All language subtitles for 2. Rebellion und Krieg

For more than a thousand years
all of Europe was a peasant society.

Generation after generation,

people with a close bond
to the land took care of it

in order to feed themselves
and their fellow humans.

But what do we know about
their struggles and their dreams,

the solidarity between them and
their revolts against the powerful

who sought to control their
land and their labour?

With no power and
no texts to describe them,

for a long time these people were
consigned to silence and obscurity.

This way of life is now
said to be dying out,

but its history is
more relevant than ever,

with the same questions relating
to the earth and how it is used

having cropped up
throughout the past 15 centuries.

You can't go through
all of your grass.

If you graze on grass
which hasn't grown enough

and you cut it, then
it will draw on its reserves

and the quality of it
will deteriorate over time.

We try to make it last
as long as possible,

10 to 20 years if possible.
But for that

you need to protect it.
You have to graze

when the time is right,
when it's like this.

This is the three-leaf stage.

If you pull out a piece of grass

then there should be
one, two, three blades, like this.

The standard height
is 18 to 20 centimetres

for dairy cows.

The word 'peasant' refers to people

who shape the land,
who make the land.

It's funny to think
how big an impact

you have on your land.

Whether or not I cut my hedges,
whether or not I plant.

If I were to replant hedges,

fruit trees and orchard meadows,

then in 100 years you'd have
the pear trees that I planted.

That's really rewarding.

The aim is to leave something behind

that's beneficial, that's habitable.

There is another way
of managing resources:

managing them by force.

Here nature is seen
as an enemy to overcome,

like with these marshes near Rome

which Mussolini's fascist regime

decided to drain in 1934

in order to make the land arable.

The operation was known
as The Battle for Grain.

Based on this newsreel footage,

it looks like war.

Europe experienced the same frenzied
clearing of land around 1000 AD

when, after years of stagnation,

demographic growth
and economic growth

picked up at the same time.

The ruling classes pushed
for more and more farmland,

claiming land
from forests and marshes,

like along the banks of
the river Po in northern Italy.

The great monasteries and lords

identified these spaces

as new places of power.

They brought men in

to work the land

and grew rich off the profits.

This violence towards nature

often led to a reaction

on the part of nature.

When a river was channelled
to create agricultural land,

this meant that when
the river level was really high

the water no longer flooded
non-agricultural land,

the marshland and woods

which had been there previously.

Instead the water ended up

spreading across farmland.

There were no longer consequences
to flooding on uncultivated land,

but when this happened on land

that had been
converted for agriculture,

it had serious repercussions

and could cause a lot of damage,
not just to crops

but also to individuals

and the villages in the area.

But in the 11th century

growth was primarily
seen as positive.

This was a new period of prosperity,

of which the construction
of great cathedrals

was the most visible sign.

This was only possible

through the labour of peasants,
the only source of wealth.

But despite the vast majority

of Christians being peasants,
they were rarely depicted

on these cathedrals,

crowded out by all
of the kings and saints,

never far from the monsters

and always at the bottom
to remind them of their place.

PERRETTE, A MILK JUG ON HER HEAD,
WENT CALMLY ON HER WAY

A peasant woman goes
to sell milk at the market.

As she walks back home
she dreams of becoming rich,

then her milk jug breaks.

No calves, no cows,
no pigs, no piglets.

The earliest French
version of this fable

dates back to the mid-13th century.

It was the sort of
Christian morality tale

that a priest would preach
to peasants on a Sunday

to warn them against getting
ideas above their station.

But this fable also shows
that medieval peasants

benefited from growth too

and made their own contribution
to the development of the market.

As the market economy
becomes more developed,

and this is very much a feature of
the 12th century and onwards,

peasants participated in it as well.

And you can see this
across most of Europe.

Peasants don't just

give rent to lords

and just barely subsist on
the rest of what they grow.

Peasants have enough to be able
to go to markets themselves

and sell grain.

