“Pampered by the Lord”. Is There an Alternative to “the People’s Turn”?

Abstract

The essay’s author addresses the arguments of critics of the so-called “people’s turn” in historiography, who in their description of relations in rural serfdom in Polish lands emphasise above all their complementary nature and alleged harmony, while also recognising the patriarchal and hierarchical order as the natural state of things, in which there was no need for the peasant to rebel. He shows that identical arguments were put forward by conservative columnists defending the serfdom system in the 19th century. They wrote, for example, about the patrimonial convention in the relations between heir and peasant, they belittled the scale of violence, and they emphasised the alleged timelessness of the peasant’s existence, “rooted in nature”. In addition he points to the selective approach taken by the authors of two reviewed works in regard to sources, along with their omission of key publications in international literature on the subject.