Intermarriage throughout History [1 ed.] 9781443860796, 9781443859509

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Intermarriage throughout History

Intermarriage throughout History

Edited by

Lumini‫܊‬a Dumănescu, Daniela Mârza and Marius Eppel

Proofreading provided by Carmen-Veronica Borbely

Intermarriage throughout History, Edited by Lumini‫܊‬a Dumănescu, Daniela Mârza and Marius Eppel This book first published 2014 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2014 by Lumini‫܊‬a Dumănescu, Daniela Mârza, Marius Eppel and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-5950-8, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-5950-9

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Lumini‫܊‬a Dumănescu, Daniela Mârza and Marius Eppel Chapter I: Mixed Marriage in the Collective Mentality Inter-War Reflections on Mixed Marriages in Banat ................................ 20 Carmen Albert Cultural Exogamy among the German and the Austrian Middle Classes in the Nineteenth Century .......................................................................... 36 Alexander Pinwinkler Descendants of Interethnic Marriages: Identification and Homeland Localisation ............................................................................................... 52 Tanya Matanova Marriage and Identity in Transylvania during the First Half of the Nineteenth Century as Seen by Foreign Travellers ......................... 72 Mihaela Mehedin‫܊‬i and Cecilia-Alina Sava Sui Sin Far: Chinese Family Facing Cultural Diversity ............................ 97 Mihaela Mudure Chapter II: Historical Events and Their Impact on the Evolution of Mixed Marriages Loyalty and Hostility: Mixed Marriages in the Royal Families of the Middle Ages—Cases from the Borders of Christendom ............... 112 Florian Dumitru Soporan Mixed Marriages in the Orthodox Deanery of Sibiu (1860-1918): Community and Law ............................................................................... 134 Valeria Soro‫܈‬tineanu

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Table of Contents

Jewish-Christian Marriages in Maramureú County during the Twentieth Century: An Oral History Research Project ............................................ 149 Aura Comănescu Pintea Intermarriage vs. Nationalism? Case Study: Cluj (Transylvania), the Interwar Period .................................................................................. 170 Bogdan Crăciun and Daniela Mârza Between “Ethnic Harmony” and Social Integration: The Status of Mixed Marriages (Mixed Families) in Communist Romania ............................. 187 Mihai Mure‫܈‬an and Claudiu Petru Rusu Chapter III: Mixed Marriages in the Secular and Religious Regulations Mixed Marriages, Mixed Children: Between Norms and Practices in the Romanian Society (Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries) ............ 204 Constan‫܊‬a Vintilă-Ghi‫܊‬ulescu Mixed Marriages Involving Gypsy Slaves in Nineteenth Century Wallachia: State and Church Policies ...................................................... 212 Bogdan Mateescu Marriages across Religious Boundaries in Albania around the Year 1900..... 232 Siegfried Gruber Churches and Interfaith Marriages in Transylvania: From 1895 to the Present ........................................................................................... 252 Ioan Bolovan and Marius Eppel Families, Marriages and Free Unions in Portugal ................................... 286 Helena da Silva Chapter IV: The Explicative Mechanism of Mixed Marriages Mixed Marriages through the Prism of the Concept of the Fourth Demographic Transition .......................................................................... 310 Yulia Prokhorova The Marriage of Europeans and Jews in Algerian Towns in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century: Open to Outsiders or Not?.................... 328 Guy Brunet

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Sentimental Relations among Italian Men and Migrant Women: How Migration Affects Place and Time in the Making of Mixed Couples ... 354 Sara Settepanella Wives and Migrants—Motivation, Advantages and Challenges: Five Case Studies .................................................................................... 372 Cristina Tîrha‫ ܈‬and Viorel Sîrca The Role of Education in Ethnically Mixed Marriages ........................... 389 Mihaela Hărăgu‫܈‬ Chapter V: Mixed Marriages, Continental and Transcontinental Migration: Continuity and Change Transnational Intermarriage and Cultural Transfer: Norwegians in Amsterdam 1621-1720 ........................................................................ 408 Sølvi Sogner Mixed Marriages among French Immigrants in Southern California, 1880-1950 ................................................................................................ 423 Marie-Pierre Arrizabalaga Some Considerations about the Marriage Market for Migrants in Almirante Brown (Buenos Aires, Argentina) at the End of the Nineteenth Century........................................................................ 449 Claudia Contente Marriage Behaviour among Immigrants: Montevideo 1860-1908 .......... 465 María M. Camou and Adela Pellegrino The Cosmopolitanism of Transnational Families .................................... 488 Viorela Ducu and Áron Telegdi-Csetri Contributors ............................................................................................. 504

INTRODUCTION LUMINI‫܉‬A DUMĂNESCU, DANIELA MÂRZA AND MARIUS EPPEL

Few are the subjects in social history that have been so intensely researched as marriage, a landmark moment in the lives of both individuals and communities, since it joins together not only two individual destinies, but also an entire range of social, economic and cultural values, of representations, of hopes for the future. Compared to marriages in general, what mixed marriages also entail are aspects pertaining to otherness, with everything this implies: differences in ethnicity and/or religion, their representation in the collective mind, the tensions associated with this type of marriages, reflected in the secular or ecclesiastical regulations, or the long-term demographic consequences thereof, translated into changes in the balance between ethnicities and religions in one area or another. Considered to be either factors of social cohesion or agents of dissolution, mixed marriages have been the subject of intense scientific research, which has generated, at the international level, an impressive amount of studies written by historians, sociologists, demographers, psychologists, anthropologists, ethnologists, etc. This volume ௅ the result of the conference “Intermarriage throughout History,” held in Cluj between 5 and 8 June 2013, with wide international participation ௅ contributes to a better understanding of this phenomenon in an area where although it is already well represented in historiography, the issue of mixed marriages is far from the level of methodological approaches and results achieved at European level (a contextual situation, we might add, mainly due to the precariousness of the sources and resources available to the Romanian researchers). This calls for a brief theoretical overview of various aspects concerning mixed marriages, as they can be found in the research undertaken in the Western scientific milieu. Thus, the concept of mixed marriages has multiple connotations and meanings that should be taken into consideration when researching this

2

Introduction

phenomenon. In general, it refers to spouses who can be of different denominations, ethnicities and/or races. Due to its complexity, this issue has been the object of multi-disciplinary researches, which have outlined several possible definitions of this phenomenon. It may be considered that at an elementary level, a “mixed couple” is a couple in which the two partners come from different cultures.1 Most often, the term “mixed marriage” refers to a union between partners of different ethnicities, different denominations, and/or different races. As an overview of the specialised literature may reveal, there is still insufficient research conducted on the phenomenon of intermarriage with reference to the area of Central-South-Eastern Europe; sporadic mention is made of studies on the former Yugoslavia (discussing the relations between the Serbs and the other ethnicities living in that space), the former Czechoslovakia (focusing on the relations between the Czechs, the Slovaks and the Hungarians), or the territory of the former Soviet Union;2 Romania is no exception to this situation: although this topic is not absent from historiography, the manner in which it has been approached is still far from the level reached in other parts of the world (Western Europe and the United States in particular). The most important reason why this gap in knowledge should be filled is that mixed marriage can be reconsidered as a way of peaceful coexistence among different social groups in an area that has been troubled by interfaith and inter-ethnic conflicts on many occasions throughout the ages. A mixed marriage essentially represents a situation that enables different ethnic or confessional groups to interact at a deep level. The frequency with which this type of marriage occurs in a society can be considered a good indicator of the level of its cultural and spiritual cohesion. Moreover, the evolution of mixed marriages not only in quantitative terms, but also as regards their composition provides information on the changes that take place in the collective mind of a particular society, affecting the rules of its functioning, the religious beliefs, the perception of otherness, etc. On the one hand, mixed marriages may have integrative effects, helping to mitigate the asperities between diverse social groups; on the other hand, however, they can also be regarded as acts of abandoning the groups to which those involved belong.3 Opposition to the conclusion of mixed marriages can be considered an expression of the social distance between groups, of prejudices or of a 1

Neyrand and M‫ޘ‬Sili, “Mixed Couples in Contemporary France,” 385-416. Smits, “Ethnic Intermarriage and Social Cohesion,” 417-432. 3 Rebhun, “Jewish Identification,” 71-88. 2

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certain degree of exclusion on ethnic or confessional grounds. This opposition is all the more powerful when it is associated with particular types of competition between groups ௅ economic or cultural. It is also more probable that opposition to mixed marriages will exist in societies marked by pronounced religiosity and by a strong identification with the denominational components. The dynamics of mixed marriages can also be analysed in relation to the size of majority/minority groups, starting from the premise that the more numerous a minority group is in relation to the majority, the less opposition there will be to mixed marriages. In addition to this, attitudes towards heterogamy tend to be more permissive among the younger generations and among those with a higher level of education.4 The prevalence of one type or another of marriage may indicate the level of interaction between individuals across group borders, revealing the extent to which the members of different social groups consider themselves to be equals. From this point of view, a mixed marriage is a bond not only between individuals, but also between the members of the groups to which they belong.5 A key aspect of the problem of mixed marriages concerns their determining factors. Thus, the reasons why people enter a mixed marriage may include individual preferences, the actual possibilities offered by the matrimonial market and the impact of external factors, such as the family, the community, the church or the state. The preference for particular characteristics has been translated, in many cases, as the desire to reach a higher social status (which often provides access to superior economic resources). It is believed that unmarried individuals search for potential partners among those categories that are attractive to them from a social, economic and cultural perspective. The “matrimonial market” provides opportunities for encountering members of other groups and socialising with them: it has been shown in the literature that when members of different groups have the opportunity to interact regularly, this increases the chances of their entering mixed marriages. The external factors that influence mixed marriages have been identified as those institutions which have the final say on matters that would otherwise exclusively pertain to the individuals’ private lives. Research has revealed, however, that these institutions, be they the family, the state or the church, have had, over time, a considerable impact on such 4 5

Tolsma, Lubbers and Coenders, “Ethnic Competition,” 215–230. Kalmijn, “Intermarriage and Homogamy,” 395-421.

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Introduction

matters, because marriage has been seen as more than a simple union between individuals, being an act or a process, rather, whereby social, economic and cultural resources are pooled together.6 Thus, although the option for mixed marriage is, theoretically, individual and belongs, first and foremost, to the two members of the couple, in reality there are several institutions that have a substantial say insofar as concluding a marriage is concerned. This influence is sometimes direct, exerted through legislative enactments, or, as it happens in many cases, it is more subtle and difficult to detect, albeit just as powerful. Among these institutions, the most important are the family, the church and the state. As for the church, the main Christian confessions (Catholic, Orthodox, the Protestant denominations) have been for centuries reluctant to accept intermarriages, on account of the “competition” for believers (further complicated by the problem of raising children in one confession or another).7 As regards the central authority (more specifically, the state), its interference is apparent especially in the case of ethnic groups that, in certain periods and regions, have had an inferior legal status (as are, for instance, the Jews or the Gypsies). The family, however, does not manifest its influence through written regulations, but through pressures exerted on the matrimonial preferences of its members (direct suggestions, marital arrangements, threats of exclusion or enforced marginalisation in cases of disagreement, etc.). All these influences have varied greatly from one era to another, as well as from one region to another. Mixed marriages can, therefore, be considered an environment that is affected by problems engendered by otherness and diversity to a far greater extent than homogeneous marriages are. An obvious conclusion would be, in this case, that such unions are much more prone to dissolution because ethnic and/or religious differences entail differences in terms of social and behavioural values, communication styles, etc. Such differences make mutual understanding between the spouses more difficult, reduce the number of activities that can be done together, and generate disagreement about the education of children; to all this is added the lack of support from the groups of origin, whose attitude towards such marriages is, most commonly, one of disapproval. The probability of divorce in the case of mixed marriages is, however, also influenced by external factors, which, at least formally and legally, 6 7

Kalmijn and van Tubergen, “Ethnic intermarriage,” 371-397. Kalmijn, “Intermarriage and Homogamy,” 395-421.

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should be able to prevent their dissolution. It is considered, thus, that whatever the tensions generated by otherness that a couple must bear, marriages that occur in environments with a traditional mentality, dominated by restrictive or severe religious precepts, are less likely to end in divorce.8 Another aspect of mixed marriages that deserves notice is that the family has the function to hand down to the next generations specific sets of values that are closely linked to ethnic and/or confessional identity; in this way, an increased number of mixed marriages can alter the make-up of ethnic or denominational groups, not just as regards the relations established between them and the ensuing influences, but also insofar as the education of the children resulting from such marriages is concerned. In the long run, a large number of mixed marriages may unquestionably bring about significant demographic changes.9 The decisions of mixed marriage couples referring to the group in which their children will be primarily socialised provide information on the relationships between groups and the collective perspectives upon them. Thus, one can often encounter a situation where the offspring are raised mainly within the group considered to have a better social position, which suggests the existence of a hierarchy, whether explicit or not, within the family and the community.10 In reality, although mixed couples can raise and educate their children in the culture of one group alone, it may be the case that the latter will not prevalently identify themselves with that particular group;11 influences coming from the “marginalised” branch of the family may be felt, in one way or another, and this may result in a large number of such mixed marriages and the formation of a new group, comprising these descendants with affinities in both groups of origin. Mixed marriages are, therefore, significant also in terms of the education and socialisation of children. If the children resulting from a homogeneous marriage develop mainly within their group of origin, in the case of mixed marriages they are exposed to the values of two distinct groups, with the potential for their integration, but also for conflict.12 As a research topic, intermarriage requires approaches that are both quantitative and qualitative.

8

Kalmijn, de Graaf and Janssen, “Intermarriage and the risk of divorce,” 71-85. Song, “Is Intermarriage a Good Indicator of Integration?” 331-348. 10 Finnas and O Leary, “Choosing for the Children,” 483-499. 11 Kalmijn, “Intermarriage and Homogamy,” 395-421. 12 Rebhun, “Jewish Identification,” 71-88. 9

6

Introduction

Depending on the nature of the available sources, mixed marriages have long been studied from a qualitative perspective, with different methods depending on the period under study. Thus, for the contemporary period, the methods that are mainly used are interviews and life stories, which offer first-hand accounts of those involved directly in these events, concerning the context in which mixed marriages occur, the reasons underlying them, the reaction of other social actors, the manners of managing disputes, and the options for educating the children. For older periods of time, where conducting interviews is no longer a possibility, this information can be gathered from sources such as: memoirs, articles in the press, secular and ecclesiastical law texts, etc. In the latter case, the researcher is faced with a high degree of subjectivity because the sources are already representations of mixed marriage filtered through the lens of the mentality or prejudices of the ages under examination. Quantitative analysis, which is of paramount importance in approaches devoted to the phenomenon of mixed marriages, has been developed and refined in different research environments, depending on access to necessary resources. These data come from civil status records, from censuses and various surveys. Based on them, researchers can investigate aspects such as: the percentage of mixed marriages in a particular society, their composition by ethnicity, confession, age, education, economic level, area of residence (rural/urban), etc.13 This type of research can be conducted only in those areas where there are extensive databases on this phenomenon and it cannot be carried out in those regions where, for various reasons, such databases are not yet available. Although it has not benefited from the documentary resources of colleagues in the West, for objective (historical, political and economic) reasons, over the past decade Romanian historiography has witnessed the birth of a genuine school of historical demography, whose core body of researchers are based in Cluj, being associated primarily with the Centre for Population Studies from “Babeú-Bolyai” University and its journal, Romanian Journal of Population Studies. In its pages, the subject of mixed marriages is well illustrated and approached from numerous perspectives. In terms of methodological contributions, special mention should be made of the study on the evolution of the family in Central Europe during the first demographic transition (signed by Ioan Bolovan and Sorina Paula 13 Valuable methodological suggestions may be found in Kalmijn’s landmark study “Intermarriage and Homogamy,” 395-421; an extensive presentation of the research methods in this field may also be found in Neyrand and M‫ޘ‬Sili, “Mixed Couples in Contemporary France,” 385-416, as well as in Rytina, Blau, Blum and Schwartz, “Inequality and Intermarriage,” 645-675.

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Bolovan), which establishes guidelines for research on the family within a wider historical, political and economic context, from the vantage point of the modernisation process the entire society of that time went through.14 Another issue addressed in this context is the significance of mixed marriage as an indicator of social dynamics, of the perceived prestige of ethnic and confessional groups, or the degree of modernisation reached in a particular society.15 There are also analyses that explore the determinants of mixed marriages, in a similar manner to the benchmarks established by reference studies like the one authored by Matthijs Kalmin.16 In the context of the research project ”Interethnic marriages between an exercise of tolerance and a modern expression of indifference, 18952010”, financed and developed under the authority of The Executive Agency for Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation Funding (UEFISCDI), the Centre for Population Studies organised the international conference “Intermarriage throughout History”, held in Cluj between 5 and 8 June 2013. Out of 65 papers addressing the subject of mixed marriages at the conference, 25 are published in this volume, mainly because of editorial reasons. The authors who sent their articles after the deadline will be pleased to hear that the editorial team of the Romanian Journal of Population Studies has accepted to dedicate a special issue of the Journal next June to the problem of mixed marriages. In this way, we will be able to accomplish the task of publishing relevant articles which were presented at the conference but which, for different reasons, were not included in this volume. Although rather diverse in terms of geographical scope, historical epoch, methods, as well as the background of their authors, the studies collected in this volume offer a coherent outlook on the problem of mixed marriages in Europe, Asia or South-America. For a better understanding of the diversity of problems arising from such a subject, the editors chose to structure the material into five chapters, each of them trying to address a stand-alone problem but also to preserve the structure of the panels of the conference. It was not easy to find the suitable place for each article in this ensemble; one or two of them might have been better suited to other themes or categories, but we are confident that the readers will find what they are interested in, without considering the artificial placement of the text in the volume. In the next pages you can find a short description of the chapters and articles, aiming to facilitate the understanding of the volume as a whole. 14

Bolovan and Bolovan, “Familia în Europa Centrală”, 293-306. ùiúeútean, “Căsătorii interconfesionale”, 111-146. 16 Brie, “Alteritatea confesională prin căsătorie”, 147-166. 15

8

Introduction

The first chapter, “Mixed Marriage in the Collective Mentality” comprises five studies analysing different aspects of intermarriage from a cultural, social, historical and demographic perspective. One of the best represented aspects is that of quantitative analysis, based on records from civil status registers or censuses. A first example in this regard is the study written by Carmen Albert, which analyses the issue of mixed marriages in one of the most diverse and multifarious regions from an ethnic and confessional standpoint - Banat. This study undertakes a substantial quantitative analysis of the available data, while examining, at the same time, subjective perceptions of intermarriage among the population. The author presents information that shows the existence, at the level of the collective mind, of a rather negative attitude of the population towards the option for mixed marriages, which, she believes, runs contrary to the large number of mixed marriages concluded in the studied period. Cultural perspectives on intermarriage are offered by studies such as Alexander Pinwinkler’s “Cultural exogamy among the German and the Austrian middle classes in the nineteenth century.” The author starts from the premise that marriage is not just an element of the social structure, but also an environment in which attitudes, concepts, habits are changed, and he organises his demonstration around case studies that highlight the degree of acceptance of or resistance to mixed marriages that various social classes exhibit. The third article of this chapter, “Descendants of Interethnic Marriages ௅ Identification and Homeland ௅ Localisation” belongs to Tanya Matanova and is focused on descendants of Bulgarian-Russian, Bulgarian-Ukrainian and Bulgarian-Slovak families. Identification processes are closely connected with those of socialisation and enculturation. In this context, they acquire language and cultural knowledge, but also create and develop social relations to relatives and peers. Concerning the problem of identification, it may be said that as a consequence of their individual and collective bi-ethnic and bicultural origin, but also depending on the momentary circumstances and the situational individual attitudes, these people identify themselves as world citizens or as belonging to the ethnic community of one, the other or both parents. Sometimes they identify themselves as “mixed” and, in different situations, others may define them as such, observing and analysing their everyday habits, activities and social communication. Another point of view on perceptions of mixed marriages may be found in the study written by Mihaela MehedinĠi and Cecilia Sava, entitled “Marriage and Identity in Transylvania during the First Half of the

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Nineteenth Century as Seen by Foreign Travellers.” Intermarriage is regarded as a sign of the modernisation process that was under way in an area characterised by strained relations between the ethnicities and the confessions that inhabited it, in a province where the rural lifestyle still prevailed. Valorising the notes of foreign travellers, the authors analyse the relationship between mixed marriage and the mode of relating to the “other,” of accepting otherness. Given the nature of family relationships, the spouses’ family members also had to take this test of otherness, in the sense that their parents and relatives had to define and clarify their attitudes towards the “other.” This situation was felt even more acutely with the birth of children in such couples and their socialisation, which could take place mostly inside one group, to the detriment of the other, or in both groups equally. The information concerning mixed marriages extracted from the travellers’ accounts completes the statistical data with new perspectives on the causes and effects of this demographic phenomenon. The last article of the chapter is an excellent analysis of the life of Chinese families living in North America, based on Canadian-AmericanChinese writer Sui Sin Far (1865-1914). Her stories portray people caught between two worlds, two cultures, and two languages. The inheritors of traditional Chinese values find themselves thrust into booming mercantile, race-conscious cities, such as Montreal or New York. This paper analyses both the literary strategies preferred by Sui Sin Far and the identity survival strategies chosen by the Chinese communities, in a context that advertises democracy, but practises discrimination and prejudice. The second chapter concerns “Historical Events and Their Impact of the Evolution of Mixed Marriages.” The reader can find here five studies analysing intermarriage in connection with particular circumstances, such as marriage as a tool for medieval political alliances, and the influences of major ideologies or events on mixed marriages. In his study “Loyalty and Hostility: Mixed Marriages in the Royal Families of the Middle Ages: Cases from the Borders of Christendom,” Florian Dumitru Soporan explores mixed marriage as the expression, par excellence, of a political alliance that placed together, under the sign of matrimony, the power and interests of two states or of two great, powerful and influential families. Among other issues the author examines against the intricate fabric of these events is the position and role of the “foreign” queens, who negotiated the imprint they left on their society of adoption on the grounds of the social and economic capital they brought therein. Further, Valeria Soroútineanu analyses one of the most interesting aspects of mixed marriages ௅ their regulation from a juridical, legal

10

Introduction

perspective and the stance adopted by the communities towards these enactments. The focus is on the Orthodox Deanery of Sibiu, between 1860 and 1918, and the argument takes both secular and ecclesiastical regulations into account. In the aforementioned context, it appears that the number of mixed marriages concluded by the Orthodox Romanians was rather low, most of them (90%) preferring partners of the same ethnicity, even though their confession was Greek Catholic; few chose spouses of Saxon, Hungarian or other ethnicities. The determinants of these preferences may have been the attitudes the communities adopted towards this issue, the position of the church, the changes that the civil laws of 1895 produced in society, making civil marriage compulsory and rendering religious marriage optional (a situation that forced the churches in Transylvania to readjust their discourse on marriage, including that on confessionally mixed marriage: what was at stake, in the case of the latter, was the religion in which the children born from such marriages would be raised). An oral history research, based on interviews with Romanians, Jews, Hungarians, Ukrainians, both witnesses and active participants on the interethnic relations from Maramureú county, has brought to light extremely interesting details concerning the mentality of different social groups, as well as the evolution, in time, of this mentality, with particular reference to the Jews, a group that used to be numerous and evinced, special characteristics which marked the life of the population in the localities where they lived. Although there were some romances, the young Jews involved were aware of the consequences and did not dare to cause their families such grief, giving up these relationships, in time, and marrying, in most cases, partners chosen by the family and the community, or even by a person specialised in such unions, called a shadchan (match maker). In the Christians’ mentality, the Jewish young girls and women are perceived as “forbidden fruit”. For these reasons, prior to deportation, there had been very few infringements of this prohibition, as remembered by witnesses, but we tried to analyse these rare cases. The Holocaust meant a turning point for the Jewish communities from Maramureú in this respect as well. The reduced number of young people who returned to these communities, their shaken belief in God and the more and more obvious tendencies to conclude heterogeneous marriages in the communist period, also taking into consideration the fact that in most cases, the marriage was contracted only at the registrar’s office, are the reasons why most of the Jewish families still living in Maramureú are mixed or why their descendants have entered such marriages.

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The next article, “Intermarriage vs. Nationalism? Case study: Cluj (Transylvania), in the Interwar Period”, signed by Bogdan Crăciun and Daniela Mârza), analyses the evolution of intermarriage in Cluj during the troubled interwar period. After World War I, the authority strcuctures were permeated by Romanians, and Hungarians lost their dominant place; at least at the discurssive level, one can notice a great animosity between these two ethnic groups. Despite this atmosphere, the number of both ethnically and confessionally mixed marriages increased in Cluj, throughout the interwar period, as shown in the main sources ௅ the marital status registers. In order to present the evolution of this phenomenon, the authors used data for the years 1919, 1922, 1930 and 1938 because of their significance in the history of the city. These data are correlated with the political, economic and social context, characterised by events that deeply affected the lives of the people of that time (the ravages of war, the union of Transylvania (a former part of Hungary) with Romania, the global economic crisis). With reference to the communist period, Claudiu Rusu and Mihai Mureúan’s study “Between ‘Ethnic Harmony’ and Social Integration: the Status of Mixed Marriages (Mixed Families) in Communist Romania” offers a very thorough and nuanced analysis of the changes produced in the collective mind by the implementation of the communist ideology, which had an impact on the relations between different ethnic groups, as well as on mixed marriages. The authors discuss issues that have been little investigated in Romanian historiography, such as the attitude of the central authority towards mixed marriages, the identification and reconstruction of a psychological pattern characteristic of mixed marriages or the position adopted by certain party organisations, like the women’s committees, on this subject. The aggressive atheism promoted by the regime added to all these, causing the manifestations of religious life to take on a more discrete, subtle and, in some cases, covert, secret character (the Romanian United Church, which had many believers, especially in Transylvania, was abolished by the regime, its places of worship were passed into the patrimony of the Orthodox Church, many priests, including the higher clergy, landed in the communist prisons, and people who chose to remain loyal to their faith were forced to practise it in secret, away from the authorities’ eyes). All these interferences placed the issue of mixed marriages within new frameworks, characterised by changes affecting the local marriage markets, as well as by perception changes in the collective mentality regarding ethnic or confessional otherness.

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Introduction

The studies in Chapter 3, “Mixed Marriages in the Secular and Religious Regulations”, mainly deal with the positions adopted by the civil and confessional authorities on the issues of intermarriage. ConstanĠa Vintilă-GhiĠulescu’s study analyses various aspects of mixed marriage in Walachia and Moldavia, from the Orthodox point of view, observing how the marriage concept was defined and how much it differed from the law (pravila), in terms of various practical features. Special attention is paid to bigamy, a common practice that was the result of free circulation in this region, which was under the authority of the Ottoman Empire. A number of merchants and craftsmen, such as Greeks, Vlachs, Serbians, Bulgarians, Armenians, who came on this route from the Ottoman Empire, regularly settled in Iasi or Bucharest. There they contracted new marriages and did not declare the ones they had previously concluded in their countries of origin. When bigamy was revealed, the situation became complicated, not only because of the common patrimony at stake but mostly because of their children. In this regard, one of the aims of the article is the study of the normative attitude and practice of the Orthodox Church concerning the solution to these cases. The author is also interested in exploring how the destinies of these children born from supposedly illegitimate affairs were judged. Bogdan Mateescu’s study on mixed marriages involving Gypsy slaves aims to provide a more thorough understanding of the attitude on mixed marriages between Gypsy slaves and the Wallachian population, in the first half of the nineteenth century when, especially after 1831, two different positions emerged. The first one was adopted by the State authorities, which officially allowed this kind of marriages in 1838, while the second was that of the Orthodox Church, which persisted not only in denying them but also in trying to separate or control marriages or household formation even between different categories of Gypsy slaves. The negative attitude towards marriages with slaves is generally known to historians, but details such as those shown above have only recently come to light; the position of the State is less known, and the exact sources found so far appear to have been researched now for the first time. They also prove to be transparent in allowing one to identify some reasons behind the two attitudes: efforts to integrate or assimilate the Gypsy population (the State), and a strange combination of social and religious concepts in favour of various kinds of separations, with certain practical and economic undersides, shown through other sources (the Church). Another example, from a quantitative viewpoint, is the article of Siegfried Gruber, “Marriages across Religious Boundaries in Albania around 1900”. The subject of the research is a situation in which religious

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barriers in the way of mixed marriages proved almost unsurpassable, while ethnic differences tended to be more easily overcome. Regarding this section, we should also mention the study of Ioan Bolovan and Marius Eppel, “Churches and Interfaith Marriages in Transylvania. From 1895 to the Present Day”, which analyses the question of intermarriage in relation to the process of secularisation and societal modernisation, or the mobility of the population between the urban and rural areas. The authors emphasise the changes that affected the attitude of the Orthodox Church and the other denominations in Transylvania towards intermarriage, due to the new civil laws which, starting from 1895, established the primacy of the state on the problem of marriages. Helena da Silva proposes an interrogation of mixed marriages from the perspective of the importance of marriage for the foundation of a family in today’s Portugal. Her study goes beyond mixed marriage, trying to answer some questions regarding the status of marriage in the postmodern Portuguese world. The fundamental question is if marriage still plays a role in the Portuguese society and, if it does, the other queries that concern the author are: who can marry, what kinds of contracts are preferred, if marriage tends to be civil or religious, the degree of mixed marriages, the problem of children, legitimate or illegitimate, born either in a family or in a free union. Chapter 4, “The Explicative Mechanism of Mixed Marriages” covers the different factors - social, economic, cultural, family background – involved in a mixed marriage and their balance therein. We chose to place a rather methodological and explicative article at the beginning of the section, attempting to explain “Mixed Marriages through the Prism of the Concept of Fourth Demographic Transition.” The research deals with the globalisation of international migration, its role and place in the demographic evolution of the developed countries (including Russia), in a historical retrospective, with emphasis on their future demographic development. The main attention is drawn to the changes in the place and role of international migration in the context of the evolution of the demographic transition theory, including the concepts of the second and the third demographic transitions. This gives the possibility of offering a new scenario for the future demographic development of the world, which focuses on the interconnection of two demographic processes – the international migration of the population and nuptiality. This scenario has been called “the fourth demographic transition” and its main premise is that migration can be a positive phenomenon for the future demographic development, which takes into account national and global interests by promoting marriages between native people and migrants. With the help of

14

Introduction

such marriages, new children will be born. They will be the symbol of a new viable generation. Ethnic marriages have already become one of the instruments with the help of which countries can solve their problems within the existing negative demographic situation, taking into account the rising migration. In this way, migration can play a positive role and remove ethnic-based tensions in society. However, this is possible only if the policy of isolated immigration enclaves is not applied. Such a policy was one of the reasons why multicultural policies have collapsed. Instead of creating such enclaves, governments should follow a policy capable of stimulating marriages between national people and migrants. Guy Brunet’s article is focused on “The Marriage of Europeans and Jews in Algerian Towns in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century.” The purpose of the research is to study the choice of a spouse according to nationality, geographical origin or social background. The author’s investigation revolves around few questions: Did nationality play a major part in the way couples were formed? What was the proportion of marriages between spouses of different nationalities? Which nationalities were concerned about these mixed marriages? Did any national or local endogamy appear in this migratory context? Special attention will be paid to marriages involving Jews: did they involve two spouses from Europe, two spouses born on the North-African territory, or did these mixed marriages stick to a geographical criterion? It must be pointed out that marriages between Europeans, Jews and “Natives” are practically inexistent, the religious criterion playing a major part in this context. The next study, “Sentimental Relations among Italian Men and Migrant Women. How Migration affects Place and Time in the Making of mixed Couples”, signed by Sara Settepanella, presents the ways such couples meet and their efforts to cope with the cultural and social differences between the two parties. Therefore this study takes into consideration the dynamic of the encounters of 21 couples, which were engaged in free interviews. The women who took part in the interviews belonged to two huge geographical areas: Latin America and Eastern European countries. The purpoe of the study was not merely to reflect on and discuss the statistic results, which shows that more Italian men are sentimentally involved with foreign women than vice versa. The choice of these fields is deeply connected to the positions occupied by women in the geography of international power, which organises unequal access to the globalised market of labour and, generally, to the hosting societies. The feminisation of migration flows highlights a profound transformation affecting the subjects of mobility. As a matter of fact, the migration

LuminiĠa Dumanescu, Daniela Mârza and Marius Eppel

15

process is gradually becoming a means of empowerment for women, thanks to the new mobility acquired and the new domestic balance. The objective of the next article, authored by Cristina Tîrhaú and Viorel Sîrcă, is to examine the problems regarding mixed marriages between Romanian migrating women and their foreign husbands. This analysis consists in qualitative interviews applies to five emigrant Romanian women who got married, before and after the migration act, to „foreigners”. Three of the subjects are married to European citizens and live in EU countries, while two of them have husbands from the Middle East, having emigrated to Siria and Jordan respectively. This qualitative method should provide a comparative insight into mixed marriages between Romanian women and foreign citizens, references bring made to migration images in the “traditional” collective mental history, life course perspectives, gender roles, the importance of religion, culture and ethnicity of the married couples and their expectations about their new life, and also the evaluation of their married life after a couple of years spent as the wives of citizens from other countries. The migration of women from their country of origin (involved in marriage and/or work) profoundly affects their family lives and also their traditional gender roles. These women also have to adjust their gender role models in a new family context and a new culture. Generally, a “modern” approach towards gender roles and task division are preferred. Mihaela Hărăgu‫’܈‬s paper assesses the role of education in ethnically mixed marriages, considering it as a complex variable in the marital process, linked with both the cultural and the socioeconomic characteristics of the spouses. The main assumption of the paper is that education may compensate the cultural differences existent when spouses are of different ethnicities, and, moreover, that similarity in education may substitute for similarity in ethnicity. Working on a subsample of married persons from the 2002 Census, the author finds that better educated persons are more likely to be in an ethnically mixed marriage than lower educated ones and that educational similarity between husband and wife means higher chances to be in an ethnically mixed marriage. Marriage choices are surrounded by uncertainty and choosing a spouse of a different ethnic background may increase it, which means that similarity in other characteristics has become more relevant. Mihaela Hărăgu‫ ܈‬considers that education is such a characteristic that may reduce the uncertainty of a marriage choice, being a good indicator of the spouses’ tastes, values and lifestyles, as well as their income and status. The last chapter of this volume, “Mixed Marriages, Continental and Transcontinental Migration: Continuity and Change” covers a highly

16

Introduction

relevant topic, especially for our time – the relation between migration and intermarriage. The article of Sølvi Sogner, “Transnational Intermarriage and Cultural Transfer. Norwegians in Amsterdam 1621-1720” analyses the differences between the emigrants and the locals in terms of cultural and social gains and benefits, emphasising the positive aspects of migration. The paper discusses a concrete example of intermarriage, in the sense of marriage between persons of different nationalities. Recent theories of transnational history are an incentive for studies devoted to different forms of transfer and interaction. For historical demography, with an intimate concentration on individuals, this approach to the past is singularly interesting. The paper discusses the intermarriage pattern and the possible consequences for the transfer of a cultural nature back to the sending country. Marie-Pierre Arrizabalaga’s complex study on “Mixed Marriages among French Immigrants in Southern California, 1880-1950” analyses the specificities and uniqueness of this hybrid culture of French immigrants, and the processes which led to its formation over time. Studies on US immigrants’ marriages using censuses have shown that the majority of the first-generation immigrants who resided in the United States (and elsewhere in America perhaps) in the late nineteenth century and early 20th century married men or women of their origins. A study of naturalisation records may indicate otherwise, as revealed by the author. The analysis of the French immigrants’ naturalisation applications will show that marriage practices and strategies were more complex than what historiography has so far assumed. The records inform where immigrants were born, whether they had married in the United States or in France, the conditions of immigration and their situation since their arrival in the United States. Using these sources, Marie-Pierre Arrizabalaga shows that couples composed of two French nationals originating from two different areas of France actually married outside their cultural environment, so, in reality, their marriage strategies were exogamous. From a similar perspective, the study of Claudia Contente, “Some Considerations about the Marriage Market for Migrants in Almirante Brown (Buenos Aires, Argentina) at the End of the Nineteenth Century”, presents quantitative and qualitative data on intermarriage between European emigrants in Brazil and the local population. Based on the census records of 1895, the author offers a preliminary analysis of the marriage market from Almirante Brown, an Argentinian district located about 40 kilometers south of the city of Buenos Aires. The analysis of the census allowes her to delineate an outline of the principal characteristics of the matrimonial composition of migrants.

LuminiĠa Dumanescu, Daniela Mârza and Marius Eppel

17

The article signed by María M. Camou and Adela Pellegrino, “Marriage Behaviour among Immigrants. Montevideo, 1860-1908” aims to study the levels of inbreeding (marriage) between the members of the “immigration flood” and what is considered the native population of Montevideo. The authors address some gender issues such as the age at marriage and differences between spouses and examine how the cultural patterns of each national group of migrants influenced these marriages. Finally, the last article of the book, “The Cosmopolitanism of Transnational Families” uses the concept of cosmopolitanism understood as openess towards otherness; in particular, the study intends to theorise the cosmopolitan openness determined by migration in the case of Romanians migrating in search for work abroad. The first aim of the article is to present those characteristics of the members of transnational families that define these persons as cosmopolitan agents. The experience of migration offers a framework for constructing a cosmopolitan attitude in the life of – direct and indirect – participants in migration. The second aim is to define and present an approach to methodological cosmopolitanism that will serve as a basis for a research project proposed in this paper. The editors wish to express their gratitude to the authors, for making this volume possible, and to UEFISCDI, for the financial support of the project “Interethnic marriages between an exercise of tolerance and a modern expression of indifference, 1895-2010.” The Editors Cluj-Napoca, December 2013

References Bolovan, Ioan and Sorina Paula Bolovan. “Familia în Europa Centrală în timpul primei tranziĠii demografice.” In În căutarea fericirii. Viaаa familială în spaаiul românesc în secolele XVIII-XX, edited by Ioan Bolovan, Diana Covaci, Daniela Dete‫܈‬an, Marius Eppel, Elena Crinela Holom, 293-306. Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2010. Brie, Mircea. “Alteritatea confesională prin căsătorie la românii din zona Crisanei (a doua jumătate a secoluluial XIX-lea - începutul secolului XX).” In În căutarea fericirii. Viaаa familială în spaаiul românesc în secolele XVIII-XX, edited by Ioan Bolovan, Diana Covaci, Daniela Dete‫܈‬an, Marius Eppel, Elena Crinela Holom, 147-166. Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2010.

18

Introduction

Elliott, Joyce E. and William Moskoff. “Decision-Making Power in Romanian Families.” Journal of Comparative Family Studies XIV, 1 (1983): 39-50. Finnas, Fjalar and Richard O’Leary: “Choosing for the Children: the Affiliation of the Children of Minority-Majority Group Intermarriages.” European Sociological Review, 19 (2003): 483-499. Kalmijn, Matthijs, Paul M. de Graaf and Jacques P. G. Janssen. “Intermarriage and the Risk of Divorce in the Netherlands: The Effects of Differences in Religion and in Nationality, 1974-94.” Population Studies, 1 (2005): 71-85. Kalmijn, Matthijs, and Frank von Tubergen. “Ethnic Intermarriage in the Netherlands: Confirmations and Refutations of Accepted Insights.” European Journal of Population / Revue Européenne de Démographie 4 (2006): 371-397. Kalmijn, Matthijs. “Intermarriage and Homogamy: Causes, Patterns, Trends.” Annual Review of Sociology 24 (1998): 395-421. Neyrand, Gerard and Marine M‫ޘ‬Sili. “Mixed Couples in Contemporary France. Marriage, Acquisition of French Nationality and Divorce.” Population: An English Selection 2 (1998): 385-416. Rebhun, Uzi. “Jewish Identification in Intermarriage: Does a Spouse's Religion (Catholic vs. Protestant) Matter?” Sociology of Religion 1 (1999): 71-88. Rytina, Steven, Peter M. Blau, Terry Blum and Joseph Schwartz: “Inequality and Intermarriage: A Paradox of Motive and Constraint.” Social Forces 3 (1988): 645-675. ùiúeútean, Gheorghe. “Căsătorii interconfesionale úi construcĠii identitare la sfârúitul secolului al XIX-lea úi începutul secolului XX (cazul oraúului ùimleu Silvaniei),” In În căutarea fericirii. Viaаa familială în spaаiul românesc în secolele XVIII-XX, edited by Ioan Bolovan, Diana Covaci, Daniela Dete‫܈‬an, Marius Eppel, Elena Crinela Holom, 111146. Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2010. Smits, Jeroen. “Ethnic Intermarriage and Social Cohesion. What Can We Learn from Yugoslavia?” Social Indicators Research 3 (2010): 417432. Song, Miri. “Is Intermarriage a Good Indicator of Integration?” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 2 (2009): 331-348. Tolsma, Jochem, Marcel Lubbers and Marcel Coenders. “Ethnic Competition and Opposition to Ethnic Intermarriage in the Netherlands: A Multi-Level Approach.” European Sociological Review 2 (2008): 215–230.

CHAPTER I: MIXED MARRIAGE IN THE COLLECTIVE MENTALITY

INTER-WAR REFLECTIONS ON MIXED MARRIAGES IN BANAT CARMEN ALBERT

Introduction Without representing an extremely vast territory, Banat has a special individuality, in which ethnic/confessional diversity has always stood out as one of its main characteristics. It therefore offers different perspectives for the investigation of interesting themes, such as the history of mentalities, the imaginary and sensitivity, which are specific of the new histories of Annals. Last but not least, the history of private life is a field that has been studied only fragmentarily so far, but a comparativist approach thereof may unravel tremendous surprises. The difficulty, in this respect, lies not only in the lack of specialists, but especially in the dispersion or even in the complete absence of sources. The purpose of this study is to add to the materials that have been written so far new information and demographic data which are necessary for accomplishing a comprehensive synthesis of marital behaviour in this region. Another purpose would be to gather the subjective perceptions of the population from a rural locality regarding the phenomenon of mixed marriages, which is often encountered in societies characterised by ethnic/confessional diversity. Atypical from many points of view, the theme of marriages, in general, and of mixed marriages, in particular, in the history of the Banat region has only recently drawn the attention of researchers; hence, there are still many unknown facts. We consider that approaching a theme of historical demography from a comparative perspective and against the background of the history of mentalities represents one of the elements that are necessary for a global understanding of this phenomenon. The present study focuses on the quantitative analysis of a sociological inquiry undertaken over the course of several years during the inter-war period, as part of the monographic campaigns organised by the Banat-

Carmen Albert

21

Criúana Social Institute. From the respondents’ answers we can discover the attitude towards the phenomenon of mixed ethnic-confessional marriages. We have also proposed a case study for verifying the results, exploring the history of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in even greater depth, in order to see whether these inter-war reflections had older origins or they represented identity conceptions specific for the analysed period.

Theoretical overview A few studies regarding the subject of families in the Banat region deserve special mention. The study written by Adrian Bucur1 refers to the phenomenon of mixed re-marriages amongst the Orthodox and GreekCatholic communities (nineteenth - twentieth centuries) in the Counties of Torontal, Timiú and Caraú-Severin, the sample it analyses comprising data referring to several towns, as they are found in the parish registers. A statistical analysis applied to the ethnic-confessional diversity of the population examined in this study reveals some interesting conclusions regarding the percentage of inter-confessional marriages from the total number of contracted marriages, the choices made by the Greek-Catholic and Orthodox grooms and brides, the seasonal character of mixed remarriages, the age of re-marriage, and the marital status at the moment of re-marriage. In another study2 I presented, for the same Banatian province, the characteristics of families based on the “zwei Kinder” system, making an incursion into history in order to detect the origins of this behaviour. The case study researched in the parish registers of ReúiĠa Montană highlights the fact that this model does not have its origins in the phenomenon of imitating the German settlers’ behaviour, but has a strict economic motivation, determined by the Romanians’ desire not to fragment their property by dividing it amongst several children. In addition to the above, there are several historical demographic studies on the population from Banat in Ioan Munteanu’s work,3 based on a Hungarian census, in which there are many considerations about family and its problems.

1

Bucur, “Aspecte privind fenomenul recăsătoriei mixte”, 136-154. Albert, “Family Models in Banat,” 211-229. 3 Munteanu, Banatul istoric, 26. 2

22

Inter-War Reflections on Mixed Marriages in Banat

Methodological background This research is based on qualitative methods of analysing the answers provided by the interviewees and the case study focuses on a quantitative analysis of the data from the Registry of Marriages in the town ReúiĠa Română. The hypothesis from which we start in our research is that in choosing a marital partner, membership to the same ethnic group prevailed over other characteristics. In starting a family, other factors were also taken into consideration, such as: age, social status or profession, which could lead to endogamy or exogamy, but ethnicity was, we think, the main criterion. The research conducted by the Banat-Criúana Social Institute during the inter-war period represents an extraordinary opportunity for understanding the collective mentality as regards family problems. Following a model inspired by Dimitrie Gusti’s philosophy, this institute advocated rural emancipation through the monographic campaigns it carried out. The investigations achieved in the monographic campaigns conducted in the Plain and Mountain Banat concentrated on diverse themes including, from the beginning, the family as a social unit. The motivation of researching the rural family with all its complex manifestations was the population shortage entailed by the low demographic growth, which the completed census revealed. Researching the causality of this phenomenon, the monographers also discussed in their approaches the problems of mixed marriages inherent to a space in which ethnic-cultural diversity had been a constant feature for many centuries. The answers to the qualitative research carried out by the team members highlighted the population’s subjective perceptions regarding this problem, as they were recorded in the published studies and in the documents. The five monographic campaigns organised in the Banat region approached the theme of mixed marriages more or less consistently within the larger context of the problem of marriage. Cases of concubinage and negative birth rates got the attention of the Church, the public institutions and the political factors; thus, the theme became a priority on the agenda of the Banat-Criúana Social Institute. The inquiry that focused on the legitimacy or illegitimacy of couples also touched the problem of mixed marriages, inevitable in a region characterised by great ethnic-confessional diversity. The information comes from these researches, more precisely from the recorded answers.

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23

Presentation of results During the first campaign (BelinĠ - 1934), the questionnaire containing the answers for drawing the ethical-judicial report4 included 7 questions about this problem.5 The answers did not receive a distinct, but a general treatment, and the conclusion was: “Mixed marriages are not common and they are looked down upon. The few such marriages that have been concluded have led to the assimilation of the minorities.”6 Fortunately, in the Sârbova campaign (1935), dedicated to the same problem of low birth rates and concubinage, there were some relevant answers given by the interviewees. One of the questions is interesting for our approach: “Would you marry a foreign person?”7 This was addressed to the husband (the head of the family) and the answers recorded in the monograph enable us to analyse them quantitatively. There were 17 persons investigated, 16 men and a woman, aged between 26-75, a small sample, because the majority had refused to respond; seeing this, the investigators no longer addressed those questions to other inhabitants. The opinions were diverse, the majority rejecting the idea from the start and offering various justifications that revolved around tradition and their subjective perceptions. The majority invoked tradition and their own image, which could become deteriorated in their relations with others. Archaic and conventional, the world of the village did not easily accept change when it came to marriage. An example in this direction was the answer provided by Dimitrie GheĠa (75 years old), who referred to old times, at least 25 years before that, when he was young: “I would not have married a foreign woman because I would have become the target of gossip of the village.” Sometimes, a different confession was accepted, although the same ethnic group was not. Thus, Iosif Fanu, who was 31 years old, said: “my wife was a Uniate and she converted to Orthodoxy, because my old man did not want me to take a German woman,” while the widow of Gorun Nicolae (31 years old) answered: “I would not have married a foreigner, we would not change our faith.” 4

The questionnaire, which contained 230 questions, was applied and analysed by the team of social policy analysts led by Adrian Brudariu and Cornel Grofúorean. 5 For instance: Are there any marriages between the representatives of different minorities? Why? How are they seen? What are their consequences? What about marriages between Romanians and Gypsies? How are they seen? What are their judicial, moral and social consequences? 6 Anchetă monografică în comuna BelinĠ, 383. 7 Monografia comunei Sârbova, 237.

24

Inter-War Reflections on Mixed Marriages in Banat

Some interviewed persons acknowledged the presence of the phenomenon only amongst the urban elite, where it was considered a normal fact, but not for the peasants, in whose case tradition was often invoked. Pavel Mozoú, 26 years old, claimed that: “I would not have married a foreign woman because this went against custom,” while Dimitrie Fanu, 57 years old, stated that: “we were taught by our ancestors to hold our traditions dear.” Sometimes the perspective of taking a wife of a different ethnicity was not entirely ignored, as young Mozoú said, thinking about the efficiency of two people labouring in a household: “I think we had better marry German women because they are better workers.” Some of the respondents referred to the position of mixed families in the collective mentality, a negative opinion in this respect being expressed by Ilie Ghilezan, 57 years old: “I met some mixed families who very often spoke Hungarian. We do not consider them Romanians, they are halfbreeds,” or by Pavel Savuloviciu, 74 years old: “there are some people from our village who got married to German women, but they have become complete strangers to us. Their children are German.”

Case-study: Mixed marriages in ReúiĠa Română A summary analysis of the above-mentioned responses reveals that the attitude and opinion of the population towards the perspective of marriage to “foreign people” was negative: almost all of those interviewed declared that they were against such matrimonial alliances. The mentality of the rural community held the idea of exogamy in disregard, the ethnic preference being for endogamous marriages. It is difficult to believe that the answers of the interviewees did not reflect the opinion of the entire community, particularly given that they made reference to the mixed families that existed in the community, so it may be that many of them were against this type of marriage. The hypothesis from which we started our research was: for many persons, ethnic membership was a basic criterion in choosing their partner and it prevailed over other characteristics. We can conclude that the inter-war collective mentality did not like the idea of mixed marriages, although such cases existed. This can be explained by the low frequency of inter-marriages during the centuries of multi-ethnic cohabitation, even though it is true that this segment has not been thoroughly investigated yet from the vantage point of Banatian historical demography. If low scores are obtained after analysing the marriages concluded in the aforementioned period, they will stand as

Carmen Albert

25

confirmation of the fact that the collective mentality had been against this type of marriage prior to the inter-war period, when the investigation of the Banat-Criúana Social Institute was undertaken. If, on the contrary, these cases were frequent and, especially, if their number increased in time, then we can speak about “cohabitation” in the space of the Mountain Banat and, what is more important, about a mentality that was open to ethnic diversity, while the answers of those questioned by the BanatCriúana Social Institute may be seen as the expression of an ideology that was held in high regard during that period. In order not to draw the wrong conclusions, we embarked on a case study researching the frequency of mixed marriages in the Registry of Marriages from the town ReúiĠa Română, during the period 1895-1912. Throughout time, this region has had different historical dominations. From the nineteenth century until 1918, it belonged to the AustrianHungarian Empire. During that time, the Banatian territory consisted of three parts: the largest part was situated on the present-day territory of Romania, a small part was in the South of Hungary and another one on the present-day territory of Serbia. The Peace Conference of 1919 brought the problem of the Banatian territory under regulation, dividing it between Romania, Serbia and Hungary.8 ReúiĠa’s population was extremely diversified ethnically and denominationally after the settlements which started in the eighteenth century, and it is unlikely that in the 100 years that witnessed the transition from coexistence to cohabitation the ethnic minorities had not engaged in mixed marriages. This fact was bound to happen because the settlers of various confessions had settled in the proximity of the Romanian localities or in their extension. It was an open geography of settlement which created everyone’s obligation to cross over to the others’ places, irrespective of whether they were Romanians, Germans or Serbs. Such was the case of ReúiĠa Română, on which we focused our attention, analysing the Registry of Marriages identified in the archives. This town consisted of two sections: ReúiĠa Română and ReúiĠa Montană. Initially, there was only ReúiĠa, but the arrival of new settlers thanks to the settlement policy adopted by Vienna, created a parallel urban structure. Thus, in 1771, ReúiĠa Montană or German ReúiĠa was founded after being colonised with Catholic population from Styria, Bohemia, Upper Austria, and Carinthia.9 Here ReúiĠa’s famous industry would later on be born. During the eighteenth – twentienth centuries, the town would see the 8 9

Preda et al. România la ConferinĠa de Pace de la Paris. Glass, MigraĠia înspre spaĠiul dunărean.

26

Inter-War Reflections on Mixed Marriages in Banat

establishment of the metallurgical factory, the machine building plant and, after 1890, the introduction of two new furnaces with an increased capacity.10 Industrial development and the settlements of multi-ethnic population also affected ReúiĠa Română, which was located nearby; over the years, it turned into a mirror image of the other part of the town, albeit at a smaller scale, in the sense that it had a smaller population but was similar to ReúiĠa Montană from the point of view of its ethnic and confessional diversity. The ethnic structure of ReúiĠa Română was, thus, very diverse and its evolution was extremely interesting from the late nineteenth until the turn of the 20th century. Thus, the Hungarian census11 reveals that in 1880 the percentage of the Romanians was 73% of the total population and that of the minorities was 27% while after 1900,12 that is, during the interval examined here, a totally different situation ensued, in which the percentage of the Orthodox diminished or, better said, it increased at a slower pace, but the minorities registered a relevant numerical increase. Certainly, this cannot be considered a natural increase, but was due to the settlement of a large number of people in this town (Figure 1). During those two centuries, industrial progress was a constant characteristic throughout the territory of Banat. After 1890, ReúiĠa’s factories tripled their production of turbines (from 1880 - 18,400 tons to 1900 – 44,902 tons); moreover, the construction of railway bridges and overpasses started, and they can still be found on the territory of the former empire today. During the analysed period, ReúiĠa became the most important industrial centre in Southern Hungary.13 The consequence was the attraction of the population towards this region, which underwent tremendous development and where the need for human resources was very large. Thus, we can explain why in the 20 years that passed between the two censuses, the population increased numerically, especially as regards the Germans and the Hungarians qualified to work in the industry; the result was that the Romanians represented less than half of the total population, given that the industrial background was not very attractive to them and they preferred agricultural work instead. Thus, in the next census, from 1900, the Romanians represented 41% and the minorities 59% of the population.

10

Gräf, Domeniul bănăĠean al Steg, 1997. Rotariu, Recensământul din 1880, 123. 12 Rotariu, Recensământul din 1900, 208. 13 Gräf, Domeniul bănăĠean al Steg, 307-308. 11

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27

Figure 1 Population of ReúiĠa Română in 1880 and 1900 80% 70% 60% 50% 40%

Romanians

30%

Minorities

20% 10% 0% 1880

1900

The confessional distribution corresponded to the following ethnic structures: the Romanians were Orthodox and Greek-Catholic; the Germans were Catholic; the Hungarians - Catholic and Protestant;14 the Slovaks and the Croatians were Catholic; the Serbians-Orthodox. In terms of the confessional character (Figure 2), the evolution was similar: we may notice that there was a substantial increase of the Roman-Catholic population, which was predominant due to the industrial environment in which they were employed. Thus, on the Steg domains,15 the number of workers increased from 4,000 in 1858 to 17,729 in 1910,16 which means by more than 4 times! A slight increase was also noticed amongst the Jewish minority, attracted by the material well-being observable in this town after a period of time. The other denominations registered constant values or small modifications. Under these conditions, the analysis of the phenomenon of mixed marriages will certainly be conducted from the confessional point of view, specifying the denomination and not the ethnic group.

14

In the Protestants’ case, there were the following confessions: Calvinist, Unitarian, Evangelical and Lutheran, but due to their extremely reduced number, we have preferred to include them in the larger class of Protestants. 15 An anonymous society with international capital which administered almost the entire South of Banat. 16 Gräf, Domeniul bănăĠean al Steg, 308.

Inter-War Reflections on Mixed Marriages in Banat

28

Figure 2 Population evolution in ReúiĠa Română (1880-1900) 1800 1600 1400 1200 1000 800 600 400 200 0 orthodox

greekcatholic

catholic 1880

protestant

israelits

1900

The studied documents do not allow us to identify the ethnic group precisely; the establishment of a relationship between an ethnic group and a particular confession would be difficult and it would have a large margin of error. This needs be specified because as evinced by the analysis of this phenomenon, sometimes customs took precedence in choosing a partner, very often the reasons for choosing a spouse being of ethnic rather than confessional extraction, as it is often the case in the real world. The ethnic structure followed closely the confessional one – yet they did not overlap completely. Between the two censuses there was an increase of the German and Hungarian populations within the Catholic majority and a slower increase of the Romanian Orthodox population (Figures 3 and 4). Likewise, we may remark the addition of some ethnic groups after the year 1900, which had previously been absent from ReúiĠa Română: Slovaks, Ruthenians, Croatians and Serbs, belonging to the Catholic and Orthodox confessions. Their number was extremely reduced; their presence, therefore, did not modify the statistics, the representative ethnic groups being the Romanians, the Germans and the Hungarians and, respectively, the Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant confessions.

