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Agrarian Movements, the National Question, and Democracy in Europe. 1880-1945

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Abstract

In order to speak about nations and agrarian question in Europe, or even the world in 1916, four central questions must be kept in mind: land and property rigths, from workers/farmers point of view; mobilizationa and organization of farmers as expresión of a civil society in rural world, interacting with the State and the marker; nationalism; and lasttly the farmerr-based overseas mifrantions and their returns in terms of capacity and new ideas.
CHAPTER 11
AGRARIAN MOVEMENTS, THE NATI ON AL QUESTION AND DEMOCRACY IN
EUROPE, 1880-1945
Lourenzo Fernández Prieto and Miguel Cabo*
Universidade de Santiago de Compostela
In order to speak of nations and the agrarian question in Europe, or even the world in 1916,
four central questions must be kept in mind: the issue of land and property rights, from the
point of view of workers/farmers; the mobilization and organization of farmers in the
conflictive contexts as well as the expression of a civil society in the rural world that
interacted with the State (politics) and the market; nationalism: stateless nations in conflict
with old empires and with nation-states constructed in the previous century; and lastly, the
farmer-based overseas migrations and their returns in terms of capacity and all sorts of new
ideas.
The overarching theme we shall attempt to encompass —the international context in
which the Galician Language Brotherhoods emerged— calls for an approach which is
plural, conceptual, discursive, ideological, political, cultural as well as material-social. This
is necessary in order to appreciate the productive and reproductive interests of the nation’s
(theoretical) subjects: farmers which constituted —in cases such as Galiciathe majority
of society. 100 years ago, on 12 October 1916, the deaths at Cans occurred (in Nebra, Porto
do Son, A Coruña). The Civil Guard shot down four women and a man and wounded many
more when protesters attempted to hinder a neighbour's forcible eviction. It was the time
of struggles (community-based and associative) for land and against the old foro or
chartered tenancy system that regulated the rent paid to landowners by farmers working
the land.
1
Those deaths in the Galicia of 1916, the year the Irmandades were founded, were
over land, not Patriotism. They died for the land of home and of everyone, within the
framework of a collective and grassroots action. We shall examine, therefore, the
complexity of this dynamic from below, from the point of view of farmer’s interests, and
from above, from the logic and perspective of the elites, the architects of the discourse
* HISTAGRA Research Group. This work is a part the project Los vectores del cambio estructural de las
agriculturas atlánticas ibéricas: moto-mecanización y especialización lechera, HAR2016-77441-P
1
More than a century has passed since these deaths, now firmly rooted in memory
(http://nebra.blogaliza.org/tag/martires-de-cans/). Regarding this case and its context, see R. Villares, La
propiedad de la tierra en Galicia 1500-1936 (Madrid: Siglo XXI, 1982), and M. Cabo Vi lla ver de, O
agrarismo (Vigo: A Nos a Ter ra, 19 98).
itself. Focus is placed on Galicia in 1916, but the lens is multi-scale, encompassing Europe
and America —more transcontinental than transnational, in order to ponder the relationship
between the Language Brotherhoods, minority nationalism and the agrarian question. This
begins with the fact that farmer majorities are voters who intervene in the political system
in a decisive manner, in European territories where small plot farming is dominant but there
are still unresolved conflicts regarding land (Galicia, Ireland, Catalonia, etc.).
Rurality generally plays a key role in nationalist discourse, even though academic
publications, paradoxically, do not always stress this connection with the emphasis it
deserves.
2
The interaction between agrarian and nationalist movements in interwar Europe
must, in our view, begin with a detailed analysis of the ruralist component present in its
discourse, which offers an essential meeting point. Rurality and peasantry also play a key
role in contemporary processes of politicization and democratization and all political forces
(socialist, liberal, social catholic, etc.) had to incorporate this peasant reality into their
analyses, which even in spite of predictions by economic or Marxist theory, demonstrated
themselves to be surprisingly stubborn survivors. Following this discourse analysis, a
second section will chart the functioning of the rural world in nationalist ideosystems. In
closing, we will offer reflections on national questions from the point of view of agrarian
movements and parties during the interwar period.
1. THE CHARACTERIZATION OF RURALISM
The exaltation of the virtues of rural reality boasts an ample history extending back to
the classic age and offers a strand of continuity not only in Europe but also in the United
States via the Jeffersonian tradition.
3
Nevertheless, during the 19th century interesting
nuances will be added, paralleling the accelerated transformations in all areas (urbanization,
industrialization, mass society, etc.). The ruralist component will therefore be more
aggressive the quicker these advances in each country ensue, with the German case
probably being the most extreme
4
.
Despite sharing many common characteristics, it is necessary to differentiate the
European ruralist discourse insofar as its United States counterpart is concerned (reaching
2
Thus, recent and ambitious syntheses succeed neither in successfully addressing rural paradigms nor the
peasants’ realities. John Breuilly (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the History of Nationalism, Oxford. Oxford
UP, 2013; Gerard Delanty and Krishar Kumar (eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Nations and Nationalism
(London: Sage, 2006); Guntram H. Herb and David H. Kaplan (eds.): Nations and Nationalism: A Global
Historical Overview, 4 vols. (Santa Barbara: ABC Clio, 2008); A. Morales Moya, J. P. F u si and A. de Blas
Guerrero (eds.), Historia de la nación y del nacionalismo español (Madrid, Galaxia Gutenberg, 2013).
Another question would be the monographs and case studies, several of which will be mentioned later.
3
Julio Caro Barjoja, The City and the Country: Reflections on some ancient Commonplaces, in J. Pitt-
Rivers (ed.), Mediterranean Countrymen: Essays on the Social Anthropology of the Mediterranean (Wes t p o rt :
Greenwood, 1963), pp. 27-40; Catherine M. Stock, Rural Radicals. Righteous Rage in the American Grain
(Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1996).
4
Klaus Bergmann, Agrarromantik und Großstadtfeindschaft (Meisenheim am Glan: Anton Hain, 1970).
its height with the late 19th century populism which ends when it is absorbed into the
Democratic Party): in the United States, the farmer was praised as an individual (farmer
and not peasant, which has different implications in the English language). This individual
aspired to respect competitive capitalism’s established norms against the monopolistic
tendencies of large corporations and the railroad companies. In Europe, broadly speaking,
the ruralist discourse placed the rural community at centre stage (and not the individual to
such a large extent), exalting a way of life and certain values within it, and behind this,
economic activity.
The high point of ruralism would be what is known as the turn-of-the-century agrarian
crisis (from approximately 1875 to 1895), with the massive arrival in Europe —due to
advances in means of transport— of products from America, Australia and New Zealand
at extremely competitive prices. The sudden alarm sparked decisive debates regarding tariff
policy, the viability of family farming, the necessity of state intervention as opposed to
liberal dogma or possible adaptations of productive systems (such as the livestock farming
in order to take advantage of the cheap fodder costs), as well as the agrarian question at
the heart of the Socialist-oriented Second International.
