The Peasants of 2001, the University Journal of Agrarian Change, Vol.Seminar 1 No. 3, July pp. 343388.

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

TERENCE J. BYRES

This is a memoir of the Peasants seminar of the University of London, which ran between January 1972 and February 1989, and to which 208 papers were presented. The following are considered: its origins, the inuences which shaped it, and its agenda; the circumstances of its launching; how it gave rise, very directly, to the Journal of Peasant Studies in 1973; its synergy with JPS, especially in the 1970s, and something of its themes, ambience and development. It is concluded that there is no better way of starting and sustaining, in its early phases, a journal than rst securing a strong intellectual base, in the 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 until February 1989. Since it was a crucial element in the initial conception and the early unfolding, via the Journal of Peasant Studies, of the project that the Journal of Agrarian Change continues, it is illuminating to consider something of its history. I presented a brief sketch of this previously (Byres 1994). Here, a far fuller, and somewhat revised, treatment is given.1 Its initial mission statement is reproduced in Appendix A; a full list of the papers is presented in Appendix B; and the number of articles published in JPS between 1973 and 1991, and the proportion coming via the seminar, appear in Appendix C.

Terence J. Byres, Department of Economics, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG. e-mail: tb1@soas.ac.uk I am grateful to Henry Bernstein for his vigorous critical reading of this paper and his numerous valuable suggestions. It was always my intention to try to recapture something of the Peasants seminar through careful reminiscence. It was at his urging that I carried this further than initially envisaged. 1 In that earlier sketch, I said that the nal 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 convened in 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 represent the end. Blackwell Publishers Ltd, Henry Bernstein and Terence J. Byres 2001.

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In the rst issue of JAC, in From Peasant Studies to Agrarian Change, Bernstein and Byres (2001) considered the major themes and approaches in agrarian 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 identify intellectual strengths and lacunae, the possibility of new approaches to old problems and the emergence of new concerns. That required that it proceed as objectively as possible, in a deliberately clinical and distanced manner. If it pointed to possible new approaches and welcomed fresh challenges, it did not seek to suggest the need for any major rupture with the broad analytical tradition of JPS, as that emerged between 1973 and 2000. It argued, indeed, that JPS, from its very early days, began to evolve as a medium for a far broader agrarian political economy than is usually suggested by the notion of peasant studies. 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 another kind of way, the nature, trajectory and challenges of agrarian political economy, and the manner of their emergence via the Peasants seminar, which gave rise to JPS, and sustained it throughout the 1970s and within which the agrarian political economy of JPS found its early expression and from which it developed. My account, inevitably, is subjective and selective. Others might tell it differently. I have tried to avoid hindsight, as far as possible, in order to capture the immediacy of events as they happened, not imposing upon them a retrospective pattern, and to represent viewpoints as they were, without the knowingness of subsequent experience. On occasion, however, some hindsight intervenes, and I try to signal that. Since I have kept fairly complete records including correspondence, my annotated copies of the papers that were presented and notes from the discussion I have not had to rely only on memory. As I noted, a more distanced 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 forum for agrarian political economy in the United Kingdom. Its papers reached a wide audience through a considerable mailing list: in the United Kingdom itself, in western Europe (in, for example, France, Germany, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Spain, Portugal), in North America, in Australasia and in many developing countries (in Asia, Latin America and Africa). Numerous people wrote from abroad, asking for copies of the papers. Out of it, very directly, grew the Journal of Peasant Studies, which was founded by its chairmen (myself and Charles Curwen), along with Teodor Shanin, in 1973. Between 1973 and 1980, it was a critical nutrient base for the journal. After 1980, it continued as an important forum in London, until its last meeting in 1989. Now, however, something of the excitement of the early years had gone, while JPS had become far more self-provisioning.

The Peasants Seminar of the University of London, 19721989 345 ORIGINS OF THE PEASANTS SEMINAR AND BROAD AIMS I was approached at some point in the middle of 1971 by Tony Atmore, then Secretary of the recently founded Centre of International and Area Studies of the University of London, who asked if I would convene a regular seminar for the Centre, on a theme of my choice. Part of Atmores brief for the new Centre was to take initiatives in the University of London to coordinate area studies and give them a focus. He believed that one way of doing this was to establish a general seminar that would bring together practitioners of area studies around a particular theme.2 Here was a demanding task. Area studies were pursued by scholars who were primarily discipline-oriented. Institutions existed within the University of London that had an area studies orientation: pre-eminently, perhaps, the School of Oriental and African Studies, but also, for example, the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, the Institute of Commonwealth Studies and the Institute of Latin American Studies. Efforts had been made, in the 1960s, within these institutions, to create a focus within individual broad areas that would draw people out of their disciplines. Heads were scratched to nd suitable themes. In retrospect, the efforts made were not conspicuously successful. Now something even more ambitious was being sought: a seminar that might bring together not only specialists from one area (difcult enough), but from a number of areas; a seminar that would be inter-disciplinary, appropriate to the broad range of relevant areas and have sufcient intellectual appeal. I agreed in principle to Tony Atmores request, and then thought about what the 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 my colleague and friend at the School of Oriental and African Studies, the late Bill Warren, which we had started in October 1970. He and I did discuss the possibility of a seminar on Imperialism and we identied a tentative list of topics for a seminar. But Bill had become quite seriously ill with kidney malfunction and I hesitated to pursue the matter too forcefully with him. Whether we would have opted for a seminar on Imperialism, had he been in good health, I really cannot be 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 aware of 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 of the School of Oriental and African Studies, as an appropriate umbrella organization for area studies in London. Its Secretary, Tony Atmore, had been a Lecturer in African History at SOAS. 3 We taught the course on Imperialism together until December 1977, when Bill Warren died. Out of 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). Ken Walker and I had taught, too, between 1968 and 1971, a course on Comparative Economic Systems: India and China Under Planning. This focused attention on socialism and its problems and on comparing those countries that had embarked upon socialism with those attempting a capitalist path. We had pursued some comparative work on Indian and Chinese agriculture. Although never published, it had suggested the rich possibilities of comparative treatment of agrarian issues and, again, the need, for inter-disciplinary/political economy examination. My own research on the agrarian question in India pushed me towards trying to grasp how the agrarian question manifested itself in poor countries other than India and, indeed, how it had been resolved historically, in the now advanced countries. In short, I had become preoccupied with seeking the historical roots of the agrarian question in contemporary poor countries and its manifestation in the past in advanced capitalist countries. In the event, I joined with another colleague at SOAS, Charles Curwen, an historian specializing in peasant movements in China, to conceive of a Peasants seminar. Tony Atmore was attracted by the idea. So, too, were others. We envisaged neither a long-running seminar of the kind that emerged, nor a journal. Our stated goals are indicated in Appendix A. Here I may indulge some hindsight. It is a document of its time (for example, the peasant and his moral community), for which, perhaps, it is superuous to apologize now. It was deliberately brief and was written in intentionally broad terms, to secure as wide a constituency as possible. Without exaggerating our knowledge, sophistication or insight at the time, one may say that we were subject to a greater range and depth of intellectual inuence, contemplated a far larger number of questions and had a more precise agenda than appear there. This quickly became obvious immediately 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 logic of peasant agriculture, and peasants and their moral communities. Our plan was that the seminar would start in January 1972 and might culminate in a nal conference in July 1973, which would yield a conference volume. WHY PEASANTS? A POWERFUL AND EXCITING AGENDA FROM THE 1960S Why, having chosen to concentrate on agrarian issues, did we focus our endeavour on peasants? We might have called it the Agrarian Question seminar. That would have been a legitimate focus, but might have narrowed the seminars appeal 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 Political Economy 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 name it, although it would have been perfectly appropriate. Was there, at the time, a certain inevitability about peasants?

The Peasants Seminar of the University of London, 19721989 347 Here, the danger of hindsight intrudes and there is a temptation to impart a clarity of view and a neatness of sequence that we were not aware of as events unfolded. I would stress that when we contemplated what we wanted to address in 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 an agenda that was altogether more sophisticated than Appendix A indicates, but let me not suggest that it was more highly developed than was the case, and that we were more incisive than we, in fact, were. Looking back, and disentangling the various inuences that informed our agenda, the rst, and strongest, was Marxism. The degree of that inuence is certainly hidden in Appendix A. In Marxist discourse, the concern was with the agrarian question. We had been inuenced by Engels Peasant War in Germany and his The Peasant Question in France and Germany (1965, 1970), the latter containing an early, and cogent, statement of the agrarian question. Signicantly, Engels referred to it as the peasant question, and part of that peasant question was the existence of a differentiated peasantry. Peasants, then, entered our consciousness and vocabulary. We were, perhaps, inuenced pre-eminently by Lenins Development of Capitalism in Russia (1964), but also by other of his writings on the agrarian question. Peasants gured prominently therein, and especially the differentiation 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 on rural China were read: again peasants loomed large, and again peasant differentiation.4 Rosa 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 Peasant Economy, address the issue of the peasant economy and its destruction by capitalism.5 Kautsky was intriguing. His Die Agrarfrage (The Agrarian Question) had not been 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 translation that one gained access. This meant very limited access. We were aware of Kautskys famous work, but remarkably ignorant of its content.6
For example, Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society, Report of an Investigation of a Peasant Movement 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, rst 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 all important Marxist texts (Byres 1996, 37, note 5). That was a fortiori true of 1971, when no English translation existed. We were aware of Lenins review of Die Agrarfrage, published in volume 4 of the Collected Works, where he delivered the following judgement: Kautskys book is the most important event in present-day economic literature since the third volume of Capital. Until now Marxism has lacked a systematic study of capitalism in agriculture. Kautsky has lled the gap (1960, 94). Had we read Kautsky, we would have seen further preoccupation with peasants, to whom he constantly refers.
4

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There was much else. The celebrated debate on the transition from feudalism to capitalism, the DobbSweezy debate, in 1971 still residing inaccessibly in the pages of various Marxist journals (it was only in 1976 that the NLB collection would be published), was eagerly read and was inuential.7 There, too, peasants gure prominently. One leaves Dobbs great work, Studies in the Development of Capitalism (1963), which gave rise to the debate, with a vivid sense of the centrality of peasants in feudalism and the importance of differentiation in the transition to capitalism. The intellectual and ideological warrant given by Marxism to a study of peasants and the peasantry was clear, albeit not proclaimed in the mission statement. Moreover, out of that Marxist tradition we took a set of issues that needed further investigation: the signicance of peasant revolt/uprisings (peasant politics/class struggle) and what gave rise to them; the impact of colonialism upon the peasantry; the nature of agrarian change in post-colonial social formations; 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 peasants in socialist transformation and the matter of collectivization; and the nature, signicance and degree of social differentiation among the peasantry and how one might measure it. There was also, for example, an awareness of Lenins debates with the Narodniks, and the issues raised therein not least that of differentiation of the peasantry and an incipient realization that these had contemporary signicance. 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 historical experience of advanced capitalist countries. But Marxism was not the only tradition that informed our agenda. We were conscious of the powerful criticism to which Marxist writing on agrarian issues was subject and wished to engage with that as openly and dispassionately as possible. The text that we were most aware of was David Mitranys Marx Against the Peasant. A Study in Social Dogmatism, rst published in 1951 and republished in 1961. Again, one notes the centrality of the peasant. Marxism, said Mitrany, had proclaimed a holy war against the peasants (1961, 35). From an apparently pro-peasant standpoint, he challenged that body of Marxist theory and writings [that] have had quite a lot to say about the economic and political place of the 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 peasantries of Europe and Asia (1961, 19). It was a book that revealed controversies pursued in the past, in Europe, with tantalizing glimpses of debates that seemed to us to have been by no means resolved, and of writers whose ideas were touched upon but needed more detailed consideration: debates and writers that we wished to 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 difcult to get hold of.

