Ulrich Pfister

The Protoindustrial Household Economy: Toward a Formal Analysis

Several recent studies on the household structure and the demographic evolution of protoindustrial communities in early modern Europe contradict important tenets of protoindustry theory as it has emerged from the writings of Braun, Mendels, Medick, and Levine. The present study develops a conceptual framework of the protoindustrial household economy based on a simple model of the decision-making process by which rural households allocate their labor to agricultural and protoindustrial activities. Its application to the class-specific location of protoindustrial activities, to the demographic corollaries of protoindustrialization, to age- and gender-specific work roles as well as to patterns and strategies of life cycles suggests its capacity to interpret in a coherent fashion a wide variety of seemingly contradictory empirical evidence.

Rural land and credit markets, the permanent income hypothesis and proto-industry: evidence from early modern Zurich

The study documents fluctuations of proto-industrial income, of occupation, debt and presence on land markets across the life course for rural households in a major proto-industrial region during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These fluctuations are interpreted on the basis that a major objective of households is to equalize their income across different stages of their development. The permanent income hypothesis is then extended to take into account land purchases and debt-contracting that result from the need to adjust land and capital to fluctuations in the size of the family labour force across the family cycle and from endeavours to improve the familys welfare by increasing the labour to land ratio. The empirical material presented shows marked fluctuations of income from proto-industrial work across the life course and suggests the existence of permanent income-cum-accumulation strategies to cope with these fluctuations.

Proto-industrielles Wachstum: ein theoretisches Modell

After a review of the discussion which followed from the seminal work by Mendels and others, the paper calls for the development of proto-industry theory in a way that renders it capable to explain for regional diferences in the development of handicraft industries in a more satisfactory way than is currently the case. In its main part, the paper provides an exposition of such a reformulation which essentially rests on three elements: First, a macro-economic growth model based on the assumption of a static technology; second, a model of the labor allocation process of households participating in manufacture production; and, third, reflections on the economic role of institutions in proto-industrial growth. The presentation includes empirical references which suggest that this model can structure in a coherent fashion our knowledge on a wide array of phenomena related with early modern manufacture production. The concluding discussion offers reflections with respect to ramifactions of the main argument, our understanding of the origins of the industrial revolution and the possible limits of the model.

Agricultural Output Growth in a Proto- and Early Industrial Setting: Evidence from Sharecropping in Western Westphalia and the Lower Rhineland, c. 1740–1860

An evidence-based time series on agricultural growth prior to 1850 only exists for very few German territories. Except for Saxony, there is no series available for the pre-1815 period. Based on sharecropping contracts from the estate of Anholt, we reconstruct the development of crop production for western Westphalia and the lower Rhineland c. 1740–1860. Our results show that parallel to Saxony, agricultural growth in this north-west German region was driven entirely by demand from a growing number of households engaged in proto-industrial and early industrial manufacture production. Fully commercialised land tenure systems dominated in Anholt from the beginning of the early modern period, and manorial institutions had little relevance for rural property relations. Hence, the radical French and Prussian agrarian reforms at the beginning of the nineteenth century had no effect on agricultural production. In a north-west European comparison, Anholts sharecroppers performed rather well during this decisive formation period culminating in early industrialisation.

Women's bread -- men's capital: the domestic economy of small textile entrepreneurs in rural Zurich in the 17th and 18th centuries.

The family enterprises of small rural entrepreneurs in proto-industrial textile production have been little studied so far. This article focuses on the ways in which family labor assists in entrepreneurial activities and nonindustrial activities within the domestic unit contribute to the creation of proto-industrial capital. The empirical material on early modern Zurich (Switzerland) documents large household economies among entrepreneurs engaging in agriculture as well as among drapers who employ their family labor in weaving or in ancillary tasks connected with the activity of putting out dependent weavers. It also demonstrates an association between proto-industrial entrepreneurship and baking, the latter often being performed by female family labor. This finding is explained by the use of bread as a means of paying workers and by the lack of access to capital markets: baking implies the creation of a surplus value within the family economy that can be directly converted into proto-industrial capital.