Faced with the threatening sensation spreading throughout European rural societies,
the elites and political representatives crafted a discourse which would praise and uphold
its virtues, refining the traditional clichés: harmony and organicism as opposed to the
atomization and individualism of the urban world, communion with Nature as opposed to
artificiality, family and tradition pitted against moral disorder, patriotism and frugality as
opposed to egoism and hedonism: a catalogue of virtues contrasted by vices seen as
belonging to workers and cities. The property-owning farmer—or at least someone who
was well established on their land—became the paradigm of this idyllic vision
5
. Ruralism
enabled intellectual elitism to synthesize a disdain for the masses with an idealization of
the peasantry, which were numerous but were not a mass due to the fact that they were not
atomized
6
. Advancing sciences such as hygiene, demographics and criminology came to
the aid of these prejudices, legitimizing them, and giving them advantages when these same
elites are faced with the need of gaining social and electoral support in order to intervene
in the democratic politics of universal (male) suffrage.
Although this was enacted mainly from above, this discourse possessed the clear
potential to be shared by the majority of the rural population as well, since it played on
shared fears: the dependence of financial capitalism and its intermediaries, the primacy of
industrial lobbies in the Administration’s priorities, the loss of identity and the
organizational advantages of the workers. In fact, the broad associative movement that
moved across Europe in different forms beginning in the last quarter of the 19th century,
5
Though conceived from a contemporary perspective, see for an understanding of all aspects that fall outside
of this idealizing perspective (women, alternative sexuality, the poor, ethnic minorities, etc.) Paul Cloke and
Jo Little (eds.), Contested countryside cultures. Otherness, marginalisation and rurality (London: Routledge,
1997).
6
John Carey, The Intellectuals and the Masses (London: Faber & Faber, 1992).
cultivated the same discursive frames and translated them into a popular message. Every
social movement calls for the elaboration of frameworks of collective action —definitions
and explanations of reality which justify and legitimate them in the eyes of its collective
parts while at the same time reinforcing its internal solidarity.
7
For the several rural-based
associative manifestations in particular, these frameworks utilized arguments along the
lines of those already mentioned (agriculture as a basic economic activity superior to any
other, the importance of food security in the case of war, etc.) and some images and
rhetorical resources which were surprisingly similar—defying linguistic and cultural
barriers (comparisons with animals in reference to antagonists, calloused hands as a sign
of identity, etc.).
The term ruralism must be closely analysed due to its ambiguity and potential
confusion with its purely literary uses. Barrington Moore offers an excellent starting point
when he points out five elements in its composition:
8
1) The necessity of a profound moral regeneration masking the absence of a realist
analysis of existing social conditions.
2) Organicism, in that rural society was considered to be a harmonious whole, although
internally hierarchical, in contrast to the atomized and disintegrated urban civilization.
3) Irrationalism, in terms of the rejection of excessively elaborated intellectual
constructions and of a vitalist and natural approach to reality.
4) Mistrust towards the foreign and cosmopolitan.
5) In the artistic sphere a preference for local and costumbrist references reflecting the
popular spirit, and which facilitated the viewer or reader’s immediate connection.
Taking these aspects as a starting point, the ruralist discourse should possess a
generally conservative potential, due to the weight on it of defensive or reactive elements.
Arno Mayer qualifies this among the strategies of the traditional elites for lengthening their
influence and thus the ‘persistence of the Old Regime’.
9
To a certain extent, this solves the
paradox Zeev Sternhell detected in the sequence of thinkers rallying against the
Enlightenment and its offshoots: the direct rejection of mass culture compatible with the
cult of a supposed popular spirit.
10
7
Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements, Collective Action and Politics (Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 1994).
8
Barrington Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the
Modern World (London, Penguin Books, 1977 [1966]).
9
Arno J. Mayer, The Persistence of the Old Regime: Europe to the Great War (New York: Pantheon Books,
1981), p. 253.
10
Zeev Sternhell, Les anti-Lumières. Du XVIII siècle à la guerre froide (Paris, Fayard, 2006), p. 21.
Nevertheless, other important nuances are at work. Firstly, the commitment to a rural
reality and the social role of the peasantry can be focused towards movements or agrarian
parties of a progressive sort, as was the case in Denmark with the liberal Venstre,
11
or the
agricultural support for the Galician Language Brotherhoods.
Secondly, the apparently nostalgic ruralist discourse did not really endeavour to
recuperate a lost past but rather to legitimize completely new goals. Examples of these
were equality in the access and active participation of the peasantry in political life and in
the market, such as the Galician agrarian reform movement, as well as many others
12
. It
can thus be understood that even for organizations of a clearly moderate ideological tenor
expressions such as ‘conservative modernization’ are used.
13
The result is that at the beginning of the 20th century the ruralist myth –or identity or
collective cultural reference- ends up acquiring a surprising transversality and is present in
the most diverse ideological variables. Thus, in the United Kingdom, the pioneer of
industrialization and urbanization, both liberals and Labour Party members were able to
vie for Tories’ hegemony in the rural districts. This was done not only through propaganda
and programmatic proposals but also by creating an interpretation of the past and the ideal
British identity (William Morris, John Ruskin, John and Barbara Hammond). At the same
time, the historical period before the enclosures is revised (Merry England) as an extension
of the organic communities that guaranteed the expression of Anglo-Saxon qualities before
the triumph of the landlords. Rooting themselves in pre-existing communal elements, they
combined them with newer ones in a new future ideal on behalf of the British workers’
movement. These authors attribute old roots to novelties in order to set it into a tradition
which had not yet disappeared, but was only dormant
14
. This happy time would end after
the Middle Ages due to the excessive ambition of landowning nobles. Both liberals (the
agrarian reforms of Gladstone and Lloyd-George) and Labour justified their reforms with
the revamped recovery of the preindustrial past.
15
Another important example is that of France, where republicanism sets its sights on
gaining the support of the peasantry in order to consolidate the Third Republic by
fomenting a compact associative network and filling out the pre-existing ruralism with the
11
Uffe Østergård, “Peasants and Danes: The Danish National Identity and Political Culture, Comparative
Studies in Society and History, 34 (1992), pp. 3-27.
12
Lourenzo Fernández Prieto, Labregos con ciencia. Estado, sociedade e innovación tecnolóxica na
agricultura galega, 1850-1939 (Vigo: Xerais, 1992); Cabo Villaverde, O agrarismo.
13
See e. g. for Austria Ernst Bruckmüller, Landwirtschaftliche Organisationen und gesellschaftliche
Modernisierung (Salzburg, Verlag Wolfgang Neubauer, 1977).
14
Alun Hawkins, Reshaping Rural England: a Social History, 1850-1925 (New Yor k : Harper & Collins,
1991).
15
Krishan Kumar, The Making of English National Identity, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003, p. 209; Clare
V. G riffiths, Labour and the Countryside. The Politics of Rural Britain 1918-1939 (Oxford, Oxford UP, 2007);
Paul Readman, Land and Nation in England (Wo od br id ge , Th e B ry de ll P re ss , 20 08 ); Matthew Cragoe and
Paul Readman (eds.), The Land Question in Britain, 1750-1950 (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).
myth of the paysan-soldat as a defender par excellence of the homeland in the trenches
16
.
Even the SFIO would adopt these theories. Even more, when the communist separation
occurred, French communists took up the defence of family farming (with co-operativism
as the mechanism that would facilitate the move towards collectivism in the long term).
The USSR would constitute a primary exception to this tendency by identifying the Russian
countryside with backwardness and superstition, inexorably dismantling its structures
through Stalinist collectivization: the same structures that the Slavophile tradition and the
populists held up as the pinnacle of the Russian spirit in the face of Western materialism
and rationalism
17
.