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Figure 3 Ethnic structure in 1880 2.8% 4.5% 15.8% Romanians Hungarians 2.1%

Germans Slovacs Others 74.7%

Figure 4 Ethnic structure in 1900

0.3% 1.5%

0.1%

0.3%

5.1% Romanians 40.6%

Hungarians Germans Slovacs Ruthenians Croatians

44.9%

Serbs Other languages 7.2%

In evaluating the phenomenon of interethnically/interconfessionally mixed marriages, we must certainly take into consideration the fact that the Greek-Catholic population largely consisted of Romanians, so in this case, we should be aware that mixed marriages were interconfessional rather than interethnic for the Romanian population; in fact, such intermarriages were intra-ethnic, the affinities being obvious: within one and the same ethnic group, confessional differences tend to be smaller. Thus, the members of an ethnic group can belong to different confessions:

30

Inter-War Reflections on Mixed Marriages in Banat

Orthodox and Greek-Catholic in the case of the Romanians, RomanCatholic, Evangelical, Reformed and Unitarian in the case of the Hungarians, Augustan in the case of the Germans. Similarly, the members of different ethnic groups can belong to the same confession, as is the case of the Hungarians, who can be either Catholic or Protestant. The different percentages registered by the Romanian and the GermanHungarian populations between the two censuses, which recorded fluctuations, may also have influenced the marriage patterns. In the interval 1895-1912, which is under examination here, the civil legislation governing marriages started to function, certain secular regulations taking precedence over ecclesiastical provisions. Laws XXXI and XXXII of 1894 brought new regulations regarding the conclusion of a marriage, its dissolution or the status of the minors born out of that marriage.17 In 1868 important provisions as regards mixed confessional marriages were laid down by Law LIII, which stipulated the possibility of conversion to another confession or the fact that marriage could be concluded before a priest of either confession.18 The way in which it was applied across the territories of Hungary, amongst which Banat was included, became a subjective problem, each ecclesiastical authority proceeding as deemed appropriate. Thus, the legislation enacted in Hungary in 1894-1895, which modified and completed the articles of the above-mentioned law, brought into discussion the pre-eminence of the church no matter the confession in the marital field.19 The legislative acts came into force on 1 October 1895, after a long period when, at least at the level of denominationally mixed marriages, a quiet fight had been waged between the temporal and ecclesiastical powers, on the one hand, and the Catholic Church and other Christian denominations, on the other. The analysis of the above mentioned registers20 illustrates the fact that from the total of marriages in the period 1895-1912, 13% were mixed (Figure 5), meaning an average of 3 marriages per year, a rather low number, especially since after 1900, there was an increased inflow of population, whose obvious welfare was highlighted by the figures of the industrial production21 achievements, the majority of the inhabitants being employed in this field.

17

LegislaĠia ecleziastică úi laică, 26-7. Gräf, Domeniul bănăĠean al Steg, 224-5. 19 Gräf, Domeniul bănăĠean al Steg, 85. 20 Registre de stare civilă, ReúiĠa Română, inv. 1576. 21 Gräf, Domeniul bănăĠean al Steg, 1997. 18

Carmen Albert

31

Figure 5 Ratio of total marriages/mixed

13%

mixed marriages marriages

87%

Figure 6 Mixed marriage/total marriages (1895-1912)

140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0 1895- 19011900 1902

1903

1904

1905- 19071906 1908

Total marriages

1909

1910

1911

1912

Mixed marriages

With the exception of the period 1895-1900, when, in 6 years, there were registered more mixed marriages than endogamous marriages in general, during the following years their number decreased, the evolution being visible in Figure 7. The decreasing trend of marriages in general was not reflected in the evolution of mixed marriages. The latter followed a constant line – true, placed at lower levels, but not with many oscillations; the exception was the year 1909, when the number of mixed marriages went down, followed by the year 1910, when they registered a slight increase.

32

Inter-War Reflections on Mixed Marriages in Banat

Figure 7 The evolution of mixed marriages (1895-1912)

140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0 18951900

19011902

1903

1904

19051906

Total marriages

19071908

1909

1910

1911

1912

Mixed marriages

In the next figure we can see the options of the future grooms and brides for a life partner. Figure 8 Mixed marriages combination 25 20 15 10 5 0

There are large values for the Catholic/Protestant and Catholic/ Orthodox combinations. In the former case, we may talk about the existence of ethnic determinism amongst the Hungarians, who were largely Protestant and Catholic, so these marriages were concluded between Hungarians in fact. Certainly, we cannot exclude the possibility that they represented marriages between the Germans and the Hungarians (some of whom were

Carmen Albert A

33

Catholics, w while others were w Protestantts). In the latteer case, the tw wo figures show that ass regards mixeed marriages, the Orthodoxx and the Catholics also registered sllightly larger scores, confirrming an opinnion from the inter-war period wherreby “we hadd better marry y German woomen because they are better workeers.” Surely, thhe values are higher also beecause their group g was more numerrous. Figure 99, which show ws the distribu ution of mixedd marriages by y gender, confirms thhe fact that a larger num mber of Cathoolic women preferred Protestant oor even Orthoodox husbands, while the G Greek-Catholic – men and womenn – also preeferred Catho olics and Orrthodox spou uses. The intermarriagge rate,22 whicch represents the proportioon of ethnicallly mixed marriages coompared to thhe total numbeer of marriagees contracted in ReúiĠa Română in the given perriod of time, was 14%. Coomparing it with w other towns in Baanat: Timiúoarra 12.2%-22.8 8% and Timiúú County 3.4% %, we can say that in R ReúiĠa Românnă the values of mixed marrriages may have h been even higher.. Figure 9 Distrribution of mixxed marriages by y gender

Conclu usion The preesent study reveals r that mixed intercconfessional/in nterethnic marriages exxisted even thhough their values v were nnot high; this confirms that the colllective mentallity had not been b against thhem prior to the interwar period,, when the Banat-Criúana B a Social Insttitute investig gated the phenomenonn.

22

Schoen, “A A Methodologiccal Analysis of Intergroup I Marrriage,” 49-78.

34

Inter-War Reflections on Mixed Marriages in Banat

The case study reveals that we can speak of actual cohabitation during the investigated period and, what is more important, that the mentality was open to “accepting otherness.” The answers of those investigated by the Banat-Criúana Social Institute were the expression of an ideology that was very much upheld in the age of “eugenics.” The negative perspectives on mixed marriages in the inter-war period made reference to ethnic purity, especially as regards the urban population, according to eugenic ideas that supported marital control by the head of the family. The young Romanians were thereby expected to choose their spouses from their own ethnic group. In 1938, the Criminal Code included a law under which the Romanian officers could marry only Romanian women. Gusti’s school, which the Banat-Criúana Social Institute subscribed to, played an important role in the promotion of eugenic ideas, which were expressed by its representatives and were visible in the actions they undertook, the courses they organised and the journal in which the theories and programs of hereditary determinism were disseminated.

References Manuscript Sources Serviciul JudeĠean Caraú-Severin a Arhivelor NaĠionale, Caransebeú, ColecĠia Registre de stare civilă, ReúiĠa Română, inv. 1576.

Secondary bibliography Albert, Carmen. “Family Models in Banat (XIX-XX).” In Families in Europe between the Nineteenth and Twentieth-First Centuries. From the Traditional Model to the Contemporary PACS, edited by Antoinette Fauve-Chamoux, Ioan Bolovan, 211-229. Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2009. Bolovan Ioan, Covaci Diana, Deteúan Daniela, Eppel Marius, Crinela Holom Elena. LegislaĠia ecleziastică úi laică privind familia românească din Transilvania în a doua jumătate a secolului al XIXlea. Cluj-Napoca: Academia Română, Centrul de Studii Transilvane, 2009. Bolovan, Sorina Paula and Ioan Bolovan. “Family and Matrimonial Behaviour in Transylvania at the End of the Nineteenth Century and the Beginning of the Twentieth Century: Tradition and Modernization.” In Dimensions of Domestic Space in Romania, edited by Petru IluĠ. Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2008.

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Bucur, Adrian. “Aspecte privind fenomenul recăsătoriei mixte în cadrul comunităĠilor ortodoxe úi greco-catolice din comitatele bănăĠene în a doua jumătate a secolului al XIX-lea úi începutul secolului al XX-lea.” In Studii de demografie istorică, edited by Corneliu Pădurean, Ioan Bolovan, 136-154. Arad: Univers Gutenberg, 2010. Bucur, Maria. Eugenie úi modernizare în România interbelică. Iaúi: Polirom, 2005. Glass Christian. MigraĠia înspre spaĠiul dunărean. Timiúoara: Cosmopolitan Art, 2012. Gräf, Rudolf, Domeniul bănăĠean al Steg (1855-1920). ReúiĠa: Banatica, 1997. Institutul Social Banat Criúana, Anchetă monografică în comuna BelinĠ. Timiúoara: Tipografia românească, 1938. —. Monografia comunei Sârbova. Timiúoara: Tipografia românească, 1939. Preda, Dumitru, Ioan Chiper and Alexandru Ghiúa. România la ConferinĠa de Pace de la Paris (1919-1920). Bucure‫܈‬ti: Semne, 2010. Munteanu, Ioan. Banatul istoric 1867-1918. Aúezările. PopulaĠia, vol. 1. Timiúoara: Editura Excelsior Art, 2006. Rotariu, Traian, Maria Semeniuc, Cornelia Mureúan. Recensământul din 1880. Transilvania. Cluj-Napoca: Staff, 1997. Rotariu, Traian, Maria Semeniuc, Cornelia Mureúan. Recensământul din 1900. Transilvania. Cluj-Napoca: Staff, 1997. Schoen, Robert. “Methodological Analysis of Intergroup Marriage.” Sociological Methodology 16 (1986): 47-79.

CULTURAL EXOGAMY AMONG THE GERMAN AND THE AUSTRIAN MIDDLE CLASSES IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY ALEXANDER PINWINKLER

Marriage as a social practice among the middle classes In the nineteenth century, middle-class members usually married for economic reasons. This is a generalising assumption concerning the middle-class section of society. But what happened if romantic ideals and conceptions of love challenged traditional marriage patterns? In 1844, Jacob Henle, a German Professor of Medicine, got straight to the core of the matter. Analysing the origins of his love affair with the seamstress and nursemaid Elise Egloff, his future wife, Henle assessed his individual perceptions as follows: “[…] So, what happened to me is the most ridiculous thing that may happen to a gentleman in such a situation: I was interested not just in her body, but also in her soul.”1

Henle’s statement appears to highlight one of the main research problems I discuss here: I argue that exogamous marriages were significantly favoured by romantic conceptions of love. Thereby, in the long run, it became possible for the number of marriages among members of different social classes to increase. However, exogamous marriages could not bring about a change as regards the social inequality of the sexes – at least not within the bourgeois society. Did “cultural exogamy” 1 Kübler, ed., Geprüfte Liebe, 39, Henle to his sister Marie Mathieu, 8 June 1844: “[…] und so passierte mir das Lächerlichste, was einem Kavalier von Welt in solchem Verhältnis begegnen kann: Ich interessierte mich nicht bloß für ihren Körper, sondern auch für die Seele des Mädchens” (German original). I would like to thank the Austrian Research Foundation (Österreichische Forschungsgemeinschaft, ÖFG) as well as the University of Cluj-Napoca which supported my travel expenses in Cluj.

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nevertheless challenge the hitherto prevalent bourgeois rules of connubium, and if yes, to what extent and under what circumstances? The aim of the present paper is to analyse this overall question. This will be done by reflecting on mixed marriages among the German and the Austrian middle-class families from the nineteenth century. When I refer to the Austrian middle classes, I mean the Cisleithanian part of the monarchy and, within that area, the German-speaking branches of these families. By pointing out the specific cultural rules surrounding marriage practices among the bourgeoisie, my paper also contributes to the research on collective mentalities. I suggest here that marriage, particularly mixed marriages, may be understood as an ensemble of social and cultural practices. In early modern societies, marriages served as means of building networks of kinship; for entrepreneurial families, in particular, marriage had traditionally represented a way of developing business relationships. By arranging marriages, the families involved exchanged economic and social capital as well.2 This relates to the more traditional concept of connubium, which was known particularly in Central and Western Europe. There, the “European Marriage Pattern” first described by John Hajnal was widely practised.3 From this perspective, connubium appears as a social practice which occurred not only between the individuals in a couple, but also among different classes, as well as among various social and generational groups. In the following investigations, I argue that exogamous marriages, which were favoured by romantic ideas of love, challenged the prevalent bourgeois rules of connubium. Especially for the middle classes, marriage was usually regarded as a decisive turning point for both the individual protagonists and their families. In this context, however, the term “middle class” will be used simply as a generalising heuristic term. As I indicate in the next chapter, I do not intend to analyse all of the middle-class groups, ranging from shopkeepers to industrialists. Rather, I wish to concentrate on a considerably smaller group, which, in German, is usually called the Besitzbürgertum or the Bildungsbürgertum and which does not include the petite bourgeoisie, consisting of shopkeepers and craftsmen. To circumscribe the object of my research, I shall use the terms bourgeois groups or bourgeois classes, or even the German word Bürgertum. Membership in such social groups, however, was rather exclusively conditioned by certain criteria, which I shall also discuss in what follows. 2

See specifically Bourdieu’s theory of cultural and social capital, “The Forms of Capital,” 241–58. 3 See Ehmer, “Marriage,” 282–321.

38 Exogamy among the German/Austrian Middle Classes in the 19th Century

“Endogamy” is to be seen as the dominant rule for marriages concluded within bourgeois groups. It served as a fundamental sociocultural practice, leading to the formation of a distinctive class. Therefore, “endogamy” can be defined as the practice of marrying within a specific ethnic group, class, or social group; outsiders to these groups are rejected as being unsuitable for marriage and the criterion of belonging to the same group takes precedence over other close personal relationships.4 Both case studies hereinafter presented, however, will highlight the consequences derived from marriages that virtually transgressed the cultural rules concerning this eminently bourgeois practice. Thus, “exogamy” will be discussed as follows: by definition, it refers to marriage outside a specified group of people to which a person belongs.5 In the present paper, I analyse the obvious contradiction between existing cultural rules of marrying, and I ask the following questions: x How did “mixed” couples and their families seek to resolve the contradiction between “endogamy” and their “exogamous” connubia? x What were the personal consequences of exogamous marriages for the couples, and to what extent can they be described as significant for the internalisation of behavioural rules among the bourgeois classes of the nineteenth century? The first example refers to the marriage between Jacob Henle (18091885), the German professor of anatomy and pathologist whom I already cited at the beginning of this study, and the Swiss seamstress and nursemaid Elise Egloff (1821-1848), as it was reflected in the family letters.6 David Sabean, a well-known American historian, accurately characterises this narrative as a “German Pygmalion/ Galatea story”, and 4

See the article on “Endogamie/Exogamie”, in: Fuchs-Heinritz et al., eds., Lexikon zur Soziologie, 161. 5 The origins of the scientific discussion on endogamy/exogamy obviously lie in ethnological debates on totemism and clan structures among the so-called primitive peoples: thus, the French sociologist Émile Durkheim considered that exogamy derived from totemism, claiming that it arose from a religious respect for the blood of a totemic clan, for the clan totem was a god and it resided especially in the blood. The Scottish ethnologist James G. Frazer (1854-1941), however, argued that exogamy began in order to ensure the survival of family groups, especially when individual families turned into larger political groups. Frazer, Totemism and Exogamy, 95. 6 See the edition of the family correspondence published by Kübler, ed., Geprüfte Liebe. See also the second edition of this book: Kübler, Mein lieber böser Schatz!

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plainly calls Elise Egloff the “German Galatea”7: According to Sabean, Jacob Henle acted like Pygmalion, the sculptor of ancient Greek mythology: Henle modelled his future wife in line with the cultural rules of his own social class. Thus, Elise’s “aesthetic education” seemed to be the precondition of her acceptance within the bourgeois family sphere. Secondly, I analyse the marriage between the Viennese participant in the 1848 Revolution Maximilian Carl Gritzner (1825-1892) and Pauline Seligmann (*1825; †?), the daughter of a Jewish upper-class family from Karlsruhe. In this case, Pauline’s family broke all ties with her, because her bridegroom was a Catholic Christian and the marriage did not comply with the moral restriction of confessional endogamy in the Jewish tradition.8

Marriage and bourgeois class identity: some general reflections on the current state of research In this chapter, I shall make a few remarks on the historiographical term of the Bürgertum in the German and Austrian context of the nineteenth century: Which social or professional groups formed the German and Austrian Bürgertum, and what were the cultural values they shared? What inferences may be drawn as regards their collectively shared values and habits, and to what degree did ‘marriage’ reflect such groupbound collective mental dispositions? Seen from the perspective of Social History, the modern Bürgertum covered a relatively broad variety of different professional categories, ranging from industrialists or bankers to professional categories such as lawyers or physicians. It is important to distinguish these branches of the Bürgertum from the traditional local Stadtbürgertum, particularly since the members of the latter category derived their social status from their privileges as eligible representatives of a town, with their own Bürgerrecht. In the nineteenth century, the German and Austrian Bürgertum normally consisted of men who shared economic independence and their appreciation of “work”, “knowledge” and private ownership. Bourgeois women, however, belonged to the bourgeois society as a whole,

7

Sabean, “Die Ästhetik der Heiratsallianzen,” 160. See Hauch, “Women’s Spaces in the Men’s Revolution of 1848”. See also the literary treatment of this exogamous marriage by Welsh, Das Lufthaus. Roman.

8

40 Exogamy among the German/Austrian Middle Classes in the 19th Century

but they usually remained excluded from such unquestionably masculine privileges.9 According to the social historian Jürgen Kocka, the noun Bürger and the adjective bürgerlich have, in the German language, two essential meanings: on the one hand, they denominate the members of a small social class or group and their characteristics (in English or French, the equivalent terms would be the bourgeoisie, or the middle class), while on the other hand, they may also refer to the Staatsbürger (citizens in English, citoyens/citoyennes in French). The latter meaning encompasses all the persons who belong to the state and share some common rights and duties. All these differentiations can generally be adopted for the German Bürger, as well as for their Cisleithanian counterparts. Still, there are some relevant characteristics which may highlight the rather specific sociopolitical situation of the German-speaking Austrian Bürgertum at that time. The emergence of the Czech, Slovene, Polish, or Italian bourgeois groups and their national emancipation challenged the traditional predominance of the German speakers within the Habsburg Monarchy to a great extent. One might ask what the proportion of mixed marriages was among the diverse ethnic branches of the bourgeois society in Cisleithania, and if there may have been – at least to a certain extent – a correlation between the nationalisation processes and the decline of interethnic marriages. As far I am concerned, this correlation existed in the abovementioned regions/countries and it has far from been sufficiently investigated.10

9

See, for the Bielefeld project “Bürgertum in the 19th century”, the programmatic draft of Kocka, “Bürgertum und Bürgerlichkeit als Probleme der deutschen Geschichte”. See, for the Habsburg Monarchy, the ten miscellanies “Bürgertum in the Habsburg Monarchy”, which, from 1990 to 2003, were published by such distinguished Austrian historians as Ernst Bruckmüller, Hannes Stekl, or Margret Friedrich. See Stekl, “Bürgertumsforschung und Familiengeschichte”. 10 In this regard, the following is more interesting: Stekl indicates that the question of marriages within the Austrian Bürgertum still forms a neglected area of historiographical research. What is more, I suggest, Stekl’s observation can be extended and viewed as a claim for further investigations on “intermarriage” as a socio-cultural phenomenon comprising not only the German-speaking bourgeois groups in Habsburg Austria, but also their non-German counterparts. See Stekl, “Bürgertumsforschung und Familiengeschichte,” 12. See further, on the entanglement of Verbürgerlichung (becoming a Bürger) and national emancipation, Urbanitsch, Bruckmüller, and Stekl, “Regionen, Gruppen, Identitäten”, 21–4.

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Since the Sattelzeit (the cusp) of the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries,11 small groups of wealthy and educated people – often possessing academic degrees – had successively gained more influence. From this time on, “(individual) property and education” (Besitz und Bildung) was regarded as sort of a magic expression pointing to various professional groups which practised becoming interrelated by marriage and by sharing cultural values.12 For these groups, in turn, academic education and a specific way of life shaped the basic elements of their social cohesion. In particular, (neo) humanistic Bildung ௅ as a conjunctive code of communication ௅ represented a criterion of distinction from such professionals as shopkeepers or craftsmen, who usually possessed neither huge amounts of property, nor academic degrees. How important the bürgerlich conception of Bildung was will be shown below (at least insofar as its female versions were concerned), when I discuss Elise Egloff’s appropriation of the bourgeois codes of behaviour. My next remarks are aimed at discussing in more detail the specific “cultural” implications of the bourgeois classes in Germany and Austria at that time. In this respect, it is essential that I should refer to the current historiographical debates concerning this topic. In the course of the last decades, the Bielefeld School of Social History has been substantially criticised. In the 1980s and early 1990s, the Bielefeld social historians occupied the field of the Bürgertumsforschung (research on the Bürgertum). Primarily, what they advocated was a social structural model of the Bürgertum. In this perspective, bourgeois marriages were largely reduced to a question of the intergenerational transfer of economic resources. In this way, connubium was described as a key strategy whereby families positioned themselves within the bourgeois society. Consequently, this area of research predominantly focused on endogamy. Exogamy, though, remained as much outside the horizon of social historical research as the spreading ideals of romantic “love” and “partnership” between a man and a woman. In contrast with such research perspectives, cultural historians usually emphasise that Bürgerlichkeit (the ensemble of bourgeois values forming a cultural unity) arises as a result of cultural than of social characteristics.13 Generally speaking, I adopt the point of view that historians benefit from both social-historical and cultural-historical approaches. As a consequence, in this paper “marriage” appears not just as a social structural element of 11

See Koselleck, Einleitung, XV. Kocka, “Bürger und Bürgerlichkeit im Wandel”. 13 See, for instance, the insights into the bourgeois “haven of values” expressed by Hettling and Hoffmann, eds., Der bürgerliche Wertehimmel. 12

42 Exogamy among the German/Austrian Middle Classes in the 19th Century

collective curricula vitae, possibly contributing to a more general perception of the Bürgertum as a social class. Rather, marriage refers to the cultural dynamics of socialising and the exchange of moral concepts and habits. In this respect, bourgeois groups are primarily characterised by cultural practices of belonging. These have to be negotiated permanently, as the following examples of “mixed marriages” will indicate.

Historical perspectives on “cultural exogamy”: The case examples of Jacob Henle/Elise Egloff and Maximilian Carl Gritzner/Pauline Marx In the Bürgertum, “exogamous” or “mixed” marriages - defined as the connubia of social and/or cultural unequals - may generally serve as a model enabling historical research to get more insight into the practices of bourgeois life in the nineteenth century.14 Elise Egloff, the “German Galatea” according to David Sabean (see above), exemplifies the model of “mixed marriage” occurring among different social classes. In order to be accepted as a proper member of Jacob’s bourgeois family, Elise was obliged to attend a finishing school so that she might exercise the habits of a bourgeois woman. She had to acquire mainly cultural skills, as shown below, which were supposed to enable her to become socially accepted in the social milieu to which she would belong in future. After she had passed her exams, Jacob Henle’s family finally accepted her as a daughterin-law. The second example refers to the confessionally “mixed marriage” between Pauline Gritzner, née Marx, known as Blümchen (“floret”), and Maximilian Carl Gritzner, a leading democratic activist in the Viennese Revolution of 1848. Against her parents’ wishes, Pauline followed her husband and immigrated together with him to the United States. Jacob Henle grew up in a Jewish merchant family which, in 1821, converted to the Lutheran faith. As a professor of medicine at the University of Zurich, he met the beautiful housemaid Elise Egloff in a colleague’s house: she had been raised as an illegitimate child in the rural Swiss region of Thurgau. Jacob and Elise fell in love, but at first Henle did not see any chance of marrying her because of the class difference between them. He came up with the idea of buying a shop for Elise and promising her that they would be together later on. But Henle couldn’t go through with his plan because he was appointed to a professorship at the University of Heidelberg. So, he decided to risk a unique “experiment in 14 The following reflections refer mostly to the relevant chapter in Pinwinkler, Heiratsallianzen, 67–75.

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education”: without informing Elise’s relatives, Henle brought her to his sister Marie Mathieu. Initially, he told her that Elise was a distant relative, an orphan who had asked Jacob for help. This was carried out with the help of Carl Mathieu, Jacob’s brother-in-law, the only relative he let in on his plan. After having spent a year in a finishing school in Traben on the Mosel, where Elise was educated in subjects like playing the piano, drawing and painting, Marie Mathieu took her into her house in Trier. There, the second, more difficult phase of Jacob’s plan started. According to him, Elise now had to assimilate the bourgeois “culture of feeling”. For this purpose, Elise was supposed to learn proper behaviour, which “could only be acquired by contact with educated people”15, so that she might finally be accepted as a sort of family member. However, at a certain moment, Jacob’s sister, Marie, voiced her suspicion that Elise was not a distant relative, but her brother’s lover. When Carl Mathieu informed him on that, Jacob admitted his love attachment to Elise towards Marie. He ultimately asked his sister for help in taking care of Elise and turning her from an unrefined girl into an educated woman. Marie promised Jacob to support him and agreed to continue this “experiment in education”. One of the most important media used in Elise’s “aesthetic education” were family letters – a means of communication generally deemed to be representative of the bourgeois identity.16 The correspondence between Elise and Jacob, the Mathieus and other family members offers an insight not only into Elise’s unique “educational trajectory”, but also into the conflicts caused by some communicative misunderstandings, which accompanied her envisaged transformation from a Naturkind into a respected professor’s wife. At first, one of her major problems referred to the manner of expressing her feelings towards Jacob while also respecting bourgeois expectations of style and taste. In her first known letter to Jacob, dated 6 February 1843 (see fig. 1)17, she addressed him - somewhat awkwardly and shyly - as Verehrtester Herr Profesor (“Most Adored Professor”); this letter contained several significant spelling and stylistic mistakes (such as Profesor instead of Professor). In any case, it is important to point out that Elise cannot be seen merely as a passive object of masculine-dominated educational methods. Rather, she followed her own strategies in order to cope with the challenge 15

Kübler, ed., Geprüfte Liebe, 44, Henle to Marie Mathieu, 8 June 1844. Schikorsky, “Vom Dienstmädchen zur Professorengattin,” 265–279. 17 See the transcription of the current German script into modern Antiqua in Kübler, ed., Geprüfte Liebe, 27. The original letter is published in: Rehberg, Elise Egloff. 16

44 Exogamy among the German/Austrian Middle Classes in the 19th Century

of becoming a bourgeois woman. In one of her letters to Jacob, for instance, she replied to his continuous instructions on style and correct orthography by arguing snappishly that she had deliberately made some mistakes in her previous letter. So she must have felt peculiar if she was not taught as a pupil.18 Figure 1 Elise Egloff to Jacob Henle, 6 February 1843

In the long run, this “experiment in education” seemed indeed to overburden all involved protagonists. Consequently, in a letter addressed to the Mathieus, Jacob conceded that “a less tender sister and a less enamoured bride” would not have pulled through it.19 In March 1846, Jacob finally married Elise in Trier. Unfortunately, their matrimony lasted only two years, because in February 1848 Elise died, in the presence of her husband, from lung tuberculosis. Their contemporaries had already begun to wonder if Elise’s loss of identity during her “experiment in education” and her deadly disease were causally

18 19

Kübler, ed., Geprüfte Liebe, 198, Elise to Jacob, 10 February 1846. Kübler, Geprüfte Liebe 206, Jacob to the Mathieus, Heidelberg, in May 1846.

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linked.20 Henle deeply grieved for her, but he married again in the summer of the following year. This time, he conventionally married the daughter of a Prussian general, who gave birth to five children.21 According to the Henle and Mathieu families, Elise was a Naturkind (a “child of nature”). Indeed, the bourgeois construction of relations between men and women implied a fundamental difference between “ratio” (male) and “nature” (female). In this sense, the perception of the Naturkind Elise reflected the specific bourgeois practice of confronting “culture” with “nature”. Beyond that, this was consistent with the polarity between the “public” (masculine) and the “private” (feminine) spheres. As a consequence, Elise’s domestication was essential in order for her to comply with the role model of the bourgeois woman.22 Thus, Elise’s task involved her standing by the side of her husband and supporting him in his professional life as a well-known physician. The aim of the whole experiment was meant to assist her in accomplishing this. Elise’s “experiment in education” revealed that class and family socialisation were closely entangled. The second case example refers, by contrast, to a marriage within the bourgeois milieu.23 The reason why this matrimony was considered as a “mixed marriage” or, more than that, as a misalliance was because the bride’s father opposed his daughter’s liaison with Maximilian Gritzner, a young Viennese student of technology in Karlsruhe. Both Pauline and Maximilian, however, had grown up in notable bourgeois families. Blümchen was the daughter of the Karlsruhe Jewish merchant Seligmann Marx and his wife Judith, née Auerbacher von Nordstetten. Maximilian’s father, Maximilian Joseph Gritzner (1794-1872), was, just like his son, one of the March 1848 revolutionaries in Vienna and a deputy in the first German National Assembly form St. Paul’s Church in Frankfurt am Main. They did not uphold primarily different cultural values, but the 20

See, on this, also Schikorsky, “Vom Dienstmädchen zur Professorengattin,” 281. For Henle’s biography, see Gruber, “Henle, Friedrich Gustav Jakob”. 22 According to Henle, Carl Mathieu considered that this situation also presented some advantages, particularly since Elise was “a girl from a social class […] that hasn’t experienced the suffering and wrongness of our culture so far.” (“ein Mädchen von einem Stande […], in welchen die Leiden und Verkehrtheiten unserer Kultur noch nicht gedrungen seien”) (German original). Cited after Kübler, ed., Geprüfte Liebe, 140, Jacob Henle to his father, 2 November 1845. 23 The historical sources concerning this love story are the unpublished “biographical notes” of Maximilian Gritzner Jr., to which is added some family correspondence, and excerpts from them are reproduced by Welsh, the author of Das Lufthaus, who is herself a descendant of the Gritzner family. 21

46 Exogamy among the German/Austrian Middle Classes in the 19th Century

confessional demarcation line between Christians and Jews, together with the husband’s proscription as a democratic revolutionary, was an obstacle preventing both families from granting their consent to this love story. Maximilian Gritzner Jr., however, obstinately insisted on marrying his beloved Pauline. In this he was supported by his liberal-thinking father. Both unanimously hoped that as a result of liberal legislation, mixed marriages would become possible in the future. Due to the fragmentary written records, it is impossible to reconstruct the circumstances under which Maximilian abducted Pauline from her parents’ house. What we almost certainly know is, though, that Maximilian kept her away from any political activity and turned her into a passive subject: “There was, after all, an association of German women”. “And me”, thought Pauline, “why can’t I do anything?”24 Still, in December 1848, after the revolution had already failed and the young Habsburg Emperor Francis Joseph I had begun to install his neoabsolutist regime in Austria, the Gritzners married in Leipzig. As a condition for their wedding, Pauline had to agree to be baptised. One and a half year later, on 11 May 1850, the young couple immigrated to the United States.25 Unfortunately, Pauline’s father relentlessly refused to be reconciled with her. The troubles of life as impoverished émigrés in the US and her resignation to these were certainly basic elements that led to Pauline’s severe psychological problems.26

24

Cited after Hauch, “Women’s Spaces in the Men’s Revolution of 1848”, 661. As a political émigré, Gritzner published his memoirs in 1867: Gritzner, Flüchtlingsleben, here the frontispiece: Gritzner dedicated the book to his wife “Frau Pauline Gritzner geb. Marx” (“Mrs. Pauline Gritzner née Marx”). He composed the following poem, in which he portrayed her as a thoroughly faithful companion. According to it, Pauline accompanied her husband through all the dangerous situations that he experienced as an émigré, far away from his homeland: “Die, die durch Drangsal, Noth und Gefahr In Lieb’ und Treu’ dem Flücht’gen gab Geleit Stets engelähnlich waltend um mich war; Die du in fremdem Land und langer Zeit, Seit nun der Bann vom Heimatland nun währt, Mit deinem reinen, inn’gen Wesen mir Mein unstät’ Leben sinnig mild verklärt, – Ich widme, Gattin, diese Blätter dir. Zürich, im Mai 1867.” (German original.) 26 Hauch, “Women’s Spaces in the Men’s Revolution of 1848”, 661. 25

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Conclusions and perspectives Both case examples referred to above demonstrate the significant role the families involved played as central authorities on marriage. Through them the cultural codes of endogamy were conveyed and mentally internalised by their offspring. The Henle and the Gritzner love stories, however, did not comply with the bourgeois ideal of endogamous marriage, and they can by no means be regarded as representative for marriage patterns among the bourgeoisie. In spite of this, these narratives illustrate the breaking point of both cultural codes, as well as practices of bourgeois marriages: exogamy, understood here as “mixed marriages” between members of social groups with different socio-cultural and confessional backgrounds, largely remained a rare exception – at least up until the second half of the nineteenth century.27 What is also interesting is that in both case examples the obviously disturbed order of the rules of marriage had to be rearranged to a certain degree. This was visible in the fact that Jacob Henle developed, together with his relatives, an “experiment in education” meant to enable his fiancé to play her future role as a bourgeois housewife and hostess. Maximilian Gritzner’s marriage to the Jewish-born Pauline Seligmann, however, could only be contracted because Pauline had agreed to be baptised and finally converted to the Catholic faith. The assimilation process to which both women were subjected ultimately turned their “exogamous” into “endogamous” marriages. Still, the allegedly natural inequality between women and men, which had been widely practised in bourgeois families, was not disturbed by this. Last but not least, the consequences of being separated from their birth families, at least for a certain time, led to severe psychosomatic troubles for both Elise Henle and Pauline Gritzner. This marked the limits of the bourgeois men’s liberalism, which was primarily defined in a political sense and did not have any bearing upon the overall conceptualisation of the natural inequality between the sexes within the bourgeois society. Notwithstanding all this, in each case “exogamous” marriage definitely challenged the socio-cultural order of the bourgeois society to a great 27

Even later on, in the second half of the 19th century, exogamy seemed not to be broadly discussed. As can be shown exemplarily by entries in conversation dictionaries, “exogamy” existed, in fact, as a dictionary entry, but its object was explicated rather briefly and technically. See, for instance, the dictionary entries on “Exogamie” in: Meyers Großes Konversations-Lexikon, vol. 6, 218–129 (s.v. Exogamie); Pierer’s Universal-Lexikon, vol. 11, 313 (s.v. Mißheirath); Pierer’s Universal-Lexikon, vol. 5, 446 (s.v. Ebenbürtigkeit).

48 Exogamy among the German/Austrian Middle Classes in the 19th Century

extent. Moreover, “exogamous” liaisons occupied the imagination of many people. To show this, it may be sufficient here to point generally to the broad contemporary literary reception of the Egloff-Henle story.28 Furthermore, it should be emphasised that romantic love, as a regulating instance of partner selection, became more and more important.29 Historical research, however, usually points out that the practice of marrying within a given social milieu maintained its significance for bourgeois class formation throughout the nineteenth century. One of the reasons for this was that the marriage market had already filtered the marriage circles. As a consequence, “misalliances” could be regarded as less possible.30 However, revolutionary situations like those seen above (see the Gritzner marriage) turned the prevalent bourgeois cultural order upside down – at least for a historically brief moment – and the impossible became real. In summary, “endogamy” was widely maintained as a key element in the bourgeois marital practices. Nonetheless, in the long run, there were some general evolutionary changes undermining this system: in the second part of the nineteenth century and the early 20th century, women gained more access to education, they could even obtain academic degrees, and their chances of getting a job significantly improved. In this respect, it is remarkable that the average age of women at first marriage gradually climbed from 22 years in the eighteenth century to about 27 years in the period between 1900 and 1914, getting closer thus to the average marriage age of men.31 The women’s emancipation process, together with the economic degradation of extensive branches of the German and Austrian Bürgertum after the First World War, produced fundamental consequences. The impact of these overall processes on the social structure and the cultural practices of the Bürgertum have not been investigated in sufficient depth. The degree to which the endogamous marriage circles of the Bürgertum opened up, as a result, to other branches of the society is a question on which more research needs to be done than it has so far been undertaken.

28 See, for this, Kübler, ed., Geprüfte Liebe, 11–15, pointing on authors such as Berthold Auerbach (1812-1882) and the distinguished Gottfried Keller (18191890) who in 1846 met Henle and his wife in Zurich. 29 See e.g. Hausen, “‚... eine Ulme für das schwanke Efeu‘,” 95, and Trepp, “Emotion und bürgerliche Sinnstiftung”, 30–1. 30 Budde, “Bürgerinnen in der Bürgergesellschaft,” 256. 31 Hausen, “‚... eine Ulme für das schwanke Efeu‘,” 95.

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References Bourdieu, Pierre. “The Forms of Capital.” In Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, edited by John G. Richardson, 241–258. New York: Greenwood Press, 1986. Budde, Gunilla-Friederike. “Bürgerinnen in der Bürgergesellschaft.” In Sozial- und Kulturgeschichte des Bürgertums. Eine Bilanz des Bielefelder Sonderforschungsbereichs (1986-1997), edited by Peter Lundgreen, 249–271. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000. Ehmer, Josef. “Marriage.” In History of the European Family, vol. 2: Family Life in the Long Nineteenth Century, edited by David Kertzer, and Marzio Barbagli, 282-321. New Haven-London: Yale University Press, 2002. Frazer, James George. Totemism and Exogamy: a treatise on certain early forms of superstition and society. Vol. IV, London: Macmillan, 1910. Fuchs-Heinritz, Werner et al., eds., Lexikon zur Soziologie, 4th edition. Wiesbaden: VS-Verlag, 2007. Gritzner, M.[aximilian] C.[arl]. Flüchtlingsleben. Mit einem einleitenden Kapitel von Moritz Hartmann. Zürich: Schabelitz, 1867. Gruber, Georg B. “Henle, Friedrich Gustav Jakob.” Neue Deutsche Biographie, vol. 8, edited by Historische Kommission bei der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 531–532. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1969, [online version], accessed September 17, 2013, http://www.deutsche-biographie.de/pnd118549154.html. Hauch, Gabriella. “Women’s Spaces in the Men’s Revolution of 1848,” in Europe in 1848. Revolution and Reform, edited by Dieter Dowe, Heinz-Gerhard Haupt, Dieter Langewiesche, and Jonathan Sperber, 639–693. New York-Oxford: Berghahn, 2001, 639–693. Hausen, Karin. “‚...eine Ulme für das schwanke Efeu‘. Ehepaare im deutschen Bildungsbürgertum. Ideale und Wirklichkeiten im späten 18. und 19. Jahrhundert.” In Bürgerinnen und Bürger, ed. Ute Frevert, 85– 117. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1988. Hettling, Manfred, and Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann, eds. Der bürgerliche Wertehimmel: Innenansichten des 19. Jahrhunderts. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000. Kocka, Jürgen. “Bürgertum und Bürgerlichkeit als Probleme der deutschen Geschichte vom späten 18. zum frühen 20. Jahrhundert.” In Bürgertum im 19. Jahrhundert, edited by Jürgen Kocka, 21–63. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1987.

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—. “Bürger und Bürgerlichkeit im Wandel,” 2008, accessed September 17, 2013, http://www.bpb.de/apuz/31372/buerger-und-buergerlichkeitim-wandel?p=all. Koselleck, Reinhart. “Einleitung.” In Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, vol. 1, edited by Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and Reinhart Koselleck, XIII– XXVII. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1972. Kübler, Gunhild, ed. Geprüfte Liebe: Vom Nähmädchen zur Professorenfrau. Jacob Henle und Elise Egloff in Familienbriefen (1843-1848). ZürichMünchen: Artemis, 1987. Kübler, Gunhild, ed. “Mein lieber böser Schatz!“ Der Anatom und das Nähmädchen. Eine Geschichte in Briefen. Zürich: Unionsverlag, 2004. Meyers Großes Konversations-Lexikon, vol. 6. Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institut, 1906. Pierer’s Universal-Lexikon, vol. 5. Altenburg: Pierer, 1858; vol. 11, Altenburg: Pierer, 1860. Pinwinkler, Alexander. Heiratsallianzen im deutschen und österreichischen Bürgertum des 19. Jahrhunderts (Phil. Master thesis, University of Salzburg, 1998) [unpublished manuscr.]. —. Wilhelm Winkler (1884-1984) – eine Biographie. Zur Geschichte der Statistik und Demographie in Österreich und Deutschland. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2003. —. Historische Bevölkerungsforschungen. Deutschland und Österreich im 20. Jahrhundert. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2014. Rehberg, Paula. Elise Egloff. Zürich: Züst, 1937. Sabean, David. “Die Ästhetik der Heiratsallianzen. Klassencodes und endogame Eheschließung im Bürgertum des 19. Jahrhunderts.” In Historische Familienforschung. Ergebnisse und Kontroversen, edited by Josef Ehmer, Tamara K. Hareven, and Richard Wall, 157–170. Frankfurt-New York: Campus, 1997. Schikorsky, Isa. “Vom Dienstmädchen zur Professorengattin. Probleme bei der Aneignung bürgerlichen Sprachverhaltens und Sprachbewusstseins.” In Sprache und bürgerliche Nation. Beiträge zur deutschen und europäischen Sprachgeschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts, edited by Dieter Cherubim, Siegfried Grosse, and Klaus J. Mattheier, 259–281. Berlin-New York: de Gruyter, 1998. Stekl, Hannes. “Bürgertumsforschung und Familiengeschichte.” In Bürgerliche Familien. Lebenswege im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, edited by Hannes Stekl, 9–33. Wien-Köln-Weimar: Böhlau. Trepp, Anne-Charlott. “Emotion und bürgerliche Sinnstiftung oder die Metaphysik des Gefühls: Liebe am Beginn des bürgerlichen Zeitalters.” In Der bürgerliche Wertehimmel. Innenansichten des 19.

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Jahrhunderts, edited by Manfred Hettling and Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann, 23–55. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000. Urbanitsch, Peter, Ernst Bruckmüller, and Hannes Stekl. “Regionen, Gruppen, Identitäten. Aspekte einer Geschichte des Bürgertums in der Habsburgermonarchie.” In “Durch Arbeit, Besitz, Wissen und Gerechtigkeit“, edited by Peter Urbanitsch et al., 11–39. Wien-KölnWeimar: Böhlau, 1992. Welsh, Renate. Das Lufthaus. Roman. Graz-Wien-Köln: Styria, 1994.

DESCENDANTS OF INTERETHNIC MARRIAGES: IDENTIFICATION AND HOMELAND LOCALISATION TANYA MATANOVA

Introduction: subject, object, empirical data and methods In my study I have focused on the forms of individual, collective and territorial identification among the descendants of interethnic families. I have chosen people of Bulgarian-Ukrainian, Bulgarian-Russian and Bulgarian-Slovak origins as my research object. The empirical data has been gathered by means of digital and nondigital methods. Face-to-face semi-structured interviews have been conducted with people of Bulgarian-Russian and Bulgarian-Ukrainian origin that live in Bulgaria (a total of fifty-five persons), eight BulgarianSlovaks, as well as three Bulgarian mothers in mixed marriages in Slovakia1. Further information has been obtained using a Google-form supported online questionnaire2 for parents living in Bulgarian-mixed marriages. After posting the survey on the walls of active Facebook groups or the Facebook pages of Russians and Ukrainians in Bulgaria and Bulgarians in Slovakia, I received responses from sixteen persons.3

1

In order to save space in the text, the origin and the gender of the respondents is abbreviated as follows: Bulgarian – Bul, Russian – Rus, Ukrainian – Ukr, Slovak – Slo, male – m., female – f. 2 https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1LfyYGBx8LhP36X-wF6WkH -ZHLy0q17 Z1uX4-gsdCTd8/edit?no_redirect=true#. 3 All “AIF I” citations are archive numbers of the transcribed interviews, which are archived in the National Centre for Intangible Cultural Heritage, at the Institute for Ethnology and Folklore Studies with Ethnographic Museum from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.

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Socialisation and enculturation Identification is a multi-systemic and variable phenomenon as it is constructed and re-constructed throughout one’s entire life. Every concrete interaction context in which a subject may be involved or the altering social environment may have some influence upon this process. Individual and collective identifications are very closely related because the process of identification happens in the social context of a meeting. In this case, individual identification is defined as personal self-perception and collective identification is defined as the personal or external ascription of ethnic group membership.4 The formation of individual and collective identification begins as early as in childhood, when the representatives of the next generation are joined ௅ to a great extent by the activity of their parents ௅ to a community and its culture.5 This is achieved through the parents’ vertical transmission of ideas, principles for the realisation of social roles and ways of thinking and behaving to their offspring. This process of socialisation is closely connected with the process of enculturation because the culture provides the frameworks for the individuals’ socialisation in the group.6 Step by step ௅ first in the family and afterwards in the peer group and the educational institutions (kindergarten, school, university, etc.) ௅ individuals get acquainted with many national-cultural elements over the years, such as literature and verbal folklore, music, cuisine, history, artistic and theatre, creative work, material culture, etc. For people born in interethnic families, this process means the adoption of the two ways of thinking and behaving that are characteristic of the two culturally different communities of their parents: the native and the migrant one. The contact with those elements is ensured in the family through the languages that are spoken, the meals that are served, through furniture and furnishings, cultural habits and, to a great extent, through mass media like radio, TV, etc. Outside the domestic space, the contact with cultural aspects of the foreign-born parent occurs not only in the context of informal, personal interethnic relationships, but also during cultural and 4

In this text, ethnic groups and other collective forms are to be understood as constructed units with altering boundaries, which are set and re-set with every interaction between two or more persons of different ethnic origin on the basis of the imagination of an “us”-group (Beer, “Ethnos, Ethnie, Kultur,” 55-7). 5 “Culture” is defined here as the core of cultural constituents like common origin, language, history, territory, values, folklore knowledge and other patterns of thought and behavior. 6 Herskovits, Man and His Works.

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celebratory meetings organised by the local and global migrant associations or within the more formal environment of educational and religious institutions. Various music and theatre events and holiday celebrations could also count as such spaces. In migrant schools, these would include the classes of language and literature, music, geography and history, as well as extracurricular activities (like the singing of folksongs and the learning of folkdances). By attending or participating in various theatre performances, interethnic descendants could use the theatre repertoire and “apply” it in the construction of their national, ethnic or cultural identification. According to the artistic manager of the Russian theatre group in Budapest, “all the children of mixed marriages should rely on cultural events, participate in different productions, literary circles, and learn poems” for “[w]hen language is acquired culturally, it is not forgotten all too quickly” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 56, Rus., f). My observations on the language, the theatre performances and the statements of a RussianBulgarian respondent who acts in a migrant Russian theatre company in Bulgaria confirm this: “The Russian theatre has been a very significant factor for enabling me to speak Russian freely because it just won’t do if I perform in a Russian play and I don’t speak the language correctly” (AIF I ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 41, Bul-Rus, f.).

Individual identification Language acquisition and identification Learning the official language of an ethnic community is one of the most important processes for the socialisation of individuals and the formation of their personal identification.7 More specifically, in interethnic families the parents may transmit two ethnic languages to their children, who, as a result, may speak two mother tongues. In many cultures, the term “mother tongue” is considered the first individual language experience8 and is seen as a legacy that is handed down by the parents to their offspring.9 The results of the applied content analysis show that only a small number of the 55 interviewed Bulgarian-Russians and BulgarianUkrainians consider that both of their parents’ languages are their mother 7

Živkov, The Ethnic Syndrome, 435. Gupta “Mother-Tongue Education,” 499; Yamamoto “Language Use in JapaneseFilipino Interlingual,” 591. 9 Živkov, The Ethnic Syndrome, 437. 8

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tongues and more than half of them understand the notion of mother tongue etymologically, i.e. as the language of their mother. By comparison, most of the Bulgarian-Slovak interviewees associate their mother tongue with their place of birth and just two of them feel they have two native languages (see AIF I ʋ 467). The three (universal) criteria for a native language proposed by Ɍove Skutnabb-Kangas ௅ origin, functionality and competence10 ௅ are reflected in the answers of the interviewees. Thus, some informants define as native the “language that is learnt first”: “My native language is Russian - the one I learned first” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 43, Bul-Ukr, m.); “I think it is the Russian language, because I started to speak in Russian” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 5, Bul-Rus, f.); as one of them says, “I have no native or mother tongue, but a first one, which is the one in which I began to speak. It is the Russian language. Bulgarian is my second one” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 34, Bul-Rus, f.). Other Bulgarian-Russians and Bulgarian-Ukrainians define their native language as “the one they know best”, e.g.: “Bulgarian is my native language because I use it more freely.” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 15, BulRus, f.); “My native language is Bulgarian because I know it better” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 17, Bul-Ukr, f.). The criterion of “functionality” is expressed in the degree of intensity, reflected in the “language one uses most often”: “I use Bulgarian much more than Russian. Therefore I consider Bulgarian as my mother tongue.” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 18, Bul-Rus, f.); “Bulgarian is my native language because it is better developed, because I use it every day.” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 6, Bul-Rus, m.); “Bulgarian is my native language because I speak it better and have almost always used it for communicating with people” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 21, Bul-Rus, m.). Other bi-ethnic interviewees use their origin and place of residence as a criterion: “My native language is Bulgarian because we live in Bulgaria.” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 10, Bul-Rus, f.); “Russian is my native language because I was born in Russia and my mother comes from there” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 29, Bul-Rus, f.). Generally, not even the shared experiences of bi-ethnic respondents reveal their complete notions of native language; they tend to convey their personal points of view, which could hardly have been defined by their parents. It therefore becomes a much more complex undertaking for researchers to define exactly how many languages one uses and how one may have gained them genetically (i.e. as a native or an acquired

10

Skutnabb-Kangas, Bilingualism or Not, 18.

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language) and synchronically (as the first, the second, an additional language, etc.).11 As regards the question whether native language knowledge is relevant for individual identification, some of the interviewed Bulgarian-Russians and Bulgarian-Ukrainians find that language competence does not play as important a role in the construction of ethnic self-definition as one’s personal attitude. In the opinion of others, “thanks to language you become a part of the respective culture” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 18, Bul-Rus, f.). For most of the interviewees, however, language skills are not of determining significance for personal ethnic and cultural identification. This means that language is acknowledged as an important sign, as a prerequisite for thorough cultural competence, but it does not serve as an exclusive marker without which ethnic self-identification is impossible.12

Individual ethnic identification Besides the above-mentioned relation between native language and language-based identification, the specificity of individual (bi-)ethnic identification mentioned by the Bulgarian-Russian, Bulgarian-Slovak and Bulgarian-Ukrainian informants in answer to the questions about their ethnic self-perception is also noteworthy. Ethnic self-identification manifests itself in different ways, and scientists researching the ethnic membership of the descendants of mixed marriages distinguish several categories thereof. Many of them can be illustrated through the answers of the interviewees. The easiest is the category of “mono-ethnic identification,” occurring among individuals who identify themselves solely with the local (majority) or with the migrant (minority) community. As some respondents mentioned, “I feel like a Bulgarian. Usually, when I meet new people they notice my bi-ethnic origin very soon, but that does not bother me” (AIF I ʋ 467, a.u. 1, Bul-Slo, m.); “I feel I am 100% Bulgarian” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 25, Bul-Ukr, m.). Another kind is “marginal identification,” which may acquire negative connotations in situations of nationalistic thinking that is biased in favour of the ethnic group enjoying higher prestige in society. Negative identification may be observed in the answers of the interviewed Bulgarian-Russians and Bulgarian-Ukrainians who have been influenced by the currently unsatisfactory situation in one of the countries: “I feel ashamed and disheartened when representatives of 11 12

Živkov 1994, 104. Ganeva-Rajþeva, The Ethnic Socialization, 110.

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one or the other community do not behave in exemplary manner” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 11, Bul-Ukr, f.); “There are many things we should be ashamed of –faint-heartedness, distrust and atheism” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 3, Bul-Ukr, m.); “Yes, there are such situations because the situation in Bulgaria is not that fortunate right now. At the moment, I refuse to believe that I am a part of the absurdity that is happening here” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 14, Bul-Rus, f.). Negative connotations surrounding Bulgaria could also be sensed among many Bulgarian-Slovak respondents living in Slovakia: “I would live in Bulgaria if the conditions there improved” (AIF ȱ ʋ 467, ɚ.u. 7, Bul-Slo, f.); “I don’t think I’d go live in Bulgaria. Maybe it’s because of the social situation there” (AIF ȱ ʋ 467, ɚ.u. 4, Bul-Slo, m.). Another way out of problematic marginal identity becomes possible when individuals identify themselves on the basis of their current citizenship. An escape from a marginal situation may also be fostered by the adoption of the consciousness of a “universal identity,” expressed through the notion of being “a citizen of the world”: “I like all the cultures in the world anyway. I don’t know them well, so I try to learn more about them and perhaps in time I will feel like belonging to absolutely all of them.” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 1, Bul-Rus, f.); “I’d say I am a man of the world. I can’t fit into a mould and I don’t want others to force me into one” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 7, Bul-Rus, f.). It is characteristic of these cosmopolitans to differentiate themselves from the community. Because of their selfawareness of being different, they stay away from both of their parents’ cultures and do not use bi-ethnic belonging as a resource for identification. As a result of their ambivalent societal recognition by the parents’ ethnic communities, the descendants of interethnic marriages may develop an ambivalent ethnic identity. Some of the respondents from all the three interethnic combinations maintain their ethnic identity through a fused type of identification; others maintain it through an alternating type of identification. We speak about “fused identification” (slivšejsja)13 when individuals mix elements from both of their parents’ cultures into a new hybrid form and therefore perceives themselves “as a medley” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 42, Bul-Ukr, f.) or “as something mixed” (AIF ȱ ʋ 467, ɚ.u. 11, Bul-Slo, f.). “Alternating identification” could also be referred to as “rotating” identification (þeredujušesja)14 since the individual identifies with one or the other ethnic group, the “inactive” one “going into the background” and “waiting” for its turn to be activated, depending on the situation. Both types are examples of positive ethnic identification because 13 14

Belinskaja and Stefanenko, The Ethnic Socialisation; Frolova, Kazan. Belinskaja and Stefanenko; Frolova.

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they integrate the contact with both ethnic groups and their cultures: “As a small child, I was not as proud of my Russian origins as I am now… And over the past couple of years, I have never missed an opportunity to emphasise my Russian origins, which I am proud of” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 29, Bul-Rus, f.). The majority of the Bulgarian-Russian, Bulgarian-Slovak and Bulgarian-Ukrainian respondents have confessed that they feel “halfand-half” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 47, Bul-Ukr, f.); “Slovak-Bulgarian” (AIF ȱ ʋ 467, ɚ.u. 7, Bul-Slo, f.), “half-Slovak, half-Bulgarian” (AIF ȱ ʋ 467, ɚ.u. 13, Bul-Slo, m.); “half-Ukrainian and half-Bulgarian” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 35, Bul-Ukr, m.) and so on. Others feel a stronger sense of belonging to one of the two ethnic groups: “I always identify myself as half-Russian, or as half-Bulgarian, but I always put my Russian half first” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 2, Bul-Rus, f.); “I feel more Bulgarian” (AIF ȱ ʋ 467, ɚ.u. 8, Bul-Slo, f.); “I feel more like a Bulgarian, but there is also something Russian in me” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 40, Bul-Rus, m.). From the point of view of some of them, this is due to the fact that they were born and have lived in one of those countries: “I grew up here, I have studied here and my friends are basically Bulgarians.” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 43.15); “I basically feel Bulgarian because I’ve lived here for thirty years” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 49, Bul-Ukr, f.). Even though the above-quoted statements might sound perplexing to people of mono-ethnic origin, the interviewed descendants of bi-ethnic families very often find these different conceptions of ethnic self-identification helpful in understanding themselves in a positive way.

Types of individual cultural identification and belonging Aspects pertaining to the interviewees’ cultural identification and sense of belonging have been investigated through questions about their feeling of clearly belonging to both of their parents’ cultures of origin. Similar to other persons of interethnic origin,16 the interviewees’ bi-ethnic identification is “accompanied” by the feeling of bicultural belonging. Excluding the respondents with cosmopolitan awareness and those for whom “this question cannot be answered” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 28, Bul-Rus, m.), who feel “indefinite” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 4, Bul-Ukr, m.) or “neither fish nor fowl” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 12, Bul-Rus, f.), most of the interviewed people of Bulgarian-Russian and Bulgarian-Ukrainian origin define themselves as belonging to both cultures - “and this is a very serious plus” 15

The informant was born and lived, in the beginning, outside Bulgaria for some years. 16 Penchev, “Folklore as a Factor of (Bi)Identity,” 129-34; Frolova, Kazan, 186-8.

