Oligarchies and Client Systems in Rural communities in the South of the Crown of Aragón (13th to 15th Centuries)

Oligarchies and Client Systems in Rural communities in the South of the Crown of Aragón (13th to 15th Centuries)

Studies of late medieval Hispanic client systems generally focus on networks of noble power, to the exclusion of the peasantry. This is doubtless in part because the peasantry has traditionally been considered to represent a largely homogenous social group defined in opposition to the feudal nobility, whose members defended common interests. However, the last few years have witnessed a profusion of studies into the rural, or peasant, elites of Western Europe during the late medieval and modern periods, and these highlight not only significant disparities between the economic status of those and that of the remainder of the peasantry, but also their employment of specific power-mechanisms in order to establish and consolidate a hierarchy of local dominance. In the south of the Crown of Aragón, such peasant elites can be traced back to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and the Christian conquest and subsequent feudal colonization of territories that had belonged to al-Andalus. In this context, certain dominant peasant families emerged as local elites which formed part of two distinct types of client network. In one of these, which extended upwards, these elites represented the local agents of the nobility, acting as intermediaries between territorial lords and the dependent peasantry in return for small benefits and rewards. The other extended downwards through their own communities, and represented a client system in which a combination of solidarity and dominance were enshrined in lending agreements, small favours, and the use of local municipal power to their own economic benefit.

http://hispania.revistas.csic.es/index.php/hispania/article/view/322