The transversality of ruralism is also evident in anarchism, a critique of all the social
and economic transformations of capitalist modernity,
18
and on the far opposite end of the
ideological spectrum, the exaltation of the peasantry and of the rural reality formed part of
the fascist ‘common minimum’
19
. The ruralist discourse therefore manages to become
generalized in such a way in the interwar period that it begins to lose its value as a
differentiating mechanism, unless a deep, detailed analysis is undertaken to explore the role
it played in each ideosystem and its interaction with the remaining components.
Aside from its political manifestations, ruralism also showed fertile development in
the literary and artistic sphere, although here we will not focus upon this facet. Nevertheless,
it is worth noting how writers from many countries like George Sand, Frédéric Mistral,
Berthold Auerbach, Ippolito Nievo, Liviu Rebreanu or René Bazin were key to the creation
of a ruralist discourse and to its social dissemination. We will only make reference here to
a fact that appears striking: this literature hardly brings into its plots positive and self-
generated changes, such as co-operativism or technical changes. It only incorporates the
results of transformations produced in the urban environment and which end up having an
effect (usually considered to be menacing) on rural societies. In this way, the peasant-based
formation of associations that spreads throughout the continent is hardly reflected at all in
ruralist literature, as we have confirmed in the Galician case or how it is exemplified in an
anecdote about Émile Guillaumin, a successful writer (and farmer) who actively fosters the
creation of an agrarian union but does not mention it in any of his novels.
20
16
Édouard Lynch, Les usages politiques du soldat laboureur. Paysannerie et nation dans la France et l'Europe
agrariennes, 1880-1945, in J.-L. Mayaud and L. Raphael (eds.), Histoire de l’Europe rurale contemporaine:
du village à l’État (Paris: Armand Colin, 2006), pp. 332-49.
17
The classic study by E.H. Carr, The Russian Revolution: From Lenin to Stalin (19171929)
(London: Macmillan, 1979) bridged a very acute description of this process of forced collectivization
and destruction of the kulaks. A recent reappraisal in Jenny L. Smith, Works in Progress: plans and
realities on Soviet farms, 1930-1963 (New Haven: Yale UP, 2014).
18
J. Casanova, El sueño igualitario: campesinado y colectivizaciones en la España republicana, 1936.1939
(Zaragoza, Institución Fernando el Católico, 1988); X. Paniagua, La sociedad libertaria. Agrarismo e
industrialización en el anarquismo español. 1830-1939 (Barcelona, Crítica, 1982).
19
L. Fernández Prieto, J. Pan-Montojo and M. Cabo (eds.), Agriculture in the Age of Fascism. Authoritarian
Te ch n oc ra c y a nd R u ra l M o de rn i za t io n, 19 2 2-1945 (Turnhout, Brepols Publisher, 2014).
20
M. Cabo, Da revolución á cooperativa: visións literarias do agrarismo galego”, in M. Romaní and M.
Novoa (eds.), Homenaje a José García Oro (Santiago de Compostela: USC, 2002), pp. 65-84; Remy Ponton,
2. NATIONALISM IN THE FACE OF THE RURAL WORLD
All nationalisms, as a national project, must construct and disseminate a narrative that
explains a human collective’s past and the present, justifies the existence of the bonds
which links its members (in turn differentiating it from other groups), reinforces its
reciprocal solidarity and directs its political praxis. Without exception, ruralism was a part
of this discourse which reinforces the ‘imagined community’ recreated by nationalisms
21
—that common past to which the original characters of the nation can be traced and that
leaves its mark on its members even when the link of many of them with the land has
become weak. Interestingly, the rural imprint provides the national identity for a good part
of the emotional component it requires for its internalization.
22
Prolific as they are in the creation of myths, a large part of those stemming from
nationalism respond to what Levinger and Lytle call a ‘triadic structure’
23
. These authors
apply it namely to the vision of history, but the same diagram in three phases can be
identified for the evolution of the rural world. As a starting point, an idyllic situation is
described, a golden age; secondly, a decadent present, a product of threats (processes
derived from the advance of industry and cities) which deteriorated and altered the nature
of primordial splendour; lastly, the promise of revitalization through the recovery of this
lost past.
24
These constructions remove two dimensions from the rural world that specialized
historiography has placed emphasis upon in recent decades. The first of these is change.
They are located in an atemporal limbo with no clear beginning and in which the only
evolution would be those negatives that lurk behind external factors related to modernity;
other than this they are configured in almost geological terms. On the other hand, recent
agrarian historiography has indicated the evolutionary capacity of rural societies. This is
patent in early Modern History for example, with the spread of foreign crops such as corn
Les images de la paysannerie dans le roman rural à la fin du dix-neuvième siècle, Actes de la recherche en
sciences sociales, 17-18 (1977), pp. 62-77.
21
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London:
Ve r so , 1983).
22
Tom N airn, Faces of Nationalism. Janus revisited (London: Ve r so , 1997), p. 106; Tim Edensor, National
Identity, Popular Culture and Everyday Life (Oxford: Berg, 2002), p. 39. A state of late creation and marked
heterogeneity, in 1830 Belgium attempted to create a new national imaginary based on the peasantry, giving
protagonism to uprisings against successive occupying powers (Austria and the Netherlands) in the new
patriotic narrative, as analysed by Leen Van Molle, Confusing categories: peasants, politics and national
identities in a multilingual state, Belgium c.1880-1940, Historia Agraria, 60 (2013), pp. 91-118.
23
M. Levinger & P. F. Lytle, Myth and Mobilisation. The triadic structure of nationalist rhetoric, Nations
and Nationalism, 7:2 (2001), pp. 175-94.
24
A present-day demonstration of this can be found in surveys by Michael Skey. The English, citizens of the
country most precocious in terms of urban and industrial development, still base their national identity on
elements coming from an idealized rural life removed from post-war transformations (immigration,
motorization, new family models, etc.). See Michael Skey, National Belonging and Everyday Life
(Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2011), p.43.
or the potato which required a drastic shift in both agricultural practices and calendar. In
the same vein, recent studies on the paradigmatic agricultural revolution at the turn of the
18th century show how scientific innovations and gentlemen farmers came down from their
pedestals in order to place emphasis on what has been referred to as hidden improvements,
based on the daily routines and accumulated knowledge of anonymous farmers (more
complex crop rotations, the replacement of the sickle with the scythe, of oxen with horses,
seed selection and livestock improvement via empirical observation, etc.). Many of the
essential traits that scholars at the service of the national ideal (as well as ethnographers
and folklorists in general) pinpoint in rural society as perennial elements preserved since
time immemorial are, in reality, under the magnifying glass of present day historians,
relatively recent. They can be grouped under the category of invented traditions as
described by Hobsbawm and Ranger.
25
The second characteristic often left unaddressed by the nationalist story are the
conflictive elements present. The rural world is usually portrayed as a harmonious space,
in which hierarchies are uncontested and elements of opposition and dissensus (land
ownership, collection of rent, communal use of resources, to name a few) are diffused by
shared values and interests, such as a common drive towards increased production, the
network of reciprocal duties, the strength of local communities, etc.). However, rural
history spanning recent decades has carefully studied the various ways in which this
conflictive nature is expressed, including endemic ones between communities described
by Charles Tilly as ‘forms of horizontal violence’
26
or the ‘everyday forms of peasant
resistance’ (‘weapons of the weak’) described by James C. Scott. These are developed in
apparent calm over periods of time not yet ripe for open defiance (occupying lands,
foregoing payment of rent, etc.) by hegemonic groups or institutions.