They sell grain to towns.

Townsmen need that grain.
They buy it.

The peasants then buy clothes,

iron goods, which are better than
the ones they could make themselves

or that their neighbour
the smith can make.

They become part
of the market world.

And when that happens
markets expand very greatly

because, of course, peasants are
90% of the population,

80 to 90% of the population.

So, if peasants start to
participate in the market

then the market becomes much bigger

and in my view that's the cause,

that's the underlying cause

of the rapid expansion of commerce
in the 13th and 14th centuries.

Life was better for peasants.

Money flowed around
the countryside again,

enabling them to claim back
a level of freedom.

Corvée and serfdom
gradually disappeared.

Lords gave peasants an opportunity
to buy back their freedom,

opting to have the money

in favour of labour which,
although free,

was far from willing.

Things may have
improved for peasants,

but the elites of the Middle Ages

still didn't view them
as entirely human.

In the Roman de la Rose,

the peasant's name is 'Danger'.

Meanwhile, in Yvain, the Knight
of the Lion by Chrétien de Troyes,

the hero meets a peasant
deep in the forest...

He had a gigantic head,

bigger than a horse's head,

dishevelled black hair

and a bare forehead.

His ears were hairy
and as big as an elephant's

and he had bushy eyebrows.

His face was wide and flat.

He had the eyes of an owl,
the nose of a cat,

his jowls were split like a wolf

and his teeth were sharp and
yellow like a wild boar's.

The knight grew bold.

"Are you a good creature?",
he asked.

"I am a man."

It's very much a feature of

many medieval sources that peasants

are regarded with total contempt.

It's almost a caste difference.

So, there is a fabliau in which
a peasant donkey herd

takes his donkey, full of manure

into a town

and finds himself, by accident,
in the spice market

and is so overcome by this

unaccustomed smell that he faints.

And he's only revived

when people put
manure under his nose

so that he can smell something
that he considers normal.

A neighbour of mine used to tell me
that when he got to school

the kids would make fun of him
for being a farmer.

He smelled of cow dung

because he used to have to clean out

the stables for the cows.

Throughout his childhood

he felt humiliated, looked down on.

Even personally,

I'm from a different generation,
but I also felt that.

My childhood was the same.

I was humiliated because
I was the daughter of farmers

and that was a shameful thing to be.

It was the lowest profession.

Someone once said to me,

"at least my dad is a lorry driver."

That was less shameful
than your dad being a farmer.

Until recently, let's say
10 years ago,

it was banned.
You couldn't use the word 'peasant'.

It was a pejorative word.

If you went on television to talk
about the rights of peasants

you had to say 'small farmers'.

Once

we wanted to have a communication

and there was a journalist

and we kept talking
about 'peasants'.

He told us, "stop saying peasants
as I have to beep everything out".

As growth returned

a new player appeared
on the stage: the town,

which was making its comeback
after centuries in the shadows.

This had a brutal
impact on the world of peasants.

In the countryside, city-dwellers
now held all the power,

especially in Italy

where the big cities
in northern and central Italy

served as a precursor.

When I say the word
'paysan' in French

I'm referring to the land.
That is, to the countryside.

In English 'peasant'
has the same derivation.

Meanwhile, in Italian,
when I say 'contadino'

that refers not to the
countryside, but to the city.

In Italian 'contado'
is not the countryside,

but the countryside under
the control of the town.

The town controlled the countryside

politically, socially
and economically.

This was down to a unique feature

of the Italian aristocracy.

Although they owned
the majority of the land,

they lived in towns from where
they ruled over the countryside.

This is shown in the fresco The
Allegory of Good and Bad Government

in which a productive countryside
serves the city, Florence.

But looking more closely
the peasants appear shifty,

as though they were up to no good.

Not only were peasants portrayed

as ignorant, unsophisticated

and illiterate,

but they were also portrayed
as thieves, as being dishonest.

