Peasants defended handmills against lord-controlled mills to keep energy autonomy.

Evidence

Here conflicts occurred between the prince, or landlord, who controlled the resources of the manorlands, and the peasants, who were primarily unfree and lived in communal villages or in isolated cottages using the manorial commons for wood, grazing, and planting. … The use of the manor’s watermill as energy for the grinding of grain was controlled by the lord, who raised revenue from its use by the villagers and tenant farmers. At harvest time, grain was hauled to the mill and, for a fee, ground into flour, a practice that encouraged peasants to keep hand-operated mills in their homes and therefore to resist the advent of wind and water as new energy sources. Lords were careful to see that competing mills were not erected on manor lands, but it was more difficult to prevent peasants from keeping hand-operated mills at home. … Handmills survived into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in areas devoid of sufficient waterways, as security against winter frost, summer drought, and siege. Hidden handmills thus competed with the manor mill, human muscle with the manor’s centralized inanimate energy sources—water and wind. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 260

Categorization

• XREF: Peasant resistance to losing control of productive technology prefigures themes of enclosure and common-resource loss recurring in eco-justice literature. — connects to: Peasant handmill resistance was economic autonomy seeking, not technological conservatism. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 263

Broader Connections

• Peasant handmill resistance was economic autonomy seeking, not technological conservatism. #expands (0.95) — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 263