27
Beyond the level of discourse, it is extremely meaningful that nationalisms constantly
face difficulties when it comes to managing agrarian conflicts, in particular in terms of land
ownership. Either its existence is denied or the problematic is simplified in order to blame
exogenous factors, such as the supposedly oppressive State, industrialization or ethnic
groups outside of the national community. A clear example can be found in the Irish case,
when in the 19th century sixties and early seventies, Fenians hesitated to take part in the
complex web of interests and struggles around the use of land ownership on the island
(cattle breeders vs. farmers, tenant farmers vs. day labourers, the role of local money-
lending shopkeepers, etc.). The predominant idea here was that confronting such questions
would have the consequence of dividing the national community before the British
Administration and therefore it was more convenient to postpone its resolution until after
independence was achieved. Lastly, at the end of the seventies, the Land War united claims
25
Eric J. Hobsbawm & T. Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1984).
26
Charles Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution (New Yo rk , R an d o m H o us e , 1 9 78 ). An approach to the
Galician case can be found in M. Cabo & X. M. Vázquez Va r el a , Las otras guerras de nuestros antepasados:
la violencia comunitaria en la Galicia rural contemporánea”, Hispania, 251 (2015), pp. 781-804.
27
James C. Scott, “Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance, Journal of Peasant Studies, 13:2 (1986), pp. 5-35.
for land and the national cause, though at the price of taking a reductionist stand with regard
to the agrarian situation. According to this, everything was subordinated to the opposition
between the tenant farmer and the landlords who had benefitted from the historical
plundering following the island’s conquest. Three trenches overlapped: the social
(landowners vs. tenants), the religious (Anglicans vs. Catholics) and ethnic (Anglo-Saxons
vs. Celts), at the expense of leaving out infinite nuances and interests that did not fit into
this interpretation.
28
Once independence was achieved was when hidden conflicts could no
longer be postponed; problems could not be blamed either on the dependency of the United
Kingdom. Disatisfaction with the decisions taken by the Dublin governments led to the
emergence of specifically agrarian parties.
29
Another example is provided by the Galician national movement, which always
handled the regional question of the ‘foros’ awkwardly.
30
Other facets of the Galician land
question offered a vantage point in which Galicia’s position was compromised because of
the lack of legal recognition of its peculiarities (such as commons) or due to being
marginalized by a centralist Spanish state more attentive to the interests of the grain
producing regions and large landowners. It is along these lines that protectionism is
denounced, claiming that tariffs impeded Galicia from following a path similar to the
Danish one (fodder importation, specialization in dairy products, and a cooperative export
oriented agricultural industry). Rather, the foro problem didn’t fit within this sort of
dichotomy since both rent payers and recipients were local. To this can be added the gentry
imprint on a good part of the nationalist ideologues, the result being that Galician
nationalists lagged behind the movement against the foro. Only shortly before the
dictatorship of Primo de Rivera (1923-1930) did they confront the issue, and when they
finally did they adopted a middle-ground posture in which rentiers’ interests were
safeguarded, while at the same time paying tribute to the historic role of the foro.
Speaking broadly, it is undeniable that nationalisms held rurality and the peasantry to
be of special importance, maintaining (particularly in periods of oppression or decadence)
essential traits: the language, popular literature, the manner in which the territory was
occupied, folklore, etc. Keeping in mind the division between civic and ethnic nationalisms
espoused by Hans Kohn in the forties (taking into account later criticism and that these
merely embody ideal types for the purpose of analysis), the latter are, by their own logic,
28
Historiography on this topic is inexhaustible, but the last attempt to systematically connect agrarian and
national issues is Philip Bull, Land, politics and nationalism: A study of the Irish land question (Dublin: Gill
& Macmillan, 1996). For the specific period of the Land War the most recent analysis can be found in Anne
Kane, Constructing Irish National Identity. Discourse and Ritual during the Land War, 1879-1882 (New Yo r k:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
29
Ter ence D ooley, ‘The Land for the People”. The Land Question in Independent Ireland (Dublin: UCD
Press, 2004); Tony Varley, “On the Road to Extinction: Agrarian Parties in Twentieth-Century Ireland”, Irish
Political Studies, 25:4 (2010), pp. 581-601.
30
The foro or chartered tenancy was a long-term contract of medieval origin with a division of domains,
hereditary in practice, while the tenant, or foreiro, would continue to pay rent annually.
those that go further towards an exaltation of the peasantry and of rurality.
31
Nevertheless,
civic or voluntary nationalisms, once they are institutionalized, end up adopting similar
stances. Thus, in the paradigmatic French case, an initial distrust of the revolutionaries
regarding the rustic milieu (suspected to be reactionary and papists) shifts and evolves into
an alliance between the Third Republic (the radical party in particular) and the paysans
who are favoured by public policy and considered to be the main supporters of the regime,
not to mention the nation itself.
It is revelatory to observe the peasantry from the perspective of nationalism as a
national class, as upholding ethnicity, in the reaction occurring when another force usurps
this nationalism in terms of mobilizing the peasantry. Nationalists considered themselves
to be the privileged guides of the rural folk, the ones to lead them from a latent nationalism
to a conscious one. This is the case in Galicia, where nationalists, considering their
weakness at the time of the Irmandades da Fala (founded in 1916), promoted an
autonomous organization independent of any state federation (whether the catholic CNCA,
the socialist UGT, or any other) for the agrarian movement which had been growing since
the last decade of the 19th century. They waited for the moment when the confluence would
occur —natural and inevitable to their minds, barring interferences— between the
aspirations of the agrarian societies and those of the Irmandades, later the Galicianist Party
(Partido Galeguista, 1931-36). They thought it would be the way to have a massive
electoral base at their disposition, a goal which began to take shape during the Second
Republic only to be ended by the Coup d’etat.
32
A reaction harbouring a certain
resemblance to that of Irish nationalists who ferociously attacked the co-operativism
promoted by Horace Plunkett for its not taking into account ideological and confessional
divisions. In their eyes, it was simply a manoeuvre from London to ‘kill it [Home Rule]
with kindness’
33
. In the same vein, in a Croatia under Hapsburg domination, the primary
nationalist party (HSK) was hostile to the emergence of the Stjepan Radić’s Croatian
Peasant Party, despite it being a defender of Croatian identity and working towards its
recognition within a federal structure.
34
The effective success of the nationalist movements in mobilizing rural workers required,
however, aspects that went beyond the simple recognition of their cultural contribution.
31
Tom N air n go es to th e ex treme w hen he aff ir ms t hat Ethnic nationalism is in essence a peasantry
transmuted, at least in ideal terms, into a nation”, and that the ruralist heritage in countries of the European
Union compromises the projects of civic nationalism at its core. See Nairn, Faces, pp. 90 and 107.
32
J. Beramendi, De provincia a nación. Historia do galeguismo político, 1840-2000 (Vigo: Xerais, 2007), p.
717; Cabo, O agrarismo.
33
Frederick H. A. Aalen, Constructive Unionism and the Shaping of Rural Ireland, c.1880-1921, Rural
History, 14:2 (1993), pp. 137-64.
34
Such fears would certainly prove to be founded given that in time Radić’s party became hegemonic among
Croatians, successfully combining the double nature of being a peasant party while also a defender of its
ethnic minority (first within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and then from 1918 within a centralist Yugoslavia).