The Peasants Seminar of the University of London, 19721989 349 agrarian question for Marxists, and also in chapter 4, The Populist Reaction (pp. 50 65). He focused, for example, on the issue of agricultural concentration and scale (1961, 3639) and the tenets of populism and neo-populism (625 and 725), and mentioned the ideas of Chayanov and others (on Chayanov, see 745).8 There 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 different ways and to different degrees, were signicant for the seminar as it was initially conceived and rst unfolded. They were books that engaged, in one way or another, with all of the issues I have mentioned: each was concerned with peasants, and each confronted, sometimes sympathetically and sometimes critically, aspects of the Marxist view. Each contained the word peasant in its title. The problematic we were being relentlessly led into, it seemed, was peasants. The three books were: Barrington Moore Jr, Social Origins of Dictatorship 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). Both Charles Curwen and I were powerfully inuenced 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 other traditions or appeared to be. Chayanov was another matter altogether. We were less eclectic (less tolerant of other traditions), but concerned to grapple with 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.9 Of the three books, it was, certainly, the most inuential at the time. At SOAS, in the late 1960s, we had a series of vigorous and well-attended seminar meetings on it. One of Moores signal contributions was to consider peasants within the broader systems and historical situations in which they exist, and their role in political, economic and
8

The passage on Chayanov referred to (Mitrany 1961, 74 5) is tantalizingly brief, but represents an acute statement of the Chayanovian view. 9 The anonymous reviewer in The Times Literary Supplement of 21 December 1967 found it impressive and 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, who has already made a reputation as a student of the Soviet Union, shows yet again how fruitful the Marxist method can be when handled intelligently and flexibly by a scholar who shuns dogma and devotes himself single-mindedly to the task of mobilizing all available historical evidence for the solution of a general problem in the eld of socio-political evolution . . . Whether Mr. Moore would call himself a Marxist is not clear. He often criticizes Marx: moreover, he shows no sign of being acquainted with the work by Marx and Engels, Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, which might have been used to add strength to some of his major arguments. His method, nevertheless, is fundamentally Marxist. Classes, broadly of the Marxist kind, are his basic social unit. These, within the limitations imposed on them by knowledge and circumstance, are seen to be pursuing their collective economic interests, and the resultant class struggle is presented as an important (although not necessarily an allimportant) force propelling the chariot of economic and social change . . . Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, in fact, is Marxist in the sense that The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte was Marxist; it is a brilliant application of a challengeable but truth-revealing hypothesis to a series of discrete historical events. We would not have disagreed with this assessment.

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social transformation. When we came to start JPS, in 1973, Moores inuence was obvious in the Editorial Statement, when we observed that the way in which peasantries disappear has a decisive inuence on the nature of the society to come (Byres et al. 1973, 1).10 That 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, constituted a peasant, and drew attention to the importance of peasant surpluses and their disposition. Here was an anthropologist seeking the general rather than the particular, and doing so incisively. In the tension between Wolf s clear awareness of the complexity of what he sought to communicate and how much of that he could represent in an elementary text, the concerns of anthropology, perhaps, won out over wider analytical concerns.11 It was, probably, the least inuential of the three, yet much referred to. We were very conscious of it. Chayanov supplied the quintessential neo-populist attempt to theorize the peasant economy and proved very inuential.12 He is noted in the mission statement. He posed a challenge to Marxist ways of treating peasants that could not easily be absorbed by eclecticism. His system was seen by many as the theoretical alternative to Marxism: seeming to grapple with the same issues (unlike, say, neo-classical economics), but with very different implications. In the Marxist tradition, there is a central emphasis on social differentiation: an emphasis that neither Moore nor Wolf would have rejected. Chayanov had a very different view of the peasantry. If there was differentiation, it was demographic rather than social differentiation. He emphasized cohesiveness and homogeneity, rather than tendencies to differentiate into classes; and harmony rather than antagonism 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 landed upper classes and the peasantry in the transformation from agrarian societies (dened simply as states where a large majority of the population lives off the land) to modern industrial ones. Somewhat more specically, it is an attempt to discover the range of historical conditions under which either or both of these rural groups have become important forces behind the emergence of Western parliamentary versions of democracy, and dictatorships of the right and the left, that is, fascist and communist regimes (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 use his text to Chayanov in German. He also recommended both volume 3 of Capital and Max Webers The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, as well as Marc Blochs Feudal Society. Had those who read the book followed his advice, they are likely to have been diverted from the narrow concerns of anthropology 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 The Times Literary Supplement of 19 December 1968, wrote of it with very high praise. He said: The name on the banners of the revolutionary students should be Chayanov and not Che; and this for three reasons. First, Chayanovs theory of peasant behaviour is central to any solution of the worlds worst problem, rural poverty. Second, the study of that problem is itself undergoing radical change, in which Chayanovs pioneering work points the way from armchair speculation towards real theory based on measuring what farmers do. Third, rural development studies are transforming our 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 ready audience.

The Peasants Seminar of the University of London, 19721989 351 self-exploitation that predominated (determined by subjective choice), rather than the surplus appropriation of dominant classes. All of this we wished to consider. The excitement created by these books was considerable, and they were, indeed, critical in informing the agenda we had in mind for the Peasants seminar. But, if Eric Wolf s little book on Peasants was rather less inuential than the other two books he published in 1969, Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century more than made up for that. It came right out of the ferment created by the Vietnam War. Wolf refers to the image of their enemy given by United States military ofcers as the raggedy little bastards in black pajamas (1969, ix). Those raggedy little bastards, who had fought to a standstill the mightiest military machine in history (1969, ix) were peasants. The book attracted considerable attention, and was part of an important debate on which strata of the peasantry constituted a likely revolutionary force (Wolf being a proponent of the middle peasant thesis). Its inuence was considerable. Its echoes may be discerned in Appendix A. When we wrote our 1971 mission statement, Teodor Shanins reader, Peasants and Peasant Societies (1971), had just been published. It is a stimulating and comprehensive collection and further encouraged us in our resolve to mount a Peasants seminar. Peasants it would be. There is a passage quoted by Mitrany that had attracted our attention and that might, indeed, have been the motif for the seminar. Mitrany cited an article on Peasant Europe from the Times Literary Supplement of July 1934: It is indeed remarkable that this subject should hitherto have been so neglected by students of economics and politics. For the importance of the peasants as a factor in international politics and the world economy is beyond dispute. A glance down the titles under the heading Peasants in the catalogue in any great library nevertheless reveals at once the paucity of books that treat of the subject from any other standpoint than that of the ethnologist or the student of folklore and ancient customs. (1961, 223). Thirty-seven years had passed since that had been written, when we wrote our 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 of economics and politics. We were determined that we would now move forward from the beachhead thus secured, although not necessarily in sympathy with the views of David Mitrany. Having noted the inuences that bore upon us, and identied some of the relevant texts, one must resist the implication all too easy to make with hindsight that we had absorbed the nuances and implications of those texts. On the contrary, while we were, indeed, conscious of the texts in question, and had read them, we were all too aware that we needed to discuss them and consider them critically. The Peasants seminar would allow us to do that. No issues were settled.

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THE PEASANTS SEMINAR AND THE FOUNDING OF THE JOURNAL 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 identied above, and duly received those papers from, respectively, Claude Meillassoux, Eric Hobsbawm, Teodor Shanin and Boguslaw Galeski (see Appendix B, papers 14). Thereafter, in a second phase, there were to be 15 papers and, nally, in a third phase, the aforementioned conference. We realized, as the second phase got under way, that we needed more time to get ready for the nal conference, and rescheduled it for Easter 1974. The seminar generated immense interest and the conference was an exciting prospect. When, however, we applied to the Committee on Research Projects of SOAS for 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 begun to crystallize. We planned an application to the Nufeld Foundation, but that other idea deected us. The seminars rst four meetings were attended by people from a wide range of disciplines, and often in large numbers, many of them coming regularly from outside of London. The enthusiasm continued between May and December of 1972. There was, in the air, a general sense of issues that had to be addressed: many of the issues identied above, but now seen more sharply, and other issues. There was, moreover, a quest for an analytical framework with which to 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 our chosen tasks. It was a sign of the essentially exploratory nature of what we were doing that we were much preoccupied with matters of denition. But we were making progress. The seminar was attracting so many participants, was the scene of such spirited discussion and was opening up so much that was new, that a journal seemed appropriate. Already, as the rst phase of the seminar came to an end, the idea of a Journal of Peasant Studies was developing. This came to a head by July 1972. We were aware that we were confronting an intellectual challenge of major proportions. One aspect of it was that here was a crucial area of enquiry, which was remarkably under-researched and that a dismissive attitude, discernible in some academic quarters, needed to be countered. Advance from the beachhead mentioned above still needed to be made. Secondly, the seminar had demonstrated a need for a dynamic, interdisciplinary, agrarian political economy, broadly based but rigorous, to be developed in relation to contemporary conditions and issues. The seminar had quickly revealed a neglected set of issues, many unresolved questions, a bubbling cauldron of ideas and clear contemporary relevance: all of which extended far beyond our original, rather limited intent. If the challenge were to be faced, then it seemed that there was a strong case for the discipline and focus of a journal. The experience of the seminar suggested both

The Peasants Seminar of the University of London, 19721989 353 the desirability of a journal and the existence, to hand, of the means of creating and sustaining one. This, I think, accurately captures a large part of what we felt. We had a further clear intent: a determination to explore the historical roots of contemporary problems the dialectic of past and present. We were very aware of the powerful tradition of British Marxist historical scholarship, of the remarkable contributions, in particular, of Maurice Dobb, Rodney Hilton, Christopher Hill, Eric Hobsbawm and E.P. Thompson the rst four of whom were contributors to the transition from feudalism to capitalism debate (one of them the originator of that debate). Perry Anderson would much later refer to the remarkable company of Marxist historians formed in the years immediately before or during the Second World War (1983, 57), although, curiously, while mentioning the other four, he did not name Maurice Dobb. Dobb certainly gured in our reckoning. There were, of course, other British Marxist historians active at that time, but these ve loomed large in our consciousness. They all had made, and most were still very actively making, outstanding contributions to agrarian political economy. We had them all in our sights. One of those historians, Eric Hobsbawm, had already addressed the seminar. We hoped, also, to involve the others.13 In April 1972, I had been approached by David Croom of the then recently established Croom Helm Ltd. He had read an article I had written on the Green Revolution in India (Byres 1972), and wanted me to expand it into a book. We met and discussed that. In the course of the discussion, I also mentioned to him the Peasants seminar and the possibility of starting a journal. He immediately expressed 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 had suggested the Journal of Development Studies to him. That had started in 1964, and I 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, as a co-editor. The rst issue appeared in October 1973.

13

In 1984, Harvey Kaye would publish a book on The British Marxist Historians (Kaye 1984), in which there is a chapter on each of those I have mentioned. I would stress here the importance of including Dobb, who is often excluded from consideration of British Marxist historians. Dobb, to be sure, was not a professional historian. Yet his Studies in the Development of Capitalism, so deeply influential, albeit so frequently unacknowledged, surely places him in the front rank of British Marxist historians. Robert Brenner, writing in 1978 in an issue of the Cambridge Journal of Economics dedicated to the memory of Maurice Dobb, captures that nicely. After some three decades Maurice Dobbs Studies in the Development of Capitalism (1946) continues to be a starting point for the discussion of European economic development (1978, 121). That is influence, indeed. Yet, it is remarkable how infrequently that book is cited by historians (even Marxist historians). In his excellent book, Kaye gives Dobb pride of place among British Marxist historians, along with Hilton, Hill, Hobsbawm and Thompson and starts with Dobb. Kaye (1984, 67), indeed, cites Hobsbawm on the Historians Group of the British Communist party, The major historical work which was to influence us crucially was Maurice Dobbs Studies in the Development of Capitalism which formulated our main and central problem (Hobsbawm 1978, 23).

