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The PeasantsSeminar of the University of London, 19721989 343Journal of Agrarian Change, Vol. 1 No. 3, July 2001, pp. 343 388.

Blackwell Publishers Ltd, Henry Bernstein and Terence J. Byres 2001.

The Peasants Seminar of the University ofLondon, 19721989: A Memoir

TERENCE J. BYRES

This is a memoir of the Peasantsseminar of the University of London, whichran between January 1972 and February 1989, and to which 208 papers werepresented. The following are considered: its origins, the influences which shapedit, and its agenda; the circumstances of its launching; how it gave rise, verydirectly, to the Journal of Peasant Studiesin 1973; its synergy with JPS,

especially in the 1970s, and something of its themes, ambience and develop-ment. It is concluded that there is no better way of starting and sustaining,in its early phases, a journal than first securing a strong intellectual base, inthe shape of a seminar that meets regularly and has a cohesive, but critical,intellectual community.

Key words : agrarian political economy, peasants, agrarian change,British Marxist historians

PREAMBLE

The Peasants seminar of the University of London ran from January 1972 untilFebruary 1989. Since it was a crucial element in the initial conception and theearly unfolding, via theJournal of Peasant Studies, of the project that theJournal ofAgrarian Changecontinues, it is illuminating to consider something of its history.I presented a brief sketch of this previously (Byres 1994). Here, a far fuller, andsomewhat revised, treatment is given.1 Its initial mission statement is repro-duced in Appendix A; a full list of the papers is presented in Appendix B; and thenumber of articles published in JPSbetween 1973 and 1991, and the proportioncoming via the seminar, appear in Appendix C.

Terence J. Byres, Department of Economics, School of Oriental and African Studies, University ofLondon, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG. e-mail: [email protected] am grateful to Henry Bernstein for his vigorous critical reading of this paper and his numerousvaluable suggestions. It was always my intention to try to recapture something of the Peasantsseminar through careful reminiscence. It was at his urging that I carried this further than initiallyenvisaged.1 In that earlier sketch, I said that the final meeting took place on 11 March 1988 (1994, 3). In fact,it went on until 3 February 1989. The meetings after 11 March 1988 (see Appendix B) were convenedin conjunction with other seminars. For that reason, I excluded them from my earlier calculations.On reflection, however, it seems entirely appropriate to include them in the Peasants seminar, since

they were explicitly part of that project and were announced as such. 3 February 1989 did representthe end.


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344 Terence J. Byres

In the first issue of JAC, in From Peasant Studies to Agrarian Change,Bernstein and Byres (2001) considered the major themes and approaches inagrarian political economy of the last three decades, especially as pursued in JPS.That paper was conceived and written in a particular way, appropriate to the

purpose in hand. It sought, as a prelude to the new venture of JAC, to identifyintellectual strengths and lacunae, the possibility of new approaches to old prob-lems and the emergence of new concerns. That required that it proceed asobjectively as possible, in a deliberately clinical and distanced manner. If itpointed to possible new approaches and welcomed fresh challenges, it did notseek to suggest the need for any major rupture with the broad analytical tradi-tion of JPS, as that emerged between 1973 and 2000. It argued, indeed, thatJPS, from its very early days, began to evolve as a medium for a far broaderagrarian political economy than is usually suggested by the notion of peasantstudies. The present paper is intended as a complement to From Peasant

Studies to Agrarian Change, and is conceived differently. It is less distanced,and proceeds with a more narrative voice. It attempts to illuminate, in anotherkind of way, the nature, trajectory and challenges of agrarian political eco-nomy, and the manner of their emergence via the Peasants seminar, whichgave rise to JPS, and sustained it throughout the 1970s and within which theagrarian political economy of JPSfound its early expression and from which itdeveloped.

My account, inevitably, is subjective and selective. Others might tell it differ-ently. I have tried to avoid hindsight, as far as possible, in order to capture theimmediacy of events as they happened, not imposing upon them a retrospective

pattern, and to represent viewpoints as they were, without the knowingness ofsubsequent experience. On occasion, however, some hindsight intervenes, andI try to signal that. Since I have kept fairly complete records including corres-pondence, my annotated copies of the papers that were presented and notes fromthe discussion I have not had to rely only on memory. As I noted, a moredistanced view is given in Bernstein and Byres (2001). We did not, necessarily,see things quite so clearly at the time.

Over the 17 years of the seminar, 208 papers were presented. In its heyday,which was probably around 1980, it had come to represent the academic forumfor agrarian political economy in the United Kingdom. Its papers reached a wide

audience through a considerable mailing list: in the United Kingdom itself, inwestern Europe (in, for example, France, Germany, Holland, Denmark, Sweden,Spain, Portugal), in North America, in Australasia and in many developingcountries (in Asia, Latin America and Africa). Numerous people wrote fromabroad, asking for copies of the papers. Out of it, very directly, grew the Journalof Peasant Studies, which was founded by its chairmen (myself and CharlesCurwen), along with Teodor Shanin, in 1973. Between 1973 and 1980, it wasa critical nutrient base for the journal. After 1980, it continued as an import-ant forum in London, until its last meeting in 1989. Now, however, somethingof the excitement of the early years had gone, while JPShad become far moreself-provisioning.


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The PeasantsSeminar of the University of London, 19721989 345

ORIGINS OF THE PEASANTSSEMINAR AND BROAD AIMS

I was approached at some point in the middle of 1971 by Tony Atmore, thenSecretary of the recently founded Centre of International and Area Studies ofthe University of London, who asked if I would convene a regular seminar forthe Centre, on a theme of my choice. Part of Atmores brief for the new Centrewas to take initiatives in the University of London to coordinate area studiesand give them a focus. He believed that one way of doing this was to establish ageneral seminar that would bring together practitioners of area studies arounda particular theme.2 Here was a demanding task. Area studies were pursuedby scholars who were primarily discipline-oriented. Institutions existed withinthe University of London that had an area studies orientation: pre-eminently,perhaps, the School of Oriental and African Studies, but also, for example, theSchool of Slavonic and East European Studies, the Institute of Commonwealth

Studies and the Institute of Latin American Studies. Efforts had been made, inthe 1960s, within these institutions, to create a focus within individual broad areasthat would draw people out of their disciplines. Heads were scratched to findsuitable themes. In retrospect, the efforts made were not conspicuously successful.Now something even more ambitious was being sought: a seminar that mightbring together not only specialists from one area (difficult enough), but from anumber of areas; a seminar that would be inter-disciplinary, appropriate to thebroad range of relevant areas and have sufficient intellectual appeal.

I agreed in principle to Tony Atmores request, and then thought about whatthe theme should be. There were several possibilities, which reduced to two: one

a seminar on Imperialism, the other a seminar on Peasants.At that time, I was teaching an MSc course on Imperialism, along with mycolleague and friend at the School of Oriental and African Studies, the late BillWarren, which we had started in October 1970. He and I did discuss the possibil-ity of a seminar on Imperialism and we identified a tentative list of topics fora seminar. But Bill had become quite seriously ill with kidney malfunction andI hesitated to pursue the matter too forcefully with him. Whether we would haveopted for a seminar on Imperialism, had he been in good health, I really cannotbe sure. I suspect that we would not.3

Since 1966 I had also been teaching, with the late K.R. Walker, an MSc course

on Economic Problems of Agriculture in Poor Countries. This had made me awareof a range of problems that offered scope for discussion among area specialists,as well as a number of thorny theoretical issues. These were problems and issues,moreover, that demanded inter-disciplinary treatment, within a political economy

2 The Centre had been created, I think in 1970, on the initiative of C.H. Philips, then Director ofthe School of Oriental and African Studies, as an appropriate umbrella organization for area studies inLondon. Its Secretary, Tony Atmore, had been a Lecturer in African History at SOAS.3 We taught the course on Imperialismtogether until December 1977, when Bill Warren died. Outof it came Bill Warrens posthumously published book, Imperialism: Pioneer of Capitalism (1980),which caused something of a stir when it appeared. We maintained a close friendship, but differed

quite fundamentally in our views on the implications of imperialism for poor countries. It was,therefore, an exciting course to teach.


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framework, if they were to be addressed adequately (or so I believed). KenWalker and I had taught, too, between 1968 and 1971, a course on ComparativeEconomic Systems: India and China Under Planning. This focused attention on social-ism and its problems and on comparing those countries that had embarked upon

socialism with those attempting a capitalist path. We had pursued some compar-ative work on Indian and Chinese agriculture. Although never published, it hadsuggested the rich possibilities of comparative treatment of agrarian issues and,again, the need, for inter-disciplinary/political economy examination. My ownresearch on the agrarian question in India pushed me towards trying to grasphow the agrarian question manifested itself in poor countries other than Indiaand, indeed, how it had been resolved historically, in the now advanced countries.In short, I had become preoccupied with seeking the historical roots of theagrarian question in contemporary poor countries and its manifestation in thepast in advanced capitalist countries.

