Antoinette Fauve-Chamoux

Widows and their living arrangements in preindustrial France.

This article examines the role of the widow in French society from the 17th century to the early 20th century. Differences between the size and composition of widow-headed households in urban and rural areas and the impact of socioeconomic factors on their residence patterns and region of residence are stressed. The final section explores the social position of rural widows in the Pyrenean stem-family system where patrimonial continuity and coresidence with older parents was the norm.

Family reproduction and stem-family system: From Pyrenean valleys to Norwegian farms

The article presents a comparative study of two stem-family European systems: on the one hand, the well-known central Pyrenean family as found in the Barony of Esparros, and, on the other hand, the one prevalent in highland farms of South-East Norway. In the two communities, the continuity of the “house” was maintained over generations through non-egalitarian practices of transmission to a privileged heir or heiress. Other siblings received compensations or stayed at home unmarried. Comparing long-term mechanisms of the Norwegian odal farm and of the Pyrenean house permits identification of similar strategies of co-residence and more-or-less controlled family reproduction through choice of marriage partner and regulated fertility. These mountainous rural communities developed efficient responses to preindustrial and early-industrial demographic changes, facing and absorbing demographic growth and transition. They had to open to new markets, new techniques of production and exploitation of natural environment – particularly the forest – and adapt to social and legislative change. In both agro-pastoral systems, population pressure created a large group of landless or semi-landless families-cottars, day labourers or servants-whose reproduction strategies (age at marriage and fertility rates) diverged from those of the owners of land.

Beyond adoption: Orphans and family strategies in pre-industrial France

There was no legal adoption of under-age children in France before 1923. After the collapse of the Roman Empire the customs of western European societies, including France, sought to find a new family framework for orphaned children and tried carefully to secure the transmission of the assets such children inherited. Relatives had duties towards the children, and the children in turn had to work and serve their substitute parents and to obey them. A child was a “person” in western Christian society as soon as he or she was baptized, and the parents were in charge. But an orphan or semi-orphan was controlled by a family council and his or her future was submitted to familial debate and was controlled by neighbors and relatives, often in front of public and judicial authorities. French society before the 1789 Revolution had devised numerous ways of meeting the needs of the many orphans created by the prevailing high mortality rate, and maternal or paternal kinship expressed itself in diverse ways in the liv...

Revisiting the decline in remarriage in early-modern Europe: The case of Rheims in France

Many were the European towns where remarriage frequency declined, especially for widows, in the 17th and 18th centuries. This article investigates how remarriage models evolved in France, basing our analysis on vital events collected for the fourteen parishes of the town of Rheims in Champagne. A large set of Family Reconstitution Forms for the period 1668-1802 allows the study of remarriage among urban widows and widowers. Through four successive periods of time, we observe changes in remarriage behaviour in this preindustrial center as a case study, in a gender comparative perspective. In urban surroundings, in the late 18th century, strategies of remarriage may have been more flexible than in rural areas. Women were less exposed to family and social pressure preventing them to remarry, discouraging or delaying a new union. The presence of dependent children was always a problem when a widow tried to choose a new partner. It was easier for a man to remarry. A widower used to take a new wife quickly and a younger one, if possible without children at charge. A specific aspect of the urban context was population geographical turn-over and changing labour markets. It would explain, at least partly, the decreasing proportion of remarriages in Rheims. Female urban surplus was a constant, affecting the chances for remarriage, particularly in large European cities.

Domestic servants in comparative perspective: Introduction

The condition of domestic workers employed in western societies in past times has attracted much recent academic interest. Although a number of paintings (see Waterfield, French, & Craske, 2003) and texts, century after century, have depicted the lives and working conditions of servants in pre-industrial Europe, domestic service as a field of study was much neglected until recently. Laslett stressed in his pioneering book The world we have lost that domestic service was often a blife-cycle occupationQ (see Laslett, 1965, 1977) to be studied in historical perspective. Sheila Cooper, in her contribution to the present issue, extends earlier research (Wall, 1978, 1987) by assessing the role of service within the framework of what Hajnal (1965, 1982, 1983) has called the bnorthwest European marriage patternQ of delayed first marriage. This theme was extensively discussed during the conference bDomestic service, a factor of social revival in Europe,Q held at the University of Essex in May 2003 as part of the European Servant Project (Fauve-Chamoux, 2004b). Some issues remain unclear, such as the extent and characteristics of service in southern Europe (Kertzer & Brettell, 1987). The quantitative importance of the servant population, particularly its share of the population of adolescent and young adults, is still a question of intense debates, given its variances

