III

In the long term, the policies enacted after 1363 contributed significantly to the development of the mezzadria system, further increasing the profits from land for city dwellers and reducing the share of profit for the peasants. The change of strategy, target and method explains the success of these agrarian policies, together with the slow demographic recovery. However, such success was not immediate. Landlords (implicitly) preferred to intensify their capital input and to pay higher salaries to sharecroppers rather than hiring free wage labourers. They stuck to the mezzadria system or to tenancy.3 See Ackerberg and Botticini, ‘The Choice of Agrarian Contracts’, 241–57.

This choice was supported by the profitability of land investment even in times of labour scarcity. Indeed, the concentration of labour on the most fertile land increased the land productivity there through the cultivation of cash crops such as vines and orchard and olive trees.4 See Piccinni, ‘L’evoluzione della rendita fondiaria’, pp. 57–95. The fall in the labour force together with immigration across the territory and towards the cities, moreover, may have lowered or kept stable the price of land.5 Cohn, Creating, pp. 101–3. Both these factors could explain, together with specific agrarian policies, the increase of land purchase by Florentine city dwellers after the 1370s, when the number of urban buyers was double that of rural buyers.6 See footnote 53. In Siena, land consolidation probably never stopped: after 1348 urban landlords kept purchasing land from rural inhabitants, while in 1446 a deliberation reported that Sienese landowners had the ‘most fertile and good by nature’ land in the Sienese territory and peasants only ‘infertile and meagre’ properties.7 See footnote 27 and Piccinni, Il contratto di mezzadria, document XLIV (1446).

As a consequence, binding peasants to the land as sharecroppers was crucial in order to maintain the profitability of land investment.8 ‘In some cases, [among the contracts of land purchase between peasants and city-dwellers analysed between 1370 and 1401] a second transaction followed on the same day and place: a short-term lease or mezzadria contract converted the former village proprietor into the urban landlord’s tenant on the very property which moments before he had owned.’ See Cohn, Creating, p. 103. Not surprisingly, there was a decrease in short-term share-contracts (one to six years) in the Sienese territory after 1363 and through the fifteenth century (see Figure 3.2). Such trend represented a win–win situation for both parties. In longer tenancies (seven to nine years, or even perpetual) the lessor benefited from the higher and more constant availability of labour input provided by the contract, while the lessee, for his part, could profit from a stability of income and benefits such as loans and capital input. Furthermore, a longer stay allowed him to benefit from longer-term investment such as the planting of new crops. A shorter contract (on average three years), on the contrary, increased the uncertainty of the lessee, which was high when he risked being deprived of the landholding and farmhouse.

Finally, post-1363 agrarian policies, implicitly or explicitly, targeted free wage labourers, who were more vulnerable to daily or seasonal wage fluctuations than sharecroppers or tenants. The aim, however, was not to curb their salaries, which kept growing until the 1470s, but to discourage sharecroppers or new immigrants from becoming (seasonal or daily) wage earners. In this respect, Florentine and Sienese rulers shifted from directly regulating the labour market (up until 1363) towards influencing it via taxation (after 1363). Furthermore, at the micro-level, urban landlords may have used loans and capital flows, and improvements of labour conditions, to create socio-economic ties. This is suggested, first, by the growing competition among Sienese landowners to ‘buy with great loans the few sharecroppers available’, as noted in 1427;9 See Piccinni, Il contratto di mezzadria, document XXXII (1427). and, second, by the negative correlation between numbers of short-term contracts and those of leases providing livestock and loans for the lessee observed between 1364 and 1469 (see Figure 3.2). In both cases, sharecroppers were kept in the employ of a lessor. Such a sharp use of tax policies and loans has similarities to some nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiscal policies in African colonies.10 Between the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries there was a ‘prevalence of domination mechanisms in the South African migrant labour system, with the state playing a prominent role to ensure that black workers were “cajoled into selling their labour power by expropriation of land, imposition of taxation, and similar non-market inducements”, and then ensuring their submission by treating the migrant “as an alien without rights of citizenship”’. See R. Hamann and R. Bertels, ‘The Institutional Work of Exploitation: Employers’ Work to Create and Perpetuate Inequality’, Journal of Management Studies, 55 (2017), 394–423.

Despite these similarities, the policies adopted by Florence and Siena differed somewhat in target and timing between 1364 and 1434. On one hand, the Sienese city councils focused on dividing sharecroppers from wage labourers and rural communities. They also adopted immigration policies thirty years later than Florence, despite an even harsher demographic crisis. Finally, their laws show a more explicit awareness of their purpose than do the Florentine ones.11 See, for instance, footnote 11. On the other hand, Florentine rulers reacted earlier to labour scarcity by developing new immigration policies. However, they may not have succeeded without the ‘informal’ tax exemptions they granted as patrons to the areas near Florence to protect the renewal of capital flows towards the countryside. In this regard, Florentine rulers apparently showed less awareness of the relevance of the sharecroppers in their government policies than they did as individual investors.

