In the paper I am going to compare the relationship between aristocratic landowners and rural population in Bohemia and England in the second half of the 19th century.
Being great landowners meant that aristocratic families in both countries were in different ways interconnected with the rural world. This world consisted of ...
(Show more)In the paper I am going to compare the relationship between aristocratic landowners and rural population in Bohemia and England in the second half of the 19th century.
Being great landowners meant that aristocratic families in both countries were in different ways interconnected with the rural world. This world consisted of tenants, estate workers, village and small town populations, local elites, clergy, the local poor and others. Members of aristocratic families were important to local societies not only because they directly or indi-rectly employed local people, but also because they or their agents were the local representa-tives of authority, e.g. in magistrates, school boards, as church or charity wardens.
Obviously, the big difference is the date of abolition of feudalism. It is an open question though, how these different experiences shaped the relationship between aristocratic land-owning families and the local population generally and especially as far as the question of authority is concerned.
What ever the situation, English as well as Bohemian aristocrats well into the 20th century thought of themselves as being paternalistic and benevolent towards the rural population and therefore entitled to deference. But paternalism as well as patronage can also be interpreted as traditional techniques of social control which helped aristocracy as a class to remain in power (or to slow down decline) in a modernising world.
Along with the question of social control goes the question how conflicts were dealt with. Since the second half of the 19th century brought along further industrialisation, urbanisation, political mobilisation and an agrarian crisis, there definitely was room for conflict. One of the arguments this paper is going to discuss is the issue that the English aristocracy remained in a stronger position as far as exercising direct authority is concerned. In Bohemia, conflicts were more often dealt with by courts. So the transformation from traditional social control by the landlords to control exercised by the state via the law seems more advanced in Bohemia than in England.
One of the consequences might be that with traditional relations loosening earlier this helped to found agrarian interest groups in Bohemia that consisted of aristocratic landlords and (ten-ant) farmers who tried to influence politics in Vienna and Prague together. Examples of this kind where quite short-lived in Britain, and after the agrarian crises nearly completely came to an halt.
So the comparison of two aristocratic groups and their relationship to the rural population in England and Bohemia leads to questions of social control and dealing with conflicts, both of which have consequences for the interpretation of the rural world’s transformation in the 19th century.
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