Pushing family reconstitution further: Life course, socioeconomic hierarchy, and migration in the Loudunais, 1705-1765

Journal of Family History

Volumn 37, Issue 3, 2012, Pages 303-318

  Kennedy, Gregory M W ^a  

^a UNIVERSITÉ DE MONCTON   (Canada)

Author keywords

Family reconstitution; France; Life course; Migration; Socioeconomic hierarchy

Indexed keywords

EID: 84862699033     PISSN: 03631990     EISSN: 15525473     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0363199012439153     Document Type: Article

References (59)

1. Série 9E 17/1 Aulnay, 82/2 La Chaussée and 178/2 Martaizé and Série 2C 1930-1943 Contrôle des Actes Bureau de Moncontour, Archives départementales de la Vienne (Poitiers).
2. Louis Henry et Michel Fleury, Des registres paroissiauxà l'histoire de la population (Paris, 1956).
3. For example, Jean Ganiage, Trois villages d'IÎe-de-France au XVIIIe siècle:étude démographique (Paris, 1963).
4. Pierre Valmary, Familles paysannes au XVIIIe siècle en Bas-Quércy:étude démographique (Paris, 1965).
5. Tony Wrigley, Population and History (London, 1969).
6. Steven Ruggles, "The Limitations of English Family Reconstitution: English Population History from Family Reconstitution, 1580-1837," Continuity and Change 14, no. 1 (1999): 105-30.
7. Bertrand Desjardins, "Bias in Age at Marriage in Family Reconstitutions: Evidence from French-Canadian Data," Population Studies 49 (1995): 165-9.
8. Jacques Dupaquier, "Problèmes de représentativité dans lesétudes fondées sur la reconstitution des familles," Annales de démographie historique (1972): 83-92.
9. For example, Pamela Sharpe, "The Total Reconstitution Method: A Tool for Class-Specific Study?" Local Population Studies 44 (1990): 41-51.
10. David R. Weir "Family Income, Mortality, and Fertility on the Eve of the Demographic Transition: A Case Study of Rosny-Sous-Bois," Journal of Economic History 55, no. 1 (1995): 1-26.
11. A special volume of the Annales de démographie historique addressed this issue at length in 1972.
12. See the introduction by Louis Henry, "Variations des noms de famille et changements de prénom. Problèmes qui en résultent pour le couplage automatique des données. Introduction," 1972: 245-50. Sharpe also discusses these challenges at length in her article, "The Total Reconstitution Method," 48-51.
13. A. V. Chayanov, The Theory of Peasant Economy (reprint, Illinois, 1966 [1925]), xvii and 69.
14. Angela M. O'Rand and Margaret L. Krecker, "Concepts of the Life Cycle: Their History, Meanings, and Uses in the Social Sciences," Annual Review of Sociology 16 (1990): 242.
15. Tamara K. Hareven, "The History of the Family and the Complexity of Social Change," The American Historical Review 1 (1991): 95.
16. Glen H. Elder, Jr., "Family History and the Life Course," Journal of Family History 2 (1977): 282.
17. Daniel Courgeau and Éva Lelièvre, Event History Analysis in Demography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 2-3.
18. George Alter, "L'event history analysis en démographie historique, difficultés et perspectives," Annales de démographie historique 2 (1998): 25-35.
19. Martine Segalen, "Life-Course Patterns and Peasant Culture in France: A Critical Assessment," Journal of Family History 12, no. 1-3 (1987): 213-24.
20. Guy Brunet et Alain Bideau "Démographie historique et généalogie," Annales de démographie historique 2 (2000): 101-10.
21. Hareven, "The History of the Family," 110.
22. Luigi Lorenzetti et Muriel Neven, "Démographie, famille et reproduction familial: un dialogue enévolution," Annales de démographie historique 2 (2000): 83-100.
23. Juuso Marttila, "Beyond the Family and the Household: Occupational Family Networks," Journal of Family History 35, no. 2 (2010): 128-46.
24. Archives Départementales Indre-et-Loire (Tours) C337 État ou nombre des feux de chaque paroisse de l'élection de Loudun depuis 1732.
25. Gregory M. W. Kennedy, "French Peasants in Two Worlds.
26. A Comparative Study of Rural Experience in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Acadia and the Loudunais, PhD Thesis, York University (2008): 330-1.
27. Gilles Postel-Vinay estimates that simple billets between private persons constituted as much as 60 percent of the number of credit transactions, but less than 15 percent of the amount of money loaned. La terre et l'argent. L'agriculture et le crédit en France du XVIIIe au début du XXe siècle (Paris, 1998), 44-5. This could explain why day-workers are underrepresented in the sample, as they were more likely to need small, short-term loans of this kind.
28. Thomas Brennan points out that it is equally difficult to know the reasons why peasants borrowed money and thus very hard to support proposed theories about poverty or investment in "Peasants and Debt in Eighteenth-Century Champagne," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 37, no. 2 (2006): 177.