See Mark Biondich, Stjepan Radic, the Croat Peasant Party, and the Politics of Mass Mobilization, 1904-
1928 (Tor onto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), p. 105.
Nationalist leaders and intellectuals had to convince them that their demands (access to
land ownership, the safeguarding of farming against industry and on commercial circuits,
mediation with the State and the Market, support for technological innovation, etc.) would
be resolved in a more satisfactory manner within their own State or as a result of political
autonomy, depending on the case. This was not a straightforward task for nationalist parties
for a variety of reasons, the most frequent of these being the lack of leaders from the rural
ranks or the aspiration to become catch-all parties representing all social groups, amongst
which the rural sector would be one of many members. The successful cases of sub-state
nationalist movements that achieved strong rural support, such as the paradigm of Ireland,
included popular demands within their programmes, an effective collaboration with
agrarian associations and their (productive and reproductive) interests, and a management
of all these factors in administrative spheres that they could gradually control at a local
level.
3. THE NATIONAL DIMENSION IN THE DIVERSE FORMS OF
ASSOCIATIONISM
Beginning in the last two decades of the 20th century, triggered by the turn-of-the-
century agrarian crisis, an acceleration can be observed in the mass politicization process
in addition to associationism and an organization of interests in all areas, both in cities and
the countryside. The importance of states in solving the crisis (tariffs, fomenting technical
change, opening up ways towards land ownership, etc.) became apparent, and therefore the
inevitability as well that each social group or economic interest was able to represent
themselves before the state in a coherent and well-organized way. The structure of available
opportunities began to broaden —with obvious nuances and rhythms belonging to each
country— due to the extension of the right to suffrage, the right to associate, the weight of
the agrarian question in political and cultural debates and the advances of literacy. Return
migration, both international as well as internal within the state itself, also facilitated the
broadening of social capital and both material and intangible resources in the villages
an element to bear in mind, particularly intense in cases such as the Irish or Galician.
The majority of farmers participated in the political system and in the output markets
(emigrant workforce, cattle, agrarian products) and inputs (technological, emigration
consignments: monetary, but also social and cultural). Their interests were quite defined in
relation to ownership (in order to assure the full control of the land), and to the market
(where they want to compete on equal terms). In this context, the relationship with politics
and also with the processes of technological innovation must also be understood.
35
Societies with a strong peasantry at this time, such as Galicia, are based around farmer’s
homes and in communities enjoying large degrees of autonomy, a prize won, as in many
35
See for the Galician case Fernández Prieto, Labregos con ciencia.
other European territories, due to a combination of resistance and resilience. This happened
over time, from the exit from the Lower Medieval crisis, through the fin-de-siècle crisis,
and filtering through that important Rubicon that was the crisis of the Ancien Regime. It is
an autonomy which is not only economic but also cultural, although often the romantic
elites would erroneously identify it with poverty, unaware that they are were confronted
with the powerful weapons of the weak.
36
In this context, ‘agrarian defence’, as expressed by Pierre Barral,
37
assumed different
forms between the crisis at the turn of the century and the Second World War on the
European continent, broken up into four categories. We will present each and then pull the
national dimension into its analysis, a procedure we find appropriate for synthetically
treating such a broad question. It must be kept in mind that they are neither successive
periods nor exclusive modalities, since they can be combined together (for example, a
pressure group or an agrarian party can arm themselves with cooperative networks or a
federation of cooperatives can present their own candidates in electoral processes).
a) Pressure groups
Pressure groups appear when a harmony is lacking between the necessities of a certain
economic and/or social sector and state politics. An example of this is the influential
German Bund der Landwirte (Agrarian League, BdL) which appears in 1893 when the
chancellor Caprivi enacts a series of commercial agreements that imply a reorientation of
tariff policy towards free-trade. As explained in the now classic study by Hans-Jürgen
Puhle,
38
this organization knew how to introduce into the conservative praxis modern
elements of mass mobilization at the service of large Eastern landowners, attracting a great
number of small to medium-sized farms while never losing of control in a restricted
management monopolized by the Junker class. A difference from what occurred in the past
is that a greater part of these groups possessed stable organization and never interrupted
their activity even after their goals were accomplished. Complete and rapid achievement
of their desired ends could nevertheless cause these groups to die of success, as was the
case with the Lega di difesa agraria, formed in Turin in 1885 by large Padano tenants
seeking an implementation of tariffs on grain importation. They obtain this in 1887 owing
to the support of nearly two hundred legislators, while the BdL could not allow itself to
36
James C. Scott, Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Ya l e U P, 1 98 4 )
37
Pierre Barral, Les agrariens français de Méline á Pisani (Paris: Armand Colin, 1968), but also in another
classic study, by Derek Urwin, From Plougshare to Ballotbox. The Politics of Agrarian Defence in Europe
(Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1980). The expression has been criticized because it can be taken to imply the
unity of interests linked to agriculture, a view we do not share
38
Hans-Jürgen Puhle, Agrarische Interessenpolitik und preussischer Konservatismus im wilhelmnischen
Reich (1893-1914) (Hannover: Ve rlag für Literatur und Zeitgeschehen, 1967). More recently in Rita
Aldenhoff-Hübinger, Agrarpolitik und Protektionismus: Deutschland und Frankreich im Vergleich 1871-
1914 (Göttingen: Va n de n h o e ck & R up r e c h t, 2002).
relax in a State which was much more industrialized and exposed to an alteration of the
balance of power benefitting export industry pressure groups.
39
The usual tactic of pressure groups was to gain parliamentary support through the
election of candidates who agreed to support their agenda, independently of the party they
belonged to. However, Social Democrats were obviously excluded from this, and success
was better with conservative parties (clearly the case as regards Germany), the automatic
option by one of them always being avoided. For this tactic to be feasible, it was necessary
to gain control of the most substantial portion of rural votes, which at that level could only
come from small and mid-sized farmers. Thus, a discourse was crafted which combined
agricultural interests and an exaltation of their social and economic role, but which also
portioned out cooperative services as well as other types of benefits, such as legal and
technical consultation as an incentive. Furthermore, this discourse would serve to fulfil one
of the basic requisites of any pressure group, namely, presenting its interests as
advantageous for society in general.
Within pressure groups, differentiate subgroups would be those made up of
associations of professional producers of certain products, generally with a clear
commercial interest (wine, beets, etc..) and with a purely economic and professional
discourse with little ruralist rhetoric. This would be the case for France with the Syndicat
général des sériciculteurs de France (1887), the Syndicat des viticulteurs de France (1888),
the Confédération générale des vignerons du Midi (1907), the Confédération générale des
planteurs de betteraves (1921) or the Association générale des producteurs du blé (1924).
What role does nationalism play as far as pressure groups are concerned? The main
aspect resides at the level of their support base’s cohesion. This was the central axis on
which the discourse of the German BdL rested —a conservative, romantic tone while
incorporating biologically racist overtones and marked anti-socialism and anti-Semitism.
40
Given that they had to negotiate with the State, these pressure groups adopted the national
identity promoted from that same source and helped to reinforce it through their mediation
with the rural masses.
b) Currents within existing political parties.
Here reference is made to wings within established parties, such as the agrarian
component in German and Belgian Catholic parties, the former based on the Christliche
Bauernvereine and the latter in the Flemish Boerenbond, which tried to direct the behaviour
of the party in the desired direction, competing with other segments, representatives of
39
Maria Malatesta, I signori della terra: L’organizzazione degli interessi agrari padani (1860-1914) (Milan:
Franco Angeli, 1989).
