A peasant is a member of a traditional class of farmers, either laborers or owners of small farms, especially in the Middle Ages under feudalism, or more generally, in any pre-industrial society. In Europe, peasants were divided into three classes according to their personal status: slave, serf, and freeman. Peasants either hold title to land in fee simple, or hold land by any of several forms of land tenure, among them socage, quit-rent, leasehold, and copyhold.
Read more about Peasant: Etymology, Position in The Hierarchy, Medieval European Peasants, Early Modern Germany, 19th Century France, Historiography
Famous quotes containing the word peasant:
“That a peasant may become king does not render the kingdom democratic.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“The lord is the peasant that was,
The peasant is the lord that shall be.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“A peasant becomes fond of his pig and is glad to salt away its pork. What is significant, and is so difficult for the urban stranger to understand, is that the two statements are connected by an and and not by a but.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)