ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the role of aristocrats in the politics of aristocratic empires. It shows that nonaristocrats play no role in the politics of the aristocracy or are at least unable to change their relationship to the aristocracy. It includes in the peasantry those in the village who carry on crafts, like weaving, carpentry, and pottery, on a part-time basis and even the relatively few full-time village craftsmen that develop in some peasant societies, as in feudal Europe and in India. The chapter regards as peasants their village leaders and village priests, even if they are not themselves engaged in agriculture and even if the latter are nominally part of the aristocrats' priestly hierarchy extending down into the village. It indicates that the agriculture they are engaged in is technologically primitive and that it is subsistence agriculture. Redfield draws the distinction well between peasants and farmers when he calls those agriculturalists peasants whose agriculture is a livelihood and a way of life, not a business for profit.