29. Chayanov, The Theory of Peasant Economy, 67.
30. Elder, J., Family History and the Life Course, 280.
31. Hoffman, Growth in a Traditional Society, 71.
32. Postel-Vinay, La terre et l'argent, 56.
33. Brennan found a clear division between the half of peasant debtors who were reasonably secure and the other half who were in "dire straits" in "Peasants and Debt, 197.
34. Lorenzetti and Neven, "Démographie, famille et reproduction familiale," 86.
35. Gérard Béaur has also recently challenged the "exploitation myth" in, "60 ans après Renève: le marché de la terre avant et après la Révolution," in Campagnes en mouvement en France du XVIe au XIXe siècle, textes réunis par Antoine Follain (Dijon, 2008), 111.
36. Philip T. Hoffman points out that landlords looked for married men with sufficient capital to be tenants in Growth in a Traditional Society: The French Countryside, 1450-1815 (Princeton: Princeton, 1996), 37.
37. James B. Collins, "The Economic Role of Women in Seventeenth-Century France," French Historical Studies 16, no. 2 (1989): 436-70.
38. Collins, "The Economic Role of Women," 442.
39. Jean-Marc Moriceau found that the availability of both permanent and temporary salaried workers was essential to rural prosperity in Les fermiers de l'IÎe-de-France, XVe-XVIIIe siècles: l'ascension d'un patronat agricole (Paris, 1994), 358.
40. Yves Landry and Jacques Légaré, "The Life Course of Seventeenth-Century Immigrants to Canada," Journal of Family History 12, no. 1-3 (1987): 201-12.
41. Brigitte Maillard found that this was common throughout Touraine in "Les veuves dans la société rurale au XVIIIe siècle," Annales de Bretagne et des Pays de l'Ouest: Anjou, Maine, Touraine Tome 106, 1 (1999): 211-30.
42. Gérard Béaur, "Les catégories socialesà la campagne: repenser un instrument d'analyse," Annales de Bretagne et des Pays de l'Ouest: Anjou, Maine, Touraine Tome 106, no. 1 (1999): 159-76.
43. Hoffman, Growth in a Traditional Society, 41.
44. Donald Sutherland found that most chouans were young men in their twenties from both richer and poorer peasant families who worked as hired hands, that is, day-workers, and not as landowners or tenants, The Chouans: the Social Origins of Popular Counter-Revolution in Upper Brittany, 1770-1796 (Oxford, 1982), 37.
45. Each parish elected a syndic to represent the community for administrative, legal and fiscal matters on an annual basis. While all heads of household in theory had voting rights in the parish assembly, this body tended to be dominated by wealthier ploughmen and artisans.
46. James B. Collins, "Translation de domicile: Rethinking Sedentarity and Mobility in the Early Modern French Countryside," French History 20, no. 4 (2006): 390.
47. Many older studies found that over 90 percent of brides married in their home parish. For example, Ganiage, Trois villages d'IÎe-de-France, 59.
48. Valmary, Familles paysannes en Bas-Quércy, 109.
49. Jeremy Hayhoe, "L'exogamie comme indicateur de la mobilité géographique en Bourgogne rurale au XVIIIe siècle," Annales de démographie historique (à venir).
50. Vincent Gourdon et Marion Trévisi, "Âge et migrations dans la France rurale traditionnelle: uneétudeà partir du recensement de l'an VIIà la Roche-Guyon," Histoire, économie et société 19, no. 3 (2000): 321.
51. Gourdon and Trévisi found that one in eleven male migrants moved during their fifties, "Âge et migrations," 321.
52. For an example of the dismissive view, see Jacques Dupâquier, Histoire de la population française, Tome 2 (Paris, 1995), 104-5.
53. Collins, "Translation de domicile," 399.
54. Jean-Pierre Poussou, "Note sur la mobilité de la vieillesse et les déplacements de la population en pays pré-pyrénéen pendant la Révolution française," Histoire, économie et société 21, no. 3 (2002): 297.
55. Several recent studies of other parts of the world have found evidence of this clustering of infant deaths among a few high risk families. See Sören Edvinsson, Anders Brändström, John Rogers, and Göran Broström, "High-Risk Families: The Unequal Distribution of Infant Mortality in Nineteenth-Century Sweden," Population Studies 59, no. 3 (2005): 321-37.
56. David Souden employed a similar approach of using nonregistration of vital events as a proxy for mobility to study change over time in mobility rates in early modern England in "Movers and Stayers in Family Reconstitution Populations," Local Population Studies 33 (1984).
57. Sutherland also found in Upper Brittany that many peasant children "left as soon as they could afford to and later installed themselves some distance from the original holding," Social Origins of Popular Counter-Revolution, 63.
58. This was an enduring pattern that Collins also found to be common in the seventeenth century, "The Economic Role of Women," 464.
59. Gérard Béaur came to a similar conclusion for Normandy in "60 ans après Renève," 108.