Katherine A. Lynch

The European Marriage Pattern in the Cities: Variations on a Theme by Hajnal

This study investigates the “European Marriage Pattern” in the cities of northwestern Europe in the early modern and modern periods. It shows the importance of heterogeneity in ways that the two features of the pattern—high age at marriage and high proportions single—were integrated in different types of urban economic settings and across various social groups. The study argues that while demographic consequences of the “European Marriage Pattern” were of fundamental importance, the endurance of the pattern is also explained by its vitality as part of a widespread system of cultural values.

The Decline of Remarriage: Evidence From German Village Populations in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

Family reconstitution data for fourteen German village populations permit the examination of remarriage during the eighteenth and nineteenth cen turies. The results provide compelling evidence for a secular decline in the tenden cy to remarry. Pronounced age and sex differentials in the likelihood of remar riage were evident: widows were far less likely to remarry than widowers, and the probability of remarriage declined rapidly with age, particularly for women. The probability of remarriage was also inversely associated with the number and age of children. There were, however, no clear differences in either the probability of remarriage or its tendency to decline over time among major occupational groups. The decline in remarriage probabilities was caused in part by declines in adult mortality, which gradually raised the ages of surviving spouses to levels at which remarriage has historically been rather unlikely. However, age-specific marriage probabilities also declined, affecting both men and women and all oc cupational groups, suggesting the presence of a social change of wide scope. Some comments on possible factors contributing to the decline of remarriage are presented. The need for a comprehensive explanation of remarriage trends and differentials remains an important challenge for family historians.

Anthropology, Family History, and the Concept of Strategy

In this essay, we consider family history as a common field of substantive and theoretical interest shaped by contacts among several disciplines. These disciplines obviously include social history and population studies, but also – and rather prominently – social anthropology. One major component of the growth of family history has been the increasing amount of attention that historians pay to topics such as marriage, kinship, and the family, which have long been of central significance in the anthropological investigation of social structure. On the other hand, anthropologists have become aware of the serious limitations of synchronic, present-oriented field research, and most of them now probably agree that historical analysis is essential if they are to understand social and cultural processes. This realization has gradually changed many anthropologists from reluctant consumers of historical work into active and often quite enthusiastic producers.1 The fruitfulness of this rapprochement was perhaps best demonstrated as early as the 1970s by the advances made possible by the adoption in family history of the anthropological concept of developmental cycle of the domestic group. Although Chayanov’s work already foreshadowed this concept, it was independently formulated in 1949 by Meyer Fortes, one of the leading British social anthropologists, and further refined by Fortes himself and by his colleagues and pupils in Cambridge in the 1950s.2 When its potentialities were revealed to the nascent field of family history by the works of anthropologists like Goody and Hammel and,

Why weren't (many) European women ‘missing’?

In a 1990 article, Amartya Sen observed “More than 100million Women … Missing” from the populations of parts of south and east Asia. Direct observation and census data suggested that gender ratios deviated sufficiently from what is known to be normal in modern human populations to suggest that the phenomenon was not random. Researchers have explored major proximate causes of “missing” girls and women such as female-selective abortion, routine neglect of young girls in their families including differential access to modern medical care, and even infanticide. This article uses Sens work and the research of others on Asia to compare with evidence of the disadvantaging or even “mortal neglect” of girls and women in Western European society in the early modern and modern periods — roughly from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. It argues that the current state of the evidence suggests little support for similar gender-specific forms of mortal neglect in Western Europe. It explores why this may have been so, using evidence from economic, social, demographic and religious life. ☆ The author would like to thank Amy Patterson for research and editorial help; and George Alter, Fabian Drixler, Joel Harrington, Satomi Kurosu, Donald Sutton, Frans van Poppel and an anonymous reader for the journal for their insightful comments and suggestions for revisions of a previous draft of this article. All errors of fact and logic are the authors alone.

Marriage age among French factory workers: an Alsatian example.

The author examines trends in age at first marriage of factory workers in a community undergoing industrialization using data from marriage registers for Dornach France for the period between the mid-1820s and the mid-1850s. Several factors influencing workers nuptiality including occupation and migration characteristics and timing of parents deaths are investigated. The focus is on data concerning female workers. The findings are compared with the outcomes predicted by Hajnals western European model and by the proto-industrialization hypothesis. (ANNOTATION)

Social Provisions and the Life of Civil Society in Europe: Rethinking Public and Private

This article discusses the critical role that social provisioning played in forming and maintaining communities across the longue durée of European history. Based on evidence from urban Europe in particular, the study suggests the importance of the early creation of a sphere of civil society here. Civil society was marked by the presence of both voluntary and civic associations, many of them designed for the care of the “honorable” or “house” poor. Although filled with the activities of “private” citizens, civil society was an eminently public sphere. It provided men and, more importantly, women with opportunities to extend their lives beyond the domestic to participate in organized associational life. Two types of community, based on confessional and civic affiliation, were especially important in shaping early modern societies and the poor relief organizations that helped to bind them together.The study argues that these types of community persisted well beyond the early modern period, leaving a legacy of community-building patterns and practices of social provisioning that helped to define the “imagined communities” of modern nations and their welfare states.

