[Dragaera] Fwd: Peasant fantasy

[Philip Hart via Dragaera]

On Sun, 2 Nov 2014, via Dragaera wrote:

> The definition of "peasant" is complicated. It can mean any poor farmer,
> but usually includes the implication of not owning the land being 
> farmed. [...]
>
> Poor farmers in, for example, the United States and Canada are not
> considered peasants, because there was no non-land-owning peasant class in
> this country for them to emerge from (there were some number of them, to
> be sure, but never a social class).

Maybe sharecroppers in the American South after the war would count as a 
peasant class?

> There is an implication in the term that peasants are serfs or come from a
> tradition of serfdom, though this isn't always the case.

If I understand correctly, a serf was better than a slave in not being 
considered property, but maybe in some times and places this didn't make a 
big difference.  To a serf who was a vassal or was bound to a piece of 
land sharecropping would be a step up.