40
Puhle, Agrarische Interessenpolitik, pp. 83-92.
industrial businesses or worker unions.
41
The risk was remaining a minority in the face of
other types of interests (for example the workers unions that struggled for cheap prices for
basic nourishment). In the German case, Catholic-based unions worked to integrate (the
same as Zentrum as a whole) important peasant sectors of Western and Southern Germany
in the Second Reich following Kulturkampf, while the case of Boerenbond was more
complex. Mobilizing Dutch-speaking peasants, it inevitably suffered tensions in the
interwar period as Flemish nationalism grew in opposition to the Belgian state. This lasts
until 1932 when, pressured by the ecclesiastic hierarchy, it is forced to release a public
declaration of condemnation. In such cases the pattern resembles regional demands
subordinated to the nation state and therefore the ethnic question is centred more around
cultural, rather than political, aspects.
c) Unions and cooperatives
These were the most common forms of defence, making up a motley ensemble
solidified at the end of the 19th century with idiosyncrasies according to each State or each
region —consisting of eminently local phenomena— but which does not of course exclude
the creation of federative structures to a greater degree. In fact, several scholars point out
the communitarian imprint which marks them, channelling the strength of pre-existing
solidarities at the local parish-wide level. Even though unions and cooperatives are
interested in different ends and often under distinct legal ordinances, they can be grouped
together in the same category for analytical purposes. This is because they share a similar
foundation, that of the smallholders (leaving aside the unions made up solely of agricultural
workers) and it is difficult to trace a clear dividing line in practice (which is why syndicats-
boutiques became a very popular name for the French unions due to their emphasis in
consumer cooperatives). The larger part of the affiliates would come from the peasantry,
which by no means excludes the participation of elements pertaining to non-peasant groups
of the rural society or mixed figures (part-time farmers or other elements derived from
strategies of families involving multiple activities).
Although generalization proves difficult, in may be said that these agrarian
associations were the result of the combination of stimuli from the local communities and
external elements (workers’ movements, social Catholicism, etc.). The main expression
was the cooperative or small-scale agrarian association, which coalesced around practical
necessities (economies of scale in the cooperative business, an increased representational
capacity vis-à-vis the State, electoral aspirations, etc.). In those countries where national
identity represented by the State was uncontested, agrarian associationism (as well as other
types of worker or cultural associations, falling outside our focus) played a nationalizing
41
See Christoph Hübner, Die Rechtskatoliken, die Zentrumspartei und die katolische Kirche in Deutschland
bis zum Reichskonkordat von 1933 (Berlin: LIT, 2014), and Leen Van Molle, Chacun pour tous. Le
Boerenbond Belge, 1890-1990 (Leuven: UP Leuven, 1990).
role. This is even the case of associations inspired in ideologies hostile to the very concept
of nation and formed around an anti-system and internationalist discourse, as has been
demonstrated for the red agrarian leghe in Central and Northern Italy, which indirectly (and
involuntarily) would have contributed towards confronting the rural masses with the idea
of nation by pushing their integration into the market and political system, connecting local
demands with larger scale problematics and finally by systematically fostering feelings of
solidarity with co-religionists of other regions of the country.
42
Moreover, this is the case
where the national project pushed by the Administration knew how to give an active
protagonism to an ample associative popular movement, as was the case in Denmark
following their defeat in the Second Schleswig War.
43
In multi-ethnic European states, associationism tended to be organized according to
ethnic lines (or national lines insofar as they were granted political meaning). Exceptions
occurred mainly on a local scale, where if only one organization existed, it was able to
accept minority members (supposing that they didn’t fulfill the requirements to be able to
form their own one). Thus the development of co-operativism from the beginning in
Central and Eastern Europe was determined by ethnic cleavages,
44
a process that was by
no means unique to rural society.
45
Although the majority of agrarian associations did not
posit the dissemination of a particular national identity as their conscious priority, much of
their activity functioned in this sense as a secondary effect. Often, the taking up of a
position in this regard was implicit at the territorial level of the larger federations and the
criteria for the admission of partners, the language in which the statutes were written and
the symbology (name, seal, etc.). In this manner, and slightly abusing the term popularized
by Michael Billig, it is possible to speak of ‘banal nationalization’
46
.
Here, two mutually reinforcing factors come into play:
—Firstly, for the elites that pushed associationism, this must work to reinforce the
material position of its members in the face of other ethnic groups. For example, the
fomentation of co-operativism was often accompanied by antisemitic messages as the
epitome of the intermediaries. Furthermore, it had to serve to recreate an alternative society
that would find full expression when it gained political recognition of the national
specificity. Thus, each association, each cooperative, turned into miniature glimpses of the
yearned for future national State: prosperous, capable of training its own elites (co-
operativism served as a springboard for many political careers) and capable of maintaining
42
Renato Zangheri, Contadini e politica nell’800. La storiografia italiana, in La politisation des campagnes
au XIX siècle, France, Italie, Espagne et Portugal (Rome: École Française de Rome, 2000), pp. 13-27.
43
Ostergard, ‘Peasants and Danes’.
44
This is shown in To rste n Lorenz (ed.), Cooperatives in Ethnic Conflicts: Eastern Europe in the 19th and
early 20th Century (Berlin: BWV, 2006).
45
For a masterful local study, see Jeremy King, Budweisers into Czechs and Germans (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton UP, 2005).
46
Michael Billig, Banal Nationalism (London: Sage, 1995).
the values that accounted for the group’s identity. National identity was created in the lap
of these organizations in those cases where state resources were not available (or were
scarcely available through local institutions, for example) in the nationalizing resources
generally thought of as nationalizing instruments (schools, military service, etc.)
47
. Lastly,
they would serve to disseminate an alternative identity among the masses and in this way
give a decisive push to the elite’s demands, the ‘C step’ in the classic terminology forged
by Miroslav Hroch.
-Secondly, associationism in general, and co-operativism in particular, called for
strong doses of ‘social capital’, translatable in mutual solidarity and the common capacity
for action. Let us think for example of the case of the Raiffeisen credit cooperatives that
included its members’ unlimited solidarity clause, addressing possible fraud or
irresponsibility by other members of the group. The coexistence of members of different
cultures and languages could serve to stabilize this crucial mutual trust. We can establish
an interesting parallel with the Dutch case, where despite ethnic homogeneity, the potent
organizational structures were governed by excluding mechanisms which had been created
from ideological/confessional variables (the zuilen or Catholic, Protestant and liberal
columns).
48
d) Agrarian parties
Agrarian parties were at their zenith in the interwar period due, on one hand, in Central
and Eastern Europe to redistributive Agrarian Reforms, and on the other in Scandinavia,
(in this case with more solid roots) due to a fertile previous co-operativist network and
early peasant access to the electoral arena.
49
Agrarian parties of countries where identity
was not a major issue, such as the case of Nordic countries, adopted a nationalist discourse
with ruralist trappings but lacking decisive weight in their everyday activities, far less at
any rate than economic, educational and other concerns. It could also be a demand-based
regionalist discourse against the political centre (akin to the Bavarian Bayerischer
Bauernbund with its anti-Prussian discourse) but without passing the limit of the demand
for its own statehood.