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(AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 23, Bul-Ukr, f.) - for which they refer to their birthplace, place of residence, language mastery or cultural interests. In their answers, the respondents often express “feelings of being in two minds,” which are caused by their primary bicultural socialisation and education: “There is something pulling you in that direction… You always lack something.” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 23, Bul-Ukr, f.); “When I am here, I feel more Russian than Bulgarian. When I am there, I feel more Bulgarian than Russian. That’s why I carry a great part of the foreign culture with me, even though it makes me very different from the others.” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 18, Bul-Rus, f.); “I belong to both of them, but a great part of what I am now is because I grew up and have lived here. If I had been there, certainly the greater part of me would have been Russian” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 22, Bul-Rus, m.). This dual identification is also influenced by the social environment and the individual’s attitude: “I discover my Russian worldviews and perceptions when I communicate with Bulgarians and vice versa - the Bulgarian “shows up” in my communications with Russians. In both cases, there are differences” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 32, BulRus, f.). These quotations confirm the observations on Bulgarian-Slovak descendants presented above - particularly the fact that as bicultural persons, they live within the thought frames of two cultures and are aware of meanings determined by two languages. A combination of both “is present at different levels, depending on one’s personal choice, participation in a given act and interaction with other individuals, and belonging to one or the other community.”17 What about the collective ethnic identification of interethnic descendants?

The collective identification of interethnic descendants In her study on the Bulgarians in Hungary, Natalija Raškova observes that the culture of the children of Bulgarian-Hungarian families, their relation to their Bulgarian origins and their eventual incorporation into the corresponding migrant community depend on the functioning of migrant institutions like cultural centres, schools, the embassy, etc. Family methods of upbringing, individual language knowledge and the inclusion of the next generation’s representatives into the cultural life of the migrant community also appear to be very relevant, for example in holiday and other celebrations, dance or artistic groups, youth-clubs, etc.18 Consequently, interethnic descendants could develop a sense of communal 17 18

Raškova, “The Slovak Bulgarians,” 126. Raškova, “One Man Reads Umberto Eco,” 159.

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identification with the migrant group if the representatives of the migrant community accept them as natives. This also applies to those BulgarianUkrainian and Bulgarian-Russian respondents who are members of migrant associations in Bulgaria. On the other hand, bi-ethnic individuals identify themselves or are identified as belonging to the local (majority) community during their everyday activities in formal and informal spaces like schools, universities, workplaces, medical centres, markets, catering establishments, the public transport, etc., where they spend most of their time. Besides these two spheres of socio-cultural inclusion, a third possibility of collective identification emerges from the above-quoted emotional views of some respondents. Dmitry Gorenburg defines this as “an intermediate ethnic identity” and the people19 expressing such a notion as “duals” (pereverteny). However, descriptions of the specificity of biethnic collective identity could not be found in the answers provided by the interviewees. They just expressed feelings of belonging to an imagined group: “I am one of these people who have two homelands, two native languages and are exposed to two different cultures, which is interesting but sometimes also a little disheartening.”20 “I am very glad that there are people who are interested in the life of people like us. Not everyone understands the difference of growing up in a family not just of Bulgarians, but also of Russians.” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 8, Bul-Ukr, f.); “At a certain point, the people from Russia and the ex-Soviet Union became foreign to me because they are not entirely like me. I’ve always been in contact with them but just for a while. Otherwise, it’s with people of interethnic origin that I easily share a common language because we know what it’s like” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 24, Bul-Rus, f.). “I feel in two minds, which may enrich you, on the one hand, because thus you have two points of view on the world, on problems. On the other hand, I may feel at my best when I am surrounded by people of interethnic extraction rather than of just Bulgarian or Russian origin. We simply have things in common, we understand one another. It is a dual situation that only these people could understand. Even if you explained it to others, I don’t think they could understand you” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 11, Bul-Ukr, f.).

One of the most adequate approaches for studying this type of collective identification is the symbolic method. It can be applied when the 19

Gorenburg’s study is focused on the Russian-Ukrainians living in the Eastern Ukrainian province (Gorenburg, “Rethinking Interethnic Marriage.”) 20 Anþeva, “Story about life,” 7.

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conception of connectedness is experienced and expressed as a meaning, as a mental construct that contributes to developing a feeling of togetherness and belonging.21 In this sense, this kind of collectivity is an imaginary structure, an imagined community (Anderson 1991) rather than a really existing and developing social and cultural entity. In other regions of the world, with more people born from interethnic or interracial marriages, these collectivities often found associations and internet-groups that support communicative relations and strengthen bi-ethnic social networks.22 Seen from Rogers Brubaker’s perspective, based on the primary tendency of thinking about the social environment in “a substantialist manner,”23 such a formation is more appropriately considered a bi-ethnic category ௅ characterised by notions of interaction, mutual recognition, common orientation, effective communication, reciprocated identification and group activity ௅ which serves as a potential basis for the formation of a (bi-ethnic) group or (bi-ethnic) groupness. According to Brubaker, contrary to the group, groupness is not perceived as a fixed reality but as a variable, characterised by the feeling of belonging to a certain community, achieved through the experience of specific phases of adhesion and moments of intensive collective solidarity; these do not demand the presence of high levels of groupness, which is characteristic of the constant and persistent conception of the group.24

Homeland-localisation Homeland-localisation could be considered the identification with a given space or territory in situations of social, ethnic or cultural correlation. The analysis of the empirical data makes it clear that all the interviewees develop a territorial collective identification depending on their places of birth and residence when they sense connectedness and reciprocity with a certain place and its population. Researchers of symbolic and emotional relations to a given place25 find that people construct “place identities” based on a “sense of being at home,” encountered in friendships, family and emotional relationships 21

Cohen, The Symbolic Construction, 118; Crow and Allan, Community Life, 6. See for example www.halfkorean.com. 23 Bourdieu and Wacquant, 228, qtd. in Brubaker, “Ethnicity Without Groups,” 2-3. 24 Brubaker, “Ethnicity Without Groups,” 168 and 47. 25 Hummon, “House, Home, and Identity”; Proshansky et al., “Place Identity”; Rapoport, “Identity and Environment” and Shumaker and Taylor, “Clarification of People-Place.” 22

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with the members of their social environment (Cuba and Hummon 1993, 547-548). This could also well be observed among the interviewed survey participants: “I feel more of a native in the Ukraine. I feel as if my place is there. And here, I feel more like an alien even if I was born and live here. Somehow people here accept me as a stranger, and there ௅ as a native.” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 23, Bul-Rus, f.); “To be honest, I don’t feel I am in the right place in Sofia, at least because all my close relatives live in Varna.” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 49, Bul-Ukr, f.); “I am not a person who attaches himself to given places, but when I return to my place of origin after being away for a longer time, as soon as I get off the train and breathe in the air, I feel at home” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 22, Bul-Rus, m.). A bi-ethnic individual’s self-identification and attachment to a place and its population can be sensed by the others on the ground of their shared knowledge, convictions, behaviour, feelings and emotions.26 A Bulgarian-Russian respondent considers his home to be “the whole world. I cannot divide it into territories, as long as I can have contact with the whole world. It seems to me that conceptions of ‘one homeland’ are outdated in modern times” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 21, Bul-Rus, m.). For an eight-year-old Bulgarian-Slovak boy living in Slovakia, Bulgaria is his paradise: “I am free of parental control” (AIF ȱ ʋ 467, ɚ.u. 10, Bul-Slo, m.). Most of the interviewed Bulgarian-Russians and BulgarianUkrainians also feel their attachment to Bulgaria as a place: “In Bulgaria the most important place for me is my birth-town and the monument Bulgaria ௅ 1300 Years situated there… And the plateau in Shumen, the highest point in Northern Bulgaria. We used to go on picnics there in my childhood, and we still do that today,.” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 37, Bul-Ukr, m.); “When we speak about Bulgaria, I imagine the Bulgarian flag because I like the collective spirit that exists in sports, because we always carry a Bulgarian flag when we go to the stadium to watch a match between a Bulgarian and a foreign team … I can also sense this common spirit when I have fun with my friends and listen to Bulgarian folklore music in the background. I also felt it when singing in a choir or in everything that bears a Bulgarian mark and carries the Bulgarian spirit” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 29, Bul-Rus, f.).

Similar to sensation, expressing one’s personal attitude to a given space makes it a place of belonging, which generates the feeling of being accepted by and incorporated amongst the other inhabitants: “Homeland is 26

Low and Altman, Place Attachment, 4-5 and Proshansky et al., “Place Identity.”

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the place that I feel I belong to” (AIF ȱ ʋ 467, ɚ.u. 1, Bul-Slo, m.). According to one interviewee: “Russia is really like a second homeland to me … In principle, I’ve always wished to emigrate. Initially, I thought of Western Europe… But now I would leave only for a short time - to work or to study. I would much rather live in Russia because to me, it is a better version of Bulgaria. In Western Europe, you always feel like a foreigner” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 6, Bul-Rus, m.).

Regardless of the possible feeling of “imagined alienation” or “imagined belonging” in such a context, this notion provides the terms for the categorisation and, respectively, for the construction of a collective identity, as it relies on a sense of interconnection, unity and security.27 Such a space could be called “homeland,” in the sense of a socially built reality, which is “the basis for everything else” (AIF ȱ ʋ 467, ɚ.u. 9, BulSlo, f.), as well as a compound of the individual’s personal identification.28 According to Willy Streitz, homeland is symbolised on condition that the behaviour of the members of a social group (neighbourhood, friendship, community, etc.) suggests the individual’s admission to and acceptance in the group.29 Some of the interviewees confirm this idea: “They see me as their equal. Actually the connection must be two-way, because if I feel good there, but they don’t accept me as one of their origin, it won’t work anyway” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 15, Bul-Rus, f.); “Homeland is a place to which you feel native; the place in which you can understand and feel understood” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 29, Bul-Rus, f. (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 29, BulRus, f.); “It is the place to which you feel attached and where you want to be” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 32, Bul-Rus, f.). Concerning the notion of homeland, the majority of the interviewees define their homeland as the place “where your relatives, friends and the people you like are” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 9, Bul-Rus, f.). They associate homeland with the feeling of being accepted, “welcome, at home” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 7, Bul-Rus, f.; AIF ȱ ʋ 467, ɚ.u. 1., Bul-Slo, m.). In common usage, “homeland” is defined as the land in which someone was born and grew up.30 This concept is also found in the answers of the respondents: 27

Lovell, Locality and Belonging, 4. Streitz, “Theoretische und methodische,” 305. 29 According to Michael Schönhuth, the majority of the social scientists in Western Europe and in North America describe the notion of homeland as an ambiguous individual conception, symbolised in space through holistic social relationships (Schönhuth, “Heimat?” 373). 30 Dictionary of the Modern Bulgarian Language, 117. 28

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“Homeland is where I grew up and went to school” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 25, Bul-Ukr, m.); “the place where I was born, grew up and was loved as a child” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 46, Bul-Rus, m.); “the place, where I was born and where my family lives” (AIF ȱ ʋ 467, ɚ.u. 7, Bul-Slo, f.). One of them adds that “the relationship is emotional rather than geographical” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 49, Bul-Ukr, f.). For others, cultural belonging is more significant than social belonging: “It is the place whose values and culture you feel more closely related to” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 12, Bul-Rus, f.), or as another person says, “the culture in which you have been brought up, the places you have been and you feel rooted in” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 8, BulUkr, f.). All these statements show that homeland could also be regarded as an active process of self-localisation (Selbstverortung).31 In addition to this, more than half of the interviewees state that they have two homelands, defining themselves as belonging to both the Russian/Ukrainian and the Bulgarian cultures. They express their definitions of this double relation to their parents’ homelands in a specific manner: “Bulgaria is my homeland up to three-fourths (¾) while Ukraine is my home up to one-fourth (¼) or less.” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 20, Bul-Rus, m.); “I feel like I have two homelands: Bulgaria ௅ a physical one, and Russia ௅ an emotional and historical one.” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 12, Bul-Rus, f.); “It is like two things that are precious to you in a different way: you always miss one place when you are in the other” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 17, Bul-Ukr, f.). Frequent travels to the other land greatly contribute to the development of commitment to that other land as a homeland, which is also favourable to becoming acquainted with the cultural roots of the foreign-born parent. One of the interviewed Bulgarian-Russians feels surprised during a visit: “I went there after not having been there for thirteen years… Russia was not just a state for me. While on the plane, I could already feel like it was my native state, my native land… I feel good there. I like it. I didn’t think that I would like it so much, I mean its nature, the air, the earth” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 28, Bul-Rus, m.).

A Bulgarian-Ukrainian skilfully compares her two homelands: “The nature of both lands is similar, especially the mountains. I always remember Ukraine, the Carpathians, when I go on a hike in Bulgaria. And the Danube Plain looks like the Ukrainian fields. These and other things remind me of Ukraine.”32 The more frequent the travels, the more 31 32

Keupp, “Beheimatung als Identitätsarbeit,” 30. Anþeva, “Story about Life,” 9.

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intensively the “sense of attachment” to the second land is developed, as a consequence of the direct contact with the culture, the mentality and the behaviour of the local population33: “My mother keeps up the Russian in me… And when I was in Russia three years ago, everything very much deepened my feeling of connectedness to it” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 25, BulUkr, m.); “Earlier, I would have said that I felt more connected to the Bulgarian culture, but after my last stays there [in Ukraine – T. M.], I can sense that I am experiencing a relationship with Ukrainian culture that is taking over a part of what was solely Bulgarian earlier” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 37, Bul-Ukr, m.). A Bulgarian-Russian also ascribes a virtual dimension to his sense of imagined belonging: “I feel Russia to be a homeland, even though the fact that I’ve lived here for a long time also has a say… I haven’t travelled to Russia very often either… Thus, for me Russia is, to some extent, a virtual homeland, in the sense that I have real memories and feelings about something that is there” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 33, Bul-Rus, f.).

Consequently, even if only imagined, the feeling of belonging to a land, community and culture gives an individual the opportunity to be categorised as belonging to or, respectively, to be compassionate towards the collective identity of this population.34 Vice versa, the personal homeland-concepts function as identification instruments (Identitätsinstrument),35 which are helpful for the expression of personal cultural or socio-physical commitment through the assertion of and relation to the native place, regardless of whether it is a house, a street, a neighbourhood, a town or a country. The respondents, who feel like they belong more strongly to one of the two cultures, define the country whose culture they know better as their homeland: “I have a number of stable relationships but I do not have a home. I don’t feel like a tourist there but rather like a familiar guest.” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 46, Bul-Rus, m.); “I feel Russia is something close. I do not go there only for the trip” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 30, Bul-Rus, f.). Other respondents define their attachment to the other country based on comparisons: “It is, for me, the smaller side of my homeland.” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 37, Bul-Ukr, f.); “Bulgaria is a very close home, and Ukraine is a homeland because my relatives are there” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 37, Bul-Ukr, m.; ɚ.u. 4.); “It is like a combination of three in one - I perceive it as a 33

Nowicka, “Identity and Socio-Cultural Capital,” 1083-4. Frolova, Kazan, 186-7. 35 Bausinger, Heimat und Globalisierung, 24. 34

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homeland, as a native home and as a touristic attraction” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 44, Bul-Ukr, m.). One of the Bulgarian-Ukrainian respondents expresses her homeland-localisation through her emotions: “My homeland is Bulgaria because I always get excited when I return from abroad” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 11, Bul-Ukr, f.). Another woman perceives “Ukraine as a native land, and Bulgaria - as a native state” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 36, BulUkr, f.). The analysis further reveals that while some of the interviewees consider their homeland not to be the whole country but just a part of it (See AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 23, Bul-Ukr, f.; AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 36, Bul-Ukr, f.), others manage to combine both countries and ethno-cultural communities into one whole: “I do not separate them into the first and the second state. It is the same.” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 4, Bul-Ukr, m.); “I have always dreamt of a mixed Bulgarian-Russian state, where lots of Bulgarians and Russians would live. Thus, every side could enrich the other: the Russians would teach the Bulgarians spirituality and culture, while the Bulgarians would teach them simplicity and a more tranquil way of life” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 3, Bul-Ukr, m ); “I was born in Slovakia, I feel close to Bulgaria, but I also feel very comfortable in other countries, like Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Macedonia… My homeland encompasses all the countries touched by the Byzantine influence, the Carpathians and the Balkans” (AIF I ʋ 467, ɚ.u. 6, Bul-Rus, m.).

Another fact emerging from the answers of some Bulgarian-Ukrainian respondents is that they feel connected to Russia: “I have only one homeland. But also Russia” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 25, Bul-Ukr, m.); “I feel more attached to Russia and ‘Russian’ because I was brought up with it. I discovered Ukraine later in my life” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 11, Bul-Ukr, m.). Possible reasons for such statements are the past of Russia and Ukraine, as well as the individual histories of the Bulgarian-Ukrainian families. The time dimension can also be found in the answers of the respondents, who express their attachment to their native place through personal memories of their childhood or later life-periods which they try to include in their present home and place of residence: “I like Troitsk very much. It really is a unique city because there’s a big forest in its midst which you must cross to reach the other part of the city… And the wooden playgrounds are not like the plastic ones in Bulgaria” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 22, Bul-Rus, m.); “My childhood experience is the village of my great grandmother in Ukraine. I feel some fondness for it that I have never felt here. For the sunflowers too, for the maize and the endless landscapes. I haven’t found such a place in Bulgaria” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 42, Bul-Ukr,

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f.). Natural landscapes are sometimes also enriched by smell-related memories (smellscapes): “I like Moscow very much. When I go there, just after landing, I can smell the ‘Russian’ scent. It all smells ‘Russian’ to me, even when I buy something from a Russian store” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 9, BulRus, f.); “The air smells different. When we cross the border by train on our way back to Bulgaria, the smell of the air is different. I sense the same in Russia. And there are many smells - of the wet soil, the grass, the traditional foods - that I remember from my childhood. When I perceive them now, I remember Russia and ‘move’ there. These are the moments when I become sentimental” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 15, Bul-Rus, f.).

As a respondent’s answer reveals, restaurants and other catering establishments also contribute to the maintenance of the symbolic olfactory relation with a given country, more precisely with its cuisine: “And when we go to a Russian restaurant, we begin to feel home-sick, maybe because of the music and the atmosphere” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 35, Bul-Ukr, m.). According to him, it is this kind of nostalgia that makes people decide to become members of ethnic associations: “Ukrainian migrants want to sing songs in Ukrainian, to taste Ukrainian meals, to communicate with people like them” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 35, Bul-Ukr, m.). Home-sickness is also mentioned in conceptions of homeland that are constructed on the basis of childhood memories: “Homeland is a complex feeling of ownership because you perceive it to be native. It is nostalgia for old places that I have been to and I could never return to. For example, the playground in which I played as a child would never be the same as it was at that time” (AIF ȱ ʋ 452, ɚ.u. 22, Bul-Rus, m.).

The latter quote shows that memories could change over the course of time because of the accumulated life-experience, but also as result of the changes in spatial structures and natural environment (landscapes, monuments, and buildings) caused by climatic and social alterations. Generally, elements like pictures, smells, buildings, feelings, etc. that bear a resemblance to memories, notions and habits of the past but are perceived as material images in the present life could be regarded, according to Moosmueller, as “homeland-substance” (Heimatstoff).36 With their help, everyone may be able to express their emotional attachment to a given socio-cultural area, as they may grant one a sense of security and the 36

Moosmüller, “Einleitung,” 17.

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opportunity for identification and for the active self-organisation of one’s life.37

Conclusion As the empirical data presented above show, the interviewees experience different types of identification, which may be individual and collective, language- and territory-based, as well as ethnic and cultural. Some of the respondents feel divided into halves because of their primary bicultural socialisation and education ௅ similar to long-term emigrants who feel attached to the country and culture of the host society as a result of their secondary socialisation and enculturation. On the whole, due to the different possible ways of identification (cosmopolitan, mono- and bicultural, rotating, fused, mixed, etc.), the interviewed bi-ethnic individuals do not indicate that they have experienced difficulties in the everyday and festive situations that required their socio-cultural and ethnic self-determination. Neither do they feel homeless. Except for some rare occasions during childhood, their experience is associated with positive feelings and not with discrimination or marginalisation. Today, all of them are integrated in the society of residence, but most of them simultaneously keep up their connection to the culture and the country of their migrant parent, predominantly in the family, but sometimes also through membership in local and global migrant institutions. Furthermore, the set of data collected makes it evident that all the respondents engage in self-reflection upon their own ethnic and cultural identification and belonging, especially in foreign ethnic contexts. However, these elements of identification are less discussed in their everyday life than those regarding their gender, place of residence, interests, age, profession, religion, etc.38 Last but not least, the data gathered on Bulgarian-Russians and Bulgarian-Ukrainians show that it is more acceptable to refer to the “biethnic Bulgarian-Russian and Bulgarian-Ukrainian generation” under study here as a “bi-ethnic group formation” than through the parameters of a “bicultural or bi-ethnic community.” Applying Anderson’s perspective, the study of such a sense of communal belonging should not be based on examining internal emotions and affections alone (as quoted above), but it

37

Greverus, Auf der Suche nach Heimat, 13. See also Stefanenko, Socio-Psycholinguistic and Tiškov, “Cultural Diversity,” 34.

38

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should also follow a given method;39 in other words, it should be based on concrete unifying indicators, such as language, habits and behaviour manners, interests, (real and virtual) social networks, etc.40 All in all, it is more appropriate to consider them as a “bi-ethnic category.” In conclusion, even if the given results do not suffice for presenting of a holistic perspective upon the life and identification of Bulgarian-Slovaks, Bulgarian-Russians and Bulgarian-Ukrainians, they could be used for further research on people of other types of bi-ethnic Slavonic or other Bulgarian-mixed origins.

References Anþeva, Nadia. “Story about life in Bulgaria and relations to the Ukraine.” In Children of Emigrants about Themselves. Confessions. Reflections. Opinions… Pain, edited by Mižnarodnij institute osviti, kulturi ta zv’jazkiv z diasporoju, 7-10. Lviv: Artos, 2009. (In Ukrainian) Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. New York: Verso, 1991. Bausinger, Hermann. Heimat und Globalisierung. Fremde Nähe. Tübingen: 2002. Beer, Bettina. “Ethnos, Ethnie, Kultur.” In Ethnologie. Einführung und Überblick, edited by Bettina Beer and Hans Fischer, 53-72. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 2003. Belinskaja, E. P., and T. G. Stefanenko. The Ethnic Socialisation of Adolescents. Moscow: MODEK, 2000. (In Russian) Bourdieu, Pierre, and Loic J. D. Wacquant. An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1992. Brubaker, Rogers. “Ethnicity without Groups.” Archives Européennes de Sociologie 2 (2002): 163-89. Accessed 12 October 2012. http://works.bepress.com/wrb/7. —. Ethnicity without Groups. London: Harvard Univ. Press, 2004. Cohen, A. P. The Symbolic Construction of Community. London: Tavistock, 1985. Crow, G., and G. Allan. Community Life. An Introduction to Local Social Relations. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994. Cuba, Lee, and David M. Hummon. “Constructing a sense of home: Place affiliation and migration across the life cycle.” Sociological Forum 8/4 (1993): 547-72. 39 40

Anderson, Imagined Communities. Such elements have not been found during the research.

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Dictionary of the Modern Bulgarian Language, 117. 4th edition. Sofia, 1983. (In Bulgarian) Frolova, Elena Valeryevna. Kazan. Contemporary Processes among the Ethnic Minority Groups, 2006, accessed 22 August 2011. http://planetadisser.com/see/dis_3644398.html. (In Russian) Ganeva-Rajþeva, Valentina. Bulgarians in Hungary: Problems of Cultural Identity. Sofia: PH “Marin Drinov,” 2004. (In Bulgarian) Gorenburg, Dmitry. “Rethinking interethnic marriage in the Soviet Union.” Post-Soviet Affairs 22/2 (2006): 145-65. Greverus, Ina-Maria. Auf der Suche nach Heimat. München: Beck Verlag, 1979. Gupta, Anthea Fraser. “When mother-tongue education is not preferred.” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 18/6 (1997): 496-506. Herskovits, Melville J. Man and His Works. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948. Hummon, David M. “House, home, and identity in American culture.” In Housing, Culture, and Design, edited by Low, Setha, and Erve Chambers, 207-28. Philadelphia, PA: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1989. Keupp, H. “Beheimatung als Identitätsarbeit in einer entgrenzten Welt.” Politische Studien 4/2 (2003): 23-32. Lovell, Nadia. Locality and Belonging. London: Routledge, 1998. Low, S. M., and I. Altman. Place Attachment. New York, 1992. Moosmüller, Alois. “Einleitung: Diaspora—zwischen Reproduktion von “Heimat,” Assimilation und transnationaler Identität.” In Interkulturelle Kommunikation in der Diaspora. Die kulturelle Gestaltung von Lebens- und Arbeitswelten in der Fremde, edited by Alois Moosmüller, 11-28. Münster: Waxmann Verlag, 2002. Nowicka, Ewa. “Identity and socio-cultural capital: Duality of transnational people in Poland.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 29/6 (2006): 1072-86. Penchev, Vladimir. “Folklore as a factor of (bi)identity.” In Macedonian Folklore. Vol. 58-59, 129-34. Skopje, 2001. Proshansky, Harold, and Abbe Fabian, and Robert Kaminoff. “Place identity: Physical world socialization of the self.” Journal of Environmental Psychology 3 (1983): 57-83. Rapoport, Amos. “Identity and environment.” In Housing and Identity, edited by James Duncan, 6-35. New York: Holmes and Meier, 1982. Raškova, Natalija, and Vladimir Penþev. Bulgarians in Slovakia Ethnocultural Characteristics and Interactions. Sofia, PH “Prof. Marin Drinov,” 2005. (In Bulgarian)

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Raškova, Natalija. “One man reads Umberto Eco, another one - folk tales (cultural dimensions of the communal identity - Bulgarians in Hungary.” In Bulgarians and Hungarians - 1000 Years Together, 15360. Budapest, 2002. (In Bulgarian) —. The Slovak Bulgarians: Ethnocultural identification among the “second” generation. Anthropological Studies 4 (2003), 117-29. Sofia: NBU. (In Bulgarian) Schönhuth, Michael. “Heimat? Ethnische Identität und Beheimatungsstrategien einer entbetteten “Volksgruppe” im translokalen Raum.” In Zuhause fremd – Russlanddeutsche zwischen Russland und Deutschland, edited by S. Ipsen-Peitzmeier and M. Kaiser, 365-80. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2006. Shumaker, Sally A., and Ralph B. Taylor. “Toward a classification of people-place relationships: A model of attachment to place.” In Environmental Psychology, edited by N. R. Feilmer and E. S. Geller, 219-51. New York: Praeger, 1983. Skutnabb-Kangas, T. Bilingualism or Not: The Education of Minorities. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 1984. Stefanenko, T. G. Socio-Psycholinguistic Aspects of Studies on Ethnic Identity, 1999, accessed April 3, 2012. http://flogiston.ru/articles/social/etnic. (In Russian) Streitz, Willi. “Theoretische und methodische Implikationen des Symbolischen Interaktionismus im Hinblick auf die Untersuchung von Heimat und Identität.” In Jahrbuch für Ostdeutsche Volkskunde, Vol. 26, edited by Ulrich Tolksdorf, 289-310. Marburg: N. G. Elwert Verlag, 1983. Tiškov, Vladimir A. “About the cultural diversity, the behavioural strategies and norms of ‘our time’.” In The Course of Developing Moldavia, edited by Ɇ. N. Guboglo and L. V. Fedotova, 30-63. Moskva: Staryi sad. 2009. (In Russian) Yamamoto, Masayo. “What makes who choose what languages to whom?: Language use in Japanese-Filipino interlingual families in Japan.” International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 8/6 (2005): 588-606. Živkov, Todor Ivanov. The Ethnic Syndrome. Sofia: Alya, 2001. (In Bulgarian)

MARRIAGE AND IDENTITY IN TRANSYLVANIA DURING THE FIRST HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY AS SEEN BY FOREIGN TRAVELLERS MIHAELA MEHEDIN‫܉‬I AND CECILIA-ALINA SAVA

Introduction One of the consequences of Transylvania’s peculiar historical evolution has been the mixture of its various populations and religions. Reliable data indicates that between 1690 and 1847, the province was home to approximately 52.7% Romanians, 27.3% Hungarians and Szeklers, 16.7% Germans (especially Saxons) and 3.3% members of other ethnicities (Gypsies, Jews, Armenians, Swabians, Ruthenians, Greeks, Bulgarians, Slovakians, etc.).1 As it could be expected, its religious and denominational structure was also complex: Orthodox believers, Greek-Catholics, RomanCatholics, Calvinists, Lutherans, Unitarians and Jews lived alongside one another. Several criteria were used when choosing a spouse, amongst which the most important were spatial proximity, ethnicity, religion and age. Due to reasons concerning the availability of land for the newly-established families, the first of these factors was extremely important for the Romanian communities of the modern epoch. When a marriage could not be concluded between partners from the same village, the solution was exogamy and, with few exceptions, the principle of ethnic and religious homogeneity was respected.2

1 2

Bolovan and Bolovan, “Transylvania until World War I,” 83. Holom, “RealităĠi demografice,” 303-5.

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Some areas were more prone to mixed marriages,3 a phenomenon which was directly related to their ethnic structure.4 In Oradea, for example, the Greek-Catholic community had a rather high proportion of such matrimonies, as they ranged between 35.29% and 71.05% in the first half of the nineteenth century.5 According to the same source, the RomanCatholic parish recorded somewhat smaller, but still significant numbers of intermarriages: between 21.71% and 46.84% during the same period.6 Researchers have identified three factors which are directly related to the probability that an individual would intermarry: living in an urban environment, having been brought up in a family that was not agriculturally occupied and being highly educated.7 Moreover, one’s attitudes towards other ethnic groups are strongly influenced by the family of origin, through a series of mechanisms,8 the most relevant of these being the socioeconomic and religious background, the intergenerational transmission of social and cultural stances, the (parents’ and the children’s) level of education, and the strength and quality of family ties. All these aspects can be discerned when discussing the extent and significance of mixed marriages in Transylvania during the first half of the nineteenth century. The purpose of this study is twofold: to present several foreigners’ testimonies regarding matrimony, while also providing the reader with an overview of intermarriage in the above-mentioned area and time frame. Thus, several travel narratives and a series of case studies were combined 3

For the second half of the 19th century, a few such examples are provided by Bolovan and Bolovan, “Căsătoriile mixte în Transilvania,” 91-3. See also the study’s Appendices on pages 104-8. 4 In Feleac, an almost entirely Romanian and Greek-Catholic community, the number of intermarriages was extremely small. For instance, between 1840 and 1849 only two such marriages were concluded and they were mixed only from a denominational viewpoint. In fact, in this community there were no interethnic marriages (all of Feleac’s inhabitants were Romanian) and no marriages with a person who was neither an Orthodox nor a Greek-Catholic believer. For more details, see Simon, “EvoluĠii demografice,” 125-60. 5 Stoenescu, “Căsătorii interconfesionale,” 166. 6 Stoenescu, “Căsătorii interconfesionale,” 166-7 shows that in Beiuú the percentage of mixed marriages was smaller than in Oradea, but most certainly they were not a rarity: between 9.43% and 45.43% for the Greek-Catholic parish and between 9.67% and 50.74% for the Roman-Catholic one in the first half of the 19th century. This dramatic increase, which, in this case, occurred towards the middle of the century, indicates a change in the community’s perceptions and mentality. 7 O’Leary, “Modernization,” 649. 8 These are detailed by Huijnk and Liefbroer, “Family Influences,” 81.

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in order to draw an accurate picture of the examined topic. It should be emphasised from the beginning that this is not an imagological study per se, as examining the reasons, motivations and preconceptions identifiable (to a higher or lesser degree) in various travellers’ notes about the Romanian people’s marital behaviour was not our intent. Actually, as already specified, we were more interested in discovering the extent of mixed marriages in the Romanian area in the nineteenth century (and since this was our main focus, we leave comparisons with other countries to future studies). Notwithstanding all this, we sought to avoid the mere enumeration of percentages and other types of statistical data and we consequently took advantage of the considerations expressed by external observers. We assumed that: (1) foreigners would provide trustworthy information about intermarriage amongst the Transylvanians (that is to say that their appreciations would coincide with the facts ascertained by contemporary researchers) and (2) certain patterns clearly established in the scientific literature, such as the traditional communities’ remarkable aversion towards mixed unions or the Orthodox believers’ preference for Greek-Catholics, would emerge from the voyagers’ accounts as well. The following pages show whether our hypotheses were supported and, in the process, they bring to the fore numerous picturesque elements embedded in the descriptions we have analysed.

Transylvanian marriages between tradition and modernity In a much larger measure than nowadays, marriage was not a private matter during the modern period, as it was strongly influenced by the secular and churchly regulations upheld by the entire community.9 Parents usually chose their child’s partner,10 but the future spouses could influence them by resorting to some type of unorthodox behaviour. Abduction was one of the usually successful methods that a young man employed when his loved one “had already been promised to someone else or she had been decidedly denied to him.”11 On such occasions, the habitual course of action involved an attempt to reach an agreement through a priest’s 9

For the importance of family within society, see Covaci, “Beica Română,” 250 and Holom, “RealităĠi demografice,” 297-8. 10 This also caused a large number of divorce requests motivated by the fact that the petitioner was forced into the marriage. See Rus, “Căsătorie úi recăsătorie,” 366. 11 These remarks, as well as the following pieces of information pertain to the Italian traveller Felice Caronni; Călători străini, Vol. I, 488.

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mediation. However, “when there is no hope of reconciliation, the lad moves to a remote place.” The parents’ choice could easily be overridden if the girl became pregnant. Due to a situation of this kind, Friedrich Uhl attended an atypical wedding at Mehadia towards the middle of the nineteenth century. The bride and bridegroom had been too intimate and her “waist was no longer as slender as it properly suits a bride.” Thus, the two were getting married although she had initially been betrothed to another man with whom even the wedding arrangements had been made. As a result, the cheated former fiancé and a group of boys accompanied the suite, adopting a mocking behaviour and singing a parodic theme-related song.12 Moreover, the boy’s mother, extremely upset that the planned alliance between her modest household and the girl’s rich parents could not take place anymore, cursed the bride with such words as “the Devil’s child” and “may you be stricken by the Holy Cross.”13 Fortunately, no scuffle occurred and the ceremony continued without further hindrance. Most travellers’ descriptions converge upon the idea that in nineteenth century Transylvania marital behaviour still complied with a series of traditional usages and practices. For instance, Felice Caronni states that “the youth marry early, because a girl is courted since she is 12.14 When the parents of the young man in love have not yet designated a wife for him, they go to agree with the parents of the one he desires, they offer them as much as they can in money or things for obtaining her and, after an understanding is reached, the wedding has to be done in two or, at the most, four weeks.”15

12

“Red rose, fresh and beautiful/ Amazing to look at/ I don’t want to like her;/ Oh! I know why!/ Black is her hair./ Long, shiny, it’s true/ I don’t want to like her;/ Oh! I know why!/ White is her face, painted,/ Black as poppy her eye sparkles/ I don’t want to like her;/ Oh! I know why!/ Fine is her nose, pointed,/ Moist is her mouth, fiery as red-hot coals/ I don’t want to like her;/ Oh! I know why!/ White as snow are her teeth/ Shining from the high mountain,/ I don’t want to like her;/ Oh! I know why!/ At her embellished teat/ Looks, it’s true, my greedy eye/ I don’t want to like her;/ Oh! I know why!/ Her thigh is plump/ Each man must admire her leg/ I don’t want to like her;/ Oh! I know why!/ But falling at a bad hour/ Her mouth must feed two/ I don’t want to like her;/ I don’t know, why?” 13 The episode appears in Călători străini, Vol. IV, 597-9. 14 In general, during the 19th century, 15 to 20 years of age for girls and 18 to 22 years for boys were considered the optimum ages for concluding a marriage. See Vele, “EvoluĠia demografică,” 278. Ignat-Coman, “The Ethnographic Image,” 73 offers slightly different figures, namely 18-23 for women and 23-26 for men. 15 Călători străini, Vol. I, 488.

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The habit of celebrating the marriage within a month of the engagement appears to have been one of the elements which remained constant over time. Almost 40 years later, Friedrich Uhl noticed that “after the conclusion of the [marriage] contract, the wedding is set, usually the fourteenth day afterwards; it can be set later on, but after [another] 14 days as well, a further postponement is considered a rupture, which, in such a case, actually happens.”16

However, choosing a date had to obey certain rules. Thus, with the exception of Reformed believers, marriage ceremonies were (and generally still are) forbidden during fasting periods. Additionally, a marital union was prohibited if the two future spouses were related up to the fourth degree or if their families were connected through a godparent-godchild alliance,17 a situation that was normally excluded through the announcement of the engagement in their church (or churches)18 on three consecutive Sundays or holidays.19 Two decades later, Joseph Adalbert Krickel also observed that marriage commonly took place at early ages in Transylvania. Referring to the Saxons, the Austrian traveller noted that the women from Sebeú “mature earlier and remark themselves by their pleasant, or even beautiful and wonderful figures, to which the beneficial climate probably also contributes. They grow old, unfortunately, fast and the cause consists in their early marriages. One of the main causes of women’s premature ageing is the loss of their teeth. I have seen few women who still had all their teeth at 40 years of age – a charm necessary for a beautiful cheek. It is not a rare thing, at the age of 15 or 16, to already be a mother of two children.20 Men get married at 20, or at 24 years of age at the latest.21

16

Călători străini, Vol. IV, 597. More details about the impediments of marriage in Holom, “Mariajul,” 240-51. 18 When the future spouses did not live in the same village or they did not belong to the same denomination, these announcements had to be made in both their churches. See Brie, Căsătoria, 36. 19 Vele, “EvoluĠia demografică,” 277-8. 20 Although such cases could probably be observed, they were most likely not as frequent as the traveller estimated, because churchly regulations prevented girls under 12 years of age from getting married and sometimes even girls over 15 needed special dispensations. More details on this topic in Holom, “Mariajul,” 239-40. The traveller’s remarks also contradict the analysis of the age at marriage in other Transylvanian communities. According to the available data, during the second half of the 19th century, most women in Ineu (Arad County) married at 18 17

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There exist, as well, marriages out of interest, namely men in their prime marry, because of their precarious material situation, rich old women. It is true that this sort of thing happens amongst all peoples, but never as often as between the Saxons.”22

The Italian traveller Felice Caronni described the manner in which a regular wedding took place. A number of the elements depicted here have not changed over the centuries, a fact that is extremely obvious to a contemporary Romanian reader: “the bridegroom goes with his suite to the bride’s house, but remains at the gate. It is the godfather’s duty to get her to come out of the house and then [the bride], with her face covered by a veil up to her chin, weepingly and gently bids farewell to her own, kisses anyone she encounters on her way until she arrives at the altar. Here the priest places a wreath of flowers and sweet-smelling herbs23 on the pair’s head[s] and a candle in their hand[s] and puts the ring[s] on their finger[s] with various formulas and blessings. Then the parents throw small silver or copper coins and [...] pass around a basket with dried fruits and nuts. [...] The bride does not appear at the first feast and eats separately and covered with her veil together with her companions. Before it gets dark, she is instructed with regard to the man’s rights [...] and to submission and diligence in the household, which are all connected to her new state. The following day, she is received at the feast with relatives, friends and girls of note from those parts. After the feast has ended, dishcloths are laid on the table, at the same time as [the marriage contract specifying] the dowry, usually consisting in cattle of any sort, in addition to the kitchen utensils and handmade objects.”24

The habitual elements of the wedding ceremonial were also emphasised by Frederich Uhl in his account of his passage through Transylvania in 1846. The girls wore holiday clothes and flowers in their hair, the church bells announced the important event and, with sobs and embraces, the bride reached the altar, where

(27%), 19 (13.3%), 20 (15.4%) or between 21 and 25 (15.2%) years old. For more details, see Bucur, “Aspecte privind căsătoriile,” 226. 21 Due to the military rigours imposed by the Habsburg Empire, the average age at marriage for the Transylvanian men was indeed 23-25 years. See Holom, “RealităĠi demografice,” 309. 22 Călători străini, Vol. II, 180. 23 The author probably referred to basil. 24 Călători străini, Vol. I, 488-489.

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Marriage and Identity in Transylvania during the 19th Century “the service was simple. Everyone held in their hand, throughout the entire wedding, a burning candle. The bride and bridegroom exchange rings and coronets of flowers [...]. When they left the church, the [nuptial] pair’s parents threw pennies towards those who were looking. Then the entire retinue departed for the bridegroom’s house, where a banquet had been prepared. The bride went, with the female society, to a special room, in which, with the veil [on her head], she impatiently awaited [the bridegroom] during the entire feast.”25

Although he did not remain there until the end and preferred to go to “the church’s square, where the youth had gathered, in the meantime, to dance,” Friedrich Uhl knew what followed: while saying goodbye to the bride, everyone “wishes her luck, kisses her and gives her money as a gift,” then the bridegroom delivers a “pathetic speech” to his wife, in which he tells her that she should “always be obedient and faithful to him, tend the house devotedly and diligently, care for and raise, with obedience, the children they are expecting.”26

Other distinctive elements of a rural wedding included the presence of girls wearing “wreaths of flowers;” they followed, “while dancing, several fiddlers who were blowing a horn.”27 Dancing with the bride, offering gifts to the new couple and a three-day celebration represented other ethnographically certified nineteenth century Transylvanian wedding traditions.28 The bride’s clothing appeared strange to some travellers, who were probably unaccustomed to such habits. For example, Auguste de Lagarde emphasised the fact that “the bride’s wedding adornment seemed even more special than her face: in a blue velvet toque, more flared at the top, long peacock feathers had been thrust as in a Peruvian crown, which brought her head closer to her 29 feet than to the top of her moving girlish crown.”

The retinue encountered by Siegfried Kapper at OraviĠa was more sumptuous than the ones described above: 25

Călători străini, Vol. IV, 599. Ibidem. 27 Călători străini, Vol. I, 588. 28 Ignat-Coman, “The Ethnographic Image,” 71. 29 Călători străini, Vol. I, 588. 26

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“two hussars in gala uniforms [...], with their clothes like an armour because of the cords, walked in front. With their hazel wood batons raised, they represented the authorities and they not only took care that all the carriages and the cattle made room for the suite, but they also drove off the trifling, barefoot and poor rabble of children and vagabonds, who were running ahead of the suite in rare groups; one moment they would stop and give out a shout, about which it is not known if it was a sign of joy or it was meant to irritate the representatives of authority, and then they immediately ran out of the two batons’ way again, terribly raising the dust. Four Wallachian lads on horseback followed the two hussars. The steeds and the riders were abundantly adorned with beautiful flowers and the lads offered a very beautiful sight, as they were straddling the animals, which were advancing with a rocking amble and seemed to be more appropriate for drawing a cabriolet, had they received an extra handful of oats; [the lads were riding] without a saddle and without a stirrup, in loose-fitting, fluttering sackcloth trousers, [with] shirts beautifully embroidered in blue and red, [with] long, white, sleeveless coats, with the most beautiful flowers, with patches of white cloth, with their caps worn on one side and [...] mocking the general disarmament, they were firing wads of paper into the air from little pipes for rattlers, like those that children play with, because they had no pistols they could shoot with. After the riders, came the musicians, truly swarthy Gypsies, two fiddles, a viola and a double bass, who played a frenzied march quite well, in which the double bass seemed to leave itself to the mercy of its own views on harmony, which, however, did not seem to cast on the entire suite a kind of wild, playful air. After the music [band], the best man30 followed with the bride and the bridegroom with the maid of honour,31 dressed in their best garments and, in the same way, in pairs and in a long row, [came] the wedding guests, mostly women.”32

For some travellers, coming across such a large wedding procession would have reinforced their belief that this sort of chance meetings brought them luck at least for the rest of their journey.33 Obviously, this expectation actually reflected the foreigners’ superstitions and not those of the locals. Interestingly enough, Siegfried Kapper, the same author who so attentively depicted the members of the aforementioned retinue, also displayed other types of preconceptions that influenced his perception of otherness. The manner in which he viewed marriage and the indirect reference to the fact that he pertained to a more evolved culture than that of the Romanians can be easily detected in the following excerpt: 30

The Czech traveller probably mistook the godfather for the best man. Again, he probably referred to the godmother. 32 Călători străini, Vol. VI, 112-3. 33 See, for instance, Auguste de Lagarde’s notes, in Călători străini, Vol. I, 588. 31

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Marriage and Identity in Transylvania during the 19th Century “on the narrow and long street a long (sic!) suite of people dressed in holiday clothes appeared and one immediately saw that their purpose was to lead two people from the Arcadia of love into marriage’s Vale of Tears. The civilised peoples suffer such calamities quietly. They do not make a fuss about fate’s unstoppable changes. The peoples to which God has still left the naive happiness of the lack of culture rejoice, shout and sing and hold processions, in order not to let the two victims come to their senses. All that concerns customs and mores is concentrated, for them, in life’s three prevailing moments: birth, marriage and death.”34

On the other hand, despite Kapper’s harsh remarks, Romanians exhibited modern features in their marital behaviour as well. For example, remarriage was allowed even in the first half of the nineteenth century,35 but, as Felice Caronni noted, they contracted a third marriage only in extremely rare situations. Notwithstanding all that, priests had to obey other rules and “after their first wife dies, they remain widowers forever, whether they are going to serve [further on] in their church or they wish to retire. In this [latter] case, they put their household affairs in order and, bidding farewell to their children, who will lean upon the other relatives [from now on], they go – if they have a right of admittance and have obtained permission – to spend the rest of their days in some monastery in Serbia, where they are regarded and treated as real monks.”36

In the case of laics, second marriages were generally related to the high mortality rate amongst young people. Krickel gave the example of a middle-aged strap maker, “very serious in his thought,” who “was marrying an older woman in order to make sure that his household would be well-kept and to give a mother to his younger children, left from 37 his first wife.”

But Siegfried Kapper had a different opinion on this issue. According to him, “marriage between young boys and much older girls is a bad habit that originates from the people’s way of life. Each householder seeks, as much 34

Călători străini, Vol. VI, 112. Usually, the Church preferred remarriages to cohabitation, especially after one of the spouses’ death. See Rus, “Căsătorie úi recăsătorie,” 372. 36 Călători străini, Vol. I, 499. 37 Călători străini, Vol. II, 180-1. 35

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as possible, to increase the number of labourers from his household. Therefore, one of his chief concerns is to find a wife for his son as soon as possible and thus he marries his daughter as late as possible, in order to use her for as long as possible in the house. Perhaps this thing that goes against nature cannot remain without an influence over the country’s population, [which is] rather sparse.”38

Actually, contrary to this traveller’s observations, marriages between young men and much older women were not particularly frequent.39 On the other hand, the reverse tendency could also be encountered and sometimes reached high levels: in Gilău during the second half of the nineteenth century, 11% of the Greek-Catholic brides were married to much older men (between 40 to 80 years old), while 19.4% of the Reformed wives-to-be shared the same fate.40 Unfortunately, the available data does not permit us to estimate the magnitude of this phenomenon at a larger regional scale. Another reliable indicator of the transition to modernity is the elevated number of mixed marriages within a certain community41 and, from this viewpoint, the differences between the urban and the rural areas are astounding. For example, during the second half of the nineteenth century, more than two thirds of the Saxons’ marriages contracted in Cluj were mixed,42 while in the Băgaciu rural community only 2 (0.50%) out of the 399 matrimonies which took place between 1821 and 1880 had this characteristic.43 The town of Arad was also responsible for a large part of

38

Călători străini, Vol. VI, 113. See, for example, the case of Oradea. More details about the age at marriage in this town in Stoenescu, “Cununiile mixte,” 154-6. 40 Vele, “EvoluĠia demografică,” 279. 41 Voas, “Intermarriage,” 97 brilliantly summarises this process: “A society may promote religious endogamy to different degrees. At one extreme, marriage outside the faith may be completely forbidden. Perhaps more commonly, it will be allowed on condition that the outsider converts. A further liberalising step is to allow intermarriage, provided there is explicit agreement to raise offspring in the faith. In a privatised version of this approach the couple themselves agree on what each will do, and on how their children will be brought up. If the society is very secular or religious identity is very weak, religion may be viewed as a matter of insufficient importance to require prenuptial negotiation.” 42 For an overview of the phenomenon of mixed marriage in interwar Cluj, see LanĠoú, “Căsătoriile mixte,” 59-73. 43 Crăciun, “CivilizaĠie urbană,” 117-118. However, not only mentalities and attitudes towards the alterity, but also the village’s ethnic structure may have influenced the matrimonial choices of Băgaciu’s inhabitants. The available data for 39

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its county’s intermarriages: between 33.14% and 41.93% for the decade 1876-1885.44 A similar percentage was recorded in Apahida, where 31.1% of the unions concluded from 1853 to 1900 were denominationally mixed.45 On the other hand, in another rural community, namely RăzboieniCetate, only 4 such couples were joined in matrimony before the Orthodox priest during a period of almost a century (1814-1920).46 The GreekCatholics from Aghireú also displayed a behaviour that was unfavourable to intermarriage. Only 13 unions of this sort were contracted here between 1850 and 1918, representing a mere 3.4% of the total.47 The fact that urban dwellers attended church more seldom than peasants, that they usually had non-farming occupations and that societal control over them was weaker than in the villages probably caused these individuals’ openness towards mixed marriages.48 It might also be worthy of note that, with time, the Church’s tolerance towards intermarriage rose, especially when faced with the possibility of losing a part of its believers through conversions.49 Moreover, modernisation manifested itself even in the new family’s location in the case of territorial exogamy: in traditional cultures the woman moved in with the husband, a situation which is no longer true when referring to periods closer to the present, when, as it will be seen further on, both the woman and the man could change their residence,50 depending on the available resources and their position within society.

the Pecica rural community provides a similar picture. For details, see Muntean, “Unele aspecte,” 65-77. 44 Vesa, “Câteva aspecte,” 31-2. 45 Deteúan, “Căsătoriile mixte,” 109. 46 In three cases, a Reformed bridegroom married an Orthodox bride, while in the fourth case the man was Roman-Catholic and the woman a Unitarian believer. See Popovici, “ObservaĠii,” 347. An additional 70 matrimonies between Orthodox believers and Greek-Catholics were recorded for the same period, but they were not recorded by the Orthodox parish registers. 47 Deteúan, “Căsătoriile mixte,” 113. 76.7% of these intermarriages involved Greek-Catholics and Orthodox believers. 48 O’Leary, “Modernization,” 660. 49 Holom, “RealităĠi demografice,” 305. 50 ùiúeútean, Etnie, confesiune, 69.

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Ethnicity and religion as essential factors in choosing a life partner Ethnicity was sometimes connected to status and foreign travellers did not disregard this aspect. For instance, Joseph Adalbert Krickel emphasised the fact that he had witnessed the marital union of a poor man: “early in the morning we suddenly heard two gunshots. Everyone ran to the windows. Shrieks and shouts of joy started and, lo and behold, it was the wedding of a poor Romanian. In a cart with 4 adorned oxen there were the bride, the bridegroom and the wedding guests.”51

However, social standing was not nearly as important as ethnicity and religion when concluding a marriage52 and foreigners remarked the locals’ tendency to avoid this kind of mixtures. Charles Lemercier de Longpré, Baron d’Haussez, detailed this preference and explained to his readers that “from all these ethnic groups that invaded and ruled Hungary one by one there has resulted a mix of races and languages whose different origins could not be erased by the centuries’ long succession. Each invading people, each immigrating horde brought here by a certain interest or another has preserved its mores, customs, [and] original language. Neither the community of interests and laws, nor the habit of living together could wipe out the initial differences. Even the facial traits have remained unchanged; to such an extent has the mixing of the races been prevented by the differences in customs, to such an extent has the national spirit which excludes alliances with families of a different origin been preserved!”53

In the same period, the Count of Locmaria also noticed that “each nation preserves its customs, mores, memories and tends to maintain its unity by avoiding any foreign interference.”54 Johann Georg Kohl even offered a clear example of how these unwritten rules actually functioned. In the Banat area, he encountered a village

51

Călători străini, Vol. II, 201. Perhaps this was also due to the fact that these three factors were usually interrelated. 53 Călători străini, Vol. III, 500. 54 Călători străini, Vol. III, 779. 52

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Marriage and Identity in Transylvania during the 19th Century “where the Romanians lived on one side of the street, [and] all the Germans [dwelt] together on the other side. But they did not mix.55 Although, as I said, they were separated only by the village street and although there are beautiful girls both amongst the Romanians and amongst the Germans, [the god] Amor has not yet fired an arrow across this narrow street. It seems that around here love is not as blind as to stop [seeing] the distinctions between the Germans and the Romanians, between the Catholic and the Orthodox believers. One of this village’s inhabitants assured me that ‘ever since our village has been in existence, no wedding between one of ours and the Romanians from the other side has occurred.’ I found that unbelievable, but he said: ‘yes, yes, this is true, our blood does not allow it!’ ‘Oh, yes, they fight amongst themselves, this they do well, but they do not marry,’ the innkeeper also said.”

The astonished traveller then continued: “In other villages, under similar circumstances, they are mixed, Germans with Hungarians and Germans with Serbians, but it is to the Hungarians that they get married more easily.”56

Lutherans were not particularly numerous in Transylvania; from an ethnic viewpoint, they were mainly Saxons, but also Hungarians, other Germans, Gypsies or Serbians. In 1850, from a total population of 2,073,737 inhabitants, only 174,606 (8.41%) were Saxons57 and, probably, their small numbers and their declining position motivated the Saxons to adopt a more open attitude towards intermarriage in the second half of the century. This was perhaps one of the most beneficial approaches that they could have taken, considering that accepting or interdicting matrimonies of this kind could have serious and long-lasting demographic effects upon a group of individuals.58 The Cluj community represents such an example of adaptation to the new realities: between 1821 and 1845, the percentage of mixed marriages concluded by the Saxons ranged between 21.4% and 40.5%,59 but three decades later it had doubled (83.58%).60 Lutherans preponderantly opted for Catholics (49.25%), chiefly because many of 55

Other examples of this attitude, as well as an analysis of the Saxons’ motives for such behaviour can be found in Crăciun, “Mariajele interconfesionale,” 195-203. 56 Călători străini, Vol. IV, 167-8. 57 Crăciun, “Dinamica populaĠiei,” 23. 58 More details in this regard are provided by ùiúeútean, “Căsătorii interconfesionale,” 113, 115-6. 59 Crăciun, “Mariajele interconfesionale,” 199. 60 Out of 67 marriages contracted between 1870 and 1874, 56 were mixed. See Crăciun, “CivilizaĠie urbană,” 116-7.