In order to fully explain such differences between Florence and Siena in facing similar issues, further research is needed. However, the discrepancy between the agrarian policies of the two cities might be explained by the (i) the divergent socio-economic features of the two cities and (ii) the diversity of their countrysides. For instance, land purchase was often considered as one type of investment among many (such as textile production, money changing, banking, merchandising and public bonds) by late medieval Florentine city dwellers. Furthermore, it was not the most important (in term of money) among the higher classes in the first half of the fifteenth century.12 See Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber, Tuscans, pp. 28–59, 93–130. In contrast, land accumulation was fundamental for Sienese nobles and members of the ruling class, especially after the crisis in Sienese banking at the end of the thirteenth century.13 See G. Piccinni, Fedeltà ghibellina affari guelfi. Saggi e riletture intorno alla storia di Siena fra Due e Trecento (Siena, 2008). See also the land purchase attested in 1348, footnote 27. In addition, the Florentine contado differed from the Sienese one because of the larger rural population living in the fertile area around the city and because a larger area was intensively cultivated. The territory around Siena, in contrast, despite its lesser population and productivity, was more fundamental to the Sienese economy and society.14 See Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber, Tuscans, pp. 28–36, 93–130; Piccinni, ‘La politica agraria’, pp. 207–92.

The final achievement of both sets of policies, however, was the same. The mezzadria system was well established in Central Tuscany by the end of the fifteenth century. For instance, the number of householders working as sharecroppers increased from 25 to 29 per cent in the whole territory under the rule of Florence between 1427 and 1469. This growth was even stronger in the most fertile areas where city dwellers concentrated their investment: in these regions, sharecroppers represented 39 per cent, 50 per cent or even the majority of the inhabitants by the end of the fifteenth century.15 South-west of Florence sharecroppers reached 39 per cent of the population between 1427 and 1469, while north-west of the city they increased 10 percentage points, to 32 per cent. See Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber, Tuscans, pp. 116–19. In the territory of S. Giovanni in Petroio in Mugello (30km northwards from Florence), sharecroppers were 56 per cent of the residents in 1504. See D. Cristoferi, ‘“I nostri contadini solevano istare molto meglio per lo addrieto che ora”: mezzadria, proprietà cittadina e disuguaglianza economica in Toscana, sec. XV–XVI’, in G. Nigro (ed.), Economic Inequality in Pre-Industrial Societies: Causes and Effects (Florence, 2020), pp. 275–300. The trend was similar in the Sienese territory: in 1460, the tax levied by Siena on rural inhabitants was called the ‘tax on the sharecroppers’ in some communities.16 Piccinni, Il contratto di mezzadria, document XXXIII n. 1. Moreover, while in 1351 there was only one Sienese village where all the inhabitants were sharecroppers, by the end of the fifteenth century the number of settlements entirely composed of sharecroppers had increased to thirty-eight, covering half of the territory of the province of Siena.17 The chronological increase of villages inhabited only by sharecroppers: 1350 = 1; 1400 = 4; 1430 = 14; 1450 = 26; 1500 = 38. See ibid., pp. 97–101 (tables 3 and 4).

Such developments can explain why rural labour regulations disappeared during the fifteenth century – after 1431 in Florence, and after 1470 in Siena. The spread of mezzadria provided the labour market control previously pursued by landlords through agrarian policies. This is evident in Sienese documentation: between 1427 and 1459 share-contracts started to explicitly refer to labour regulations in order to enforce specific clauses. After 1500, great landowners began to introduce standardised contracts to run all their estates in mezzadria and to apply the same conditions to all their sharecroppers.18 Standardized contracts applied the same clauses (length, extra-works, benefits to the landlords, etc.) to all the sharecroppers working properties of the same lessor, usually a big landlord such as a religious institution: ibid., pp. 140–5. In this regard, the replacement of individual negotiation with fixed clauses for large group of sharecroppers represents the final step of the establishment of the mezzadria system.

An important role was also played by the peasants: after 1348, some of them – but how many and to what extent is still a matter of debate – were recovering part of their ‘landed losses’ from other villagers and city dwellers using profits from higher wages. These purchases, however, were mainly scattered strips and plots of land rather than mezzadria farms and landholdings.19 See Cohn, Creating, pp. 98, 101–3. Others, in contrast, turned to seasonal or daily wage labour, which was more remunerative in times of lower grain prices and rising salaries (see Figure 3.3). This group, however, was highly varied, including smallholders or leaseholders who turned to occasional wage labour, as well as servants and daily wage earners, and was mostly complementary to the management of properties owned by city dwellers, religious and welfare institutions that were leased rather than sharecropped.20 See F. Panero, ‘Il lavoro salariato nelle campagne dell’Italia centro-settentrionale dal secolo XII all’inizio del Quattrocento’, in A. Cortonesi, M. Montanari and A. Nellie (eds), Contratti agrari e rapporti di lavoro nell’Europa medievale (Bologna, 2006), pp. 179–202, at pp. 194–201.

