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1

OLD AGE IN THE LIFE OF POLISH PEASANTS AT THE TURN OF THE MODERN ERA (Starosc w zyciu kmieci polskich przelomu sredniowiecza i czasów nowozytnych)

100%
Guzowski P.
Kwartalnik Historii Kultury Materialnej
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2010
|
vol. 58
|
issue 1
101-110
EN
The article is based on the book of court record from the village of Trzesniowa from the years 1419-1609. The data was analyzed from both the demographic and the social perspective. Records of village courts allow us to trace peasants' fortunes and to reconstruct their families and lifecycles by the classical genealogical method. The analysed book contains 1542 court notes from the years 1419-1609, regarding the purchase, sale, inheritance or exchange of land, as well as rents, testaments, inventories, loans, pledges, criminal cases and conflicts between neighbours. Most commonly, the people involved were peasants who were hereditary tenants of land and performed some court functions (e.g. jurors). Women were heavily under-represented. Particular people were mentioned from one to over a hundred times. The demographic analysis was conducted on two levels. The first step was to delimit a group of 219 peasants who were mentioned in the book at least five times. This procedure made it possible to trace a significant part of their lifecycle, starting with the purchase or inheritance of land. The last mention of such a person in the book often came from over 20 later. The arithmetic average for the whole of the period in question was almost 24 years, but the median was only 21 years. The average time of activity for members of the village elite was over 25 years (arithmetic average - 26, median - 25), and for the other 'common' peasants it was 20 years (median - 19). Out of the analyzed 219 peasants 64 people were selected, who were active for 30 or more years. 26 of those sold their land on older age, usually on credit (10 of them to their sons or sons-in-law) and appeared in court to confirm the receipt of instalments. They usually stayed with their families, having a guarantee of care and a right to use a room and a piece of land, or they rented accommodation with another family. The other 38 of the group, who formally did not bequeath their land in the old age, probably remained heads of their family households. 22 of them played important roles in the village community, being jurors or the lord's officials. Only in 35 cases of the 64 the land was inherited by the peasant's progeny. Securing a heir to the hereditary plot was the worst demographic and economic problem for both peasants and, indirectly, their lords.
2

OLD PEOPLE IN PEASANT AND GENTRY HOUSEHOLDS IN POLAND IN THE LATE 18TH C. (Ludzie starzy w chlopskich i szlacheckich gospodarstwach domowych w Koronie schylku XVIII wieku)

100%
Kopczynski M.
Kwartalnik Historii Kultury Materialnej
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2010
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vol. 58
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issue 1
111-119
EN
Old age as a special period in an individual's life is a relatively new topic in historical research. Interest in this subject has been stirred by the process of population ageing, inevitably affecting all the developed countries and increasingly present in public discourse. Population ageing stems from an increase of longevity but its effects are acutely felt only when it is combined with a decrease of the fertility rate, as a result of which the proportion of old people in the population (however old age is defined) rises to over 20%. In Western Europe the process has been witnessed since the 1960s, being euphemistically called the second demographic transformation. In Poland and other countries of 'the younger Europe' it started in the 1980s and has been much more rapid than in the West. Population ageing leads to a number of economic and social consequences. The article deals with the situation of old people in peasant and gentry families in Poland in the late 18th century. It is based on civil and military census records from the years 1790-92 from the districts of Radziejów and Podgórze in Kuyavia (peasants) and the region of Wielun (gentry). The basic research question concerns the family strategies assumed in view of ageing and their impact on the structure of households. For eighteenth-century peasants in Kuyavia social ageing began when they lost the position of the head of the household. In the case of men this happened quite late, about the age of 70, in the case of women - about the age of 60. In the serfdom system, where contracts and ownership were not legally guaranteed, and the position of elderly people was regulated only by ethical norms not by law, the loss of this position entailed social degradation. Unsurprisingly, peasants tried to avoid it, hanging on to their farms. Men were more successful at that, while women were more quickly and inevitably degraded. The author explored the differences in the structure of peasant and gentry households. In both cases the dominant model was a nuclear family, but the proportion of extended families including lineal ancestors and collateral relatives was different. Among peasants there was a significant proportion of families headed by single mothers; households of more complex structure were uncommon. Gentry households quite often included collateral relatives, usually unmarried or widowed women. The small proportion of households in which widowed mothers lived with their sons' families indicates that widowed gentry women were in a much better position than widowed peasant women. The above-mentioned differences were conditioned by the domination of the production function in peasant households and the lack of ownership guarantees. These factors made the situation of old people in peasant households very difficult. For fear of declassing peasant families get rid of older sons, making them go into service, so that they did not compete with their ageing parents, and replacing them with hired labourers. Widowed men often remarried, which was necessary from the perspective of productivity and helped avoid degradation. Women, who were unable to do that, quickly lost the position of the head of the household. In gentry households the production function was not so prominent and ownership was guaranteed by law, therefore the perspective of ageing was not as disturbing as it was for peasants.
3
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PEASANTS INTO POLES: SUBJECTIVIZATION AS A STRATEGY TO NATIONHOOD IN THE POLISH VILLAGE AT THE TURN OF THE 20TH CENTURY

100%
Boncza-Tomaszewski N.
Sprawy Narodowościowe
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2006
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issue 28
75-88
EN
The analysis of a strategy of nationalization of peasants' national awareness in the Kingdom of Poland proves that the basic role in this process was played by the idea of the man as Subject. Konrad Prószynski, whose views were of pivotal importance for the alphabetization of millions of peasants in the Kingdom, treated education of agrarian population as a tool for their subjectivization. He strongly advocated self study, due mainly to the weakness of village education but also as a means of awakening individualistic and subject values such as self control, self knowledge, growth of individual capacities among the peasants. Prószynski instilled in his readers a belief that individual's talents and aspirations are what constitutes the value of man. Education is seen here in the ethical categories, in which affirmation of subject ideals was combined with an imperative to recognize dignity of each individual as a Subject. In the author's opinion the ideal of man as a Subject formed a basis for development of national awareness of peasants. Prószynski and other educational activists from the intelligentsia circles encouraged this ideal among the common people.
4
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Rethinking Agency, Rethinking Assumptions of the New Social History of Immigration of the Late Twentieth Century

63%
Gerber D. A.
Studia Migracyjne - Przegląd Polonijny
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2019
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vol. 45
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issue 3 (173)
29–40
EN
In the last decades of the twentieth century, the concept of agency – i.e., purposeful self-determination based on calculated choice – enjoyed a hegemonic position in the literature of the social history of European immigration to the United States. The original inspiration for this development in immigration historiography was the path breaking 1964 essay by essay by Rudolph Vecoli challenging the classic work on Oscar Handlin, The Uprooted (1951), which saw immigration as a jarring experience of alienation and confusion that left immigrants defensive and poorly adjusted in their new American homes. This essay reexamines the conflict of views associated with Vecoli’s challenge to Handlin in two contexts. One is the conceptual and empirical foundations of immigration historiography, and the second is the origin and early development of the New Social History, in British and American labor history and in the history of African American slavery and in Western neo-Marxism thought, which sought a humanist alternative to Communist ideology. The essay seeks critical engagement with agency, and advances the view that we should open ourselves once more to seeking guidance in Handlin’s interpretive understandings, which also suggests a reevaluation of the contributions of Thomas and Znaniecki’s The Polish Peasant in Europe and America, the now century-old source of Handlin’s views.
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