Family Formation in an Age of Nascent Capitalism

202 Pages·1977·4.727 MB·English

by  David Z. Levine, Charles Tilly and Edward Shorter (Auth.)

STUDIES IN SOCIAL DISCONTINUITY
Under the Consulting Editorship of:
CHARLES TILLY EDWARD SHORTER
University of Michigan University of Toronto
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FAMILY ΡΟΚΜΑΉΟΝ
IN AN AGE OF
NASCENT CAPITALISM
David Levine
Department of History and Philosophy
The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Academic Press
New York San Francisco London
A Subsidiary of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Levine, David.
Family formation in an age of nascent capitalism.
(Studies in social discontinuity)
Based on the author's thesis, Cambridge University.
Bibliography: p.
1. Family-England-History. 2. Marriage-England-
History. 3. Villages-England-Case studies. 4. Great
Britain-Economic conditions-1760-1860. I. Title.
IL Series
HQ613.L48 1977 301.42Ό942 76-50398
ISBN 0-12-445050-4
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
To Maish
List of Figures and Tables
Figures
Figure 4.1. Proportion of married women, by age groups. 48
Figure 5.1. A nine-year weighted, moving average of baptisms, burials,
and marriages (x4), Shepshed. 59
Figure 5.2. Mean age at first marriage, 10-year cohorts. 62
Figure 6.1. A nine-year weighted, moving average of baptisms, burials,
and marriages (x4), Bottesford. 89
Figure 6.2. Annual conceptions, burials, and marriages, Bottesford, by
harvest years. 101
Figure 7.1. A nine-year weighted, moving average of baptisms, burials,
and marriages (x5), Colyton. 105
Figure 8.1. A nine-year weighted, moving average of baptisms, buricds,
and marriages (x4), Terling. 117
Tables
Table 2.1 Occupational Distribution, 1831 17
Table 2.2 Employed Persons per Household, 1851 27
LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES
Table 3.1 Population Turnover, Shepshed 38
Table 3.2 Population Turnover, Bottesford 39
Table 3.3 Generational Replacement, Shepshed 40
Table 3.4 Generational Replacement, Bottesford 41
Table 3.5 Birthplace, 1851 44
Table 4.1 Household Composition, 1851 47
Table 4.2 Household Composition by Occupation 50
Table 4.3 Distribution of Children by Occupation 50
Table 4.4 Working Wives 51
Table 4.5 Residence Patterns of Married Couples, by Husband's Age 54
Table 4.6 Residence of Married Couples, by Number of Coresident
Children 55
Table 5.1 Age at First Marriage 61
Table 5.2 Mean Age at First Marriage, Ten-Year Cohorts 63
Table 5.3 Completed Family Size, by Age at Marriage 64
Table 5.4 Age-Specific Fertility Rates 65
Table 5.5 Family Limitation 67
Table 5.6 Mother's Age at Birth of Last Child 68
Table 5.7 Infant and Child Mortality (MF) 68
Table 5.8 Endogenous and Exogenous Infant Mortality (MF) 69
Table 5.9 Infant Mortality (MF), Three Registration Districts, 1839-1844 70
Table 5.10 Infant Mortality (MF), by Birth Rank 71
Table 5.11 Adult Mortality (MF) 72
Table 5.12 Net Rate of Reproduction 74
Table 5.13 Effects of Fertility Restriction in Shepshed, 1825-1851 79
Table 5.14 Age at First Marriage, by Occupation 84
Table 5.15 Age-Specific Fertility, by Occupation 85
Table 5.16 Fertility Restriction by Age at Marriage, by Occupation 85
Table 5.17 Infant Mortality Rates (MF), by Occupation 86
Table 5.18 Rate of Reproduction, 1825-1851, by Occupation 86
Table 6.1 Net Rate of Reproduction, Bottesford. 92
Table 6.2 Components of Population Growth in Later Seventeenth
Century Bottesford 93
Table 6.3 Mother's Age at Birth of Last Child, by Age at Marriage,
Bottesford 94
Table 6.4 Birth and Death Rates in Early Nineteenth Century Bottesford 96
Table 6.5 Components of a Rising Birth Rate in Early Nineteenth
Century Bottesford 96
Table 6.6 Age at First Marriage, Bottesford 97
Table 6.7 Age-Specific Fertility, Bottesford 98
Table 6.8 Infant and Child Mortality (MF), Bottesford 99
Table 6.9 Adult Mortality (MF), Bottesford 100
Table 6.10 Annual Conceptions, Burials, and Marriages, Bottesford, by
Harvest Years 101
Table 7.1 Net Rate of Reproduction, Colyton 111
Table 7.2 A Falling Birth Rate Compared with a Rising Death Rate,
Colyton, Seventeenth Century 112
Table 7.3 Rising Birth Rate Compared with a Falling Death Rate,
Colyton, Nineteenth Century 112
LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES XI
Table 7.4 Age at First Marriage, Colyton 113
Table 7.5 Age-Specific Fertility, Colyton 114
Table 7.6 Infant and Child Mortality (MF), Colyton 115
Table 7.7 Adult Mortality (MF), Colyton 115
Table 8.1 Net Rate of Reproduction, Terling 122
Table 8.2 Age at First Marriage, Terling 123
Table 8.3 Age-Specific Fertility, Terling 124
Table 8.4 Infant and Child Mortality (MF), Terling 125
Table 8.5 Adult Mortality (MF), Terling 126
