The late medieval French peasant had a decent gig if you don't mind bone crushing material poverty. As in, "the-roof-can-be-lifted-to-eavesdrop-outside" poverty. "Manure-on-the-floor-because-livestock-sleeps-with-you-in-winter" poverty. "Your-second-son-will-be-homeless-vagrant-shepherd" poverty.
It would be nice if Keynes had been right, and we could have collectively said "okay, let's stop the hedonic treadmill there and just chill more going forward", but that's not the way status competition works. The peasants weren't industrious because medieval society wasn't wired to reward productivity with status; ours is.
Apparently it was pretty bad in Poland too. The following is about XVIII, so it's not even medieval period...
The British traveler and historian traveled half of Europe. In the course of his many voyages, he also ended up in Vistula. The description that came out from his pen is considered extremely valuable, as you can hardly accuse him of bias. Coxe depicted what he saw and had no interest in embellishing Polish reality. In addition, he was able to relate the appearance of Polish peasants to how the landowners in other parts of the continent presented themselves. He wrote:
I could never project in my mind an area so sad and empty. (...) For 45 miles we met only 2 carriages and 12 wagons (...) The sight of the miserable villages matched completely with the miserable surroundings that surrounded them.
The villagers in this country are poorer and gloomier than in others we visited. Wherever we stopped, beggars came to us in groups and asked for handouts with the basest intrusiveness. Compared to Swiss peasants, who are polite but also demand politeness, Polish peasants are slavishly submissive: they bow to the ground having taken off their hats, holding them in their hands until the man is out of their sight.
The Polish peasant has a wild appearance, a burnt, dark, almost black face, lean cheeks, sunken eyes, short stature; he moves slowly, his general apathy making him incapable of feeling either great joy or suffering. n winter in a simple sheepskin coat, in summer in a shirt and pants made of ragged canvas, barefoot, he drags himself lazily behind his skinny, shaggy horse, pulling a socha with which he tears up a weedy field to harvest winter supplies from it, insufficient to feed his family and possessions.
(...) The villagers, whose number they count to six million, called peasants, constituted two-thirds of the nation. Hardly different from cattle, they have no property, live from day to day, rotting in filth and misery. In the absence of light and means of subsistence, half of their offspring are lost, which would have increased the population (...). It must be said that whatever fate awaits Poland, their condition cannot get worse.
"They feel little and think little"
That the above comments were not at all far from reality is also evidenced by the words of Stanislaw Staszic. In Cautions, the famous Enlightenment activist and Catholic priest wrote with bitterness:
Five parts of the Polish nation stand before my eyes. I see millions of creatures, some of whom walk half naked, others covered with skin or rough coats; all of them dried out, shriveled, swollen, grubby; having their eyes sunken deep into their heads, breathless, and ceaselessly working.
Gloomy and stupid, they feel little and think little - this is their greatest happiness. One can barely see a rational soul in them. Their superficial form at first sight bears more resemblance to an animal than to a human being.
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Notes -
The late medieval French peasant had a decent gig if you don't mind bone crushing material poverty. As in, "the-roof-can-be-lifted-to-eavesdrop-outside" poverty. "Manure-on-the-floor-because-livestock-sleeps-with-you-in-winter" poverty. "Your-second-son-will-be-homeless-vagrant-shepherd" poverty.
It would be nice if Keynes had been right, and we could have collectively said "okay, let's stop the hedonic treadmill there and just chill more going forward", but that's not the way status competition works. The peasants weren't industrious because medieval society wasn't wired to reward productivity with status; ours is.
Apparently it was pretty bad in Poland too. The following is about XVIII, so it's not even medieval period...
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