No, that's not true. We can tell because farmers, by and large, strongly resisted attempts to push them off of their land, and generally only moved into cities in large surges every time the economy slumped (Baumol's cost disease having lead to cost increases for the tools they needed to do their farming). Before the modern era, cities were actually net-negative growth rates due to disease, starvation, exposure, murder, etc. -- a fact which was certainly not true of the countryside. Even just operationally we can think -- how common was it for farmers to lose an arm to a threshing machine, to develop black lung from inhaling coal, to take orders from another man like he was their boss? People liked being farmers, people liked owning their own land, people liked being their own boss, people liked feeding themselves, people liked to be independent and self-reliant. All of that goes away when one moves to the city to work in a factory or mine.
What you're saying is a common understanding, but it's a false one, rooted in Victorian-era attitudes towards medieval peasants that really have nothing to do with reality.
The most important thing to understand about peasant farmers is that their economic prospects are tied to the availability of land, and land is a finite resource of which there is not enough and no more can be had. Most pre-modern societies are set up to extract every possible extra amount of food produced, which basically means that in times of plenty, you get more people who have no work available for them (which means they up and leave to the cities, the only places which have the sufficient labor pool).
> People liked being farmers, people liked owning their own land, people liked being their own boss, people liked feeding themselves, people liked to be independent and self-reliant.
Oooh boy. There's a vast array of different socioeconomic statuses varying through time and space, but broadly speaking, most peasants did not own their own land, and even the majority of people who did own their own land did not own enough to feed themselves from their own land. And even if you did own your land and enough of it to feed your family, you probably still need to borrow the plow and oxen teams, and other farming implements, from your local lord. And since you are perennially on borderline starvation, you're not independent and self-reliant, you're entirely reliant on the village communal support to help you get through those times when your fields were a little bare.
Pretending that medieval peasantry was some sort of idyllic lifestyle is exactly the kind of Victorian-era fantasy you're decrying.
What peasant life offered wasn't comfort but stability. Peasant life may suck, but at least you knew what you were in for. If you moved to a city (let alone further away), you left your support network, you left everybody you knew, maybe for a shot at a better life... but with essentially no recourse if anything failed. Or you could stay, where things wouldn't get better, but they also wouldn't get worse. Unless there were a major calamity and staying wasn't an option.
In Victorian England farmers were being displaced through the enclosure movement. Common land was privatized. The old way of life (farming) was taken away from them by the upper class. An economy shifting to factory labor was also a factor - farming lost its sustainability for most poor farmers in the new economy. Farming was hard and becoming harder. Factories were horrific. The notion that people simply chose factories because their old way of life was available to them and factories were just “better” is an oversimplification.
I appreciate your trying to engage in this but I don't think your response is founded in historical fact.
> most peasants did not own their own land,
If you mean most individuals then sure, but on a per household basis actually most peasants did indeed have land to call their own. E.g. reference The Decline of Serfdom in Late Medieval England. The "bottom rung" was predominantly half-virgater villeins, who were unfree leaseholders with barely enough to feed their family -- but they did still 'own' their land insofar as they had perpetual usufruct to it, and by the early 1500s paid essentially nothing in rent due to inflation and hereditary fixed rent levels.
> What peasant life offered wasn't comfort but stability.
Sure, I don't disagree. I never tried to claim that peasant life was great and enjoyable -- but people, especially people with kids to take care of, tend to value a baseline of stability above all else.
>land is a finite resource of which there is not enough and no more can be had.
That's not as true in the US's development. There's such an abundance of land and rapid expansion made it easier and easier for new landowners to grab acres of land. American to this day is still very sparse as a country.
US farmers had a bunch of land and possibly slave labor. They had little need to adapt to new tech. And yes, stability is key if you have it; it's a fleeting feeling (even to this day).
It's not done yet, and I am eagerly awaiting the end results. That said, from what I can tell from his writings, jcrammer is mostly correct. The peasant life - the modal life - was just awful hard work for many decades. It was not nice and it was not better than the factories most of the time. Yes there were bad factories, a lot of them, but they lasted a brief time. The Factory Act in Britian was in 1833, only a few decades after the factories were even a thing.
Aside: We really need better education in labor laws overall.
I'm familiar with Bret Devereaux, but you're underestimating the state of industrial labor. It did not suddenly get happy-cheery in 1833; if anything I would say almost another century of intense political organization was necessary before people were "secure" in their lives and jobs again. C.f. the Coal Wars in Appalachia.
Even "medieval peasantry" was a bit of an odd phrase.
The middle ages saw the growth of cities, commerce, increasingly industrial agriculture, etc. It also saw non-peasant societies like the vikings, muslim civilization, etc.
There were massive social safety nets in the form of guilds, religious orders, and political patronage organizations. Disease was a much bigger threat than starvation.
You're right the Victorians, like the Pre-Raphelites and Oxford movement, fetishized medieval life. But that was a reaction against anti-medieval Tudor-begun propaganda in place since the Plantagenets were defeated at the Battle of Bosworth Field (1485).
> Even "medieval peasantry" was a bit of an odd phrase.
It really isn't. This is the accepted term in academia, so long as you don't dispute the user of the term "medieval". While the period did see an outgrowth of cities, the vast majority (80%++) of the population was rural in almost every country throughout the period, including Scandinavian ones: Viking was a profession, not a culture, and the vast majority of Scandinavians, including Vikings, were in fact farmers, which is evidenced by how once the "Great Heathen Army" secured a foothold in Northumberland they proceeded to build a bunch of farms, thus all the places now named "-by" in northern England. Similarly, "Muslim civilization" was not a monolith. Yes, Arabia is not exactly conducive to settled agriculture, but Egypt and the Levant -- the political heartlands of Arab civilization from the 8th century and onwards -- were among the most agriculturally productive lands on earth, and a similarly large proportion of their population was engaged in the hereditary profession of agriculture as a result.
> There were massive social safety nets in the form of guilds, religious orders, and political patronage organizations. Disease was a much bigger threat than starvation.
This is true, and something very commonly overlooked. People think of medieval life as "brutish and short" but in reality these were stable, largely prosperous societies.
Maybe he thinks about US farmers? But even there I am pretty sure most were not working their own lands, slaves and hired hands and so on seems to have been pretty common.
Farming was bad, but before the labor movement, factories were generally worse. People chose to move to factories not because they were superior to farming but because their old livelihoods were taken from them.
Factories paid better. The working conditions might have been bad but factories paid so much more that people did it anyway, it isn't that you couldn't be a farmer but working in a factory made you richer.
Only if you think living longer is bad. Till early 20th century, urban life expectancy was lower than rural life expectancy in Britain. It was dubbed urban penalty.
