Perspectives on the peasantries of Europe

A collected volume on The Peasantries of Europe: From the Fourteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries, edited by Tom Scott, is reviewed. It contains an Int roduction by Scott; papers on France (Jonathan Dewald and Liana Vardi), Ibe ria (Teofilo F. Ruiz), Italy (S.R. Epstein), Western Germany (Thomas Robish eaux), East-Elbian Germany and Poland (william W. Hagen), the Austrian Empi re (Hermann Rebel), Russia (Edgar Melton), the Ottoman Empire (Fikret Adani r), Scandinavia (David Gaunt) and England (Richard M. Smith); and a conclud ing essay (John Langton). The volume's scope and the claims made on its beh alf, as a work of major historiographic importance, are notes; the theoreti cal/methodological intent and the authors' remit identified; and the indivi dual papers considered critically. It provides a useful depiction of the sp ecificities of a wide range of European peasantries. It is, however, in sev eral ways, analytically defective. This is so, it is argued, inasmuch as th e authors' quest for diversity turns out to be unhelpful; it is structured by an inadequate political economy, seen in an absence, or deficient treatm ent, of various crucial themes - most notably sharecropping, differential l and productivity, social differentiation, and the state; and the volume has major shortcomings in terms of comparative history (including a curious ne glect of the influential work of Robert Brenner).