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those believers were Germans, but Reformed partners were also soughtafter (25.37%). On the other hand, according to Andrew Archibald Paton’s account, at least in Sibiu, “the three peoples, Saxon, Hungarian and Romanian, remain distinct and separated one from the other, the hatred between them being terrible and undying.”61

Even if a tendency of this sort was not related to hatred, some communities seemed to exclude mixed marriages in the last half of the nineteenth century. For instance, in Gilău the number of Reformed believers who selected spouses belonging to other denominations62 was insignificant: only 6 out of 462,63 namely 1.29%. Irrespective of their proportion, intermarriages represented a real phenomenon in the nineteenth century. Researchers have identified a few patterns concerning the process of deciding upon a life partner and these patterns reveal a strong preference for a certain ethnicity or denomination. For example, the Greek-Catholics living in Oradea ordinarily chose Reformed (42.66%)64 or Roman-Catholic65 (40.34%) spouses and only a few of these Uniates married Orthodox believers (14.09%).66 The RomanCatholics’ intermarriages were even more denominationally oriented: most brides and bridegrooms who entered into a mixed marital union opted for a

61

Călători străini, Vol. V, 498. The laws regarding intermarriage adopted by the Transylvanian Reformed Church in the period 1655-1868 are presented and discussed by Lukács, “Premisele juridice,” 67-85. 63 Vele, “EvoluĠia demografică,” 279. 64 These percentages were computed having in view the total number of mixed marriages for the period 1801-1880. 65 Generally, in order for such a marriage to take place, the Roman-Catholic spouse had to obtain a dispensation from the bishop. Apparently, at least in ùimleu Silvaniei, the reverse situation did not occur and ùiúeútean, Etnie, confesiune, 71 provides an explanation for this peculiarity: perhaps the Roman-Catholics did not even request such dispensations due to the fact that the Hungarian Roman-Catholic Church considered itself superior to the Greek Catholic one, especially as the members of the latter were, to an overwhelming degree, Romanians. 66 Stoenescu, “Căsătorii interconfesionale,” 169. Apart from a clear predilection for certain denominations when choosing partners who did not belong to one’s own religious community, it must also be noted that the number of Orthodox Romanians inhabiting Oradea was rather small in the period. 62

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Reformed partner (65.04%)67 and only very few of them selected GreekCatholics (16.72%) or Orthodox believers (10.20%).68 Sebiú, a locality situated near Arad, displayed the same predilections: out of 179 marriages concluded between 1801 and 1849 in the Roman-Catholic parish, 17 (9.49%) were mixed and in 14 (82.3%) of these the spouses were Reformed. Only two Roman-Catholic women chose Orthodox husbands, while one such bride married a Greek-Catholic.69 The Roman-Catholics’ intermarriages were also rather frequent in Buteni (Arad County) in the first half of the nineteenth century, as they reached 27.02% of the total. The preference for a Reformed partner was obvious here as well and more than half of these marriages (51.11%) followed this trend. Nevertheless, 30% of these mixed unions involved an Orthodox believer, while 16.66% were contracted with an Evangelical. Only two Roman-Catholic brides (2.22%) married Greek-Catholic men.70 During the second half of the century, four distinct typical models of intermarriage could be identified in the Greek-Catholic parish from Oradea.71 In the majority of cases, Greek-Catholics married Orthodox believers (42.95% of the total number of mixed matrimonies),72 mainly because in this manner the union was almost always ethnically homogenous, as both spouses were, in all probability, Romanians.73 The Greek-Catholics’ second option for intermarriage was represented by Roman-Catholics (33.27%). As it can be noticed, albeit less pronounced 67

As shown by Stoenescu, “Cununiile mixte,” 123, this pattern was also preserved during the second half of the century. 68 Stoenescu, “Căsătorii interconfesionale,” 170. In Beiuú, most mixed-married Greek-Catholics chose Orthodox consorts (62.08%), both of the two spouses usually being Romanians, while only 19.43% opted for Roman-Catholics. In the same town, Roman-Catholics usually married Reformed believers (58.65%), but Greek-Catholics (24.03%) and Orthodox Romanians (16.34%) were also preferred rather often. 69 Pădurean, “Căsătoriile mixte confesional,” 190. 70 Oarcea, “Aspecte privind,” 263-4. 71 See Brie, “Alteritatea confesională,” 156-8. 72 In Apahida, 87.4% of the mixed marriages involved these two denominations during the same period. The rest of the intermarriages were concluded between Reformed and Orthodox believers (10.3%) and between Greek-Catholics and members of the Reformed Church (2%), respectively. See Deteúan, “Căsătoriile mixte,” 111. 73 However, despite ethnic homogeneity, denominational complications still occurred, especially in what concerned the religion of the couple’s future children. Details on this matter are provided by Brie, Căsătoria, 42-43. See also Vesa, “Câteva aspecte,” 30 and Săsăujan, “Căsătoriile mixte,” 30.

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than in the first part of the century, this preference still illustrated the spiritual closeness between the two denominations. The third most frequent choice was that of a Calvinist partner (21.01%) and this somewhat high percentage was chiefly due to the fact that the area was inhabited by many members of this denomination. Interestingly enough, Greek-Catholics did not apply the same logic in the case of Evangelicals, who were involved in only 2.76% of the analysed unions, whereas their presence within the parish was more substantial (9.8%). It should be noted that although marriages between Greek-Catholics and Orthodox believers were rather frequent owing to the future spouses’ common ethnicity, from a denominational viewpoint a series of problems still needed to be solved. Thus, the authorities’ favouritism towards the Catholic Church, including its “Greek” form, clearly manifested itself in the regulations adopted beginning with the eighteenth century. For example, according to Catholic rules, only a Uniate priest was entitled to officiate at a wedding ceremony of the type mentioned above. Moreover, Orthodox priests who disregarded this decision could be severely punished: they were brought before a court of law, they could lose their parish and their properties were likely to be confiscated.74 Similarly, the numerous unions between Roman-Catholics and members of the Reformed Church,75 detected also at ùimleu Silvaniei in the second half of the nineteenth century,76 were usually related to the fact that both partners were Hungarians. However, generally, both the GreekCatholics and the Roman-Catholics who married a Reformed believer and changed their religion were excommunicated by the Pope.77 The same harsh course of action could also be taken against a Catholic who chose to marry an Orthodox believer, but by the first half of the 19th century, this type of intermarriage had begun to be at least tolerated, if not accepted.78 Apparently, the Orthodox Church was less tolerant of such unions. In Oradea in the second half of the nineteenth century, only 8.77% of the marriages were denominationally mixed and very few of those were concluded with Roman-Catholics or Protestants.79 It is also worth 74

Vesa, “Câteva aspecte,” 29-30. Details about the denominational issues arising from such unions are available in Brie, Căsătoria, 45-7. 76 ùiúeútean, Etnie, confesiune, 68. 77 ‫܇‬i‫܈‬e‫܈‬etean, Etnie, confesiune, 71. The opposite situation, in which the betrothed couple got married in a Catholic church, required a catechising process for the Reformed spouse. 78 Brie, Căsătoria, 40. See also Săsăujan, “Căsătoriile mixte,” 19, 26. 79 Brie, “Alteritatea confesională,” 160-3. 75

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mentioning that Orthodox women were much more likely to marry outside their denominational group than men (61.2% and 38.8%, respectively). Furthermore, ethnic affinity is extremely obvious: in 40.12% of the cases, the spouses were Greek-Catholic, although this latter community was rather small in comparison with the other denominations.80 Despite advising against intermarriage through its high representatives, notably Andrei ùaguna, the Orthodox Church had to accept it, from time to time, as a necessary evil. Nonetheless, certain rules had to be obeyed in order for such a marriage to be recognised.81 Firstly, the announcements had to be made in both churches and the non-Orthodox priest had to attest to the fulfilment of this task through a written document. Secondly, ùaguna proposed that both the bride’s and the bridegroom’s priests should officiate at these weddings,82 especially as the Orthodox Church did not recognise the marital unions that had not taken place according to its traditions. Besides, even if modernisation made its presence felt during the second half of the nineteenth century, marriage with a heretic or a Jew was still considered illegitimate by the Orthodox Church83 and behaviour of this sort was also harshly punished by the Catholic Church. Still, the relation between the various denominations and the secular authorities was sinuous. For example, Law III from 1844 validated mixed marriages concluded before a pastor and simplified the conversion procedure. Moreover, under Law XX of 1848, all of the Habsburg Monarchy’s “accepted” denominations, namely Roman-Catholic, GreekCatholic, Reformed, Evangelical, Eastern Orthodox and Unitarian, were declared equal and some measures were even taken to improve the Jews’ civil status.84 In addition to all this, by a series of laws and regulations that came in force during the second half of the nineteenth century, the Austrian government tried to clarify these matters in an attempt to significantly decrease the number of intermarriage-related arguments and conflicts between denominations.85 Thus, even though they favoured the

80

Brie, “Alteritatea confessională,” 164. For more details, see Brie, Căsătoria, 37. 82 For a similar discussion of ùaguna’s recommendations, see Săsăujan, “Căsătoriile mixte,” 24-5. 83 Brie, Căsătoria, 39. 84 Lukács, Biserica reformată, 14-17. 85 See the Austrian General Civil Code (1853), the Catholic Marriage Law (1856), the law regarding military service within the Empire (1858) and the special marriage law of 1868; Cârja and Cârja, “Biserica Unită,” 36. 81

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Catholic Church,86 these norms still emphasised that the announcements were compulsory for both the future spouses’ churches and stipulated that the non-Catholic priest could attend the ceremony upon request.87 Nevertheless, as a clear sign of secularisation,88 Law XXXI of 1894 no longer recognised any form of churchly regulation for matrimony, thus declaring mixed marriages, irrespective of the partners’ religion, just as valid as denominationally homogenous unions.89 It might be of interest to note that the Church itself generally preferred intermarriage to illegitimacy, especially in the second half of the nineteenth century. Hence, it becomes obvious why, particularly in extremely mixed communities, the proportion of matrimonies between brides and bridegrooms belonging to distinct ethnicities and denominations could reach 45.51% for Greek-Catholics and 43.72% for Roman-Catholics, as they did, for example, in Oradea.90 Within this context, it should also be mentioned that illegitimacy’s effect upon the analysed phenomenon was different as a function of religious affiliation: the percentage of illegitimate births was related to the mean age at marriage, which varied from one denomination to another. For instance, Reformed women usually got married between 24.5 and 26 years of age and the percentage of illegitimate births was around 10.9-11.7% in their case, while Greek-Catholic women got married sooner, when they were between 19.6 and 21.5 years of age and, as a result, the rate of births occurring outside marriage was situated at around only 7.14%.91

86

For an overview of the measures adopted by the Austrian government beginning with the 17th century in order to hamper the influence of Protestantism and of the Protestants within the Monarchy, see Lukács, Biserica reformată, 11-49. However, despite these actions, during the 19th century, Reformed believers managed to gain certain rights in Transylvania. The Catholic Church’s attitude towards intermarriage involving other Christians also changed over time. While these types of unions were considered valid at first, even if they were not encouraged, eventually the Catholic Church banned marriages between its members and Orthodox believers. See Săsăujan, “Căsătoriile mixte,” 31. 87 Brie, Căsătoria, 49. 88 More details about these processes and their influence upon Transylvania’s religious life can be found in Chimpan (Kovács), “The Position,” 397-406. 89 Brie, Căsătoria, 49-50. 90 Stoenescu, “Cununiile mixte,” 122-3. 91 Vele, “EvoluĠia demografică,” 279.

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Concluding remarks Transylvania’s remarkably variegated ethnic and denominational structure caused frequent interactions between members of divergent groups. Nonetheless, these relationships were habitually conditioned by ethnicity, religion, age and spatial proximity and all these elements exercised various degrees of influence. This point can be illustrated by the fact that the community’s ethnic composition had direct repercussions on intermarriage: the more diverse the former factor was, the more mixed the marital unions reported by the official statistics. However, this statement applied differently to urban and rural societies. Researchers have found that the inhabitants of the towns (who attended church only occasionally and benefited from a somewhat elevated level of education) were much more prone to contract such a union than the village dwellers. Besides, even when the latter resorted to this type of matrimonies, the partners were chosen on ethnic principles: Orthodox believers opted for Greek-Catholics and vice versa, as the vast majority of those pertaining to these two denominations were Romanians, while most intermarriages involving Hungarians or Germans were concluded between Roman-Catholic, Evangelical and/or Reformed believers.92 Tradition governed marital behaviour to a large extent during the nineteenth century. Ordinarily, the parents decided who their child’s spouse was going to be and they seldom selected a son-in-law or a daughter-in-law who did not belong to the same ethnicity or denomination. There were also customs and habits related to this important step in a person’s life that were picturesque and worth describing, specifically from the viewpoint of an external observer. Even so, it should be noted that foreign travellers were not experts in demographic issues and, as a rule, they were ill-informed about these Transylvanian realities. Consequently, contrary to their allegations, the proportion of mixed matrimonies during the first half of the nineteenth century was rather high, especially in the case of multiethnic and multidenominational communities. In addition, the age at marriage was not as low as some of them presumed, particularly for women. The increase in mixed marriages during the latter decades of the nineteenth century represents a clear sign of modernisation. Even the rural societies’ life began to be less influenced by religious dictates and to respond better to individual needs. Modernisation manifested itself in a dissimilar manner from one area to another and even from one human 92

Vesa, “Câteva aspecte,” 32.

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being to another. As the definition of this phenomenon is based on the concepts of economic growth, industrialisation, educational attainment, institutional development and urbanisation,93 one might say that a certain community or person is more “modern” than others. Something similar can be affirmed about attitudes and mentalities, which are partly determined by the above-mentioned factors and which strongly affect one’s stance on matrimony in general and on intermarriage in particular. Actually, towards the end of the nineteenth century, due to the ongoing laicisation process and to the nation state’s prevalence over the Church,94 religion began to play a continuously declining role in choosing a spouse, in contrast with ethnicity, which remained a relatively saturated criterion.95 This was also connected to the fact that the Church became more indulgent with respect to intermarriage as time passed: although it had initially taken action against those who married someone outside their denomination, it eventually had to accept these unions when confronted with the risk of losing some of its believers or causing a substantial rise in the number of illegitimate children. By way of conclusion, we must emphasise that one cannot disregard the positive consequences that mixed marriages have at a societal level: they encourage communication and interaction amongst distinct ethnic and religious groups, they provide a golden opportunity for mutual acquaintanceship and understanding, while also fostering tolerance and reduced stereotyping.96 All these effects are noticeable when considering the information comprised in this article and, if we take into account that those who adopted a marital behaviour of this kind in the nineteenth century were defying the rules, we may state with the utmost conviction that present-day Transylvanians are much indebted to their ancestors.

93

O’Leary, “Modernization,” 648. During the first half of the 19th century, marriage was first subjected to a StateChurch “dualism” and, later on, the two institutions mutually influenced one another; Cârja and Cârja, “Biserica Unită,” 35. 95 ùiúeútean, “Căsătorii interconfesionale,” 111-2, 115-6. 96 Bolovan, Crăciun and Mârza, “Mixed Marriages,” 406-7. The authors also mention other societal benefits derived from mixed matrimonies besides those enumerated here. 94

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References Bolovan, Ioan, Bogdan Crăciun and Daniela Mârza, “Mixed Marriages in a Multiethnic and Multiconfessional Environment. A Case Study on the City of Cluj (1900-1939).” Transylvanian Review, XXI, Supplement 4 (2012): 405-411. Bolovan, Ioan and Sorina Paula Bolovan. “Transylvania until World War I. Demographic Opportunities and Vulnerabilities.” Transylvanian Review XIX, Supplement 1 (2010): 73-124. Bolovan, Sorina Paula and Ioan Bolovan. “Căsătoriile mixte în Transilvania la sfârúitul epocii moderne. ConsideraĠii demografice.” In Căsătorii mixte în Transilvania. Secolul al XIX-lea úi începutul secolului XX, edited by Corneliu Pădurean, and Ioan Bolovan, 87-108. Arad: Editura UniversităĠii “Aurel Vlaicu,” 2005. Brie, Mircea. “Alteritatea confesională prin căsătorie la românii din zona Criúanei (a doua jumătate a secolului XIX – începutul secolului XX).” In În căutarea fericirii. ViaĠa familială în spaĠiul românesc în sec. XVIII-XXI, edited by Ioan Bolovan, Diana Covaci, Daniela Deteúan, Marius Eppel, and Elena Crinela Holom, 147-166. Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2010. Brie, Mircea. Căsătoria în nord-vestul Transilvaniei (a doua jumătate a secolului XIX – începutul secolului XX). CondiĠionări exterioare úi strategii maritale. Oradea: Editura UniversităĠii din Oradea, 2009. Bucur, Adrian. “Aspecte privind căsătoriile mixte la Ineu (judeĠul Arad) în a doua jumătate a secolului al XIX-lea.” In Căsătorii mixte în Transilvania. Secolul al XIX-lea úi începutul secolului XX, edited by Corneliu Pădurean, and Ioan Bolovan, 219-235. Arad: Editura UniversităĠii “Aurel Vlaicu,” 2005. Călători străini despre ğările Române în secolul al XIX-lea, New Series, Vol. I (1801-1821). Edited by Paul Cernovodeanu. Bucharest: Editura Academiei Române, 2004. Călători străini despre ğările Române în secolul al XIX-lea, New Series, Vol. II (1822-1830). Edited by Paul Cernovodeanu and Daniela Buúă. Bucharest: Editura Academiei Române, 2005. Călători străini despre ğările Române în secolul al XIX-lea, New Series, Vol. III (1831-1840). Edited by Paul Cernovodeanu and Daniela Buúă. Bucharest: Editura Academiei Române, 2006. Călători străini despre ğările Române în secolul al XIX-lea, New Series, Vol. IV (1841-1846). Edited by Paul Cernovodeanu and Daniela Buúă. Bucharest: Editura Academiei Române, 2007.

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Călători străini despre ğările Române în secolul al XIX-lea, New Series, Vol. V (1847-1851). Edited by Daniela Buúă. Bucharest: Editura Academiei Române, 2009. Călători străini despre ğările Române în secolul al XIX-lea, New Series, Vol. VI (1852-1856). Edited by Daniela Buúă. Bucharest: Editura Academiei Române, 2009. Cârja, Cecilia and Ion Cârja. “Biserica Unită, dreptul matrimonial úi modernitatea în Transilvania (a doua jumătate a secolului al XIX-lea úi începutul secolului XX). SchiĠă pentru o posibilă analiză de caz: căsătoriile mixte.” In Căsătorii mixte în Transilvania. Secolul al XIXlea úi începutul secolului XX, edited by Corneliu Pădurean, and Ioan Bolovan, 35-54. Arad: Editura UniversităĠii “Aurel Vlaicu,” 2005. Chimpan (Kovács), Noémi-Emese. “The Position of the Roman-Catholic Church in Transylvania on Civil Marriages at the End of the Nineteenth Century.” Transylvanian Review Vol. XX, Supplement No. 2:1 (2011): 397-406. Covaci, Diana Maria. “Beica Română: Model de evoluĠie demografică. 1836-1885.” In Transilvania în secolele XIX-XX. Studii de demografie istorică. Omagiu profesorului Liviu Maior, edited by Sorina Paula Bolovan, Ioan Bolovan, and Corneliu Pădurean, 241-274. ClujNapoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2005. Crăciun, Bogdan. “CivilizaĠie urbană úi comportament demografic. Comunitatea luterană din oraúul Cluj în secolul al XIX-lea.” In PopulaĠie úi societate. Studii de demografie istorică a Transilvaniei (secolele XVIII-XX), edited by Ioan Bolovan, and Corneliu Pădurean, 109-124. Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2003. —. “Dinamica populaĠiei săseúti din Transilvania în a doua jumătate a secolului al XIX-lea úi începutul celui de-al XX-lea.” In Transilvania în secolele XIX-XX. Studii de demografie istorică. Omagiu profesorului Liviu Maior, edited by Sorina Paula Bolovan, Ioan Bolovan, and Corneliu Pădurean, 13-87. Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2005. —. “Mariajele interconfesionale în comunităĠile lutherane din Transilvania, în epoca modernă.” In Căsătorii mixte în Transilvania. Secolul al XIXlea úi începutul secolului XX, edited by Corneliu Pădurean, and Ioan Bolovan, 195-203. Arad: Editura UniversităĠii “Aurel Vlaicu,” 2005. Deteúan, Daniela. “Căsătoriile mixte în comitatul Cluj între 1848-1918.” In Căsătorii mixte în Transilvania. Secolul al XIX-lea úi începutul secolului XX, edited by Corneliu Pădurean, and Ioan Bolovan, 109122. Arad: Editura UniversităĠii “Aurel Vlaicu,” 2005.

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Holom, Elena Crinela. “Mariajul în satul românesc transilvănean din protopopiatul greco-catolic al CâĠcăului în a doua jumătate a secolului al XIX-lea. Studiu de caz: Impedimente la căsătorie.” In Căsătorii mixte în Transilvania. Secolul al XIX-lea úi începutul secolului XX, edited by Corneliu Pădurean, and Ioan Bolovan, 237-258. Arad: Editura UniversităĠii “Aurel Vlaicu,” 2005. —. “RealităĠi demografice în parohia greco-catolică Urca (jud. Cluj) în a doua jumătate a secolului al XIX-lea.” In Transilvania în secolele XIXXX. Studii de demografie istorică. Omagiu profesorului Liviu Maior, edited by Sorina Paula Bolovan, Ioan Bolovan, and Corneliu Pădurean, 297-325. Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2005. Huijnk, Willem and Aart C. Liefbroer. “Family Influences on Intermarriage Attitudes: A Sibling Analysis in the Netherlands.” Journal of Marriage and Family 74 (2012): 70-85. Ignat-Coman, LuminiĠa. “The Ethnographic Image of the Transylvanian Romanians in the Nineteenth Century.” Studia Universitatis BabeúBolyai, Historia 57, Special Issue: “Transylvanian Identities in the Modern Epoch” (2012): 67-76. LanĠoú, ùtefan. “Căsătoriile mixte în Clujul interbelic.” Studia Universitatis Babeú-Bolyai, Sociologia-Politologia Anul XXXVII, No. 1-2 (1992): 59-73. Lukács, Olga. “Premisele juridice ale căsătoriilor mixte în Biserica Reformată din Ardeal, în secolele XVII-XIX.” In Căsătorii mixte în Transilvania. Secolul al XIX-lea úi începutul secolului XX, edited by Corneliu Pădurean, and Ioan Bolovan, 67-85. Arad: Editura UniversităĠii “Aurel Vlaicu,” 2005. —. Biserica reformată din Ardeal în a doua jumătate a secolului al XIXlea. Cluj-Napoca: Limes, 2006. Muntean, LuminiĠa. “Unele aspecte privind nupĠialitatea populaĠiei de la Pecica în secolul al XIX-lea.” In PopulaĠie úi societate. Studii de demografie istorică a Transilvaniei (secolele XVIII-XX), edited by Ioan Bolovan, and Corneliu Pădurean, 65-77. Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2003. O’Leary, Richard. “Modernization and religious intermarriage in the Republic of Ireland.” British Journal of Sociology Vol. 52, Issue No. 4 (2001): 647-665. Oarcea, Felicia-Aneta. “Aspecte privind căsătoriile mixte din localităĠile Moneasa, Buteni úi Galúa, din judeĠul Arad, în secolul al XIX-lea.” In Căsătorii mixte în Transilvania. Secolul al XIX-lea úi începutul secolului XX, edited by Corneliu Pădurean, and Ioan Bolovan, 259273. Arad: Editura UniversităĠii “Aurel Vlaicu,” 2005.

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Pădurean, Corneliu. “Căsătoriile mixte confesional în unele localităĠi din judeĠul Arad în secolul al XIX-lea.” In Căsătorii mixte în Transilvania. Secolul al XIX-lea úi începutul secolului XX, edited by Corneliu Pădurean, and Ioan Bolovan, 171-193. Arad: Editura UniversităĠii “Aurel Vlaicu,” 2005. Popovici, Vlad. “ObservaĠii privind evoluĠia demografică a comunităĠii ortodoxe din localitatea Războieni-Cetate în perioada 1814-1920.” In Transilvania în secolele XIX-XX. Studii de demografie istorică. Omagiu profesorului Liviu Maior, edited by Sorina Paula Bolovan, Ioan Bolovan, and Corneliu Pădurean, 327-363. Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2005. Rus, Dana-Maria. “Căsătorie úi recăsătorie în satele comunei Budeúti între anii 1850-2000.” In Transilvania în secolele XIX-XX. Studii de demografie istorică. Omagiu profesorului Liviu Maior, edited by Sorina Paula Bolovan, Ioan Bolovan, and Corneliu Pădurean, 365-376. Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2005. Săsăujan, Mihai. “Căsătoriile mixte în lumina legislaĠiei bisericeúti ortodoxe, catolice úi protestante în monarhia austriacă, în a doua jumătate a secolului al XIX-lea.” In Căsătorii mixte în Transilvania. Secolul al XIX-lea úi începutul secolului XX, edited by Corneliu Pădurean, and Ioan Bolovan, 19-34. Arad: Editura UniversităĠii “Aurel Vlaicu,” 2005. Simon, Alexandru. “EvoluĠii demografice în Feleac (1826-1907).” In PopulaĠie úi societate. Studii de demografie istorică a Transilvaniei (secolele XVIII-XX), edited by Ioan Bolovan, and Corneliu Pădurean, 125-160. Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2003. ùiúeútean, Gheorghe. “Căsătorii interconfesionale úi construcĠii identitare la sfârúitul sec. al XIX-lea úi începutul sec. XX (cazul oraúului ùimleu Silvaniei).” In În căutarea fericirii. ViaĠa familială în spaĠiul românesc în sec. XVIII-XXI, edited by Ioan Bolovan, Diana Covaci, Daniela Deteúan, Marius Eppel, and Elena Crinela Holom, 111-146. ClujNapoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2010. —. Etnie, confesiune úi căsătorie în nord-vestul Transilvaniei. Zalău: Caiete Silvane, 2002. Stoenescu, Adelina. “Căsătorii interconfesionale în comunităĠile catolice din comitatul Bihor în sec. al XIX-lea. Studiu de caz: Oradea úi Beiuú.” In Om úi societate. Studii de istoria populaĠiei României (sec. XVIIXXI), Omagiu profesorului Nicolae Bocúan la împlinirea vârstei de 60 de ani, edited by Sorina Paula Bolovan, Ioan Bolovan, and Corneliu Pădurean, 161-185. Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2007.

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—. “Cununiile mixte în comunităĠile catolice (latine úi orientale) din Oradea între 1851-1918.” In Căsătorii mixte în Transilvania. Secolul al XIX-lea úi începutul secolului XX, edited by Corneliu Pădurean, and Ioan Bolovan, 121-133. Arad: Editura UniversităĠii “Aurel Vlaicu,” 2005. Vele, Ana Maria. “EvoluĠia demografică a parohiei reformate Gilău (jud. Cluj), 1859-1903.” In Transilvania în secolele XIX-XX. Studii de demografie istorică. Omagiu profesorului Liviu Maior, edited by Sorina Paula Bolovan, Ioan Bolovan, and Corneliu Pădurean, 275-295. Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2005. Vesa, Pavel. “Câteva aspecte privind căsătoria în protopopiatele arădene în secolele XVIII úi XIX.” In PopulaĠie úi societate. Studii de demografie istorică a Transilvaniei (secolele XVIII-XX), edited by Ioan Bolovan, and Corneliu Pădurean, 17-45. Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2003. Voas, David. “Intermarriage and the demography of Secularization.” British Journal of Sociology 54 (2003): 83-108.

SUI SIN FAR: CHINESE FAMILY FACING CULTURAL DIVERSITY MIHAELA MUDURE

Motto: “A Chinese dressed in the latest American style and a very blonde woman, laughing immoderately, were entering a Chinese restaurant together.” (Sui Sin Far – “The Wisdom of the New”)

The issue of intermarriage is particularly topical for the societies founded by immigration, such as the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand or South Africa. People from all over the world came to these lands attracted by the economic opportunities they offered and by the prospects of, hopefully, a better life. Even if ghettoization according to the newcomers’ ethnic origin was both a defence strategy and, sometimes, an imposition from the others, intermarriage was very frequent. Maintaining one’s ethnic purity in such circumstances most often did not last more than one generation. Writers have often focused on the consequences of such matrimonies where love tried to overcome differences in culture, religion, language, class. Sui Sin Far/Edith Maud Eaton was, probably, the earliest Chinese and also Asian writer in North America. She was born in a mixed family in England, in 1865. Her father was English and he dealt in silk. Her mother was Chinese from Shanghai. The parents of Sui Sin Far had met in Shanghai and since interracial marriages were not well regarded in either cultures, they decided to try the New World after a short period they spent in England. In 1872 the family moved to New York and then to Montreal looking for a better life, like millions of other immigrants. But abundance did not come into the family in spite of their hard efforts. Sui Sin Far as well as her siblings had to leave school early because money was scarce and children had to help with domestic chores and earn money as well. The little Sui Sin Far tried to continue her education at home by herself and she was also peddling her father’s paintings on the streets of Montreal.

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In 1883 she got a job at a Canadian newspaper: Montreal Daily Star. She worked as a secretary but she also published short pieces particularly about the Chinese community in Montreal. This is how the process of her identifying with the expatriate Chinese community intensified and she adopted as her pen name a childhood nickname: Sui Sin Far. Edith was not the only one in the family interested in writing. Her younger sister Winnifred tried her hand publishing Oriental(izing) “romance novels, which enjoyed huge popular acclaim in her day, and fashioned several ethnic literary personas having no relation to her Chinese heritage, which she obscured through elaborate self-invention.”1 Although there is significant difference between the two sisterly writers who took their ethnicity quite differently, “a resistance to ethnic fixity or, conversely, the cultivation of ethnic ambiguity, seems to inform the work of both sisters.”2 All her life Sui Sin Far suffered because of her poor health, she had rheumatism, arthritis, and malaria. She left Canada hoping to improve her health if she spent time in Jamaica, Boston and Seattle, but nothing helped. Finally she returned to Canada to die in 1914, at the age of only 49 years old. In her works, Sui Sin Far focuses on the boundaries imposed by the mainstream culture upon the Asian immigrants. The new-comers respond by alternative self-definitions of their ego. Andrée Lévesque notices, for instance, that Sui Sin Far’s writings operated like an epistemic bridge between the Americans and the Chinese-Americans: “she was in fact explaining the inscrutable Americans to the Chinese Americans while showing the latter in their daily settings, with their own conflicts and dilemmas.”3 The coordinates of Sui Sin Far’s educational mission are emphasized by Martha Patterson. “…Sui Sin Far created stories of Chinese North American communities committed to the ideals of filial duty, piety, hard work, and cohesiveness not merely to combat the prevailing racist stereotypes of the Chinese as antithetical to Western values, but to appeal to a dominant white reading culture fearing the labour strife, immigrant influx, and mass market commodity culture of the new century.”4 Vanesa Holford Diana was one of the most perceptive critics who analysed Sui Sin Far’s stories, articles, and essays. She came to the conclusion that they are a kind of “written montage”5 presenting Chinese families living in America, coming to America or leaving for 1

Roh-Spaulding, “Mrs. Spring,” 126. Roh-Spaulding, “Mrs. Spring,” 128. 3 Lévesque, “Mrs. Spring,” 281. 4 Patterson, “Mrs. Spring,” 124. 5 Holford, “Biracial/Bicultural,” 181. 2

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China, mixed families experiencing a peripatetic lifestyle just like Sui Sin Far’s. The fact that Sui Sin Far did not write a novel, which is the genre traditionally considered to be the consecration of a fiction author’s creative capacity is not seen as a disadvantage but rather as a an alternative manifestation of literary creativity which allows us to consider together, as a whole, Sui Sin Far’s short-stories, sketches, essays, documentary articles. Holford Diana also noticed that Sui Sin Far’s realistic writing is spiced by “her use of a kind of trickster trope.”6 Here Holford Diana agrees with Annette White-Parks who had already noticed in 1995 that these trickster figures “slip past the censor and upset her [Sui Sin Far’s] readers’ monologic view of reality by opening multiple perspectives.”7 One of the most powerful of Sui Sin Far’s stories, at least in my opinion, is “The Wisdom of the New,” where the confrontation between the values of the Chinese family and the American values leads to tragedy. This narrative can well be considered a good sample of Wenxin Li’s critical opinion. “Sui Sin Far’s legacy is manifold, but the one aspect that most concerns the present investigation is her negotiations between male and female subjectivity. As courageous as she was in creating unprecedented female characters in her work, Sui Sin Far does not achieve her goal at the expense of Chinese men.”8 The story is constructed as complex texture weaving several narrative threads and framing everything with a story that gives the moral message. At the core of the text is the story of Wou Sankwei and his wife Pau Lin. Wou Sankwei is the elder son of a Chinese magistrate who has passed away. As the elder son, he is spoilt by his mother and his younger brother: “he did nothing but sleep, dream, and occasionally get into mischief.”9 The economic situation and the technological development of the Chinese society give Wou Sankwei no other possibility to make some money except if he became a fisherman, which would have been a disgrace to the family. Still the ocean attracts him. A poetical prolepsis interrupts Sui Sin Far’s very exact precise narration preparing us for the big journey in Wou Sankwei’s life: the big leap over the ocean. “The great green waves lifted white arms of foam to him, and the fishes gleaming and lurking in the waters seemed to beseech him to draw them from the deep.” The feminization of the waves which look like a woman’s white arms lifted towards him and eager to embrace him also announces his encounter with 6

Holford, “Biracial/Bicultural,” 165. White-Parks, Sui Sin Far, 154. 8 Li, “Sui Sin Far,” 127. 9 Far, Mrs. Spring Fragrance, 42. All the following quoted texts without adjacent footnotes belong to the same work, Mrs. Spring Frangrance. 7

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woman across the ocean. The main story intersects with other stories which create a rich and diverse background as if we watched the narrative development upon one of those traditional wooden panels that the Chinese love so much. Chinese men are attracted by America but not all of them are successful. Chance and good luck are distributed randomly. Li Wang is a peddler, although he tried to become rich in America. On the contrary, Ching Kee “accumulated a small fortune” among the foreigners and he waves the flag of the American dream in front of Sankwei’s naïve eyes. Life is hard in America but it is worth while. You can find work and if you are a man, you can make it. The American dream is a possibility for Sankwei to inscribe into the patriarchal society and play according to its rules. Although he has “flabby muscles” and “plump, white hands.” Wou thinks he can pass the test of masculinity and prove to be a man. Again, the narrator intersects the main story with other hear-say stories about the advantages of going to America. She has the following story from Sik Ping, “the Canton merchant” who has it from Hum Wah, “who traded in palm leaves”. Times are changing and having a good command of foreign languages is a great opportunity: “the son of a cobbler returned from America with the foreign language [and he] could easier command a position of consequence than the son of a school-teacher unacquainted with any tongue but that of his motherland.” Staying in China would mean that Wou Sankwei stay poor and remain an ambiguous creature, a “woman man” because Chinese society does not give him the opportunity to empower himself through his intellectual qualities. He is intelligent, diligent but he is not fit for hard physical work. His intellectual gifts effeminize him, according to the Chinese gender script, and they are accepted from a man only if they “tame” the Chinese contact with otherness (for instance, having a good command of a foreign language); therefore, creating an in-between-genders space which is acceptable for a man. Sankwei’s mother agrees to her son’s decision but she also obliges him to marry and have a son to “comfort” her for the “loss”. Wou Sankwei spends seven years in America. The miracle number seems to have worked well for him. “Self improvement had been his object and ambition…”. Wou Sankwei’s self-educational program reminds one of the American self-made man but also of the Confucian obligation that man must constantly think of bettering his spirit. From the “plump, white hands” the focus is now on a part of the hand which can help Wou with his new work. This transition from the whole to the part (hand-finger) is also an intelligent prolepsis pointing to the identity transformations that Wou has been submitted to and which he encourages. From Chinese he is

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about to become an American-Chinese, he speaks “careful English” and this linguistic duality is relevant for his identity split. Sankwei has made friends in America, he is invited into the houses of his American friends but he still takes his meals “in a Chinese restaurant across the street from the bazaar”. He has a good economic situation and as his mother has passed away he considers this is the moment to call his wife to America. The bonding of the couple relies completely on duty and family obligations. In seven years Wou did not write a single letter to his wife because she cannot read or write. Also before his departure they had only spent three weeks together but they had a son and she “had proved a good daughter to his mother.” In his turn, Wou had sent her money “for her support.” From this moment the story of the Chinese couple interferes with a couple of American women – Mrs. Dean and her niece, Adah Charlton– patronizing the integration of the Chinese into American society, in fact patronizing them into acculturation. Mrs. Dean pretends to understand the Chinese character which is highly adaptable in the name of duty. “But Chinese character is wonderful; and now after seven years in this country, he enjoys a reputation as a business man amongst his countrymen, and is as up to date as any young American.” She considers that romanticism, emotions are an issue only for the Caucasians. Here, Sui Sin Far warns us discreetly about the evolution of the narrative. In a short argumentative comment Adah Charlton responds to the all too knowledgeable Mrs. Dean wondering if “it is all duty” on the part of Sankwei’s wife. This is also an introduction of this character into the forefront of events. Till now Sankwei’s wife has only been talked about, from now on the reader will see her acting. This last-before-the stage-entrance introduction is made by another female character who feels that emotions will be very important in the young wife’s life and she throws this prolepsis towards the end of the story. Against the background of this intrusion story in the name of the best ideals, Sui Sin Far also gives us eloquent sketches of the Chinese community. The reunion of the Chinese family separated for six years takes place also under the patronizing and too-eager-to-help American ladies previously mentioned: Mrs. Dean and Adah Charlton. “[W]ith a feminine desire to make herself fair to see in the eyes of her husband, she [Pau Lin] had arrayed herself in a heavily embroidered purple costume, whitened her forehead and cheeks with powder, and tinted her lips with carmine”. The Chinese ritual of beauty is opposed to the American ritual of friendship and comradeship. From the first moment when she sees Adah, Pau Lin becomes suspicious about the substance of the relationship between her

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husband and this self-assertive American lady. The writer explains: it was a suspicion “natural to one who had come from a land where friendship between a man and woman is almost unknown.” Wou Sankwei and Pau Lin live a sort of déjà vu Chinese married life. “Pau Lin was more of an accessory than a part of this life. … She kept up the Chinese custom of taking her meals after her husband or at a separate table, and observed faithfully the rule laid down for her by her late motherin-law: to keep a quiet tongue in the presence of her man.” Her favourite company was “one or the other of the merchants’ wives who lived in the flats and apartments around her own.” On the other hand, Sankwei is very respectful and caring about his wife. He does everything that a good Chinese husband is expected to do. He buys her jewellery, silk dresses, hair ornaments, and even erects “behind her sleeping room a chapel for the ancestral tablet and gorgeous goddess which she had brought overseas with her.” Religion does not seem to have been an issue for the eager-toget-Americanised Sankwei. Erecting the little altar reinforces the family’s connections with their home country and gives a kind of spiritual framing to the identity quests that they experience. What really unites the family is the little boy. His father is not the traditional Chinese father, distant and patronizing. He is more “like an elder brother than a parent, delighted in playing all kinds of games with him, and whom he followed about like a little dog.” On the other hand, although he is very kind with his wife, Sankwei disregards her abilities to understand the New World (she is beyond “her learning days”). Neither does he think it necessary to discuss with her what education their son, Yen, will receive. “A woman does not understand such things,” he said. When Adah, in a burst of female sorority, reacts warning him that a woman “understands such things as well as and sometimes better than a man,” he answers praising the superiority of the American woman able to understand intellectual issues better than the Chinese woman. It is clear that Sankwei’s adaptability to American realities is, actually, a mild form of acculturation. America’s supposed superiority is taken for granted by Sankwei for whom China is more and more becoming the signifier only of tradition, obsolete respectability, something like the dear memorabilia from childhood one cannot separate from without pain, neither can one take them one hundred per cent seriously. There are two incidents which foreshadow the story’s tragic end and knit the narrative texture according to the pattern of reinforcement. The little boy is forbidden to speak English, which is “the language of the white women” for Pau Lin. Still, Yen disobeys her and has a conversation in English with a “white boy from the next street.” Then his mother

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punishes him: his little hand gets “red and swollen.” The author has an amazing capacity to select the relevant details which would emphasize the meaning of a situation in a very discreet way. The overt description of pain or violent actions is avoided but the gaps in the narrative tell the reader more than any loquacious paragraphs. The father disagrees with the punishment inflicted upon the child and instead of discussing the matter with the mother, he quickly decides to give something pleasurable to the child in order to compensate for the harshness of the mother. Pau Lin has cooked a vegetable dish for that supper but the husband decides they, the men of the family, will go to a restaurant and then to a show. The mother does not dare to oppose this plan which disregards her authority and her parental capacity to decide about the boy’s educational development. She shows her care for her son by giving him a wrap to put around his body. “The night air is chill.” Surprisingly, the little boy seems to understand the sentimental bet of the situation much better than his father. He clings to his mother and wants to stay home with her. But Pau Lin is adamant. She knows that the father should be the highest and the unchallenged authority in a Chinese family and although secretly proud of her son’s open manifestation of affection, she sends him away. Yen should go out with his father. Late, at night, after the son and father have returned home, she gently takes him from the bed where he slept with his father and takes him to the next room. Then “she rocked him, passionately caressing the wounded hand and crooning and crying until he fell asleep again.” Pau Lin becomes jealous of Adah Charlton for whom, she thinks, her husband has some form of sublimated love. Pau was used to men having several wives. This was common in China. “[B]ut each woman, at least, had the satisfaction of knowing that her man did not regard or treat the other as her superior. To each had fallen the common lot – to bear children to the man, and the man was master of all.” But this was different. Wou looked up to a woman of another race and put her above the Chinese wife who had given him children, a son. Pan and Wou’s matrimony is also under the influence of the expatriate Chinese community living in San Francisco. The author delights in presenting the exterior picturesque image Mrs. Dean and Adah have of Chinatown and, comparatively, the insiders’ perspective, which points to other dramas, tragedies, alienations condensed by the authorin to a few sentences. The gossip of the Chinese district transmits information and it also represents a kind of communal choir which passes judgements upon the Chinese Americans, sanctions their behaviour from the point of view of a very enduring tradition and maintains ties with their distant homeland. “Sien Tan’s son had married a white woman, and his children passed their

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granddame on the street without recognition… A Toy, the young daughter of Lew Wing, is as bold and free in her ways as are the white women, and her name is on the men’s tongues.” No respectable Chinese man would take her for a wife, comments Lae Choo. Hum Wah gave all his savings to a white man who promised to return it to him double fold, within a month but this never happened. “Meanwhile, his father and mother, who looked long for his coming, have passed beyond returning.” In spite of the distance, the connection between China and the American Chinatown of San Francisco is tight. News come and go to and fro. In a significant crescendo of warning and judgmental appreciations, Lae Choo keeps the cruellest incident for the end of her gossip report. “[T]he good old mother of Chee Ping – he who was baptized a Christian at the last baptizing in the Mission around the corner – had her head secretly severed from her body by the steadfast people of the village, as soon as the news reached there.” Although Sui Sin Far is a very good story teller, occasionally she takes a break from unwinding her narrative thread and gives exceptional descriptions. Here is, for instance, the Chinatown seen through the eyes of Pau Lin. Each sentence has a powerful cinematic value and one can feel that behind each of these characters there is a story. “The sing-song voices of girls whom respectable merchants’ wives shudder to name, were calling to one another from high balconies up shadowy alleys. A fat barber was laughing hilariously at a drunken white man who had fallen into a gutter; a withered old fellow, carrying a bird in a cage, stood at the corner entreating passersby to have a good fortune told; some children were burning punk on the curbstone. There went by the stalwart Chief of the Six Companies engaged in earnest confab with a yellow-robed priest from the joss house. A Chinese dressed in the latest American style and a very blond woman, laughing immoderately, were entering a Chinese restaurant together.” The second episode which is a prolepsis to the short story’s tragic end is the cutting of the typically Chinese hair queue of little Yen. The boy is very happy because now he is like his father. It is only in this moment that we find that Sankwei gave up this Chinese accessory a long time ago. Still, he did not throw it away but put it in an old trunk where his wife discovers “a picture of Mrs. Dean, taken when the American woman had first become the teacher and benefactress of the youthful laundryman.” This is also the first time when Pau Lin dares to express openly her jealousy of Adah Sankwei’s reaction is most unfortunate. He “flushed angrily,” refuses to discuss the issue with his wife and even forbids her to speak of Adah. This repression suggests a complex of inferiority which Pau Lin takes for love. Even if the husband tries reconciliation and he attempts at

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appeasing his wife by playing old Chinese music by his flute, the evil has been done. This is another incident paving the way for the tragic climax of the narrative. It increases the gradually overwhelming feeling that this is a story not about success and accomplishments, but a story about loss. The author deftly creates a gap in the story. The couple have a second child who dies very soon. Did the couple’s second child die of natural death or was he also killed lest he should be contaminated with the wisdom of the new? We only know about the “mystery of the dead child’s look” and that Pau Lin passionately declared she would rather have her elder son dead than see him “contaminated with the wisdom of the new.” It is now that Pau Lin discovers a portrait of her first born made by Adah. She thinks the American woman tries to put a spell on her family. Sankwei considers it is useless to talk about such stupid superstition and even forbids his wife to talk about the young American women whom he calls in a desperate fit “a pure water-flower–lily.” The writer suggests an idealized subliminal feeling, maybe love, that Sankwei hides even from himself and which is combined with an inferiority complex because Sankwei realizes that China is so backward in terms of Western progress, whereas America is so young and can afford so much recklessness in its generosity. Pau Lin’s jealousy leads to an estrangement between Sankwei and his benefactress, Mrs. Dean. Sui Sin Far is at her best when she describes the lady’s patronizing ideology. Mrs. Dean has something of the promoters of the Western Enlightenment who desire to spread these ideals regardless the values that the other cultures might have. Sankwei’s American experience is presented in very positive terms. He has “benefited and profited by living in America.” On the other hand, she only has strong negative words for Pau Lin’s position which is characterized by “bigotry and narrow-mindedness.” Another picturesque segment postpones and gives us more of the background of the short story’s tragic climax. It is the Harvest Moon Festival. Sui Sin Far’s ability to give very significant visual details is impressive. Colours and sounds create an atmosphere of joy and celebration. “Rows of lanterns suspended from many balconies shed a mellow, moon shiny radiance. On the walls and doors were splashes of red paper inscribed with hieroglyphics. In the narrow streets, booths decorated with flowers, and banners and screens painted with immense figures of josses diverted the eye; while bands of musicians in gaudy silks, shrilled and banged, piped and fluted.” The hymn to the moon calls for a complex combination of reason and love – we are dealing here with a discreet reaction to the cold rationalism of the Western Enlightenment. The priest’s

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advice to the Chinese believers is “to forget the stormy emotions which crash like jarring discords across the harmony of life, and bringest to my memory a voice scarce heard amidst the warring of the world–love’s low voice.” Adah Charlton, who participates in this festival and, finally, understands the duality of the Chinese spirit: Confucianism for the practical life and Buddhism or Christianity (if he lives in America) for the “yearnings above everyday life,” tries to make Sankwei see his identity problem. She realizes that in spite of her good intentions, her aunt, Mrs. Dean has paved the way for identity hell: “it is a mistake to try and make a Chinese man into an American – if he has a wife who is to remain as she always has been.” It is interesting that woman is seen by Sui Sin Far as the basis of ethnic identity. The wife is more traditional, less fickle than the husband because she is like land, like nature. She may be or not impregnated by her husband but her fertility is always there for him to work on. Sui Sin Far’s traditional imagery of woman is not derogatory but, on the contrary, a tribute to the stability of gender and ethnic structures that a mixed blood longs for. Being two in one body and mind is both enriching and torturing and Sui Sin Far knows this all too well. After Sankwei is lectured upon by Adah as to his duties to his family and wife – a gesture as patronizing as Mrs. Dean’s interest in the young Chinese merchant but of a much more subtle nature – Sankwei “felt himself exiled from Paradise.” He has to confront the complex nature of his respect for Adah and admit to himself that he has repressed his infatuation for the young American women. The writer gives us another sample of the sorority that should dominate relationships among women in Adah’s speech about Pau Lin. Adah points to Sankwei the value of his wife’s silent devotion to him, her generosity, and her dedication to the family values. An American woman may have been more open towards change but she would not have dedicated herself so completely and earnestly to her husband. “The white woman reads, plays, paints, attends concerts, entertainments, lectures, absorbs herself in the work she likes, and in the course of her life thinks of and cares for a great many people. She has much to make her happy besides her husband. The Chinese woman has him only.” The omniscient writer’s discourse deftly points to the difference in mentalities between the American man and the Chinese man. Sankwei has been brought up in a culture where you are not used to question the authority of your elders or of those whom you consider to be your superiors. Although Adah is a woman and she is younger by age than Sankwei, he sees her as his superior because he has internalized an inferiority complex based upon the West-East, White-Yellow difference

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where the West and the Caucasian is axiomatically identified as superior. Consequently, Sankwei sees no reason to question Adah’s authority or her capacity to give him advice about his family. Sankwei’s mistake was that he does not talk openly about these problems with his wife. “[H]e had decided that, should she offer any further opposition to the boy’s attending the American school, he would not insist upon it.” Even the English language may not be so important, after all. We all know the truth about “the wheel of the world” and Sui Sin Far, as well as her spokesperson, Wou Sankwei, wonder if English “might not be necessary at all.” Like another Medea, the jealous Pau Lin, whose only precedence over her husband is her matrimonial position, poisons her second son lest he should start studying at the American school. Patriarchy has reduced her agency to one single and terrible tool: infanticide. Let us consider for a moment, Pan’s companions into tragedy! They come from ancient texts and myths or from history. Medea is jealous of Jason, she is to be abandoned by her lover and her only possibility to punish him is the killing of their children. La Llorona, the Mexican woman, is exactly in the same situation. She has been abandoned by her husband and she kills their children in order to prevent him from being happy with his mistress. Malinche, the mistress of Cortez, the conqueror of Mexico, also kills the children she begat with the Spaniard. The man wanted to take the children to Spain where he had left a wife and, according to the legend, Malinche’s only weapon against her treacherous partner is to kill their children. In contemporary American literature, we have another example of infanticide in the novel Beloved by Toni Morrison. An African American mother kills her daughter to exempt her from the atrocities of slavery. All these women are under extraordinary stress and they make terrible choices which bring them on the brink of madness. Their traumas are intensified by the gendered hierarchies of patriarchy which render these women helpless. It is only by denying their motherhood that the patriarchal world they live in allows them to exercise some kind of agency at this terrible price. Sui Sin Far insists upon the night before the little boy’s first day in the American school. The father asks him to read from a Chinese book the story about “an irreverent lad” who eats the offerings left on his grandfather’s grave “for the feasting of the spirit.” Then the little boy stumbles against his mother’s knee and she makes a curious comparison, “tis always the feet. They are to the spirit as the cocoon to the butterfly.” And then the mother sings a Chinese ditty about the Happy Butterfly who has shed its cocoon.

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The interest of Chinese culture in feet is extremely well known. The cruel custom of foot binding is meant to make more relevant the woman’s femininity. The little girl suffering the torture of having her feet bound will become more desirable and more feminine, i.e. more dependent upon the others for mobility. The little boy stumbles against his mother’s knee and it is the mother who wants to prevent him from growing up the American way. Killing the boy symbolically, putting herself to voluntary torture, Pau Lin considers that she turns the family’s precious offspring into a happy Chinese butterfly. And butterflies never cry over their shed cocoons. On the other hand, her terrible gesture also relies on the patriarchal hierarchy of the Chinese family. Children have to obey their elders, their lives belong to their elders. Sui Sin Far ends her story with exceptional sobriety befitting the innocent’s tragic death. Sankwei put up the shutters of his shop, meaning the shutters of his mind, and he writes a brief note to Adah Charlton: “I have lost my boy through an accident. I am returning to China with my wife whose health requires a change.” For the first time, Pau Lin gets the full attention of her spouse. Sui Sin Far does not give too many explanations of Pau’s extreme gesture. One possible explanation can be found in the dual nature of the immigrant. As Adah Charlton puts it, Wou Sankwei “tries to live two lives – that of a Chinese and that of an American.” When this dual nature becomes schizophrenic, tragedy is to happen. On the other hand, Pau Lin’s gesture may have some religious explanations. Previously in the text, Sui Sin Far has referred to the dual religious allegiance of the Chinese people: Confucianism and Buddhism. “Even the most commonplace Chinese has yearnings for something above everyday life. Therefore, he combines with his Confucianism, Buddhism.” Confucianism requires rigorous respect for the elderly and for traditions. Buddhism, on the other hand, advocates man to cut any ties and belongings to and in this world because they only bring misfortune.Pau Lin has cut the bond of motherhood because she thinks that the worst possible misfortune for her son is “the Wisdom of the New.” The story about the dark neurosis that made a mother think that death could be better for her son than life is framed by the story of old Li Wang, the peddler. He has “lived in the land beyond the sea” just like the couple Paul Lin and Wou Sankwei and he has returned to the old homeland, just like them. He knows that “where one learns how to make gold, one also learns how to lose it.” The old man’s wisdom tells him that, in fact, winning and losing are just two facets of the same story and the peddler will “tell stories about the winning and the losing but the stories of the losing were even more fascinating than the stories of the winning.”

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Most American or Canadian literary historians paid attention to the stories about the so-called successful immigration and avoided, for various reasons, those texts talking openly about unsuccessful integration and about immigration as a loss leading process. Sui Sin Far’s international – we could even call it global – background makes her an excellent candidate for the comprehensive representation of deterritorialization, transnationalism, immigration, in all their complexity (pangs and throes, included). Her story “The Wisdom of the New” is an excellent reading of the problems immigration and intra-marriage raise.

References Far, Sui Sin, Mrs. Spring Fragrance and Other Writings, edited by Amy Ling and Annette White-Parks. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1995. Holford, Diana, Vanessa. “Biracial/Bicultural Identity in the Writings of Sui Sin Far.” Melus 26, 2 (2001): 159-186. Lévesque, Andrée. “Mrs. Spring Fragrance and Other Writings.” The Canadian Historical Review, June (1997): 280-283. Li, Wenxin, “Sui Sin Far and the Chinese American Canon: Toward a Post-Gender-Wars Discourse.” Melus 29, 3-4 (2004): 121-131. Patterson, Martha. “Mrs. Spring Fragrance and Other Writings.” Melus 22, 2 (1997): 122-124. Roh-Spaulding, Carole. “Mrs. Spring Fragrance and Other Writings.” Melus 29, 3-4 (2004): 121-128. White-Parks, Annette. Sui Sin Far/Edith Maud Eaton: A Literary Biography. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1995.

CHAPTER II: HISTORICAL EVENTS AND THEIR IMPACT ON THE EVOLUTION OF MIXED MARRIAGES

LOYALTY AND HOSTILITY: MIXED MARRIAGES IN THE ROYAL FAMILIES OF THE MIDDLE AGES— CASES FROM THE BORDERS OF CHRISTENDOM FLORIAN DUMITRU SOPORAN

The Middle Ages are identified in the quasi-official perception with a time of cultural stagnation and social immobility,1 with a time span that has remained entrenched in human memory thanks to the documents written by men of the church, who invested narratives of facts with providential meanings. According to these, individual conduct and options were circumscribed by the rules and interests governing the multiple solidarities that ensured the functionality of medieval human communities.2 This preconception was formed by appeal to a diversity of approaches and sources. Cultural historical data advocated the enthusiastic reception of precedents from classical antiquity and of spectacular developments that were coterminous with the Renaissance and with Humanism. Approaches conducted from the vantage point of economic and social history have conferred the Middle Ages the status of a caesura between two moments of grace in the history of mankind. The predominantly agrarian character of the European economy in the Middle Ages, the low level of exchange relations and the precariousness of the communication axes augmented the self-sufficiency of community life and inhibited manifestations of dynamism and individual initiative outside the limits of a regional geography. The territorial framework and the importance of family solidarities for the everyday life of medieval man represent the main arguments brought into the historiographical debate about the real meanings of ethnic solidarities in the Middle Ages.3

1

Pomian, L’Europe, 24-6. Kohn, “The Modernity,” 8. 3 Gellner, Nations, 23-5. 2

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Written medieval culture itself helped shape a contradictory image through the ethical paradigms with which it operated. Given its conservative outlook on social hierarchy, the theory of the society of the three Orders meant, at least theoretically, a distrustful attitude to personal success achieved outside a predestined career by virtue of family membership.4 The medieval world perpetuated, in theory, the image of classical unity, rearticulated throughout Christendom, a reality that incorporated moral and political meanings. The soundness of this reality was ensured by the existence of familial, social and jurisdictional particularisms,5 marked by specific relations with one another and with the legitimacy-imparting authorities. This study proposes to demonstrate the significance that ethnically mixed marriages involving representatives of the ruling dynasties of the Christian states had for medieval social history and for the history of mores. Even though these first cases of mixed marriages did not represent a mass phenomenon, for the reasons mentioned above,6 an analysis of the covenants made at the level of the political and social establishment can highlight the creation of the framework for the manifestation of social and spatial mobility trends. Methodologically, the arguments are built through a selection of examples from two geographical areas, outside of the former Orbis Romanus, and are supported by primary and secondary historiographical sources. The reader has thus the opportunity to decode the individual or collective moral mechanisms underlying solidarity, conflict or dissent.