Biometric Modeling n the Study of Infant Mortality: Evidence from Nineteenth-Century Sweden

In this study we investigate a well-known biometric model of infant mortality that has been used both to distinguish major causes of mortality before 1 year of age and to examine historical data to identify possible underregistration of infant mortality particularly that which occurred shortly after birth. We show that arguments for the under-registration of infant deaths based solely on the biometric model cannot be supported empirically and are likely due to mis-specifications of the model as well as inappropriate methods for estimating the parameters of interest. The study uses data for 21 parishes in nineteenth-century Sweden. (EXCERPT)

Domestic Tensions, National Anxieties: global perspectives on marriage, crisis and nation

to do with leftovers, nostalgia (‘Christmas ain’t what it used to be’, 136), Morecambe and Wise and much more are included in Johnes’ analysis of the British Christmas. There is the potential for the analysis to be like a Christmas stocking – very full of presents but without coherence or connection – yet Johnes holds the argument together with the ‘big idea’ of the book, which he explains is that Christmas has been and is experienced as a good thing by the British. Despite changing social and economic contexts, there are substantial continuities of expression and articulation around Christmas, so that one poll in 2007 suggested that 93% of the population would celebrate Christmas – including, for example, Punjabi families in Southall giving presents in the 1990s. Whereas Mark Connelly argues that Christmas came to be understood as a peculiarly English phenomenon (Christmas: a social history, London, 1999, 2012), Johnes argues that it became part of the fabric of British society. Different experiences of Christmas across the UK were variations on a theme rather than alternative or contested cultural expressions. Johnes’ book is fact-packed. Its extensive evidence reflects the range and depth of Johnes’ underpinning research – and it is clear that as a compendium of Christmas stories it is also aimed at the general reader as well as academic audiences. My one question at the end of the book (which I read over Christmas) was whether Johnes considered that the Christmas experience had any autonomous agency or whether it was merely reflective of changes and continuities in British society. Does the exceptionality of Christmas remove it from contributing to developments in the everyday experiences of the British since 1914? Was it all over by early January until the next time?

Population and Society in Western European Port-Cities, c. 1650-1939 (review)

allegorical voice of the Creator himself” (84). Part II addresses the organ in the small factory town of Leufsta Bruk, Sweden (1728), covering the architectural, social, and economic history of the town as well as the history of the organ, its builder, and its renovations over the centuries. The subject of Part III is a Frenchdesigned organ in Copenhagen (1890). The authors discuss international connections and patronage as well as technological changes in nineteenth-century organ construction. Part IV addresses the twentiethcentury interest in the performance practice of previous periods, speciacally the organ revival as it relates to an organ in Stockholm (1949). This anal section discusses musical styles that depart radically from the techniques of previous eras, most notably through the composer (and contributor) Bengt Hambraeus’ Rioessioni (2000). That composition is on the compact disk provided with the book, along with other music performed on each of the six instruments. Guides to parsing the compositions, like those on pages 271/72 and 190, illuminate the musical compositions and the character of the organs as discussed in the text. The inclusion of the disk makes for a uniquely engaging experience. Two of the interludia, the Primum and Secundum, are notable studies. The arst is a historiographical study that takes on sweeping narratives about the “golden age” of organs. The latter provides an excellent interdisciplinary conspectus of musical life in eighteenth-century Germany, emphasizing the importance of residential cities and their princely courts along with the development of the middle class and universities. Snyder’s Postludium provides a brief look at a sixth organ—the recently built organ in Göteborg (2000). It exempliaes her message of recognizing change in history, since the instrument came about through the collective work of historians and organists in order to recreate aspects of earlier organs. This chapter brings out an apparent paradox: Because this organ was built at the dawn of the twenty-arst century to play music of the seventeenth century, it would not seem to reoect its own time, but it does. The aesthetic of our time recognizes that no one instrument can play the entire organ repertory.

Review Essay : French Historical Demography: Theory and Practice

Katherine A. Lynch is Associate Professor of History at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213. Her research interests include historical demography and the family history of modern Europe, and the study of the relationships between industrialization, demographic change, and social policy. The appearance of two new works by leading scholars in French historical demography provides the occasion for looking into the past and future of a particular style of research. Jacques Dupdquier’s Pour la démographie historique and Jean-Pierre Bardet’s Rouen aux