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THE SYNERGY BETWEEN THE PEASANTS SEMINAR AND JPS There were two senses in which the seminar was important for the journal. The rst was that it provided, both directly and less directly, a ow of papers for the journal. The second was equally important, and lay in identifying, through the papers presented and in the lively discussion, central areas of controversy, existing limits of our knowledge and understanding, and where we needed to go from there. It was certainly the case that in the seminar a major set of persistent questions recurred, and a major agenda for research began to emerge. Here I will concentrate on the rst 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 a paper at the seminar was no guarantee of publication, although, of course, not all papers were written with publication in mind. Publication was far more likely in the 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 came through other channels. But, certainly, for the rst six years of its existence, the dependence or synergy was crucial. Over that period, i.e. up to and including vol. 6 (19739), just under a third of the papers published came directly from the 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 for the rst six years the dependence or synergy was considerable. I think it would be an error to base a journal any more exclusively on such a seminar. It is very important to open it up to winds from every direction: within the eld of agrarian political economy to diverse tendencies (we tried very hard to avoid dogmatism) and regionally from all over the globe (to people who could never reach the seminar). Then there was a structural break. In vols 7 and 8, the proportion of articles published that had been presented to the seminar fell to 14 per cent. We had now reached 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 gure was 12 per cent. Thereafter, relatively few articles came via this route: only ve in the six volumes 1318. But we did nish superbly. The last two articles 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 Champart Rent in Medieval England, by Rodney Hilton and Even Dogs Are Better Off : The Ongoing Battle Between Capital and Labour in the Cane Fields of Gujarat, by Jan Breman. The seminar was most valuable as a vetting mechanism for the journal. The papers were subject to close, critical reading, and gave rise, often, to very lively discussion. It was an excellent way of having the papers read and gaining a very

The Peasants Seminar of the University of London, 19721989 355 rm purchase on the content and quality of each paper. The seminar was held on Fridays, from 4.30 p.m. to 6.30 p.m. We then repaired to the SOAS bar, and from there took the speaker out to dinner. The papers were distributed in advance. I would spend all of Friday morning reading the paper at home with great care, annotating it and preparing a critical position on it. A better monitoring system would be difcult to devise. We did not, necessarily, get for publication all of the papers from the seminar we might have liked. For example, Joan Thirsk did not wish to publish her paper on The Disappearance of the English Peasant (no. 38), because it needed more work. Clive Bell similarly viewed his paper, Technological Change and the Demise of the Sharecropper (no. 12), and would later publish it, after a series of heavy revisions and extensions (his own words), and with a different title in Sankhya (Bell 1976). The Seminar and Special Issues The seminar was a somewhat less direct source of special issues for JPS. Our rst special issue, The German Peasant War of 1525, edited by Janos Bak, derived from it. It was very much a product of the seminar inasmuch as the editor, Janos Bak, had appeared in London in September 1974, on sabbatical from Canada, and was a regular attender. It was during discussions in the SOAS bar after meetings of the seminar that the idea of the special issue emerged. I can remember, quite vividly, the night he suggested it, and wondering whether he could deliver. He did. The third special issue, on Agrarian Movements in India: Studies of Twentieth Century Bihar (vol. 9, no. 3, April 1982), had its origins in the seminar more directly, inasmuch as its guest editor, Arvind Das, had given a paper on Peasant Movements in Bihar, 19301970, in October 1980 (no. 131). It was out of that paper that the special issue grew. The fourth special issue, on Sharecropping and Sharecroppers, edited by T.J. Byres (vol. 10, nos 2 and 3, January and April 1983), also had its roots in the seminar: in three papers presented to the seminar by, respectively, Clive Bell (no. 12), Dick Pearce (no. 114) and Desmond Gill (no. 134). Versions of the second and third of these appeared in that special issue. So, too, the fth, Kritsman and the Agrarian Marxists (vol. 11, no. 2, January 1984), edited by Terry Cox and Gary Littlejohn, originated in the seminar. Each of the editors had presented papers on the subject (no. 116, October 1979; no. 138, February 1981) and, indeed, it was the seminar that brought them together, so to speak. The special issue on Feudalism and Non-European Societies, edited by T.J. Byres and Harbans Mukhia (vol. 12, nos 2 and 3, January and April 1985) came out of the seminar, too, inasmuch as the paper that gave rise to it (Mukhia 1981) came to the journal after a visit by Harbans Mukhia to the seminar. He told me about his paper after the seminar (again, in the bar) and gave me a copy to read.

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SOME REMINISCENCES, WITH PURSUIT OF THE BRITISH MARXIST HISTORIANS AS A MAJOR THEME The Background As I have indicated, the seminar was hosted, initially, by the Centre of International and Area Studies of the University of London. When the Centre closed in 1980, the Institute of Commonwealth Studies became our hosts (from October 1980), and the Peasants seminar met there until its nal meeting. Its successive Directors, 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 Economics Section 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 seminar resuming. I was increasingly consumed by administration. It was during the years when the seminar was hosted by the Centre of International and Area Studies (197280) that it was at its most vigorous and exciting and reached its heyday. That was the period, too, when it was a major nutrient base for JPS. Over those years, the synergy between seminar and journal was predominantly, though not exclusively, one in which the journal depended on the seminar. After 1980, this changed. By 1981, the early white heat of excitement had gone, and it had ceased to be a crucial source for JPS. Nevertheless, it continued 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 themes addressed in the seminar over the length of its existence, and the complex manner of their unfolding. That would require quite another, and a different kind of, paper: a paper more analytically ordered and theoretically focused. Such an exercise is attempted for JPS in From Peasant Studies to Agrarian Change (Bernstein and Byres 2001). Rather, in what remains of this paper, I will seek to capture, through reminiscence, something of the ambience of the seminar, something of its development and something of how we sought to ensure its continuing intellectual vitality through securing contributions from the most exciting exponents of agrarian political economy in Europe (usually our invitations were successful, although sometimes they fell on stony ground). I have mentioned our pursuit of the historical roots of contemporary problems. Certainly, we sought to maintain both the quantity and the quality of the historical contributions. The quality, I think, was very high. That was one of the seminars major achievements. And nowhere was our persistence greater than in our pursuit of the ve British Marxist historians noted above. I would note, however, that amid the variety the two constantly recurring themes over the whole period of the seminars life were, I would say, peasant movements and peasant differentiation. I have suggested that the seminars heyday

The Peasants Seminar of the University of London, 19721989 357 was probably around 1980, while 197280 was the period when the seminar served so prominently as a source for JPS. In the ve years 19726, peasant movements/ struggle gured very prominently. This, surely, was the dominant theme in those years, in the sense that so many of the papers were concerned directly with it.14 But, in conjunction with this and part of it, as well as more broadly, another theme was persistent in its recurrence. Differentiation of the peasantry emerged as a central theme from the very beginning. In the discussion, in seminar after seminar, if not in the papers themselves, it forced itself on to the agenda. It was in response to this that, in the second and third terms of the 19767 session, we focused on it as the theme of the seminar. Eight of the nine papers given in those terms were on differentiation (nos 7680 and 824, see Appendix B), and of these ve were published papers by Wrightson (1977), Cliffe (1978), Perlin (1978), Carter (1977) and Hilton (1978). Both themes recurred to the very end and 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, in particular, when Eric Hobsbawm gave his paper, Peasants and Politics, on 9 February 1972, thinking that it was more like a pop concert than an academic seminar. I think that even Eric Hobsbawm was slightly taken aback: the more so, perhaps, inasmuch as we had him wired for sound. Similar hordes assembled for 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 SOAS was in complete darkness (we were literally groping in the dark). But we found a building not far away a union headquarters, as I recall that, for some reason, did have an electricity supply, and held it there. Both these papers appeared in the rst number of JPS (Shanins in two parts, in the rst two numbers of JPS). Fortunately, numbers came down to more reasonable levels, when a core of those seriously interested in the relevant issues consolidated. In the early years, we attracted a number of distinguished academics during their sabbaticals in London, who became regular attenders: people like Janos Bak, Eric Wolf, Burton Stein, Mubeccel Kiray. The core included both established scholars and those just embarking on scholarly careers. I am gratied, now, by the number of established (and distinguished) scholars who remind me that they regularly attended the Peasants seminar when they were research students. A remarkable galaxy of outstanding scholars, both established and those in the early part of their careers, read papers in this period. It would be tiresome to list 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 it gured in many of the other papers.

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The papers ranged from the magisterial treatment of well-known scholars to exciting new work by the then relatively unknown. The former included, among many others, such as Eric Hobsbawm (no. 2), Keith Grifn (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), Ester Boserup (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, are noted elsewhere in this paper. But noteworthy were David Craigs sensitive treatment of Novels of Peasant Crisis; Slicher van Baths daring application of the notion of dependencia to 16th18th-century Europe; Joan Thirsks masterly examination of The Disappearance of the English Peasant; and Ester Boserups consideration of Women in Peasant Societies, at a time (1974) before feminist scholarship 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 discussion at the Peasants seminar was by far the best he had experienced. The younger scholars, at the beginning of their careers, often attracted attention in the novelty of what they did. To capture that, we do need to note what they addressed. Again, I must be selective. For example, Clive Bell (no. 12) was stimulating in his treatment of sharecropping. Frank Fureidi (no. 27) was genuinely original in his examination of the social composition of the Mau Mau movement. John Sender (no. 45) was bold in what he argued with respect to the development of capitalism in Tanzanian agriculture. Peter Nolans comparison 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 of the north-east of Scotland in a way, and in a depth, that nobody previously had done. Mark Harrison (no. 58) provided a truly original, and uniquely rigorous, analysis of Chayanov. Keith Wrightson (no. 76) was pioneering and convincing on social differentiation in rural England, 15801660. Frank Perlin (nos 79 and 103) was at once bafing and brilliant on the pre-colonial Deccan. Colin Bundy (no. 88) considered the emergence and transformation of an African peasantry in South Africa, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in a new and refreshing way; and with William Beinart (no. 101) uncovered the incidence and nature of rural resistance in the Transkei between 1900 and 1960. Roger Wells (no. 96) was characteristically robust and incisive on the English rural proletariat and social protest. Shahid Amin (no. 107) was distinctively systematic on peasants and capitalists involved in cane production in north-eastern India. Harriet Friedmanns exciting work on family grain farming in the American prairies, and her theorizing of the family farm in advanced farming (no. 111), were a revelation. Keith Wrightson (now a distinguished historian of seventeenth-century England) gave his paper on Aspects of Social Differentiation in Rural England c. 15801660, on 21 January 1977. The papers were circulated in advance and there was a large mailing list. I received a letter from Christopher Hill dated 21 January 1977. It said:

The Peasants Seminar of the University of London, 19721989 359 Rodney Hilton told me that I must read a paper from the London Seminar called Aspects of Social Differentiation in Rural England c. 15801660, by Keith Wrightson . . . I should be most grateful if it were possible for me to have 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, when Rodney Hilton gave his paper on Medieval Peasants: Any Lessons?, in March 1973, 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 from Paris, as I recall, because, although he was not mentioned in the paper, there was a 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 current over-simplications of the stages of social history. For example, there is a strong tendency, resulting partly from a reaction against Marxism, to see history as divided simply between traditional and modern or postindustrial societies. This is basically the same theory as that which supposes that peasant society or peasant economy is one complete social formation, provided peasants constitute a majority of the population and irrespective of 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 the Report of that Discussion in vol. 1, no. 2. As I re-read it, I can still catch some of the excitement. Rodney Hilton presented papers on two further occasions (nos 84 and 186, in, respectively, July 1977 and March 1986). All three were published in JPS. Rodney Hilton was the second of those outstanding members of the school of British Marxist historians mentioned above to present a paper. But our intention to catch the others was frustrated. I was in contact with Maurice Dobb. The paper by Cristbal Kay on Comparative Development of the European Manorial System and the Latin American Hacienda System, which we published in JPS in 1974, had come with his warm endorsement. We were fortunate to have him review Rodney Hiltons book, Bond Men Made Free (1973) in JPS in 1974 (Dobb 1974), in a characteristically incisive and generous review. Clearly, both from what he wrote about Kays paper and his review of Hiltons book, he maintained a close interest in those issues that he had addressed with such distinction in his Studies in the Development of Capitalism. Moreover, he was acutely aware of the contemporary relevance of 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 History, rst 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 the problems of the transition from Feudalism to Capitalism in Western Europe (and more particularly in Britain) it is interesting to know that there are to be found analogies (and also present-day relevance for social alignments and policy) in the economic and social development of countries of South America. I did contemplate asking him to address the seminar. But he was not, by now, concerned directly with agrarian political economy. He died in 1976. I regret not having asked him. I wrote to Christopher Hill, in 1973, indicating our desire to explore historical themes, and inviting him to give a paper. He was on sabbatical at the time and declined. He suggested Brian Manning, who, he said, would do you proud. We were fortunate. Brian Manning, an outstanding Marxist historian of the English Civil War period, gave an excellent paper on 1 February 1974, on The Peasantry and the English Civil War (no. 33), which we published subsequently in JPS as The Peasantry and the English Revolution (Manning 1975). He did, indeed, do us proud. The last of the ve great English Marxist historians mentioned above was E.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 circulate papers in advance. He replied at once, saying what a very interesting series of seminars you have held, but indicating that since he would be teaching in the United 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 Land and 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 June 1976), this time telling him that in the second and third terms of 19767 we were concentrating on differentiation of the peasantry, and wondering if his paper might t into that rubric. He replied (4 July 1976) saying that it did, and with no hint 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 of JPS on 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 on my time. What had been a seminar becomes a paper and then a request to prepare the paper for publication: so that what one had thought was a couple 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 no publication. I had not, in fact, upped my demands, inasmuch as I had indicated from the outset that we liked to circulate papers in advance, while what I said about a special issue was very tentative, and certainly not calculated to exert pressure. Who would have dared do that, anyway, to E.P. Thompson?