Towards a possible history of medieval women The vacillation between social exclusiveness, identified with the purity of moral norms, and medieval social sensitivities had a cultural corollary at the level of the elites:7 the emergence of chivalrous ethics. Woman and the sentiments she inspired gave rise to heroic or devotional deeds, immortalised by the troubadour poets. Along the same lines, the series of medieval cultural revivals and the recovery of certain patristic texts meant valorising the historical presence of women, invoked through examples of martyrdom and sanctity. One aspect that has been of particular interested for the history of law concerns the position of noble women in relation to 4

Duby, Three Orders, 32-8. Huizinga, Men, 86. 6 Le Goff, Medieval 53-7. 7 Duby, Lady, 32-7. 5

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the family patrimony, and the solutions proposed by the legislations of medieval power structures illustrate their more or less permissive character. An in-depth analysis of the regulations governing the inheritance of titles and, especially, of fiefs in the noble families demonstrates the existence of peculiar legislative practices, which were the result of experiences acquired on account of state membership.8 The case of England throughout the 11th-12th centuries is the most relevant in this regard.9 Positivist historical writing10 has focused primarily on aspects of political history, the queen’s influence on the sovereign and his decisions, or the juridical consequences of certain titles of legitimacy she brought to the dynasty she belonged to by marriage.11 The most spectacular example of managing matrimonial alliances as a prerequisite for the consolidation of state structures, which had become essential components in the balance of power from the beginning of the modern era, is the career of the representatives of the House of Austria from the second half of the 15th century.12 An overall analysis of the facts demonstrates a relation of interdependence between the institutional development of the medieval territorial state and the political evolution of the queen from a factor of influence to an actor in the balance of power, who had her own agenda and initiative. The impact of this innovative trend, activated somehow against the grain of the political paradigms prevalent in the Middle Ages, produced antinomical reactions at the level of the public discourse and in the mindset of educated observers, generating, on the one hand, xenophobic attitudes or incipient misogynist stereotypes and, on the other hand, enthusiastic expressions of solidarity and unconditional loyalty on the part of the subjects. The queen’s presence as a subject of reflection and controversy for the medieval authors and her influence in the daily life of her subjects lend certain nuances to the presumption that the history of the role played by women in the Middle Ages might coincide with a history of dissent and subversion. At the same time, it cannot be assimilated with a chapter of religious history, focusing on saints and martyrs who inspired medieval collective piety. The rapports with the queens proved challenging for the conservatism of the Middle Ages from a twofold perspective: they were women invested with political and social responsibilities and they also 8

Delille, Kinship, 181-9. As regards the legislative peculiarities that survive in the so-called territory governed by the Danelaw, see Bloch, Societe, 76-69. 10 Barnes, History, 193-5. 11 Bologne, Histoire, 29-30. 12 For details, see Berenger, Histoire, 104-5. 9

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represented ethnically foreign elements. Ethnicity incorporated familial, confessional and patrimonial meanings in the Middle Ages, and the annals and chronicles illustrate this pluralism.13 Their initiatives or those that were assigned to them incorporated an innovative dimension, in the sense that they made the relations within the noble elite more dynamic, being identified, in most of the cases, with policies of change. In the Middle Ages, matrimonial alliances acted as catalysts for the transfer of human resources and competences, and also activated the internal competition between those loyal to the queen and the champions of local interests. This complex set of contradictions raised questions about the functionality of certain affinities considered to be essential for the medieval grid of values, such as the horizontal solidarities which united the members of privileged social classes or ensured their allegiance to the sovereign. Methodologically, a general approach to the problem should consider a reconstitution of particular cases, determined by variables such as the socio-political, regional-ethnic or state context, the personal capacities of the parties involved and their political partners, and the accuracy of the sources available to historians. If in order to ascertain the limits of social permissiveness, we applied the centre-periphery rapport proposed by specialists in economic history,14 we would find that the factors which inhibited women’s involvement in the political sphere were especially active at the heart of the new medieval Europe, among the successor states of the Carolingian Empire, while their impact was diminished in the border regions of Western Christianity. A considerable difference in this respect was noted by contemporary observers also in relation to the Byzantine world. The career of the empresses and the influence exerted by the women from noble families in the urban life and politics of the Byzantium were more surprising to the Western prelates than the differences between the Greek and the Latin rites, which were still negligible in the early 10th century. The first manifestations of the wariness expressed by the German ecclesiastical circles towards the political ambitions of a Byzantine princess were occasioned by a mixed marriage that was meant to settle the disputes between the Byzantium of the Macedonian dynasty and the empire restored in the West by the successors of the Saxon dukes. The conduct of Empress Teophano and her political initiatives from the period in which she exercised power during the minority of her son, Otto III (98313 14

Guenee, Histoire, 34-47. Braudel, Civilization, 23-6.

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1003), were recorded in harsh terms in contemporary chronicles.15 The echoes of this hostile perspective also affected the perception of the emperor,16 a learned disciple of Pope Sylvester II17 and the product of an ethnically mixed marriage. More recent opinions have re-evaluated the long-term significances of his political project of restoring the Empire.18 His moderation is considered to have been essential for the emergence of the Church and Kingdoms of Hungary and Poland.19 Literary careers like those of Anna Comnena and the women’s role in the formation of certain clerics and intellectuals from Constantinople were met with distrust by the French and German knights and prelates who were on their way to the Holy Land. Comments about the effeminacy and licentiousness of the Greeks represented a commonplace in the accounts of the participants in the first crusades, who saw this state of affairs as yet another potential indictment against the Byzantine religion and morality. Woman as a cause of perdition had here similar meanings to those used in the calls for a crusade against the Waldensian heresy from Longuedoque. The political crisis and the economic depression the Byzantine Empire experienced from the first half of the 13th century on coincided with the revival of exclusivist attitudes as a result of the radicalisation of confessional discourse. An illustration of the diversity of medieval social realities was the permissive attitude towards the women’s involvement in political decisions among the Scandinavian peoples. The biographies of leaders such as Olga of Kiev, who initiated the Christianisation of the Russians,20 were considered an argument supporting their Varangian descent.21 The phenomenon may seem uncharacteristic of populations that remained in the memory of the medieval sources on account of their military exploits, but it was fully compatible with the dynamic proclivities of the Vikings and the need for social and patrimonial stability that women ensured in communities which were on their way to becoming sedentary.22 This pragmatic approach to family hierarchy was transplanted, at various levels, in all the areas where the exponents of the Scandinavian clans founded more durable political structures. 15

Diehl, Figures, 36-7. Althoff, Otto III, 16-8. 17 Fricke, “Jesus,” 82-195. 18 Canduci, Triumph, 237-42. 19 Berent, Christianisation, 181-3. 20 Butler, Woman, 771-80. 21 Obolenski, Byzantine Commonwealth, 34. 22 Jochens, Women, 28-30. 16

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Foreign queens and new Christian nations The queen as a vector of political initiative and as the catalyst of cultural and identitarian reactions achieved the most spectacular career in the states from the frontier spaces of Christianitas. Here the ethnic and spiritual stabilisation specific to the Middle Ages ended with the second wave of migrations and entailed different forms and actors in relation to the former Roman provinces. This was the case of the state structures developed in Central Europe following the conversion of the Czechs, Poles and Hungarians to Christianity, and especially of the Plantagenet Kings of England, where the political initiatives of the queens determined, together with the aristocracy’s inclination to dissent, the genesis of new relations between power and society. As regards Central Europe, the queen as a factor of power was in an intermediate position in the above-mentioned situations, in the sense that the theoretical limits of her functions were set in accordance with the French and German paradigms. This was the consequence of transplanting social structures that had accompanied the transition from tribal unions ௅ subjected to the authority of military leaders ௅ to the medieval state, governed by a Christian ruler assisted by the former members of the clans, who had become part of a nobiliary hierarchy that had been adopted, in specific circumstances in each case, from the former enemies.23 The moment of the irreversible integration of the Slavic and Hungarian populations into the political and confessional order of Christianity is considered to have been the result of the convergence between two complementary phenomena: the economic and moral recovery of the West from the Great Fear at the end of the first millennium and the firm option of some of the leaders envisaged by the Christian mission. On a concrete level, the approach initiated under the auspices of the papacy activated a series of authority disputes among the power holders. The options of the Holy See that privileged persuasion were placed in agreement with the interests of the powerful Bavarian dioceses that preferred conversion via the crusades,24 as postulated by the Carolingian precedents. From the perspective of the leaders of the new Christian nations, the difficulty of accepting a faith celebrated in a language unknown to the majority population was added to the demand that they should demonstrate their loyalty to the Roman Church, the forum that had by now granted them authority over their own country and people. The 23 24

Berent, Christianisation, 116-8. Platonov, Russie, 57-9.

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solution chosen was the integration of the founding dynasty within the system of the family alliances that ensured political legitimacy. The appearance of foreign queens in the history of the Central European nations was thus part and parcel of the founding of states, so much frequented by identitarian discourse. The baptism and consecration of the pagan leaders coincided with or were followed by matrimonial alliances with Christian dynasties from the vicinity, the latter considering that by bringing their new relatives to the faith, they had ensured their right of spiritual patronage over their kin, which could also entail political consequences. Christianity captured the loyalty of some of the wives and daughters of Western Slav dynasts,25 even before the act of conversion became an irreversible option. The lives of Saints Cyril and Methodius and the Bavarian chronicles mention the importance of St. Ludmila’s contribution, who was later revered as one of the Czech nation’s patron figures. Tradition knows another successful example from the second generation of duchesses from the Przemysl family, in neighbouring Poland: here, the conversion of Duke Mieszko I and the establishment of the Diocese of Gniezno were accomplished with the assistance of Duke Boleslaus of Bohemia and through the marriage between the Polish dynast and his daughter, Dubrovka.26 The chronicle of Thietmar of Merseburg mentions that the Czech duchess was accompanied in her new homeland by many Czech prelates and artisans, and these influences are noticeable in the vocabulary of the vernacular Polish language. The dynastic alliance was quick to demonstrate its patrimonial significance, the dynastic crisis of Bohemia during the first decades of the 11th century enabling the new King Boleslaus the Bold to claim his maternal inheritance.27 Although the vacillating loyalty of the Czech nobles and the hostility of the German emperor caused the failure of this initiative, this was the first attempt to restore the political unity of the Western Slavs, under the auspices of legitimate feudal succession this time. Another dynastic marriage led to similar consequences at the eastern borders of the Piast kingdom, and the military intervention to help his sonin-law Sviatopolk caused the first conflict between the Russians and the Poles. The episode was invested by the Russian chronicles with identitarian meanings, due to its coincidence with the time when Knezes Boris and Gleb, martyrs of the Russian Orthodox Church, were 25

Kloczovski, “Church,” 41. Kantor, Origin, 143-54. 27 Dlugosz, Annales, 237. 26

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assassinated.28 The repeated kinship alliances established between the ruling houses provided an opportunity for greater territorial and social mobility, by passing some nobles and prelates from the service of one court to that of another. The newcomers, in turn, established cross-border family ties, but they also aspired to an economic position ensured by the granting of land estates. The competition between the Czech and the Polish nobles for offices and privileges was strong enough to inhibit the repeated attempts of unifying the two kingdoms, resumed at the initiative of the Przemysl dynasty, with the proclamation of the Kingdom of Bohemia. Medieval nationalism prefigured the emergence of the pre-modern corporate solidarities and the assertion of the so-called nobiliary nations. Its sources originated in xenophobic attitudes inherent in territorial proximity, but also in the affirmation of a right belonging to the local elites, which claimed the legitimacy of their access to secular and ecclesiastical offices in the territory they controlled effectively. The presence of the German queens and their entourages determined hostile reactions from the Czech and Polish chroniclers, censored, in part, by dynastic loyalism and by opportunities for close relations with the Empire, as was the case of the claim to the succession of the estates belonging to the Babenberg dynasty. The marriage between King Ottokar II of Bohemia (1253-1278) and the descendant of a princely Ruthenian family generated appeals from the clergy to protect the rights of native Czechs to ecclesiastical dignities.29 The theme of the nefarious influence exerted by a foreign queen made a most spectacular career in the Hungarian chronicles. The problem had its origins in the effects of the dynastic alliance that had preceded the Christianisation of the kingdom and was inspired by the influence of Queen Gisela, the daughter of Duke Heinrich of Bavaria, over Saint Stephen, King of Hungary. The perfection of this arrangement was intended to end the divisions between the Hungarians and the Bavarians that had impeded the conversion of the latter; the German prelates and warriors who had arrived in the kingdom were instrumental to the victory of the king over his heathen contesters.30 The German chroniclers highlighted the queen’s active participation in the conversion of her husband and the founding of the first monastic centres in Hungary, but medieval Hungarian authors criticised her involvement in the royal family 28

Mikhailova and Prestel, Cross, 3-7. Dvornik, Slaves, 9-11. 30 Medieval chronicles see the victory against Kopany as a triumph of the Teutons over the Hungarians. See Pal, Realm, 103. 29

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disputes,31 which ended with the mutilation of some of the Arpadians and the exile of others into the neighbouring states. The succession of power in favour of Peter I of Orseolo, the Venetian son-in-law of the king, and the contempt of his German entourage towards the Hungarians brought further arguments for a censorious attitude towards the German queen, who was forced to spend her last years in a monastery from Passau. The conduct of the German, Ruthenian or Cuman queens was a leitmotif in the chronicles written during the repeated dynastic crises in Arpadian Hungary. The contestation of King Bela II’s rights by the pretender to the throne Boris Arpad led to the convening of a nobiliary assembly that was to declare the latter a bastard, as well as to issue notations on the immorality of the Ruthenian nation.32 The influence of Queen Gertrude of Meran and especially the usurpation of some of the Crown properties for the benefit of her German relatives were the main charges against King Andrew II; public hostility led to her murder, an obvious case of nota infidelitatis, committed by the highest officials of the kingdom.33 The end of the confrontation between the sovereign and the nobles of the kingdom was consecrated through the proclamation of the Golden Bull, the cornerstone of the Hungarian nobility’s privileges. In the history of Hungary, the 13th century marked the moment when the Hungarian identitarian consciousness articulated a discourse meant to legitimise political rights in relation to the royalty, based on the Hunnic lineage and on the role played by the founders of the 108 Hungarian noble clans in reconquering the country, which was defined in the official documents as the frontier of Christendom.34 This message with political purposes also included a xenophobic dimension, designed to undermine the position of the king and his foreign allies as defenders of the country and to confirm the authority of the nation’s true sons. One of the main charges that were brought King Ladislaus IV the Cuman and that ensured the papacy’s support in favour of his opponents was his preference for Cuman women and the risk that the influence exerted by these recent converts to Christianity might lead Hungary back into heresy. The evolution of dynastic loyalties during the 13th century would suggest that the sources of this hostility ought to be sought in the reactions of corporate medieval nationalism rather than in the misogynistic background, given the ethnic and institutional profile of the 31

Roles, “Roles,” 14-15. See Scriptores, 237-8. 33 Kosztolniyk, Hungary, 29-31. 34 Berent, “Defense,” 1001-6. 32

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Central-European states and the incompatibility between tolerance and the medieval norms.35

Challenges, power and social responsibilities Like Central Europe, the Kingdom of England was the result of the effort for institutional stabilisation initiated by several secular power holders, placed under the auspices of the papacy. The Norman Conquest had entailed the transplantation of the social elite from the continent; the competition between the Franco-Norman knights, who benefitted from most of the estates seized from the vanquished, and the old Anglo-Saxon aristocracy could be reconstituted by resorting to contemporary sources. The perpetuation of traditions regarding dynastic succession and various subjective factors guaranteed that female royal descendants could also inherit the Crown; the sovereigns’ matrimonial engagements added a jurisdictional dimension to this pluralism. The apanages acquired by marriage with the heiresses of fiefs under the jurisdiction of the Kings of France did not result in strengthening the monarchy: the case of the reign of Henry II Plantagenet (1154-1189) and his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine is the best known example in this sense, both in terms of its political and familial consequences36 and insofar as its cultural meanings are concerned.37 The historical moment recording the first successful attempt made by a medieval queen to actually take power and to propose an entirely new vision of governance coincided with the biography of the most interesting political product of the Capetian dynasty, Princess Isabella the Fair, who was the daughter of King Philip IV of France and the wife of King Edward II (1307-1327). In retrieving this subject, scientific history has to face the challenges of a harsh competition with both the history of popularisation and literary fiction, whose products are more accessible and appeal more to the public interest through their piquant details rather than through their academic rigor. Such circumstances, which caused the authors of historical syntheses to be circumspect, are offset by certain primarily scientific benefits and, above all, by the legitimate interest in a profound understanding of historical reality through the recognisable details of the individual and collective mind-set and the history of mores.

35

Loomis, “Nationality,” 509-11. Turner, “Eleanor of Aquitaine,” 329-35. 37 See Bienvenu, “Alinor d’Aquitaine,” 23-7. 36

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The quasi-official discourse about Queen Isabella is a sum of stereotypes characteristic of misogynist medieval and modern attitudes. The indictments brought against her by the authors of chronicles or moralising literature and by the biographers of the following centuries summarised all the accusations against this woman, ranging from infidelity and her relationship with the nobleman Roger Mortimer, to the deposition and assassination of the king, without overlooking her extravagance, accumulation of goods, arrogance and cruelty.38 The ethical and critical spirit that is integral to the historical profession requires that a series of major amendments be made to this partial reading, which tends to substitute itself to reality, as it can be reconstructed through the faithful interpretation of the meanings inherent in the queen’s personal and public initiatives. The negative perception of this remarkable historical character’s conduct is rooted in the ideological and cultural context of the time. The last centuries of the Middle Ages, which were coeval with the beginnings of the Renaissance, corresponded to structural societal crises. These were manifested through periods of economic depression, social and political instability, changes at the level of individual and collective piety,39 all of these being amplified by the general atmosphere of insecurity and pessimism.40 From the perspective of public conduct, the dissemination of theological speculation theses through mendicants and through sermons delivered in vernacular languages prefigured the general trend of contesting institutional benchmarks, radicalising the written word and volatilising loyalties. Enthusiasm for social and spiritual innovations alternated with calls to the authority of tradition and collective panic attacks,41 and the protagonists and victims of this violent entry of society into history were individualities. The world of ideas reflected, in its turn, the accelerated pace of history, and in the context of the competition between the Holy See, the territorial state and the regional centres of power, there emerged the first project for a federation of European states, as a prerequisite for a successful crusade.42 Another component of this image is rooted in the specific historical circumstances of England. The effective takeover of power by Edward III was defined as a restoration of the rule of law and as the relinquishment of previous political experimentations. The beneficiaries of the Court’s 38

Weir, Isabella of France, 34 et sqq. Bruner, Disorder, 341-3. 40 Huizinga, Autumn, 23-6. 41 Delumeau, Peur, 76-91. 42 Duroselle, Idee, 13-15. 39

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cultural patronage produced works considered to be emblematic for the emergence of the medieval English national sentiment.43 A French queen who was so actively involved in the public affairs of the kingdom was hardly compatible with the requirements of this identitarian profile or with the affinities of those engaged in the Hundred Years’ War.44 For the French authors, Isabella’s royal descent provided the de jure grounds for the English claims to the French Crown and had therefore caused the disasters that the kingdom had witnessed for over a century. In the absence of written records that might also express the protagonist’s viewpoints on the controversies stirred by her actions in the immediate succession of facts, an objective analysis should start by acknowledging that her career began under circumstances that were specific to the Middle Ages. Her marriage to the Crown Prince, the Heir Apparent of England, actively supported by the Holy See, was a political act intended to end the jurisdictional disputes between her homeland and her adoptive country. The chroniclers’ writings mention the positive impression that the arrival of the new queen at the court and her charismatic nature made on the subjects,45 and to these qualities were added a strong awareness of her mission and a remarkable political instinct. Her actions during the early years of her English existence were circumscribed to the paradigms of a medieval queen and consisted primarily of charity actions, her patronage of arts and letters and her efforts to establish peace among the internal factions. The reasons of her first interventions in the kingdom’s politics are to be sought in the specific features of political equilibrium in England and in the inability of local power holders to find acceptable solutions for an agreement that would benefit the general interest. The disputes between the sovereign and his vassals and the latter’s role in the recognition of succession contributed to consolidating the role of the representative institutions through legal regulations, such as the Magna Charta Libertatum. The escalating contestations during the reign of Henry III compelled his immediate successor, King Edward I, to attempt an externalisation of the conflicts with his barons, through a policy of expansion west and north, to Wales and Scotland. The summons to battle for defending the country acquired unprecedented frequency in the royal proclamations from the years 12851306,46 and the theme of the struggle against the king’s external and internal enemies was also resumed in the early years of Edward II’s reign. 43

Galbraith, “Language and Nationality,” 45-7. McHardy, “Liturgy and Propaganda,” 215-8. 45 See Geffroi de Paris, “Cronique,” 87-122. 46 Barnaby, “England,” 99-106. 44

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The war gave the occasion to the monarchy to loyalise the noble elites by exercising their essential role, especially by gaining access to the fiefs seized from the vanquished. On the other hand, this option created successful opportunities for politically legitimated individuals, through feats of arms and the accumulation of economic and administrative resources. The success of the central power depended exclusively on the king’s personal abilities and provided potential challengers with considerable chances. The risks of this policy were felt at the very beginning of Edward II’s reign, whose equivocal preference for a series of companions and whose mental instability placed him in the position of a catalyst for the opposition.47 Historical writing has revealed the arguments used by the exponents of this movement to legitimise their insurgency: the king’s ineptness as a military leader and the activation of the public’s homophobic reactions.48 Another important coordinate for the course of events was the constant attempt of the aristocracy to institutionalise its control over the country by means of ad hoc institutions and legislative regulations enacted in Parliament. At the time of these conflicts, which escalated into civil war, the survival of the royal authority and its military successes were primarily victories secured by the queen, who demonstrated her ability as a negotiator and sole rational political actor, as well as her talent for channelling the affection of her subjects for the benefit of a cause. During the first decade and a half of her presence in England, she systematically managed to provide real support for the Crown by activating her European and English family connections and by demonstrating the functionality of this medieval solidarity. Her pacifist propensities ensured the respect of the papal legates and all the moderate English barons, and the sympathy of the people was confirmed by their response to the call for mobilisation, destined to punish the offence that had been brought against the queen when her access to Leeds Castle had been denied in 1321.49 The political crisis that affected both the stability of the kingdom and the queen’s position was the result of unpredictable circumstances, caused by the king’s emotional instability, which compromised the chances for restoring internal order, with the elimination of the insurgent opposition, demonstrating, at the same time, the impossibility of arriving at a solution within the frameworks of medieval legitimacy. The option for her exile to France occurred in the context of a new peace mission that was to end the 47

Ian Mortimer, “Sermons,” 48-50. As regards the king’s propensities as a motif of Renaissance drama, see Delumeau, Civilization, 342. 49 Menache, “Isabelle of France,” 129. 48

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war for the English possessions in Gascony. This represented the turning point in the political career of Queen Isabella, who had now become the leader of the opposition against her husband’s regime, which had been dominated by his favourites from the Despenser family and had distinguished itself through abuses and expropriations of the contesters. The action that led to the queen becoming the de facto ruler of England demonstrated the qualities of this medieval political genius and incorporated superior meanings to a mere act of power usurpation. The military campaign was preceded by a process of legitimation, through a discourse that claimed the king had been responsible for the destruction of this marriage and for the loss of his subjects’ respect; the rightful representatives of the latter were claimed to be the exiles from the entourage of the queen and the Crown Prince. Her qualities as a mediator secured her diplomatic support by contracting an opportune marriage between the heir to the throne and Countess Philippa of Hainault, and the military resources were ensured by the expertise of Lord Roger Mortimer and the faction led by Henry of Lancaster. The campaign from the autumn of 1326 had the aspect of a liberation march and the forces that landed in Orwell served as an escort; aside from the brief siege of Bristol, the confrontations were modest. The reports of the time provide essential data for reconstituting the ethical profile of the Queen, who during the campaign, personally acquitted the value of the assets requisitioned by her soldiers.50 The effective takeover of power involved the articulation of an original political project, maintaining nonetheless the new situation within the sphere of civil law and ensuring the effective and moral support of some of the clergy. The Bishop of Hereford, Adam Orleson, advocated the queen’s cause in Parliament, which had convened to take note of Edward II’s abdication.51 Even though from a formal standpoint, the participants in these events acted within the limits of medieval practices, their attitudes prefigured a new type of relationship between power and society: the errors committed by the monarch in public and personal life were likely to cancel his sovereign rights. The idea remained entrenched in the subtext of the theological speculation of the scholars from Oxford52 and underlay the theory Jan Hus developed about the responsibility of the leaders of the Christian community.53

50

Strickland, Lives, 192. Ibidem. 52 Lahey, “Wyklif on Right,” 3-6. 53 Smahel, Revolution, 52-9. 51

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The innovative character of the policies adopted by the new government generated a series of vulnerabilities, on account of the regency’s questionable legitimacy and the almost constant pressure of factions with divergent interests. The option for restoring the state authority and the potential opposition rendered the presence of the deposed king as a source of instability. In her correspondence with him, the queen insisted that the Parliament’s will should be respected, and historians are still debating the circumstances of his death or assassination, which probably occurred at Berkeley Castle in 1327.54 The episode may have involved moral responsibilities, but these did not diminish the revolutionary significance of the political vision that had inspired those political acts of the new power. Historical data are scarce as regards the events of the years 1327-1330, limited almost exclusively to a series of conspiracies and violent acts that accompanied the passage of Crown property into the possession of the former rebels and the violent reprisals against some allies that had fallen into disfavour, including the execution of Edmund of Kent, which aroused live controversy at the time. The involved nature of medieval writing does not allow us to ascertain, beyond any doubt, the personal responsibilities of the leaders for these acts, and in assessing them we cannot ignore the propensities towards violence of a society accustomed to ignoring even the minimal rules of war in the Middle Ages. What were important for the significance of the political undertaking with which the regent queen was identified were her foreign policy decisions, characterised by the same pragmatic approach. This was attested by her constant efforts to restore confidence in the authority of the Crown in relation to its creditors and to maintain an effective partnership with the power holders in the Netherlands, these efforts having remained imprinted in the institutional memory of British diplomacy. Her creative skills and the courage to make rational decisions, at the risk of losing popular support, were manifested in 1328, when the Treaty of Northampton was concluded, marking the end of the war with Scotland. The regulations stipulated that the English claims to the crown of Scotland would be relinquished in exchange for financial compensation and they established the first dynastic alliance with the Stuart family.55 The agreement prefigured solutions that would ultimately lead to the creation of the United Kingdom and ensured a possible short-term ally for England, particularly considering that the previous experiences had demonstrated the impossibility of achieving, in Scotland, a similar success 54 55

Mortimer, “Death of Edward II,” 1175-220. Stones, “Historical Revision,” 56-8.

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to that from Wales and that medieval Scottish nationalism catalysed the loyalty of the people around political independence.56 Internally, the decision marked the end of efforts to ensure internal stability by engaging in foreign conflicts that might deflate potential contestations, but the consequence on a domestic level was the loss of support from a significant part of the former loyalists. Those who had been bereft of their Scottish fiefdoms under the peace concluded thus reacted in the traditional manner of medieval uprisings and the supporters of the regency became firmly committed to repressing them. The military engagements prevented the initiation of reformist policies as regards the local administration. These remained in draft form, with limited effects on the organisation of London. They also disallowed the tendency to substitute violent reprisals against the rebels with financial sanctions, these measures being also adopted by other successful British sovereigns. The attempt to secure ௅ through negotiations and juridical procedures ௅ the recognition of King Edward III’s right to the throne of France could not resolve the political crisis stemming from the incompatibility between Isabella’s realistic and proactive agenda and the perspective of the medieval English political elites. The latter’s option was imposed in 1330, when a conspiracy organised around the king ended the regency. The execution of Lord Mortimer and the effective takeover of power by Edward III meant a return to the medieval order, with the Queen Mother leaving the sphere of public affairs and devoting herself to charitable activities,57 cultural and religious preoccupations, and attempts to restore the peace between England and France. Her political career returned under the auspices of its beginnings, but despite its conciseness and the controversial character assigned to it in the historiographical debate, this episode was the first attempt to transform the political and institutional mechanisms that governed medieval society in its archetypal essence: the royal family. The dynamics of these events prefigured the changes that would occur in the Renaissance and the modern era, such as the triumph of an exceptional individuality over the norms, of the spirit over stereotypes, of innovation over dogma, even if the means used and the moral choices made emphasised the difficulties that stood in the way of the future sociopolitical developments. The Central European kingdoms did not experience such developments and their queens did not generate such large projects, but the political and

56 57

Harvie, Scotland, 17-20. Hilton, Queens, 267.

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moral significances they activated in the consciousness of their subjects had a decisive role in the process of dynastic succession.58 The first decade of the 14th century marked the escheatment of the Przemysl dynasty in Bohemia and of the Arpadians in Hungary. Whereas the latter strengthened their membership to the Christianitas through matrimonial alliances with the European dynasties, this also occasioned a process of adversarial takeover of their patrimonies. The agents of initiative were once again the institutions that promoted a universalistic vision, the Empire and the papacy, both being on the defensive in relation to the territorial state as a rallying pole for social loyalties in the West. The papacy supported the claims of the Angevin dynasty to the Hungarian Crown, but the approval of the nobility, which had become part of the legal country under the Holy Crown Theory, was secured by invoking Charles Robert’s descent from the ancient and holy kings of Hungary. The cult of the Arpadian queens was broadly disseminated in southern France and the Kingdom of Naples, where the Angevins benefited from apanages. Emperor Henry VI of Luxembourg ensured the recognition of his son John as King of Bohemia by marrying him to Elizabeth Przemysl, the only survivor of the old Czech dynasty. The theme of dynastic sanctity, which generated legitimacy, can be traced at the level of the propaganda professed by the new political actors in the region, but its suggestiveness activated the loyalties of the nobles and the people. The danger looming over the last representative of the Przemysl dynasty, who was exposed to the reprisals of King John of Luxembourg, caused a large protest reaction on the part of the Prague inhabitants, which demonstrates once again the level of the medieval Czech nation’s identitarian consciousness.59 Marriages continued to incorporate political significances and to serve as instruments in the diplomatic arsenal of the regional powers. This was the case of the Hungarian-Polish alliance, designed to balance the CzechGerman partnership, which had resulted in the loss of Silesia by the restored Piast kingdom.60 The marriage between Charles Robert of Anjou of Hungary and Elizabeth, the daughter of King Casimir III of Poland, determined the establishment of a personal union between the two countries, which was preceded, however, by negotiations with the Polish nobility. The latter was reluctant to accept the Hungarians’ competition for the dignities of the kingdom and their claims to the Ruthenian territories. The importance of dynastic loyalism was also felt during the interregnum 58

Vauchez, Sainthood, 35-7. Dlugosz, Annales, 52. 60 Knoll, Rise, 96-105. 59

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in the two kingdoms, when the two daughters of the former King Louis became essential for legitimising claims to the Angevin succession.61 His marriage to Maria ensured the legitimacy of King Sigismund of Luxembourg in Hungary, while the marriage between his daughter and Duke Albrecht of Habsburg ensured the legal grounds for including Hungary and Bohemia in the series of titles held by the House of Austria. The political and administrative work carried out by the successors of the Angevin and Luxembourg dynasties was tantamount to the first lasting integrationist experiment, which was constantly at the centre of historiographical debate as regards its effectiveness and its vulnerabilities. In her turn, Jadwiga consecrated the bringing to the faith and to the Polish throne of her husband, Jogaila, the Duke of Lithuania, who became King Vladislaus Jagiello and the founder of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.62 The family alliances concluded between members of the dynasties that ruled the kingdoms from the borders of the medieval Western Christian world had a major contribution to the genesis of state forms and experiments that history, the abiding teacher of life, has preserved in the expression of their specificity, in relation to the formula considered to be classical for the Middle Ages, the centralised territorial state and the absolute monarchy. In the both cases, these ethnically mixed marriages originated in the effort to establish a political order founded on personal and familial connections. Royal marriages consecrated dynasties and created patrimonial legitimacies, but their conduct triggered political changes and identitarian reflections. In the Central-European kingdoms, their descendants furnished examples of dynastic holiness and guaranteed the transfer of power. At the western border of Latin Christendom, the queens’ involvement in politics and the ambitions of the aristocracy built new relations between power and society. This analysis of succinct information about the presence of medieval queens in the public life provides an opportunity for a more comprehensive perspective on social sensibilities, ethical options, ethnic and social conflicts and solidarities, without sacrificing the importance of personal data, drawing, all in all, a more profound picture compared to the sheer sequence of historical events. Translated by Carmen-Veronica Borbely

61 62

Halecky, Jadwiga of Anjou, 23-5. Davies, God’s Playgrounds, 92-99.

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Duby, Georges. The Lady, the Knight and the Priest. The making of Modern Marriage in the Medieval France. New York: Pantheon, 1981. —. The Three Orders. The Feudal Society Imagined. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1981. Duroselle, Jean Baptiste. L’idee de l’Europe dans l’histoire. Paris: Deleon, 1965. Dvornik, Francis. Les slaves: histoire et civilisation dans l’antiquite au debut de l’epoque contemporaine. Paris: Edition de Seuilles, 1970. Fricke, Beate. “Jesus Wept! On the History of Antropology on Christianity: Other Lecture of a Miniature from Gospell Book of Otto III as Kippfigure.” Journal of Antropology and Aesthetics 59-60 (2011): 182-205. Galbraith, Vivian H. “Language and Nationality.” In Nationalism in the Middle Ages, edited by C. Leon Typton, 45-53. New York, 1972. Gelner, Ernest. Nations et nationalisms. Paris: Gallimar, 1994. Guenee, Bernard. Histoire et culture historique dans l’Occident medieval. Paris: Flamarion, 2011. Halecki, Oskar. Jadwiga of Anjou and the Rise of East Central Europe. New Jersey: New Jersey University Press, 1991. Harvie, Christopher. Scotland and Nationalism. Scotish Society and Politics. 1700-1970. London: Routledge, 1977. Hilton, Lisa. Queens Consort in England in the Middle Age, London: Barnes & Noble, 2005. Huizinga, Johan. The Autumn of the Middle Age, translated by Henry Payton and Ulrich Mammitzsch. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1996. —. Men and Ideas. Essay on History: Middle Ages, Renaissance. New York, Evanston, London: Evanston, 1970. Joichens, Jenny. Women in Old Norse Society. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998. Kantor, Marvin. The Origins of Christianity in Bohemia. Sources and Commentary. Evanston: North-Western University Press, 1990. Keeney, C. Barnaby. “England.” In Nationalism in the Middle Ages, edited by C. Leon Typton, 87-97. NewYork: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972. Kloczowski, Jerzy. “The Church and the Nation: the Example of the Mendicants in Thirteenth Century Poland.” In Faith and Identity. Christian Political Experience, edited by D. Loades and K. Walsh. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. Knoll, Paul W. The Rise of Polish Monarchy. The Piast Poland in East Central Europe. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1972.

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MIXED MARRIAGES IN THE ORTHODOX DEANERY OF SIBIU (1860-1918): COMMUNITY AND LAW VALERIA SORO‫܇‬TINEANU

Introduction: Statistical data This study aims to show the proportion of mixed marriages in the Orthodox Deanery of Sibiu (from the Archdiocese of Sibiu/Transylvania) during the period 1860-1918, against the legislative background of the two Romanian - Orthodox and Greek - Catholic ௅ Churches and of the dualist state. The statistics drawn up at the level of the Orthodox Metropolitan See in Sibiu (comprising one archdiocese ௅ the Orthodox Archdiocese of Transylvania ௅ and two dioceses ௅ one in Arad and the other in Caransebeú) suggest the existence of greater permissiveness concerning mixed marriages amongst the Romanian communities from Banat and Bihor. This also had to do with the more diversified political and administrative structure in those areas.1 Mention should be made of the importance associated with the town of Sibiu as the ecclesiastical centre of Orthodoxy in Transylvania and Banat, just like Blaj was the centre of the Greek-Catholic Metropolitan See, which comprised the Archdiocese of Blaj and the Dioceses of Oradea, Gherla and Lugoj. At the level of the above-mentioned archdiocese, mixed marriages began to be recorded in 1879 (462), the smallest number of these marriages ௅ 148 ௅ occurring in 1895 and the largest in 1911 (883).2 In terms of proportion, a similar situation prevailed in the Orthodox Deanery of Sibiu, although we must mention the fact that initially there had been two such deaneries, Sibiu I and Sibiu II. These included not only the few parishes from the town of Sibiu (the Sibiu citadel, the Josephine District and the Lower District of Sibiu), but also most of the rural communities from around the town and from Mărginimea Sibiului, 1 2

Calendarul bunului creútin 1880-1920. Calendarul bunului creútin…

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including the parish of Săliúte. Together, they represented the most powerful deaneries: insofar as their number was concerned, they were superseded only by the Deanery of Zarand, while as regards their importance, they were on a par with the Deaneries of Braúov and Făgăraú.3 The dual organisation of the Deanery of Sibiu went through a major transformation in 1871, when, within the framework of the Archdiocesan Synod from the same year, a committee elaborated a project for a new distribution of the deaneries in the archdiocese. Concerning Sibiu, the suggestion that was accepted was that it should have only one deanery and that the parishes that were located at a somewhat greater distance from Sibiu should be included in the Deaneries of Săliúte, Miercurea and Avrig. From a political-administrative point of view, the parishes belonged to the Counties of Sibiu, Târnava Mare and Lower Alba.4 If Sibiu’s Deanery I initially had 18 parishes and Deanery II 28, in the statistics from 1883 on, only one deanery was mentioned, with 28 parishes and a population of 26,332 inhabitants. The population from this deanery increased by 1,000 inhabitants in each of the following decades, reaching 26,332 in 1883, 27,331 in 1893, 28,067 in 1903 and 31,213 in 1913.5 Unlike the sporadic data released by the Deanery of Sibiu, the information was much more consistent at the archdiocesan level, covering, with a few exceptions, the period 1882-1914.6 At the level of the archdiocese and the deaneries, the statistical picture of mixed marriages is relevant, even though the overall impression is that there were rather large fluctuations in this respect; thus in the Archdiocese of Sibiu, there were 462 mixed marriages in 1879, 148 in 1895, 883 in 1912, and 480 in 1915.7 Thus, while mixed marriages had been recorded even since the mid-nineteenth century, it is likely that their number was so insignificant in the Deanery of Sibiu that mentioning them constantly was deemed unimportant up until the last decades of this century. In the Deanery of Sibiu, the data are discontinuous. They cover especially the period 1895-1904, 1910 and they have 2 reference points; thus, in 1895, there were only 11 mixed marriages in the Deanery of Sibiu, while in 1910 there were 56. We do not have complete series with direct reference to the subject ௅ the numerical evolution of marriages in the Deanery of Sibiu. We do not have data about the number of marriages contracted in the years: 1877, 1882-1884, 1889-1891, and there is 3

Roúca, Lexiconul comunelor bisericeúti, 31. Roúca, Lexiconul comunelor bisericeúti, 135-75. 5 Calendarul bunului creútin. 6 Calendarul bunului creútin. 7 Calendarul bunului creútin. 4

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Mixed Marriages in the Orthodox Deanery of Sibiu (1860-1918)

continuous information from only one period, namely the years 19101917.

Legislation Regarding the statistical picture that we have been able to reconstruct only partially so far, we should perhaps reproduce here a remark that was mentioned quite often in the clerical milieus from Sibiu, more specifically the critique brought against the slow pace at which the information was sent to Sibiu, mostly from the parish level. Therefore, we should not be surprised at the large number of official letters or even circulars addressed to the priests from the rural areas, who were enjoined to advocate, especially there, the discipline of administrative activities.8 Another important milestone was the legislation, which underlay the involvement of both the Church and, ever more persistently, of the state in everything related to the life and evolution of the individual and the family, as well as of their descendants, in administrative, demographic, political and, above all, national terms. As regards the legislation referring to family, marriage and divorce, the Austrian State and, as of 1867, the dualist state imposed their own legislation, after consultations with the Churches of the Empire, until the years 1894-1895, when the famous “political-ecclesiastical laws” finally tilted the legislative balance in favour of the secular state. In short, prior to that moment, Vienna had imposed ௅ somewhat in parallel with the confessional space ௅ an armistice, as was the case of the Austrian Civil Code that was imposed in Transylvania and Hungary in 1853.9 Other significant legislative acts governing matrimony, including that relating to mixed marriages, were: the Instruction on marriages of 1854, Law 43 of 1868, on the accepted, hence, officially recognised religions, and Law 58 of 1868, referring to the divorce procedure in the case of mixed marriages. Law 53 of 1868 imposed the principle of equal rights amongst the Churches in the Empire, considered to have been insufficiently applied by those who had refused to comply with the role of primus inter pares played by the Catholic Church. Under this law, the provisions regarding

8

Protocoalele ùedinĠelor Consistoriului Arhiepiscopiei Române Ortodoxe din Transilvania 1880-1916. 9 Bolovan et al., LegislaĠia ecleziastică úi laică, 20.

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mixed marriages established the stages leading to their conclusion and the responsibility for the religious education of children.10 Thus, in order for a balance to be established, the daughters resulting from mixed marriages were to follow the mother’s confession, while the sons were to adopt their father’s, a requirement that was accepted and taken over by the two Romanian Churches. The age of the children also mattered: those aged between 7 and 18 years needed the approval of the so-called orphancy authorities if they wanted to change their confession. In the late nineteenth century, the 3 laws under which the state established itself as a secular power (Laws 30, 31 and 32 of 1894) were enacted, coming into effect in 1895. They governed the necessity of civil marriage, the establishment of the confession to be adopted by children resulting from mixed marriages and the introduction of civilian transcripts; on the other hand, the church records containing the names of those born and baptised, married and buried became of secondary importance compared to the official, state registries. Many of those who were contemporaneous with this legislation felt that the rather aggressive attitude of the Roman Catholic Church and the state’s attempt to establish a modus vivendi between the secular and the ecclesiastical legislation, where each party was accused of not being receptive or consistent insofar as its enforcement was concerned, offered the state the opportunity to intervene, even though at that time, in the Orthodox milieus, for example, such interferences were criticised without the right of appeal, being considered gestures of false liberalism.11 In 1894 and 1895, Telegraful Român, the official publication of the Orthodox Metropolitan See of Sibiu, covered the debates of the House of Magnates and presented the speeches delivered by the Romanian bishops, who upheld the need to maintain religious marriage. Many articles highlighted the motivations underlying state actions, as well as the “controversy between State and Church in the dualist state.”12 The Roman Catholic Church had also circumvented the law before, when it had demanded that the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Public Instruction should issue the ordinance of 1890, whereby the state imposed an interim solution for children of different confessions: they could be baptised in a Roman Catholic Church and the priests could subsequently notify the authorities about the birth of these children.13

10

Bolovan et al., LegislaĠia ecleziastică úi laică, 22. Bolovan et al., LegislaĠia ecleziastică úi laică, 84-5. 12 “Efectele căsătoriei civile”, 1896, 281. 13 Telegraful Român 1890, 425. 11

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Mixed Marriages in the Orthodox Deanery of Sibiu (1860-1918)

The bureaucracy that appeared in the case of mixed marriages caused further discontent. Unlike the 1868 law, civil marriage also brought forth the obligation that prior to their getting married, prospective parents should choose their children’s confession in the presence of a notary or a public official. Even against this religious background, the two Romanian Churches would not relinquish their insistence on the significance that religious marriage and, implicitly, religious divorce continued to have, although, chronologically, the state had imposed the compulsory character and the primacy of civil marriage. The Instruction of the Metropolitan Consistory to be followed in our metropolitan province as regards the new politicalecclesiastical laws expressed explicitly the fact that all of the above laws had been accepted in extremis and that from the point of view of the Orthodox Church, only religious marriage was valid.14 There were not many other articles focusing on this subject, and the conflicts that arose were dealt with especially at the local level; in addition to that, the Orthodox priests had always considered papal encyclicals as a manner whereby the Greek Catholics “will try to win over proselytes in this way too.” The two Romanian Churches had a common basis for upholding marriage as one of the holy sacraments of the Church, dogmatically supported by the Holy Fathers, the canons of the ecumenical and the local synods, all of them having been systematised for the Romanian territory in the 17th century. Strictly dogmatically speaking, this should not have raised any major problem because the regulatory framework regarding the family had largely been enacted in the Pravila (Code of Laws) or the Pidalion (The Rudder, a book explaining the modality of enforcing these laws), these being the most important codes of canon laws for both churches until the first half of the nineteenth century. In the Orthodox space of Transylvania, matrimonial legislation was regulated by Metropolitan Andrei ùaguna, especially through 3 works of reference: Instruction for Marriages (1854), Useful Knowledge about the Marriages Business from the same year and the Compendium of Canon Law issued in 1864. The novelty of the 1854 Instruction was that it required the existence of a baptismal certificate, proofs of the three announcements and the submission of dispensations, if necessary. In the Orthodox environment, all the three works established the main steps to be followed in the case of mixed marriages, but it was the Compendium of Canon Law that was considered a benchmark: mixed 14

Telegraful Român 1895, 390-1.

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marriages were sensitive and particularly liable to canonical errors, but determined the steps for concluding such marriages, in an overall sequence with which the Greek Catholics broadly agreed: marriage was to take place in the Orthodox rite if this was the bride’s confession; prior to the celebration of the marriage ceremony, the 3 announcements could be made in both churches; two religious ceremonies could be held, but the Orthodox Church deemed that the “passive assistance of the priest of a different religion” was without value, so the understanding between the two parties had to be clear.15 In the sphere of the Greek-Catholic Church, the aforementioned works authored by Iosif Papp-Szilagy, Ioan RaĠiu and Tit Bud represented an attempt to square this legislation not only with the laws of the Austrian and, thereafter, the dualist state, but especially with those of the papal state. After the first Provincial Council of the Greek-Catholic Church discussed the problem of mixed marriages in Blaj, they were considered to be canonically valid but detrimental to a Catholic person, who faced the danger of losing true faith. Unlike in the Orthodox environments, the passive presence of the priest was accepted and blessing the marriage was left to the priests’ decision, but the situation was different when it came to the confession of the resulting children; thus, the “babies born from a marriage of mixed rite shall follow the rite of the man, who is the head of the family.”16 A similar view was shared by Tit Bud, in a special work devoted to matrimonial canon law from 1875, entitled PrelecĠiuni teologice despre matrimoniu, impedimente, procedura cu respect la teoria e praxa vigente în provincia metropolitană greco-catolică a Albei-Iulia [Theological Lectures on Marriage, Impediments, the Procedure with Respect to Teoria e Praxa Vigente within the Greek-Catholic Metropolitan Province of AlbaIulia], in which he detailed the regulations imposed by the Provincial Council, under which mixed marriages were valid but illicit, on account of the danger that the spouse’s confession and the possibility of conversion to that confession represented. An examination of the main laws underlying this approach, namely the Lambruschini Instruction of 1841, the Instructions issued by Pope Gregory XVI to the Archbishop of Freiburg in 1846 and, respectively, by Pius IX to the episcopates in 1858, may reveal the influence Rome exerted towards

15

ùaguna, Compendiul de Drept Canonic, 66; The Archdiocese of Sibiu Archive, 1854, 425. 16 Bolovan et al., LegislaĠia ecleziastică úi laică, 64-5.

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Mixed Marriages in the Orthodox Deanery of Sibiu (1860-1918)

maintaining a certain pre-eminence and the balance necessitated by the new relations established with an ever more powerful secular state.17 If these were the main references in legislative matters, what remains to be specified is the manner in which the community applied and, therefore, respected both ecclesiastical customs and the authorities’ expectations.

Case studies With reference to the Deanery of Sibiu, common problems were broadly reported for both the Orthodox and the Greek-Catholic milieus. If establishing a typology is the aim of this study, we should start with the few notes taken at the level of this deanery, on the subject of mixed marriages or on the related topic of religious conversions. Thus, in the minutes compiled at the Synod of the Sibiu Archdiocese from 1879, the chapter on religious conversions in this deanery mentioned a single case of conversion to Greek Catholicism by marriage, while six Greek Catholics had switched to the Orthodox belief out of conviction; for the years 1877 and 1879, only 2 cases of mixed divorce were reported in both Deaneries of Sibiu.18 At the community level, neither of the two confessions wanted their image to be affected by their priests’ actions. For instance, in the Orthodox environment, the future priests were not encouraged to marry GreekCatholic brides ௅ and this was a serious concern for the clerical circles in Sibiu since, in 1903, a synodal decision established a fee of 400 crowns for those facing that situation (which could be paid in instalments over 4 years).19 The priests, however, took the brunt of the punishment imposed by their superiors in the event of any mistakes they made. For a necessary clarification, the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Public Instruction from Budapest approved a type of form, which was imposed amongst the Orthodox in 1899 and updated in 1902, entitled Report on the case of the religious conversion of..., specifying compliance with Law no. 53 of 1868. Moreover, the Greek-Catholic and the Orthodox priests were to be informed that one would lose and the other would win a new parishioner. Failure to send them on time created many problems because although there was another way of clarifying denominational affiliation, more 17

Bolovan et al., LegislaĠia ecleziastică úi laică, 66-7. The Archdiocese of Sibiu Archive. Deanery of Sibiu, 1876, 998. 19 Soroútineanu, Aspecte din istoria Bisericii Greco-Catolice, 97. 18

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specifically the one attested by 2 witnesses, it did not always yield results, simply because after a longer period of time or out of the desire not to put themselves in potentially unpleasant situations, witnesses no longer recognised their participation in that religious conversion.20 Thus, in the Vurper parish from the Deanery of Sibiu, the parish priest Nicolae ManiĠiu married three pairs of spouses, where the brides were Orthodox and the grooms were Greek Catholic; he was entitled to do so because “churchly laws” allowed the wedding to be officiated by a priest of the bride’s confession. From the point of view of secular law, his actions were also legitimate, for in keeping with Law no. 56 of 1868, the marriage had to be celebrated by one of the priests. Far from being clarified, the situation was complicated by the complaint the GreekCatholic priest Ioan ùerb submitted, claiming that the brides may have been baptised in the Orthodox faith, but their parents had converted to Greek Catholicism when the future brides were 7 years old, so the latter’s confession was the same as their parents’, namely Greek Catholic. According to the law, if they had wanted to change it, the intervention of the “orphancy authorities” would have been necessary, which had not been the case at that time. The Orthodox priest was punished to a pay part of the wedding fees, in the amount of 52 crowns. One possible danger had already been pinpointed by the men of the church, namely, of the 3 pairs, one did not have money to pay these fees and declared that “they would be content with only a civil marriage.” It is worth mentioning here an excerpt from the complaint filed by the GreekCatholic priest, who had received the amount for the wedding fee: “the (Orthodox) priest should pay, if he enjoyed mingling amongst the Greek Catholic people.”21 The precise ascertainment of the believers’ confession led to further efforts being made by the Orthodox Consistory (Council) in Sibiu, where the consistorial secretary, Miron Cristea, criticised the lack of initiative amongst some of the Orthodox priests: “it is only our [priests] who will leave everything to chance, even where they could easily win over many (believers).”22 The lack of such certificates caused long delays in the divorce proceedings, in which the parties involved and the priests were faced with situations where older disputes needing resolution were brought to the surface. 20

Soroútineanu, Aspecte din istoria Bisericii Greco-Catolice, 95; The Archdiocese of Sibiu Archive. Protocoalele ùedinĠelor Consistoriului Arhiepiscopiei Române Ortodoxe din Transilvania 1902. 21 The Archdiocese of Sibiu Archive, 1899, 756/6394. 22 The Archdiocese of Sibiu Archive, 1899, 756/6394.

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Mixed Marriages in the Orthodox Deanery of Sibiu (1860-1918)

Thus, Ion Bobeúiu of Hamba and Paraschiva Popoviciu from Turniúor in the Deanery of Sibiu filed for divorce in 1878, less than one year after their marriage. Given that the husband’s denomination was Greek Catholic, the trial was also heard by these authorities. Having submitted a medical certificate attesting her being abused, his wife obtained a divorce from the Greek-Catholic matrimonial tribunal and the husband was punished with the prohibition to remarry, while the Orthodox matrimonial authorities did not deprive the wife of this right. The following conclusions may be drawn: in many cases, a ban on a new marriage would be lifted after a period of time, during which the culprit was presumed to have mended his or her ways, but in the case mentioned above, a decisive factor may have been the incurable leg wound the husband was suffering from. Utterly dissatisfied with the decision of the Greek-Catholic tribunal, the husband quickly converted to the Orthodox faith. In its response, the Consistory of Sibiu demanded only that all the legal requirements should be complied with, for there was no impediment against his conversion.23 Another couple from the Deanery of Sibiu, Maria Stoica and Nicolae Boborodea of Nucet were involved in a divorce suit that had been delayed because although the wife had converted to the Greek-Catholic confession only for a brief while, the trial had been unable to advance until things were clarified.24 Things took a similar turn in the case of Stana Drăghiciu and Ioan Vidrighin of Răúinari: here, because of the suspicion that the wife had been Greek Catholic, Dr. Ioan Borcea, the jurist expert from the Consistory of Sibiu, demanded clarification on whether her denominational affiliation was endorsed by a birth certificate, and if so, what were the reasons why she had married in an Orthodox church?25 From Colun, another parish of the Deanery of Sibiu II, Ana CreĠu and Moise Braga did not know at which court they should file for divorce. They had been married for 9 years, but after 3 years, the husband had chosen the Greek-Catholic denomination; he therefore attended the GreekCatholic Church, where his children were also baptised. Since the divorce had taken place before the conversion, it was to be heard by the GreekCatholic authorities too. Ioan Panoviciu, the Orthodox archpriest from the Sibiu Deanery, commented on the behavioural pattern of small communities like the one in Colun: “for any trifling matter, they (the young spouses) will hasten into total separation.”26 23

The Archdiocese of Sibiu Archive, 1879, 238. The Archdiocese of Sibiu Archive, 1871, 706. 25 The Archdiocese of Sibiu Archive, 1871, 806. 26 The Archdiocese of Sibiu Archive, 1871, 99. 24

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There were reported cases in which the priests of both denominations made efforts to save marriages that were in trouble, including in the case of mixed marriages. In Sibiu, the Greek-Catholic priest Ioan Rus attempted to reconcile George Suciu and Paraschiva Banciu no less than 5 times. The wife suffered from epilepsy, which is how the husband explained her excessive verbal behaviour, “the unstoppable garrulousness of my wife, which is out of all bounds.” Though initially no canonical reason for divorce could be found, since basically one could not ask for divorce because his wife was bad mouthed, in the Deanery’s matrimonial court of first instance they were urged to seek reconciliation. Unlike the matrimonial court of first instance, the Metropolitan Consistory of Sibiu eventually agreed to grant them the divorce.27

Conclusions The facts presented above highlight only some of the typologies encountered in the archive of the Orthodox Metropolitan See from Sibiu. The following general conclusions should be drawn: A small number of mixed marriages were reported in the Deanery of Sibiu; to a large extent, they involved partners who were Romanian, but whose denomination was Greek Catholic. The reasons could have been very complex, but we believe that they were based on the structure of the population from Sibiu County and on a certain degree of immobility and conservatism in the area. Even after the introduction of civil laws on marriage and divorce, marriages were concluded in church too, but what should be noted here are the efforts made by both metropolitan sees to eliminate any possible conflicts, by standardising procedures for mixed marriages. Just like in the case of some communities, the Orthodox and the Greek-Catholic believers chose other, strictly personal reasons for changing their confession, demonstrating a higher degree of autonomy than that to which the priests had been accustomed. After the avalanche of laws whereby the dualist state had taken control of a significant moment in the life of each individual, both Romanian Churches managed to make the believers increasingly aware of the importance and the consequences of their actions in the public and the private space.

27

The Archdiocese of Sibiu Archive 1876, 504.

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Mixed Marriages in the Orthodox Deanery of Sibiu (1860-1918)

This was actually something that Metropolitan Andrei ùaguna had sensed at an earlier point in time, when, referring to the attitude that a man of the Church was bound to have toward marriage, he considered that the state was entitled to deal only with the “physical form of marriage, whereas its canonical and moral aspects are inherently dependent on the Church.”

References Published Sources Andreiu baron of ùaguna, Compendiul de Drept Canonic. Second edition, Sibiu: Editura ‫܈‬i Tiparul Tipografiei Arhidiocezane, 1885. Calendarul bunului creútin pe anii de la Christos 1880-1920, întocmit după gradurile úi clima Ungariei úi a României, Sibiu: Editura ‫܈‬i Tiparul Tipografiei Arhidiocezane, 1880-1920. “Cine susĠine căsătoria civilă,” Telegraful Român, March 22, 1894. “Efectele căsătoriei civile,” Telegraful Român, July 9, 1896. Protocoalele Sinoadelor Ordinare ale Arhidiecezei Greco-Orientale Române din Transilvania, 1880-1920, Sibiu: Editura ‫܈‬i Tiparul Tipografiei Arhidiocezane, 1880-1920. Telegraful Român, November 11, 1890. Telegraful Român, October 5, 1895. The Archdiocese of Sibiu Archive, 1854, III, 425. The Archdiocese of Sibiu Archive, 1871, III, 706 The Archdiocese of Sibiu Archive, 1871, III, 99. The Archdiocese of Sibiu Archive, 1871, III, 806 The Archdiocese of Sibiu Archive, 1876, III, 504. The Archdiocese of Sibiu Archive, 1879, III, 238. The Archdiocese of Sibiu Archive, 1899, III, 756/6394. The Archdiocese of Sibiu Archive, 1899, III, 756/6394. The Archdiocese of Sibiu Archive, Deanery of Sibiu, III, 998-B. The Archdiocese of Sibiu Archive. Protocoalele ùedinĠelor Consistoriului Arhiepiscopiei Române Ortodoxe din Transilvania, Sibiu, 1880-1916.