In the event, I joined with another colleague at SOAS, Charles Curwen, anhistorian specializing in peasant movements in China, to conceive of a Peasantsseminar. Tony Atmore was attracted by the idea. So, too, were others.

We envisaged neither a long-running seminar of the kind that emerged, nor ajournal. Our stated goals are indicated in Appendix A. Here I may indulge somehindsight. It is a document of its time (for example, the peasant and his moralcommunity), for which, perhaps, it is superfluous to apologize now. It wasdeliberately brief and was written in intentionally broad terms, to secure as widea constituency as possible. Without exaggerating our knowledge, sophistica-tion or insight at the time, one may say that we were subject to a greater range

and depth of intellectual influence, contemplated a far larger number of questionsand had a more precise agenda than appear there. This quickly became obviousimmediately the seminar got under way, as I show below.

Our intention was to explore, over a period of 15 months, four broad themes:peasants and their social structures, peasants and politics, the nature and logicof peasant agriculture, and peasants and their moral communities. Our plan wasthat the seminar would start in January 1972 and might culminate in a finalconference in July 1973, which would yield a conference volume.

WHY PEASANTS? A POWERFUL AND EXCITING AGENDAFROM THE 1960S

Why, having chosen to concentrate on agrarian issues, did we focus our endeav-our on peasants? We might have called it the Agrarian Question seminar. Thatwould have been a legitimate focus, but might have narrowed the seminarsappeal to those of a Marxist persuasion. We wished to cast our net more widely,and engage on a broad intellectual front. It might have been the Agrarian PoliticalEconomy seminar. We might even have called it the Agrarian Change seminar although that is to indulge hindsight too much. It did not occur to us so to nameit, although it would have been perfectly appropriate. Was there, at the time, acertain inevitability about peasants?


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Here, the danger of hindsight intrudes and there is a temptation to impart aclarity of view and a neatness of sequence that we were not aware of as eventsunfolded. I would stress that when we contemplated what we wanted to addressin the seminar, our ideas were inchoate, incomplete and tentative. The seminar

was to be exploratory; it was to be a genuine learning process. We did have anagenda that was altogether more sophisticated than Appendix A indicates, butlet me not suggest that it was more highly developed than was the case, and thatwe were more incisive than we, in fact, were.

Looking back, and disentangling the various influences that informed ouragenda, the first, and strongest, was Marxism. The degree of that influence iscertainly hidden in Appendix A. In Marxist discourse, the concern was with theagrarian question.

We had been influenced by Engels Peasant War in Germanyand his The PeasantQuestion in France and Germany (1965, 1970), the latter containing an early, and

cogent, statement of the agrarian question. Significantly, Engels referred to itas the peasant question, and part of that peasant question was the existenceof a differentiated peasantry. Peasants, then, entered our consciousness andvocabulary. We were, perhaps, influenced pre-eminently by Lenins Developmentof Capitalism in Russia (1964), but also by other of his writings on the agrarianquestion. Peasants figured prominently therein, and especially the differenti-ation of the peasantry, the title of chapter 2 of Development of Capitalism in Russia,one of the most powerful chapters in the book. The early writings of Mao onrural China were read: again peasants loomed large, and again peasant differenti-ation.4Rosa Luxemburgs immensely stimulating chapters, in Section Three of

her Accumulation of Capital (1951) on The Struggle Against Natural Economy,The Introduction of Commodity Economy and the Struggle Against PeasantEconomy, address the issue of the peasant economy and its destruction bycapitalism.5

Kautsky was intriguing. His Die Agrarfrage (The Agrarian Question) had notbeen translated into English, and would not be translated in full until 1988(Kautsky 1988). Banaji would publish an excellent summary in 1976 (Banaji 1976).In 1971, however, it was via the original German work or the French transla-tion that one gained access. This meant very limited access. We were aware ofKautskys famous work, but remarkably ignorant of its content.6

4 For example, Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society, Report of an Investigation of a PeasantMovement in Hunan, and How to Differentiate the Classes in Rural Areas, in Mao Tse-tung (1967).These were written, successively, in 1926, 1927 and 1933.5 Accumulation of Capital, first published in English in 1951, with its Introduction by Joan Robinson,was reprinted in paperback in 1963.6 As I have observed elsewhere, Kautskys text is probably the most quoted and least read of allimportant Marxist texts (Byres 1996, 37, note 5). That was a fortioritrue of 1971, when no Englishtranslation existed. We were aware of Lenins review of Die Agrarfrage, published in volume 4 of theCollected Works, where he delivered the following judgement: Kautskys book is the most import-ant event in present-day economic literature since the third volume of Capital. Until now Marxismhas lacked a systematic study of capitalism in agriculture. Kautsky has filled the gap (1960, 94). Had

we read Kautsky, we would have seen further preoccupation with peasants, to whom he constantlyrefers.


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There was much else. The celebrated debate on the transition from feudalismto capitalism, the DobbSweezy debate, in 1971 still residing inaccessibly in thepages of various Marxist journals (it was only in 1976 that the NLB collectionwould be published), was eagerly read and was influential.7There, too, peasants

figure prominently. One leaves Dobbs great work, Studies in the Developmentof Capitalism (1963), which gave rise to the debate, with a vivid sense of thecentrality of peasants in feudalism and the importance of differentiation in thetransition to capitalism.

The intellectual and ideological warrant given by Marxism to a study ofpeasants and the peasantry was clear, albeit not proclaimed in the missionstatement. Moreover, out of that Marxist tradition we took a set of issues thatneeded further investigation: the significance of peasant revolt/uprisings (peasantpolitics/class struggle) and what gave rise to them; the impact of colonialismupon the peasantry; the nature of agrarian change in post-colonial social forma-

tions; the extent to which capitalism was developing in the countryside, if at all,and the degree of capitalisms expropriation of the peasantry; the role of peasantsin socialist transformation and the matter of collectivization; and the nature,significance and degree of social differentiation among the peasantry and how onemight measure it. There was also, for example, an awareness of Lenins debateswith the Narodniks, and the issues raised therein not least that of differentiationof the peasantry and an incipient realization that these had contemporary signific-ance. So, we asked, what are populism and neo-populism? We were, further,aware of the need to explore the historical roots of these issues and the historicalexperience of advanced capitalist countries.

But Marxism was not the only tradition that informed our agenda. We wereconscious of the powerful criticism to which Marxist writing on agrarian issueswas subject and wished to engage with that as openly and dispassionately aspossible. The text that we were most aware of was David Mitranys Marx Againstthe Peasant. A Study in Social Dogmatism, first published in 1951 and republishedin 1961. Again, one notes the centrality of the peasant. Marxism, said Mitrany,had proclaimed a holy war against the peasants (1961, 35). From an apparentlypro-peasant standpoint, he challenged that body of Marxist theory and writ-ings [that] have had quite a lot to say about the economic and political place ofthe peasants in the evolution of modern society and considered the story of that

doctrine, in theory and in practice, and of the way it has affected the peasantriesof Europe and Asia (1961, 19). It was a book that revealed controversies pursuedin the past, in Europe, with tantalizing glimpses of debates that seemed to usto have been by no means resolved, and of writers whose ideas were touchedupon but needed more detailed consideration: debates and writers that we wishedto see examined in contemporary circumstances. Thus, Mitrany in chapter 3(The Agrarian Program of Socialism, pp. 4050) considered the nature of the

7 For the NLB collection see Hilton (1976). A previous collection had been published in 1954,

which contained contributions by Sweezy (two contributions), Dobb (two contributions), Takahashi,Hilton and Hill. See Dobb et al. (1954). But this was very difficult to get hold of.


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agrarian question for Marxists, and also in chapter 4, The Populist Reaction(pp. 5065). He focused, for example, on the issue of agricultural concentra-tion and scale (1961, 3639) and the tenets of populism and neo-populism (625and 725), and mentioned the ideas of Chayanov and others (on Chayanov,

see 745).8There was much to chew on.Given all this, 1966 was a crucial year in setting the agenda that would inform

the seminar, for in that year three books were published that, in their differ-ent ways and to different degrees, were significant for the seminar as it wasinitially conceived and first unfolded. They were books that engaged, in oneway or another, with all of the issues I have mentioned: each was concernedwith peasants, and each confronted, sometimes sympathetically and sometimescritically, aspects of the Marxist view. Each contained the word peasant inits title. The problematic we were being relentlessly led into, it seemed, waspeasants. The three books were: Barrington Moore Jr, Social Origins of Dictator-

ship and Democracy. Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (1966);A.V. Chayanov, The Theory of Peasant Economy, edited by Daniel Thorner,Basile Kerblay and R.E.F. Smith (1966); and Eric Wolf, Peasants (1966). BothCharles Curwen and I were powerfully influenced by the Marxist tradition,to which both Moore and Wolf were sympathetic; but each of the latter two,in different ways, was also, to a degree, eclectic, and prepared to draw on othertraditions or appeared to be. Chayanov was another matter altogether. Wewere less eclectic (less tolerant of other traditions), but concerned to grapplewith the issues raised by these writers.

