In recent years the peasant household has become a central focal point of social history. This is true not only because the peasant represents the major element of European society through the nineteenth century, but also because many of the main issues in modern historical debate can be studied within the sphere of the peasant family. This book deals with the European peasant family during the period of transformation from agrarian to industrial society, the time called by some the period of protoindustrialization. The essays in this volume explore some of the major issues concerning the influence of the economy, society and institutions on the peasant household and, conversely, the influence of the peasant household on the outside world. Themes dealt with include the ways in which the physical environment and the economy may make for very different family structures and even affect intra-family relationships; the effects of inheritance, marriage and kinship strategies, as well as social pressure, on peasant family structure and demography; the debate about changing gender roles and status; the debate over the manner and effects of class formation; questions of social and political agency; the nature of gender and parent-child relations; the validity of protoindustrial theory; and the role of peasants in initiating industrialization as consumers, producers and as a labor force. In examining these themes, the essays provide both case studies and innovative analysis by preeminent international scholars in the fields of family and women’s history, economic history and demography.

Barbara A. Hanawalt's richly detailed account offers an intimate view of everyday life in Medieval England that seems at once surprisingly familiar and yet at odds with what many experts have told us. She argues that the biological needs served by the family do not change and that the ways fourteenth- and fifteenth-century peasants coped with such problems as providing for the newborn and the aged, controlling premarital sex, and alleviating the harshness of their material environment in many ways correspond with our twentieth-century solutions. Using a remarkable array of sources, including over 3,000 coroners' inquests into accidental deaths, Hanawalt emphasizes the continuity of the nuclear family from the middle ages into the modern period by exploring the reasons that families served as the basic unit of society and the economy. Providing such fascinating details as a citation of an incantation against rats, evidence of the hierarchy of bread consumption, and descriptions of the games people played, her study illustrates the flexibility of the family and its capacity to adapt to radical changes in society. She notes that even the terrible population reduction that resulted from the Black Death did not substantially alter the basic nature of the family.

This history of medieval village life is told through the experiences of Cecilia Penifader, a peasant woman who lived on one English manor in the early fourteenth century. This truly unique book offers a wealth of insight into medieval peasant society, bringing many of the characteristics of a time and a people to life. Short and readable, it is an ideal text for undergraduate teaching, suitable for courses in Western civilization, medieval history, women's history, and English history.

This book applies scientific demographic methods to the study of Byzantine peasantry in a period of feudalization. The author shows that the number of peasants declined in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries for reasons that had less to do with catastrophes than with internal social developments. Her book makes the first thorough analysis of this rural society, and one that draws on all available sources. It focuses on village structure and family or kinship groups as well as social and demographic trends. Angeliki Laiou-Thomadakis is Professor of History at Rutgers University and the author of Constantinople and the Latins (Harvard) Originally published in 1977. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

A beautiful volume that brings to light the forgotten Le Nain brothers, a trio of 17th-century French master painters who specialized in portraiture, religious subjects, and scenes of everyday peasant life In France in the 17th century, the brothers Antoine (c. 1598-1648), Louis (c. 1600/1605-1648), and Mathieu (1607-1677) Le Nain painted images of everyday life for which they became posthumously famous. They are celebrated for their depictions of middle-class leisure activities, and particularly for their representations of peasant families, who gaze out at the viewer. The uncompromising naturalism of these compositions, along with their oddly suspended action, imparts a sense of dignity to their subjects. Featuring more than sixty paintings highlighting the artists' full range of production, including altarpieces, private devotional paintings, portraits, and the poignant images of peasants for which the brothers are best known, this generously illustrated volume presents new research concerning the authorship, dating, and meaning of the works by well-known scholars in the field. Also groundbreaking are the results of a technical study of the paintings, which constitutes a major contribution to the scholarship on the Le Nain brothers.

Focusing on the immigrant family, this title brings together documents and commentary that is suitable for teaching United States history survey courses as well as immigration history and introductory sociology courses. It includes an introduction and epilogue.

The family forms of historic Europe have been fascinating in their variety. Their importance for the historical development of our continent would be difficult to exaggerate; for our relationship with the peoples of the other continents of the world as well. This book is an attempt to recover the different familial systems and compare them with one another. The studies range from Russia, Poland, Hungary and Austria to Scandinavia, Flanders and Britain. All the influences which have affected the character and composition of European households are taken into account. The analysis covers their function as productive work groups, in the procreation and bringing up of children, and in the support of the elderly, and their relationship with the wider society and its norms along with its political organization, central and local. Claims that inheritance customs and inheritance practice and the occupation of the household head exerted a powerful influence on the size and composition of households are subjected to rigorous and systematic investigation.

How do changes in family form relate to changes in society as a whole? In a work which combines theoretical rigour with historical scope, Wally Seccombe provides a powerful study of the changing structure of families from the Middle Ages to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Responding to feminist critiques of ‘sex-blind’ historical materialism, Seccombe argues that family forms must be seen to be at the heart of modes of production. He takes issue with the mainstream consensus in family history which argues that capitalism did not fundamentally alter the structure of the nuclear family, and makes a controversial intervention in the long-standing debate over European marriage patterns and their relation to industrialization. Drawing on an astonishing range of studies in family history, historical demography and economic history, A Millennium of Family Change provides an integrated overview of the long transition from feudalism to capitalism, illuminating the far-reaching changes in familial relations from peasant subsistence to the making of the modern working class.

Russian rural history has long been based on a 'Peasant Myth', originating with nineteenth-century Romantics and still accepted by many historians today. In this book, Tracy Dennison shows how Russian society looked from below, and finds nothing like the collective, redistributive and market-averse behaviour often attributed to Russian peasants. On the contrary, the Russian rural population was as integrated into regional and even national markets as many of its west European counterparts. Serfdom was a loose garment that enabled different landlords to shape economic institutions, especially property rights, in widely diverse ways. Highly coercive and backward regimes on some landlords' estates existed side-by-side with surprisingly liberal approximations to a rule of law. This book paints a vivid and colourful picture of the everyday reality of rural Russia before the 1861 abolition of serfdom.