A comparison of two rural areas in an industrializing region
The present analysis is focused on a comparison between two adjacent but very different rural areas, the East Ardennes and the Land of Herve. These areas are separated by the River Vesdre, on which the city of Verviers is located, and their comparison can be seen as a contrast between the archaic and the modern countryside.
Much of the territory of Sart is located in an area called the ‘Hautes Fagnes', a high plateau of peat bogs and forests. The population is concentrated in half a dozen hamlets, which form islands in the woods. The inhabitants of Sart preserved a complex economy of multiple activities. Most of them were smallholders who supplemented their incomes with forest products and proto-industrial wool spinning. Recognized members of the community also had a variety of rights on the extensive lands held in common. Many households had one or two animals in a common herd foraging in the forests. ‘Slash and burn' agriculture was still being practised, and community elders chose a piece of forest to burn, which was then divided among families for cultivation (Vliebergh and Ulens 1912; Hoyois 1981).The Land of Herve, especially the heart of the plateau, was a very different environment. Since the sixteenth century, proto-industry in woollen textiles developed in association with a precocious transition from subsistence to commercial agriculture. Raising cattle required less labour and allowed the inhabitants to devote themselves to craft production. In the late eighteenth to early nineteenth century more than 20,000 people were engaged in spinning or weaving, either part or full time (Haesenne-Peremans 1981: 59, 74—5; Servais 1982b; Gutmann 1988). Grassland enclosed by hedges made up more than 85% of the cultivated area. Production was highly specialized in dairy products (especially a famous cheese), fruit, and to a less extent, meat.
With this structure and its international markets, the Herve plateau has been called ‘the most modern countryside of Europe' (Gutmann 1988). From a social point of view, the situation was more ambiguous. Proto-industrial workers were proletarianized through a putting-out system dominated by merchant-clothiers in the city of Verviers. Paul Servais (1982^, b) has shown, however, that rural families accumulated savings, generation after generation, to gradually acquire land. In the late eighteenth century, between 68% and 75% of agricultural land belonged to local peasants. The region had three outstanding characteristics: the proliferation of small properties, the local origin of the landowners, and their fundamentally peasant status.Eastern Belgium was at the heart of the economic transformation of continental Europe. In 1798, William Cockerill constructed the first spinning machines on the
continent for two rich families of clothiers in Verviers, the Biolley and the Simonis. In 1817, his son John Cockerill moved the family factory to Seraing where he established a coal and iron empire, which was soon followed by local competitors (Van der Herten et α∕.1995). During the nineteenth century, the East Ardennes and the Land of Herve were profoundly influenced by the expanding Industrial Revolution in textiles in Verviers, only 20 km away, and the coal and iron centre of Liege 40/50 km away. Together, the industrial agglomerations centred on these cities grew from 65,000 inhabitants to more than 500,000 between 1800 and 1900. The urban population of the province of Liege increased from 20% to more than 60%. This huge external force affected the countryside and its population in many ways.
Although this volume is primarily devoted to rural societies, the two areas studied here were fundamentally affected by these external forces, and we cannot understand changes in the East Ardennes and the Land of Herve without referring to the Industrial Revolution.
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