From the point of view
of the Italian ruling classes,

from the Middle Ages onwards

and for the whole modern era,

this negative image
of peasants took the form

of the deceitful peasant

stealing what he owes
to the city-dwelling landowners.

The number one concern
for landowners was profit.

This mattered far more
than controlling people,

as was the case for
the traditional aristocracy.

Along the Flemish North Sea coast

port cities also experienced
remarkable growth,

gradually cutting
the urban elite off

from the surrounding countryside.

Around the North Sea area
you have the cities,

you have the world of merchants,

of bankers, of capital

living nearby these marshes

with their free peasant
populations which also enjoy

good standards of living,

which also have political power.

And that's something which
is very difficult to tolerate

for these urban elites.

What is dangerous for
an ambitious urban dweller

are ambitious rural dwellers,

or ambitious farmers.

Peasants are not dangerous
when they are poor and destitute.

They are no problem.

But when peasants
got wealthy and powerful,

they are a problem
for the urban merchants.

It's because of a sort of envy

and also a sort of anxiousness about

peasants which are
not poor and destitute,

but peasants which are thriving

and which are social competitors.

And these peasants must

and would be crushed

by the alliance
of urban elites, nobility

and the church.

In the 11th century

independent rural communities

began building dykes

in order to drain marshland
along the North Sea coast,

thereby creating new land
for growing cereal crops.

These dykes were basic,

built at the initiative
of village communities

and maintained collectively,

held together by cooperation.

Each family was responsible for
looking after a section of the dyke

proportional to the surface area
of the fields they owned.

These dykes were fragile,

unable to withstand
fierce North Sea storms.

They burst regularly,

but they planned for this
and repairs were easy.

In any event
the effects were limited

by the modest size of the dykes.

Things were looking good

until another storm
appeared on the horizon.

A man-made one this time.

When land was flooded

in medieval times

the peasant communities
would gradually repair the dykes.

Sometimes they managed
to do that directly,

sometimes it took a few more years

and it took some time.

But gradually we see that flooding

is considered a failure

and the floods are used

to confiscate land
from the peasant communities,

because if a dyke was broken,
if the land was flooded,

this clearly was a sign
that the peasant community

was not able to maintain

its dykes, its seawalls,
in proper conditions.

In official legislation
we see this new type

of customary law which said that

when the land could not be reclaimed

within one year after a flood

the former owners lost their lands.

They had to abandon their lands.

It's legal fiction.

It's legal fiction which
is imposed from above.

It's imposed by

the jurists working

for kings and counts
and princes and bishops

increasingly interested
in these coastal lands

because there
you could make a profit,

because there you could
develop new lands.

But the land was not wasteland.

It was not wilderness,
it was occupied

by these peasant communities.

So, they had to wait
for floods, in a way,

to flood the land to observe that

the peasant community
was not able to repair its dyke

and then the land
could be confiscated

and new projects could be initiated.

After 300 years of constant progress

growth came to an end
in the early 14th century.

Europe was plunged into a succession
of overlapping crises,

from famine and war to disease,

as depicted in
The Triumph of Death by Bruegel.

This nightmare was to last

for the next three centuries.

Since 1000 AD

growth had been predicated

on the continuous
expansion of cereal crops,

which were of primary importance
to both markets and people.

Such dependence
resulted in catastrophe.

In the early 14th century

a succession of
poor harvests was enough

to bring about a famine

the likes of which Europe
had not known for centuries.

Known as The Great Famine,

it left millions dead.

The phenomenon
of agricultural colonisation,

or the expansion of agriculture

to the detriment
of other activities,

led to very serious famines
in the early Middle Ages,

in the first half
of the 14th century.

The peasant economy
sought to diversify

by combining agriculture

with forestry.

And within agriculture

by growing a wide range of products.

In addition to wheat flour
they grew rye, millet,

einkorn wheat, spelt,
barley and oats.