The Peasants Seminar of the University of London, 19721989 361 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 taken on an impossibly large number of things. I have absolutely no alternative but to cut some of them out. Even with pruning I shall be spending about two days a week travelling and speaking and with all the immense chores of correspondence and manuscript reading I will scarcely be able to get on with my writing at all. This not only makes nonsense of my attempt to 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 academic welfare worker) nancially ruinous. I really am very sorry: I shall have to cancel my SOAS engagement. I am writing in the hope that I may catch you before the Spring programme is nalised, 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 somewhat bruised). His cri de coeur is one that strikes a chord. The paper he had suggested initially Common Land and Common Rights was, presumably, what was to become the outstanding essay, Custom, Law and Common Right which would appear in his book, Customs in Common (Thompson 1991). That we did 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 directly with agrarian political economy. He was a Marxist theorist, and an historian of economic thought, of some distinction, whose book, Studies in the Labour Theory of Value (1973), rst published in 1956, was one of the outstanding contributions of Marxist economists working in post-war Britain (he was, in fact, a New Zealander). In my mind, however, he was bracketed with the aforementioned Marxist historians as part of a powerful British Marxist tradition. Our project, moreover, was theoretically informed, and among the Marxian concepts that appeared to me crucial to an agrarian political economy with peasants at 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 and incisively.16 In October 1975, Meek had acted as referee for a paper submitted to JPS, and in his comments had said that he was at the moment trying to revise some of my earlier views about Marxs concept of simple commodity production . Seizing upon this, I asked him to present those revised ideas to the 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 commodity production at your very attractive-sounding Peasants Seminar. But Id rather leave this over for a while, if you dont mind. Ive just done a 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 of the Marxian transformation problem and has precious little to do with peasants (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, and if anything emerges which seems to be relevant to peasant communities I shall certainly bear your very kind suggestion in mind. That, however, did not come to pass. Ronald Meek died in 1978. Simple commodity production subsequently became a subject of intense debate, not least in the 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 not accept. He suggested his colleague at Jesus College, Cambridge, Peter Garnsey, who duly gave a paper, on 30 May 1975, on Peasants and Ancient Roman Society, 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 nally settled in London, having retired early from the University of Hawaii. According to him it was the only game in town. His interventions were always incisive, well-informed and enlivened by a quick and engaging wit. He ranged widely, both analytically and regionally, and was devastating in his ability to see aws in argument or presentation. Eric Wolf was on sabbatical in London in 19734 and came to every meeting of the Peasants seminar. He was attached to the Department of Anthropology at SOAS, but quickly stopped attending the Department of Anthropology seminar in favour of the Peasants seminar. We were attered. His presence signicantly graced the seminar, where his considerable learning and theoretical acumen were deployed modestly but to considerable effect. His deep knowledge of Marxist theory 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 Mughal India, Irfan Habib, on 13 March 1974, during a brief visit to London. There was no written paper, but he gave a splendid oral presentation on Structure of the Agrarian Economy in Mughal India (no. 37). There followed a remarkable exchange between him and a Turkish scholar who was in the audience, Mubeccel Kiray, on the comparison between the Mughal Empire and the Ottoman Empire. 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 Ottoman Empire. Unfortunately, we were not able to publish the exchange between the two, nor either of the papers.

The Peasants Seminar of the University of London, 19721989 363 We had some splendid meetings on peasant folk song (I saw no harm in indulging my own passions), with illustrated seminars by two great folk musicologists: Hamish Henderson and A.L. Lloyd. The former spoke on Bothy Ballads of the Scottish North East (no. 28). The latter came three times, speaking on The Lament: The Peasant Way with Grief (no. 42), Songs of Hungarian Seasonal Workers (no. 63) and Rural Musicians in an Urban Setting (no. 128). These proved to be immensely informative, as well as entertaining. We published a version of Hamish Hendersons presentation in our Peasants Speak section (in vol. 2, no. 4, July 1975). This, I think, is extremely good especially if you have the record to go with it. We never thought to market that record with the journal.17 Hamish was an academic. Bert Lloyd was not, but was remarkably learned and completely self-taught (an avid user of the Reading Room of 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 his paper. He was stopped at Heathrow by an immigration ofcial, and asked why he was visiting Britain. Arvind told him that it was to give a paper to the Peasants seminar. Ah, said the ofcial, you must know the Journal of Peasant Studies. Yes, replied Arvind, of course I do. He was waved through. I would love to know who that immigration ofcial was. Did we really number immigration ofcial among our readers? Was he a former student? I do not suppose that I will ever know unless, of course, he happens to read this. Another of my memories concerns Cristbal Kay, whom I have mentioned already, with respect to his paper Comparative Development of the European Manorial System and the Latin American Hacienda System (vol. 2, no. 1, October 1974). After that article was published we invited him to present a paper at the seminar (the synergy worked both ways). Indeed, he read three papers: 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. Lloyd and Colin Bundy the record of addressing the seminar on three occasions (two of Colin Bundys papers written with William Beinart). Anyway, Cris was a Visiting Professor in Lima, Peru, in 1980. He was a political refugee and could not go back to Chile at the time. On one occasion, he had been having some difculty in getting much response in a village he was visiting, until someone (a government ofcial, I think), when he heard his name, said, Are you the Cristbal 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 aforementioned article. Cris has told me:

17 The record, in fact, is among those I reviewed in my review article, Scottish Peasants and their Song (1976): Bothy Ballads. Music from the North-East TNGM 109, sleeve notes and accompanying booklet by Hamish Henderson, in the series Scottish Tradition, recorded and documented by 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 the European Manorial System and the Latin American Hacienda System ( JPS 2, 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 and the JPS article certainly opened many doors for me, especially among the intellectuals and academics . . . The JPS was certainly much admired by agrarian specialists in Lima, especially from the Universidad Catolica del Peru, Instituto de Estudios Peruanos (IEP) and Centro Peruano de Estudios Sociales (CEPES). At that time, and to some extent today, the intellectual elite is rather small and closed. The JPS article referred to was certainly a factor which helped me to enter this circle and benet from their knowledge and wisdom. That made me realize we were doing something worthwhile. It was at the very end of 1980, on 5 December, that Henry Bernstein addressed 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 eld of agrarian political economy, pursuing eldwork on peasant production and marketing, initiating and convening an Agrarian Question Study Group. Around the same time, he gave the same paper at Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford, where he was there asked, by a senior member of the university who clearly disapproved of class analysis in such 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 following appears: what are the conditions that give rise to and sustain a particular kind of differentiation ensuring that it goes no further than a particular level or point? What are the factors that prevent a transition from kulak to capitalist? That, however, is far too teleological a formulation! Rather, what denes a kulak or rich peasant position of the kind you specify? Once again, the issue of peasant differentiation, that had so preoccupied us at the very 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 of Appendix B reveals the high quality, and the range, of contributions. Again, established 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 scholarship on Kenya (1980) and revealed something of his virtuosity (no. 145). Colin Bundy and William Beinart (no. 159) again contributed memorably this time on hidden struggles and rural politics in South Africa, and centred on the Transkei.

The Peasants Seminar of the University of London, 19721989 365 Ravi Srivastava, at the beginning of his PhD work at Cambridge, gave a paper on capital accumulation in India (no. 169). Mick Reed (no. 173) read a paper of great promise on nineteenth-century rural England. Krishna Bharadwaj displayed 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 astonishing ability to pursue eldwork among the poor and exploited in India. Although the early intensity had lessened, a clear sense of discovery persisted that could not but generate intellectual excitement. For example, it was via the seminar that we discovered the full signicance of the work of Kritsman and the Agrarian Marxists in the Soviet Union. Terry Cox had read a paper in October 1979 (no. 116), and now Gary Littlejohn added to our knowledge in February 1981 (no. 138). The two had never met. Now they did and the outcome was the excellent special issue of JPS on Kritsman and his School (Cox and Littlejohn 1984). In quick succession, and serendipitously, we had revealing papers on Gramsci and the peasantry: rst by David Arnold (no. 155), and then by Alastair Davidson (no. 158). Rodney Hilton (no. 186) provided an original treatment of why share tenancy had been relatively rare in medieval England. 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 rst became aware of his remarkable book, The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World (1981), in late 1981. Here was an outstanding Marxist historian of 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 between the seminar and JPS, apart from providing a glimpse of a remarkable Marxist scholar. He had written to me in October 1981, just before the publication of his monumental book it was due to be published in November describing the book and asking if we would like a review copy for JPS. He had used and cited some articles from JPS in his book, and wrote at the suggestion of Joan Thirsk, then a member of our Editorial Board. I replied at once, saying that we would be 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 October 1982 number of JPS (Garnsey 1982). To my eternal shame, I had not heard of Geoffrey de Ste. Croix at that time. But before sending the book off to Peter Garnsey, both Charles Curwen and I dipped into it and were excited by what we read. 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 from the former to the latter. He was unable to accept that rst invitation. I set to and read his The Class 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.18 Already, Eric Hobsbawm and Rodney Hilton had addressed the seminar. Maurice Dobb was now dead. Efforts to get Christopher Hill and E.P. Thompson had proved unsuccessful. I was determined to get Geoffrey de Ste. Croix. Then, in July 1982, when editing a special issue of JPS on Sharecropping and Sharecroppers and writing an essay for that special issue on Historical Perspectives on Sharecropping, I wrote to him seeking his help. I had been intrigued by 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 Youngers thinking 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 of sharecropping in the ancient Greek world. He replied immediately (on 1 August 1982) and proved remarkably helpful. Apart from his astonishing mastery of the classical sources, he had incisive views on sharecropping as a general phenomenon. He was aware of the general literature on sharecropping, and had been reading Cheungs book, The Theory of Share Tenancy (1969). He wrote, My own feeling is that sharecropping tends to be found more in stagnant or declining economies; but of course that is just a guess and may be completely wrong. My determination to get him to the seminar grew. I sent him a copy of the sharecropping special issue in June 1983, and he was delighted with it. He asked for a notice of forthcoming seminars, but was not quite ready to read a paper to the seminar. He said (19 June 1983), I cant offer to give a paper myself just yet, as I still havent emerged from the ghastly state of 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 in this country, almost entirely on Early Church matters, where the literature of course 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 (Anderson 1983), makes the point: The publication of Geoffrey de Ste. Croixs The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World alters, massively and unexpectedly, the atlas of Marxist historiography in Britain. The changes it brings are of a number of different kinds. The rst, and simplest, lies in the surprise of the author itself. It would have been reasonable to think that the remarkable company of Marxist historians formed in the years immediately before or during the Second World War had long since become a nite pleiad in our intellectual rmament its names familiar to every reader of this Journal. But it is now clear how mistaken such an assumption would have been. Alongside a Hill or a Hobsbawm, a Hilton 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 for students of Marx and the general reader as well as for specialist scholars was written during his seventh decade (Anderson 1983, 55). I have noted above that Anderson does not mention Maurice Dobb as a member of the pleaid. As I have suggested, that would, I think, be a common view, and a quite erroneous one. Dobb clearly belongs in the pleaid in question. Kayes book on The British Marxist Historians, noted already, contains no mention of de Ste. Croix. That is curious. He does apologize for the omission of any serious treatment of the writings of Victor Kiernan and George Rud, but not for the omission of de Ste. Croix. That, presumably, can only be a matter of unfortunate timing. One assumes that Kaye had nished his manuscript before the signicance of de Ste. Croixs book 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 be essential in such a book.