Secondary bibliography Bolovan, Ioan, Diana Covaci, Daniela Deteúan, Marius Eppel, Crinela Elena Holom. LegislaĠia ecleziastică úi laică privind familia românească din Transilvania în a doua jumătate a secolului al XIX-

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lea. Cluj-Napoca: Academia Română, Centrul de Studii Transilvane, 2009. Roúca Remus, Lexiconul comunelor bisericeúti din Arhidieceza GrecoOrtodoxă Română a Transilvaniei pentru trebuinĠele oficiale, Sibiu: Editura ‫܈‬i Tiparul Tipografiei Arhidiocezane, 1894. Soroútineanu,Valeria. Aspecte din istoria Bisericii Greco-Catolice. Sibiu: Editura Universită‫܊‬ii “Lucian Blaga”, 2007.

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Mixed Marriages in the Orthodox Deanery of Sibiu (1860-1918)

Appendix Table 1 Marriages in the Romanian Orthodox Archdiocese of Transylvania Reference year 1878 1879 1880 1881 1882 1883 1884 1885 1886 1887 1888 1889 1890 1891 1892 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 1899 1900 1901 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910 1911 1912 1913 1914 1915 1917

Religious Marriages 5,112 4,230 4,303 4,892 6,743 4,843 5,099 5,443 5,320 5,254 4,575 4,948 5,405 6,077 5,575 5,376 5,045 4,739 4,623 4,557 5,379 5,509 5,695 5,761 5,309 6,492 5,576 6,224 7,229 7,532 6,778 7,242 8,224 7,809 7,253 5,122 1,679 1,587

Civil marriages

127 83 86 103 88 103 88 96 102 102 105 162 226 279 170 139 99 125

Interfaith Marriages

417 148 386 399 323 369 446 485 495 439 570 570 607 778 726 704 809 883 810 750 480 158

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Table 2 The Romanian Orthodox Population in the Deanery of Sibiu Reference year

Deanery of Sibiu I

1871

25,510

1881 1882

23,010 23,010

1883 1884 1885 1886 1887 1888 1889 1890 1891 1892 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 1899 1900 1901 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910 1911 1912 1913 1914 1915 1916 1917 1918

Deanery of Sibiu II

25,263 25,263 Deanery of Sibiu 26,332 26,332 25,737 26,496 26,790 26,790 26,790 26,790 26,790 28,007 27,331 27,685 27,685 27,685 27,685 27,685 28,498 28,485 28,067 28,162 28,294 28,756 28,756 28,756 29,551 29,551 29,313 30,746 31,213 31,764 32,117 32,170 31,625 31,114

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Mixed Marriages in the Orthodox Deanery of Sibiu (1860-1918)

Table 3 Marriages in the Deanery of Sibiu Reference year

Religious Marriages

Interfaith Marriages

Civil Marriages

Marriages

1877

196

196

1879 1882 1883 1884 1887 1889 1890 1891 1893 1895 1896 1897 1898 1900 1901 1903 1904 1910 1911 1912 1913 1914 1915 1916 1917

462 219 230 190 102 207 177 263 247 160 164 237 192 224 247 218 294 318 320 318 331 211 41 42 49

462 219 230 190 102 207 177 263 247 171 166 274 193 228 249 220 297 320 320 318 331 211 41 42 49

11 18 37 26 22 26 23 26 56

2 37 1 4 2 2 3 2

Sources: Calendarul bunului creútin 1880-1920. Protocoalele Sinoadelor Ordinare ale Arhidiecezei Greco-Orientale Române din Transilvania 1880-1920.

JEWISH-CHRISTIAN MARRIAGES IN MARAMUREù COUNTY DURING THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: AN ORAL HISTORY RESEARCH PROJECT AURA COMĂNESCU PINTEA

The present study is a section of an oral history research project based on a series of interviews taken of 71 people, Jews and Christians, who were born or have lived most of their lives in the present-day County of Maramureú. This oral history research project resulted in the completion of my PhD thesis, entitled The Image of the Jews from Maramureú in the Collective Memory, which I defended before an academic committee on 29 March 2013. For certain religious minorities, marriage issues represent an extremely sensitive topic, even nowadays, when societal modernisation and emancipation have changed, to some extent, people’s perspectives on this matter. The subject of marriage was even more delicate within the Jewish community. We can easily imagine the rigid restrictions and interdictions with regard to mixed marriages in a social group with so many distinctive characteristics, so “different” from the majority, as was the case of the Jewish community throughout the 20th century. Abiding by the Law in matters pertaining to marriage traditions and practices was a high priority among the Jews. Moreover, these specific interdictions against marrying a spouse of a different religion were comprised in the texts of the Holy Bible; therefore, they had to be thoroughly observed. Marriage between Jews and people of different faiths is also repeatedly forbidden by the texts of the Old Testament. In the Book of Deuteronomy 7:1-4, where the seven nations Jews should fight against are clearly designated, the former are also cautioned against the following: (3) “Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, 4 for they will turn your sons away

150 Jewish-Christian Marriages in Maramureú County during the 20th Century from following me to serve other gods, and the Lord’s anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you.”1

The interdiction of marrying spouses of different faiths or of different nationalities is clearly stated and repeated in other similar excerpts from the Bible: Joshua 23, 12-13: “(12) But if you turn away and ally yourselves with the survivors of these nations that remain among you and if you intermarry with them and associate with them, (13) then you may be sure that the Lord your God will no longer drive out these nations before you. Instead, they will become snares and traps for you, whips on your backs and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from this good land, which the Lord your God has given you.”2

The same position and attitude towards marrying people of different faiths can also be found in the Book of Ezra 10:10-11: “(10) Then Ezra the priest stood up and said to them, ‘you have been unfaithful; you have married foreign women, adding to Israel’s guilt. (11) Now honour the Lord, the God of your ancestors, and do his will. Separate yourselves from the peoples around you and from your foreign wives.’”3

Intermarriage issues prior to deportation All the interviews that have been analysed over the course of this research reveal the same attitude and position towards mixed marriages between Jews and non-Jews. These intermarriages have always been regarded as “taboo” issues by both parties involved. No matter how close inter-ethnic relations might have been at that time, no exceptions to the rule were allowed: “the relations between Jewish and non-Jewish people were quite good, but that did not mean they were permitted to marry and start a family together.”4 Mixed marriages were concluded between people belonging to other minorities (especially when they shared the same faith), but marrying a Jewish person was something unimaginable: “there was no problem when a Romanian man married a Ukrainian woman, for instance. Nevertheless, marrying someone of Jewish faith was completely forbidden. Strong prohibitions were placed on marriages between Jews and non-Jews, 1

The Bible. The Bible. 3 The Bible. 4 Interview with ùtefan Pop. 2

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151

because the Jewish community did not allow such communions. They wouldn’t mix their blood with that of others… Their religion would forbid it. The members of the Jewish community did not allow other people, of other religions to marry someone of their own, because they were very devoted to their faith.”5 Due to potential “complications” determined by interfaith differences and religious issues, there was practically no future for relationships between Jewish girls and Christian young men. Therefore, Christians would not even consider socialising with these young women. “No way, young Romanian Christian men would not even dare get into a romantic relationship with Jewish girls. One would have had to be quite handsome and smart to be accepted as a spouse for their daughters. But no, Jews wouldn’t normally allow their daughters to marry a Christian fellow.”6 Even in smaller rural communities, young Jewish people had their own group of friends, all sharing the same faith, no “outsiders” being allowed. “Only with Jewish lads would Jewish girls take a stroll on a Saturday evening. Afterwards, both boys and girls would head home.”7“A Jewish girl would never have spent the night out, with some lad, as some of the girls in our community did. As I said before, they would only go for a walk around the village with young men of their own faith and then, Jewish lads and lassies would go straight back home, and they never wondered about at night.”8 As we can infer from an interview with Dora Apúan Sorell, during the interwar period Jewish teenage girls were not precluded, though, from having a boyfriend, on one condition, that is: “In my senior year of high school I even had a boyfriend. If you ask, sure, he was Jewish; there was no other way, right?”9 This particular love story still continues today in Berkeley, California, although it started in Sighet, one of the largest towns in the County of Maramureú. At that time, according to the official population census of 1930, the Jewish community was the largest in the town of Sighet (the census data show that the total population comprised, at that time, 38.6% Jews, 35.4% Romanians, 19.9% Hungarians, 4.5% Ukrainians, etc. There are still debates over the fact that the population census of 1930 might have taken into consideration only the Jews holding valid residence documents and that it completely ignored the large number

5

Interview with Mihai Botnariuc. Interview with Ioan Danci. 7 Interview with MăricuĠa MâĠ. 8 Interview with M. MâĠ. 9 Interview with Dora Apúan Sorell. 6

152 Jewish-Christian Marriages in Maramureú County during the 20th Century

of merchants, of students enrolled in the higher religious schools or of apprentices, all residing in town on a temporary basis). In smaller and rather remote, isolated villages, hazard also played an important role insofar as marriage and starting a family were concerned; therefore, every opportunity had to be seized: “at that time, my father was wandering around with his trade business and was transporting some goods for sale in his cart. Once he went to Satu Mare with some merchandise. He made a halt in a large village near the town and there was a sort of inn where people could also grab something to eat... My mother was the owners’ daughter. They met there and the second or the third time he passed by her parents’ inn, he proposed to her... She didn’t really agree at first, because she thought ‘Well, I’ve been raised in a town, how could I live in a village?’ But she eventually said ’Yes!’ She moved to her husband’s village and had a very good life and marriage, as my father was a very good man.”10 Sometimes, finding a partner for marriage was tantamount to looking for a needle in a haystack and people would eventually resort to professionals who could find the “perfect match” for them: “There was this shadchan.11 It was someone specialised in searching and finding a spouse, the perfect match for you. For instance, such a “match maker” would have, at some point, to make marriage arrangements for ten girls. Therefore, he/she had to find ten potential husbands for those girls. There were cases when these young men and women accepted their match maker’s proposals and lived happily ever after, as they say. Others, though, made their terms clear, they wanted dowry: ‘Yes, you’ve found someone for me, but it’s not enough, I also want board and lodging.’ I know my mother’s brother proposed a marriage arrangement to my father: ‘Well, you know I have a sister... What if I make you a match?!’ I know for sure this is how they got engaged and married.”12 When a match maker was not available, weddings were among the rare occasions of socialising for young Jewish men and women living in different villages: “there were these weddings in Tămăúeúti, in Urminiú or in Ariniú, for instance. I, for a fact, attended no wedding until my brother got married. It was the only Jewish wedding I went to.”13 The lack of socialising among Jewish young people was, to some extent, overcome by the fact that marriage between first-degree cousins was allowed and accepted in most Jewish families and communities. “My 10

Interview with an anonymous woman. Shadchan - match maker. 12 Interview with Sara Goldstein. 13 Interview with Rozalia Deutsch. 11

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grandmothers were sisters, born in SăpânĠa. Nevertheless, all the children born from my parents’ marriage alliance were healthy; none of them had any sort of handicap. In the Jewish religion, marriage between first-degree cousins is actually accepted. In spite of the fact that my parents were firstdegree cousins and contrary to all theories about genetic diseases, mental and physical disorders that might occur in children born from relationships between spouses who are in close kinship, all their children were healthy and beautiful and grew up as respectable and responsible people.”14 “The Mosaic legislation permitted marriage to cousins (Lev. 18; 20) but not to closer affines. […] Marriage within the family assured social equality and the preservation of the family wealth through the exchange of gifts, the payment of the bride-price (indirect dowry) and the use of the (direct) dowry as working capital.”15

During our oral history research, we came across a peculiar case in which marriage between first-degree cousins was repudiated and banned by the bride’s family. For her foolishness, she was disinherited. “My parents were also first-degree cousins. They married for love; it was not an arranged marriage. As a child, I remember my parents saying that my mother’s parents did not agree to their marriage, so my mother got no dowry, although her parents were wealthy.”16

The above-mentioned Jewish people eventually became parents themselves and, at some point, when their daughter also wanted to marry a cousin of hers, they were against their daughter’s relationship: “I knew that if my parents had been alive, they wouldn’t have let me marry him, because we were also first-degree cousins.” AP: “But still, your parents did get married, in spite of being cousins themselves.” DR: “Maybe that’s precisely the reason why they refused to allow us to marry. Then I told Tibi, who eventually became my husband: ‘I am only going to marry you when my parents agree to it. If they don’t, then I won’t do it.”17 Their marriage took place much later, when Rozalia Deutsch came back from deportation. She kept her word, in a manner of speaking, because her parents had died in Auschwitz. The interesting part is that the parents of Mrs. Rozalia Deutsch’s husband, of Jewish faith and closely related to her own parents, had agreed 14

Interview with Golda Solomon. Guenther, “Typology of Marriage,” 389. 16 Interview with Rozalia Deutsch. 17 Rozalia Deutsch. 15

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to the idea of her marriage to Tibi ever since their childhood: “I was only three years old back then. My mother was bathing us and my aunt asked my uncle: ‘Which one of these girls would you like for a daughter-inlaw?’ And my uncle chose me. He said: ‘It’s her I want.’ He chose me and it’s interesting how I remembered everything they had told me when I was only a small child. I remember once visiting them during my summer holidays. Tibi was in the army at that time, in Oradea... We were talking about things and they said to me: ‘Well, you do have a fiancée, you know...’ And I said: ‘But who’s my fiancée?!’ And they replied: ‘Well, it’s Tibi, you know...”18 Families had the last word insofar as concluding a marriage was concerned. In most cases, all family members would submit to and adopt any solution their family would consider suitable. Among the arguments in favour of Jewish people marrying only Jewish spouses, religious matters were by far the most important: “if the future groom was a Jew and the bride-to-be a Romanian young woman, their family wouldn’t allow them to marry. Changing one’s religion was forbidden. If the young man was a Jew, he could only marry a Jewish young woman. Likewise, a young Romanian woman could only marry a Romanian Christian lad.”19 Besides religious considerations, Jewish and Christian people would refrain from getting romantically involved for fear that their relationships would eventually lead to ethnic conflicts within their family: “To be honest, we have a very deep-rooted tradition which says every Jew should only marry another Jew. No one ever imposed it on me, but for various reasons... I can’t explain why, but when someone said, for instance, “well...she’s a kike” or something like that... it was painful for me to hear it... it really was, although I got along very well with everyone in the village. But as a child, when I heard other children calling me a “kike”, I naturally presumed they had heard their parents talking like this in the house and that’s why they kept calling me that. That’s why I only wanted to marry a Jew, one like myself.”20 We must mention that during the interwar period, most marriages between Christian young men and women were also arranged by their parents: “What did we know about love back then? Our parents said it was the right thing to do, that’s what the old folks thought back then, ma’am. The parents of young men and women usually talked to each other: “...well, you know I have a daughter... You have a son... My land plot is 18

Rozalia Deutsch. Interview with Golda Solomon. 20 Interview with Neli Lazăr. 19

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next to yours. We should marry our children, you and I could give them a piece of land and they would be able to breed some cattle or the likes...”21 The profound significance of marriage in Judaism is closely linked both to the religious vow made by the entire “chosen people” to their only God and to the individuals’ affiliation to their community and family. Young Jewish people actually abided both by their community and by their families, as the latter ones understood better which the best path to follow in life was. Here is an oral testimony of Ioan J. Popescu, a Christian intellectual from Sighet, who adopted the same perspective on the marriage strategies at work within the Jewish community. He says: “The idea that marriage had nothing to do with love was a strong belief amongst the Jewish community for a very long time... They probably no longer see it as a valid idea nowadays. As regards their marriage arrangements, whether it was all a matter of pure business or not, one cannot tell. One thing is certain: the community decided what was best for a person and for the entire community as well. If a decision taken by the community with regard to an individual was good for that individual, then it was the best decision for the community, too.”22 His opinion coincides with that of the militant American feminist Blu Greenberg: “In Judaism, marriage reflects aspects or dimensions of what might be thought of as sacramental but also of what is quite secular, and these aspects are determined by rabbinic interpretation of Jewish law. Some of the rulings of the rabbinic stance in regards to the purposes and guidelines of marriage have been as follows: Jewish individuals have an obligation to marry, with the entire community responsible to fulfil that obligation; the role of predestination is considered in holding that humans are unable to adequately perform mate selection without the involvement of God; sexuality and its urges are considered positive and normal; celibacy is actually looked down on even if the celibate is an esteemed scholar; and procreation is seen as a central duty of married individuals, but it is expected to be balanced by mutual sexual desire.”23

In their article “Many Meanings of Marriage”, Yarhouse and Nowaki make a thorough analysis of the world’s major religions and underline the fact that in Judaism, marriage has a more profound significance and that it is more than a mere contract between two individuals in the presence of God. By marriage, every Jewish believer helps fulfil the promise made by God to his people: 21

Interview with Sava MâĠ. Interview with Ioan J. Popescu. 23 Greenberg, “Marriage Tradition,” 37. 22

156 Jewish-Christian Marriages in Maramureú County during the 20th Century “Marriage is also valued in Judaism for the related reason that it is the route for fulfilment of the covenantal promise made by God to his people by means of procreation: ‘The biological family, born of marriage, is the unit that carries the promise of the covenant, one generation at a time, toward their final completion and realisation’. Put differently, marriage is ‘central to the theology of Judaism’ because of its covenantal symbolism, which ‘rests on the meaning premised in its procreative impulse.’ So marriage is central to Judaism; however, it is not considered a formal religious sacrament in the way that it is in Christianity.”24

These are some of the reasons why mixed marriages between Jews and Christians bore the burden of supreme treason against God’s plan and were perceived as a desertion from attaining the common objective of the Jewish community and family. Apart from this particular aspect, there was also the Jewish belief that in a mixed family, awareness of their own identity would fade away in time. “Trends in exogamy reflect more than an ‘erosion’ of population size and composition; they provoke and create tensions about the measure and meaning of Jewish identity and the development and maintenance of consensus on core Jewish values and theological principles.”25 No wonder, therefore, that more than fifty years ago, marrying someone of a different nationality and faith was taboo amongst the Jewish communities in Maramureú, most of which were very religious. Christians, on the other hand, were also aware of the fact that Jews were extremely religious: “I think they were more disciplined than we were. They observed their Talmudic and other religious laws more thoroughly than we did.”26 In the late interwar period, between 1939 and 1942, when antiSemitism in Romania was at the highest level, there were, nonetheless, voices accusing the Jews that they actually wanted to mix with the dominant nation, with the Romanians, and that, in fact, the latter, being Christians, were opposing this. “The attitude of the nationalist circles towards the Jewish problem is closely connected to the tendency of assimilating the Jews with the Christians in Romania. Fortunately, the Romanians’ hatred towards the Jews doesn’t really allow for the mixing of blood through intermarriage.”27

24

Yarhouse, Nowacki, Many Meanings of Marriage, 36. Kaufman, review of Jewish Intermarriage, 601. 26 Interview with Dumitru Dunca. 27 R. K, review of Judenfrage in Rumänien, 428. 25

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In spite of all sorts of marriage-related interdictions, we can find forbidden love stories in almost every Jewish family. Numerous cases served as “negative examples” for many generations to come. Most of these stories have no happy end, because sense and reasoning usually outweighed feelings and sensibility. “My mother had also liked someone, a colonel, but I think she was not allowed to have a relationship with that man. There were some romantic feelings between them, but everybody knew it was impossible... Maybe she even suffered from not being able to follow her heart, as she had told me so many times: ‘...isn’t love beautiful...?’... But she also told me that back then; no one would have dared love someone of a different faith... There were so few cases of mixed marriages... Although she had loved that colonel as a young woman, she had had to give him up and marry someone else later, because she didn’t want to die an old maid. In time, she knew she would have to be a good and honest wife and get along with her life... She eventually learnt to love my father. That was the mentality back then.”28 An interview with Mihai Eisikovits, a Jewish young man back in the interwar period, reveals another story about a Romanian colonel, this time: he had a daughter, with whom Mr. Eisikovits fell in love. The Romanian colonel, the girl’s father, did not agree to her marrying a Jew. Here’s what Mr. Mihai Eisikovits tells us: “I met a wonderful Romanian young girl, she was a marvellous person. Her mother was a physician. My intentions were honourable and I was quite sure of my feelings... But I couldn’t marry her because her father had been a colonel of gendarmerie and was openly against our relationship. Well, what could I do?! I had to keep out of that wasps’ nest. That says it all, I think... She eventually married a veterinary physician, who proved himself a first class drunkard. He was Romanian, all right, but an alcohol addict, a brawler and a lazybones... He would stay out for days, he wouldn’t come home and they found him dead drunk many times, sleeping in a ditch. She told me so. But well... he was Romanian... And, of course, they eventually got divorced.”29

Mrs. Rozalia Deutsch, on the other hand, refused, for the sake of her parents, the advances a Romanian young man made to her, even though he would have done anything for her: “He was a very handsome and bright young man, but I knew I wasn’t allowed to marry him, ever. I used to tell him: If I ever get married, I will 28 29

Interview with Sara Goldstein. Interview with Mihai Eisikovits.

158 Jewish-Christian Marriages in Maramureú County during the 20th Century choose only someone who holds a degree!” He made me shake his hand and I had to promise him that if he ever became a university graduate, I would marry him. And I said: ‘No, I can’t do that.’ I didn’t want my parents to suffer. I knew they loved me so much, so I decided not to get involved in this romantic affair.”30

In some cases, though, young people on both sides chose to ignore all religious interdictions, but their relationships did not always have a happy ending. Mr.Vasile Chindriú remembers such a love story: “There were two young people, she was Jewish and he was a Romanian Christian... Neither of the families would ever have agreed to their marriage... And, one day, they found them both dead in the field of maize. They had committed suicide because their parents would not allow them to marry. Many others lived in concubinage and their families couldn’t do much to separate them...”31

Such acts of deflection, displaying genuine courage and a spirit of mutual sacrifice, were mainly seen in the larger boroughs and towns, where one could easily succumb to various temptations and where most young people had a rather open-minded mentality. Besides, they were more likely to be able to support themselves without the help of their family of origin. Mrs.Hédi Fried has given us an account of such an episode, which had an overwhelming impact on her, as a child. It was actually part of the strategies and measures Jewish families and communities adopted in such cases: for others so see and learn from the so-called sinners’ mistakes: “As we opened the door to the dining room, we faced a heavy, mourning silence. The whole family was sitting down on the carpet, all red-eyed... There was a burning candle on the table and all the mirrors, pictures and paintings in the room were covered in cloth. I asked my mother what was going on, but she signalled to me to be quiet and she explained to me, in a whisper: our eighteen-year-old cousin Teri had eloped with a non-Jewish boy and now, the whole family was in mourning, shivah. They were going to mourn for her for seven days, according to the Jewish tradition. ‘But she’s not dead!’, I objected... Still, my mother kept on whispering: ‘For them, she’s as good as dead now...’ My uncle and aunt never forgave their daughter Teri. They even forbade her sisters to ever meet her again.”32

30

Interview with Rozalia Deutsch. Interview with Vasile Chindriú. 32 Fried, Pendulul vieĠii, 40. 31

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In most cases, even when the newly established family was resilient and children were born, the “lost sheep” was lost forever for the Jewish family and community: “I only remember one case when someone converted from Judaism. The Markovitses were a very observant family. They had a small booth where they sold soda and sweets. Their daughter worked in that store. She was a very pretty girl. There was a collector, a very good-looking Romanian man, the head of the public finances, they were about the same age, or the man was slightly older, and they fell in love with each other. One day the girl disappeared. They looked for here everywhere for months, but nobody knew what had happened to her. In the end, one of the neighbours told them she was staying in the tax collector’s house. Moreover, they had been married by a Romanian priest. The whole family was totally devastated. For a Jew, a converted Jew was the same as a dead one. The whole community was talking only about what had happened – she was excluded from the community. She was disowned even by her family and they broke any contact with her. For us, children, it was a very unusual thing for a Jewish girl or boy to marry a Christian, this was equivalent to their death. (And interestingly, she wasn’t deported and had 2 children. She is dead already; she was 6 years older than I.)”33

In some cases, though, the family of origin would eventually get over the “ultimate betrayal” of their children and they were on good terms with the newly established family. “For example, I had an aunt. Before World War I, she had found work in Hungary and went to Budapest, but she was born in Bolda, a Romanian village. In Budapest, she met a young Hungarian Catholic man and they got married. Well... you can imagine: her family did not like this at all. Neither my father, nor my grandmother... They even broke any contact with her for a long time. Nonetheless, when my aunt’s children grew up, they eventually got along pretty well.”34

From the information provided by the interviewees who contributed to the current study, we can infer that before deportation, both Jews and Christians strongly held to their traditional taboos concerning marriage between individuals of different faiths. They tried to prevent and avoid any infringement whatsoever by means of education and strictness. If such an undesirable event did occur, serious punitive measures were taken against the “traitorous” couple in order to set an example for all the other 33 34

Interview with Bernat Sauber. Interview with Desideriu Fülop.

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members of the community. Not to mention that in the long run, such love stories would enter the rural oral tradition as shameful and dishonourable affairs. Both Jews and Christians were well aware of the rules: “There was no such thing as mixed marriages ever before, in our community.”35 And the rules had to be observed: “If a Jewish young man wanted to marry a Romanian young woman, his family would never have approved. Everybody knew that changing one’s religion was forbidden. If that Jewish young man we were talking about was Jewish, then he had to marry a Jewish young woman and the young Romanian woman had to marry a Romanian, of course.”36

The Holocaust The dreadful tragedy of the Holocaust also meant a dramatic turn as regards the traditional mentalities towards marriage. This critical situation also triggered the self-preservation instinct among some members of the Jewish community, who were willing to ignore any religious and Biblical precepts and principles in order to save their lives. Others made a stand and kept their faith while knowing that the alternative to entering a mixed marriage was death. Cornel Tureanu has given us an account of a romantic relationship that surmounted all traditional prejudices. “A Jewish girl escaped from being deported. She had a love affair with a Hungarian fellow... He was our military training instructor at Levente’s back then... All young lads had to participate in the military instruction... During our training, he also taught us various Hungarian songs: ‘Lads with Jewish girlfriends should hang themselves’ ... that sort of lyrics... Only much later did we realise he was actually bluffing. We heard that this instructor of ours, Costin Alexandru was his name ௅ I really have no idea what sort of a Hungarian guy he was, as he had a Romanian name... so this Costin Alexandru, although he had been teaching us those songs instigating us against the Jews, saved that Jewish girl from being deported... He kept her in a hiding place and then married her. He actually saved her... she’s the only Jewish person I know of who was not deported...”37

35

Interview with Ioana Mârza. Interview with Golda Solomon. 37 Interview with Cornel Tureanu. 36

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Many other love stories with a happy end occurred from time to time, like the one related by Margareta Mezei. She tells us about a Jewish young man saved by his fiancée: “One of these people was an engineer; he was actually the manager of the electrical plants in Sighet. One of his house maids, who was doing the cleaning and cooking for him, found a hiding place for him in the mountains and saved him from deportation. He had a very beautiful house and when things settled down, he returned home. As a form of reward for her saving his life, he married her.”38

Golda Solomon also tells us a similar story: “Some Jews have been hidden by Romanian Christians and managed to escape deportation. Yes, they did.... One of these Jewish lads, Samuel Perl, had a relationship with a Romanian woman (the Devil’s Mary they’d called her). She hid him inside a dried-out drilled well. She used to bring him food and supplies, but only at night. He was saved from deportation. He married this Romanian woman...”39

Ioan Gulin, a Romanian national, had the opportunity of saving a Jewish girl by marrying her. He says they were both interested in getting married: she wanted to save herself from being deported and, on the other hand, he was hoping to become a wealthy man... He thought his future wife would reveal to him the Jews’ secrets to prosperity. But no priest agreed to marry him in Church, because he was under the marrying age: “Some gossip was flying around about the Jews being taken away... They were forced to wear those yellow stars on their coats and things were getting serious... But there was a chance of escape... Jews who agreed to convert to Christianity would be able to marry a Romanian man or woman and could escape deportation thus. It was a rumour... And there was this Jewish girl who wanted to save herself; she was looking for a Romanian lad who would accept to marry her... But most Romanian lads were afraid to take this step... I wasn’t, although I was so young... I was only 16 years old back then... I thought I might get rich if I married her, but I was under the marrying age, no priest would marry us in the Church... My mother went weeping to the priest and she asked him why he wouldn’t marry us. And the priest told her that even if I had intended to marry a Romanian girl, it would have been impossible for him to join us in holy matrimony because of my age... He said that only after the age of 18 would he be able to marry us in the sight of God. But it wasn’t a tragedy... 38 39

Interview with Margareta Mezei. Interview with Golda Solomon.

162 Jewish-Christian Marriages in Maramureú County during the 20th Century Not for me... She was a nice young woman, her religion or nationality didn’t count to me... It was no big deal; we had done nothing shameful...” 40

In other cases, young Jewish women did not agree to any proposal, even if it would have saved their lives. In Copalnic Mănăútur, a Jewish girl refused a marriage proposal from someone who wanted to save her from deportation. She stood by her parents until the end: “I remember a Jew, Rosenberg was his name. He had a very beautiful, charming daughter. She was a doll of a girl, tall, athletic, with a wonderful personality... and there was a young man who liked her very much and asked her to stay. But she wouldn’t... She didn’t want to leave her parents. We heard that in some villages around here, this sort of last-minute marriage did not matter to the authorities... Young women recently married to Romanian Christians were still taken away... “41

Golda Solomon also confessed to having received such a last-minute marriage proposal, on her way to Auschwitz, but she had turned it down: “There was this handsome young soldier who said to me: Come on, I’ll find you a good hiding place! Do you think I’m crazy? Me, hiding? I’m not going anywhere! He probably had his heart set on me; he even said he would marry me. When we walked for a few miles on the road, he said: Look, there’s a gate, run through that gate and hide... I’ll meet you there and I’ll help you escape deportation. And I said: I won’t leave the others, we started this journey together and we’ll go together... I didn’t trust him, I said to myself that maybe he’d set his mind to dishonour me and then hand me over to the authorities as a runaway. So I refused his proposal.”42

After deportation Our analysis clearly shows that before deportation, some members of the Jewish community encountered a series of difficulties in finding a suitable marriage partner, especially if they lived in rather small and isolated villages. Nonetheless, this particular situation was generalised for all Holocaust survivors, when they returned home. Diminished in number by the Holocaust and by emigration, the surviving members of the Jewish community had to adapt themselves to the new life conditions. In order to preserve their traditions, some of them gave up on their previously held 40

Interview with Ion Gulin. Interview with IoanTureanu. 42 Interview with Golda Solomon. 41

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social or economic status and concluded mixed marriages, an inconceivable act before World War II. “She was the daughter of the synagogue’s curator... Theirs was a renowned and wealthy family. This guy we are talking about, Habălă, was a ragamuffin,43 quite destitute. They had no choice; she had to marry him, because they weren’t able to find her a Jewish husband.”44

During the communist regime, some Jewish families imposed the observance of traditional rules on their adult children who wanted to find a marriage partner: “My child was very understanding and reasonable. I told him I wanted one thing only: ‘Marry someone of your own kind, no one else, I’m telling you!’ And when he brought his future wife home, I couldn’t comment on his decision... She was Jewish, of course. That had been our only condition and that was it... It was he who had chosen her, not us.... I don’t know if this is good or bad, but I heard from other people that people of different religions entering mixed marriages don’t get along too well, even though human beings are all the same, no matter their faith... everyone worships one God alone... We decided it was best for our son to have a Jewish wife...”45

Hari Markus describes, in a rather humorous manner, the circumstances of his first meeting with his future wife, a young Jewish girl. His personal marital options were actually determined by his deeply rooted religious awareness, which made him choose a partner who shared the same faith and nationality, even if he was open-minded and tolerant of diversity. “It was a sort of custom back then and I also think it was preferable for Jews to marry Jews. My wife and I first met at a public community meeting and then.... I ... I hooked up with her... I didn’t need a reason for that, I just liked her... But I must say there are very strong and good marriages amongst mixed families, as well. Different nationalities and faiths shouldn’t normally be an impediment against marrying someone you love. Love is the most important reason of all when one wants to start a family. On the other hand, I, for instance, also thought that if I married someone sharing the same religion, we’d spend and celebrate the Jewish

43

Coldúú, -i, (coldău), m. n. translated from Hungarian: koldus. Interview with Ioan Danci. 45 Interview with Sara Goldstein. 44

164 Jewish-Christian Marriages in Maramureú County during the 20th Century holidays together. I don’t know exactly what I thought back then... It’s a long time since then...”46

During the communist regime, the advancement of societal levelling, including in the most intimate areas, such as marriage and starting a family, determined many Jews to enter mixed marriages. Most of them completely ignored the tradition of getting married in church and preferred a civil ceremony instead. Young couples could have a civil marriage without being forced to meet any nationality and religion-related conditions. Mrs. Markovits, a Hungarian national, remembers how she found out, shortly before her wedding, that she would become the member of a very religious Jewish family: “My mother-in-law was born in Sighetul MarmaĠiei and my father-in-law was from Baia Mare. I had no idea that my future husband was a Jew. We never actually thought of choosing our life partners according to nationality or religion... It wasn’t like that... When we bought our wedding rings, my mother-in-law started telling me I must convert to Judaism and learn the proper manner of cooking, housekeeping and all that... I was taken aback by her discourse, because I found it difficult to understand.... How could she think that I, at the age of 19, had no idea how to clean up or cook, for that matter...? Our mother had taught us everything we needed to know about household keeping, so I knew about these things... But afterwards, my husband said to me: ‘You must be careful... My mother wants everything to be kosher; every household task must be dealt with like in all traditional Jewish families.’ So, he also demanded that I do everything kosher. At first, I had no idea how to do that, so I stood aside, watched them do things and learnt.”47

Fulop Desideriu, on the other hand, has made an open confession about the actual marriage-related mentalities of people. He states that there are families ௅ even nowadays ௅ which are still not open towards mixed marriages. “AP: You said these mixed marriages were held in disregard by most people. FD: Yes, they were... But do you think they aren’t now, in the 21st century? Well... My wife is Romanian. My father-in-law came from the County of Teleorman and my mother-in-law from Mihai Bravu, close to Moldavia. Her grandparents descended from that region. But don’t you believe that all the people around us looked favourably on our

46 47

Interview with Hari Markus. Interview with Ileana Marcovits.

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relationship... It depended on the character of each of them... Never mind, we have been together for more than 40 years now.”48

Most interviewees agree that even during the communist regime, mixed families comprising Jewish and Christian members paid due respect and consideration to both cultures and religions, as much as they could. Mr. Alexa Frenkel was lucky enough to find a Christian wife, who would have done everything out of love for him: “[My wife] was half Romanian, half Hungarian. Her name was Irina ğentea. She was a rather religious person. And she proved to be more Jewish than I was... She knew I was a Jew when we met, and she wanted to convert to Judaism, but we didn’t have much money to spend on something like this... It would have meant travelling to Cluj and Bucharest for some special classes... and staying there for a while... and we didn’t really afford it. AC: Why would she convert to Judaism? FA: She only wanted to do this for me. We (crying)... we loved each other very much.”49

Conclusions Compared to the interwar period, when mixed marriages between Jews and Christians were totally rejected, many changes occurred during the communist years. Even though senior members of the Jewish community, survivors of the Holocaust, would have preferred their descendants to continue living in the traditional way, they had to resign themselves: “I can tell you they weren’t that strict after World War II. They just couldn’t. My mother-in-law was very strict, for that matter, because she was a very religious person and wanted to impose her religion on all of us. She thought her religion was something special and had to be respected. We never argued about that, ever. She wasn’t upset that I was of Hungarian nationality, but she would have liked her son to marry a Jewish girl and her family should have been of Jewish origin, of course. But my father-in-law never interfered with his son’s decisions and my husband never thought of marrying a Jewish girl, so I had no problem in this respect.”50 In most cases, the families of the future spouses (of both Jewish and Christian faith) would display mutual positive attitudes like appreciation, 48

Interview with Desideriu Fülop. Interview with Alexa Frenkel. 50 Interview with Ileana Marcovits. 49

166 Jewish-Christian Marriages in Maramureú County during the 20th Century

admiration and respect towards each other. It was the case of Mrs. Mariana Jager’s Romanian family, especially her father, who was most happy to agree to her marrying a Jewish young man: “At least I had the privilege to have a Jewish husband, to know more about their culture and religion... I don’t have a thorough knowledge about Judaism, you may realise that... In 1991, when we got married, I only had a few notions... My father, God rest his soul, when I told him who was the young man I was going to marry, said: ‘Aha... His father is Jewish!’ So that’s how my father reacted...” AP: With appreciation? JM: Yes, his “aha...” meant that my husband was someone special, from a good family... Only afterwards did I discover and study their language and culture... I travelled and visited them and attended meetings... And I felt great ... and I settled down here. What can I say?! We can’t change who we are, but we can choose what we become and what we do with our lives.”51

There has been considerable debate about whether mixed marriages between Jews and Christians led to the dissipation of traditions and religious rituals, hence to the current situation of the Jewish communities in general. The French writer of Jewish extraction Alain Finkielkraut shares a positive view towards mixed marriages: “Jews do not abandon their traditions by marrying a non-Jewish spouse.’ On the contrary, by doing that, a Jewish person demonstrates the will to disseminate knowledge about Judaism throughout the world. Those who want to stay Jewish in a world they couldn’t care less about contribute to reducing Judaism to nothing more than a lobby.”52

As it has been observed, the open mentality of today’s Christians towards Jews has led to a revival of the Jewish community in Sighet, to some extent. Here, in Sighet, young people born from mixed marriages or distantly related to some of their Jewish ancestors actively participate in the activities organised by the community. The Jewish culture continues, therefore, to be spread and to advance, having been brought back to light and saved from the oblivion to which it was relegated by helplessness and carelessness. We must say that, unfortunately, it was not so much because of mixed marriages as because of mass emigration to Israel that the villages of Maramureú have been emptied of their Jewish inhabitants. All they left behind were the cemeteries and the memories of old people, who still 51 52

Interview with Mariana Jager. Le Monde, 218.

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recount stories about their former Jewish neighbours, acquaintances and, for some, friends. But not for long... As we have tried to indicate in the present study, oral history research is constantly trying to capitalise on stories of people’s lives which may be told by the fireplace on a winter evening or in a shelter by a Maramureú traditional gate. Moreover, one of our most important goals in developing these oral history studies is to stimulate the younger generations to explore and understand the fascinating but already vanishing world of the Jewish people who once lived in the area.

References Fried, Hédi. Pendulul vieĠii. Bucure‫܈‬ti: EdituraVremea XXI, 2004. Guenther, Allen. “A Typology of Israelite Marriage: Kinship, SocioEconomic, and Religious Factors,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 29 (2005): 387-407. Kaufman, Debra Renee. Review of the Jewish Intermarriage around the World, by Shulamit Reinharz and Sergio Della Pergola (eds.), New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2009, Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews, 39, 5 (2010): 601-622. Karl Reinerth, Review of Die Judenfrage in Rumänien, by Hans Schuster. Anuarul Institutului de Istorie NaĠională, VIII, 1939-1942, Sibiu: Tipografia Cartea Românească din Cluj (1942): 424-429. Wasserstein, Bernard. DispariĠia disaporei. Evreii din Europa începând cu 1945. Iaúi: Polirom Publishing, 2000. Yarhouse, Mark A, and Kaye Nowacki, Stephanie. “The Many Meanings of Marriage: Divergent Perspectives Seeking Common Ground”. The Family Journal 15, 1 (2007): 36-45.

Electronic Sources “The Bible, New International Version,” Retrieved from http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy+7%3A14&version=NIV Interview with Dora Apúan Sorell. Retrieved from http://www.tellingstories.org/holocaust/dsorell/index.html. Interview with Bernat Sauber, taken by Ildiko Molnar in November 2003, Retrieved fromhttp://www.centropa.org/biography/bernat-sauber

168 Jewish-Christian Marriages in Maramureú County during the 20th Century

Appendix Anonymous Lady, a person born in 1923 in Sălaj County (she does not want to specify the locality), Jewish, Mosaic religion, housewife, pensioner Apúan Sorell, Dora, born in 1921, in Sighet Jewish, Mosaic religion, physician, pensioner Botnariuc, Mihai, born in 1938, in Rona de Sus, Maramureú County, Ukrainian, Orthodox, primary school teacher, pensioner. Chindriú, Vasile, born in SighetuMarmaĠiei, Maramureú County, Romanian, Orthodox, pensioner. Danci, Ioan, born in 1927, in Săcel, Maramureú County, Romanian, Orthodox, pensioner. Deutsch, Rozalia (maiden name Ferencz), born in 1923 in BăiĠa de Sub Codru, Sălaj County, Jewish, Mosaic religion, office worker, pensioner. Dunca, Dumitru, born in 1931, in ùieu, Maramureú County, Romanian, Orthodox, primary school teacher, pensioner. Eisikovits, Mihai, born in 1920, in Gherla, Cluj County, Jewish, Mosaic religion, economist, pensioner, Fülöp Desideriu, born in 1928, in Ariniú, Maramureú County, Jewish, Mosaic religion, accountant, pensioner. Frenkel, Alexa, born in 1928, in Chiúineu Criú, Bihor County, Jewish, Mosaic religion, accountant, pensioner. Goldstein, Sara, born in 1935, in Iaúi, Jewish, Mosaic religion, accountant, pensioner. Gulin, Ion, born in 1927, in Strâmtura, Maramureú County, Romanian, Orthodox, farmer, pensioner. Jager, Mariana, born in 1970, in Sighetu MarmaĠiei, Maramureú County, Romanian, Orthodox, trade worker. Lazăr, Neli, born in1947 in Budeúti, Maramureú County, Jewish, Mosaic religion, manager, pensioner. Marcovits, Ileana, born in 1937, in Băbeni, Sălaj County, Hungarian, Reformed religion, chemist technician, pensioner. Markus, Hari, born in 1942, in Iaúi, Jewish, Mosaic religion, engeneer, pensioner, president of the Jewish Community Sighetu MarmaĠiei. Mârza, Ioana, born in 1924, in Rozavlea, Maramureú County, Romanian, Orthodox, housewife. MâĠ, MăricuĠa, born in 1919, in Moisei, Maramureú County, Romanian, Orthodox, housewife.

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MâĠ, Sava, born in 1927, in Moisei, Maramureú County, Romanian, Orthodox, housewife. Mezei, Margareta (maiden name Rosenberg), born in 1921, in Sighetu MarmaĠiei, Jewish, Mosaic religion, pensioner. Pop, ùtefan, born in 1934 in Ariniú, Maramureú County, Romanian, Catholic, trader, pensioner Popescu, Ioan Johnny, born in 1953, in Baia Mare, Baia Mare Region, Romanian, Catholic religion, journalist. Sauber, Bernat, born in 1920, in Târgu Lăpuú, Someú County, Jewish, Mosaic religion, prosecutor, pensioner, president of the Jewish Community Târgu Mureú. Solomon, Golda (maiden name Malek), born in 1926, in Sighetu MarmaĠiei, Maramureú County, Jewish, Mosaic religion, pensioner Tureanu, Cornel, born in 1929, in Copalnic Mănăútur, Someú County, Romanian, Orthodox, public functionary, pensioner. Tureanu, Ioan, born in 1927, in Copalnic Mănăútur, Someú County, Romanian, Orthodox, inspector of taxes, pensioner.

INTERMARRIAGE VS. NATIONALISM? CASE STUDY: CLUJ (TRANSYLVANIA), THE INTERWAR PERIOD BOGDAN CRĂCIUN AND DANIELA MÂRZA

Transylvania has represented, for over a millennium, a mixed region from an ethnic and confessional standpoint. Its importance lies not only in the fact that it has been inhabited prevalently by Romanians, but also in the significance with which it has been invested in the Romanian collective mind ௅ that of being an important part of the territory of the Romanian nation, a safe place where the Romanians could retreat from the path of the Slavic tribes or the Turks who invaded them. For this reason, Transylvania has always had great symbolic significance within Romania. On the eve of World War I, Transylvania (then a province of Hungary) had a population of about 2.7 million inhabitants, of which almost 1.5 million were Romanians, 865,000 were Hungarians and 218,000 were Germans. The localities where these communities lived together accounted for a small number compared to the number of ethnically compact villages (about 80% of the localities). Nonetheless, the Hungarians formed the majority of the great landowners, the civil servants, and the representatives of other socially significant professions. To compensate for their numerical disadvantage, the Hungarian authorities pursued a relentless policy of assimilating the Romanians, which generated strong hostilities, with a substantial impact on the overall atmosphere at the end of the war and after the accomplishment of Greater Romania.1 In the new post-war world, the political elite of interwar Europe had no plan to integrate into society and co-opt into governance the minorities that had held dominant positions before. The situation was further

1

Reisser, “Self-Determination,” 231–47.

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complicated by the prevailing concept of the nation-state, which was incompatible with the idea of a powerful minority.2 Any multi-national state contains at least one ethnic group that considers itself “the ruling nation,” whose mission is to ensure the growth of the national patrimony and to rule the other “subjected” nations.3 At the end of World War I, the rule by a “dominant minority” was replaced by the nation-state of the “dominant majority” in the Transylvanian space.4 The replacement of the dynastic empires by the nation-states raised the national question within new frameworks; in Romania’s case, the territorial unit did not overlap with the cultural or the social unit. The administrative and legal unification measures did not automatically entail the homogenisation of the population, among which the numerous minorities, far from collaborating with the new state, harboured strong resentment towards it, rightly seeing it as an instrument of the majority group.5 Ethnic-nationalism, the dominant driving force in these cases, derives its strength from the idea that the members of a nation are part of an extended family, united by blood ties, the idea of “us” versus “them” being as real and tangible as possible.6 Ethnicity and nationalism have been considered essential tools of social and cultural identification, of delineating the “self” from the “others” and of building, around these concepts, an entire reality (consisting of solidarities, interests, etc.). Confessional membership acts in the same way, serving as a factor of social cohesion and division simultaneously. Religion also provides tools for the identification of one group versus “another,” of building, in a particular way, a community at the level of the collective mind.7 As regards Transylvania, after 1918-1919 it was included in a state whose territory and population doubled. Thus, in this province, to the tensions existing before the war and to those triggered by the economic and social crisis were added those caused by a series of measures taken by the new state, such as universal male suffrage, the emancipation of the Jews, or the land reform. At the level of the elites, disgruntlement stemmed from the fact that in the annexed territories, only few of the intellectuals and the tradesmen were of Romanian extraction: they were 2

Cattaruzza, “Last Stop Expulsion,” 114. Ingrao, “Understanding Ethnic Conflict,” 291-318. 4 Deletant, “A Balancing Act,” 125. 5 Brubaker, “Politică naĠionalistă,” 46. 6 Müller, “Us and Them,” 18-35. 7 Brubaker, “Religion and Nationalism,” 2-20. 3

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primarily Hungarians, Germans and Jews and, although they accounted for a minority in the new state, they occupied better social and cultural positions. This situation was to persist for a long time. According to the 1930 census, only 58.2% of the urban population was represented by the Romanians, who formed a compact mass especially in rural areas where, in Transylvania, they had a strong sense of regional identity combined with a broader ethnic-national consciousness.8 In addition, the ethnic communities that had become minorities in the new Romanian state often went through identity crises. One such example is that of the Saxons, in whose case there was a diminishment of the “Saxon” identity related to Transylvania in favour of an affiliation to the broader German community.9 In this context of unrest and turbulence, the city of Cluj was invested with special significance. Its remarkable role can be traced back to very long ago. Since the eighteenth century, Cluj has functioned as the capital of Transylvania, being considered the most important city of the province. Throughout time, important educational and cultural institutions were set up here.10 In the modern era, Cluj was considered one of the most important centres of public life in Hungary, if not the most important after Budapest.11 After Transylvania was included in Greater Romania, Cluj maintained its importance, being regarded as the “heart of Transylvania” and a genuine “barometer” of the process of Romanianisation in the province. The Romanian history of Cluj began when the city was taken over by the Romanian administration. This, in all appearances, amounted to a genuine conquest and the Romanianisation of Cluj became a priority policy for the authorities, notwithstanding the fact that the local population proved hostile, resorting to all manner of vexations against the Romanian newcomers (who had difficulty in finding housing since the majority Hungarian landlords would reluctantly rent to them; this led to forced requisitioning measures, to “requisition vouchers, on which many a time tears were spilled: of joy, by the poor Romanians, who, until they received these vouchers, would loiter aimlessly on the streets of Cluj, looking for a home, and of grief, by the chauvinistic minority members, forced to make room for one or another of the usurping nation’s detested sons”). The situation was elucidated, without right of appeal, in a very suggestive “Address to the Hungarian Fellow Citizens of Cluj,” which Gh. Bogdan

8

Szilágyi-Gál, “The Nationality of Reasoning,” 89. Cercel, “Religious and National Identity,” 169. 10 Vais, “Urban Planning,” 449-68. 11 Reisser, “Self-Determination,” 231–47. 9

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Duică, a Professor of Romanian Literature at the University of Cluj, submitted to the town’s citizens: “The future is ours, but this future does not threaten you with extinction or with contempt or even with ill-intent. It is with this future that you must start coming to terms now. It would be wise if you reconciled with this idea right now, so you ought to show us your goodwill. Do make a little room for us, as we request: for the representatives of the Romanian state, for the Romanian professors, for the Romanian students. All of us have come to Cluj with peaceful thoughts, with the decision to live with you in peace and to honour one another, to collaborate, you with us and we with you, for the development of our common Homeland. Therefore make room... Now you must come to terms with fate, now you must make room for us.”12

Thus, after the Romanians took over its administration, Cluj, dominated by a Hungarian majority, became a hotspot for the systematic and deliberate policy of Romanianisation, which started by taking over all the institutions and replacing the Hungarian officials with Romanians. This special attention also had beneficial effects, in the form of massive investments in infrastructure, industry, the education system, etc. Their purpose was twofold: on the one hand, every effort was made to increase the Romanian element in industry and commerce; on the other hand, this deployment of forces had a demonstrative role, showing the advantages of the “new regime” compared to the situation before the war. As it is self-understood, Hungarian was replaced by the Romanian language in the administration, being introduced as a compulsory subject in all the schools. To the frustration of the authorities, however, it was difficult to impose the use of Romanian in the quotidian, regular context of the administrative or cultural institutions, due to the fact that most Romanians could speak Hungarian, while very few Hungarians knew Romanian. In 1926, for example, a journalist from the city complained about the fact that the Romanians in Cluj still preferred the press in Hungarian, kept their distance from the Romanians who had come from the Wallachian Kingdom, and did not go to the Romanian theatre. In the late 1930s it became mandatory to display the company signboards exclusively in Romanian.13 All these changes have had significant demographic effects: in the first years of the new regime there was a mass emigration of the Transylvanian Hungarians (especially civil servants and students) to Hungary, as well a substantial inflow of Romanians, many from the Old Kingdom, who were 12 13

Buzea, Clujul, 68-9. Codarcea, “Românizarea oraúelor,” 736-8.

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eager to occupy posts in the public sector. The city’s population grew from 60,000 in 1910 to 100,000 in 1930, 70% of this increase being due to the Romanians; in 1930, the Hungarians were still, however, the clear majority ௅ 54% of the total population (according to the criterion of mother tongue), while the Romanians accounted for only 35% (the data in the 1930 census must, nonetheless, be considered in the context of the manipulative pressures towards Romanianisation in those times; the Jews were computed as a distinct Yiddish-speaking nationality, even though, during the dualistic period, the vast majority of the Jews had declared themselves as Hungarians, in terms of the spoken language). The symbolic geography of the city was reconfigured; the streets and the squares were renamed after Romanian personalities. The Orthodox Cathedral that was erected across the street from the National Romanianised Theatre (Orthodoxy being declared “the dominant church in the Romanian state” in the Constitution) represented one more way of marking this space as “Romanian.”14 At the level of the intelligentsia, all this diversity was seen, through the lens of older resentments, as evil, as an eternal source of troubles, as suggested by one of personalities of that time: “I do not regard the religious-denominational diversity in certain areas of the reunited Homeland as irredeemably evil, but rather as a historical phenomenon generated by the succession of various foreign rules over parts of the Romanian people’s land and soul. But the result of diverse historical developments can serve, now and in the future, not as grounds for enmity, envy and hatred, but as the opportunity for a noble contest among the heads and servants of the holy altars, who are required, as enjoined by the Gospel of Christ, to love one another.”15 One of the most sensitive issues raised by this diversity was that of mixed marriages.16 In general, the Romanian elite in Transylvania did not look favourably upon this kind of marriage. Mixed marriages were considered to have long-term consequences on the social and cultural evolution of the nation. This hostility was more pronounced in areas where the Romanian element was a minority compared to other ethnic groups, notably the Hungarians. It was considered (an opinion unsupported, however, by the statistical data) that most mixed marriages were concluded between older Hungarian women and younger Romanian men, who thus reached a position of inferiority, no longer having any authority 14

Brubaker, “Politică naĠionalistă,” 106-10. Lupaú, “CredinĠa,” 8. 16 On this subject, see also the study of ùtefan LanĠoú, “Căsătoriile mixte în Clujul interbelic,” 59-73. 15

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over the language spoken in the family, the religion practised therein, the customs and traditions abided by, or child-rearing. In this way, in the long run, a numerical imbalance between the Romanians and the other ethnic groups was reached, in favour of the latter.17 On this account, the strict control of mixed marriages was necessary not only from the point of view of ethnic purity, but also for reasons of national security, lest the families founded by the Romanians should become a kind of “Trojan horse” of minority irredentism.18 Despite this atmosphere, in a completely surprising manner, the number of both ethnically and confessionally mixed marriages increased in Cluj, throughout the interwar period, as shown in the marital status registers. In what follows, we shall present the evolution of this phenomenon in relation to the broader demographic context. We have used the data for the years 1919, 1922, 1930 and 1938 because they are significant years in the history of the city. The year 1919 marked the immediate aftermath of the war, when authority exchanged hands; 1922 was coeval with the stabilisation of the Romanian administration; 1930 immediately followed the outbreak of the Great Depression; 1938, finally, was the last year before World War II, when the administration was replaced once again. The data available to us, based on which the analysis of mixed marriages in Cluj has been conducted, only provide information about the confession of the spouses, mentioning nothing about ethnicity. However, since the city is a multi-ethnic and multi-confessional centre par excellence, we can ask to what extent confession may be a relevant and reliable indicator for the ethnicity of the two. Table 1 Ethnicity - Absolute values Ethnicity Year

Total

Romanians

Hungarians

Germans

Jews

1900 49,295 6,039 40,845 1,784 1910 60,808 7,562 50,704 1,676 1920n 83,542 28,274 41,583 2,073 10,633 1930 1,004 34,836 54,776 2,702 6,691 1930n 1,004 34,895 47,689 2,500 1,302 1941 1,106 10,029 97,698 1,825 831 n - nationality; Source: http://varga.adatbank.transindex.ro/?pg=3&action=etnik&id=5291 17 18

Anonimus, Căsătoriile mixte, 3. Thorne, “Assimilation,” 182.

Others

741 866 979 1,839 2,698 573

Intermarriage vs. Nationalism?

176

If we compare the data on ethnicity with those on confession, we may notice that under the Hungarian administration (1900, 1910 and again in 1941), the (ethnic) weight of the Romanians was a few percentages lower than that of the Orthodox and the Greek Catholics put together. In the 1930 census (under Romanian administration) the two values were very close. Table 2 Ethnicity – Weights Ethnicity Year 1900 1910 1920

n

1930 1930 1941

n

Total

Romanians

Hungarians

Germans

Jews

Others

49,295

6,039

40,845

1,784

-

741

60,808

7,562

50,704

1,676

-

866

83,542

28,274

41,583

2,073

10,633

979

1,004

34,836

54,776

2,702

6,691

1,839

1,004

34,895

47,689

2,500

1,302

2,698

1,106

10,029

97,698

1,825

831

573

The reverse was found for the Hungarian population. In this case, the censuses from extreme years of the range indicate a Hungarian ethnic population above the sum of the weights of the “Hungarian” confessions (RC, R and U). In the latter case the explanation is simpler, resulting from the comparison of the data from the 1930 census, for the two variants: ethnicity by declared mother tongue and by nationality. There were 54,776 persons who declared themselves to be Hungarian according to first criterion and only 47,689 according the second. The difference of over 7,000 people may be accounted for if we look at the data for the Jewish citizens. Here we have a difference of 6,371 people in favour of those declaring themselves of Jewish nationality. Obviously, this may be explained by the fact that almost half of the Jews in Cluj indicated Hungarian as their mother tongue. This explains, for the period before 1918 and the one after 1940, their absence from statistics by ethnicity and their presence in confessional statistics. According to this succinct analysis, we may, with good approximation, consider that confession is a reliable indicator for the ethnicity of a couple (see Table 1). In this sense, as a general rule, we will consider those of GC [Greek Catholic] or O [Orthodox] confession, as ethnically Romanian, those of RC [Roman

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Catholic], R [Reformed] or U [Unitarian] confession as Hungarian ethnics, while the vast majority of the Evangelical Lutherans are German ethnics. Consequently, also as a general rule, the marriages between GC and O will be interpreted as confessionally mixed, but ethnically homogeneous, and the same will hold true for those between RC, R and U. Table 3 The evolution of the population in Cluj, by confessions Conf./ Year 1910 1930 1941

Total

Orth.

