Publications

The book analyses social networks and the emergence of rural class societies in two Westphalian communities in the 19th century. In a region in which property relations were characterised by the undivided inheritance of farms and a resulting socio-economic hierarchy with large farmers at the top and wage labourers as a broad lower peasant class, a distinction can be made at the level of social relations between a strongly segregated class society in the Hellweg region (Borgeln in the district of Soest) and a well-integrated network society in East Westphalia (Löhne in the district of Herford). The relationship between kinship and godparent relationships and social stratification, kinship- and class-related marriage behaviour, the significance of social networks for the social placement of children and the negotiation of relationships and resource flows within families are examined.

The numbers of landless people – those lacking formal rights to land, or possessing only tiny smallholdings – grew rapidly across post-medieval Europe, as rural population and economic growth divided landowners and farmers from (increasingly) landless rural workers. But they have hitherto been relatively neglected, a gap which this volume, covering Scandinavia, Germany, Austria, Netherlands, Belgium, Britain, France and Spain from the sixteenth to the early twentieth centuries, aims to fill, making creative use of a diverse range of unexplored sources. Instead of concentrating on the well-documented cases of landholding peasants, it explores the many different experiences of the numerous rural landless. It explains how their households were formed (often in the face of economic difficulties and official hostility), how all the members of a family contributed to its survival, how the landless related to other social groups and negotiated access to vital resources, and how they adapted as rural society was changed by war, politics, agrarian and industrial development, government policy and welfare systems.

The volume traces relationships, networks and conflicts among relatives in various social milieus and spaces of interaction and at the same time to place these in relation to other forms of interdependence - such as sponsorship, friendship or political engagement. The contributions illuminate the potential of kinship as a fundamental social and political category in a variety of ways. Its power extends into the 20th century and is by no means limited to high-ranking holders of power, but structures social fields as a whole. The cross-epochal approach is also able to emphasise that concepts of kinship are always bound to time and situation and are therefore changeable.

Existing scholarship on the early modern consumer revolution postulates a dichotomy between the classic pioneering countries of England and the Netherlands and the remaining parts of Europe, which were more stagnant. We contribute to this literature by analysing probate inventories in a rural area in north-western Germany. We show that a closer look at these spaces, which had an intermediate level of development and integration into global markets, reveals a more gradual development and a discernible market evolution. Sumptuary laws may have somewhat slowed down the change in material culture in German regions, but the presence of towns and the proximity to the Netherlands had noticeably positive effects on consumer behaviour. The proto-industrial orientation of local economies proved to be particularly important, as it led to the granting of access to global markets, in addition to greater availability of cash. We observe a delayed diffusion of the new consumer culture in intermediate European regions and argue for a more gradual view of the European consumer revolution. 

The article investigates intergenerational social relations, distribution of power and mutual rights and obligations within rural families in nineteenth-century Westphalia. Following Frédéric Le Play and Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl, historiography assumes the predominance of a stem family system in northwestern Germany. However, the definition of ‘stem family’ is still not well determined to date. In particular, the question of paternal authority pertains to the core concept of stem families, but has received rather little attention in historical research. The article argues that there are good reasons to question the adequacy of the notion of ‘stem family’ for northwestern Germany. Using farm and house transfer contracts as qualitative sources, the strong position of farm heirs will be demonstrated. These contracts settled relationships between family members after intergenerational transition, especially for different types of family composition. Ageing parents were confronted with children having alternative options to make a living and had to make far-reaching concessions if they wanted a child to stay and work or respectively care for them. Even parents who still wanted to manage the farm on their own gave up the property rights in order to keep a son or a daughter as labour force and care-taker on the farm. This points to considerable bargaining power of adult children, and strongly diminished parental authority even in multiple households.

The article analyses the importance of family networks for the integration of social classes in pre-modern rural societies. Discussing the thesis of a 'rural class society', which has been prominently advanced by Moser (1984) and Sabean (1990, 1998), the study analyzes two communities in north-western Germany, both of which are characterised by downward mobility and growing social inequality. However, the two communities were very different in terms of their economic structure and their integration into supra-local markets. The article uses formal network analysis to analyse marriage strategies and the creation of social networks through godparentage. It shows that although production for regional markets was very successful in the agriculturally prosperous community, social circles became increasingly closed and a class structure developed that was hardly permeable upwards. In contrast, in the poorer proto-industrial community, producing linen for the export into the Atlantic trade system, social classes actively networked and formed lasting cross-class support networks through marriage and patronage.

The paper addresses the question of how the reproduction of social inequality is mediated by family strategies. It is well known that families played an important role in the social placement of their offspring not only in pre-modern but also in modern and contemporary societies. Bourdieu has argued that families can draw on different types of capital. The article compares the influence of different types of capital on the success of family reproduction strategies and comes to the conclusion that, in addition to the well-known positive effect of economic capital and membership of a particular social class, other factors play an important role. A positive effect could only be found for kinship networks in some contexts. However, if parents had a central position in networks based on sponsorships, this had a consistently positive influence on the social placement of their own offspring. This is the first time that it has been shown that social networks, alongside economic resources, have a significant influence on the placement of children and thus on the social reproduction of social inequality.