In multi-ethnic contexts, on the contrary, the agrarian parties tended to represent a
concrete minority, in the sense that in the Yugoslavia created though the dismantled
Hapsburg Empire, the peasant parties were Croatian, Serbian and Slovenian. In
Czechoslovakia, there was a Czechoslovakian agrarian party continuously present in the
47
In accordance with the classic nationalization model for the masses taken from the French case by Eugen
Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen. The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914 (Stanford: Stanford UP,
1976). Associationism is one of the means of nation-building which is independent from the state, and to
which Weber did not pay sufficient attention.
48
The most recent and complete panorama is by Ronald Rommes, Voo r en d oo r b oe r e n? D e o p k om s t va n h et
coöperatiewezen in de Nederlandse landbouw vóór de Tweede Wereldoorlog (Hilversum: Ve r l or e n , 20 1 4 ).
49
The only available comprehensive analysis of this grouping continues to be Heinz Gollwitzer (ed.),
Europäische Bauernparteien im 20. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Gustav Fischer Verlag, 1977).
governmental coalitions and those corresponding to the German, Magyar and Ruthenian
minorities. Thus, the ethnic component was quite strong, and, through the identification of
the ‘peasantry’ with ‘nation’, they were able to proclaim themselves to be defenders par
excellence of the latter. This was the case in Radić’s Croatian Peasant Party, first
demanding autonomy within the Austro-Hungarian Empire and then after 1918 defending
Croatian specificity against Serbian centralism.
In all of this, the nationality issue rarely played the most important part in their
ideology, except in cases of marked ethnic opposition between large land owners and the
peasantry.
50
In general terms, in agrarian parties the issue of ‘class’ took preference over
national concerns.
51
Proof of this is that even in contexts of strong interethnic tension, so
common in the successor states after World War I, the agrarian parties understood how to
form alliances beyond national barriers, such as in Czechoslovakia when the Agrarian Party
(Republican) managed to communicate effectively with the agrarian party of the German
minority (the Bund der Landwirte, which was independent on the Second Empire pressure
group mentioned above), and even incorporate it into the government presided over by the
agrarian Antonin Svehla in 1926.
52
Similarly, the Serbian Agrarian Party was the only
Serbian party in interwar Yugoslavia that supported federalism and regularly allied itself
with its Croatian counterparts in parliament.
53
It should also be added that the nationalist
component of central and Eastern European agrarian parties was devoid of the aggression
present in other groupings. Two eloquent arguments suffice to demonstrate this. The first
is their trajectory both within opposition and where they held power, with a foreign policy
agenda that eschewed war as an instrument of such and encourage peaceful relationships
with countries that had been enemies during the First World War.
54
Secondly, agrarian
parties put forward proposals for a regional confederation within the parameters of na
international and collaborative structure at a European level. Both pacificism and
Europeanism were aspects of the identity of the International Agrarian Bureau (1921-1938)
based in Prague, which grouped together the larger part of European agrarian parties in the
Interwar Years.
50
As occurring in Estonia, according to Anu-Mai Koll, “Agrarianism and Ethnicity”, in H. Schultz and E.
Kubu (eds.), History and Culture of Economic Nationalism in East Central Europe (Berlin: BWV, 2006), pp.
141-60.
51
For an illustration of this thesis for Ruthenians and Poles in Eastern Galicia during the Hapsburg Empire,
see Kai Struve, Bauern und Nation in Galizien. Über Zugehörigkeit und soziale Emanzipation im
19.Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005), p. 295.
52
Silke Sobieraj, Die nationale Politik des Bundes der Landwirte in der Ersten Tschechoslowakischen
Republik. Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der Verständigung zwischen Tschechen und Deutschen (1918-1929),
Bern: Peter Lang, 2002, p. 85.
53
Biondich, Stjepan Radic.
54
This was the case of the Stamboliski government in Bulgaria, which approached Yugoslavia in spite of
having ceded to this latter country some territories as a result of the Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1919. This
conciliatory policy highly disliked by the Macedonian terrorist organization IMRO, which contributed to its
later defeat in 1923.
e) Finally, a category can be distinguished that is not included in any of those listed
previously because they are not exactly pressure groups, agrarian parties, factions of
existing parties, associations or trade unions. Following the crisis at the end of the 19th
century and during the first decades of the 19th century, the creation at that point and not
before of mixed spaces of communication and relationships between elites and the
peasantry can be identified. There is a confluence, on the one hand, of actors highly
connected to a type of political action that can be defined as “populist” in historical and
contextual terms, whether in the United States, in the Russia of the narodniki or in the
Galicia of Acción Gallega and the Irmandades. These spaces of communication between
elites and peasantry also constructed networks of knowledge, information and action.
55
In
the Galician case, the most visible spaces are the Asambleas Agrarias (Agrarian
Assemblies), imitated later by the Irmandades themselves under the name of Asambleas
Nazonalistas (Nationalist Assemblies)
56
. These spaces, which were relatively abundant in
Europe before 1945, blended at least three tupes of actor: those of a new politics that was
an alternative to liberalism (at times populist, at other times, classist), the agents of the new
scientific and professional technocracy, agrarian specialists who grew in number and
influence due to the development of new systems of state and sector innovation by rural
workers themselves who had the ability to represent their interests in the political and social
sphere of liberalism. These were often return migrants, affluent sectors or peasantry with
aspirations to social mobility or who were representatives of their community in mediation
with the State or Market.
57
CONCLUSIONS
Ruralism, embodying a vast tradition since Classic Antiquity, exhibited an extraordinary
ideological protagonism and reformulated its manifestations paradoxically in the historic
moment in which rurality and agriculture began to lose steam in the West. A surprising fact
is the transversality it encompasses, given that it is present in a broad range of ideological
discourses. A polyvalent element, ruralism played a key role in the self-portraying of
nations, even though in this process ideologues would alter the historical reality of the rural
societies, adapting it to their needs. Conversely, in different organizational variants of
agrarian interests detectable in Europe between the turn of the 19th century and World War
II (pressure groups, agrarian wings within parties, associationism/cooperativism and
agrarian parties), the national variable plays an important part but with extremely varied
55
Ref. the Nets of knowledge defined in the session of the same name at the EURHO Berne conference (2013)
by Ives Seger and L. Van Molle. www.ruralhistrory2013.org
56
Both processes have, and not by chance, a historiographical treatment inversely proportional to their
importance and genuine influence.
57
See Cabo, Agrarismo, as well as R. Soutelo, Os intelectuais do agrarismo (Vigo: Universidade de Vigo,
1999). On the emergence of state-sponsored systems of innovation, see L. Fernández Prieto, El apagón
tecnológico del franquismo: Estado e innovación en la agricultura española del siglo XX (Va l en c i a , Ti r a n t
Lo Blanch, 2007).
effects depending on each country. The ruralist discourse offered a shared meeting point
between agrarian associationism and nationalisms (with or without the State, depending on
the case) with great potential for mutual collaboration even while pursuing objectives held
only partially in common.
The forms of organization we have presented throughout this work allowed for the
creation of communication routes between elites and the peasantry which gave rise to
networks of knowledge, information and action.
58
In the Galician case, these more visible
spaces are the Agrarian Assemblies, beginning in 1909 in Monforte, and which designed
an ambitious reform program for Galicia in all areas—a vision which ended up being the
predominant one until the Spanish Civil War. These spaces, quite abundant in Europe prior
to 1945, combined a new politics (populist at times, class oriented at others) with the new
technocracy of the agrarian technicians that spawned a number of new systems of state
innovation and with the peasants themselves, now capable of representing their own
interests in liberalism’s political and social sphere.
