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- Title
Avarice in the Moral Landscape of Olivier de Serres's Theatre d'agriculture et mesnage des champs (1600).
- Authors
Patterson, Jonathan
- Abstract
This article studies the much neglected moral landscape of a popular early modern agronomical treatise, the Theatre d'agriculture et mesnage des champs (1600) by Olivier de Serres. It shows how Serres provided a practical and moral response to the decimation of the French countryside in the Wars of Religion (1562–98). The Theatre d'agriculture was written to offer comprehensive guidance on how to make husbandry of the soil a virtuous form of wealth creation, untainted by the vice of avarice. The article examines Serres's description of just profiteering, excessive getting and deficient giving on an early modern country estate. Serres denounced avaricious overlords, but his greater concern was to advise landowners on managing their allegedly greedy, fraudulent workforce. This resulted in strategies that favour the landlord's enrichment over that of his workers, but not, as is usually argued, in an enthusiastic promotion of sharecropping. I find little evidence that Serres strongly supported any model of land management other than ones involving direct cultivation and fixed rent contracts, where the landowner personally oversaw and monitored the productivity of his servants and tenants. For Serres, a meticulously calculating attitude to finances was warranted by a volatile, avaricious workforce. Historical contextualization suggests that these suspicions, whilst not wholly unsubstantiated, must be viewed critically. Serres's advocacy of pragmatic economic calculus (bon mesnage) as a just philosophy of enrichment was by no means universally shared by his peers. Indeed, for some, bon mesnage of this sort could be, morally speaking, akin to avarice.
- Subjects
THEATRE d'agriculture et mesnage des champs (Book); AGRICULTURAL literature; LANDSCAPES in literature; DE Serres, Olivier; ANCIENT agriculture; SHARECROPPING
- Publication
Forum for Modern Language Studies, 2013, Vol 49, Issue 3, p244
- ISSN
0015-8518
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/fmls/cqs034