A comparative study of family transmission systems in the central Pyrenees and northeastern Japan

The stem-family system tells us much about the mechanisms controlling reproduction in rural areas and the important role women played as mothers, heiresses, or in other roles. In this article, two stem-family rural societies are compared, one located in the central Pyrenees in Europe (Esparros), the other in northeastern Japan (Aizu domain and Nihonmatsu domain). Both are in mountainous areas. Particular attention is paid to the role of adopted sons and sons-in-law in family transmission processes.

Continuity and change among the Rhemish proletariat: Preindustrial textile work in family perspective

Textile workers formed a major part of the population in Rheims at the end of the Old Regime. Traditionally, many pieces of cloth were woven both in urban and rural families for Rhemish manufacturers (fabricants). With economic changes during the 18th century, the French cottage proto-industry was in crisis. Unemployed textile workers, young males and females, moved to town. Family workshops had difficulties surviving in Rheims. One of the sons inherited the family loom, but he rarely kept his independence. Family histories presented in this study show how weavers relied on their family network in and outside the city in order to deal with irregular demand. The market required that production be diversified. At the same time, a concentration of the workforce developed in new, larger family enterprises. The role of female workers in textile production was often elusive. Single women and widows, women alone without a spouse, worked hard to survive and could rarely keep their children at home.

Family transmission in Eurasian perspective ☆: Introduction

Although culturally very different, Europe and Japan have much more in common than many researchers in these countries thought. Recent research and scientific collaborations in the context of Eurasian projects clearly show that succession strategies and inheritance practices in the historical past of Japan and Europe have so many similarities that a comparative study could be fruitful. These strategies and practices were in some ways different and evolved similarly or differently for reasons that

Richard Wall, 1944–2011

On June 22, 2011, Richard Wall, a great historian of the family, household economy and gender, 66-yearsold, passed away following an extended illness, which he faced with exemplary courage, lucidity and serenity. He was buried in Cambridge, UK, where he spent most of his busy academic life. We have lost a generous world-renowned researcher, a talented and tireless colleague and a wonderful friend. Born on June 2, 1944 in Abergavenny, a charming Welsh market town, he came from a notable educated family and was attached to his origins, remaining a true defender of local identities and customs. Early in life, his mother became a widow. As a single child, he experienced an unexpected transition to hardship and developed his sense of family responsibility and solidarity towards the needy, particularly women living alone, single-parent women, and widows. Richards contribution to the 1998 European Science Foundation conference in Venice, “The impact on the household of the death of the father in simple and stem-family societies” in Renzo Derosas and Michel Oris (eds), When Dad Died, Individuals and Families Coping with Distress in Past Societies, 2002, Bern, Peter Lang, stressed (by personal experience) the family difficulty “to accumulate sufficient assets to support a household after the father and principal breadwinner had died” (p. 172). One of his main seminal articles did not exclude an autobiographical perspective: leaving home “is something that nearly all of us do at some stage of our lives, yet, paradoxically, very little is known about it” (“The age at leaving home”, The Journal of Family History, Studies in Family, Kinship and Demography, 1978, 3:2, p. 181). Richard Wall earned a degree in history at Kings College, London in 1965 and was awarded a Master of Philosophy at London University College (1969), with a dissertation entitled “A history of the development of Walthamstow, 1851–1901”, a socio-economic study of an Essex community.

Introduction: Adoption, affiliation, and family recomposition—inventing family continuity

Abstract This special issue deals with adoption practices and family recomposition in different societies in the past. Childrens survival and family continuity were of major concern, and individual interests were linked, if not subordinated, to family groups. There were many different ways to perpetuate assets and power within the framework of the family. In Europe, systems that stress the importance of patrimonial arrangements houses are generally associated with the Roman conception of property, whereas systems favoring egalitarian redistribution within enlarged kinship groups have affinity with “barbarian” customs. In Japan, China, or on the Pacific atolls, we find other kinds of family systems, but in all of them adoption, affiliation, or family recomposition give priority to family continuity and well-being, inventing solutions to conflict, penury, infertility, and death. No future could be imagined without children, and the succession of generations was secured by these practices, resulting in early geographical, social, and family mobility for children and sometimes young men and women.