The Peasants Seminar of the University of London, 19721989 367 occupied with; and my next book will be a collection of Essays in Early Christian History (or something like that). He did add, in a handwritten postscript, The paperback of CSAGW having sold out (at 15), there is now a corrected reprint of 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, uncompromisingly scholarly, highly priced book on The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World should have earned sufcient royalties to enable him, at the age of 73, to buy a new car for the rst 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 of Marxist Thought (Bottomore et al. 1983). In it I had drawn attention to the woeful treatment accorded him in the Dictionary, at the hands, especially, of Moses Finlay, who wrote the major entries on the ancient world (on Ancient Society 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 seminar programme to be sent, since he might be able to come to one or two of the seminars. He said that he was going to give the Gregynog Lectures early the next year at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth on Early Christian Attitudes to Women, Sex and Marriage. He further said, Ive been spending nearly all my time for the past few years on the Early Fathers. This came as something of a surprise. Although there is much on early Christianity in his Class Struggle book, 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 as having anaemia. On 1 October 1985 I sent him a copy of the JPS special issue on Feudalism and 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 still determined to have him address the seminar. Robert Browning had written, when reviewing his book, More than one ancient historian has remarked to the present reviewer that de Ste. Croix knows more about his own special eld than 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 now been diagnosed as having a bowel tumour, and had to have blood transfusions and 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 telling me of friends who, they say, have had operations for bowel cancer and have survived to die of old age. I reply tartly that Im very soon going to do that anyway. (I am 75). He recovered remarkably. In fact, he died only recently (on 5 February 2000) at the age of 89. In that letter of 7 October 1985, he said that at present theres nothing I could offer for your seminar, unless theres an opportunity to present something on the subject of the [Gregynog Lectures]. I replied saying that we would be delighted to have such a paper. This time, he accepted my invitation. In his reply of 4 November, he did say, What I ought to offer, of course, is something about Later Roman peasants; but . . . I nd that Im now dreadfully slow at

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absolutely everything, and preparing a piece on L.R. peasants would be beyond my capacity, for at least some months. So Early Christian Attitudes to Women, Sex and Marriage it was to be. Indeed, he was fullling, in yet another way, Brownings observation, and his justication 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 Christianity in the early centuries. But there are so many gross misunderstandings about early Christian history, and so few of the theologians who are responsible for nearly all serious modern writing about early Christianity have much historical knowledge of the Graeco-Roman (and Jewish) world in which Christianity developed, that I do not think I need apologise for the content of 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 exclusive religion of the Roman Empire.19 It was a splendid paper, scornful of the clear misogyny of the early Christian Church: his scorn supported by fastidious scholarship. In fact, he spent the remaining years of his life on two books, Early Christian Attitudes to Women, Sex and Marriage and Essays in Early Christian History, neither of which he completed. We were privileged to have an early statement of his arguments. He did restate these in a book, Radical Conclusions, to be published by Oxford University Press.20 CONCLUSION Journals are established, and acquire a reputation. People submit articles, most of which, by denition, are turned down. If the journal is successful, a certain style emerges, a distinctiveness in what is published (of theme and methodology) which, surely, reect 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, in fact, he had been a practising lawyer before the war (which gave him some qualication to consider legal questions), while in theology he had read a great deal of the modern literature. We had a long chat before the seminar, and he told me that, indeed, he had been a practising lawyer until the age of 37, when he went to read classics at University College, London. He was also a gifted tennis player and played at the centre court at Wimbledon in 1929. At University College he came under the influence of A.H.M. Jones, whom he describes as my revered teacher (1981, 8), and of whom he 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 role of Christianity in imperial Rome from Constantine onwards. He told me that his reckoning with Christianity was, in part, a powerful reaction to early indoctrination by his mother, the daughter of a missionary and a fundamentalist Christian, who could recite the Bible by heart. One obituary tells us that His mother was a member of the British Israelites, a protestant sect, which believed that the date of Armageddon could be calculated from the dimensions of the great pyramid of Giza (it measures 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).

The Peasants Seminar of the University of London, 19721989 369 seek out particular kinds of copy, and go, sometimes, to considerable lengths to get it: suggesting certain themes, discouraging others; encouraging younger scholars, cajoling established scholars not to rest on their laurels. The Peasants seminar was critical to the successful launching of the Journal of Peasant Studies. The seminar was a workshop in which the journals style and distinctiveness were forged. My advice to anyone starting a journal is: if you can, rst get yourself a strong intellectual base, in the shape of a seminar that meets regularly and has a cohesive, but critical and argumentative, intellectual community. Do not, however, depend exclusively on that community. Eventually, the synergy between the seminar and JPS diminished, as the journal drew increasingly for its content on a far wider intellectual community. The journal had then reached a degree of maturity, but it was a maturity that would not have been possible without that prior synergy. APPENDIX A INITIAL MISSION STATEMENT OF PEASANTS SEMINAR OF UNIVERSITY OF LONDON SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES AND CENTRE OF INTERNATIONAL AND AREA STUDIES
Seminar and Conference on Peasants After years of neglect the study of peasants has become a subject of intense interest. Economists, anthropologists, historians and others have quite recently started to direct their attention to the peasants, who constitute an immense majority in many areas in the world to their role in the economy, to their social organization and characteristics, to the part they have played, and might play in the future, in revolutionary movements. Scholars in several different disciplines and concerned with different geographical regions have 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 exchange of ideas. The idea of this series of seminars and a conference emerged, in the rst instance, from the obvious importance of peasant studies to the understanding of those parts of the world with which the organizers are primarily concerned, but we are anxious that there should be 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 discussion broadly to the following themes: (1) The Peasantry and their Social Structure What is the peasantry and what are peasants? What are their common features at different points in time and in different areas of the world? Is it useful to think in terms of an undifferentiated, homogeneous category, or are there critical divisions within the peasantry? If so, according to what logic do they operate, and are such divisions antagonistic or

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non-antagonistic? These are fundamental and general problems which certain scholars have addressed but about which there is still no consensus. There is a distinguished line of analysis originating with Marx which sees the emergence of class divisions. This is hotly debated by some. In particular contexts a supposedly unique organizing principle in rural society is emphasized: caste, in India, for example. But are there general principles? (2) The Nature and Logic of Peasant Agriculture According to what principles does peasant agriculture operate? Do conventional concepts have meaning in this context? What are the appropriate analytical categories? What is the rationale and the nature of decision-making in peasant agriculture? Economic anthropologists have debated this vigorously for some time. There have been distinguished contributions in the past by agricultural economists (for example, by Chayanov), which are currently being re-discovered. (3) The Peasant and His Moral Community Are there values which are typical of peasant society? How does the peasant view other peasants, authority, outsiders, leaders, politicians, ofcials, etc.? How does the peasant view time? As cyclical or linear? These are issues of great importance. Hidden in the writings of economists, political scientists, historians and so on, are assumptions on peasant values. These should be identied and their validity examined. (4) Peasants and Politics The peasants and political processes. Under what circumstances can peasants be mobilized politically? What are the patterns of peasant political action and inuence? What determines them? Are they independent and spontaneous or guided and engineered? What are the conditions which produce peasant rebellion? What transforms rebellion into revolution? These are questions of great current interest on which much has recently been written. They are fundamental to the understanding of twentieth-century revolutions in Mexico, China, Cuba and elsewhere, and to contemporary movements in many parts of the world. We envisage a three-phase operation culminating in the conference: A. In the rst phase a seminar will meet at fortnightly intervals at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, during which the four broad themes mentioned above will be opened up. Prepared papers will be given, preferably by those scholars who have worked most extensively on the subject in question. Each paper will be commented upon by two specied discussants before being opened to general discussion. Our aim is that this phase should start in January 1972 and spread over the second term of the academic year 19712. B. In the second phase we intend to pick up particular aspects of the four broad themes, depending upon what emerges from the rst phase. Perhaps fteen papers could be discussed in the third term of 19712 and in the three terms of 19723. C. The third phase will be an international conference held in London towards the end of July 1973, at which the best of the papers from the rst two phases will be presented, together with papers requested from scholars not based in Western Europe. Each of these papers will have two discussants. As a result of experience gained in the rst and second phases there may by this stage be a narrowing down of themes and focusing on issues within the themes.

The Peasants Seminar of the University of London, 19721989 371

It is hoped to publish a collection of the papers which are presented at the conference, edited by the organizers. T. J. Byres C. A. Curwen School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London Anthony Atmore Centre of International and Area Studies, University of London October, 1971.

APPENDIX B FULL LIST OF PAPERS PRESENTED TO THE PEASANTS SEMINAR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON, 19721988
NOTES: a) Where a paper was promised and listed in the seminar programme, but never presented, it is omitted from the following list.21 b) Versions of papers marked with an asterisk were subsequently published in JPS. Publication details are given after the authors name. c) Presentations of song are listed below. In addition, there was a lm presentation.22 d) Between 1983 and 1989, papers were presented to The State and Political Economy seminar of the University of London (of which T.J. Byres was co-organizer) that were clearly relevant to the Peasants seminar. It is only where these were given at a joint meeting of the two seminars that they are listed below.

1972 17 meetings, 4 papers published in JPS 1. 2. 3. *Claude Meillassoux 1973 October 1 (1) *Eric Hobsbawm 1973 October 1 (1) *Teodor Shanin 1973 October 1 (1) and 1974 January 1 (2) The Social Organisation of the Peasantry Peasants and Politics The Nature and Logic of Peasant Economy 19 January 9 February 23 February

The following papers come into that category: Perry Anderson, Agrarian Social Classes in Classical Bourgeois Revolutions (5 December 1975); James Hunter, The Highland Land War in Scotland, 18811890 (14 May 1976); Jack Gray, Differentiation of the Peasantry in Twentieth Century China (17 June 1977); Leslie Sklair, The Transition from the Pre-capitalist to the Socialist Mode of Production: The Case of China (16 March 1979). 22 On 11 March 1977, Autumn of Hunger (Food Crisis in Rural West Bengal, 1974). We were also to have a lm on Peasants and Greek Politics, 19741981, made by Maria Comninos, on 12 February 1982, 21 May 1982, but that had to be cancelled on each occasion.

