Peasant proprietors, social mobility and risk aversion in the early Middle Ages: an Iberian case study

Abstract

This article investigates an important but neglected question concerning the social and economic dynamics of village communities in early medieval north-western Iberia: why did ‘medium owners’–that is, peasants who accumulated significant landed holdings–assemble portfolios of property large enough to produce significant surpluses in an age in which the institutional infrastructure needed to marketise such surpluses was rudimentary? The pursuit of upward social mobility is most commonly posed as the answer to this question; but how exactly did medium owners stand to gain? After all, north-western Iberia in the early Middle Ages was a scarcely monetised society in which would-be medium owners could not expect to be paid in coin for the sale of their surplus and consequently see their options as buyers increase. Why, then, assume the risks involved in expanding one’s farming operation? Certainly, the acquisition of landed wealth brought with it clear advantages, including symbolic prestige and an expanded client network. Yet this article suggests that we can better understand why socially mobile peasants sought to own landed resources capable of producing significant surpluses only if we are prepared to re-examine important historiographical motifs, including peasant risk aversion, and the culturally constituted nature of the subsistence minimum.