60,808 100,844 110,956

1,359 11,942 2,197

Gr.Cath. 8,646 22,816 11,530

Rom.Cath. 19,021 20,291 32,629

Ref.

Ev.

Unit.

20,726 26,919 40,605

2,016 2,425 2,643

1,921 2,137 4,124

Mos. 7,046 13,504 16,763

Table 4 Confession – Weights Conf./ Year 1910 1930 1941

Orth. 2.3 11.9 2.0

Gr.Cath. 14.2 22.6 10.4

Rom.Cath. 31.3 20.1 29.4

Ref.

Ev.

Unit.

Mos.

34.1 26.7 36.6

3.3 2.4 2.4

3.2 2.1 3.7

11.6 13.4 15.1

Others 0.0 0.8 0.4

In the four sampled years there were 3,443 marriages concluded in Cluj, 1,659 of which, that is 48%, were mixed (Table 5): Table 5 The evolution of marriages and mixed marriages in Cluj Total Mixed (%)

1919 853

1922 890

1930 762

1938 938

Total 3443

391 (45.8)

461 (52)

374 (49)

432 (46)

1659 (48)

Table 6 Weights of the confessions according to the census and the sample (1930) Conf./ Year

Orth.

Gr.Cath.

Rom.Cath.

Ref.

Ev.

Unit.

Mos.

Census

11.9

22.6

20.1

26.7

2.4

2.1

13.4

Sample (%)

104 (13.6)

158 (20.7)

149 (19.5)

206 (27)

11 (1.4)

15 (2)

115 (15)

Intermarriage vs. Nationalism?

178

Comparing the weight of the confessions in the city’s population, according to the Census of 1930, with their distribution in the case of the married couples in Cluj, in the same year, we may notice fairly close values (the differences are under 2 percent) (Table no. 6). This similarity between the census data and those calculated for the spouses’ confession and occupation allows us to conclude that sociologically, marriages represented a fairly accurate model of Cluj as a whole. Figure 1 Evolution of the total number of marriages (T), of interfaith marriages (M) and interethnic marriages (IM) between 1921 and 1938. T

M

MI

Linear (MI) 60

1400

1200 50

1000 40

800

30 600

20 400

10

200 1920

1921

1922

1923

1924

1925

1926

1927

1928

1929

1930

1931

1932

1933

1934

1935

1936

1937

1938

In order to highlight the general trends of interfaith marriages in Cluj between the two world wars, we have analysed how persons belonging to various religious denominations selected their spouses. In Figure 2 we focused on the subjects belonging to the GC community in Cluj; represented is the ratio of marriages concluded with partners belonging to one of the “Hungarian” denominations (R, CR or U) and of ethnically homogeneous marriages, with spouses of Orthodox religion. We should first of all note that the GC preferred matrimonial alliances with partners from other ethnic groups, to the detriment of Romanians having a different religion. Of course here we should consider the concrete situation of the marital market in Cluj at that time. As seen from Table no.

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4, in 1930 the city’s population was composed of approximately 50% “Hungarians” (R, RC and U) and only 12% were Orthodox. GC married mostly GC. But the moment when, for various reasons, confession ceased to be one of the decisive factors in the choice of a life partner, other criteria, such as occupation or residential proximity, played a more important role in couple formation than the other’s ethnicity. This was especially the case since, as can be seen from Figure no. 5, the districts with a significant GC population did not coincide with those in which the Orthodox were concentrated. This reduced the chances for interfaith Romanian romantic attachments. Figure 2 Evolution of the ratio of marriages between Greek Catholics (GC) and “Hungarians” (RC, R and U) and, respectively “Romanians” (O) (mobile average for 3 years). 2,5

2,0

1,5

1,0 1920

1921

1922

1923

1924

1925

1926

1927

1928

1929

1930

1931

1932

1933

1934

1935

1936

1937

1938

Secondly, it is evident that there was a two-stage evolution, with a rhythm break in the middle of the time range under study. Compared with the previous decade, in the 4th decade ethnicity seems to have become an important element in the selection of a marriage partner, for the GC at least. The easiest explanation for this change in behaviour is politicalideological. The emergence of right-wing movements, accompanied by an

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Intermarriage vs. Nationalism?

increasingly aggressive public discourse with xenophobic and nationalist overtones, reflected mutations in the collective mind, which became less and less willing to tolerate difference. But if one looks more closely at the intimate mechanism of the change in marital preferences, the explanation is more nuanced. For if the nationalist hypothesis were correct, one would expect the number of marriages with Hungarian partners to have decreased. And things couldn’t have been more different! The number of marriages with non-Romanian partners (R, CR or U) remained approximately constant, but the number of Romanian couples (GC-O) increased in the 1930s. We can therefore speak not so much about rejection on ethnic criteria, but about a greater attraction towards Romanians belonging to the “competing,” Orthodox confession. Our hypothesis is that one of the decisive factors for this evolution was time. Approximately 70% of the Romanian population in interwar Cluj was young, the result of the recent migration after the Union. All this mass of people, Orthodox and Greek-Catholic alike, needed an adjustment period to integrate themselves in the urban structure, necessary for building social networks and expanding the horizon of their marital market beyond their immediate vicinity. The Reformed were preferred from the start because they were (much) more numerous and more evenly distributed across the city, and the preference for them remained relatively constant in time. The Orthodox, less numerous and less accessible, became increasingly desirable for the Greek Catholics, the moment both communities felt integrated into the social structure of Cluj and managed to relativise the geographical barriers of the city’s neighbourhoods. Applying the same method as in the case of the GC, we have analysed the evolution of the preferences expressed by the Reformed for “Hungarian” marriage partners (R and U) and, respectively, for Romanians (GC and O) (Figure 3). Except for the extreme limits of the period studied, the values of the ratio between the two groups of marriages remained clustered around the value of 2 ௅ with a slight hesitation at the end of the third decade; this means that the Reformed who chose life partners from the same ethnic group were, on average, twice as numerous as those who preferred Romanians. The decrease registered in the early 1920s had, in our view, a double determination. On the one hand, at stake was a demographic component. As mentioned above, the Romanian population was largely a young population, resulting from recent immigration, stimulated by the opportunities of a growing urban centre. This influx of Romanian population after 1918 meant a more consistent presence of the GC and the Orthodox on the marriage market, which increased the chances of

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interethnic marriages. On the other hand, we can talk about the psychosocial effects of the changes entailed by the annexation of Transylvania to Romania. The Hungarians from Cluj initially had a reaction of rejection towards the newcomers, who were regarded with the hostility generally reserved to intruders. The significant increase at end of this time span requires a nuanced approach. As we saw above in the case of the Greek Catholics, it was not a rejection of the Romanians (GC or O), but rather a significant increase in marital unions with persons belonging to the “Hungarians” (RC or U). One possible explanation results from the comparison of the graphs in Figures 1 and 3. Figure 3 Evolution of the ratio between the marriages of Reformed (R) and “Hungarians” (R and U) and, respectively, “Romanians” (GC and O) (mobile average for 3 years). 3

2,5

2

1,5

1 1920

1921

1922

1923

1924

1925

1926

1927

1928

1929

1930

1931

1932

1933

1934

1935

1936

1937

1938

At least partially, the increase in the number of marriages between the Reformed and Roman Catholics or Unitarians overlapped the increase in the total number of marriages concluded in Cluj. Obviously, this surplus of marriages was not distributed evenly, as the Reformed preferred those of the same ethnicity. Applying the same reasoning, but for the Roman Catholic community this time, we obtained the graph in Figure no. 4. An important aspect

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pertaining to this confession is the difficulty of defining it in terms of ethnicity. If the Reformed and the Unitarians were, indeed, almost entirely Hungarian, things were more nuanced in the Roman Catholics’ case, which is why we used quotation marks when we ethnically defined the three non-Romanian religious denominations (RC, R and U). Most of the foreigners married in Cluj were Roman Catholics (whether Germans, Austrians, Czechoslovaks or Hungarians). Then, among the autochthonous population, the names of some of the Roman Catholic spouses betrayed their Slavic or Germanic roots. These were either the descendants of immigrants from the Empire who had settled in Transylvania, or members of the Roman Catholic ethnic minorities (Swabians, Slovaks, and Poles) in the province. In any case, the vast majority of this confession was made up of Hungarians, or the descendants of other ethnic groups, who had been Magyarised over time.19 We would like to emphasise two aspects pertaining to this development. First, we should note the slightly more pronounced reluctance of the Roman Catholics towards the Romanians’ confessions. While in the case of the Reformed, the ratio of the Hungarian-Romanian preference stood somewhere around the value of 2, here it is situated between 2 and 2.5. The explanation is quantitative. In the Roman Catholics’ case, the offer of Hungarian partners ௅ and we are talking here primarily about the Reformed, the largest confessional group in Cluj (see Tables 3 and 4) ௅ was simply higher than in the reverse situation. In other words, in purely probabilistic terms, the odds for a RC to meet a Reformed spouse on the city’s marriage market were higher than for a Reformed person to come across a RC. Second, we see that after an initial decline, similar to the evolution of the Reformed, the values calculated for the Roman Catholics remained relatively stable, between 2 and 2.5, except for a peak during the years of the economic crisis. It should be noted that this difficult period of the interwar decades had a noticeable impact for all the three cases analysed here. While in the case of the Reformed and the Roman Catholics, we can talk about rhythm ruptures, followed by returns to the values from before the crisis, from the 1920s, the Greek Catholics registered a more profound change in their attitude towards mixed marriages.

19

This is suggested by the analysis of the grooms’ signatures in the marriage registers studied. Even if the name of one of the spouses has a Slavic resonance, for instance, the graphic peculiarities of the signature betray the Hungarian influence.

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Figure 4 Evolution of the ratio between the marriages of Roman Catholics (RC) with “Hungarians” (R and U) and, respectively, with “Romanians” (GC and O) (mobile average for 3 years). 3,0

2,5

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In conclusion, we can note the following: - the issue of mixed marriages in Cluj must be addressed in a nuanced manner, as they could be mixed ethnically or confessionally, or ethnically and confessionally at the same time; - it was often the case that the proximity of the home or the workplace prevailed, as a factor favouring marriage, over ethnicity, which was remarkable at a time when xenophobic discourse was the order of the day; - for a place where, at least in the collective mind, as reflected in the press and other documents of the time, there was so much hostility between the Romanian majority population and the various minorities, the number of mixed marriages was still high, proving that the relationships between these groups were relatively normal at the level of quotidian life and that intermarriage is, indeed, a good indicator of the existence of good social relations.

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References Anonymous. “Căsătoriile mixte in Transilvania,” Universul: Foaie politică ilustrată, 54, 26/II: 1; 3. Brubakers, Rogers. Politică naĠionalistă úi etnicitate cotidiană într-un oraú transilvănean. Cluj: Kriterion, 2010. Brubaker, Rogers. “Religion and nationalism: four approaches.” Nations and Nationalism 18, 1 (2012): 2–20. Buzea, Octavian. Clujul 1919-1939. Cluj: Tipografia Ardealul, 1939. Cattaruzza, Marina. “‘Last stop expulsion’ – The minority question and forced migration in East-Central Europe: 1918–49.” Nations and Nationalism 16, 1 (2010): 108–126. Cercel, Cristian. “The Relationship Between Religious and National Identity in the Case of Transylvanian Saxons (1933–1944),” Nationalities Papers 39, 2 (2011): 161–180. Codarcea, Corneliu. “Kolozsvar-Cluj. Problema românizării oraúelor din Ardeal,” ğara Noastră 7 (1926): 736-738. Deletant, Dennis. “A Balancing Act - Romania, 1919-1940.” History Today 42, 6 (1992): 122-134. Ingrao, Charles. “Forum. Understanding Ethnic Conflict in Central Europe: An Historical Perspective.” Nationalities Papers 27, 2 (1999): 291-318. LanĠoú, ùtefan. “Căsătoriile mixte în Clujul interbelic.” Studia UBB, Series Sociologia-Politologia, 1-2 (1992): 59-73. Lupaú, Ioan. “CredinĠa, cultura úi arta.” ğara noastră 1 (1938): 8. Müller, Jerry Z. “Us and Them. The Enduring Power of Ethnic Nationalism.” Foreign Affairs 37, 2 (2008): 18-35. Reisser, Wesley J. “Self-determination and the Difficulty of Creating Nation-States: the Transylvania Case.” The Geographical Review 99,2 (2009): 231–247. Szilágyi-Gál, Mihály. “The Nationality of Reasoning: Autochthonist Understandings of Philosophy in Interwar Romania.” In NationBuilding and Contested Identities: Romanian and Hungarian Case Studies, edited by Trencsényi, Balázs, Dragoú Petrescu, Cristina Petrescu, Constantin Iordachi and Zoltán Kántor, 81-92. Budapest: Regio Books; Iaúi: Polirom, 2001. Thorne, M. Benjamin. “Assimilation, Invisibility, and the Eugenic Turn in the ‘Gypsy question’ in Romanian Society, 1938–1942,” Romani Studies 21, 2 (2011): 177–206. Vais, Gheorghe. “Urban Planning in Cluj in the Age of Dualism (18671918),” Philobiblon XIV (2009): 449-468.

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Acknowledgement This work was supported by a grant of the Romanian National Academy for scientific research, CNCS-UEFISCDI, project number PN-II-ID-PCE2011-3-0188.

Appendix – see over The distribution of grooms in the Cluj districts

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BETWEEN “ETHNIC HARMONY” AND SOCIAL INTEGRATION: THE STATUS OF MIXED MARRIAGES (MIXED FAMILIES) IN COMMUNIST ROMANIA MIHAI MURE‫܇‬AN AND CLAUDIU PETRU RUSU

Introduction Officially, ethnic relations were considered not just good in Communist Romania, but, most of all, brotherly. Marxist-Leninist ideology propagated this idea, as ethnicity increasingly became an important factor in many aspects of daily life. We will not dwell on ideas as Andersonian imagined communities, as personal relations were not limited in some clear frameworks, similar in the least with metric surfaces or shoe size. Moreover, this ideology was not backed up by information about actual marriage behaviour, as we shall see in this case also. During the communist era, hardly any statistics on intermarriage were available, as even official publications of yearly censuses (most important being 1956, 1966 and 1977) did not officially report rates of intermarriage. It was not an isolated and targeted case. They did not report even GDP per area or capita or the volume of local investments, the kind of data that could explain the economic structure of the communist regime. We will start from a series of elements relating ideology and ethnic identity: how the idea of co-habitual nationality actually evolved, when we could understand an ethnic group as “a collectivity within a larger society having real or putative common ancestry, memories of a shared historical past, and a cultural focus on one or more symbolic elements defined as the epitome of their peoplehood.”1 During the communist regime, the project of national community had underlined a clear class-based limit. A socialist community was imagined as an evolved element from the bourgeois-capitalist structure, one that 1

Schermerhorn, Comparative Ethnic Relations, 12.

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could surpass any multi-ethnic problems of the new society. This in part related to some aspects of the exploited/exploiter dichotomy, where ethnicity is surpassed by other structural defensive or engaging ideas. Even in 1948, the idea of ethnicity was replaced by a strange togetherness nationality, class homogeneity and integration in the new adapted system being at the core in understanding how a socialist state must evolve. In this regard, the creation of a Hungarian Autonomous Region was important in name, not so autonomous in the applicability of socialist/communist elements, even if the regime in the 1950s had created a structure that integrated languages or areas or schools related to minorities. The only supra-national element had remained the language, a defining limitation between ethnic groups. This second premise is directly related to mixed marriages. As language becomes increasingly important in the ideological reference of ethnic communities, an interesting sign is represented by the differences between the number of the ethnic group and the number of the people who spoke a different language or were raised in a different language. By the 1960s a series of nationalisation campaigns, intended not in economic but in ethnic structures, had changed using the default settings of languages, the perceived structure of nationhood versus ethnic minorities. How could they be perceived by a man and a woman of different ethnic backgrounds who entered the murky waters of marriage as a social phenomenon is, in fact, the third aspect in our study. In this case, the presence of a correlation between mixed marriages, ideology, and social elements has a powerful turning point in the newly perceived idea of assimilation. To quote Robert Park and Ernest Burgess, “assimilation firstly is a process of interpenetration and fusion in which persons and groups acquire the memories, sentiments, and attitudes of other persons or groups, and, by sharing their experience and history, are incorporated with them in a common cultural life,”2 or for J. Milton Yinger “a process of boundary reduction that can occur when members of two or more societies, ethnic groups, or smaller social groups meet.”3 This is reversed in a so-called acculturation process, where the nationality of those with a different maternal language than their perceived ethnic descent creates a big blur in the understanding of the problem. Also it poses the question if inter-marriages are not, in some sense, a part of a process of assimilation, or maybe they are more of a breach between 2 3

Park and Burgess, An introduction to the Science of Sociology, 360. Yinger, Ethnicity: Source of Strength? Source of Conflict? 39.

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different ethnicities. Here, the Sarajevo case of expanded mixed-marriages does not create the basis for cultural and ethnic assimilation but for what Timoty Garton Ash has seen as a so-called treason from those who choose a different husband or wife than those of their ethnic pool.4 In a personal space, intermarriage is a marital assimilation, a decision made by two consenting adults, which is different from its ethnic differences. Why do they marry? We are keeping the idea presented in the last issue of The Economist5 that intermarriage is not the final act of what Andrei Oi‫܈‬teanu has coined as the erotic attraction of a different other6 but the final scene of day-to-day relationships, continuous boredom, routine, simple house chores, meals, activities that make a relationship impossible to break and long lasting. There is also a social exchange theory that focuses on the fact that different characteristics of individuals may differ in their value in the marriage market and that persons may compensate for unfavourable characteristics in one respect with more favourable characteristics in other respects. With regard to ethnic intermarriage, it means that persons whose social status in society is low because they belong to a subordinate ethnic group have a better chance of marrying members of the higher-prestige dominant group if they can offer the partners something in return, like high socio-economic status or physical attractiveness.7 But it is also important to understand and perceive the role of state intervention in such relationships. Moreover, the place of living is important, where a social distance places different boundaries of spatial segregation: living in a residentially concentrated area is more likely to be a dissimilative force than being scattered spatially by region and community. And on top of all this, we must not omit changes in religion and ideology, like the support for the Orthodox Church, the pressure on the Catholics and other denominations which happened after 1948.8 4

Garton Ash, The Uses of Adversity. “The Mixture as Before”, accessed 6 July 2012, http://www.economist.com/feastandfamine/2012/07/mixed-marriages. 6 Oi‫܈‬teanu, Inventing the Jew: Anti-Semitic Stereotypes in Romanian and Other Central-East European Cultures. 7 Smits and Monden, “Taller Indian Women are More Successful at the Marriage Market”, pp. 468-472. 8 Bucur and Stan, Persecuаia Bisericii Catolice din România. An upcoming book by George Cipăianu, Catholicisme et communisme en Roumanie, 1946-1955. Une perspective diplomatique française, is based on the same aspect of interfaith, gender-based problems in the Romanian society after the forced transition to Orthodoxy of the Greek Catholics in December 1948. 5

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In this political aspect, after the coming to power of the communist regime, some researchers consider that an effort of integration in the Romanian community of some Hungarian descent elites was doubled by changes in name, origin, even marriage (as presented by Lucian Nastasa), even though an official campaign against nationalism and hate was implemented in the Magyar Autonomous Region, where a mix of communist, Darwinist and agricultural studies were put together with popular activities and old folklore, although they in fact continued a development of different cultural activities. On this aspect, mixed marriages were not only tolerated, but also openly supported as this could put an end to traditional national segregation.9 In the 1970s and 1980s the process was reversed, as the main feature of the Ceausescu regime implied a process of Romanian expansion in Transylvania. This collided with a different Transylvania than that from the period between the World Wars, a region where the population started to blend, so to say, as in the great industrial centres a new generation was raised, one where a combination of different languages was spoken and who had begun to create a lively mixture between Romanians and Hungarians, placing foreign observers before the impression that ethnic conflict in this Oriental Europe was no more than a thing of the past. Although this would lead after 1989 to conflict but also cooperation between ethnic majority and minorities, a subject that needs more discussion, the fact is that intermarriages were becoming increasingly important in number and importance is a fact hard to disrepute.

Between the lines: data regarding ethnicity and mixed-marriage Our data, based on Censuses made in Cluj, Bra‫܈‬ov, Miercurea-Ciuc and Mure‫( ܈‬Transylvanian cities where the ethnic minority had an important role, the most noteworthy being Miercurea-Ciuc) answers the question if a person is, in fact, in a borderline ethnic background or simply does not want to state his ethnicity, or does not know how to answer. The regime was confronted with strange data, as the local population was interested in defining itself as different in its nationality and mothertongue. In some aspects, it was quite paradoxically defined. For example 11.59% of the Jews living in Cluj were born and raised using Yiddish as their mother tongue, 128.34% of the “Germans” living in Miercurea-Ciuc

9

Bottoni, Transilvania RoЮie.

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had declared German as their mother tongue, and even Romanians had some duplicity in defining their language and ethnicity. Table 110 Ethnic composition in the city of Cluj Cluj 1956 Nationality: Romanian Hungarian German Jews

Declaring themselves as… 74,033 74,155 990 4,530

Declaring their mother tongue as: 74,623 77,839 1,115 525

Table 2 Ethnic composition in the city of Miercurea-Ciuc Miercurea-Ciuc 1956 Nationality: Romanian Hungarian German Jews Gypsies

Declaring themselves as… 702 11,144 47 61 208

Declaring their mother tongue as: 668 11,247 45 7 No data

Table 3 Ethnic composition in Stalin city (Bra‫܈‬ov) Stalin cityȋBra‫܈‬ov) 1956 Nationality: Romanian Hungarian German Jews

Declaring themselves as… 88,329 22,742 8,064 526

Declaring their mother tongue as… 88,651 24,186 10,349 149

This presented three different aspects in understanding the ethnic background of the population. Firstly, they used their ethnicity as different from their understanding of family origins. It seemed like being born in a house using native Hungarian, German, Romanian, Yiddish did not automatically make them German or Hungarian or other ethnic sources. They chose a different social/ethnic path and the main question is why? It 10 All the data comes from the Statistical yearbook of the Socialist Republic of Romania (ed. from 1956, 1966, 1977), The General Directorate of Statistics, Bucharest. As it is impossible to discern any clear and recurrent structure of the chosen indicators/page in each of the volumes, for the purposes of this article the data had to be mixed together.

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creates a backlash, a hit to the idea of homogenous ethnic societies, because the people had a hard time defining themselves as part of this. This created a problem for the regime, which could not understand what the people were. A second aspect of the problem is a socio-economic one. If they chose a different language as a source of social performance, social mobility and economic advancement, they felt the need to declare themselves in a way that they best understood as useful for their social interest. If, in a communist state, it was important to state not so much their ethnic background but their social one, they were inclined to present themselves in the best economic way possible. The third aspect is the most reliable and also the most important in our study. What if they had been raised by a mother in her native tongue in a home with a father from a different ethnic background? In this case, using his father’s ethnicity and his true mother tongue, the respondent was fair and honest in a way. It was hard for him to make a stand between ethnicities when asked who he was and what language he first knew as a child. It also was a strange mix, usually ignored in the social studies, as it is hard to understand why somebody would present himself in such a dual ethnic statement. It has no reference on religion, another important source, this time, for inter-faith marriages. It was not recommended in an atheist state to use religion as a distinction between people, so this element was discarded. In our opinion, it would have created even greater havoc in deciding who was what in matters of ethnic definitions. This status had posed, at the same time, a problem for the communist state, and also, paradoxically, an argument for its social policies in the 1950s. The problem was how to define the ethnicity of a citizen and to clarify, at the same time, the need for a communist – non-racial, nonethnic, non-religious mind. The fact that it was so hard for a person to define himself as a person of Romanian, Hungarian, Jewish or Roma descent would be refined by the regime. In 1965 the new census was altered so that the number of ethnic marriages could be completely and finally presented to the public:

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Table 4 Ethnic Marriages in 1965 Husband: Romanian Romanian Hungarian Hungarian German German

Wife: Hungarian German Romanian German Romanian Hungarian

Total: 2,198 557 1,627 181 567 241

This data comes in a different light when we see the level of Romanian and Hungarian marriages in a different table, creating a different perception. From a total of nation-wide marriages of 164 229, the numbers regarding Romanians and Hungarians were these: Table 5 Nation-wide marriages in 1965 Husband: Romanian Romanian Hungarian Hungarian

Wife: Hungarian Romanian Romanian Hungarian

Total: 2,198 145,074 1,627 13,903

This creates some fruitful insights regarding the so-called polarisation and isolation of ethnic communities. Some 11% of Hungarian males had taken a Romanian wife just in 1965. The same could be said for Romanians and Hungarian wives, but an estimate could be made in this case, regarding only the number or marriages between the two ethnic groups (2198 vs. 1627) not a percentage related to the national sum of marriages, as the data was expanded, encompassing provinces where the number of Hungarian people was close to zero. If we look at the data structured on the difference between urban mixed marriages and rural ones, the urban population is more invested in this kind of social structure. One could argue that the main reason is based on the lax urban structure, somewhat independent from the specific conservatism of the rural population. Another main reason could be that the effects of state propaganda had a mark on the urban population, the people there being marinated more easily by the new communist structure.

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Table 6 Nation-wide urban and rural mixed marriages Husband: Romanian Romanian Hungarian Hungarian German German

Wife: Hungarian German Romanian German Romanian Hungarian

Urban

Rural 1,687 446 1,162 135 646 211

511 111 465 46 103 30

If we pick the regions of Cluj and the Magyar Autonomous Region, a nuanced data emerges, one that could nevertheless present an incidence of mixed marriages smaller than the national average of the same structure. Table 7 The raw number of marriages in the Region of Cluj Region: Cluj Cluj Cluj Cluj Cluj Cluj

Gender: Husband Wife Husband Wife Husband Wife

Nationality: Romanian Romanian Hungarian Hungarian German German

Number of: 8,058 8,000 2,211 2,292 49 42

In this case, the number of Romanian husbands exceeds the number of Romanian wives, which implies the incidence of a number of 58 Romanian males, married to Hungarian or German women. This happens in a homogenous region just when taking into account the nationality, not the religion of the respondents. If we look at another case, the Magyar Autonomous region, the incidence between Romanians and Hungarians becomes clearer, as the Germans have no mixed marriage there. This time the number of Romanian husbands without Romanian wives increases to 111. Table 8 The raw number of marriages in the Magyar Autonomous Region Region: Magyar A. R. Magyar A. R. Magyar A. R. Magyar A. R. Magyar A. R. Magyar A. R.

Gender: Husband Wife Husband Wife Husband Wife

Nationality: Romanian Romanian Hungarian Hungarian German German

Number of: 2,419 2,298 3,395 4,125 73 73

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For the region of Bra‫܈‬ov, the same conclusion could be drawn, as 59 Romanian males here also had a wife from other ethnic pools. Table 9 The raw number of marriages in the Region of Bra‫܈‬ov Region: Bra‫܈‬ov Bra‫܈‬ov Bra‫܈‬ov Bra‫܈‬ov Bra‫܈‬ov Bra‫܈‬ov

Gender: Husband Wife Husband Wife Husband Wife

Nationality: Romanian Romanian Hungarian Hungarian German German

Number of: 6,641 6,580 1,874 1,923 1,163 1,181

This framework was not sufficient in describing the inter-ethnic relationships among mixed communities. It raised some questions about the nature of different social structures. The regime did not officially present their conclusions regarding the information available, but instead they “hinted” at their opinion in a new understanding of the way in which the architecture of social life could be understood. In the 1977 census, this aspect was defined by their interest in linking the total number of population with the number of people who – again – had a different mother tongue than their perceived ethnicity. On 16 February 1968, the old Magyar Autonomous Region (like all other Romanian regions) was dismantled into a series of smaller administrative entities. The old Magyar Autonomous Region and Bra‫܈‬ov were re-assembled in a series of “judete” named: Bra‫܈‬ov, Covasna, Harghita, Mure‫܈‬, with some districts going even further away to Cluj and Buzau. The primary objective of this restructuring was to “dilute” the Hungarian enclaves by blending them into a cohesive Romanian majority. This is true also for judete where the Hungarian population kept a majority (Harghita and Covasna) by encompassing some areas with a Romanian majority and taking away other areas with a Hungarian population. This created a different view of the census from 1977. It was also a time when the communist regime abruptly went towards a mix of extreme nationalism, xenophobia and the appeal to a grassroots revival of Romanian greatness in the fight against neighbours. If we look at the distribution of ethnic structures and the same mothertongue paradox, some interesting observations arise:

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Table 10 The ethnic structure of Bra‫܈‬ov (total of 582 863) Ethnicity Romanian Hungarian German Same ethnicity/Different mother tongue

Total 471,281 70,208 35,940 2,491

The element of same ethnicity/different mother tongue was low in Cluj, which had a clear Romanian majority, and did not give the opportunity of creating a melting pot structure, the same as in Harghita, Mure‫܈‬, and Covasna. Table 11 The ethnic structure of Cluj (total of 715 507) Ethnicity Romanian Hungarian German Same ethnicity/Different mother tongue

Total 539,280 167,473 1,505 831

Table 12 The ethnic structure of Covasna (total of 199 017) Ethnicity Romanian Hungarian German Same ethnicity/Different mother tongue

Total 41,060 155,133 202 2,392

Table 13 The ethnic structure of Harghita (total of 326 310) Ethnicity Romanian Hungarian German Same ethnicity/Different mother tongue

Total 45,947 275,759 837 3,399

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Table 14 The ethnic structure of Mure‫( ܈‬total of 605 345) Ethnicity Romanian Hungarian German Same ethnicity/Different mother tongue

Total 310,226 264,567 17,439 4,113

The percentage point regarding same ethnicity/different mother tongue differs from county to county: Bra‫܈‬ov (0.42%), Cluj (0.12%), Covasna (1.20%), Harghita (1.04%), Mure‫( ܈‬0.68%). The data seems negligible but was especially intended to hide any hint of non-nationalistic structures in 1970s’ Romania. If we bend the statistic a little, considering the number of the “undecided” regarding their ethnicity as a percentage calculated vis-àvis the number of Romanian respondents, the data changes. So, looking at the data county-by-county, their percentage point is: Bra‫܈‬ov (0.52%), Cluj (0.15%), Covasna (5.82%), Harghita (7.39%), Mure‫( ܈‬1.32%). The fact that in Harghita, the ones who had a different mother tongue were 7.39% relative to those of Romanian descent is staggering and explains why the vexed interest of the communist regime in diluting the Hungarian population created not a new Romanian ethnic group but a mixed one. In another aspect this created a new dichotomy, the least studied when talking about the nationhood idea in Romania: the multiplication effect of mixed marriages. Our hypothesis is that, in families who had children married to life partners of different ethnic backgrounds the nationalistic tempo had been surpassed by the economic and daily routine, the need to accept and integrate the “other” who had become a part of the family. This implies a multiplication effect in which the number of those related to a mixed marriage (mothers, fathers, uncles, cousins, future sons and daughters) highly increases the visibility of such an endeavour. It also makes it acceptable. Even if we choose to look at 1% of the population, the multiplication effect raises the bar of those invested in these cases. A family started in a highly patriarchal and homogenous society is tempted to keep the power, respect and its position in the social world. This transforms the “un-safe” ethnic marriage into a good one, because they said so, because they protect it and influence it. It dissolves the nationalistic/ethnic structure.

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Another answer: social mobility? When talking about mixed marriages, it is easy to confuse or to use as a sole argument the geographic structure of the social environment. If one operates with this idea, the area is important in defining social relationships between two different ethnic bodies, but not so clear as regards personal relationships. It is hard to understand how a community living alongside another for centuries has just recently managed to accept a basic level of social integration, of inter-ethnic marriages. This becomes clear once we take social mobility into account. The communist creed emphasised the need for economic development, based on a Stalinist framework where it was hard to put aside the actions and motivations of the masses. If they “wanted” to create a new dam, a new agricultural area, they were welcome to do so, regardless of their background. This created, in a sense, a social mobility where those who sought a job found it in another area, this being effective especially on those with meagre means. On another hand, the economic upheaval caused by collective planning and industrial development had taken a huge toll on those who were victims, people robbed of their belongings and forced to move to another place or to adapt. The third aspect is related to the Second World War. The conflict created a paradigm shift in the understanding of the other, a shift based on the fear of living without accomplishing enough, placed in the borderline action regarding awareness of death. This blurred much of the social structure, cohesion and patriarchal ossification, as fear and uncertainty were decisive in moulding the minds of young people. They changed and the communist push toward finding a new place and a new life just expanded this idea. In a census from 1966 the social mobility is evident, the high level of social polarisation being shattered by the migration of a huge number of people back and forth. Table 15 Social mobility in Cluj County (pop. 631100) from other counties From… Alba Mure‫܈‬ Sălaj Bistri‫܊‬a Hunedoara

Towards: Cluj Cluj Cluj Cluj Cluj

Total of: 17,711 17,360 16,920 9,994 3,636

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Table 16 Social mobility in Bra‫܈‬ov County (pop. 442692) from other counties From… Covasna Harghita Buzău Mure‫܈‬

Towards: Bra‫܈‬ov Bra‫܈‬ov Bra‫܈‬ov Bra‫܈‬ov

Total of: 18,438 10,393 10,233 7,858

Table 17 Social mobility in Covasna County (pop. 176858) from other counties From… Harghita Bra‫܈‬ov Buzău Bacău Foreigners

Towards: Covasna Covasna Covasna Covasna Covasna

Total of: 5,075 4,435 834 905 1,419

Table 18 Social mobility in Harghita County (pop. 282392) from other counties From… Mure‫܈‬ Covasna Bra‫܈‬ov Bacău

Towards: Harghita Harghita Harghita Harghita

Total of: 7,667 3,599 2,142 2,146

Table 19 Social mobility in Mure‫ ܈‬County (pop. 561598) from other counties From… Harghita Alba Cluj Sibiu Bistri‫܊‬a

Towards: Mure‫܈‬ Mure‫܈‬ Mure‫܈‬ Mure‫܈‬ Mure‫܈‬

Total of: 18,533 7,953 7,903 7,037 5,510

Regarding the Romanian capital Bucharest, the data is also conclusive, explaining high spikes in mobility:

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Table 20 Social mobility in Bucharest (pop. 1,366,684) from other counties From… Harghita Covasna Mure‫܈‬

Towards:

Total of:

Bucharest Bucharest Bucharest

5,863 3,481 10,711

The data shows a high degree of social mobility, the counties having significant ethnic minorities and being geographical neighbours. It was almost impossible to get the patriarchal marital acceptance of one’s personal family when that person had already gone to another area to find a new job. Social mobility also explains why social cohesion was no longer supported after World War Two. It was almost impossible to follow the structure of inter-war Romania, when the Churches were segregated in their ethnic enclaves. After 1948, it becomes clear that marriages were no longer related solely to one’s faith or religious options, but to the social pool where they were gathering (marriage was not only a religious event or a family advantage, it was also the main effect of being together in a new place, with new people). This explains, in an empirical fashion, the duality between mother tongue and the declared ethnicity of some interviewees. It is also hard to discern if intermarriages were exceptions or a natural state in communist Romania, if the couples were in any way affected by their “strange” status. It is clear nonetheless that social mobility was the main reason for this event, as the number of combinatory elements between a male and a female blurred the ethnic or local preconception of life, relationships and marriage. It was a clear adaptive element, when getting used to another, getting accustomed to new things made it easier to marry outside the social norms.

Conclusion: data as political paradox? In conclusion, the raw data explains an interesting growth of intermarriages, even when they were no longer supported by the communist regime. Moreover, social mobility was a direct cause of it, as vast construction projects and mass mobilisation inserted people of different origin in a totally strange area, an idea that clashed with the elements required by the communist plan. This is the aspect, besides the nationalist policies of the 1970s and 1980s, for which the advancement in career of those with dual ethnic families was limited. This did not limit the

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need to choose spouses based solely on their ethnic background. Some were for the first time interested in their wellbeing and family, especially those from the cities or from the work colonies. This happened even though their contact with the regime surpassed that of the rural areas, as they were more likely prone, in theory, to the regime’s plans and ideals. But they were also more interested in adapting, finding a right job and a right family. Another aspect that has eluded the studies written about this “short decade” is sexuality. Even though there have been a lot of papers written about gender policies and the hard-core pro-life option that the Romanian state took by adopting the 770/1966 decree, the role of sexual liberation or sexual emancipation (in the mist of the 1968-1969 events) has been deeply neglected. By criticising the western bourgeois and immoral society and, thus, its sexual aspect, the Romanian state (like the East German one, but in a different key, the Germans using sexuality as part of the new socialist man, in their own understanding of the term) left much unspoken but understood. The critique meant not only an attempt to forge a distinctly non-capitalist sexuality (rigid, corseted in strict family rules, traditionalistic) but an attempt to explain (like in the German case again) what it meant to be a Romanian citizen and implicitly what Romania was. This seemingly small part of the overall society is more important than it seems, as sexuality – the repression of it and a lack of knowledge about it, to be more precise – has been an important element in the last 80 or so years of Romanian history. The duality of family in propaganda discourse and in public life is the most paradoxical effect of the late socialism, and needs to be developed in the following lines as clear texts regarding what we call the two facets of family life – both in analytical terms and in party discourse – seem to be lacking. Family was for the communist regime a party in nuce – a nuclear structure where doctrine could be apprehended by hand from the early years. As education – by this meaning critique and independence – lacked any real support, mainly because an educated man is a doubting one, it was left to those closest – usually the family – to insert the thought values that the regime left out. The family was also a place of Orwellian double speak, the official terminology and its critique being as one, in the day-today conversations. “The communist society is a society without real informational feed-back and, particularly, a society which, in its core, could not learn from its own history.”11

11

Mihnea Botez, Lumea a doua, 83.

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Between “Ethnic Harmony” and Social Integration

The family frame thus ensured a perpetuation of communistconservative values, at the same time being a weapon against the same standardised message as that which was bombarded from above. Family meant cooperation and also submission, as family members were more obedient for the sake of their relatives. At the same time, they provided to one another the basic necessities, so hard to find in the last years of communism. This dual, symbiotic blend of familial conservative and plain utopic communism ensures not only the perpetuation but also the apprehension of the doctrinal framework of the regime. Unable to persuade directly, it uses the backdoor of familial structure and relationships. As a vast majority of the population was already working class, the idealisation of this special category (while emphasising on miners, railroad workers, heavy industry workers, chemists, engineers) has, for the past 40 years, created the perfect precondition for the familial perpetuation of ideological elements.

References “Mixed Marriages. “The Mixture as Before.” The Economist: Feast and Famine, accessed July 6th, 2012, http://www.economist.com/feastandfamine/2012/07/mixed-marriages. Botez, Mihnea. Lumea a doua. Bucure‫܈‬ti: Style Publishing, 1997. Bottoni, Stefano. Transilvania RoЮie: comunismul român Юi problema naаională. 1944-1965. Cluj-Napoca: Editura Institutului pentru Studierea Problemelor Minorita‫܊‬ilor Na‫܊‬ionale, Kriterion, 2010. Bucur, Ioan Marius and Lavinia Stan, ”Persecu‫܊‬ia Bisericii Catolice din România: documente din Arhiva Europei Libere 1948-1960” Studia Universitatis BabeЮ-Bolyai, Theologia Catholica 1 (2002): 20-35. Garton Ash, Thimoty. The Uses of Adversity: Essays on the Fate of Central Europe. New York: Random House, 1989. Jeroen Smits; Christiaan W. S. Monden. “Taller Indian Women are More Successful at the Marriage Market.” American Journal of Human Biology, 24, 4 (2012): 468-472. Oi‫܈‬teanu Andrei. Inventing the Jew: Antisemitic Stereotypes in Romanian and Other Central-East European Cultures. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009. Park, Robert Ezra, and Ernest Watson Burgess. An Introduction to the Science of Sociology. New York: Greenwood Press, 1969. Schermerhorn, Richard Alonzo. Comparative Ethnic Relations. New York: Random House, 1970. Yinger, John Milton. Ethnicity: Source of Strenght? Source of Conflict? New York: State University of New York Press, 1994.

CHAPTER III: MIXED MARRIAGES IN THE SECULAR AND RELIGIOUS REGULATIONS

MIXED MARRIAGES, MIXED CHILDREN: BETWEEN NORMS AND PRACTICES IN THE ROMANIAN SOCIETY (EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES) CONSTAN‫܉‬A VINTILĂ-GHI‫܉‬ULESCU

In the eighteenth century, Wallachia was politically controlled by the Ottoman Empire, which exacted a tribute to the Porte in exchange for its administrative autonomy. This regime of partial political “independence” was an incentive for various ethnic groups which emigrated to Bucharest or other towns in Wallachia and Moldavia, prompted by a desire to set up businesses there. This explains the diversity of the population in Bucharest and other important market towns, with Romanian, Serbian, Armenian, Romanian Vlach, Bulgarian, Greek, Gipsy, Turkish and Jewish inhabitants (and with a denominational diversity to match). Being artisans and merchants, some of them were active in workshops and shops in Wallachia, but retained significant links with their places of origin.1 Their departure, prompted by business and work interests, provided them with opportunities for contracting a new marriage, without declaring the original one. This was also possible for autochthonous people who went to the other end of the country in search of work or merely for survival, and found a way to become integrated into the new community through a marriage contract. Because priests could be insufficiently vigilant, there appeared cases of bigamy. They came to be known only owing to various troubles which people found themselves involved in and which revealed their actual predicament. There are 20 cases of bigamy recorded in the archives, if we leave cohabitation aside; though the latter meant that couples illicitly lived together as husband and wife in sin, it did not put a stain on the sacred ties 1

For this topic, see Lazăr, Les marchands en Valachie 348-355; Deteúan, Căsătoriile mixte în comitatul Cluj, 109-21.

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of wedlock. Our research will analyse bigamy, taking into consideration the children who were born from such illicit relations. The cases tried were actually very complex, since the provisions of the codes of law were extremely severe; however, owing to the economic motivations that accompanied them, the various legal provisions in question came to be negotiated in practice.2 A man was likely to contract another marriage more easily than a woman because men travelled more (there were only two bigamous women compared to the 20 recorded cases of bigamous men). To avoid all the unhappy and costly stages involved in a divorce case, the husband would leave the marital residence, getting settled in another village or another county, as far away from home as possible; because he was unknown there, he could marry a second time. Vasile was married in the village of Jăblea, Argeú County, but one day he left for good, settled in the village of Grabicina, Buzău County, where he got married again. Nobody asked him anything and, in addition, the Bishop of Buzău ordained him. The truth came to light by mere chance. When Vasile stole the horses of his newly acquired brother-in-law and ran away, he was put on the register and the bishop found out about the error he had committed. On being caught, Vasile’s hair was cropped and he was defrocked not because of his theft but of his bigamy.3 The same happened to Dima the Greek, who had come from the Ottoman Empire; after settling in Bucharest, Dima married Maria, but failed to impart to her the fact that he had a wife and children “in his own country.”4 On 24 July 1761, some Greek merchants (Iane Costea, CuĠari and Stoian) testified before Metropolitan Grigorie of UgroWallachia about the civil status of Costandine the Greek, the son of Ianache Botca of Arvanitohori (from the Island of Kasos). Costandine got married to Safta, the daughter of Lamba, of Bucharest. Some time afterwards, he returned to his native village, where, in the presence of three business partners as witnesses, he got married again to the daughter of one Costea Pandora, hiding the fact that he had contracted a previous marriage in Wallachia.5 2

For the ecclesiastical court and its activity, see further details in VintilăGhiĠulescu, “Judicial archives,” 1-17. 3 Arhivele NaĠionale ale României [National Historical Archives] Bucharest, Manuscript Funds, mss. 139, f. 195v, 26 June 1742 (Hereafter ANR, ms., followed by the pressmark). 4 ANR, Bucharest, mss. 140, f. 123v. 5 Biblioteca Academiei Române [The Library of the Romanian Academy], Manuscript Collection, mss. 634, f. 41v (hereafter BAR, ms., followed by the pressmark).

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Mixed Marriages, Mixed Children

The same was the case with Dumitru the Serb, who got married to Maria Istodoroaia in Saac County, while also being married at Drîstor;6 the same happened with Gavrilă the tailor, who was married to Sanda in Iaúi and to AncuĠa in Bucharest,7 or with Hristodor, married at Epirus, but also wedded to Marica in Râmnic,8 and again, with Dumitru the Greek, an Albanian soldier who came from Castiniotu, where he had already been married, with children, but, on arriving in the Schitul Hagii Dinii district in Bucharest, he wedded Zmaragda, too.9 To avoid such situations, the Church introduced the “testimonial marriage writ.” What did it imply? The moment a priest suspected that one of the partners might be in the wrong as far as his civil status was concerned, he requested a testimonial letter. Two or three persons testified in this letter that the (young) candidates who wished to get married had not contracted previous marriages elsewhere, that they did not have incompatible religions or were not related by blood. This measure was beneficial in a country that did not have very accurate population registers. Metropolitan Antim Ivireanul recorded this phenomenon in his catechetical book10 where he warned the priests that there were quite a lot of people “from the Hungarian and the Turkish Countries or from other remote places” who came to Wallachia and got married or committed bigamy, or infringed the commandments of the Church by contracting a fourth marriage. The applicants had to prove what their civil status was either by means of letters from the bishops in whose jurisdiction they were located or by sworn oaths. Priests were also warned about the behaviour of some peasants and youth: the former wandered from one village to the next, either because they were poor or they tried to shun tallage, which is why they did not take their families along; but the latter eloped, for fear of their parents’ anger, whom they had disobeyed, and appeared before the priest of another parish to join them in marriage.11 This was the reason why such a document was required – as illustrated in what follows. One case in question was Stoian the goldsmith’s, who had settled and lived in Bucharest for 17 years and who brought three witnesses who testified that he “has not been married before and since he settled here he has not 6 ANR, Bucharest, mss. 139, f. 145r and CronĠ et al Acte judiciare din ğara Românescă, 81-82. 7 BAR, mss. 636, f. 84r. 8 BAR, mss. 636, ff. 63v-64r. 9 BAR, mss. 636, ff. 42v-43r. 10 Antim Ivireanu, Higher Commandments, 1714. 11 Antim Ivireanul, Opere. Didahii, 338, 341.

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wedded anyone.” The woman, Ivana, was, in her turn, attended by three neighbours who declared that she was not married.12 The Church tried to adopt measures designed to avoid bigamy, the mixture of blood, or marriages between people of different religions and any other kinds of illicit unions. The observance of measures meant to enforce this depended on the vigilance and diligence of the priests; the latter’s lack of watchfulness was chronicled by a significant number of documents, which either attested the break-up of couples that had been “joined in disrespect of the law” or the punishment of priests who had deliberately ignored, or failed to check, the status of people whom they allowed to be joined in marriage or whose unions ௅ forbidden by canon law ௅ they had helped legitimise. One example is that of the priest Constandine, who, on April 18th 1770, was directly involved in the bigamous case of the small boyar Costandine: 1. while being in Bucharest, in February 1769, on the occasion of his being ordained, with help from the boyar, the priest found out about Costandine’s wife and daughter and also about his extra-marital relationship with Slamna; 2. on being ordained, in April 1769, he joined in matrimony the boyar Costandine with Slamna, in the village of Stăneúti, Argeú County, without inquiries. He was making up, in this way, for the sum of money he should have paid in order to be ordained.13 The Code stipulated that such a union was to be very severely punished, either by beheading or by confinement in the salt works and the forfeiture of all possessions, since in the eyes of the law such a person had no need of possessions after relinquishing honesty. There followed a dishonouring ritual meant to show publicly the shame and gravity of the sin committed. Bigamous men would be paraded “naked in the street, astride on donkeys and whipped with two distaffs women used for spinning.” Bigamous women received the same kind of treatment, but in their case it was the rich men’s head-dressing or fur caps that replaced the distaffs.14 In practice, the Metropolitan realised that he could not enforce capital punishment. The survival of everyone else, the wives and children innocently caught up in the mess of this misdeed and crime depended on the fate of the bigamous man or woman. The ecclesiastical court took this

12

BAR, mss. 634, f. 103v, . BAR, mss. 639, f. 47v. 14 Indreptarea legii, 231-233; Vintilă-GhiĠulescu, Women’s Sexuality, 107-117. 13

208

Mixed Marriages, Mixed Children

into consideration when analysing the bigamous cases brought up for trial.15 What happened to the two marriages? What was the fate of the offspring born from such ambiguous relations? Who had priority? As a rule, the second marriage, deceitfully contracted, was null and void from the beginning. The first wife had priority and the judge took her wishes into account; the feelings or wishes of the bigamous husband were of no avail. If the first wife reclaimed her husband, the conclave obliged him to return to the marital bed and threatened to punish him if he should refuse. On 15 January 1777, Metropolitan Grigore heard the case of Drăgan, convicted for bigamy. The latter had been married to Ilinca in Craiova and the marriage had been childless but he wedded another woman, by whom he had a child in the village of Nămăieúti, Muúcel County. The Metropolitan seemed inclined to favour the second marriage, bearing the fate of that child in mind. He even convinced Ilinca to give up on her bigamous, run-away husband’s return to the marriage bed in exchange for his returning her dowry, but the final judgment was in the hands of the Prince. Prince Alexandru Ipsilanti (1774-1782) decided that Drăgan return to his first wife and that he be in charge of educating the child from the second marriage. No legal provision for the adjudication was mentioned, and the Prince’s justification of his pronouncement was: “we have pardoned him so that he may live in peace and good will with his wife,” though “he is guilty and deserves to be punished for his behaviour.” Drăgan tried to defend himself and protest, refusing the enforcement of the court’s decision, but nobody would listen to him since it was believed that “there had been no misdeed to cause his separation in church” from his first wife.16 Dima the Greek shared in this fate. He had come to Bucharest in 1789 and married Zamfira, sister to Nicola, the overseer of the sergeants at law in the administrative court. After the birth of his first child, Dima went away in search of another workplace. He got as far as the village of Sapoca, Buzău County; here, “prompted by people, repeatedly,” he got married to Smaragda, sister to one of his masters. The parish priest read him the marriage service and Costache the Serb, from the village of Dăscăleúti, Buzău County, was his godparent. One week after the birth of his second child, Dima was arrested and taken away from the marital bed by bailiffs, who brought him to trial. The ecclesiastical court had to decide the fate of the two women and their offspring: one, a child of two, the 15 16

Gauvard and Stella, Couple en justice. Acte judiciare din ğara Românească, 264-265.

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other, infant who was barely one week old. Again, the verdict was in favour of the first wife, and Dima returned to his first legally wed wife. But the court obliged him to provide for the second child, too.17 The conclave justified the lenience it showed in trying this kind of cases by the need to make peace reign supreme in the families, though it acknowledged the fact that the bigamous man “was guilty and justly deserved punishment for his deed”; he was granted pardon, on condition “that he live in good will with his wife.” The enforcement of the Law would have uselessly augmented the spouses’ ill will and, in addition, there were hardly any goods to forfeit in these cases, since all the people involved were extremely poor. Yet the court explicitly referred to the evolution in mentalities, discriminating between the old regime and the ongoing century, which had a different approach to deeds. The old regime was not necessarily associated with barbarousness: it was simply different; and one thing was sure, bigamy incurred the death penalty. By contrast, the ongoing century was a century of humanity, of compassion, of “civilisation,” when bigamy was only crowned by flogging and parading the culprits to shame them; but it was possible to pardon them and not even this kind of punishment was enforced if the culprits acknowledged their sins and repented, promising to return to their first families. The culprits were, nevertheless, reminded of the old punishment, to frighten and warn them that worse punishment awaited them should they relapse. In addition, the court showed concern for the fate of the children and took pains to provide for them. For example, on 6 February 1785, Barbul, a man from Gruiu, Ilfov County, filed a complaint at the Metropolitan’s court against his wife Costandina. Having had three children together, after eight years of marriage, Barbu, who was in debt, had gone away to find a master to serve and earn money “to repay his debt and provide for food.” In his absence, Costandina had wedded another man, Manul, and got pregnant. Costandina’s bigamy was blatantly clear, but the ecclesiastical court was more concerned over the fate of the three minor children and over the future of the unborn infant. Consequently, Barbu, the husband, was counselled to accept his adulterous wife back and to take responsibility for the education of the child in her womb. His pledge stated things to this effect: “I have pardoned her; and I have accepted to live with her - in good will; I have also agreed to take responsibility for educating the child she is having.”18

17 18

ANR, mss. 140, ff. 123r-124r, 28 October 1793, 17 November 1793. BAR, mss. 637, f. 167v.

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Concern for children was a permanent preoccupation in all the divorce cases. The integration of children in families, their continuing to live under the authority of the father until their coming of age, their maintenance and surveillance within the domestic group were, in fact, requisite measures for preserving the social order. Forsaken children, infanticide or starvation were desperate practices to which families resorted when poverty became overwhelming.19 To avoid such practices, the Church strove to provide shelter for the babies and ensure their subsistence. But the Church’s interventions were punctual and not consistent enough, which caused them to be only scantily effective.

References Manuscript Sources Arhivele NaĠionale ale României [National Historical Archives] Bucharest, Manuscript Funds Biblioteca Academiei Române [The Library of the Romanian Academy], Manuscript Collection

Published Sources CronĠ, Gheorghe, Al. Constantinescu, A. Popescu, Th. Rădulescu, and C. Tegăneanu, (eds.). Acte judiciare din ğara Românescă, 1775-1781. Bucure‫܈‬ti: Editura Academiei Române, 1973. Indreptarea legii (1652) (Bucure‫܈‬ti: Editura Academiei Române, 1962).

Secondary Sources Deteúan, Daniela. ”Căsătoriile mixte în comitatul Cluj, 1848-1918.” in Căsătoriile mixte în Transilvania. Secolele XIX úi începutul secolului XX, edited by Corneliu Pădurean, Ioan Bolovan, 109-121. Arad: Editura UniversităĠii „Aurel Vlaicu”, 2005. Gauvard, Claude and Alessandro Stella. Couple en justice, IVe-XIXe siècle. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2013.

19

On this subject, see Roman, “L’infanticide en Valachie,” 91-122; Roman, “Unwanted Children,” 673-88.

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Ivireanul, Antim. Opere. Didahii ed. G. ùtrempel. Bucure‫܈‬ti: Minerva, 1997. Lazăr, Gheorghe. Les marchands en Valachie, XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles. Bucure‫܈‬ti: Institutul Cultural Român, 2007, 348-355. Roman, Nicoleta. “Un acte entièrement inhumain: L’infanticide en Valachie au milieu du XIXe siècle.” In Le corps et ses hypostases en Europe et dans la société roumaine du Moyen Âge a l’époque contemporaine. Travaux du colloque, edited by ConstanĠa VintilăGhiĠulescu and Alexandru-Florin Platon, 91-122. Bucure‫܈‬ti: New Europe College, 2010. —. “Unwanted Children, Abandoned Children: Sides of Childhood in the Nineteenth Century Wallachia.” In Families in Europe between the Nineteenth and the Twenty First Centuries: From the Traditional Model to Contemporary PACS, edited by Antoinette Fauve-Chamoux and Ioan Bolovan, 673-688. Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2009. Vintilă-GhiĠulescu, ConstanĠa. “Judicial Archives and the History of the Romanian Family: Domestic Conflict and the Orthodox Church in the Eighteenth Century.” The History of the Family 2 (2013): 261-277. —. ”Women’s Sexuality between Legal Prescription and Ecclesiastical Control in the Romanian Principalities (the Eighteenth Century).” In Gender in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, edited by Marianna Muravyeva and Raisa Maria Toivo, 107-117. London: Routledge, 2012.

Acknowledgement This work was supported by the grant of the Ministry of National Education, CNCS-UEFISCDI, project number PN-II-ID-PCE-2012-4-0079.