21

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4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Terence J. Byres
Boguslaw Galeski Ernst Utrecht *Jerzy Tepicht 1975 April 2 (3) Gerrit Huizer Jack Gray Henry A. Landsberger Peasants and Their Moral Community Class Struggle and Politics in the Javanese Countryside A Project for Research on the Peasant Revolution of our Time Peasant Organisation and the Land Question: Strategies of Struggle Mao, Myrdal and Modernisation Political, Social and Economic Determinants of the Success of Mexican Ejidos: A Qualitative and Quantitative Study Peasantry and the Mode of Production in Colonial and Modern Latin America The Social Context of Peasant Action Technological Change and the Demise of the Sharecropper Peasants and the Distributional Aspects of the Green Revolution in Asia The Telengana Struggle, the Communist Parties in Nalgonda District and the Indian Peasantry Peasant Movements in Latin America An Analytical Framework for the Peasantry of Western Europe Participation by the Philippine Peasantry in Revolutionary Struggles 22 March 3 May 10 May 24 May 7 June 21 June

10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

Ian Rutledge Andrew Pearse Clive Bell Keith Grifn Hugh Gray

13 October 27 October 3 November 10 November 17 November

15. 16. 17.

David Lehmann Henri Mendras William J. Pomeroy

24 November 1 December 8 December

1973 14 meetings, 7 papers published in JPS 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. A.A. Zghal W. Wertheim Biplab Basgupta A.L. Lloyd Geoffrey Shillinglaw Peasants and Political Power in North Africa Polarity and Equality in the Chinese Peoples Communes Agrarian Armed Revolt in Contemporary India Peasant Folklore in a Changing Society: The Romanian Experience Social Structure and Peasant Mobilisation in Post-Liberation South China Medieval Peasants: Any Lessons? Peasantry and Revolution in China, 19271949 Peasant Solidarity; Concept and Implications 24 January 26 January 9 February 23 February 9 March

23. 24. 25.

*Rodney Hilton 1974 January 1 (2) *Lucien Bianco 1975 April 2 (3) B.F. Galjart

23 March 18 May 1 June

The Peasants Seminar of the University of London, 19721989 373

26. 27. *Judith Brown 1974 July 1 (4) *Frank Furedi 1974 July 1 (4) *Hamish Henderson 1975 July 2 (4) Hamza Alavi *Lionel Cliffe 1977 January 4 (2) *David Craig 1974 October 2 (1) Gandhi and Indias Peasants, 19171922 The Social Composition of the Mau Mau Movement in the United Highlands The Bothy Ballads of the North East of Scotland The Rural Basis of Political Power in South Asia Rural Class Formation in East Africa Novels of Peasant Crisis 8 June 12 October

28. 29. 30. 31.

26 October 9 November 23 November 7 December

1974 17 meetings, 4 papers published in JPS 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. Phil Billingsley *Brian Manning 1975 January 2 (2) B.H. Slicher van Bath Tapan Raychaudhuri Peasant Insurgency in China: Bai Lang, the White Wolf The Peasantry and the English Civil War 18 January 1 February 15 February 1 March 8 March 13 March 15 March 13 May 17 May 31 14 21 11 May June June October

45. 46.

47.

48.

Dependencia in 16th to 18th century Europe Traditions of Agrarian Resistance in Indian History Eric R. Wolf Peasant Nationalism in an Alpine Valley Irfan Habib Agrarian Structure in Mughal India Joan Thirsk The Disappearance of the English Peasant Janos Bak The Hungarian Peasant War of 1514: Ideology and Structure *Philip Longworth Peasant Leadership and the Pugachev 1975 January 2 (2) Revolt Ester Boserup Women in Peasant Societies A.L. Lloyd The Lament: the Peasant Way with Grief Mubeccel Kiray Peasantry in the Ottoman Empire Michael Shepperdson Social and Economic Factors Underlying Differences in Productivity in a Pakistan Village John Sender Class Formation and the Development of Tanzanian Agriculture Stuart Schram Mao Tse-Tung and the Role of Various Classes in the Chinese Revolution, 192327 *Gavin AldersonThe Internal Differentiation of Peasants Smith 1979 April 6 (3) *Cristbal Kay An Analysis of Popular Unitys 1975 July 2 (4) Agrarian Reform in Chile

25 October 8 November

22 November

6 December

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1975 13 meetings, 6 papers published in JPS 49. *Maria Mies 1976 July 3 (4) Juan Martinez-Alier *Peter Nolan 1976 January 3 (2) Keith Hart Shahada: A Peasant Movement in Maharashtra, its Development and Perspectives Land Rent, Exploitation and Surplus Collectivisation in China Some Comparisons with the USSR RuralUrban Migration and the Proletarianization of the Peasantry in West Africa The Peasantry of the North-east of Scotland, 18401914 The Awkward Class Revisited Agrarian Change and Peasant Protest in Northern India: Oudh, c. 18501933 Peasants in Ancient Roman Society Isolation and Dependency on a Small Island Resource Allocation and Agrarian Class Formation: The Problem of Social Mobility Among Russian Peasant Households 18801930 Peasants, Proletarianization and the Articulation of Modes of Production: The Case of Sugar Cane Cutters in Northern Peru, 18401969 Telengana: The Perspectives for Peasant Struggle Village Community, Landlord and Political Power: Problems of Interaction in Early Modern Prussia 17 January

50. 51. 52.

31 January 14 February 28 February

53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58.

*Ian Carter 1976 January 3 (2) Teodor Shanin Gyananda Pandey *Peter Garnsey 1976 January 3 (2) Robin Cohen *Mark Harrison 1977 January 4 (2)

14 March 2 May 16 May 30 May 13 June 10 October

59.

*C.D. Scott 1976 April 3 (3)

24 October

60. 61.

Barry Pavier Heide Wunder

7 November 21 November

1976 14 meetings, 5 papers published in JPS 62. Michael Redclift Agrarian Reform on the Ecuadorian Coast and the Transformation of the Peasantry Songs of Hungarian Seasonal Workers The Lineage as Landlord in Chinese Peasant Society Labour in the Formal and Informal Sector of South Gujarat Procrustes Revisited: Social Relations and Agricultural Production in Nepals Terai 16 January

63. 64. 65. 66.

A.L. Lloyd J.L. Watson *Jan Breman 1977 April 4 (3) *David Feldman and Alain Fournier 1976 July 3 (4)

30 January 13 February 27 February 12 March

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67. Henry Cohn Clerical Lords and German Peasants, 1525: The Economic Basis for Anti-Clericalism Economic Property and Commodity Exchange in the Formation of Agrarian Capitalism A Theory of Agrarian Structure: Typology and Paths of Transformation in Latin America Some Problems of Enumerating the Peasantry in Cuba The Hoe and the Vote: Rural Labourers and the National Election in Brazil in 1974 Modes of Exploitation and Womens Labour: Oaxaca, Mexico Transformation of the Class Structure within the State Formation Processes in the Philippines Workplace Conict and the Farm Worker: Norfolk, 19001920 Peasant Weddings in Nineteenth Century Wales 30 April

68.

Keith Tribe

28 May

69.

David Lehmann

11 June

70. 71.

72. 73.

*Brian Pollitt 1977 January 4 (2) *Verena MartinezAlier 1977 April 4 (3) Kate Young Wilhem Wolters

25 June 15 October

29 October 12 November

74. 75.

*Alun Howkins 1977 April 4 (3) Trefor Owen

26 November 10 December

1977 14 meetings, 4 papers published in JPS Between January and July (terms 2 and 3 of the 19767 academic year), the theme of the seminar was peasant differentiation. 76. 77. 78. *Keith Wrightson 1977 October 5 (1) *Lionel Cliffe 1978 April 5 (3) Mahmud Abdel-Fadil Aspects of Social Differentiation in Rural England, c. 15801660 Labour Migration and Peasant Differentiation: Zambian Experiences The Process of Differentiation of the Peasantry in the Post-Reform Period in Egypt Interior and Exterior in Rural Formations. Difference as Relation in the Countryside of the Late Medieval Deccan Social Differentiation in the Aberdeenshire Peasantry, 16961870 The Organization of Collective Incentives in a Socialist Chinese Peasant Community Unequal Redistribution: Post Agrarian Reform Differentiation in Coastal Peru The Nature of Rural Class Differentiation in Bangladesh 21 January 4 February 18 February

79.

*Frank Perlin 1978 January 5 (2) *Ian Carter 1977 October 5 (1) Jonathan Unger

4 March

80. 81.

18 March 6 May

82. 83.

William S. Bell Geoff Wood

20 May 3 June

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84. 85.

Terence J. Byres
*Rodney Hilton 1978 April 5 (3) David Hardiman Reasons for Inequality Among Medieval Peasants A Gandhian Peasant Satyagraha. The No-Tax Campaign of 193031 in the Kheda District Towards a Class Analysis of the Social Relations in Rural Catalonia, 19361938 A Comparison of Rural Development Strategies in East Asian Socialist Countries Passing Through a Period of Stress. The Transkei Peasantry, c. 18901914 Landlord and Tenant in a Colonial Economy: The Transvaal, 18801910 1 July 14 October

86. 87.

Anne Bailey Suzy Paine

28 October 11 November

88. 89.

Colin Bundy Stan Trapido

25 November 9 December

1978 16 meetings, 3 papers published in JPS 90. Adrian Chan The Communist Peasant Policy in the Canton Government: Marxian, Russian or Chinese? North Vietnams Land Reform, 195456: Mistakes, Leftist Deviation or Class Struggle? Sugar Beet and Agrarian Change in East-Central Europe, 18601914 Strikes on Coffee Plantations in Sao Paulo, 19001930 Agrarian Structures and Social Movements in Rural Portugal The State and Rural Class Formation in Rural Kenya The Development of the English Rural Proletariat and Social Protest, 17001850 Capitalism and Big Estates in the Balkan Economy: The Case of Modern Greece (18801917) Rural Differentiation and Class Formation in Tanzania Communists and Populists in Central Colombian Coffee Haciendas: 19201950 Revolutionary Transformation of Village Leadership During the Land Reform Campaign in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (19531956) 20 January

91.

Alec Gordon

27 January

92. 93.

John Perkins Verena MartinezAlier and Michael Hall *Manuel Cabral 1978 July 5 (4) Diana Hunt *Roger Wells 1979 January 6 (2) Kostas Vergopoulos

3 February 17 February

94. 95. 96.

3 March 17 March 5 May

97.

19 May

98. 99.

*Philip Raikes 1978 April 5 (3) Marcos Palacios

2 June 16 June

100.

Christian White

30 June

The Peasants Seminar of the University of London, 19721989 377

101. 102. William Beinart and Colin Bundy Norman Klein State Intervention and Rural Resistance: The Transkeian Territories, c. 19001960 Kinship, Slavery and Ideology in the Formation of the Peasantry in 19th Century Ghana The Pre-Colonial State: Western Deccan from the 15th to the 19th Century Agrarian Structure and Differentiation in Bolivia Class and Clientilistic Politics: The Case of Greece 13 October 27 October

103.

Frank Perlin

10 November

104. 105.

Jorge Dandler Nicos Mouzelis

24 November 8 December

1979 15 meetings, 5 papers published in JPS 106. Peter Nolan Inequality of Income between Town and Countryside in the Peoples Republic of China in the Mid-1950s Peasants and Capitalists in Northern India: Cane Cultivation in Gorakhpur (Easter U.P.) in the 1930s The Political Economy of Land Reform in Bangladesh Dacoity and Rural Crime in Madras, 18601940 The Historical Evolution of Agrarian Relations in the North-West Tapi Basin Peasants and Simple Commodity Production: Analytical Distinctions The Effects of Overseas Remittances on the Development of Rural Capitalism in the Punjab (India) Social Transformation and Rural Disturbance in Ireland and Tipperary, 18001848 Towards a Marxist Analysis of Sharecropping The Politics of Foodgrain Procurement: A Case Study of Uttar Pradesh (India) Class Analysis of the Russian Peasantry: The Work of Kritsman and his School The Ritual of Riot: Agrarian Disorder in Early Modern England Politics and the Greek Peasants 19 January

107.

*Shahid Amin 1981 April 8 (3) Kamal Siddiqui *David Arnold 1979 January 6 (2) P. Paranjape

2 February

108. 109. 110.

16 February 2 March 16 March

111. 112.

*Harriet Friedmann 1980 January 7 (2) Shinder Thandi

4 May 18 May

113.

Bernard Reaney

1 June

114.

115. 116.