Moores was a work of comparative, historical sociology, which was widely

and very favourably reviewed and had a dramatic impact.9Of the three books, itwas, certainly, the most influential at the time. At SOAS, in the late 1960s, wehad a series of vigorous and well-attended seminar meetings on it. One of Mooressignal contributions was to consider peasants within the broader systems andhistorical situations in which they exist, and their role in political, economic and

8 The passage on Chayanov referred to (Mitrany 1961, 745) is tantalizingly brief, but represents anacute statement of the Chayanovian view.9 The anonymous reviewer in The Times Literary Supplementof 21 December 1967 found it impressiveand had no doubt of its use of the Marxist method. He said, Mr. Moores book has already attracted

frequent and favourable notice. It is indeed a very distinguished achievement . . . Mr. Moore, whohas already made a reputation as a student of the Soviet Union, shows yet again how fruitful theMarxist method can be when handled intelligently and flexibly by a scholar who shuns dogma anddevotes himself single-mindedly to the task of mobilizing all available historical evidence for thesolution of a general problem in the field of socio-political evolution . . . Whether Mr. Moore wouldcallhimself a Marxist is not clear. He often criticizes Marx: moreover, he shows no sign of beingacquainted with the work by Marx and Engels, Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, which might havebeen used to add strength to some of his major arguments. His method, nevertheless, is fundamentallyMarxist. Classes, broadly of the Marxist kind, are his basic social unit. These, within the limitationsimposed on them by knowledge and circumstance, are seen to be pursuing their collective economicinterests, and the resultant class struggle is presented as an important (although not necessarily an all-important) force propelling the chariot of economic and social change . . . Social Origins of Dictatorshipand Democracy, in fact, is Marxist in the sense thatThe 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonapartewas Marxist;

it is a brilliant application of a challengeable but truth-revealing hypothesis to a series of discretehistorical events. We would not have disagreed with this assessment.


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social transformation. When we came to start JPS, in 1973, Moores influencewas obvious in the Editorial Statement, when we observed that the way inwhich peasantries disappear has a decisive influence on the nature of the societyto come (Byres et al. 1973, 1).10That was what we wished to pursue. It was

much in our minds when we planned the Peasants seminar.Wolf s slim textbook in anthropology was somewhat deceptive in its modesty.

One of its merits was that it forced attention upon what, precisely, constituteda peasant, and drew attention to the importance of peasant surpluses and theirdisposition. Here was an anthropologist seeking the general rather than the par-ticular, and doing so incisively. In the tension between Wolf s clear awarenessof the complexity of what he sought to communicate and how much of thathe could represent in an elementary text, the concerns of anthropology, perhaps,won out over wider analytical concerns.11It was, probably, the least influentialof the three, yet much referred to.We were very conscious of it.

Chayanov supplied the quintessential neo-populist attempt to theorize the peas-ant economy and proved very influential.12He is noted in the mission statement.He posed a challenge to Marxist ways of treating peasants that could not easilybe absorbed by eclecticism. His system was seen by many as the theoreticalalternative to Marxism: seeming to grapple with the same issues (unlike, say,neo-classical economics), but with very different implications. In the Marxisttradition, there is a central emphasis on social differentiation: an emphasis thatneither Moore nor Wolf would have rejected. Chayanov had a very differentview of the peasantry. If there was differentiation, it was demographic ratherthan social differentiation. He emphasized cohesiveness and homogeneity, rather

than tendencies to differentiate into classes; and harmony rather than antagon-ism in the peasantrys essential relationships. If there was exploitation, it was

10 In his own words, Moore endeavours to explain the varied political roles played by the landedupper classes and the peasantry in the transformation from agrarian societies (defined simply as stateswhere a large majority of the population lives off the land) to modern industrial ones. Somewhatmore specifically, it is an attempt to discover the range of historical conditions under which either orboth of these rural groups have become important forces behind the emergence of Western parliament-ary versions of democracy, and dictatorships of the right and the left, that is, fascist and communistregimes (1966, xi).11 Wolf quoted a long passage from Chayanov (pp. 14 15), from one of the few pieces by Chayanov

published in English before 1966 (in 1931); and referred the anthropology students who might usehis text to Chayanov in German. He also recommended both volume 3 of Capitaland Max WebersThe Theory of Social and Economic Organization, as well as Marc Blochs Feudal Society. Had those whoread the book followed his advice, they are likely to have been diverted from the narrow concerns ofanthropology that never constrained Wolf himself in a large body of distinguished writing.12 Michael Lipton, in an anonymous review of Chayanovs book along with two others, in TheTimes Literary Supplement of 19 December 1968, wrote of it with very high praise. He said: Thename on the banners of the revolutionary students should be Chayanov and not Che; and thisfor three reasons. First, Chayanovs theory of peasant behaviour is central to any solution of theworlds worst problem, rural poverty. Second, the study of that problem is itself undergoing radicalchange, in which Chayanovs pioneering work points the way from armchair speculation towardsreal theory based on measuring what farmers do. Third, rural development studies are transformingour understanding of the whole nature of social science, and revealing at once the scope and the

limits of the extreme empiricism currently in vogue. Those were bold claims, which found a readyaudience.


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self-exploitation that predominated (determined by subjective choice), ratherthan the surplus appropriation of dominant classes. All of this we wished toconsider.

The excitement created by these books was considerable, and they were,

indeed, critical in informing the agenda we had in mind for the Peasantsseminar.But, if Eric Wolf s little book on Peasants was rather less influential than theother two books he published in 1969, Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Centurymore than made up for that. It came right out of the ferment created by theVietnam War. Wolf refers to the image of their enemy given by United Statesmilitary officers as the raggedy little bastards in black pajamas (1969, ix). Thoseraggedy little bastards, who had fought to a standstill the mightiest militarymachine in history (1969, ix) were peasants. The book attracted considerableattention, and was part of an important debate on which strata of the peasantryconstituted a likely revolutionary force (Wolf being a proponent of the middle

peasant thesis). Its influence was considerable. Its echoes may be discerned inAppendix A.

When we wrote our 1971 mission statement, Teodor Shanins reader, Peasantsand Peasant Societies(1971), had just been published. It is a stimulating and com-prehensive collection and further encouraged us in our resolve to mount a Peasantsseminar. Peasants it would be.

There is a passage quoted by Mitrany that had attracted our attention and thatmight, indeed, have been the motif for the seminar. Mitrany cited an article onPeasant Europe from the Times Literary Supplementof July 1934:

It is indeed remarkable that this subject should hitherto have been soneglected by students of economics and politics. For the importance ofthe peasants as a factor in international politics and the world economy isbeyond dispute. A glance down the titles under the heading Peasants inthe catalogue in any great library nevertheless reveals at once the paucity ofbooks that treat of the subject from any other standpoint than that of theethnologist or the student of folklore and ancient customs. (1961, 223).

Thirty-seven years had passed since that had been written, when we wroteour mission statement. Clearly, peasants were now attracting much attention.Peasants had ceased to be the sole preserve of the ethnologist or the student of

folklore and ancient custom and had come into the analytical gaze of students ofeconomics and politics. We were determined that we would now move forwardfrom the beachhead thus secured, although not necessarily in sympathy with theviews of David Mitrany.

Having noted the influences that bore upon us, and identified some of therelevant texts, one must resist the implication all too easy to make withhindsight that we had absorbed the nuances and implications of those texts. Onthe contrary, while we were, indeed, conscious of the texts in question, and hadread them, we were all too aware that we needed to discuss them and considerthem critically. The Peasantsseminar would allow us to do that. No issues weresettled.


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THE PEASANTSSEMINAR AND THE FOUNDING OF THEJOURNAL OF PEASANT STUDIES

We planned four lead papers for the second term of 19712 (i.e. between January

and March 1972), each covering one of the four broad themes identified above,and duly received those papers from, respectively, Claude Meillassoux, EricHobsbawm, Teodor Shanin and Boguslaw Galeski (see Appendix B, papers14). Thereafter, in a second phase, there were to be 15 papers and, finally, in athird phase, the aforementioned conference.

We realized, as the second phase got under way, that we needed more timeto get ready for the final conference, and rescheduled it for Easter 1974. Theseminar generated immense interest and the conference was an exciting prospect.When, however, we applied to the Committee on Research Projects of SOASfor a grant, we were turned down (in December 1972). By the end of December

1972, a further 13 papers had been presented. By now, another idea had begunto crystallize. We planned an application to the Nuffield Foundation, but thatother idea deflected us.