This provided some security

in the event of famine

as each cereal crop

had different periods
for growing and harvesting,

but over time
this wide range of resources

was restricted

to agriculture alone.

As was written
in an 11th century text,

it was impossible to
survive without agriculture.

This is something

that a sixth century peasant
would never have thought of saying.

Back then agriculture was important,

but you could survive without it.

A few centuries later
this was no longer possible.

A shortage of grains
or a shortage of cereals

automatically resulted in famine.

Chroniclers reported
the most awful recipes.

Earth was mixed with what
flour there was left

and this dough was kneaded
into a bread-like shape

in order to keep up the illusion.

Known as famine bread,

this was a staple food
for peasant families.

According to sources
and written chronicles

it got to a stage

where men were no longer men.

They had abdicated
their human condition.

The tipping point came

when they started eating grass

like animals.

"Sicut pecudes"
it says in these texts.

Like livestock.

As long as they were still capable

of using grass and roots

to make a sort of bread

they were able to retain

their human identity,

their cultural belonging

to a society of human beings

who produced their own food.

This marked their cultural identity,

even in their very darkest moments.

Famine exacerbated tensions
between town and countryside.

The towns had cereals in reserve

and peasants fled there seeking aid,

but the bourgeois
didn't want to share.

During one particularly bad famine

the bourgeois of Troyes in Champagne

announced that bread
would be given out

to refugees outside the city walls.

Once the peasants had left

they quickly shut
the gates to the city

and the starving people were
told to go seek help elsewhere.

This 14th century song

continues to be sung
by choirs worldwide,

like this choir from Taiwan.

The 'dirty and smelly' kerels
that the song refers to

are Flemish peasants
from coastal regions

who staged a revolt in 1325

against ill-treatment
by the Count of Flanders

and his ally the King of France.

This was the first major
peasant revolt of the 14th century.

It remains little-known despite
its violence and duration:

it was three years before
the peasants were crushed

at the battle of Cassel.

Royal accounts
celebrated this victory.

Manuscript illuminations
show the King of France

with his fleurs-de-lys,

but no matter how hard you look
you won't see any peasants.

It would probably
have been seen as dishonourable

to show the king
being forced to fight

against simple, rebellious louts.

This construction of
the peasant as being

an inferior being,

which I think probably
becomes more powerful

as the Middle Ages goes on,

is related to the fact that

chroniclers don't know
what to do with peasant revolts.

Peasant revolts are
literally incomprehensible

because they show
a peasant protagonism

which has not been
directed by a lord

because they're revolts against
lords or against the state.

And so they're treated
as literally meaningless,

irrational. Peasants are irrational;

they don't know what they're doing.

Their actions are
completely incoherent

and that all you can really
see is meaningless violence.

In modern France any explosion
of popular anger of which the causes

are unknown or ignored are
referred to as 'jacqueries',

like this demonstration by peasant
farmers from Brittany in 1967.

The violent clashes and fires
are what gets remembered,

but the real reason is forgotten:

a sudden collapse
in the price of pork.

The very first jacquerie,
known as La Grande Jacquerie,

was that of the Jacques Bonhommes,

the contemptuous nickname
the peasants were given by lords.

The revolt began in May 1358

with the massacre of four noblemen
out in the countryside.

Then came an anti-feudal
explosion all across Ile-de-France

which no-one had foreseen

and which no-one was able to quell.

For three weeks the insurgent
peasants hunted down noblemen

and pillaged their castles.

The noblemen regained control
in June and crushed the 'jacquerie',

killing thousands of rebels.

Contemporary chroniclers stressed

the savagery of the peasants,

believing the revolt to be absurd.

But it did have a genuine cause:

the start of the Hundred Years' War.

Peasants knew they were always
the first victims of war,

while noblemen saw it
as an opportunity

to prove their courage

and to show their colours.

They looked upon war
as a celebration.

The money they extorted

from peasants, theoretically

in exchange for their protection,
was spent on finery.

