A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry is right now doing a series on how peasants lived. Arable land is limited, people really don’t want to watch their family members starve, and the entire economic system is maybe kind of reliant on squeezing peasants to do the things necessary for society to function, so there’s strong incentives of all kinds to work a lot
Yay! A chance for me to link to my favorite blog: https://acoup.blog/2025/09/12/collections-life-work-death-and-the-peasant-part-ivc-rent-and-extraction/ (may require reading part IV.a and IV.b first).
A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry is right now doing a series on how peasants lived. Arable land is limited, people really don’t want to watch their family members starve, and the entire economic system is maybe kind of reliant on squeezing peasants to do the things necessary for society to function, so there’s strong incentives of all kinds to work a lot