The seminars first four meetings were attended by people from a wide rangeof disciplines, and often in large numbers, many of them coming regularly fromoutside of London. The enthusiasm continued between May and December of1972. There was, in the air, a general sense of issues that had to be addressed:many of the issues identified above, but now seen more sharply, and otherissues. There was, moreover, a quest for an analytical framework with whichto approach them. If we were not quite groping in the dark, we did feel the need

to get our intellectual bearings and to consider the concepts appropriate to ourchosen tasks. It was a sign of the essentially exploratory nature of what we weredoing that we were much preoccupied with matters of definition. But we weremaking progress. The seminar was attracting so many participants, was thescene of such spirited discussion and was opening up so much that was new, thata journal seemed appropriate. Already, as the first phase of the seminar came toan end, the idea of a Journal of Peasant Studieswas developing. This came to ahead by July 1972.

We were aware that we were confronting an intellectual challenge of majorproportions. One aspect of it was that here was a crucial area of enquiry, which

was remarkably under-researched and that a dismissive attitude, discernible insome academic quarters, needed to be countered. Advance from the beachheadmentioned above still needed to be made. Secondly, the seminar had demon-strated a need for a dynamic, interdisciplinary, agrarian political economy, broadlybased but rigorous, to be developed in relation to contemporary conditions andissues. The seminar had quickly revealed a neglected set of issues, many unresolvedquestions, a bubbling cauldron of ideas and clear contemporary relevance: allof which extended far beyond our original, rather limited intent. If the chal-lenge were to be faced, then it seemed that there was a strong case for thediscipline and focus of a journal. The experience of the seminar suggested both


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the desirability of a journal and the existence, to hand, of the means of creatingand sustaining one.

This, I think, accurately captures a large part of what we felt. We had a furtherclear intent: a determination to explore the historical rootsof contemporary problems

the dialectic of past and present. We were very aware of the powerful traditionof British Marxist historical scholarship, of the remarkable contributions, inparticular, of Maurice Dobb, Rodney Hilton, Christopher Hill, Eric Hobsbawmand E.P. Thompson the first four of whom were contributors to the transitionfrom feudalism to capitalism debate (one of them the originator of that debate).Perry Anderson would much later refer to the remarkable company of Marxisthistorians formed in the years immediately before or during the Second WorldWar (1983, 57), although, curiously, while mentioning the other four, he didnot name Maurice Dobb. Dobb certainly figured in our reckoning. There were, ofcourse, other British Marxist historians active at that time, but these five loomed

large in our consciousness. They all had made, and most were still very activelymaking, outstanding contributions to agrarian political economy. We had themall in our sights. One of those historians, Eric Hobsbawm, had already addressedthe seminar. We hoped, also, to involve the others.13

In April 1972, I had been approached by David Croom of the then recentlyestablished Croom Helm Ltd. He had read an article I had written on the GreenRevolution in India (Byres 1972), and wanted me to expand it into a book. Wemet and discussed that. In the course of the discussion, I also mentioned to himthe Peasants seminar and the possibility of starting a journal. He immediatelyexpressed great interest, and by July 1972 was urging me to discuss it further

with him. Ultimately, however, I approached Frank Cass with the idea. I hadsuggested theJournal of Development Studies to him. That had started in 1964, andI was on the editorial board. Frank Cass agreed at once. We invited Teodor Shanin who had read a paper to the seminar (number 3) to join us in the venture, asa co-editor. The first issue appeared in October 1973.

13 In 1984, Harvey Kaye would publish a book on The British Marxist Historians (Kaye 1984), inwhich there is a chapter on each of those I have mentioned. I would stress here the importance ofincluding Dobb, who is often excluded from consideration of British Marxist historians. Dobb, to besure, was not a professional historian. Yet his Studies in the Development of Capitalism, so deeply influ-ential, albeit so frequently unacknowledged, surely places him in the front rank of British Marxisthistorians. Robert Brenner, writing in 1978 in an issue of the Cambridge Journal of Economicsdedicatedto the memory of Maurice Dobb, captures that nicely. After some three decades Maurice DobbsStudies in the Development of Capitalism (1946) continues to be a starting point for the discussion ofEuropean economic development (1978, 121). That is influence, indeed. Yet, it is remarkable howinfrequently that book is cited by historians (even Marxist historians). In his excellent book, Kayegives Dobb pride of place among British Marxist historians, along with Hilton, Hill, Hobsbawmand Thompson and starts with Dobb. Kaye (1984, 67), indeed, cites Hobsbawm on the HistoriansGroup of the British Communist party, The major historical work which was to influence uscrucially was Maurice Dobbs Studies in the Development of Capitalismwhich formulated our main andcentral problem (Hobsbawm 1978, 23).


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THE SYNERGY BETWEEN THE PEASANTSSEMINAR ANDJPS

There were two senses in which the seminar was important for the journal. Thefirst was that it provided, both directly and less directly, a flow of papers for

the journal. The second was equally important, and lay in identifying, throughthe papers presented and in the lively discussion, central areas of controversy,existing limits of our knowledge and understanding, and where we needed to gofrom there. It was certainly the case that in the seminar a major set of persistentquestions recurred, and a major agenda for research began to emerge. Here I willconcentrate on the first of the two senses.

A Direct Flow of Papers and the Seminar as a Valuable Vetting Mechanism

Over the whole period of its existence, 208 papers were presented. Of those,

versions of 53 were published in JPS, i.e. 25 per cent of the total. So reading apaper at the seminar was no guarantee of publication, although, of course, not allpapers were written with publication in mind. Publication was far more likely inthe earlier than in the later years of the seminar.

Yet, the seminar was a most valuable base for the journal in its early years.JPS was never wholly dependent on the seminar. Important articles camethrough other channels. But, certainly, for the first six years of its existence, thedependence or synergy was crucial. Over that period, i.e. up to and includingvol. 6 (19739), just under a third of the papers published came directly fromthe seminar (see Appendix C). Clearly, at that point, the success of the journal

was intimately bound up with the seminar. It provided a crucial base. So forthe first six years the dependence or synergy was considerable. I think itwould be an error to base a journal any more exclusively on such a seminar. It isvery important to open it up to winds from every direction: within the field ofagrarian political economy to diverse tendencies (we tried very hard to avoiddogmatism) and regionally from all over the globe (to people who could neverreach the seminar).

Then there was a structural break. In vols 7 and 8, the proportion of articlespublished that had been presented to the seminar fell to 14 per cent. We had nowreached 1981. In vols 9 and 10, the proportion was only 8 per cent, and in vols 11

and 12 it was 16 per cent. Over the second six-year period (197985, vols 712),the figure was 12 per cent. Thereafter, relatively few articles came via this route:only five in the six volumes 1318. But we did finish superbly. The last twoarticles in JPS that came through the seminar were published in vol. 17, no. 4( July 1990) and were exceptionally good: Why Was There So Little ChampartRent in Medieval England, by Rodney Hilton and Even Dogs Are BetterOff : The Ongoing Battle Between Capital and Labour in the Cane Fields ofGujarat, by Jan Breman.

The seminar was most valuable as a vetting mechanism for the journal. Thepapers were subject to close, critical reading, and gave rise, often, to very livelydiscussion. It was an excellent way of having the papers read and gaining a very


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SOME REMINISCENCES, WITH PURSUIT OF THE BRITISHMARXIST HISTORIANS AS A MAJOR THEME

The Background

As I have indicated, the seminar was hosted, initially, by the Centre of Inter-national and Area Studies of the University of London. When the Centre closed in1980, the Institute of Commonwealth Studies became our hosts (from October1980), and the Peasants seminar met there until its final meeting. Its successiveDirectors, W.H. Morris-Jones and Shula Marks were generous in their support.I stopped the seminar after I became, in October 1988, Head of the EconomicsSection of the then Department of Economic and Political Studies at SOAS.The administrative burdens were heavy, although I did contemplate resumption.When, in October 1990, I became Head of a separate and growing Department

of Economics, for a further four-year stint, there was no chance of the seminarresuming. I was increasingly consumed by administration.

It was during the years when the seminar was hosted by the Centre of Inter-national and Area Studies (197280) that it was at its most vigorous and excitingand reached its heyday. That was the period, too, when it was a major nutrientbase for JPS. Over those years, the synergy between seminar and journal waspredominantly, though not exclusively, one in which the journal depended onthe seminar. After 1980, this changed. By 1981, the early white heat of excitementhad gone, and it had ceased to be a crucial source for JPS. Nevertheless, it con-tinued to be an important focus for work on agrarian political economy. There

were, moreover, several memorable papers in the second period of its existence,between 1981 and 1989.

It would not be appropriate to consider here the rich variety of themesaddressed in the seminar over the length of its existence, and the complex mannerof their unfolding. That would require quite another, and a different kind of, paper:a paper more analytically ordered and theoretically focused. Such an exercise isattempted forJPSin From Peasant Studies to Agrarian Change (Bernstein andByres 2001). Rather, in what remains of this paper, I will seek to capture, throughreminiscence, something of the ambience of the seminar, something of its develop-ment and something of how we sought to ensure its continuing intellectual

vitality through securing contributions from the most exciting exponents ofagrarian political economy in Europe (usually our invitations were successful,although sometimes they fell on stony ground). I have mentioned our pursuit ofthe historical roots of contemporary problems. Certainly, we sought to maintainboth the quantity and the quality of the historical contributions. The quality,I think, was very high. That was one of the seminars major achievements. Andnowhere was our persistence greater than in our pursuit of the five British Marxisthistorians noted above.