*Dick Pearce 1983 January/ April 10 (23) Ian Duncan *Terry Cox 1984 January 11 (2) John Walter Maria Comninos

15 June

29 June 12 October

117. 118.

26 October 9 November

378
119.

Terence J. Byres
Joel Kahn Petty Commodity Production on the Periphery of the World Economy: The Case of Indonesia Kinship and the Labour Market in Peru 23 November

120.

Alison Scott

7 December

1980 15 meetings, 4 papers published in JPS 121. 122. Sumit Roy Penny Franks The Political Economy of the Use of Modern Inputs in Indian Agriculture Industrialization and the Japanese Model of Agricultural Development: A Case Study An Agricultural Cooperative in Mozambique The Changing Organization of Landholdings in Western India, 19001939: A Case of Agricultural Involution? Change and Consciousness in a Thai Countryside Interactions Between Agrarian Structure and Technology in India Migration and Modes of Exploitation: The Social Origins of Immobility and Mobility Rural Musicians in an Urban Setting The Signicance of Broach (India) Agrarian Economy for an Interpretation of Underdevelopment Aspects of Agricultural Development in North Vietnam Peasant Movements in Bihar, 19301970 Non-Capitalist Modes of Production: An Assessment of Current Debates Labour Migration in Southern Africa Sharecropping in Tuscany 18 January 1 February

123. 124.

*Laurence Harris 1980 April 7 (3) Neil Charlesworth

15 February 29 February

125. 126. 127.

Ruth McVey Ashwani Saith *Guy Standing 1981 January 8 (2) A.L. Lloyd Shri Prakash

14 March 2 May 16 May

128. 129.

30 May 13 June

130. 131. 132. 133. 134.

Adam Fforde *Arvind Das 1982 April 9 (3) John Taylor Judy Kimble *Desmond Gill 1983 January/ April 10 (23) Henry Bernstein

27 June 10 October 24 October 7 November 21 November

135.

State and Peasant Production in Tanzania

5 December

The Peasants Seminar of the University of London, 19721989 379

1981 11 meetings, 1 paper published in JPS 136. Christine White State, Cooperative and Family in the Political Economy of Vietnamese Agriculture Agricultural Development Policies in Early China Kritsmans Analysis of Class Stratication in the Soviet Countryside Violence and Social Control in Southern Italy: Landlords and Peasants in Apulia, 19001922 The Peruvian Agrarian Reform, 19691980 Peasants, Patterns of Violence and Politics in Madras Presidency Proto-Industrial Production A Barrier to Industrialization? The Case of the North Indian Sugar Industry and Market, 18501980 What Marriage Payments Mean to Women: The Case of Dowry in North India The Conict Between Individual and Collective Interests in Peruvian Agrarian Cooperatives: Effects on Economic Performance and the Labour Process Peasants and Pastoralists: The Commercialization of Agriculture and Change in the Money Form Kenya 190552 16 January

137. 138. 139.

Francesca Anne Bray *Gary Littlejohn 1984 January 11 (2) Frank M. Snowden

30 January 13 February 19 February

140. 141. 142.

Cristbal Kay David Arnold Simon Commander

27 February 13 March 16 October

143.

Ursula Sharma

30 October

144.

Jose Maria Caballero

13 November

145.

Gavin Kitching

27 November

380

Terence J. Byres

1982 13 meetings, 1 paper published in JPS 146. 147. 148. John Archer Pervaiz Nazir Satish Mishra Incendiarism in Norfolk and Suffolk, 18301870 Class Formation in Rural Pakistan The State and Peasant Politics in Bombay and Punjab in Pre- and Post-Independence Period Poverty and Inequality in Contemporary Rural Uttar Pradesh (India) Modes of Power and the Peasantry The End of Class Struggle in North Vietnam, 19751982 Peasants and Rural Manufacture in Lombardy, 18601920 Authoritarianism and Accumulation on the Pioneer Frontier of Brazil Changes in Production Conditions in Agriculture in Contemporary Gujarat 22 January 5 February 19 February

149. 150. 151. 152. 153. 154.

Jean Sargent Partha Chatterjee Alec Gordon Paul Corner *Joe Foweraker 1982 October 10 (1) Nick Amin

5 March 19 March 7 May 4 June 18 June 2 July

1983 4 meetings, 2 papers published in JPS There were no meetings in the rst half of the year. T.J. Byres co-organized a Political Economy of South Asia seminar, instead of the Peasants seminar. 155. 156. 157. 158. *David Arnold 1984 July 11 (4) Atiur Rahman Stan Trapido *Alastair Davidson 1984 July 11 (4) Gramsci and Peasant Subalternity in India Differentiation of the Peasantry in Two Villages in Bangladesh Aspects of Sharecropping in South Africa Gramsci and the Peasantry 7 October 28 October 11 November 25 November

The Peasants Seminar of the University of London, 19721989 381

1984 13 meetings, 3 papers published in JPS 159. 160. 161. 162. 163. Colin Bundy and William Beinart W.G. Clarence-Smith Tsehai BerhaneSelassie Arun Sinha Kate Crehan Hidden Struggles: Rural Politics in South Africa The MPLA and the Peasantry in Angola Political Participations of Peasant Farmers in Gojam (Ethiopia) On the Question of Peasant Unity in India: Experiences in Present-day Bihar Bishini and Social Studies: The Production of Knowledge in a Zambian Village Fieldwork: Between Accumulation and Immiserisation Islamic Revolution and the Agrarian Question in Iran Science, the State and Small-Scale Farmers: Rice Research in Sierra Leone Politics and Class in Spring Valley: an Anti-Structuralist Interpretation of Capitalism in the Countryside of the Uva Highlands of Sri Lanka Unfree Labour and Capitalist Restructuring in the Agrarian Sector: Peru and India Some Recent Trends in the Pattern of Capital Accumulation in India: An Empirical Evaluation and a Political Economy Analysis Rural China: 1983 An Outline of the Impact of Trade on African Rural Class Formation in the Colonial Period 20 January 3 February 17 February 16 March 4 May

164. 165. 166. 167.

*Jan Breman 1985 October 13 (1) Massoud Afarinkia Paul Richards *Charles Kemp 1984 October 12 (1)

18 May

12 October

168.

*Tom Brass 1986 October 14 (1) Ravi Srivastava

26 October

169.

2 November

170. 171.

Keith Grifn John Sender and Sheila Smith

9 November 23 November

382

Terence J. Byres

1985 12 meetings, 1 paper published in JPS 172. Crispin Bates Tribalism, Dependency and the Sub-Regional Dynamics of Economic Change in Central India Peasant Studies and 19th Century Rural England Price Response in a Small Peasant Economy: The Gujarat Districts (India), 18501937 The Language of Politics and the Language of Nationalism: The Sri Lankan Case Study Agrarian Crisis in Africa and Neo-Classical Populism Peasants, Pilgrims and Pestilence: Cholera in Colonial India Employment and the Agricultural Labour Market in Egypt Agrarian Structure and Agricultural Growth in Bangladesh The Agrarian Question in Latin America The Land Market in a Bengal District: Midnapore, 18701920 Planting Ideology in Colonial Sri Lanka Vertical Integration of Capital in Bangladesh Agriculture 25 January

173. 174.

*Mick Reed 1986 October 14 (1) Shri Prakash

1 February 22 February

175.

Jonathan Spencer

8 March

176. 177. 178. 179. 180. 181. 182. 183.

Henry Bernstein David Arnold Simon Commander James Boyce Cristbal Kay Chitta Panda Charles Kemp Geoff Wood

15 March 3 May 17 May 31 May 14 June 11 October 25 October 6 December

1986 7 meetings, 1 paper published in JPS The Political Economy of South Asia seminar intervened to reduce the number of Peasants seminar meetings. 184. Krishna Bharadwaj Commercialization in Indian Agriculture and the Development of Capitalism Some Further Thoughts Rethinking Socialist Agriculture in the Light of Chinas Post-Mao Reforms Why Was There So Little Champart (Sharecropping) in Medieval England? The Oral Tradition and Peasant Resistance in Colonial India We Be Black As Hell: Disguise, Ritual and Public Revolt Early Christian Attitudes to Women, Sex and Marriage Ravenna and Chioggia (Italy): Hydraulic Agriculture, Public Policy and Politics 31 January

185. 186. 187. 188. 189. 190.

Peter Nolan *Rodney Hilton 1990 July 17 (4) Majid Hayyat Siddiqi Alun Howkins and Linda Merricks G.E.M. de Ste. Croix John MacDonald

14 February 14 March 9 May 30 May 6 June 13 June

The Peasants Seminar of the University of London, 19721989 383

1987 4 meetings, no papers published in JPS The Political Economy of South Asia seminar intervened to reduce the number of Peasants seminar meetings. 191. 192. Gurharpal Singh Neeladari Bhattacharyya Charles Searle Christopher F. Clark Regional Politics in India: Recent Developments in the Punjab Merchants, Moneylenders and Peasants: Accumulation and Proletarianization in Colonial Punjab Parliamentary Enclosure: A Dissenting Note from the Uplands Economics and Culture: Change in Rural Massachusetts, 17801860 6 February 20 February

193. 194.

6 March 13 March

1988 10 meetings, 2 papers published in JPS The Political Economy of South Asia seminar intervened somewhat to reduce the number of Peasants seminar meetings. By the end of the year, the Peasants seminar had run its course. 195. Tenkir Bonger The State, the Peasantry and Class Formation in Pre-Revolutionary Ethiopia The Japanese Capitalism Debate, 19271937 Inter-Sectoral Resource Flows in Post-1949 China The Green Revolution in Africa: Stagnation or Diffusion? From Wage Labour to Social Labour: The Unnished Revolution of Late Antiquity Plain Tales from the Rice Trade: Implications of Vertical Integration in Foodgrain Markets in Bangladesh We Are Inferior Even to Dogs: Labour Nomads in the Plains of South Gujarat From Plantation to Peasant Production of Cocoa in German Cameroons Rural Life and Protest in Nineteenth Century England Writing off the National Grid: On the Difculties of Doing Scottish Socialist Agricultural History 22 January

196. 197. 198. 199.

K. Sugihara Yuming Sheng Peter Lawrence Jairus Banaji

5 February 19 February 26 February 11 March

200.

*Ben Crow 1989 January 16 (2) *Jan Breman 1990 July 17 (4) Gervase ClarenceSmith Barry Reay Ian Carter

27 May

201.

21 October

202. 203. 204.

4 November 18 November 2 December

384

Terence J. Byres

1989 1 meeting, no papers published in JPS The Peasants seminar had now come to an end. The meeting of 3 February was a symposium on The Transition to Capitalist Agriculture in South Africa, held jointly with the Southern Africa seminar. 205. Tim Keegan Primitive Accumulation and Class Formation in the Making of Agrarian Capitalism in South Africa Land and Freedom the South African Case The Transvaal Agrarian Class Structure in the Early 20th Century Montagues Road to Capitalism: The Distribution of Land and Property, 1845 3 February

206. 207. 208.