The very foundations of the
feudal pact had been destroyed.

It might seem as though
the director is exaggerating,

but illuminations from
this period vindicate the peasants,

who accused the mafia-like lords

of transforming
the fruits of their labour

into shimmering fabrics
and silk stockings.

As though the horrors
of war were not bad enough,

the same period also saw
the worst pandemic

that Europe had ever seen:
the Black Death.

In Nosferatu, a film by Murnau,

a terror arrives via the sea.

In the film this terror
is a vampire from the Carpathians.

However, as we know now,
the plague came from Central Asia.

It didn't arrive in Bremen
like in the film,

but in Marseille

and instead of
going up in smoke at sunrise

it ravaged Europe for
more than two centuries.

The first wave hit in 1348,

killing thousands

whose bodies filled mass graves.

Not knowing what was happening,
people accused Jews

of poisoning wells, or believed
it was the wrath of God

whom processions of flagellants
sought to appease.

Against this backdrop
of extreme tension,

in 1381

the King of England sought
to introduce a new tax on peasants.

They refused and revolted,

thousands of them
marching on London,

pillaging monasteries
and abbeys along the way.

One of their targets was
the great abbey at St Albans,

whose abbot had seized all of
the peasants' millstones

so that they were forced to use

the abbot's mill.

The abbot then came up with the idea

of recycling
the peasants' millstones

to pave the floor of his parlour.

When the peasants captured the abbey

they ripped up the floor

and broke the millstones
into tiny pieces

which, according to a chronicle,

they shared like the host given out
on Sundays at church

so that the people knew
vengeance had been taken.

When they reached London

the rebels were quickly
defeated and their leader,

the priest John Ball,

was tortured before being executed.

Yet another defeat.

But for the first time

the voice of a peasant revolt
had properly been heard.

Contemporary chroniclers had
transcribed John Ball's sermons,

without realising
their significance.

He had called on
the peasants to kill the lords,

comparing this to
pulling up weeds.

To the chroniclers
the revolt is so meaningless

that the chroniclers
actually include

in their accounts

some of the documents
of the peasants themselves

because these documents
have no meaning

to them and so they might
as well just include them.

So, the sermons of John Ball,

written in English, are preserved

in English in Latin chronicles,

not exactly as a joke, but as

instances of the kind
of thing that peasants say

which obviously have no meaning.

If you actually look at these
sermons they have plenty of meaning.

They construct a world that peasants

are going to be able to understand,

that have meaning for us
because we know more

about what peasants
think from other sources.

So, John Ball's sermons are
about trust, for example,

they're about mutual solidarity.

The most famous of these sermons,

which was taken up by English
socialists in the 19th century,

questioned the very principle
of social inequality.

"When Adam delved and Eve span,

who was then the gentleman?"

The quote that is
ascribed to John Ball,

which seems to be authentic, is:

"when Adam delved and Eve span,
who was then the gentleman?"

In other words, in the Garden
of Eden there were no lords.

That is certainly a religious image,

but is that image
more important than

people not wanting
to pay the poll tax?

That's not what is entirely clear.

I think that people can hold -
people still do hold -

contradictory ideas in
their minds at the same time

and the idea that
there is some perfect past

which you can return to,

in which there are no lords,

is an image that you can
hold at the same time

as thinking:

"I just don't want to pay this tax
and I don't want anybody

ever to ask me to pay it again."

Well, the contradiction is

that going back to the Garden
of Eden is much, much,

much more radical than
not wanting to pay a tax.

In the century which followed
the English peasants' revolt,

social unrest turned its attention

on the Catholic Church,

accusing it of serving the powerful

and betraying
the egalitarian message

of early Christianity.

In the early 16th century
the German Martin Luther

became the spiritual
leader of this movement

which led to
the Protestant Reformation

and inspired the largest
peasant revolt

which Europe had ever seen.

The revolt began in the
strangest of circumstances.