59
Though briefly, it is worth taking on the question of whether the multiple forms
of agrarian associationism on the European continent from the end of the 19th century and
interwar period constituted a democratizing factor. It seems evident that it promoted the
politicizing of the rural population, but both terms are not necessarily synonyms.
We can take as an example the thesis regarded as neo-toquevillian in Political
Science, inspired by the author of Democracy in America. The authors grouped beneath
under this label link the vitality of associationism in its diverse forms to democratic
stability in a given society
60
. It is tempting to establish a nexus between associative habits
and democratic culture and tolerance but it still presents some dark areas. For example, in
a merely quantitative analysis so dear to political scientists, they in fact underplay the
quality of these associations. It is paradoxical that a statistical focus ultimately weighs the
Ku Klux Klan or (for the case argued here) the Comités de dèfense paysanne of Henri
Dorgères on the balancing scale of the elements which contributed to the consolidation of
democracy.
61
The fact that Wilhelmian and Weimar Germany were among the European
countries with the highest associative density and still this did not impede the slide into
58
In reference to Nets of knowledge, as defined during the session of the same name in the Bern conference
of the EURHO (2013) ,by Ives Seger and L. Van Molle (see www.ruralhistrory2013.org).
59
As regards Galicia, see Cabo, Agrarismo. For Spain, Fernández Prieto, El apagón; on the collaboration of
technicians and cooperative movements on the other side of Europe, see Katja Bruisch, Als das Dorf noch
Zukunft war: Agrarismus und Expertise zwischen Zarenreich und Sowjetunion (Vien na, Böhlau, 2014).
60
Among others it is necessary to note Stefan-Ludwig Hoffman, Geselligkeit und Demokratie. Vereine und
Zivile Gesellschaft im transnationalen Vergleich 1750-1914 (Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003);
Nancy Bermeo and Philip Nord (eds.), Civil Society before Democracy (Lanham, Rowman & Littlefield, 2000);
Robert Putnam, Making Democracy Work. Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, NJ, Princeton UP, 1993),
as well as id., Bowling Alone: the Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York : Simon & Schuster,
2000).
61
Robert O. Paxton, Le temps des chemises vertes. Révoltes paysannes et fascisme rural, 1923-1939 (Paris,
Seuil, 1996).
authoritarianism also raises doubts. With the necessary exceptions, we hold that European
agrarian associationism constituted a primary element in the shift from a politics of
notables to one of masses. The perspective is complimented by the debate as to whether
the various types of agrarian associations constituted schools of democracy, and the
response in general terms must be positive. Despite the undeniable manifestations of
personality cults, the presence at times of practices of communitarian transition practices
such as collective voting in electoral processes or the influence of dignitaries, each agrarian
cooperative or society offered a space for socialization in politics, of public discussion and
dissemination of the concept of accountability of public office. This extended to the
creation of cadres and social capital in civil society and for acquiring practical and
necessary skills for such budget accounting (for markets), keeping minutes of meetings and
of formalizing agreements. In each assembly of members and in each meeting ordinary
people (in many cases women as well) regularly had the opportunity to take part, on a small
scale, in the democratic process regarding issues that most directly affected them. Normally,
these individuals would not possess voice in public matters in any area at all. The sum of
an infinite number of modest actions at the heart of voluntary associations marked a
substantial contribution towards consolidating a democratic habitus in European society as
a whole.
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The common reputation of the British Labour Party has always been as 'a thing of the town', an essentially urban phenomenon which has failed to engage with the rural electorate or identify itself with rural issues. Yet during the inter-war years, Labour viewed the countryside as a crucial electoral battleground - even claiming that the party could never form a majority administration without winning a significant number of seats across rural Britain. Committing itself to a series of campaigns in rural areas during the 1920s and 30s, Labour developed a rural and often specifically agricultural programme on which to attract new support and members. Labour and the Countryside takes this forgotten chapter in the party's history as a starting point for a fascinating and wide-ranging re-examination of the relationship between the British Left and rural Britain. The first account of this aspect of Labour's history, this book draws on extensive research across a wide variety of original source material, from local party minutes and trade union archives to the records of Labour's first two periods in government. Historical, literary, and visual representations of the countryside are also examined, along with newspapers, magazines, and propaganda materials. In reconstructing the contexts within which Labour attempted to redefine itself as a voice for the countryside, the resulting study presents a fresh perspective on the political history of the inter-war years.
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Today we can already see a regenerated Ireland, living a new and prosperous life, with a peasantry helped and aided, largely by its own co-operative effort, beyond the peasantry of any other country. Tomorrow we trust to see a self-governing Ireland, still a part of the British Commonwealth. (Barker, Ireland in the Last Fifty Years (1919) 147).
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From a cultural and historical-sociological perspective, the Danish nationstate of today represents a rare situation of virtual identity between state, nation, and society, which is a more recent phenomenon than normally assumed in Denmark and abroad. Though one of the oldest European monarchies, whose flag came ‘tumbling down from heaven in 1219’—ironically enough an event that happened in present-day Estonia—Denmark's present national identity is of recent vintage. Until 1814 the word, Denmark, denominated a typical European, plurinational or multinational, absolutist state, second only to such powers as France, Great Britain, Austria, Russia, and perhaps Prussia. The state had succeeded in reforming itself in a revolution from above in the late eighteenth century and ended as one of the few really “enlightened absolutisms” of the day (Horstbøll and østergård 1990; østergård 1990). It consisted of four main parts and several subsidiaries in the North Atlantic Ocean, plus some colonies in Western Africa, India, and the West Indies. The main parts were the kingdoms of Denmark proper and Norway, plus the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. How this particular state came about need not bother us here.
Xerais, 1992); Cabo Villaverde, O agrarismo
  • Prieto Lourenzo Fernández
Lourenzo Fernández Prieto, Labregos con ciencia. Estado, sociedade e innovación tecnolóxica na agricultura galega, 1850-1939 (Vigo: Xerais, 1992); Cabo Villaverde, O agrarismo.
Macmillan, 1979) bridged a very acute description of this process of forced collectivization and destruction of the kulaks. A recent reappraisal in Jenny L. Smith
  • E H Carr
The classic study by E.H. Carr, The Russian Revolution: From Lenin to Stalin (1917-1929) (London: Macmillan, 1979) bridged a very acute description of this process of forced collectivization and destruction of the kulaks. A recent reappraisal in Jenny L. Smith, Works in Progress: plans and realities on Soviet farms, 1930-1963 (New Haven: Yale UP, 2014).
El sueño igualitario: campesinado y colectivizaciones en la España republicana
  • J Casanova
J. Casanova, El sueño igualitario: campesinado y colectivizaciones en la España republicana, 1936.1939 (Zaragoza, Institución Fernando el Católico, 1988); X. Paniagua, La sociedad libertaria. Agrarismo e industrialización en el anarquismo español. 1830-1939 (Barcelona, Crítica, 1982).
Da revolución á cooperativa: visións literarias do agrarismo galego
  • M Cabo
M. Cabo, "Da revolución á cooperativa: visións literarias do agrarismo galego", in M. Romaní and M. Novoa (eds.), Homenaje a José García Oro (Santiago de Compostela: USC, 2002), pp. 65-84;