Szuhay Péter: A Szendrő környéki falvak paraszti gazdálkodása a kapitalizmus időszakában (Borsodi Kismonográfiák 14. Miskolc, 1982)

contrast of the developed and the undeveloped. Backwardness of this region is to be emphasized when contrasting it with the Transdanubian and European agriculture. Investigating peasant society cultivation of the soil and consumption cannot be separated. Peasant farming seems to be a system of self-support and every moment of production and consumption takes place in this system. Supposing that closeness weakens with the disorganization of peasantry and exchange i.e. trade connections take place not only among peasants but with other social classes as well, the above mentioned categories become reasonable and in this way capitalistic production of goods turns into general. The investigated period is the age of this change and so this essay is reasonable to follow the ideas of economics. I made an effort to explore the production structure, the connections between changes of the structure and the agricultural village falling into pieces. Before the analysis of the period I gave a short account on the state of affairs, the emancipation of the serfs. The agricultural life is determined by the size of parcels, by the estate structure and the characteristic rate of them. Take only a peasant farm of medium size and the cultivation on this field being considered as a model I tried to describe the situation. After the emancipation of serfs the medium-sized estates based mainly on forced labour, couldn't turn to a large scale capitalistic economy. This medium-sized estate had lived for some decades but after all it didn't prove to be profitable and was broken up. Farms went over to the peasants and in this way they stengthened the earlier pauperized peasantry. This way of getting property proved to be an illusion for the peasants, a desire to keep the way of life of peasantry. In the villages there lived pauperized peasantry. In the sixteenth century, during the properous agriculture one can find a great number of peasants having a great amount of plus corn, but by the nineteenth century as a result of the increasing number of inhabitants and the parcels having been broken into small pieces, peasants of this type are going to disappear and peasants without any land or only with a small-sized farm become characteristic. So as to earn their living these people were forced to take all kinds of employment and they engaged themselves especially to agricultural work. Although there are opportunities for work till the end of the nineteenth century, their life is hard because of living in difficult circumstances. They wanted to obtain subsistence economy, i.e. their aim was the creation of independent life. The only opportunity for getting land is the impoverishment of medium-sized estates. 149