In the summer of 1524

a countess in western Germany

ordered her peasants
to go out into the fields

to gather snail shells.

This was somewhat of
a whimsy and, worse of all,

this request came
during the harvest season.

The peasants refused

and their revolt spread
quickly across Germany.

The village assemblies
wrote up a list

of over 300 demands,

outlining all of the abuses
of the feudal system,

from the practical to the symbolic.

If you think from
the perspective of a lord

the landscape is an area
in which you go hunting

and if you have to ride
across the fields then you do.

It's about space and the distances

that you can cover on a horse.

But for the peasants

to have someone ride across the land

where you've just planted crops,

that's infuriating.

A hunting horse, a battle horse -

they're different animals
from the working animals

that some peasants have.

What a horse does if you ride it

and you're not using
it to power a plough,

what a horse does
is it gives you height.

And that means that if the lord

comes to you and comes on his horse,

he's high above you.
You have to look up.

He literally looks down on you.

So, one of the things
the peasants say is,

"when you come to see us
you have to get off your horse."

And it comes up with dogs as well.

The lords have hunting dogs

and these are big dogs

and they put them in peasant houses

and make peasants feed them.

So, you'll get complaints
from peasants saying,

"we have to feed the lord's dogs.

We can't feed our own children

and we have to feed these dogs meat

and if we don't feed them

and if the dog is thin,
when the lord comes

we get into trouble and then we feel

the lord's displeasure."

In the spring of 1525

the peasant assemblies
agreed on a set of 12 articles

outlining all of their demands.

The most radical demanded
the abolition of serfdom

wherever it still existed.

These 12 articles, which were
accompanied by Biblical references

justifying them, were what held
the armed revolt together.

The peasant manifesto
spread across Germany

thanks to a new invention:
the printing press.

The manifesto had 20 print runs
with 25,000 copies printed,

a remarkable figure for the time.

Then there were all
of the satirical images

denouncing the corruption
of the Church and its monks.

At its peak the peasant armies

had as many as 300,000 men.

The long list
of places they captured

included not only castles,
but also monasteries,

which they particularly hated and
which were specifically targeted.

Monasteries are incredibly
powerful at this point.

They are lenders.

They are overlords.

They have huge areas
that they control.

They seem to be increasing
the sorts of burdens

that they're placing
on their peasantries.

And then, I think

these monasteries,

when they're in the countryside,

they really stick out.
It's clear what they are.

They are concentrations of wealth,

of crops, of plenty.

This was the first time

that a peasant revolt
left traces of it behind

like this series of images

showing the attack
on Weissenohe Abbey.

What is even more surprising

is that these works were
commissioned by the abbot himself

who can be seen fleeing on horseback

followed by monks on foot.

The rebels pillaged the abbey,

emptying fish ponds,
larders and cellars;

gorging themselves, getting drunk
and fighting with each other.

They were living up to the savage
image the masters had of them.

But the rebels themselves
saw things differently.

You and your guys

rock up at a monastery

and you can go in and take it.

You turn up at a castle,

someone knows how
to burn down a castle:

you throw the incendiary
stuff into the castle,

you put in gunpowder
and you blow it up.

So, seeing everything
that's high in the landscape

fall to you

so that you change
the landscape of lordship,

it's visually different.

I think that was part of it.

But also what you're
doing is marching

through the landscape with others,

probably also hearing preaching,

which must have
been very exciting too,

travelling as a group,

marching to places that are often

quite considerably
further than the markets

they normally would have walked to

and living a different life

outside of time,

outside of feudalism,

outside of all the constraints
of ordinary life.

Pragmatic in terms of their demands,

the peasants were mystical
in their beliefs.

Convinced that the stars

and divine providence
were on their side,

they were certain of their
triumph over the old, corrupt world,

but their armies were crushed
one after the other

by professional soldiers
working for princes.

130,000 peasants were killed

in the fighting and
the repression which followed,

but Martin Luther,

whose ideas had inspired the revolt,

sided with the victors.