More importantly, many peasants, instead of purchasing land or working as wage labourers, preferred to use their temporary bargaining power to pay lower rents or to increase their buying power on the commodity market and to diminish their participation in capital input into the mezzadria system: that is, they preferred to risk less. Loans, tax exemptions, lessors’ capital input and the access to food, credit and shelter provided by the mezzadria system were more attractive to landless peasants than daily wage labour or independent farming, especially in period of crisis.21 Regarding the risk-avoiding factors explaining the persistence of mezzadria see Ackerberg and Botticini, ‘The Choice of Agrarian Contracts’, 241–57. The peasants’ preference for sharecropping is further explained by the century-long process of land expropriation led by the city dwellers. By then, many peasants were already bound to land through the mezzadria system, while their capacity for entrepreneurship was limited by their dependency on their lessors.22 See Emigh, The Undevelopment of Capitalism, pp. 131–67. In this regard, it is not surprising that only a minority of peasants purchased land in the Florentine plains after the Black Death.23 See footnote 53.

Once population levels recovered in the fifteenth century, however, the sharecropping system framed by Sienese and Florentine labour regulations and city dwellers’ land purchases contributed to reversing the situation in favour of the landowners. Peasants started to lose the bargaining power acquired between 1348 and 1363, while the city dwellers’ profits from land grew again. Between 1471 and 1500, for instance, we observe a decrease in the value of rural daily wages in the Florentine territory.24 Wage labour further shrank to seasonal works: Tognetti, ‘Prezzi e salari’, 305–8. In the Sienese countryside, sharecropping contracts with longer terms and loans started to decrease in number since 1459. In contrast, clauses requiring sharecroppers to provide extra works for free and special benefits to the lessor multiplied (see Figure 3.2).

Extra works consisted of tasks such as planting new vineyards and olive and fruit trees, grafting fruit trees, cartage services and clearing and tillage activities, in addition to the usual maintenance of the landholding. Benefits were (small) payments in cash, an unequal division of valuable products such as wine or industrial crops and the delivery of a certain amount of commodities produced by the sharecropper, such as wax, timber, honey and capons. If the terms were not fulfilled, the lessee could be deprived of the landholding. Labour regulations, moreover, supported the landowners who demanded extra works in order to increase the profits from land.25 In 1427 Sienese city-councils established fines of twenty soldi per olive tree and ten soldi per fruit tree for every sharecropper, tenant and farmer who would not plant two fruit trees and two olive trees or four fruit trees per each landholding. The lessor should pay back his lessee with one silver grosso per olive tree and one soldo per fruit tree: Piccinni, Il contratto di mezzadria, document XXXI (1427). Despite such clauses being found in pre-Black Death contracts, their growth in number and details during the fifteenth century reflects the increasing negotiating power of the lessors.26 See Pinto and Pirillo, Il contratto di mezzadria, pp. 44–52. Essentially, lessors asked sharecroppers to pay back the higher share of land investment lessors were providing through loans, oxen and building services. These operations, furthermore, particularly benefited the landlord, since they took a long time to increase land productivity.27 Recently planted vines or olive trees require some years (seven for the vines, nine to ten for the olive tree) to reach full productivity.

Such a trend was also evident in the Florentine territory. During the second half of the fifteenth century a priest claimed: ‘our peasants used to be better off in the past than now […] in many villages, they also pay for oxen and sowing seeds and […] they must do it in this way because they have increased a lot in numbers’.28 See G. Folena (ed.), Motti e facezie del pievano Arlotto (Milan–Naples, 1953), p. 218 motto CLV. Furthermore, capital flows together with the concentration of labour input provided by the sharecroppers increased the value of the land owned by the city dwellers. For instance, landed wealth increased by up to 40 per cent in the Florentine territory, while Sienese landowners claimed to own the best land available and to make great investments through the fifteenth century.29 In the Florentine territory of Petroio in Mugello, the number of landed estates worth over 250 golden florins increased from 58 per cent to 73 per cent between 1427 and 1512. In the same period, the revaluation of the landed property of the city-dwellers was up to 40 per cent. See Cristoferi, ‘“I nostri contadini”’, p. 280. Regarding the claims of the Sienese landowners, see Piccinni, Il contratto di mezzadria, pp. 17–8 and document XLIV (1446). Sharecroppers were caught up in a spiral: in order to profit from their own efforts they were induced to renew the share-contract at almost any cost, no matter the length, the labour input required or the loans provided.

To conclude, post-Black Death labour regulations, fiscal laws and immigration policies enacted by Florentine and Sienese elites successfully interacted, in the long term, with demographic changes and peasants’ agency in establishing the mezzadria system at the core of Tuscany. In the short term, these measures failed to curb the rise of agricultural wages and the claims of the peasants, but they laid the foundation of a share-tenancy mostly beneficial for the landowners as soon as the labour supply recovered. Peasants, for their part, mainly chose to remain within a less risky system in a period of high uncertainty, profiting from its short-term benefits. When these benefits were reduced by population recovery, peasants were already bound to land within the mezzadria system. Through its ties, however, the mezzadria contract was able to keep the tenant and his family at subsistence level, providing land, food, shelter, oxen and credit. In this way, Florentine and Sienese labour regulations ensured the profitability of land investment and made Tuscan rural society stable in the long term, despite its growing economic inequality.