Page 239 - Panjek, Aleksander, Jesper Larsson and Luca Mocarelli, eds. 2017. Integrated Peasant Economy in a Comparative Perspective: Alps, Scandinavia and Beyond. Koper: University of Primorska Press
P. 239
intangible and material evidence on the slovenian peasant economy ...
In the suburban settlements, and especially in the villages of Šk-
edenj, Križ and Prosek many houses built of walls may be seen,
which can be said to be more gentlemanly than of peasants. [...] If
one gives a look at the farming of Trieste so painful, because the
earth must either be supported with walls or forced by hoe and
shovel to produce; and if one reflects that these plots may be scarce-
ly worked, since they have little more than a palm in depth and the
manure must be carried by men, it can only be an industrious peo-
ple [popolo industrioso] who works this land. This cannot be said
to be poor, on the contrary, among them there are many wealthy,
but their wealth is not a result of agriculture, which could not pro-
vide them with sufficient subsistence, but the particular industry:
the villages of Križ, Kontovel and Prosek, as well as the adjacent
coast [...] apply themselves to fishing especially tuna. Opčine and
Trebče earn from supplying draft animals and freight wagons, Ba-
zovica and Gropada from the excavation and transport of earth-
coals [...]. All of them and especially the suburban settlements pro-
vide the city with their animals and earn with the transport of
goods from the customs-storehouses to the boats, and from these
places to the storehouses, and they derive from it such a great prof-
it that they quite neglect the agriculture. [...Nevertheless] agricul-
ture and the rural economy, as much as a sterile territory allows
it, is blooming [...], everything possible to cultivate is cultivated [...
and new plots are being reclaimed] so to speak, between the rocks
(Dorsi 1989, 137–85).
Although self-consumption was present too, of course, from these de-
pictions it emerges very clearly how the Karst peasant economy was rather
market oriented, and that the laborious reclamations mainly had the same
goal, at least in the second half of the 18th century. Apart from commercial-
ising wine and wheat, especially animal husbandry was very much directed
to the market through dairy products, wool, and meat, with the lambs find-
ing their final commercial destination as far as Venice, almost 200 kilo-
metres away. Then there were fishing and the transport activities, which
surely derived an impulse from the growing trade in the fast developing
free-port of Trieste from the mid-18th century onwards.
But let is now turn to the new sources related to the Devin manor in
the 17th and 18th centuries.
237
In the suburban settlements, and especially in the villages of Šk-
edenj, Križ and Prosek many houses built of walls may be seen,
which can be said to be more gentlemanly than of peasants. [...] If
one gives a look at the farming of Trieste so painful, because the
earth must either be supported with walls or forced by hoe and
shovel to produce; and if one reflects that these plots may be scarce-
ly worked, since they have little more than a palm in depth and the
manure must be carried by men, it can only be an industrious peo-
ple [popolo industrioso] who works this land. This cannot be said
to be poor, on the contrary, among them there are many wealthy,
but their wealth is not a result of agriculture, which could not pro-
vide them with sufficient subsistence, but the particular industry:
the villages of Križ, Kontovel and Prosek, as well as the adjacent
coast [...] apply themselves to fishing especially tuna. Opčine and
Trebče earn from supplying draft animals and freight wagons, Ba-
zovica and Gropada from the excavation and transport of earth-
coals [...]. All of them and especially the suburban settlements pro-
vide the city with their animals and earn with the transport of
goods from the customs-storehouses to the boats, and from these
places to the storehouses, and they derive from it such a great prof-
it that they quite neglect the agriculture. [...Nevertheless] agricul-
ture and the rural economy, as much as a sterile territory allows
it, is blooming [...], everything possible to cultivate is cultivated [...
and new plots are being reclaimed] so to speak, between the rocks
(Dorsi 1989, 137–85).
Although self-consumption was present too, of course, from these de-
pictions it emerges very clearly how the Karst peasant economy was rather
market oriented, and that the laborious reclamations mainly had the same
goal, at least in the second half of the 18th century. Apart from commercial-
ising wine and wheat, especially animal husbandry was very much directed
to the market through dairy products, wool, and meat, with the lambs find-
ing their final commercial destination as far as Venice, almost 200 kilo-
metres away. Then there were fishing and the transport activities, which
surely derived an impulse from the growing trade in the fast developing
free-port of Trieste from the mid-18th century onwards.
But let is now turn to the new sources related to the Devin manor in
the 17th and 18th centuries.
237
