1. Social status
Smallholders constituted a hard-to-define class within the highly stratified world of the early modern peasantry [3]. They occupied a place between the self-sufficient full peasants who could afford a team (Harness) and the sub-peasant classes – owners of tiny farms or allotments (Cottager) or totally unlanded (Laborer, unlanded) – classes which even before 1800 constituted the majority of the rural population in most parts of Europe (Rural society).
As a rule, sm…