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This is the first book to survey the experience of servants in
rural Europe from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century. This is
the first book to survey the experience of servants in rural Europe
from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century. Live-in servants were
a distinctive element of early modern society. They were typically
young adults aged between 16 and 24 who lived and worked in other
people's households before marriage. Servants tended to be employed
for long periods, several months to years at a time, and were paid
with food and lodging as well as cash wages. Both women and men
worked as servants in large numbers. Unlike domestic servants in
towns and wealthy households, rural servants typically worked on
farms and were an important element of the agricultural workforce.
Historians have viewed service as a distinct life-cycle stage
between childhood and marriage. It brought both freedom and
servility for young people. It allowed them to leave home and earn
a living before marriage, whilst learning a range of agricultural
and craft skills which reduced their dependence on their parents
and increased their choice in marriage partners. Still, servants
had limited rights: they were under the authority of their
employer, with a similar legal status to children. In many
countries the employment of servants was tightly controlled by law.
Servants could demand their wages, and leave when the contract
ended, but had to work long hours and had little say in their work
tasksduring employment. While some servants effectively became
family members, trusted and cared for, others were abused
physically and sexually by their employers. This collection
features a range of methodologies, reflecting the variety of source
materials and approaches available to historians of this topic in a
range of European countries and time periods. Nonetheless, it
demonstrates the strong common themes that emerge from studying
servants and will be of particular interest to historians of work,
gender, the family, agriculture, economic development, youth and
social structure. JANE WHITTLE is Professor of Rural History at the
University of Exeter. Contributors: CHRISTINE FERTIG, JEREMY
HAYHOE, SARAH HOLLAND, THIJS LAMBRECHT, CHARMIAN MANSELL, HANNE
OSTHUS, RICHARD PAPING, CRISTINA PRYTZ, RAFFAELLA SARTI, CAROLINA
UPPENBERG, LIES VERVAET, JANE WHITTLE
First comparative study of landless households brings out their
major role in European history and society. The numbers of landless
people - those lacking formal rights to land, or possessing only
tiny smallholdings - grew rapidly across post-medieval Europe, as
rural population and economic growth divided landowners and farmers
from (increasingly) landless rural workers. But they have hitherto
been relatively neglected, a gap which this volume, covering
Scandinavia, Germany, Austria, Netherlands, Belgium, Britain,
France and Spain from the sixteenth to the early twentieth
centuries, aims to fill, making creative use of a diverse range of
unexplored sources. Instead of concentrating on the well-documented
cases of landholding peasants, it explores the many different
experiences of the numerous rural landless. It explains how their
households were formed (often in the face of economic difficulties
and official hostility), how all the members of a family
contributed to its survival, how the landless related to other
social groups and negotiated access to vital resources, and how
they adapted as rural society was changed by war, politics,
agrarian and industrial development, government policy and welfare
systems. Contributors: Arnau Barquer i Cerda, John Broad, Dieter
Bruneel, Christine Fertig, Henry French, Margareth Lanzinger, Jonas
Lindstroem, Riikka Miettinen, Richard Paping, Wouter Ronsijn, Merja
Uotila, Nadine Vivier
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