The Social Context of Changes in Slovene Agriculture Since Feudalism
The Social Context of Changes in Slovene Agriculture Since Feudalism

Summary/Abstract: This article offers an account of farming practices in Slovenia from the misty pre-modern period to the present. From the feudal order onwards to the end of the 20th century, Slovene farmers have always produced in another state or under a foreign regime. Because of the rather long chronological sweep, where four different economic and political systems have been in force (Austrian-Hungarian Empire, Yugoslav Autocratic Kingdom, Yugoslav Socialistic System and Slovenia as an independent state), the focus of this analysis is on the real potential effects of these fundamentally different systems on the farming structure, performance of agriculture and peasant traditions in the country. The objective of this manuscript is to address previously unanswered questions about how these distinctively different ruling entities may have affected Slovene private farmers and agriculture in general. Albeit Slovenia has not become a successor state to the Austrian Empire, its exposure to agricultural reforms, laws, and practices in the Austrian Empire (from the late eighteenth century to 1918) left their mark on Slovene agricultural practices. This explains why farming practices somewhat differed from those in the rest of Yugoslavia during the entire twentieth century. It also helps us to understand better the genuine attitude of Slovene private farmers towards the ongoing reform of the Common Agricultural Policy and their relative willingness in adopting its prevailing trends.

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