Table 9.1 Mean Age at First Marriage and at Bastardbearing, Colyton 137
Table 9.2 Repetitive Bastardbearing, Colyton, by Children 138
Table 9.3 Repetitive Bastardbearing, Colyton, by Mothers 138
Table A.l The Comprehensiveness of Parochial Registration in
Shepshed 158
Table A.2 The Comprehensiveness of Parochial Registration among
''Presumed Anglicans'' 159
Table A.3 Matched Families by Registration Status of Father 163
Table A.4 Families with "Mixed" Registration Experience 164
Table A.5 Registration Frequency of the "Reconstitutable Minority" 167
Table A.6 The Comprehensiveness of Parochial Registration in
Bottesford. 168
Table A.7 A Comparison of Fertility between the Reconstitutable
Minority and a Group of Other Women 169
Table A.8 A Comparison of Age at Marriage between the
Reconstitutable Minority and a Group of Other Women 170
Table A.9 Distribution of Infant Deaths (MF), 1750-1849 172
Table A.lOInfant Mortality (MF), 1839-1844 173
Acknowledgments
The original research for this book was funded by the generous offices
of the Canada Council. At Cambridge I had the privilege to be associated
with the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Struc­
ture. Roger Schofield, Tony Wrigley, Peter Laslett, Karla Oosterveen, and
Richard Wall all showed remarkable tolerance in listening to my inchoate
theorizing. Oly Anderson and Ros Davies were of inestimable aid in
helping me to solve the practical matters to do with my data. Les Pepper
calmed me during those many occasions when the task seemed insur­
mountable.
While at Cambridge I was fortunate to get to know Keith Wrightson.
Our interests in history and social change complemented each other, and I
learned a great deal from his careful mastery of source materials, which he
combined with an ability to reconstruct sympathetically the often short
but rarely simple annals of the poor.
The other person to whom I would like to pay special tribute is Hans
Medick. Since our meeting he has always encouraged me to go on with the
empirical side of my work while urging me to extend the analysis.
Moreover, he has always given me useful advise, freely and graciously.
Furthermore, Hans was instrumental in arranging a month-long visit to
the Max-Planck-Institut f٧r Geschichte, Gφttingen, where his director,
Professor Dr. Rudolf Vierhaus, and his colleagues made me welcome and
provided me with the kind of oasis in which much of this work was
completed.
XW ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
John Eisenberg, Chad Gaffield, and Bryant Griffiths, colleagues at the
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, have been kind, courteous and
willing to provide a forum for discussion. Ian Winchester provided me
with the opportunity to complete the manuscript.
My wife Jennifer had almost nothing to do with this book—she had
her own work with which to "enjoyce" herself. Together we found that
there were other things.
INTRODUOTON
The controversy over the growth of population during the English
Industrial Revolution provided the starting point for this study, but in the
course of my research I found myself, as it were, moving backward in
time. This study deals with the impact of early capitalism on the strategies
of family formation among four sets of English villagers in the period
before the wholesale switch-over to factory industry. Although this era,
roughly speaking from 1550 to 1850, has been variously described as
"traditional," "preindustrial," and, more recently, "protoindustrial," I
prefer to see it as a stage in the transition from feudalism to capitalism—a
halfway house.
In Marx's categorical framework the nature of full-blown industrial
capitalism is twofold: The worker is not only separated from the ownership
of the means of production but also, and perhaps more important, he loses
control over the labor process, becoming an extension of the machine that
regulates his work. It is in the second sense that the industrial activity
studied in this volume does not yet fulfill Marx's definition. Rural indus­
trial workers were indeed often reduced to proletarianization, but they
almost never lost control over the pace of production. Their skill was
valued, not diluted as in later stages of capitalist industrialization. In
agriculture, much the same process was under way when the peasantry
were first dispossessed of their land and then, later, brought together as
wage laborers working the farms of capitalist producers. Gang labor in
rural agriculture was not a new phenomenon—slavery is just one age-old
variant of this form of labor—and the English rural experience evokes
many parallels. But agricultural wage-labor is essentially different from