P.M.M. Klep

De geschiedenis van de landbouw in de Beijerlanden

Embankment and allotment of the polders of Beijerland, in the southern part of the Province of Holland during the 16th and l7th Centuries; changes in the parcelling in course of time; prices of land and rates of land rent and interest on mortgages since the beginning of the l7th Century; statistical data on cropping patterns; yields and prices of cash crops since the early 18th Century; data on stocking- rate of cattle and losses due to the cattle-plague, during the second part of the 18th Century in Beijerland and the Province of Holland; organization and management of farms, and types of farmhouses and buildings; an estimate of the profitability of agriculture, 1618-1841.

Adriaan Kluit's statistics and the future of the Dutch state from a European perspective

This article discusses the early history of academic statistics in the Netherlands in relation to the reform challenges of the Dutch state. Statistics, before it developed into a predominantly quantitative social science, was adopted around 1800 by Adriaan Kluit as a method for shaping and articulating his political vision. Kluits politics, the article suggests, echoed the specific outlook on the ‘intrinsic power’ of the Dutch Republic as a trading state that was developed during William IVs stadholderate in the mid eighteenth century. Through the ideas of later writers and statesmen who had trained as statisticians this same approach to envisaging the Dutch future in international trade and politics was carried over into nineteenth-century Dutch political economy and constitutional reform.

The relationship between parents and adult children in the economic culture of rural Netherlands, 1880–1910

This study examines the complexity of contradictory interests in the relationship between parents and adult children among agricultural wage laborers in rural Netherlands about 1900. One important potential issue of conflict was the marriage of children. In the case of wage laborers, Hajnals independent livelihood theory is not really helpful in explaining regional differences in age at marriage. Marriage is viewed as a problem of balance and competition between the livelihood problems of parents and children. Two main issues of wage laborers are dealt with: the help adult children give to elderly parents and the control of the earnings of unmarried adolescent and adult children by their parents. Regional variations in childrens help and parental control are measured and explained using four independent variables: extent of property ownership by wage laborers, extent of their production for the market (and need for unpaid family labor), wage level, and percentage who belonged to traditional religions in the village. Statistical analysis suggests that the property of agricultural wage laborers was most important in explaining variation in parent–child relationships. Wage level and religion also showed considerable explaining power, particularly for wages earned by unmarried children.

Introduction to special issue: contradictory interests of offspring and parents, 1500–2000

Abstract Conflicts between parents and offspring at home are not a popular issue, at least not in the field of the history of the family. Nevertheless do they occur and it might be rewarding to study these phenomena, although historical sources are scarce. They can be an expression of more general social tensions and they might provoke social changes. This Special Issue presents four contributions in which the central focus is about tensions between parents and grown-up offspring that is still at home. Three topics will be dealt with: marriage, earnings of children working elsewhere, and the threat of leaving home. Factors that seem to affect the balance of interests between parents and offspring include parental power, family needs, public authority and interests taken by children in the outside world.