This book addresses the multifaceted history of the domestic sphere in Europe from the Age of Reformation to the emergence of modern society. By focusing on daily practice, interaction and social relations, it shows continuities and social change in European history from an interior perspective. The Routledge History of the Domestic Sphere in Europe contains a variety of approaches from different regions that each pose a challenge to commonplace views such as the emergence of confessional cultures, of private life, and of separate spheres of men and women. By analyzing a plethora of manifold sources including diaries, court records, paintings and domestic advice literature, this volume provides an overview of the domestic sphere as a location of work and consumption, conflict and cooperation, emotions and intimacy, and devotion and education. The book sheds light on changing relations between spouses, parents and children, masters and servants or apprentices, and humans and animals or plants, thereby exceeding the notion of the modern nuclear family. This volume will be of great use to upper-level graduates, postgraduates and experienced scholars interested in the history of family, household, social space, gender, emotions, material culture, work and private life in early modern and nineteenth-century Europe.

This book addresses the multifaceted history of the domestic sphere in Europe from the Age of Reformation to the emergence of modern society. By focusing on daily practice, interaction and social relations, it shows continuities and social change in European history from an interior perspective. The Routledge History of the Domestic Sphere in Europe contains a variety of approaches from different regions that each pose a challenge to commonplace views such as the emergence of confessional cultures, of private life, and of separate spheres of men and women. By analyzing a plethora of manifold sources including diaries, court records, paintings and domestic advice literature, this volume provides an overview of the domestic sphere as a location of work and consumption, conflict and cooperation, emotions and intimacy, and devotion and education. The book sheds light on changing relations between spouses, parents and children, masters and servants or apprentices, and humans and animals or plants, thereby exceeding the notion of the modern nuclear family. This volume will be of great use to upper-level graduates, postgraduates and experienced scholars interested in the history of family, household, social space, gender, emotions, material culture, work and private life in early modern and nineteenth-century Europe.

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

The book examines the topic of paternal authority as it developed over a long period of time. The focus is on the power of fathers as manifested within a complex fabric of legal, social, economic, political and moral aspects. In early modern times, a father's power was based upon his personal and legal position as the one responsible for the family and the household in the sense of an economic unit, as well as on his moral authority over all those who belonged to said household. At the same time, the father was subject to public control, and his legal status was characterized not only by power, but also by obligations. This status was modelled after the figure of the pater familias as conceived of in Roman law-a concept that remained relevant up into the nineteenth century, though not without changes. Ultimately, the figure of the pater familias came to overlap with the modern-era perception of fathers' disempowerment. The chapters of this book analyse the public responsibility of fathers in the case of an adulterous daughter, legal acts of emancipation by which a son could gain independence from his father, and various opinions with regard to "indulgent" fathering, paternal authority over married sons, and provisions set out in wills. This book was originally published as a special issue of The History of the Family.

Throughout history, houses have been an economic resource as much as a means of social, political and cultural agency. From the early modern period to the 20th century, the multifaceted capital of houses linked individuals, families and societies in specific ways. The essays collected here probe the material texture of past societies concerning the inheritance, value, sale or maintenance of houses as well as the symbolic meanings that houses conveyed.