I would note, however, that amid the variety the two constantly recurringthemes over the whole period of the seminars life were, I would say, peasantmovements and peasant differentiation. I have suggested that the seminars heyday


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was probably around 1980, while 197280 was the period when the seminar servedso prominently as a source forJPS. In the five years 19726, peasant movements/struggle figured very prominently. This, surely, was the dominant theme inthose years, in the sense that so many of the papers were concerned directly with

it.14But, in conjunction with this and part of it, as well as more broadly, anothertheme was persistent in its recurrence. Differentiation of the peasantry emergedas a central theme from the very beginning. In the discussion, in seminar afterseminar, if not in the papers themselves, it forced itself on to the agenda. It wasin response to this that, in the second and third terms of the 19767 session, wefocused on it as the theme of the seminar. Eight of the nine papers given inthose terms were on differentiation (nos 7680 and 824, see Appendix B), andof these five were published papers by Wrightson (1977), Cliffe (1978), Perlin(1978), Carter (1977) and Hilton (1978). Both themes recurred to the very endand both found their way into JPS.

19721980: From Early Heady Days to the Seminars Heyday

Alarmingly large numbers turned up to the early meetings. I remember, inparticular, when Eric Hobsbawm gave his paper, Peasants and Politics, on9 February 1972, thinking that it was more like a pop concert than an academicseminar. I think that even Eric Hobsbawm was slightly taken aback: the moreso, perhaps, inasmuch as we had him wired for sound. Similar hordes assembledfor Teodor Shanins paper, The Nature and Logic of Peasant Economy,which he presented on 23 February 1972. I recall that this took place in the

middle of an electricity strike. We could not hold it at SOAS, because SOASwas in complete darkness (we were literally groping in the dark). But wefound a building not far away a union headquarters, as I recall that, forsome reason, did have an electricity supply, and held it there. Both these papersappeared in the first number of JPS (Shanins in two parts, in the first twonumbers of JPS).

Fortunately, numbers came down to more reasonable levels, when a core ofthose seriously interested in the relevant issues consolidated. In the early years,we attracted a number of distinguished academics during their sabbaticals inLondon, who became regular attenders: people like Janos Bak, Eric Wolf, Burton

Stein, Mubeccel Kiray. The core included both established scholars and those justembarking on scholarly careers. I am gratified, now, by the number of established(and distinguished) scholars who remind me that they regularly attended thePeasants seminar when they were research students.

A remarkable galaxy of outstanding scholars, both established and those inthe early part of their careers, read papers in this period. It would be tiresome tolist them all here. The full list may be seen in Appendix B. While it is, perhaps,invidious to single out individuals, one may be permitted an illustrative selectivity.

14

Out of the 75 papers presented over those years, 19, i.e. 25 per cent, were on this theme; and itfigured in many of the other papers.


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The papers ranged from the magisterial treatment of well-known scholars toexciting new work by the then relatively unknown.

The former included, among many others, such as Eric Hobsbawm (no. 2),Keith Griffin (no. 13), Rodney Hilton (nos 23 and 84), David Craig (no. 31),

Brian Manning (no. 33), B.H. Slicher van Bath (no. 34), Tapan Raychaudhuri(no. 35), Eric Wolf (no. 36), Irfan Habib (no. 37), Joan Thirsk (no. 38), EsterBoserup (no. 41), Stuart Schram (no. 46), Jan Breman (no. 65), Suzy Paine(no. 87). I will not identify all of the themes they covered. Some, indeed, arenoted elsewhere in this paper. But noteworthy were David Craigs sensitivetreatment of Novels of Peasant Crisis; Slicher van Baths daring applicationof the notion of dependencia to 16th18th-century Europe; Joan Thirsks masterlyexamination of The Disappearance of the English Peasant; and Ester Boserupsconsideration of Women in Peasant Societies, at a time (1974) before feministscholarship had put the issue on the intellectual agenda. David Craig observed

that he had given the same paper at several seminars, but that the quality of dis-cussion at the Peasantsseminar was by far the best he had experienced.

The younger scholars, at the beginning of their careers, often attracted atten-tion in the novelty of what they did. To capture that, we do need to note whatthey addressed. Again, I must be selective. For example, Clive Bell (no. 12)was stimulating in his treatment of sharecropping. Frank Fureidi (no. 27) wasgenuinely original in his examination of the social composition of the MauMau movement. John Sender (no. 45) was bold in what he argued with respectto the development of capitalism in Tanzanian agriculture. Peter Nolans com-parison of collectivization in China and the Soviet Union (no. 51) was new,

provocative and plausible. Ian Carter (nos 53 and 80) looked at the peasantry ofthe north-east of Scotland in a way, and in a depth, that nobody previously haddone. Mark Harrison (no. 58) provided a truly original, and uniquely rigorous,analysis of Chayanov. Keith Wrightson (no. 76) was pioneering and convincingon social differentiation in rural England, 15801660. Frank Perlin (nos 79 and103) was at once baffling and brilliant on the pre-colonial Deccan. Colin Bundy(no. 88) considered the emergence and transformation of an African peasantryin South Africa, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in a new andrefreshing way; and with William Beinart (no. 101) uncovered the incidenceand nature of rural resistance in the Transkei between 1900 and 1960. Roger

Wells (no. 96) was characteristically robust and incisive on the English ruralproletariat and social protest. Shahid Amin (no. 107) was distinctively systematicon peasants and capitalists involved in cane production in north-eastern India.Harriet Friedmanns exciting work on family grain farming in the Americanprairies, and her theorizing of the family farm in advanced farming (no. 111),were a revelation.

Keith Wrightson (now a distinguished historian of seventeenth-century Eng-land) gave his paper on Aspects of Social Differentiation in Rural Englandc. 15801660, on 21 January 1977. The papers were circulated in advance andthere was a large mailing list. I received a letter from Christopher Hill dated21 January 1977. It said:


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Rodney Hilton told me that I must read a paper from the London Seminarcalled Aspects of Social Differentiation in Rural England c. 15801660, byKeith Wrightson . . . I should be most grateful if it were possible for me tohave a copy of this paper.

I duly sent him a copy.I recall most memorable papers and discussion, including the papers I have

already mentioned, and the discussion associated with them. For example, whenRodney Hilton gave his paper on Medieval Peasants: Any Lessons?, in March1973, which was published in vol. 1, no. 2 ( January 1974), it was to a full house.Eric Hobsbawm was there and Burton Stein; and Daniel Thorner had come fromParis, as I recall, because, although he was not mentioned in the paper, there wasa passage that seemed to be a criticism of his writing on peasants. Hilton noted,quite sharply, that:

the main danger at the moment seems to me to be the result of currentover-simplifications of the stages of social history. For example, there isa strong tendency, resulting partly from a reaction against Marxism, tosee history as divided simply between traditional and modern or post-industrial societies. This is basically the same theory as that which supposesthat peasant society or peasant economy is one complete social formation,provided peasants constitute a majority of the population and irrespectiveof the characteristics of the other social classes, even the ruling class.15

It was a very lively discussion. At that time we recorded the proceedings of

the Peasants seminar and produced a Report on the Discussion. One can read theReport of that Discussion in vol. 1, no. 2. As I re-read it, I can still catch someof the excitement. Rodney Hilton presented papers on two further occasions(nos 84 and 186, in, respectively, July 1977 and March 1986). All three werepublished in JPS.

Rodney Hilton was the second of those outstanding members of the school ofBritish Marxist historians mentioned above to present a paper. But our intentionto catch the others was frustrated.

I was in contact with Maurice Dobb. The paper by Cristbal Kay on Com-parative Development of the European Manorial System and the Latin American

Hacienda System, which we published inJPS in 1974, had come with his warmendorsement. We were fortunate to have him review Rodney Hiltons book,Bond Men Made Free (1973) in JPS in 1974 (Dobb 1974), in a characteristicallyincisive and generous review. Clearly, both from what he wrote about Kayspaper and his review of Hiltons book, he maintained a close interest in thoseissues that he had addressed with such distinction in his Studies in the Developmentof Capitalism. Moreover, he was acutely aware of the contemporary relevanceof those issues. He pointed to the many interesting and valuable features of

15

This was, indeed, a criticism of Thorners Peasant Economy as a Category in Economic His-tory, first published in 1962, and reprinted in Shanins 1971 Reader. See Thorner (1971).


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Dr. Kays work and wrote, For one who was at one time occupied with theproblems of the transition from Feudalism to Capitalism in Western Europe (andmore particularly in Britain) it is interesting to know that there are to be foundanalogies (and also present-day relevance for social alignments and policy) in

the economic and social development of countries of South America. I did con-template asking him to address the seminar. But he was not, by now, concerneddirectly with agrarian political economy. He died in 1976. I regret not havingasked him.

