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Abstract
This dissertation challenges key assumptions about the history of smallholding (peasant) agriculture over the twentieth century. Today smallholding is typically viewed as a marginal activity, an anachronistic holdover from an agrarian past doomed to disappear. And yet, by taking the Peruvian valley of Antapampa as a case study, I demonstrate how amidst a period of unprecedented demographic growth, the valley filled with a record number of people farming at a previously unimaginable scale. In so doing, this dissertation not only upends common perceptions of the fate of smallholding agriculture but also reveals existing scholarship has missed a critical driver of change in the countryside. Indeed, once we focus on the remarkable transformation to smallholding agriculture, many cardinal narratives in the history of Peru, Latin America and even beyond start making much less sense. For one, this dissertation rewrites long held ideas that land was overwhelmingly concentrated in a handful of estates and that agrarian reforms transformed rural tenure patterns. Rather, by documenting the dramatic expansion of smallholding numbers and a vast internal division of land, I show Andean estates came to hold much less territory than commonly believed and that the Peruvian agrarian reform, generally considered the continent’s most sweeping, was far less impactful than once imagined. For another, this account questions dominant visions of recent anthropogenic changes. Whereas most studies focus on the rise in human activity and ecological upheaval in a few specific places and activities like the Global North, fossil-fuel consumption, or agroindustry, I point to how smallholding agriculture, overwhelmingly found in the Global South, with a comparatively minor carbon footprint, also enacted sweeping intensification of production and a profound remaking of the ecological status quo ante. In brief, this dissertation stresses the need for a much closer examination of smallholding agriculture to better understand the world we have inherited.