An Approach to Modern Labor: Worker Peasantries in Historic Saxony and the Friuli Region over Three Centuries

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Abstract
The spread of manufacture in the European countryside initiated the formation of vital and complex rural laboring groups that defy neat classification. The nature of livelihood in these rural settings furthered an integration of diverse productive involvements rather than the creation of narrow occupational niches. In the course of their labor careers, men and women moved between agrarian and industrial pursuits—weaving linen cloth, spinning silk, raising livestock, digging potatoes, tending vineyards, making bricks, mining coal, casting iron, and forging steel. In this context, livelihood was not merely an individual concern; rather, it was part of a broader household strategy, rooted in a family-based agrarian holding. The maintenance of bonds to peasant agriculture fostered familial solidarity over working-class identity. These laborers saw their destinies in the immediacy of flesh-and-blood relationships among family and kin and not in more abstract social and political identifications.