I wrote to Christopher Hill, in 1973, indicating our desire to explore historicalthemes, and inviting him to give a paper. He was on sabbatical at the time anddeclined. He suggested Brian Manning, who, he said, would do you proud. Wewere fortunate. Brian Manning, an outstanding Marxist historian of the EnglishCivil War period, gave an excellent paper on 1 February 1974, on The Peasantryand the English Civil War (no. 33), which we published subsequently inJPSas

The Peasantry and the English Revolution (Manning 1975). He did, indeed, dous proud.

The last of the five great English Marxist historians mentioned above wasE.P. Thompson. I wrote to him on 6 May 1975, asking him to deliver a paper,enclosing a list of previous seminars, and explaining that we liked to circulatepapers in advance. He replied at once, saying what a very interesting series ofseminars you have held, but indicating that since he would be teaching in theUnited States in 19756 he could not accept the invitation. He said, however,that on his return from the States he could offer something on Common Landand Common Rights. Encouraged by this reply, and sensing some sympathy

with what we were trying to do, I duly wrote to him a year later (on 15 June1976), this time telling him that in the second and third terms of 19767 we wereconcentrating on differentiation of the peasantry, and wondering if his papermight fit into that rubric. He replied (4 July 1976) saying that it did, and with nohint of any dissipation of sympathy: My talk really does concern differentiation,although thro legal and bye-law evidence, rather than economic quantitative.By this time, I was becoming quite excited at what was to come.

But when I wrote on 10 September 1976, suggesting a date in March 1977,and saying that we were contemplating a special issue ofJPSon differentiation,I received an impassioned reply. Whatever sympathy he had with what we were

attempting seemed to have gone. He said that:

as is very common today, you are upping your demands and claims onmy time. What had been a seminar becomes a paper and then a requestto prepare the paper for publication: so that what one had thought was acouple of days work turns out to be a demand note on a couple of months.

He did, however, agree to give a talk from notes rather than a paper and nopublication. I had not, in fact, upped my demands, inasmuch as I had indic-ated from the outset that we liked to circulate papers in advance, while whatI said about a special issue was very tentative, and certainly not calculated toexert pressure. Who would have dared do that, anyway, to E.P. Thompson?


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He agreed to give a talk, without a paper circulated in advance. In the event,however, he withdrew, albeit giving me ample notice. On 15 November 1976,he wrote:

I write to you with an exceedingly bad conscience, but write to you I must.

I have been marking up my diary of 1977 engagements, and I have takenon an impossibly large number of things. I have absolutely no alternativebut to cut some of them out. Even with pruning I shall be spending abouttwo days a week travelling and speaking and with all the immense choresof correspondence and manuscript reading I will scarcely be able to geton with my writing at all. This not only makes nonsense of my attemptto get out of university chores for several years in order to write: it is also(since I am an unsalaried free-lance and am used as a sort of academicwelfare worker) financially ruinous.

I really am very sorry: I shall have to cancel my SOAS engagement. I amwriting in the hope that I may catch you before the Spring programme isfinalised, and in any case in time for you to get a replacement.

I sympathize, in retrospect, with his dilemma (although at the time I felt some-what bruised). His cri de coeur is one that strikes a chord. The paper he hadsuggested initially Common Land and Common Rights was, presumably,what was to become the outstanding essay, Custom, Law and Common Rightwhich would appear in his book, Customs in Common(Thompson 1991). That wedid not have this presented to the Peasants seminar remains a cause of regret.

Ronald Meek was not an historian. Nor was he concerned in any way directlywith agrarian political economy. He was a Marxist theorist, and an historian ofeconomic thought, of some distinction, whose book, Studies in the Labour Theoryof Value (1973), first published in 1956, was one of the outstanding contribu-tions of Marxist economists working in post-war Britain (he was, in fact, aNew Zealander). In my mind, however, he was bracketed with the aforemen-tioned Marxist historians as part of a powerful British Marxist tradition. Ourproject, moreover, was theoretically informed, and among the Marxian con-cepts that appeared to me crucial to an agrarian political economy with peasantsat its centre indeed, a concept that seemed, potentially, analytically more

illuminating than that of peasants was that of simple commodity production.In Studies in the Labour Theory of Value, Meek had written on this powerfully andincisively.16 In October 1975, Meek had acted as referee for a paper submittedto JPS, and in his comments had said that he was at the moment trying torevise some of my earlier views about Marxs concept of simple commodityproduction. Seizing upon this, I asked him to present those revised ideas tothe Peasants seminar. He replied on 27 October:

16

See Meek (1973, xv, xxiv, xxxii, xxxiv, xxxvi, xl, 66, 1556, 180, 182, 198, 218, 232, 266, 268,287, 288 ff., 3036, 311.


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It was nice of you to ask me to try out my new ideas about simple com-modity production at your very attractive-sounding Peasants Seminar. ButId rather leave this over for a while, if you dont mind. Ive just donea short piece on the subject for the Economic Journal, in reply to a critique

of my views which appeared in the June issue, but this is in the context ofthe Marxian transformation problem and has precious little to do withpeasants (even indirectly). I shall be elaborating upon the theme, however,in a book which I am contracted to produce by the end of next year, andif anything emerges which seems to be relevant to peasant communitiesI shall certainly bear your very kind suggestion in mind.

That, however, did not come to pass. Ronald Meek died in 1978. Simple com-modity production subsequently became a subject of intense debate, not least inthe pages of JPS(as noted in Bernstein and Byres 2001). It is a pity that we did

not hear Ronald Meeks views thus early.Our efforts to secure historical depth extended to classical antiquity. I invited

Moses Finley in 1974, but he was over-committed at the time and could notaccept. He suggested his colleague at Jesus College, Cambridge, Peter Garnsey,who duly gave a paper, on 30 May 1975, on Peasants and Ancient RomanSociety, which we published in JPS(Garnsey 1976).

Burton Stein came regularly, one year when he was on sabbatical in London,in 19723, and subsequently when he finally settled in London, having retiredearly from the University of Hawaii. According to him it was the only game intown. His interventions were always incisive, well-informed and enlivened by a

quick and engaging wit. He ranged widely, both analytically and regionally, andwas devastating in his ability to see flaws in argument or presentation.

Eric Wolf was on sabbatical in London in 19734 and came to every meetingof the Peasantsseminar. He was attached to the Department of Anthropology atSOAS, but quickly stopped attending the Department of Anthropology seminarin favour of the Peasants seminar. We were flattered. His presence significantlygraced the seminar, where his considerable learning and theoretical acumen weredeployed modestly but to considerable effect. His deep knowledge of Marxisttheory was impressive and worn lightly. He presented a paper in March 1974(no. 36).

We were fortunate to be addressed by the great Marxist historian of MughalIndia, Irfan Habib, on 13 March 1974, during a brief visit to London. There wasno written paper, but he gave a splendid oral presentation on Structure of theAgrarian Economy in Mughal India (no. 37). There followed a remarkableexchange between him and a Turkish scholar who was in the audience, MubeccelKiray, on the comparison between the Mughal Empire and the Ottoman Em-pire. It was spellbinding. I had never met Mubeccel and knew nothing of her.But I did get her to give a paper on 21 June 1974, on Peasantry in the OttomanEmpire. Unfortunately, we were not able to publish the exchange between thetwo, nor either of the papers.


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We had some splendid meetings on peasant folk song (I saw no harm inindulging my own passions), with illustrated seminars by two great folk musi-cologists: Hamish Henderson and A.L. Lloyd. The former spoke on BothyBallads of the Scottish North East (no. 28). The latter came three times, speak-

ing on The Lament: The Peasant Way with Grief (no. 42), Songs of HungarianSeasonal Workers (no. 63) and Rural Musicians in an Urban Setting (no. 128).These proved to be immensely informative, as well as entertaining. We pub-lished a version of Hamish Hendersons presentation in our Peasants Speaksection (in vol. 2, no. 4, July 1975). This, I think, is extremely good especiallyif you have the record to go with it. We never thought to market that recordwith the journal.17Hamish was an academic. Bert Lloyd was not, but was re-markably learned and completely self-taught (an avid user of the Reading Roomof the British Museum from an early age).

I mentioned above the paper by Arvind Das (on 10 October 1980) that gave

rise to a special issue. Arvind, as I recall, had come from Holland to deliver hispaper. He was stopped at Heathrow by an immigration official, and asked whyhe was visiting Britain. Arvind told him that it was to give a paper to thePeasants seminar. Ah, said the official, you must know the Journal of PeasantStudies. Yes, replied Arvind, of course I do. He was waved through. I wouldlove to know who that immigration official was. Did we really number immig-ration official among our readers? Was he a former student? I do not suppose thatI will ever know unless, of course, he happens to read this.

