Authors

Discussion

Beggars and begging were ubiquitous features of late Imperial rural life. This paper seeks to engage with the broader themes of our panel, which explores aspects of late Imperial economy, through close analysis of the alms offered to beggars by village dwellers, and the provision of services and labour by mendicants to almsgivers in the late Imperial period. Focus on beggars and begging offers insights into the economic practices of among the most marginalised historical actors, indigent rural people. This paper outlines the range of possible gifts that were offered by individuals to beggars, and the social and moral frameworks of expectations around these gifts. We will reflect on the relative significance of gender, disability, and age in these transactions. The paper will outline the exchanges and transactions that were initiated through begging, with beggars offering their labour, religious services and small items in return for alms. The provision of crusts to beggars by even the poorest village dwellers is a well-known feature of rural individual charity. This paper explores this practice, and investigates the transactional value of crusts, which were sometimes collected and re-sold by beggars. A core source for this study is the responses sent by twenty-nine rural correspondents to an ethnographic survey commissioned by Prince Tenishev in 1898. While the questions about begging posed by Tenishev were laden with negative expectations around beggars (laziness, fraud, immorality and criminality), the rich materials these questions generated transcended Tenishev’s assumptions.