Search results for "Rural oligarchy"

Oligarchies and Client Systems in Rural communities in the South of the Crown of Aragón (13th to 15th Centuries)

2010

Studies of late medieval Hispanic client systems generally focus on networks of noble power, to the exclusion of the peasantry. This is doubtless in part because the peasantry has traditionally been considered to represent a largely homogenous social group defined in opposition to the feudal nobility, whose members defended common interests. However, the last few years have witnessed a profusion of studies into the rural, or peasant, elites of Western Europe during the late medieval and modern periods, and these highlight not only significant disparities between the economic status of those and that of the remainder of the peasantry, but also their employment of specific power-mechanisms in…