This article compares property transfer contracts between generations in two Prussian parishes where marital law differed significantly in the 19th century. Our sources focus on two critical phases in peasants' life cycles at the time. Whereas young people could find the resources to settle down, the older generation had to plan for their retirement. Although sons had a better chance of inheriting the farm, female successors were not rare. A peasant daughter's overall prospects of becoming a peasant by inheriting her parent's farm or marrying a farm successor were almost as good as her brother's. The situation for older women, however, was subject to their legal standing with regards to marital property. When couples held joint marital property, men and women had the same opportunities to arrange for retirement. In contrast, when couples held separate marital property and male succession prevailed, older women were at an evident disadvantage. 

The essay shows how kinship can be analysed as a historical network of relationships. It discusses methodological difficulties and presents various solutions with their advantages and disadvantages. In historical European societies, the household as a basic unit plays an important role in analysing the significance of kinship for dealing with everyday problems and major crises. Ethnological methods such as P-graph analysis make it possible to analyse an elusive phenomenon such as the European kinship network. 

The chapter demonstrates that the rural labour market in Northwestern Germany was divided into three segments. There were lifecycle servants employed on a yearly basis and integrated into the farm household throughout rural society. In addition, there were rather independent, house-owning day labourers and renters, who were both to some extent integrated into the farm economy. The analysis shows that in all regions, farms employed day labourers and an embedded workforce – either as servants, or as renters with work obligations. Secondly, the chapter argues that we can observe two distinct models of the integration of landless families in local rural society. In proto-industrial regions, landless families found shelter on larger and smaller farms, living near their employers, and working on demand. In other agricultural regions, work relations and living arrangements were strictly separated. Landless families found accommodation with other non-farmers or with smallholders who earned extra income by renting out part of their limited living space. The important point here is the lack of personal relationships between farmers as employers on the one hand and day labourers on the other. Farmers instead employed servants who would eventually leave their service to marry, but they had no interest in long-term relationships with resident landless families.

Those who left rural Westphalia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries came from a society characterised by tradition, modern change and social inequality. In addition to farmers, many people lived here who had to earn their living through services and wage labour, often combining different activities. These different ways of earning an income also had to be pursued by many peasant children who were unable to maintain the status of their parents and found themselves in the large group of landless families. In addition to the opportunity to learn a trade, which only some families could afford, it was above all servitude that served to educate the following generations. In addition to the acquisition of skills, the development of social networks and emancipation from one's parents were among the consequences of servant service, which was widespread in north-west Europe. Above all, however, maidservants and farmhands were mobile, sometimes travelling considerable distances during their years of wandering. Farm heirs, on the other hand, were closely tied to their parents' farm; they were expected to work for the farm and not on their own account. Women were represented in large numbers both among the servants and among the farm heirs, and their position as wives or widows was also better than many in other historical contexts. Women were not equal to men, but their opportunities and room for manoeuvre were significantly greater in this Westphalian society than in some others.

Servants provided for a substantial part of the workforce in premodern rural households in Northwestern Germany, as in many other European regions. Depending on the regional economy, many young men and women recognized service as an acceptable opportunity to accumulate the means for an independent life, thereby accepting temporary integration and subordination into an unfamiliar household and family. Servants moved to increasingly skilled working opportunities during their frequent job changes, and they saved a large proportion of their cash wages for the establishment of their own household. Yet service was not restricted to peasant farms as smallholders, craftsmen, ministers, shopkeepers and others also employed young people. Servants contributed to the mobility of premodern society in many ways. They transferred labour from households with little land and low demand for work to households with a high demand. They left their parents’ house and moved to neighbours, to neighbouring villages, and sometimes further afield or even abroad. Many servants worked within a short distance of their parents’ house that allowed them to maintain close contact with their families, but it was quite common to move to another parish for attractive working opportunities.

The chapter shows how strongly the import of consumer goods into the German hinterland grew in the 18th century. The import of colonial goods in particular, especially coffee and sugar, showed enormous growth rates. In addition, globally traded goods for well-being and medical use were among the goods that showed massive growth. This increasing willingness over the eighteenth century to acquire substances with dietetic and medical uses must be seen in the context of the growing valuation of the individual in the wake of the enlightenment movement. The human body, neatly separated from its physical surroundings, became both an element of individual identity and an object of the care of the self. Between the second quarter of the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth centuries the production and dissemination of knowledge on medicinal and dietetic substances becomes much more multifaceted and involved a broader set of actors. The emerging science of botany and the proliferating genre of merchant manuals joined forces in classifying substances with respect to morphology, product quality and origin.