Country-"Policey": Norms in Early Modern Agrarian Societies.

Abstract

The collection of sources on “good” policeyhas, so far, illustrated and interpreted the characteristics of early modernregulatory policy with territorial or urban examples. This was examined for aperiod which, as the saddle period of modernity, was responsible for setting acourse that can hardly be overestimated, according to which rights and duties,public and ecclesiastical order, social peace, honour, happiness, health andprosperity are partly derived to this day. This temporal framework remained inthis essay, but the social perspective changed. While many publications onordinances were tailored to the role of the nobility and the courts, themunicipal councillors, the imperial ecclesiastical chancelleries or theexecutive offices in the Reichskreise (Imperial Circles), the focus isnow on their social reflections. The perspective from “below” becomes moreeffective. The rural area, village cooperatives, agrarian forms of trade andaction remote from capitals and centres are the new, undoubtedly no lessinteresting focus. 

Keywords

• Rural law
• agrarian policing
• order
• honor
• health
• villages