Another of my memories concerns Cristbal Kay, whom I have mentionedalready, with respect to his paper Comparative Development of the Euro-

pean Manorial System and the Latin American Hacienda System (vol. 2, no. 1,October 1974). After that article was published we invited him to present apaper at the seminar (the synergy worked both ways). Indeed, he read threepapers: one in December 1974 (no. 48), the second in February 1981 (no. 140)and the third in June 1985 (no. 180). He shares with Rodney Hilton, A.L. Lloydand Colin Bundy the record of addressing the seminar on three occasions (twoof Colin Bundys papers written with William Beinart). Anyway, Cris was aVisiting Professor in Lima, Peru, in 1980. He was a political refugee and couldnot go back to Chile at the time. On one occasion, he had been having somedifficulty in getting much response in a village he was visiting, until someone

(a government official, I think), when he heard his name, said, Are you theCristbal Kay who has published an article in the Journal of Peasant Studies?When he said yes, he at last got some cooperation. It was the aforementionedarticle. Cris has told me:

17 The record, in fact, is among those I reviewed in my review article, Scottish Peasants andtheir Song (1976): Bothy Ballads. Music from the North-East TNGM 109, sleeve notes and accom-panying booklet by Hamish Henderson, in the series Scottish Tradition, recorded and documentedby the School of Scottish Studies, University of Edinburgh, and issued by Tangent Records,London.


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I . . . remember . . . that my article Comparative Development of theEuropean Manorial System and the Latin American Hacienda System (JPS2, 1, 1974) became widely known in Latin America among rural specialists(and also the USA at the time), especially Peru and Mexico. I was in Peru

as Visiting Professor in one of the main universities in Lima in 1979/80 andtheJPSarticle certainly opened many doors for me, especially among theintellectuals and academics . . . The JPS was certainly much admired byagrarian specialists in Lima, especially from the Universidad Catolica delPeru, Instituto de Estudios Peruanos (IEP) and Centro Peruano de EstudiosSociales (CEPES). At that time, and to some extent today, the intellectualelite is rather small and closed. The JPSarticle referred to was certainly afactor which helped me to enter this circle and benefit from their know-ledge and wisdom.

That made me realize we were doing something worthwhile.It was at the very end of 1980, on 5 December, that Henry Bernsteinaddressed the seminar, with his paper State and Peasant Production in Tanzania(no. 135). He had spent four very productive years in Tanzania (19748),honing his analytical/theoretical skills in the field of agrarian political economy,pursuing fieldwork on peasant production and marketing, initiating and con-vening an Agrarian Question Study Group. Around the same time, he gave thesame paper at Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford, where he was there asked, bya senior member of the university who clearly disapproved of class analysis insuch a context, if kulak was a Swahili word. No such question was asked at

the Peasants seminar. Among my many annotations on the paper, the followingappears:

what are the conditions that give rise to and sustain a particular kind ofdifferentiation ensuring that it goes no further than a particular level orpoint? What are the factors thatprevent a transition from kulak to capitalist?That, however, is far too teleological a formulation! Rather, what definesakulak or rich peasant position of the kind you specify?

Once again, the issue of peasant differentiation, that had so preoccupied us at thevery outset, was still very much with us.

19811989: From Heyday to Finish and in Pursuit of Geoffrey de Ste. Croix

In the second period of the seminar, between 1981 and 1989, inspection ofAppendix B reveals the high quality, and the range, of contributions. Again, estab-lished scholars mingled with fresh-faced (sometimes) newcomers. For example,Francesca Bray (no. 137) provided a foretaste of her outstanding book (1986).Gavin Kitching, a rising star, had recently published a book of formidable scholar-ship on Kenya (1980) and revealed something of his virtuosity (no. 145). ColinBundy and William Beinart (no. 159) again contributed memorably this time onhidden struggles and rural politics in South Africa, and centred on the Transkei.


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Ravi Srivastava, at the beginning of his PhD work at Cambridge, gave a paperon capital accumulation in India (no. 169). Mick Reed (no. 173) read a paperof great promise on nineteenth-century rural England. Krishna Bharadwaj dis-played her analytical brilliance (no. 184). We got a taste of the Japanese capitalism

debate (Sugihara, no. 196). There was a bravura performance from Jairus Banaji(no. 199). Jan Breman (no. 201) displayed the results, yet again, of his astonish-ing ability to pursue fieldwork among the poor and exploited in India.

Although the early intensity had lessened, a clear sense of discovery per-sisted that could not but generate intellectual excitement. For example, it wasvia the seminar that we discovered the full significance of the work of Kritsmanand the Agrarian Marxists in the Soviet Union. Terry Cox had read a paperin October 1979 (no. 116), and now Gary Littlejohn added to our know-ledge in February 1981 (no. 138). The two had never met. Now they did andthe outcome was the excellent special issue of JPS on Kritsman and his School

(Cox and Littlejohn 1984). In quick succession, and serendipitously, we hadrevealing papers on Gramsci and the peasantry: first by David Arnold (no. 155),and then by Alastair Davidson (no. 158). Rodney Hilton (no. 186) provided anoriginal treatment of why share tenancy had been relatively rare in medievalEngland.

Certainly, among the more unusual papers was that by Geoffrey de Ste.Croix, on 6 June 1986, on Early Christian Attitudes to Women, Sex and Marriage(no. 189). I first became aware of his remarkable book, The Class Struggle in theAncient Greek World(1981), in late 1981. Here was an outstanding Marxist historianof whom we had been unaware. From then onwards I made several attempts

to get him to address the seminar. His ill health prevented that until June 1986.The story is worth telling, since it illustrates something of the synergy betweenthe seminar and JPS, apart from providing a glimpse of a remarkable Marxistscholar.

He had written to me in October 1981, just before the publication of hismonumental book it was due to be published in November describing thebook and asking if we would like a review copy for JPS. He had used and citedsome articles fromJPSin his book, and wrote at the suggestion of Joan Thirsk,then a member of our Editorial Board. I replied at once, saying that we wouldbe delighted to arrange a review of the book, which arrived by late November.

We asked Peter Garnsey to review it. The review was published in the October1982 number of JPS (Garnsey 1982). To my eternal shame, I had not heard ofGeoffrey de Ste. Croix at that time. But before sending the book off to PeterGarnsey, both Charles Curwen and I dipped into it and were excited by what weread. We were most reluctant to part with it. I quickly acquired my own copy.I immediately asked him (in December 1981) to address the Peasants seminar.Here the synergy between journal and seminar is again clear: now running fromthe former to the latter.

He was unable to accept that first invitation. I set to and read his TheClass Struggle in the Ancient Greek World and my admiration of him was great.Clearly, here was a towering Marxist historian, to be included in the reckoning


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of outstanding British Marxist historians.18Already, Eric Hobsbawm and RodneyHilton had addressed the seminar. Maurice Dobb was now dead. Efforts to getChristopher Hill and E.P. Thompson had proved unsuccessful. I was determinedto get Geoffrey de Ste. Croix.

Then, in July 1982, when editing a special issue of JPSon Sharecropping andSharecroppers and writing an essay for that special issue on Historical Perspect-ives on Sharecropping, I wrote to him seeking his help. I had been intriguedby the various references to sharecropping in his book (de Ste. Croix 1981, 214,2167 and 2567) and had found fascinating his account of Pliny the Youngersthinking about adopting sharecropping on one of his estates (de Ste. Croix 1981,2567). I asked him if he could give some indication of the earliest recording ofsharecropping in the ancient Greek world. He replied immediately (on 1 August1982) and proved remarkably helpful. Apart from his astonishing mastery of theclassical sources, he had incisive views on sharecropping as a general phenomenon.

He was aware of the general literature on sharecropping, and had been readingCheungs book, The Theory of Share Tenancy(1969). He wrote, My own feelingis that sharecropping tendsto be found more in stagnant or declining economies;but of course that is just a guess and may be completely wrong. My determinationto get him to the seminar grew.

I sent him a copy of the sharecropping special issue in June 1983, and he wasdelighted with it. He asked for a notice of forthcoming seminars, but was notquite ready to read a paper to the seminar. He said (19 June 1983), I cant offerto give a paper myself just yet, as I still havent emerged from the ghastly stateof overwork Ive been in for years. I was somewhat surprised when he said,

further, As it happens, Ive been giving a whole lot of papers at universities inthis country, almost entirely on Early Church matters, where the literature ofcourse is totally different from the social, economic and political stuff Im usually

18 Perry Anderson, in his review article on de Ste. Croixs book in History Workshop (Anderson1983), makes the point: The publication of Geoffrey de Ste. Croixs The Class Struggle in the AncientGreek Worldalters, massively and unexpectedly, the atlas of Marxist historiography in Britain. Thechanges it brings are of a number of different kinds. The first, and simplest, lies in the surprise of theauthor itself. It would have been reasonable to think that the remarkable company of Marxist historiansformed in the years immediately before or during the Second World War had long since become a

finite pleiad in our intellectual firmament its names familiar to every reader of thisJournal. But it isnow clear how mistaken such an assumption would have been. Alongside a Hill or a Hobsbawm, aHilton or a Thompson, Ste. Croix must be entered as another such incommensurable magnitude.The paradox is that he is older than any of these. The great work before us avowedly designed forstudents of Marx and the general reader as well as for specialist scholars was written during hisseventh decade (Anderson 1983, 55). I have noted above that Anderson does not mention MauriceDobb as a member of the pleaid. As I have suggested, that would, I think, be a common view, anda quite erroneous one. Dobb clearly belongs in the pleaid in question. Kayes book on The BritishMarxist Historians, noted already, contains no mention of de Ste. Croix. That is curious. He doesapologize for the omission of any serious treatment of the writings of Victor Kiernan and GeorgeRud, but not for the omission of de Ste. Croix. That, presumably, can only be a matter of unfortunatetiming. One assumes that Kaye had finished his manuscript before the significance of de Ste. Croixsbook had become obvious, although when writing in March 1984 it does seem odd that de Ste. Croixs

remarkable work should have escaped Kayes attention. A chapter on de Ste. Croix would now beessential in such a book.


