peasant class
Feudal farming poor
The peasant class comprises agricultural laborers and small farmers who work the land, historically at the bottom of social hierarchies.
In feudal societies, peasants were bound to estates owned by nobility, trading labor for protection and subsistence.
The term now describes rural poor in developing economies or, dismissively, people considered unsophisticated: The aristocracy viewed the peasant class as beneath concern.
- tenant farmerOne who leases farmland
- villeinFeudal tenant farmer
- enclosure movementPrivatization of communal farmland
- serfdomFeudal bound labor
- feudalismLand-for-service social structure
feudal lord · sharecropper · subsistence farming · agrarian reform · common folk · proletariat · folk traditions · laborer · harvest time · oral storytelling · seasonal rituals · plowman · lord · tenant · cottage · village life · poverty · hardship
- Communist ChinaCommunist Party, People's Republic, Great Leap Forward, Gang of Four, Central Committee
- classessubclass, superclass, underclass, caste, tier
- social classesnobles, aristocrats, underclass, peasants, elite
- Edo Japanshogun, samurai, shogunate, daimyo, Tokugawa
- Ritsuryopenal code, penal codes, military codes, legal reform
- ScandinaviaNorway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland
peasant classnobility
Titled ruling class
aristocracy · ruling class · upper class · landed gentry · gentry
peasant classlandlord class
Property-owning lessors collectively
landowning class · feudal lords · absentee landlords · plantation owners