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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
A reassessment of seigneurial justice that presents a new vision of
village society in eighteenth-century France. Thousands of
seigneurial courts covered the French countryside in the early
modern era. By the eighteenth century these courts were subject to
mounting criticism, as Enlightenment concerns about rationality and
standardization combined with older absolutist worries that lords'
ownership of justice weakened the king's authority. Although the
courts were abolished in 1789, this criticism persisted, with
historians traditionally portraying them as marginal and abusive
relics of a bygone feudal age. In Enlightened Feudalism, Jeremy
Hayhoe demonstrates that these local institutions actually
functioned with a degree of efficiency, professionalism, and
attention to peasant concerns that few historians have appreciated.
Set in Northern Burgundy, this study reveals how provincial
administrative elites quietly encouraged the use of simpler
procedure for minor disputes, thus bringing seigneurial courts
closer to village life. But these reforms paradoxically made the
newly invigorated courts a key instrument of the late
eighteenth-century intensification of the seigneurie. Peasant
ambivalence toward seigneurial courts reflected thisduality, as the
cahiers de doleances both praised the institution for its role in
community affairs, and vigorously criticized it for bolstering the
seigneurial system. By situating the local court within a wide
rangeof para-judicial institutions and behaviors, Hayhoe presents a
new vision of village society, one in which communal bonds were too
weak to enforce behavioral norms. Village communities had
substantial authority over their own affairs, but required the
frequent and active collaboration of the court to enforce the rules
that they put into place. Jeremy Hayhoe is Assistant Professor at
the Universite de Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada.
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