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occupied with; and my next book will be a collection of Essays in Early ChristianHistory (or something like that). He did add, in a handwritten postscript, Thepaperback of CSAGW having sold out (at 15), there is now a corrected reprintof it (at 18). Ive already made so much out of the book that Ive been able to

buy a new car astonishing! It was, indeed, remarkable that a massive, uncom-promisingly scholarly, highly priced book on The Class Struggle in the AncientGreek World should have earned sufficient royalties to enable him, at the age of73, to buy a new car for the first time in his life.

I was next in contact with him in March 1985. I had sent him (on 12 March)an offprint of a review article I had written (Byres 1984) on A Dictionary ofMarxist Thought (Bottomore et al. 1983). In it I had drawn attention to thewoeful treatment accorded him in the Dictionary, at the hands, especially, ofMoses Finlay, who wrote the major entries on the ancient world (on AncientSociety and Slavery). He enjoyed the review article. In his letter of 18 March,

he spoke again of being seriously overworked and again asked for the seminarprogramme to be sent, since he might be able to come to one or two of theseminars. He said that he was going to give the Gregynog Lectures early thenext year at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth on Early Christian Attitudesto Women, Sex and Marriage. He further said, Ive been spending nearly all mytime for the past few years on the Early Fathers. This came as something of asurprise. Although there is much on early Christianity in his Class Strugglebook,I had not expected him to be so preoccupied with it. His health had been poor.He had a series of vicious colds, felt very weak, and had been diagnosed ashaving anaemia.

On 1 October 1985 I sent him a copy of the JPS special issue on Feudalismand Non-European Societies (Byres and Mukhia 1985), saying that, of course,the invitation to address the seminar was still open if he felt up to it. I was stilldetermined to have him address the seminar. Robert Browning had written,when reviewing his book, More than one ancient historian has remarked tothe present reviewer that de Ste. Croix knows more about his own special fieldthan he does himself (1983, 147). Who better, then, to give a paper on, say,Peasants in the Ancient Greek World? He replied on 7 October. He had nowbeen diagnosed as having a bowel tumour, and had to have blood transfusionsand drip-fed antibiotics to bring down a fever. He had had an operation, which

seemed to have been successful. He was now 75. He wrote, People keep tellingme of friends who, they say, have had operations for bowel cancer and havesurvived to die of old age. I reply tartly that Im very soon going to do thatanyway. (I am 75). He recovered remarkably. In fact, he died only recently (on5 February 2000) at the age of 89.

In that letter of 7 October 1985, he said that at present theres nothing Icould offer for your seminar, unless theres an opportunity to present somethingon the subject of the [Gregynog Lectures]. I replied saying that we would bedelighted to have such a paper. This time, he accepted my invitation. In hisreply of 4 November, he did say, What I ought to offer, of course, is some-thing about Later Roman peasants; but . . . I find that Im now dreadfully slow at


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absolutely everything, and preparing a piece on L.R. peasants would be beyondmy capacity, for at least some months. So Early Christian Attitudes to Women,Sex and Marriage it was to be.

Indeed, he was fulfilling, in yet another way, Brownings observation, and his

justification of the topic covered was convincing. In the paper, he said:

I cannot pretend that what I have to say has any special reference to peasants,who indeed were generally slower than townsfolk to convert to Christianityin the early centuries. But there are so many gross misunderstandings aboutearly Christian history, and so few of the theologians who are responsiblefor nearly all serious modern writing about early Christianity have muchhistorical knowledge of the Graeco-Roman (and Jewish) world in whichChristianity developed, that I do not think I need apologise for the contentof the paper on a subject of the greatest importance to every member

of the ancient Mediterranean world from the early 4th century onwards,when Christianity became the predominant and eventually the exclusivereligion of the Roman Empire.19

It was a splendid paper, scornful of the clear misogyny of the early ChristianChurch: his scorn supported by fastidious scholarship. In fact, he spent theremaining years of his life on two books, Early Christian Attitudes to Women, Sexand Marriage and Essays in Early Christian History, neither of which he com-pleted. We were privileged to have an early statement of his arguments. He didrestate these in a book, Radical Conclusions, to be published by Oxford Univer-sity Press.20

CONCLUSION

Journals are established, and acquire a reputation. People submit articles, mostof which, by definition, are turned down. If the journal is successful, a certainstyle emerges, a distinctiveness in what is published (of theme and methodology) which, surely, reflect the editors. The editors will have an agenda, and will

19 In the paper he notes that he has entered the territory of theology and law, but observes that, infact, he had been a practising lawyer before the war (which gave him some qualification to consider

legal questions), while in theology he had read a great deal of the modern literature. We had a longchat before the seminar, and he told me that, indeed, he had been a practising lawyer until the ageof 37, when he went to read classics at University College, London. He was also a gifted tennisplayer and played at the centre court at Wimbledon in 1929. At University College he came underthe influence of A.H.M. Jones, whom he describes as my revered teacher (1981, 8), and of whomhe spoke very highly in our chat. He moved to New College, Oxford in 1953 and remained there.He was a militant atheist, and in the context of his own professional work he despised the roleof Christianity in imperial Rome from Constantine onwards. He told me that his reckoning withChristianity was, in part, a powerful reaction to early indoctrination by his mother, the daughterof a missionary and a fundamentalist Christian, who could recite the Bible by heart. One obituarytells us that His mother was a member of the British Israelites, a protestant sect, which believed thatthe date of Armageddon could be calculated from the dimensions of the great pyramid of Giza (itmeasures 480 feet high and has 755-feet sides so work it out) (Conrad 2000). He was, needless to

say, scathing in what he had to say about that.20 On these last details see the obituary in the LSEs News and View (Anon. 2000).


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seek out particular kinds of copy, and go, sometimes, to considerable lengthsto get it: suggesting certain themes, discouraging others; encouraging youngerscholars, cajoling established scholars not to rest on their laurels. The Peasantsseminar was critical to the successful launching of the Journal of Peasant Studies.

The seminar was a workshop in which the journals style and distinctivenesswere forged. My advice to anyone starting a journal is: if you can, first getyourself a strong intellectual base, in the shape of a seminar that meets regularlyand has a cohesive, but critical and argumentative, intellectual community. Donot, however, depend exclusively on that community. Eventually, the synergybetween the seminar andJPSdiminished, as the journal drew increasingly for itscontent on a far wider intellectual community. The journal had then reached adegree of maturity, but it was a maturity that would not have been possiblewithout that prior synergy.

APPENDIX A

INITIAL MISSION STATEMENT OF PEASANTSSEMINAR OFUNIVERSITY OF LONDON

SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIESAND

CENTRE OF INTERNATIONAL AND AREA STUDIES

Seminar and Conference on PeasantsAfter years of neglect the study of peasants has become a subject of intense interest.Economists, anthropologists, historians and others have quite recently started to directtheir attention to the peasants, who constitute an immense majority in many areas in theworld to their role in the economy, to their social organization and characteristics, tothe part they have played, and might play in the future, in revolutionary movements.

Scholars in several different disciplines and concerned with different geographical regionshave begun to examine peasants and peasant societies from these and other viewpoints, and

we thought it would be useful to gather some of them together and initiate an exchangeof ideas.

The idea of this series of seminars and a conference emerged, in the first instance, fromthe obvious importance of peasant studies to the understanding of those parts of the worldwith which the organizers are primarily concerned, but we are anxious that there shouldbe no geographical limitation to the range of problems which will be discussed. However,since the subject is clearly one of enormous scope, we are proposing to limit the discussionbroadly to the following themes:

(1) The Peasantry and their Social StructureWhat is the peasantry and what are peasants? What are their common features at differ-

ent points in time and in different areas of the world? Is it useful to think in terms of anundifferentiated, homogeneous category, or are there critical divisions within the peasantry?If so, according to what logic do they operate, and are such di

the peasants seminar of the university of london-terencebyres

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