Gavin Williams Jeremy Krikler Robert Ross

3 February 3 February 3 February

APPENDIX C NUMBER OF ARTICLES PUBLISHED IN JOURNAL OF PEASANT STUDIES AND PROPORTION COMING VIA PEASANTS SEMINAR, 19731991
Volume numbers and years 1 12 (19735) 34 (19757) 56 (19779) Total 16 (19739) 78 (197981) 910 (19813) 1112 (19835) Total 712 (19785) 1314 (19857) 1516 (19879) 1718 (198991) Total 1318 (198591) TOTAL 118 (19731991) Total number of articles published (including Peasants Speak and excluding Review Articles) 2 40 46 30 116 29 37 31 97 39 28 29 96 309 Number of papers published from seminar 3 13 12 11 36 4 3 5 12 2 1 2 5 53 % of articles published via seminar (column 3 as % of column 4) 4 33 27 37 31 14 8 16 12 5 4 7 5 17 Number of special issues

5 0 2 0 2 0 2 (one double) 2 (one double) 4 (two doubles) 1 0 1 (double) 2 (one double) 8 (5 double)

The Peasants Seminar of the University of London, 19721989 385 REFERENCES

NOTE: Here I have listed all the References given in the text. I have not, however, repeated references to the papers in Appendix B marked with an asterisk which were published in the Journal of Peasant Studies. Full referencing is given there. Anderson, Perry, 1983. Class Struggle in the Ancient World. History Workshop, Autumn, 16: 5773. Review article on de Ste. Croix (1981). Anon., 1967. Review of Moore Jr (1967). Times Literary Supplement, 21 December. Anon., 1968. Review of Chayanov (1966). Times Literary Supplement, 19 December. This was, in fact, written by Michael Lipton. Anon., 2000. Obituary of Geoffrey de Ste. Croix. News and Views, 21 February, 21 (7). Published by the London School of Economics. As downloaded from the internet: http://www.lse.ac.uk/Press/newsandviews/21-2-2000.htm Bak, Janos, ed., 1975. Special issue: The German Peasant War of 1525. Journal of Peasant Studies, October, 3 (1). Banaji, Jairus, 1976. Summary of Selected Parts of Kautskys The Agrarian Question. Economy and Society, February, 5 (1): 149. Bell, Clive, 1976. Production Conditions, Innovation, and the Choice of Lease in Agriculture. Sankhya C. Bernstein, Henry and Terence J. Byres, 2001. From Peasant Studies to Agrarian Change. Journal of Agrarian Change, January, 1 (1): 156. Bloch, Marc, 1961. Feudal Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bottomore, Tom, with Laurence Harris, V.G. Kiernan and Ralph Miliband, eds, 1983. A Dictionary of Marxist Thought, 1st edn. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Bray, Francesca Anne, 1986. The Rice Economies. Technology and Development in Asian Societies. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Breman, Jan, 1990. Even Dogs Are Better Off : The Ongoing Battle Between Capital and Labour in the Cane Fields of Gujarat. Journal of Peasant Studies, July, 17 (4): 546608. Brenner, Robert, 1978. Dobb on the Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 2: 121 40. Browning, Robert, 1983. The Class Struggle in Ancient Greece. Past and Present, August, 100: 14756. Review article on de Ste. Croix (1981). Byres, Terence J., 1972. The Dialectic of Indias Green Revolution. South Asia Review, January, 5 (2): 99116. Byres, Terence J., 1976. Scottish Peasants and their Song. Journal of Peasant Studies, January, 3 (2): 23651. Byres, Terence J., ed., 1983. Double special issue: Sharecropping and Sharecroppers. Journal of Peasant Studies, January/April, 10 (23). This was published also as Terence J. Byres, ed., 1983. Sharecropping and Sharecroppers. London: Frank Cass. Byres, Terence J., 1984. Eurocentric Marxism and the Third World: The View From the Academy in the Anglophone Metropolis. Economic and Political Weekly, 28 July, XIX (13): 1199204. A review article on Bottomore et al. (1983). Byres, Terence J., 1994. The Journal of Peasant Studies: Its Origins and Some Reections on the First Twenty Years. In The Journal of Peasant Studies: A Twenty Volume Index 19731993, eds Henry Bernstein, Tom Brass and T.J. Byres, with Edward Lahiff and Gill Peace, 112. London: Frank Cass.

386

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Byres, Terence J., 1996. Capitalism from Above and Capitalism from Below. An Essay in Comparative Political Economy. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan. Byres, Terence J. and Harbans Mukhia, eds, 1985. Double special issue: Feudalism and Non-European Societies. Journal of Peasant Studies, January and April, 12 (23). This was also published as Terence J. Byres and Harbans Mukhia, eds, 1985. Feudalism and Non-European Societies. London: Frank Cass. Byres, Terence J., Charles Curwen and Teodor Shanin, 1973. Editorial Statement. Journal of Peasant Studies, October, 1 (1): 12. Carter, Ian, 1977. Social Differentiation in the Aberdeenshire Peasantry, 16961870. Journal of Peasant Studies, October, 5 (1): 4865. Chayanov, A.V., 1966. The Theory of Peasant Economy. Homewood, Illinois: Richard Irwin for the American Economic Association. Edited by Daniel Thorner, Basile Kerblay and R.E.F. Smith. Cheung. Steven N.S., 1969. The Theory of Share Tenancy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Cliffe, Lionel, 1978. Labour Migration and Peasant Differentiation: Zambian Experiences. Journal of Peasant Studies, April, 5 (3): 32646. Conrad, Jack, 2000. History Man. Explaining Decline and Fall. Weekly Worker, 17 February, no. 323. As downloaded from the internet: http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/ 323/stecroix.html Cox, Terry and Gary Littlejohn, eds, 1984. Special issue: Kritsman and the Agrarian Marxists. Journal of Peasant Studies, January, 11 (2). Also published as Terry Cox and Gary Littlejohn, eds, 1984. Kritsman and the Agrarian Marxists. London: Frank Cass. Das, Arvind N., ed., 1982. Special issue: Agrarian Movements in India: Studies of Twentieth Century Bihar. Journal of Peasant Studies, April, 9 (3). Also published as Arvind N. Das, ed., 1982. Agrarian Movements in India: Studies of Twentieth Century Bihar. London: Frank Cass. Dobb, Maurice, 1963. Studies in the Development of Capitalism, rev. edn. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. First edition published in 1946. Dobb, Maurice, 1974. Review of Hilton (1973). Journal of Peasant Studies, January, 1 (2): 25354. Dobb, Maurice et al., 1954. The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism. A Symposium. With a Foreword by Maurice Dobb and contributions by Maurice Dobb, Paul M. Sweezy, H.K. Takahashi, Rodney Hilton and Christopher Hill. London: Fore Publications. Engels, Friedrich, 1965. The Peasant War in Germany. Moscow: Progress Publishers. This was written in the summer of 1850 in London, and appeared in the fth and sixth issues of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, which was edited by Marx, in that same year. Engels, Friedrich, 1970. Die Bauernfrage in Frankreich und Deutschland (The Peasant Question in France and Germany. In Selected Works in Three Volumes, vol. 3, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, 45776 and 543 (for notes 2868). Moscow: Progress Publishers. Written between 15 and 22 November 1894 and rst published in Die Neue Zeit, Bd. 1, No. 10, 1894 5. Garnsey, Peter, 1976. Peasants in Ancient Roman Society. Journal of Peasant Studies, January, 3 (2): 22135. Garnsey, Peter, 1982. Review of de Ste. Croix (1981). Journal of Peasant Studies, October, 10 (1): 1235. Henderson, Hamish, 1975. The Bothy Ballads. Journal of Peasant Studies, July, 2 (4): 497501.

The Peasants Seminar of the University of London, 19721989 387

Hilton, Rodney, 1973. Bond Men Made Free. Medieval Peasant Movements and the English Rising of 1381. London: Temple Smith. Hilton, Rodney, 1974. Medieval Peasants Any Lessons?. Journal of Peasant Studies, January, 1 (2): 20719. Hilton, Rodney, ed., 1976. The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism. London: New Left Books. With an Introduction by Rodney Hilton, and contributions by Paul Sweezy, Maurice Dobb, Kohachiro Takahashi, Rodney Hilton, Christopher Hill, Georges Lefebvre, Giuliano Procacci, Eric Hobsbawm, John Merrington. Hilton, Rodney, 1978. Reasons for Inequality among Medieval Peasants. Journal of Peasant Studies, April, 5 (3): 271 84. Hilton, Rodney, 1990. Why Was There So Little Champart Rent in Medieval England?. Journal of Peasant Studies, July, 17 (4): 50919. Hobsbawm, Eric, 1973. Peasants and Politics. Journal of Peasant Studies, July, 1 (1): 322. Hobsbawm, Eric, 1978. The Historians Group of the Communist Party. In Rebels and Their Causes, ed. Maurice Cornforth. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Kautsky, Karl, 1899. Die Agrarfrage. Eine bersicht ber die Tendenzen der Modernen Landwirtschaft und die Agrarpolitik der Sozialdemokratie. Stuttgart: Dietz. Kautsky, Karl, 1900. La Question Agraire. tude sur les Tendances de lAgriculture Moderne. Paris: V. Giard and E. Briere. Republished by Maspero in facsimile, Paris, 1970. Kautsky, Karl, 1988. The Agrarian Question, rst English translation, by Pete Burgess, 2 vols. London: Zwan Publications. First published in 1899 in German. Kay, Cristbal, 1974. Comparative Development of the European Manorial System and the Latin American Hacienda System. Journal of Peasant Studies, October, 2 (1): 6998. Kaye, Harvey, 1984. The British Marxist Historians. Cambridge: Polity Press. Kitching, Gavin, 1980. Class and Economic Change in Kenya. The Making of an African Petite-Bourgeoisie. New Haven: Yale University Press. Lenin, V.I., 1960. Review of Karl Kautsky, Die Agrarfrage (1899). In Collected Works, vol. 4, 94 9. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House. Written and rst published in 1899. Lenin, V.I., 1964. The Development of Capitalism in Russia. In Collected Works, vol. 3. Moscow: Progress Publishers. Written 18969; rst edition published in 1899. Luxemburg, Rosa, 1963, with an Introduction by Joan Robinson. The Accumulation of Capital. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. First published in 1913; rst English translation published in 1951. Manning, Brian, 1975. The Peasantry and the English Revolution. Journal of Peasant Studies, January, 2 (2): 13358. Mao Tse-tung, 1967. Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, vol. 1. Peking: Foreign Languages Press. Meek, Ronald L., 1973. Studies in the Labour Theory of Value, 2nd edn, with a new Introduction. London: Lawrence and Wishart. The rst edition was published in 1956. Mitrany, David, 1961. Marx Against the Peasant. A Study in Social Dogmatism. New York, N.Y.: Collier Books. First published in 1951 by the University of North Carolina Press. Moore Jr, Barrington, 1967. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World. London: Allen Lane The Penguin Press. First published in the USA by Beacon Press, 1966. Mukhia, Harbans, 1981. Was There Feudalism in Indian History?. Journal of Peasant Studies, April, 8 (3): 273310.

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Perlin, Frank, 1978. Of White Whale and Countrymen in the Eighteenth-Century Maratha Deccan: Extended Class Relations, Rights and the Problem of Rural Autonomy Under the Old Regime. Journal of Peasant Studies, January, 5 (2): 172237. de Ste. Croix, G.E.M., 1981. The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World. London: Duckworth. de Ste. Croix, G.E.M., forthcoming. Radical Conclusions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Shanin, Teodor, ed., 1971. Peasants and Peasant Societies. Selected Readings. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Shanin, Teodor, 1973. The Nature and Logic of the Peasant Economy I: A Generalisation. Journal of Peasant Studies, October, 1 (1): 6380. Shanin, Teodor, 1974. The Nature and Logic of the Peasant Economy II: Diversity and Change III: Policy and Intervention. Journal of Peasant Studies, January, 1 (2): 186206. Thompson, E.P., 1991. Customs in Common. London: Merlin Press. This was later published by Penguin Books in 1993. Thorner, Daniel, 1971. Peasant Economy as a Category in Economic History. Reprinted in Shanin, Teodor, ed., 1971. Peasants and Peasant Societies. Selected Readings, 20218. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Published originally in 1962, in Deuxime Confrence Internationale dHistoire conomique, Aix-en-Provence, vol. 2, 287300. Mouton. Warren, Bill, 1980. Imperialism: Pioneer of Capitalism. Edited by John Sender. London: NLB and Verso. Weber, Max, 1947. The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. New York: Oxford University Press. Wolf, Eric, 1966. Peasants. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. In the Prentice-Hall Foundations of Modern Anthropology Series. Wolf, Eric, 1969. Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century. New York: Harper and Row. Wrightson, Keith, 1977. Aspects of Social Differentiation in Rural England, c. 1580 1660. Journal of Peasant Studies, January, 5 (1): 3347.