Joana-Maria Pujadas-Mora

The apple never falls far from the tree: siblings and intergenerational transmission among farmers and artisans in the Barcelona area in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

Abstract This article aims at studying the intergenerational transmission of status within farmers and artisans in the preindustrial area of Barcelona from a siblings’ attainment perspective in a context of impartible inheritance. The data source used are the Marriage License Books from the Barcelonas Diocese compiled in the Barcelona Historical Marriage Database, which for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries provides a rich and continuous demographic and socioeconomic information through the use of the multilevel regression analysis. Our main findings points out the important family impact on the social fate of children. First-married children were the maximal inheritors of parental statuses in all social groups, especially for farmers and artisans, the former being more linked to ascription than the latter. However, farmers were found to be the group with the highest intergenerational occupational inheritance although artisans were who transmitted at most their social group. This divergent effect is due to the different strategies, or in a way a same strategy, used on non-first-married children to whom, families from the two social groups, when not able to transmit the same parental occupation, preferred to position the offspring in artisans’ careers thanks to a favourable context of a flourishing manufacturing industry at the countryside.

Cordons Sanitaires and the Rationalisation Process in Southern Europe (Nineteenth-Century Majorca)

Never before the nineteenth century had Europeans, especially in the south, adopted cordons sanitaires in such great numbers or at such a fast rate. This article aims to analyse the process of the rationalisation and militarisation of the cordons sanitaires imposed in the fight against epidemics during the nineteenth century on the Mediterranean island of Majorca (Spain). These cordons should be understood as a declaration of war by the authorities on emerging epidemics. Epidemics could generate sudden and intolerably high rises in mortality that the new liberal citizenship found unacceptable. Toleration of this type of measure was the result of a general consensus, with hardly any opposition, which not only obtained the support of scientists (especially in the field of medicine) but also of most of the local and provincial political elite, and even of the population at large.

La cuantificación demográfica y epidemiológica en el higienismo balear, 1850-1930

El desarrollo de la Medicina Social potencio el uso de la cuantificacion como herramienta para la valoracion del estado de salud de las poblaciones. En Mallorca, higienistas como los medicos Enric Fajarnes, Bernat Riera, Antoni Mayol y Emili Darder y el ingeniero de caminos Eusebi Estada buscaron conocer el estado de salud a traves del crecimiento de la poblacion, el perfil demografico y epidemiologico de la mortalidad y su relacion con el clima. Sus calculos mostraron el buen estado de salud de la poblacion balear respecto a la espanola, mientras no era tan satisfactorio en un contexto internacional. Estos resultados se explicaban por la benevolencia del clima insular, lo que justificaba la reforma sanitaria.El desarrollo de la Medicina Social potencio el uso de la cuantificacion como herramienta para la valoracion del estado de salud de las poblaciones. En Mallorca, higienistas como los medicos Enric Fajarnes, Bernat Riera, Antoni Mayol y Emili Darder y el ingeniero de caminos Eusebi Estada buscaron conocer el estado de salud a traves del crecimiento de la poblacion, el perfil demografico y epidemiologico de la mortalidad y su relacion con el clima. Sus calculos mostraron el buen estado de salud de la poblacion balear respecto a la espanola, mientras no era tan satisfactorio en un contexto internacional. Estos resultados se explicaban por la benevolencia del clima insular, lo que justificaba la reforma sanitaria.At the end of the 19th century, social medicine promoted the use of quantification as a means to evaluate the health status of populations. In Majorca, hygienists such as the physicians Enric Fajarnés, Bernat Riera, Antoni Mayol and Emili Darder and the civil engineer Eusebi Estada sought a better understanding of health status by considering the population growth, the demographic and epidemiological profile and the influence of weather on mortality. These calculations showed that the Balearic population had a good health status in comparison to the population of mainland Spain, although less so in the international context. These results were explained by the benevolence of the insular climate, a factor that would also guarantee the success of the public health reforms proposed.