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This book sheds new light on old problems of wealth, poverty and material culture in rural societies. Much of the debate has concentrated on north-west Europe and the Atlantic world. This volume widens the geographic range to compare less well known areas, with case studies on the Mediterranean world (Catalonia and Greece), from central Europe (Bohemia and Hungary), and from the Nordic countries (Denmark). Methodologically, several papers link the possession of goods to the use of room space, while others highlight the importance of the channels for the circulation of goods, problems of stocks and flows of goods, and the complexities of urban/rural difference. Finally, this book seeks to stimulate new comparative studies in living standards and lifestyles by providing an overview of achievements up till now.
The Routledge History of Poverty, c.1450–1800 is a pioneering exploration of both the lives of the very poorest during the early modern period, and of the vast edifices of compassion and coercion erected around them by individuals, institutions, and states. The essays chart critical new directions in poverty scholarship and connect poverty to the environment, debt and downward social mobility, material culture, empires, informal economies, disability, veterancy, and more. The volume contributes to the understanding of societal transformations across the early modern period, and places poverty and the poor at the centre of these transformations. It also argues for a wider definition of poverty in history which accounts for much more than economic and social circumstance and provides both analytically critical overviews and detailed case studies. By exploring poverty and the poor across early modern Europe, this study is essential reading for students and researchers of early modern society, economic history, state formation and empire, cultural representation, and mobility.
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.
Rural societies are conventionally thought to be bound by tradition and resistant to change. But from the 18th century onwards many countries began to see the countryside as the basis of national prosperity, with a healthy and increasing population, and rising agricultural output fostering general economic growth. It became an objective of the State to encourage the trend, but also to exert social control on this major part of the population in order to civilize the rude peasantry and acquire their electoral support. This book deals with the various aspects of rural life in which the State intervened: economic matters, such as property rights and market regulations; social questions, from moral concerns to demographic policy; and the key issue of rural education. From Sweden to the Iberian Peninsula, the United Kingdom to Hungary, and from the eighteenth century to the twentieth, using both broad surveys and in-depth studies, with an extensive introduction written from a comparative perspective, an international group of historians (brought together by the COST network A35) for the first time examine the rural concerns of the state, both economic and social, in a comparative European context. Nadine Vivier is professor of social and economic history at the University ofMaine (France). She has worked extensively on rural societies from 1750 to 2000 in France and in Europe.
In a world dominated by poverty, a central characteristic has been the plight of orphans and abandoned children. Over the centuries, State, Church and individuals have all attempted to tackle the issue, but can we trace any change over the course of time when it comes to the welfare system intended for these disadvantaged children and acts of philanthropy? What kind of social policies did States follow and what were the main differences between countries and regions? Drawing on historical evidence across several centuries and a range of European countries, the contributors to this volume provide a transnational overview.
This book is situated at the crossroads of two recurring themes in rural history: agrarian contracts and property rights. Emphyteusis is at the heart of agrarian history in that it brings together agricultural history and the nature of social relations in traditional societies. Despite this, many such contracts have been blithely ignored, or unjustly dismissed, either because they are hard to identify, given the many variants that existed, or because, as a form of divided property, they are generally perceived in a negative light. Nevertheless, emphyteusis is to be found everywhere, even in regions which deny its existence, and it is far from being obsolete. Rather, it is flourishing, prospering and long-lived, particularly in urban areas. Emphyteusis has a long history and has played a central role, sometimes misleading, but always crucial, in the process of agricultural development. It has held sway as a substitute when access to property has been impossible, and as a source of conflicts has often revealed the nature of power relations between property owners on the one hand, whether seigneurial or not, and cultivators, short-term and long-term tenants on the other. The different chapters in this volume illuminate these multiple facets and forms of this type of contract and imperfect property rights. Though the focus is on Mediterranean societies, the questions raised have relevance far beyond this specific area.
The Industrial Revolution is central to the teaching of economic history. It has also been key to historical research on the commercial expansion of Western Europe, the rise of factories, coal and iron production, the proletarianization of labour, and the birth and worldwide spread of industrial capitalism. However, perspectives on the Industrial Revolution have changed significantly in recent years. The interdisciplinary approach of Reinventing the Economic History of Industrialisation - with contributions on the history of consumption, material culture, and cultural histories of science and technology - offers a more global perspective, arguing for an interpretation of the industrial revolution based on global interactions that made technological innovation and the spread of knowledge possible. Through this new lens, it becomes clear that industrialising processes started earlier and lasted longer than previously understood. Reflecting on the major topics of concern for economic historians over the past generation, Reinventing the Economic History of Industrialisation brings this area of study up to date and points the way forward.
This book examines the development of social support systems in the Modern age in the rural areas of the city-states of Northern Italy. This investigation achieves two main purposes: first, it allows researchers to understand the role occupied concretely by welfare and micro-credit activities in the political and socio-economic panorama of rural Northern Italy; secondly, it verifies to what extent the formation of a more or less structured support system influenced the establishment of local identity and the rooting of individuals. The book brings together perspectives from different fields of research ranging from economic and political history to the study of the history of ecclesiastical institutions, as well as integrating recent research on the anthropological value of welfare actions and the use of multiple historical sources. It considers how the retreat of the welfare activity of the State, associated with a depopulation of the rural areas of the peninsula and a steady increase of poverty into social fringes that were previously not affected by economic problems, pushes us to investigate more carefully the dynamics that in the Ancien Régime gave shape to the support activities against indigence and poverty. This book will be of interest to academics and students working in economic history and social history.
This interdisciplinary volume discusses the division of the early modern material world into the important legal, economic, and personal categories of mobile and immobile property, possession, and the rights to usufruct. The chapters describe and compare different modes of acquisition and intergenerational transfer via law and custom. The varying perspectives, including cultural history, legal history, social and economic history, philosophy, and law, allow for a more nuanced understanding of the links between the movability of an object and the gender of the person who owned, possessed, or used it. Case studies and examples come from a wide geographical range, including Norway, England, Scotland, the Holy Roman Empire, Italy, Tyrol, the Ottoman Empire, Greece, Romania, and the European colonies in Brazil and Jamaica. By covering both urban and rural areas and exploring all social groups, from ruling elites to the lower strata of society, the chapters offer fresh insight into the division of mobile and immobile property that socially and economically posed disadvantages for women. By exploring a broad scope of topics, including landownership, marriage contracts, slaveholding, and the dowry, this book is an essential resource for both researchers and students of women’s history, social and economic history, and material culture.
The treatment of long-term agricultural transformation remains a lively topic for historians. Much debate arose when agricultural development patterns were discovered that did without a dominant, production-oriented cereal crop, even when it was accompanied by livestock farming. Joan Thirsk hoped to conclude this debate by putting forward the hypothesis that such "alternative agriculture" was the farmers' way of responding to the difficulties caused by periods of low agricultural prices. This theory stirred up controversy and arguments both for and against.00The contributions to this volume take this hypothesis seriously and attempt to assess its validity. Examining a large number of "alternative agricultures" over the long term, from the fifteenth to the twentieth century, they discuss the issues encountered in tracing the links between the spread of alternative crops, such as fruits and vegetables, flowers, and industrial crops, and the general economic environment, across a vast swathe of territory stretching from Flanders to Spain and from France, through Italy and Switzerland, as far as Russia.