The Other Proletarians: Seasonal Labourers, Mercenaries and Miners

In: International review of social history, Band 39, Heft S2, S. 171-193

Abstract

The emergence of wage labour in Europe has traditionally been seen as a transition from peasant agriculture to employment in urban industries involving permanent migration from rural areas to the cities. In this context migration was often depicted as a flight from the land forced by enclosure or by famine. This particular form of proletarianization-cumurbanization was indeed of major historical significance. Recently, how-ever, many historians have tried to shift the emphasis in another direction. According to one such scholar, Charles Tilly, European demographic growth from the Middle Ages to the late nineteenth century was caused predominantly by the proletarianization outside the cities which was induced by the modernization of agriculture and, above all, by proto-industry. Migration also plays an important role in this model. Firstly, early modern European proletarianization led to net migration losses of European proletarians who left for white settlement colonies, as in the cases of Spain, England and southern Germany. Secondly, proletarianization had major mobilizing effects on the rural population by way of short-distance and temporary or seasonal migration, followed by long-distance migration during the nineteenth century. As a rule, proto-industry caused indirect proletarianization through self-employment which brought the work to the labourers rather than causing migration.