"My Lord", he wrote,

"whosoever can should
smite, strangle and stab,

for there is nothing
more poisonous, pernicious

and devilish than a rebellious man."

It is perhaps this betrayal,

this stab in the back

that is being alluded to in this
plan for a monument

to the peasant defeat by Dürer.

Atop a column made out
of symbols of rural life,

sitting on a crate of chickens,

is the defeated peasant,

a sword sticking out of his back.

His posture is exactly the same
as that of Christ

in another drawing by Dürer.

In the 1930s a Czech writer

wrote the story of an inventor

who develops a new machine

capable of imitating human work.

He called it 'robot'

from the Old Slavic word 'robota'

which means servitude
or forced labour.

For peasants in this part of Europe

serfdom was not
such a distant memory.

It had survived there
into the 19th century,

although it should be said

that it had only arrived
there in the 14th century

at a time when it was
already on its way out in the West.

This five-century difference
between East and West

was a consequence

of the spectacular drop
in the rural population

caused by the Black Death.

In Western Europe a decrease
in available manpower

put the peasants
in a strong position

in relation to those
who employed them.

Seeking to hold on
to this now rare commodity,

they granted them what
was necessary: their freedom.

In Central and Eastern Europe
it was the opposite.

With workers increasingly rare

the ruling classes imposed serfdom,

something that was not
common here prior to this.

This meant forced labour

and being unable to move

or get married without
the lord's permission.

For women, meanwhile, it meant

staying single or widowed

if they wanted to keep their farms.

In normal western European societies

in the period from the 16th

to the 18th century

about 15% of peasant households
were headed by women

at any one time, so women
were perfectly capable

of running a farm household.

In areas of Europe

which had very strong serfdom

the percentage of
female household heads

in peasant villages was about 5%

and the reason was
that the village oligarchs

and the landlord

collaborated with one another
to kick women out of their farms.

In 1604

in the Duchy of Friedland
in northern Bohemia

a peasant woman, the widow Teschner,

refused to give up her farm.

In the manorial court records

I can follow the conflict

between this extremely
strong widow Teschner

and both her village community

and the landlord who are
trying to forcibly sell her farm

because the village
community wants her out

because I think her male
relatives want to get the farm.

And the landlord wants her out
because landlords

in Eastern Europe

didn't regard female-run farms
as having enough labour

to do the three to five
days of forced labour

or 'robota' as it was called.

So, old widow Teschner,

she lost in the end,

but she kept her farm
for another three years

and in the end the landlord said,

"either you get kicked
out of your farm

or we forcibly sell the farm

or you marry off
one of your daughters

to get a man to run the farm."

And the frustrating thing is that

the court records break off there

so we don't know what
happened to old widow Teschner.

And it's actually possible
she hung on for a few more years.

If she managed it for three years,

maybe she managed it
for another three years.

It wasn't until the 18th century

that Joseph II, Emperor of Austria,

discovered what life
was like for peasants

and finally abolished serfdom.

And it took another 50 years

for that abolition
to actually take effect.

This delay is one of the reasons

for the economic
and social differences

between Eastern and Western Europe.

A lot of the industry
before the Industrial Revolution

took place among
peasants in the countryside

who set up textile
industries or made nails

or made straw hats.
They did everything

and the landlords didn't
completely choke that off,

but they tried to restrict

what their peasants could do.

They made their peasants
pay loom fees

and spinning fees
and nail fees and so on,

so it tended to delay
that sort of development.

And so, on the whole,
it took much longer

for the areas
of Europe under serfdom

to actually unleash

the peasant economic dynamism

which was always there,

but was restricted by the landlords.

So, the whole economy matters.

But if 80% of the whole
economy is peasants

then what happens in
the peasant economy matters more.

Beginning in the 16th century

a new crop began to compete
with traditional cereals.

