Preliminary Programme

The Trøndelag region was involved in war several times in this period. Trøndelag is a part of Norway, which at this time belonged to the Danish kingdom. Sweden was, however, a power of great ambitions, and the two powers fought several wars. In Trøndelag the most serious periods were the seven months of Swedish occupation in 1658, and the Swedish invasion through Trøndelag in 1718.
In my paper I want to investigate:
· The consequences of peasants being conscripted as soldiers. In both periods several thousands of men from the countryside were conscripted, in 1657-58 first by the Norwegian army, then by the Swedish occupants, and then again by the Norwegians. Even the Swedish commissioner in charge of conscription was worried because the countryside was left without labouring hands. This means that more labour and responsibility was left with the remaining population, especially women and children.
· The consequences of peasants having to supply the army with provisions and equipment. The economic burden on the peasantry was increasing immensely through the seventeenth century, mostly because of warfare.
· The consequences of the plundering both the invading and the defending soldiers did in the countryside. Especially in 1718 serious damages are reported in the region affected.
After the war in 1657-58 as well as after 1718 the question of compensation for damage was raised. Letters of application and enquiries make it possible to see some of the consequenses. (Show less)

The North-western region of Galicia was controlled in less than three weeks after the coup d’état of July the 18th 1936. Subsequently, it became a key-piece of the war effort against the Republican authorities, supplying manpower and foodstuff. As an apologist of the so-called “national” side wrote, Galicia became “our larder and human hatchery”. It must be emphasized that the Civil War has often been described from the Francoist point of view as a rebellion of the rural Spain, as the healthy, pious and traditional part of the nation, against the cities, where foreign ideas and moral decay had taken hold. As a matter of fact, the main cities remained under the authority of the Republican government.
Our paper will analyze if the quick success of the military rebellion in Galicia was the result of a widespread support among the rural population. We will pay special attention to the following aspects:

- The repression of the peasant unionism once the military had taken the four Galician provinces under control.
- The impact of war on peasant economies, given that the urban centres were behind enemy lines, thus making the army the main purchaser of cattle.
- The experience of the peasant-soldier.
- The mixture of propaganda and coercion in the Home-front to keep the war effort for what had been planned as a putsch and had become a long and bloody civil war.
- The first signs of resistance and the figure of the “fuxido”, people on the run who sheltered in woods and mountains fearing dead or imprisonment because of their political or social profile. (Show less)

Until recently, forced labour in German agriculture during the Second World War appeard as a 'lighter' variation of forced labour in German war economy. In contrast, recent studies have pointed out the pecularities of rural forced labour more precisely, e.g. the wide range of different types of relationsships between peasants and forced labourers. According to these findings, the wide variety of peasant-labourer-relationships on the micro level was a constitutive element of the system of forced labour in German agriculture on the macro level. The actors on the farms had to cope with the contradictions of the forced labour program that arose from the polycratic structure of the Nazi state - and they adapted the guidelines from above to their local living conditions. Thus, many practices of peasant 'resistance', e.g. having dinner with forced labourers from Poland or the Soviet Union, stabilized the contradictory system of forced labour in German agriculture. The proposed paper will discuss this thesis with reference to a research project on the former province of 'Niederdonau'. (Show less)

This paper aims to deal with the Remensa Catalan wars during the later Middle Ages. Catalonia, a Mediterranean principality, experienced a severe form of lordship that limited the freedom of peasants: they had to pay to leave the domain, they had to pay when they married, when they died, etc. Between 1462 and 1486 Catalan servile peasants mounted the most successful peasants’ war of the European Middle Ages, and achieved the formal abolition of servitude and their personal freedom. We have no doubt that the Catalan peasants in the period before the outbreak of war in 1462 were extraordinarily well-organized and articulate. They even went several times, paying their own voyages, to Naples to visit the King Alfons IV, who after conquering that town stayed there until his death.
In fact, the remensas waged two wars against their lords. In 1950 Jaume Vicens Vives studied the royal version of these two wars but we still do not have local studies about them. The main purpose of this paper is to study how the remensa wars affected to the lordship of the “Almoina del Pa de la Seu de Girona” (a charitable fundation of the cathedral of Girona that distributed bread between poor people). Its domains, including lands, households, mansi, etc. and also the people who held them, were involved in war. Most of its servile peasants (remensas) took an active part in both of them, some of them even went to Naples. The accounts books of this Institution offer several informations about the conflict between the “Almoina” and its remensas: the lordship’s jails, the provost kidnapped by the remensas, the purchase of weapons and so on. (Show less)

Albania was not a belligerent in the First World War, but was invaded or fought over by several armies. In January 1916 the Austro-Hungarian army entered Albania and by summer 1916 had reached the southernmost extent of the territory it occupied, facing the Italian army over the River Vjosa. This paper examines the situation of Albanian civilians, in particular the inhabitants of the area adjacent to the front line, Mallakastër. They were in an ambiguous position. There was no enemy to resist, nor was it treachery to join the Austrian army or earn money from the occupiers, but they did not owe the Austrians any loyalty either. Until the final assault only minor fighting occurred along the front, but there were casualties among Albanians who fought in the army. Heavy-handed actions by the army caused resentment, and restrictions imposed by the occupiers and the supplies they commandeered resulted in shortages of food and disruption to people’s lives. Refugees had come from areas that were under Italian occupation, or were disputed, and in the final months of the war villages near the river were evacuated, and their inhabitants were crowded into others round about. When stronger neighbours fight, those who find themselves in the way share the burden of war. (Show less)