Peasant populations (i.e., sedentary agricultural groups forming part of larger, more complex societies) have probably existed since 6000 BCE in southwestern Asia, since 3100 BCE in Egypt, and since 1500 BCE in southeastern Mexico. Unlike agricultural entrepreneurs who are active economic agents or semisubsistence cultivators practicing ritual exchange and barter, peasants are farmers whose surpluses are redistributed to urban centers by more powerful groups. In practice it is not always easy to decide who actually is or is not a peasant, especially in the case of farmers who hold factory jobs, modern European family farmers, contemporary North American small farmers, or cash crop slash-and-burn cultivators of South America and Africa. For the purposes of this article, this term applies to past and present-day sedentary cultivators and pastoralists of Asia, North Africa, southern Europe, and Latin America, and historically to sedentary cultivators in northern Europe and North America as...