It was given all sorts of names:

Indian wheat, Turkish wheat,

Egyptian wheat, Barbarian wheat.

Behind these aliases

was the sacred plant
of the American Indians:

maize.

Before becoming
the common field crop it is today

maize was grown in secret
in the gardens of peasants.

To begin with peasants grew maize

in their own vegetable gardens.

This way they wouldn't
need to pay any tax on it

as vegetable gardens were a sort

of protected space, a sanctuary

that were exclusively
for the use of peasants.

They were very important
to the peasant economy

as vegetable gardens
produced a lot all year round

and were exempt from taxes.

Over time maize moved out
of vegetable gardens

and began to be planted in fields.

The lords wanted it, essentially.

They didn't see it as
a means of generating profit.

The aim was not
to sell it on the market.

It was, however, a good product

to feed their peasants with,

meaning they could take
other cereals from them

which were better suited
to being sold on.

And so the emergence of maize

in the peasant diet

further widened the gap between
the food eaten by peasants

and the food eaten by those
who bought their produce.

Wealthy city-dwellers
weren't the only ones

to benefit from
the emergence of new crops.

They were a boon to
mosquitoes as well,

who spread thanks to the
development of rice growing.

Rice was highly
profitable as yields

were much higher
than with traditional cereals.

The 15th century saw the emergence

of enormous, fortress-like
rice farms in northern Italy

like Tenuta Colombara
in the Vercelli region.

The elites had the capital

while the labour
was provided by peasants,

reduced to the status
of agricultural workers.

As a by-product of paddy fields

mosquitoes spread a deadly disease:

malaria, marsh fever

or the paddy field plague.

Not that this worried the urban
aristocracy, who grew rich

and enjoyed sumptuous risottos

while banning paddy fields
from being planted

near cities

in order to protect themselves
from the stench and disease.

Hard lines for all the little people

forced to trudge
through those marshes

up until the 1950s.

The Flemish coastline around Antwerp

provides a striking illustration

of the major changes that took place

between the 11th and 15th centuries.

On one hand you have
what is left of the wetlands,

the primary resource for
peasants in 1000 AD,

while on the other is the landscape

as it was remodelled
on the cusp of the modern era.

What you see in
the new polder landscapes,

which were created
by merchant capital,

mostly merchant capital
in the early modern period,

is a sort of radical
simplification of nature.

So, you've got these
new coastal landscapes

which are very rational,

entirely geometric,

which were designed
at a drawing table

and then implemented
in the landscape.

And they serve
a new type of agriculture

which concentrates
on a single commodity,

which uses scale

and the advantages of scale

to produce one commodity

in a cost-efficient way.

For me it's a sort
of testing ground of how

capitalism could rework nature

in a very radical and
a very destructive way.

The 'tempestaire' was a figure
from ancient peasant mythology

who had the power
to control the elements

and tame storms using
just his breath.

The new 'tempestaires'
in 16th century Flanders

were water engineers.

Their increasingly imposing and
sophisticated structures

were designed, so they said,

to resist the fierce storms
of the North Sea,

dykes so safe that you
could live right next to them,

knowing they wouldn't burst.

But they always burst

and the consequences were awful.

We see that often after 20-30 years

these newly constructed
seawalls, they broke,

as did their medieval predecessors,

but the difference was that
there were no people living

nearby the seawall

as if the seawall could not break.

And that's what explains these
tens of thousands of victims

in different floods

in the 16th, 17th and 18th century.

That's what explains the last

major flood in the North Sea area,
which was in 1953,

which still killed 2,000 people.

And you still see
the same processes at work,

a sort of social differentiation

between the labourers living

in low-lying locations
nearby the dyke,

very exposed, very vulnerable

and the larger farms
in the middle of the polder,

in their large farms,

one, two, three metres higher,

and one, two, three metres higher

when a flood happens
that makes all the difference.

It's the difference between drowning

and saving your life.

SUBTITLES BY PAUL MULLANEY