MIXED MARRIAGES INVOLVING GYPSY SLAVES IN NINETEENTH CENTURY WALLACHIA: STATE AND CHURCH POLICIES BOGDAN MATEESCU

Slavery in Moldavia and Wallachia has been a subject of reflection since the nineteenth century, when many Western historians and travellers spoke of the Gypsy slaves’ condition, customs, occupations and language.1 At present, however, there is still much catching up to do as regards the study of slavery in the two Principalities, especially during the nineteenth century. Romanian historians traditionally relied on simple documents, on records of either sales of or legal disputes over slaves, sometimes on exchanges (compensations) resulting from marriages, many of which had taken place prior to the 1800s. Very few research efforts have been aimed at valorising the archival material preserved from the 1830s and 1840s, which abounds in files and correspondence on slaves, created either by the State Administration or by the Church, in an age when both were slave owners. The National Archives in Bucharest hold a significant amount of these sources, including funds of the Metropolitanate, as well as of the dioceses, monasteries and churches of Wallachia. Aside from these, there are the funds of the Department of Church Affairs and of the House of the Holy Metropolitanate (Ocârmuirea/Casa Sfintei Mitropolii), institutions that administered certain ecclesiastical matters and also acted as intermediaries between the religious and the secular authorities. In addition to these, the Municipal Archives of Bucharest hold a fund of the Metropolitanate; several district archives took over files from the dioceses and almost all the district archives preserve those of the local church 1

A very comprehensive overview of, probably, all the works on the subject written by European historians prior to 1870 is that provided by Paul Bataillard’s study entitled Les derniers travaux relatifs aux Bohémiens dans l'Europe orientale, Paris: A. Franck, 1872.

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administration (protopopiates, parishes and churches). We may ascertain that most of the material has generally not been researched so far. The current study intends to explore different policies or tendencies evinced by the slave owners, especially by the Church and the State, with reference to certain categories of slaves. It focuses on materials found mostly in the Municipal Archives of Bucharest, but it also includes files from the Central Office and from two district offices (Dolj and Arge‫)܈‬. Whereas the initial intention was to study primarily the marriages between Gypsies and freemen, we have come across even richer information and findings regarding the subject of marriages between slaves of various categories. Eventually both subjects have been explored and analysed. The research and its results are mostly based on a qualitative rather than a statistical inquiry, the latter being extremely difficult and time consuming, given that documents on Gypsy slaves are extremely diverse and disseminated in numerous funds, which can be practically found in all archives. Instead, this effort concentrates on sources from the higher levels of the Church and the regular Administration, as well as on orders, reports and inquiries from the period under examination here, which have served as revealing and direct evidence in our research. Why intermarriages between categories of slaves? One might argue that certain cultural and professional sub-groups of Gypsy slaves tended to be associated with certain kinds of ownership: the State, the Church or the nobility. However, a no less pertinent observation is that their condition was more or less the same and their well-being hardly changed after the abolishment of slavery. Overall, they could all be sold, given away, disputed in court and, depending (at least theoretically) on the will of their master, they could marry; they also had to offer their work and skills whenever called upon to do so, and their living conditions were mostly the same, irrespective of their category. What did, however, vary from one category to another was a set of customs and, sometimes, written rules which affected their options towards marriage and, as we shall see, had an important impact on some communities or individuals. Thus, when it came to marriage, the categories of ownership mattered more than in other respects, thus individualising the slaves, whether we are talking about individual cases or entire communities. Thus, intermarriages between Gypsies belonging to the State, the Church and the nobility can provide historians with a very interesting perspective on social life before slavery was abolished in Wallachia.

214

Mixed Marriages Involving Gypsy Slaves in 19th Century Wallachia

Legislation on Slave Marriages In the Middle Ages, the laws of both Moldavia and Wallachia had traditionally been inspired by Byzantine codes of law that had their origin in religion. The end of the 19th century witnessed the beginning of a process that would irreversibly secularise legislation. Although some laws continued to be inspired by religious practices and beliefs, most legislation would henceforth be a matter of the secular administration regulating social life and social status. By the 1830s, Wallachia had enacted its main codes of law: x Regulamentul Organic (The Organic Regulation) - with the role of a Constitution, elaborated by a Russian commission and adopted in 1831; x Pravilniceasca Condică (The Ipsilanti Code, 1780-1817) and Codul Caragea (The Caragea Code, 1817-1865), both functioning as civil codes. Besides these vital and modern elements of state and society, Buletin Gazetă ofiаială (Bulletin - The Official Gazette) started appearing as a weekly publication and served as an official mouthpiece. All of the above-mentioned codes recognised the existence of slaves and regulated the elements that were characteristic of their social status. One cannot help noticing that the regulations regarding marriage were somewhat emphasised as a key aspect of their condition as slaves. In Pravilniceasca Condică, 8 out of 9 articles referring to slaves concerned their marriage possibilities and conditions; so did 3 out of the 10 articles in Codul Caragea, which were also the most detailed. In both codes, the main prerequisite for allowing slaves to get married was their masters’ awareness of and consent to such marriages, various situations where this proviso might be eluded being stipulated. Still, in this very specific case of marriages involving Gypsies, research has shown that the law-making system in Wallachia did not function organically: the laws issued by the Government or by the Prince, for example, did not always lead to the actual modification of the Civil Code (in particular, of Codul Caragea), or at least this is what the published versions of the code suggest; they were also not reflected in the proceedings of the Country’s Assembly. Moreover, as we shall further see, both Pravilniceasca Condică and Codul Caragea covered the will of the owner, but left out the possibility

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for the Church, as an institution, to lay down its own set of written or unwritten rules, to be applied in mass to its own slaves. For a comprehensive look at the manner in which ownership influenced marriage and marriage patterns amongst the Gypsies, all the levels of authority have had to be analysed: codes of law, administrative orders with the power of law, ordinances, reports and regulations inside the Church, and sources reflecting common practices of any kind. The situations covered are presented below: Type of source covered

Situation covered

Legislation x

Civil codes

Pravilniceasca Condică (1780-1817) and Codul lui Caragea (1817-1865)

x x x x x

Constitution

2

Regulamentul Organic2 (1831-1864/6)

x

marriages between slaves belonging to any different owners marriages between slaves and freemen marriages between state-owned slaves and those of the nobility slave-freeman couples outside marriage laws towards the abolishment of slavery laws preventing slave families from being divided (1847)

abolition of slavery

Including the laws adopted by the Country’s Assembly after the enactment of the Organic Regulation.

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Regulations

Orders with the power of law (State Administration)

x x

marriages between state-owned slaves and freemen (allowed in 1838) the obligation of the Church to issue civil state documents to slaves

Sources from the owners – the Church x x Orders with role of regulations or endorsing existing secular regulations or ecclesiastical practices

x x

x Reports, demands and regular ordinances

Personal requests of nobles

x

x

marriages between state-owned slaves and freemen marriages between other slaves and freemen marriages between slaves of the Metropolitanate and those of the monasteries marriages between slaves of the Metropolitanate and those of the nobility marriages between slaves of the Metropolitanate and those of the monasteries marriages between slaves of the Metropolitanate and those of the nobility marriages between slaves of the Church and those of the nobility

Marriages between Different Kinds of Slaves: Legislation and Practice In the matter of marriages between slaves, the general legislation mainly established the knowledge and consent of the master as the main condition for their taking place and covered various circumstances that

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were either meant to prevent the infringement of this condition or dealt with cases of such violations:

ł the priests’ obligation to verify the owners’ written consent to the marriage of their slaves (Pravilniceasca condică3 - Art. 2) ł if a state-owned slave intended to get married, his supervisor (armaЮ) was bound to verify his ownership (PC, Art. 6) ł cases representing a breach of the above-mentioned condition: o if one owner gave his consent without ascertaining the approval of the other owner, he would incur the loss of his slave in favour of the other owner (PC Art 1; CC Art. 8) o if slaves intended to get married without the knowledge and consent of their masters, then they had to be separated (CC Art. 5) o if an owner gave his consent to one of his slaves’ marrying an alien slave4 (PC Art. 5). Marriages between alien slaves (considered to be state-owned slaves) and slaves belonging to the nobility were banned in Pravilniceasca Condică (Art 6). If such marriages were to take place, however, they did not have to be broken; instead, the wife would enter the possession of her husband’s master and the other owner would have to be compensated. The code that came into effect in 1817 (Codul Caragea) was not clear on the matter: it did not overtly ban these marriages, but mentioned that the procedure stipulated in the previous code should apply in case they were to take place. Moreover, neither code clearly specified whether this situation referred to state-owned slaves in general or only to alien slaves, in the sense of slaves belonging to an unknown master. Within the framework established by these laws, the marriages of any slaves were theoretically possible: the sources show that, most of the times, the slaves themselves would first agree to marry one another and then inform their master of their intentions. If they belonged to different masters and if they had received their owners’ consent to their marriage, then they could get married. What followed next was well entrenched in the custom regarding slaves, as the codes themselves mentioned (după obiceiul vechi – “according to the old custom”): the wife would come into the possession of her husband’s master and her former owner would be 3

All the articles from this code are part of the chapter “Regarding Gypsies” (or slaves, for the two terms were synonymous at that time). 4 The slave of unknown master or owner.

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Mixed Marriages Involving Gypsy Slaves in 19th Century Wallachia

compensated with another slave woman, an operation known in the sources as schimburi - exchanges. If otherwise agreed, the husband could also change owners. The compensation had, of course, to take into account the economic value of the slave whose owner changed as a result of marriage: if he or she was skilled, then the compensation had to come in the form of a fairly equally skilled slave. Both codes of law actually covered this aspect, in one way or another (Art. 4 in Pravilniceasca Condică). Sometimes the couple would remain split in terms of who owned them, but their children would go to either owner, by gender: the sons would belong to the father’s master and the daughters to the mother’s. Such cases seemed less frequent. We can estimate that other combinations were theoretically possible, the only sine-qua-non condition being the permission granted by the two owners. An example of a case which avoided this stipulation, or was thought to have eluded it, was found in the complaint from 1843 submitted by Serdar (a military rank) Dimitrie Fărcă‫܈‬anu to the archpriest of Vla‫܈‬ca District, and later remanded to the Metropolitanate. The report to the Metropolitanate, reproducing the nobleman’s words, speaks of: “Father Radu from the village of Futoaie who, it is said, dared, without the knowledge of his Lordship, marry a girl by name of Călina, a slave of his, to a rudar [a state-owned slave].”5

A full inquiry was ordered, implicating the Metropolitanate, the archpriest of the district, two parish priests and the vătafi (supervisors of the slave communities), together with the slave communities. It turned out that Călina, the child of an unmarried mixed couple (her parents were slaves owned by a monastery and by the state), was in fact a state-owned slave – such cases seem to have been very frequent and a great number of disputes between the owners were due to the fact that kinship inside Gypsy communities was difficult to trace, and couple formation was sometimes hard to control and keep track of. Still, this case shows just how important the permission of the owner was, since its settlement involved all the levels of ecclesiastical authority. We also know that, while prior to the 19th century, permissions were likely to be granted verbally, written consent was used especially after 1831. RăvaЮe or tickets were issued – they were small-size documents that certified, through simple written messages, the owner’s consent to a 5

Bucharest Municipal Archives (further BMA), Mitropolia Ungro-Vlahiei, file 1165/1843, 1.

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219

marriage, and were presented to the parish priest. Owners very often corresponded through letters and thus agreed to their slaves’ marriage. Regarding state-owned slaves, the officiating priest had to be presented with a răvaЮ from the community’s supervisor (vătaf) showing that the marrying slaves were owned by the state. Thanks to these existing sources, sometimes preserved as whole files, we can step beyond the theoretical possibilities described by the laws. Thus, we may detect some tendencies of allowing or restricting the marriage of slaves belonging to certain owners or kinds of owners if we observe when and how the owners refused or accepted to give their consent to these marriages. There are examples that suggest the tendency of the Church and of the nobles to limit the marriages of their slaves to their own category. One such example even speaks of marriages between Church-owned slaves and slaves owned by the nobility as being against the law: on 4 October 1846, Clucer (a rank) C. Hiotu wrote a letter to the Metropolitan, informing him about two of his slaves “leaning towards” (înclinaаi) two female slaves who belonged to the Metropolitanate. He proposed that the couples should be united in marriage and offered compensation to the Metropolitanate, but acknowledged, at the same time, the gravity of the situation and attempted to excuse himself: “…and while such unions are against the law, even I cannot hold my men back…”6 The law certainly did not focus on this specific combination in slave marriages. The formulation “against the law” could come as the expression of a custom specific to the nobility and/or the Church. Unfortunately, further such instances involving slaves owned by nobles have not been found, but there are examples that clearly show a tendency, at certain levels of the Church, to limit these marriages, and even more, to prevent marriages between slaves belonging to different ecclesiastical institutions, in particular between slaves of the Metropolitanate and those of monasteries. In 1842, a group of male slaves belonging to several monasteries from the mountainous North-West (where Cozia, Govora and Dintrunlemn are said to have had the largest number of slaves) complained to the Prince, showing that: “… we were free to marry [spouses] from one monastery to another; along went the young men from Cozia and wedded girls from Govora or from Întrunlemn Monastery,7 they8 made exchanges,9 but only here, for we are 6

BMA, Mitropolia Ungro-Vlahiei, file 1177/1846, page 7. “Dintrunlemn.”.” 8 The abbots. 7

220

Mixed Marriages Involving Gypsy Slaves in 19th Century Wallachia labourers of Ocna.10 But for a while now, we see that others [the abbots] have no longer allowed us as they used to and, for this reason, as the village is rather small, and we are also related, and we can also no longer go to [other] monasteries to wed girls…”11

The case was reported to the Department of Church Affairs, which gave the slaves a positive answer, showing that such a case was not common at the time: “[a complaint] which we shall answer by saying that their request is justified and, therefore, on such occasions as [those] shown in their grievance, it is advisable that, on the one hand, the abbots should agree with one another, to make either an exchange or an agreement for the children to be divided, according to the custom that was in use before and that was followed as such; and, on the other hand, the supervisors of the slaves should report here (to the House of the Metropolitanate) about the exchange they desire to make.”12

This correspondence reveals two important aspects. First, this is a case that imposed restrictions on marriages even between slaves belonging to different monasteries, and second, we have a clear testimony of how the condition of being a slave impacted marriage arrangements: aside from the restrictions imposed by the abbots, forcing the slaves to work in a particular place chosen by the owner also mattered: the slaves showed how they, as labourers in one and the same setting, could not go looking for marriageable girls in other places. The natural landscape may also have had a contribution, as communication was more difficult and villages were smaller in the region. This - so far, singular - case seems too extreme even for that period, but at the next, higher level, that of marriages between slaves belonging to monasteries and to the Metropolitanate, a similar case suggests a rather common practice, which is in striking contrast to that of Clucer Hiotu, who could not master his men. The situation refers to the slaves of the Metropolitanate in general, who were numerous and spread on many estates, but who could also be concentrated in towns like Bucharest and Târgovi‫܈‬te. In November 1844, one year after the emancipation of the state-owned slaves and three years before of the emancipation of the church-owned slaves, the House of the Metropolitanate reported to the 9

Exchanges made as a result of marriages. Târgu Ocna, a mining town in Northern Wallachia, Vâlcea District. 11 BMA, Mitropolia Ungro-Vlahiei, file 1160/1842, 2. 12 BMA, Mitropolia Ungro-Vlahiei, file 1160/1842, 3. 10

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Metropolitan that the slaves of the Metropolitanate were, in their vast majority, so closely related to one another that their marriages to slaves belonging to monasteries often became a forced solution, and asked for permission to grant its consent to such marriages: “As the Gypsy slave communities of the Holy Metropolitanate are more or less sealed, for the most part, by kinships amongst themselves, and as most of them see themselves barred by the Church laws from joining one another in marriage, the male and the female Gypsy [slaves] of the Holy Metropolitanate, and are forced to wed or to join slaves of the monasteries (...) and because necessity so often demands that slaves of the Holy Metropolitanate be wedded to those of monasteries, and as staling in drafting the agreement papers is not affordable, Your Holiness is humbly requested either to kindly order that the House should be permitted to conclude such agreements solely on the basis of the deeds it issues and receives from the supervisors at the monasteries, which shall be recorded in a separate register, so that they may be known of; or do as Your Holiness deems best… to do away with the bulky correspondence that may accompany every exchange.”13

One might argue that this report does not make it absolutely clear whether the described situation was a matter of the authority and ownership that were exercised over the slaves or if other factors played a role in that regard. It would nonetheless be very difficult to imagine that in Bucharest or Târgovi‫܈‬te, the slaves’ relations with other categories of slaves were not possible due to isolation or endogamous behavioural patterns, for these certainly did not prevent other categories from mixing, with or without the consent of their masters. The response of the Metropolitanate, however, was very transparent on the question whether ownership could influence cross-community marriage patterns: “We have seen the circumstances shown in report No. 1240 on the slaves of the House, that kinship amongst them has expanded and that, according to the ecclesiastical canons, they cannot take one another in lawful marriage, being forced - in case an agreement is reached or they have a leaning towards it - to marry monastery slaves; we have also seen the request submitted by the House, asking that it should be entitled, on such occasions [marriages], to make exchanges, giving slaves of the House and receiving monastery slaves, under records compiled with the monastery [slave] supervisors. Our answer in that as regards the matter of making exchanges with monastery slaves and not with slaves belonging to the 13

BMA, Mitropolia Ungro-Vlahiei, file 1168/1844, 1.

222

Mixed Marriages Involving Gypsy Slaves in 19th Century Wallachia boyars, the request is granted our approval; but the House should be as economical as possible, in the sense of not giving away only female Gypsies, but also males...”14

In the fragment above, reference is made to the exchanges of slaves as a result of the marriage thereof, by way of compensation: in order for the couple not to remain of mixed ownership, one owner would receive the entire couple and the other another slave, as compensation for the ceded slave. The terminology is clear, not only from this case alone, but also from all other such examples dating back to that period. The file also bears the title Orânduiala căsătoriilor аiganilor Sf(intei) Mitropolii cu ai măn(ăs)tirilor – The Procedure for Marriages between the Gypsy Slaves of the Holy Metropolitanate and Those of the Monasteries. The request and resolution can be seen as referring to two aspects. Marriages with monastery slaves were forbidden or limited prior to their owners’ correspondence and the House would suggest that they should be allowed. Secondly, the House would ask for permission to personally handle these marriages, if they were desired by the slaves. The Metropolitanate would grant its permission but, additionally, it would rule out any such possibility with slaves belonging to the nobility; a milder tone could be adopted in the interpretation, as cases of marriages with the latter category of slaves were probably intended to be resolved personally, by the Metropolitan. However, even if this were the correct interpretation and if it was all a simple question of procedure, it still shows some limitations on the possibility to marry. Above all, the case proves, beyond doubt, that the Church had a clear tendency to restrict some marriages, not only of its own slaves to those of the nobility, but also between slaves belonging to the Metropolitanate and the monasteries (slaves of the dioceses might also have had the same regime as monastery slaves), as this is the likeliest cause for the expansion of kinship in the slave communities of the Metropolitanate. The impact of different policies on the marriage arrangements within the slave communities seems to have been significant, and although it was singular at his level of authority, the situation of the slaves living near Ocna showed a tendency common to the Church as a whole. Thus the close kinships inside some communities of slaves clearly had more to do with the exercise of ownership than with inherent marriage patterns and behaviours or with the degree of communication between the settlements and their size. Apparently, they impacted the communities so much that in 1844, mixed marriages actually became a forced solution. Even so, a 14

BMA, Mitropolia Ungro-Vlahiei, file 1168/1844, 2.

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restriction was still imposed, this time not on the slaves, but on the House of the Metropolitanate: exchanges of male slaves were to avoided, for the woman was to follow the man. This was, in all probability, not so much a Biblical reference, but the order in which the Administration was to enforce the custom whereby a woman slave had to be placed in the possession of her husband’s master, the other owner being, of course, compensated with a different female slave. What this meant was not that only the male slaves of the Metropolitanate were allowed to marry or that the Metropolitanate gained only male slaves in the exchanges that followed such marriages, but that only women were to be exchanged by way of compensation in any kind of mixed marriage involving Gypsies of the Metropolitanate. This reveals a desire for a better control and lasting ownership of the male slaves, who were generally very skilled and had great economic value, coming as a necessity after centuries when the relations between their owners had been dominated by disputes regarding whose slave was whose. For the same reason of keeping better records and enforcing tight procedures, a special written procedure was established in 1847, which had to be followed if any church-owned slave was to marry, with slightly different provisions for the following two sub-categories: x for slaves of the Metropolitanate: File 1164 from the Mitropolia Ungro-Vlahiei (Metropolitanate of Wallachia) Fund in the Bucharest Municipal Archives holds a few documents describing the following chain: a Metropolitan slave wanting to marry another such slave: 1. had to inform the supervisor (vătaf), who would make a simple inquiry, establishing if both slaves belonged to the Metropolitanate and were entitled to marry under church laws; 2. in case of a favourable result, the supervisor had to address a request to the House of the Metropolitanate, stating the affirmative result of his inquiry; 3. the House of the Metropolitanate would give an order that the archpriest in charge of the slaves should issue permission tickets (răvaЮe), which ultimately allowed the slaves to get married. x for monastery slaves: 1. if the monastery was directly subordinated to the Metropolitanate of Wallachia: the same procedure was followed except for the fact that the abbot of the monastery sometimes filled the duties of both the supervisor and the archpriest; there are also documented cases that ultimately had to be approved directly by the Metropolitan.

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Mixed Marriages Involving Gypsy Slaves in 19th Century Wallachia

2. if the monastery was in Wallachia but was subordinated to the Holy Land, the same procedure was followed as above, but with the representative of the Holy Land (Epitropia Sfântului Mormânt) acting as a mediator between the abbot and the House of the Metropolitanate. Although not entirely excluded, the direct approval of the Metropolitan was not always reflected in this type of correspondence, but this does not mean that his central authority was overstepped. On the whole, starting from 1844, better records were kept of these arrangements, from the requests made by the supervisors on behalf of the slaves, to the answers the House addressed to the archpriests of the area. Lastly, personal approvals and orders issued by the Metropolitanate are also present in the archive files. The case of the 1844 report and resolution has, therefore, more than one significance: x it attested a certain policy on intermarriages between different slave categories; x it was one of the rare occasions where customs became written regulations – the resolution of the Metropolitanate was adopted as a standard procedure and was cited in future agreements with the monasteries; x it can be seen as a point where keeping records of the marriage agreements also became regulated, thus improving control over these cases. Still, these circumstances should not be taken in absolute terms, for exceptions from this policy could be and were made, both before and after 1844. Cases where slaves belonging to the nobility married church-owned slaves (of any kind) did exist but, it seems, all had to be approved directly by the Metropolitan and all were requested by the nobles and not by the Church. In their very own words, several nobles recounted about having some difficulty in obtaining approval for the marriage that their slaves hoped and asked for: x In October 1846, certifying an agreement made with the Metropolitan, Cup-Bearer (paharnic) Nicolae Brătescu wrote: “Ion, son of Ion Bon‫܊‬oiu, and Lucsandra, daughter of Amache of Ioana, Gypsy slaves of the H(oly) Metropolitanate, living together for many

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years, the former with Zamfira, a (female) slave of mine, and the latter with Ghi‫܊‬ă, another (male) slave of mine, and as they could not part from one another, after the many efforts I made, in the end, my prayer to His Holiness, Father Metropolitan that I should be given these so that I can join them in lawful marriage (…)15 has been granted.”16

x in the winter of 1842, Serdar Iordache Zosima wrote to the Metropolitanate: “I think you may remember about the situation that I have presented on several occasions, for I happen to have only one slave as a coachman, by name of Nicolae, son of ‫܇‬erban, and that lad has never ceased, either directly or through others, to ask me to allow him to get married, for he can no longer live this way.”

The request continued by showing how, in his search for a partner, Nicolae had been rejected a few times by the girls he desired until, eventually, a slave of the Metropolitanate accepted him; the Metropolitanate finally granted the noble’s request.17 In a very interesting case, the noble had to wait so long for the Church to effectively carry out his approved request regarding the slaves’ marriage that the latter simply lost interest in one another, and a new request had to be made. The records show that on 5 May the Metropolitanate received the request of Dimitrie Sachelaropol, who requested that consent should be granted to a marriage between his slave Nicolae and a slave girl from the Comana Hermitage. The request seems to have been accepted, but on 10 September 1846 the House of the Metropolitanate received another request from Dimitrie Sachelaropol, saying that: “Because of His Holiness, Fr. Ecclesiarch Nichifor, Abbot of the Comana and Gâlmile Hermitages, who did not immediately carry out Order No. 522 issued by the Honourable House last year, that a Gypsy woman slave should be given into marriage to a slave of mine, by the name of Nicolae, for whom I asked His Holiness, Father Metropolitan, that I should be given in exchange for compensation; so that (female) slave happened to grow dis-infatuated and now she has married another, my slave also falling in love with another Gypsy woman…” (the text continues with a renewed

15

Here is a list of the names of the slaves that the Metropolitanate was to be compensated with. 16 BMA, Mitropolia Ungro-Vlahiei, file 1177/1846, 6. 17 BMA, Mitropolia Ungro-Vlahiei file 1162/1842, 9.

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Mixed Marriages Involving Gypsy Slaves in 19th Century Wallachia request, this time for Nicolae’s new partner, who also belonged to the Church).18

The attitude of the Church towards slave marriages seems clear, but what poses a problem is the origin of this tendency to restrict them: x it was not the secular laws that provided these restrictive patterns; x Church laws did not include any regulations regarding slave marriages. Îndreptarea Legii, the previous code of law, did not refer to slaves at all. The only reason behind the practices and tendencies described by the cases presented above seems to have been the desire to exercise a more efficient ownership over the slaves. What this research has not focused on, however, are marriages involving slaves who belonged to the state. Their documented cases seem somewhat scarcer than in the previous cases; the archives of the former Governments hold very little material on them, covering mostly fiscal aspects. Instead, they were the subject of a very interesting development in the 1830s, as presented below.

Marriages between Slaves and Freemen In both Principalities, the beginning of the 1830s was marked by a series of reforms in almost all the areas of state and social life. Above all, the two countries were given a Constitution and attempts to improve and regulate all these aspects were made everywhere. More and more, as the principalities opened up to the West, slavery gained visibility, and it was now that probably for the first time in history, ideas and debates on the matter became significant in state and public affairs. They focused on three major purposes: x Improving the living conditions of the Gypsy slaves became a preoccupation from very early on, being included in the Constitution and debated during the first legislature of Wallachia, which led to the formation of a Commission in charge with exploring measures that might be taken in this respect. x The abolishment of slavery became an idea that was increasingly heard of but, at the same time, it was rather difficult to put in practice. 18

BMA, Mitropolia Ungro-Vlahiei, file 1182/1846, 3.

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x Assimilating and integrating Gypsy slaves into the Wallachian society went, of course, hand in hand with the previous two, but what is somewhat surprising to note is that measures towards this goal were actually carried out before any slave category was abolished. The idea of assimilation, as it transpires from that time, had a social and cultural rather than an ethical meaning. The main strategy for enforcing it was creating the premises for a closer relation with the Wallachians (or the freemen in general). The personality behind the strategy seems to have been Colonel Herăscu, Head of the Department of Prisons in the 1830s, under whose administration the state-owned slaves were directly placed. As measures destined to strengthen relations with the free inhabitants of the country, the colonel first proposed to the Prince that Wallachians should be allowed to baptise the children of state-owned Gypsies, but on 8 August 1838 he added that mixed marriages should also be allowed. The Prince accepted these proposals and they were passed on to the administration to be put to practice: first to the Department of the Interior, and then, on 28 September to the House of Metropolitanate, which in turn transmitted the orders to the archpriests: as of that moment, the slaves of the state were free to marry freemen, freemen were entitled to baptise the slaves’ children and priests had the obligation to officiate the ceremonies and provide civil state documents, like in all other cases. The document of the proposal itself is an example of the positive attitude towards integrating the slaves into Wallachian society, as well as towards culturally and socially assimilating them with the Wallachians. In the words of Colonel Herăscu, the goals of fostering closer relations between slaves and freemen included the adoption of:19 “civilised habits, fully similar to those of the other inhabitants, by nurturing their nature, the state of their spirit and good habits”… “so that through this measure, bringing them into closer relation, they may imitate the habits of the other local inhabitants, in a shorter time, and gain the happiness that is in store for them”.

In striking contrast to its intentions and projections, this measure seems, at least from the sources consulted, to have had almost no effect. This is also one of the reasons for which the project remained almost unknown in Romanian historiography. Even after the full abolishment of slavery, mixed marriages between Romanians and Gypsies seemed to be 19 The text of the proposal can be found reproduced in Buletin – gazetă ofiаială, the issue of 16 September 1838.

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Mixed Marriages Involving Gypsy Slaves in 19th Century Wallachia

very marginal events in society. The failure to integrate the Gypsies, or at least to improve their living conditions in any way, their happiness, so much desired by Colonel Herăscu, seems to have involved factors that were deeply rooted in both the Gypsy and the Romanian populations. The Church, on the other hand, again seems to have adopted a negative attitude towards such unions, and this time it was not only the higher clergy who exhibited it but also the parish priests. In 1838, just after the Department of Prisons informed the Church of the possibility of granting the right of intermarriage to state-owned slaves, an order was issued to the Secretary of the Metropolitanate to ensure that Gypsies would not face any opposition from the rural clergy as regards the baptism of their children or the burial of their dead next to the ordinary inhabitants (the Wallachians). The order also made reference to a report on state-owned slaves, showing that: “Because the subjects of this administration showed that at the baptism of their children and at the time of the aforementioned subjects’ demise, they encountered opposition from the village priests, who were unwilling to baptise them and to bury them among their dead. That is why the Honourable House is asked to give its general orders to all the archpriests, so that on such occasions the priests should be bound to baptise and bury them in the church where the other villagers are also buried; to which (the House) is requested to provide an answer.”20

The accounts of such oppositions, reported by the slaves themselves, could have a very practical meaning, for beginning in 1831, a Church Regulation approved by the Prince and the Country’s Assembly demanded that parish priests should be partially supported by the parishioners, with money and labour, in return for their religious services. It may have been the case that since slaves did not contribute to or have a clear status in this system, they were denied religious services, as were ordinary Wallachians if they did not follow the regulations. But there may also have been other factors at stake, on which we could, at most, speculate, since no other such cases were documented. The House of Metropolitanate approved the request of the Department of Prisons, and the order was dispatched in the districts. As regards actual marriages excluding state-owned slaves, the Metropolitanate maintained its firm opposition, but again, practices tended to eschew regular legislation. When it forbade such marriages between its own slaves, as their owner, the Church also gave clear justifications: 20

BMA, Mitropolia Ungro-Vlahiei, file 1144/1838, 4.

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marriages with freemen would lead to the enslavement of the free partner, and thus they were to be avoided. Strangely enough, the civil code functioning at the time did not include such a possibility, certifying that the only way a man could become a slave was if he was born of a slave mother, irrespective of the partner’s status. Moreover, if freemen and slaves intended to live together or even to get married, the law stated that the couple should be broken, and if an owner gave his permission to the marriage, the consequence was not the enslavement of the free person, but the freeing of the slave – The Caragea Code, Art. 10 of Chapter VII. The same article was invoked in a case from 1840, when the Prefecture of Romana‫܊‬i District asked the Department of Interior whether any action should be taken in the case of a slave married to a free woman, since only the aforementioned article was known.21 In this circumstance, the justification offered by the Church seems to have been utterly invalid. Three cases where this justification was used have been found, one of which seems more interesting: in 1845, the Bishop of Râmnic addressed himself to the Archpriest of Craiova and Dolj in the matter of a report the Dolj Prefecture had sent to the Metropolitanate, showing three cases of couples that involved male slaves and free women who were not married, but lived together and had children. The bishop strongly demanded that the aforementioned Romanian girls and their parents should consider not having anything further to do with the Gypsy slaves, “for it will only harm (their) soul, giving away their blood from treasured freedom into slavery.”22 Forming a couple with a slave would thus be equivalent, in the bishop’s words, with a form of sin. If this assessment is correct and since there were no actual situations in that period where people were enslaved through marriage, then the use of this argument along with the spiritual justification (the harming of souls) in order to enforce the slave marriage regime in an even stricter manner than the law did renders this particular situation as extremely delicate. The Church appears to have been in a position where it was freer to act outside active regulations and the relation it had traditionally had with the political authority, a relation that might have confined it in the past to accepting the ownership of slaves and also their condition and marriage regime. By the end of the century, the political authority had already had made steps towards ousting the old customs, first in 1838, and then in 1843, when it emancipated its own slaves; one might interpret that the Church clearly took a very personal 21 22

Achim and Tomi, Documente, 79. Dolj District Archives, Protoeria Dolj, file 3/1845, 2.

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Mixed Marriages Involving Gypsy Slaves in 19th Century Wallachia

stand against these marriages, which had less to do with religious or secular customs or its relation with the secular power than with the exercise of power as a slave owner. Slavery in Wallachia meant that choosing a partner or joining him/her in marriage was ultimately reduced to the consent of the owner, coupled with other factors that could influence family formation, like the living and the working environments. The slaves of Ocna showed how before their options could be restricted by the abbots, they could only chose their wives from the working community of the area. Added to this, the desire for a better control over their slaves very often meant that the owners reduced their field of options to their own categories of ownership. Church-owned slaves in particular seemed the most restricted from this perspective, as the Metropolitanate of Wallachia tended to allow marriages only within the main branches of Church ownership. During the period under examination here, the secular authorities adopted a somewhat passive attitude towards these cases: Colonel Herăscu’s proposals towards free marriage, as well as the order transmitted to the Metropolitanate that slaves should be treated fairly by parish priests, appeared to be singular cases, which had little effect. Even under these conditions, one cannot help noticing the contrast between the policies or strategies that the State and the Church adopted in this respect. On the one hand, the State constantly evolved towards granting freedom to the slaves, first the freedom of marriage to its own slaves in 1838, followed by their complete liberation in 1843; then came the freeing of the slaves owned by the Church in 1847 and of those belonging to the nobility in 1856. The Church, on the other hand, might be said to have embarked on the reverse process, for in the years leading to 1847, the instruments for keeping better records and ensuring the control of all its slaves were increasingly perfected. Like in the case of mixed marriages involving freemen, the Church acted in a manner that was not reflective of its spiritual role of uniting man and woman and that was not consistent with its traditional relationship of symphonia with the secular authority. Insofar as intermarriages between slaves and between slaves and freemen were concerned, the Church displayed its full status as a slave-owning institution. Ultimately, the right of free marriage became a reality through emancipation: as the cases examined above reveal, this was one of the great benefits the abolishment of slavery brought about, even though, for entire decades, the former slaves’ well-being and integration into Romanian society remained probably almost as difficult as they had been during slavery.

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References Manuscript sources Bucharest Municipal Archives, fund Mitropolia Ungrovlahiei, files 1144/1838, 1160/1842, 1162/1842, 1165/1843, 1168/1844, 1177/1846, 1182/1846. Dolj District Archives, fund Protoeria Dolj, file 3/1845.

Printed Sources Academia Republicii Populare Române, Pravilniceasca Condică 1780, Bucure‫܈‬ti: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Române, 1957. Academia Republicii Populare Române, Legiurea Caragea, Bucure‫܈‬ti: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Române, 1955. Academia Republicii Populare Române, Îndreptarea Legii 1652, Bucure‫܈‬ti: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Române, 1962. Adunarea Deputa‫܊‬ilor. Analele Parlamentare ale României, 14 vols. (1831-1847), Bucure‫܈‬ti: Imprimeria Statului, 1890. Buletin. Gazetă Oficială (Official monitor of Wallachia), 1831-47, Bucure‫܈‬ti: Tipografia Cur‫܊‬ii Domne‫܈‬ti (The Court`s Typography), 183147. Regulamentul Organic. Întrupat cu legiuirile din anii 1831, 1832 Юi 1833 Юi adăogat cu legiuirile de la anul 1834 pănă acum. Acum a doa oară tipărit. Bucure‫܈‬ti: Tipografia Cur‫܊‬ii Domne‫܈‬ti, 1847.

Secondary bibliography Achim, Venera and Tomi, Raluca. Documente de arhivă privind robia аiganilor. Epoca dezrobiriii. Bucure‫܈‬ti: Editura Academiei Române, 2010. Achim, Viorel. Яiganii în istoria României. Bucure‫܈‬ti: Editura Enciclopedică, 1988. Bataillard, Paul. Les derniers travaux relatifs aux Bohémiens dans l'Europe orientale. Paris: A. Franck, 1872. Constantin, Florina Manuela. Robii аigani din Яara Românească în justiаie: cutume Юi ipostaze juridice: studiu de caz (Hrisovul din 21 iunie 1637). Revista istorică n.s., 18, 1-2 (2007): 91-108. Kogălniceanu, Mihail. Schiаe despre аigani. Edited by Gheorghe Ghibănescu. Ia‫܈‬i: P. Iliescu & D, Grossu, 1900.

MARRIAGES ACROSS RELIGIOUS BOUNDARIES IN ALBANIA AROUND THE YEAR 1900 SIEGFRIED GRUBER

Introduction In previous centuries, marriage barriers between different religious groups were often more pronounced than those between different ethnic groups. A century ago, the population of Albania was mainly Muslim, but Christian minorities lived in the north and south of the country. There were almost no religious intermarriages recorded in the census data: only 0.1 percent of the Christians and 0.02 percent of the Muslims reported being married to a spouse of another confession. The data of the 1918 population census enable us to verify whether the numbers of religious intermarriage cases were really almost negligible or simply went unnoticed because women converted to their husbands’ religious confession at marriage. Women’s conversions at marriage could be part of a larger pattern of religious change and flexibility or just another feature of male domination in a patriarchal society. The place of birth allows us to reconstruct the religious confession of wives before marriage, but religiously mixed places make it difficult to distinguish between spouses with the same religion and spouses with different religious backgrounds. This research on marriages across religious boundaries in Albania around the year 1900 will therefore concentrate on people born in mono-religious settlements.

Albania and its population Albania was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire during the latter’s expansion in Europe beginning in the late Middle Ages. Albanians became the nation with the highest percentage of Muslims within the European part of the Ottoman Empire, and people of Albanian descent were successful in making a career within the military and civil administration of the Ottoman Empire. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,

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regional office holders established themselves as semi-independent rulers in the Albanian territories, while a national movement did not begin until the end of the 19th century, when the Ottoman Empire was shrinking in Europe. Albanian independence occurred only with the final collapse of Ottoman rule in Europe (with the exception of the region around Istanbul). Although the country’s neighbouring states wanted to partition the Albanian territories among them, independence was declared in 1912, but the new Albanian state was smaller than the region settled by Albanians.

Marriage patterns Age at marriage Hajnal defines an “Eastern European marriage pattern” characterised by a low age at marriage and a virtual lack of celibacy east of a line running roughly from Trieste to St. Petersburg1. Sklar notes that there was a clear distinction between the high age at marriage in the Baltic, Polish, and Czech lands as compared to South-Eastern Europe2. Plakans and Wetherell propose a division of Eastern Europe into three sub-regions or subzones (Northern, Central, and Southern)3. The family organisation, religion and the course of the demographic transition have all been analysed as causes underlying nuptiality patterns in the Balkans, but Botev is rather sceptical about the first two reasons4. At the start of the 20th century, the average age at marriage in Albania was 18.1 years among women and 26.6 years among men, according to the census of 1918 (SMAM: singulate mean age at marriage, see Hajnal 1953). This resulted in a considerable age difference between the spouses, which averaged 8.5 years, and supported male domination5. The male age at marriage was higher than postulated for the “Eastern European marriage pattern”6. Considerable differences can be seen for the age at marriage, which ranged from 16.3 years (district of Kavaja) to 20.7 years (district of Gora) for women and from 20.9 years (district of Kavaja) to 33.4 years (city of Shkodra) for men. Accordingly, the age differences between husband and wife were between a low of 4.0 years (district of Durrësi) and a high of 13.5 years (city of Shkodra). In general, urban people married 1

Hajnal, “European Marriage Patterns,” 101. Sklar, “The Role of Marriage,” 232. 3 Plakans and Wetherell, “The Hajnal Line,” 109, 120. 4 Botev, “Nuptiality,” 107-26. 5 Gruber, “Household Composition,” 104. 6 Hajnal, “European Marriage Patterns,” 101. 2

234

Marriages across Religious Boundaries in Albania around 1900

later than the rural people of the surrounding district and Northern Albanian women married, on average, earlier than the women of Central Albania7. Marriage was almost universal: in the age group 48-52 years, only 2.1 percent of the women and 4.3 percent of the men were still unmarried.

Polygamous marriages Marrying more than one wife can be considered a means of ensuring the continuation of the male line, especially in cases in which the first wife did not bear sons. This was allowed for Muslims, but not for Christians. Nevertheless, such cases did exist among Catholics, and Hahn reported that infertile wives were rejected and replaced by concubines8. Levirate was also practised, since they “consider the woman as bought; if the husband dies, she remains with the family as an inherited object and she is taken by the brother of the deceased or by another member of the house”.9

The Catholic Church threatened members who engaged in this practice with excommunication. In a report from 1893 we read that, among the Merturi, 50 out of 213 families were excommunicated because they married their daughters to Muslims or because they lived with a sister-inlaw, an aunt or another woman10. In the Southern Albanian region of Mallakastër, 4.2 percent of the married men had more than one wife11. Overall, in 1918 4.4 percent of all married men lived with more than one spouse. The lowest proportion was in the city of Shkodra (0.3 percent), while the highest was in the district of Elbasani North (8.0 percent). In general, urban men were less polygamous than rural men and polygamy was most widespread in the eastern regions.12

Endogamous and exogamous marriages The customary law known as “The Code of Lekë Dukagjin” forbade marriages to blood relatives or to fictive kin related through godfathers or 7

Gruber, “Household Composition”, 105. von Hahn, Albanesische Studien, 180. 9 Valentini, La legge, 104. 10 Valentini, La legge, 123. 11 Nicholson, “Women who Shared a Husband,” 48. 12 Gruber, “Marriage Relations.” 8

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235

blood brothers13 and, therefore, required exogamy. Exogamy was much more strictly practised in the areas of Northern Albania and in the region of Labëria (Southern Albania), where the Canon of Labëria was adhered to, while in other southern and south-eastern regions, marriage patterns were more flexible.14 The data of the 1918 population census indicate that 91.5 percent of all married or widowed men in this area were born in the place of residence at the time of the census, while only 29.0 percent of all married or widowed women were also born there. We can clearly see the effect of patrilocal residence in these figures. Of all married women, 25.5 percent were born locally and were married to a local man, 67.2 percent were born in another village and were married to a local man, 1.3 percent were locally born and were married to a man from another village, and 6.1 percent had come to this village together with their husband. Indications of matrilocal residence never exceed 5 percent of all married couples15. Finally, we can draw a rough picture of predominantly exogamous marriages in the north of Northern Albania, predominantly marriages within the same village in the south-west of this region, and high rates of endogamous marriages in the south and east of this region16.

Religious intermarriages Such marriages were generally not promoted, but accepted under some conditions. The easiest way was for one of the partners to convert to the religious confession of the other and then it was a religiously homogenous marriage. In the Catholic Church an episcopal permission was required for a religious intermarriage. Under Islamic marriage law, Christians and Jews were acceptable marriage partners on condition that all children would be raised as Muslims17. The barriers to Muslim-Christian intermarriages have already been mentioned, and the data enable us to verify whether the numbers of such unions were really almost negligible or simply went unnoticed because women converted to their husbands’ religious confession at marriage. Women’s conversions at marriage could be part of a larger pattern of religious change and flexibility or just another feature of male domination in a patriarchal society. 13

Elsie, Der Kanun, 63. Dojaka, “Ekzogamia tek shqiptarët”, 43-57. 15 Gruber, “Marriage Patterns,” 414. 16 Gruber, “Marriage Relations,” 9. 17 Rosenbaum, “Interfaith Marriage,” 909. 14

236

Marriages across Religious Boundaries in Albania around 1900

There were almost no religious intermarriages recorded in the Albanian census of 1918: only 0.1 percent of the Christians and 0.02 percent of the Muslims reported being married to a spouse of another confession. But there are ethnographic reports from Northern Albania about ChristianMuslim intermarriages. The Muslim fis of Krasniqi and Gashi sometimes married Catholic women from Merturi. However, this custom had almost vanished by the beginning of the 20th century18. In Lurja, intermarriage of Christians and Muslims was reportedly quite common,19 while Durham noted that members of the Lurja fis married mostly Mirdites, as long as they were Christians. As Muslims, they preferred marrying people from Matja and the Dibra region20. The place of birth allows us to reconstruct the religious confession of wives before marriage. In the Velja fis (part of Zhuba), which was 100 percent Catholic, 10 percent of the spouses were born in Matja, which was 100 percent Muslim. In Kastrati, half of the Catholic men were married to women from Matja and Grizha, both Muslim fis21.

Data A pertinent source for this kind of research is the population census conducted by the Austro-Hungarian army in Albania in 191822. The Austro-Hungarian army occupied the majority of the territory of the newly created independent Albanian state and established a new administration in 1916. Officers of the Austro-Hungarian army collected the data with the assistance of Albanian officers23. The census personnel were male and the persons responsible for providing information about the members of each household were the (overwhelmingly male) household heads. However, the census-takers were instructed to make sure that no persons were excluded from the count, such as female children. These efforts appear to have been successful, since the census counted almost the same number of men and women, whereas in censuses of other countries in the region, there was always a clear male majority in the population24. This census is the first for Albania in which the original data is still available on the level of the persons recorded, and it is of high quality, given the circumstances under 18

Liebert, Aus dem Nordalbanischen, 11. Whitaker, “Tribal Structure,” 275. 20 Durham, Tribal Origins, 30f. 21 Gruber, “Marriage patterns,” 420. 22 Nicholson, “Women”, 48. 23 Seiner, Ergebnisse der Volkszählung, 3. 24 For Serbia see Holm Sundhaussen, Historische Statistik Serbiens, 80. 19

Siegfried Gruber

237

which it was taken25. It is still widely unknown; thus, in a demographic atlas of Albania, data from 1926 is considered the earliest population data26. Gjonça mentions only the preliminary census of 1916 and gives the credit for the first general census conducted in Albania to the 1923 census.27 The research project entitled “The 1918 Albanian Population Census: Data Entry and Basic Analyses,” based at the University of Graz and funded by the Austrian Science Fund (2000-2003), sought to convert the data into machine-readable form.28 The data remains on the individual level, which allows for much more research than aggregate data on the village level. The researcher is able to aggregate data as s/he wishes, and is not bound to the categories of already aggregated data29. This also enables the researcher to combine different variables on the individual level for research purposes. The census data of 1918 represent a rich source for a variety of questions related to studies about population structure and behaviour. The age, birth place and place of residence were registered for each person and, therefore, data on marriage patterns are available. Up to now, the data from 309 villages and cities have been entered in a database, which contains 140,611 persons.30 This is a data sample and has to be weighted to represent the population of the prefectures, which have been used as sampling strata. We investigate marriages and, therefore, couples are the unit of investigation. Some men were married to more than one woman and thus the number of married women is equal to the number of couples. The marriage partner is not recorded for several hundred married people and, consequently, they have to be excluded from the analysis. It is impossible to infer the religious situation in all the settlements of Albania from the census database because it does not contain information for places which are not yet part of the database. This information is derived from the published results of the census31.

25

Gruber, “Die albanische Volkszählung,” 257. Bërxholi, Atlasi gjeografik. 27 Gjonça, Communism, Health and Lifestyle, 38f. 28 http://www-gewi.uni-graz.at/suedost/seiner/index.html 29 Hall et al., Handbook of International Historical Microdata, 9. 30 http://www-gewi.uni-graz.at/suedost/seiner/availability.html 31 Seiner, Ergebnisse der Volkszählung. 26

238

Marriages across Religious Boundaries in Albania around 1900

Table 1 Data used

Unmarried Married

Women (unweighted) 29,656 26,889

Women (weighted) 88,108 88,097

Men (unweighted) 41,793 26,396

12,918 39,649 Widowed 69,463 215,854 Overall population 26,585 87,149 Married to a recorded partner Source: Kaser et al., Census of Albania. Note: For 13 children, there is no indication of their sex.

Men (weighted) 129,434 84,772

2,946 71,135

9,377 223,583

25,777

83,331

Religion in Albania in 1918 In 1918, the dominant religion in Albania was Islam, with about 75 percent of the population. Catholic and Orthodox Christians together accounted for about a quarter of the population. Orthodox Christians are underrepresented in the census database because more than half of the Orthodox Christians lived in the four districts where the data was destroyed. Only the aggregate data of the preliminary census of 1916 is available for three of them, while for the district of Shkrapari only an estimation of the population exists. In addition, a major part of the Orthodox Albanians lived outside the area where the census of the Albanian population was conducted in 1918: south of this region. The destruction of some of the census material makes the Orthodox population also the most urbanised religious group in the census database. Table 2 Religion in Albania in 1918 in percentages Muslim Catholic Orthodox Other 76.4 20.4 3.2 0.02 Census database 74.8 17.1 8.1 0.004 Published results 13.2 8.5 42.7 32.6 City dwellers in census database Source: Seiner, Ergebnisse der Volkszählung, 10; Kaser et al., Census of Albania.

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239

These religious groups were not evenly distributed within Albania: Catholics were concentrated in the north-west while Orthodox Christians dominated in the south-west and were also numerous in some cities outside this area. Muslims were the major religion everywhere else. Table 3 Religions majorities by settlements settlements percent 917 Muslims 100 percent 983 Muslims 99 percent 1,078 Muslims 90 percent 1,129 Muslims 75 percent 1,193 Muslims 50 percent 149 Catholics 100 percent 165 Catholics 99 percent 202 Catholics 90 percent 221 Catholics 75 percent 241 Catholics 50 percent 89 Orthodox 100 percent 92 Orthodox 99 percent 118 Orthodox 90 percent 146 Orthodox 75 percent 175 Orthodox 50 percent 3 40-50 percent Source: based on Seiner, Ergebnisse der Volkszählung. Note: 182 out of 1,794 settlements have no such information recorded.

56.9 61.0 66.9 70.0 74.0 9.2 10.2 12.5 13.7 15.0 5.5 5.7 7.3 9.1 10.9 0.2

About one percent of the population declared themselves as Bektashi, a deviant Muslim group32. They were especially numerous in the districts of Malakastra and Elbasani North. Religious majorities in the settlements were generally clear: more than 90 percent of the settlements were dominated by a proportion of at least 75 percent of one religious group and an absolute majority of 50 percent was found in all but three settlements. A majority of 99 percent was even prevalent in 76.9 percent of all the settlements, representing 64.5 percent of the population. Settlements with inhabitants of only one religion made up 71.7 percent of all the settlements and more than half of the population (53.9 percent).

32

Clayer, “The Bektashi Institutions,” 183-203.

240

Marriages across Religious Boundaries in Albania around 1900

Research design The analysis will be based upon the reported religious affiliation of couples. In the analysis we treat one couple as one case. We take the wife as the point of reference here, because there were polygamous men, but every wife was married to only one husband. Table 4 shows that almost no religious intermarriages were reported in the census material. Research about marriage patterns in Northern Albania has shown that comparing the religious affiliation of husbands and wives may reveal only few religious intermarriages, but comparing the religious situation in the wives’ places of birth with the husbands’ religion may highlight higher rates of religious intermarriage. We assume either that the husband did not declare the correct religious affiliation of his wife or that the wife converted to the religion of her husband. We do not assume that husbands converted to the religion of their wives. We shall check this assumption at first. We can only verify the people who were born in mono-religious settlements because they are the only ones whose religion at birth we know for sure. A different religion could be reported only for those who left their place of birth afterwards. This migration affected more than half of the married women born in such places, but less than 10 percent of such men. Table 4 Religious intermarriage rates Percentage (weighted) Muslim wife: Catholic husband Orthodox husband Catholic wife: Muslim husband Orthodox husband Orthodox wife: Muslim husband Catholic husband Overall Source: Kaser et al., Census of Albania.

0.02 0.00 0.07 0.02 0.00 0.15 0.04

N (unweighted) 20,684 3 0 3,269 2 4 2,624 0 4 26,585 13

Siegfried Gruber

241

Table 5 The percentage of men and women (married to a recorded partner) who left their mono-religious place of birth and reported a different religion in the census of 1918 Men Percent (weighted)

N (unweighted) 25,777

Married to a recorded partner Both partners 22,135 born in census area 53.4 % of Born in a above 7,818 monoreligious settlement 6.9 % of Left their above 845 place of birth 157 Born Catholic: 89.8 149 Catholic 0.0 0 Orthodox 10.2 8 Muslim Born 34 Orthodox: 76.2 32 Orthodox 0.0 0 Catholic 23.8 2 Muslim 6.7 70 Different religion of those who left Different 0.5 70 religion of those born in a monoreligious settlement Source: Kaser et al., Census of Albania.

Women Percent (weighted)

N (unweighted) 26,585

22,832 51.3 % of above 57.6 % of above

8,191

89.4 0.0 10.6

4,708 577 508 0 69

98.8 0.8 0.4 3.7

247 244 2 1 174

2.1

174

The results show that only few people from the group selected for analysis (married persons to recorded partners), who were born in a place with only one religion and left their place of birth, differed from this religious affiliation: less than 4 percent of the women and less than 7 percent of the men. So among these migrants, more men than women

242

Marriages across Religious Boundaries in Albania around 1900

actually changed their religion. If we look at all such married men and women, irrespective of their migrant status, the numbers are different: 2 percent of the women and only 0.5 percent of the men. This suggests that at the census, women were generally more likely than men to report a religion different from that of their place of birth, but only because they were more likely to have changed their place of residence on account of their marriage. Among the Catholic migrant men and women, about 10 percent reported to be Muslim at the census. There was no difference between men and women. Among the Muslim migrants, more than 5 percent of the men reported being Christian, while only 2.5 percent of the women reported being Christian. The majority reported being Catholic and only a minority confessed to being Orthodox. Among the Orthodox migrants, men and women behaved completely differently: only 1.2 percent of the women reported being non-Orthodox, while almost a quarter of the men reported being Muslim. But the number of cases of Orthodox migrant men was rather small. We could see no higher tendency among the Catholics or Orthodox Christians to report the other Christian confession than among the Muslims. The fact that this other confession was Christian does not seem to have been of importance.

Descriptive analysis We shall therefore compare the religious affiliation of one partner with the religion of the other partner’s place of birth. In a first step, we shall determine the number of cases for analysis, which depends on the availability of information about the religion of the place of birth. The analysis is consequently restricted to couples where both partners were born in Albania. In addition, we have to exclude the data for the cities of Kruja and Elbasan, because the information about the place of birth for these two cities is unreliable. The couples are split into three groups: (1) a locally born husband and an in-migrant wife from a place with only one religion (2) a locally born wife and an in-migrant husband from a place with only one religion (3) both in-migrants from places with only one religion The first group is by far the largest one, with more than 4,000 cases, while the others have fewer than 500 cases for analysis.

Siegfried Gruber

243

Table 6 Data used for analysis

Married to a recorded partner Both partners born in census area and place identified Locally born husband and in-migrant wife from a place with only one religion Locally born wife and in-migrant husband from a place with only one religion Both in-migrants from places with only one religion Source: Kaser et al., Census of Albania.

Women (unweighted) 26,585

Women (weighted) 87,149

22,832

75,793

4,108

20,523

221

686

430

1,307

The largest group is where the husband was locally born and his wife came from outside. This is not surprising because generally, couples in historical Albania lived patrilocally after marriage33. The highest percentage of religious inter-marriages can be found among immigrating Catholic women, almost 10 percent of them marrying a husband of a different faith. These husbands were predominantly Muslim because the number of available Orthodox husbands was quite low. The opposite combination (Catholic husband and Muslim wife) had lower percentages of intermarriages, but higher absolute numbers, because the number of Muslim women is the largest in the sample used for this analysis. Intermarriages among local women marrying immigrant men were highest among Orthodox women, but their number was very small. They generally married men coming from Muslim settlements. Catholic women had again higher rates of intermarriage than Muslim women. Both combinations were generally Muslim-Catholic. In the cases of both spouses being immigrants to the place of residence, Catholic women had again the highest intermarriage rates.

33

Gruber, “The Influence of Migration,” 137.

244

Marriages across Religious Boundaries in Albania around 1900

Table 7 Inter-religious marriages by migrant status, comparing the religion of the place of birth with the religion of the spouse Percentage Locally born husband and inmigrant wife from place with only one religion: Catholic wife Orthodox wife

Women (unweighted)

10.7

470

1.4

219

2.1

3,419

8.6 76.9

52 13

Muslim wife

2.3

156

Both in-migrants from places with only one religion: Catholic wife Orthodox wife

8.9 0.0

69 18

Muslim wife

2.8

343

Muslim wife Locally born wife and in-migrant husband from place with only one religion: Catholic wife Orthodox wife

Source: Kaser et al., Census of Albania.

We can conclude that Catholic women generally had higher rates of religious intermarriage than Muslim women. The number of Orthodox women is too small to have significant results, but it is interesting that in the group of local men marrying immigrant women, Orthodox women had the lowest rates of intermarriage. This would mean that Catholic-Orthodox intermarriages (both of these being Christian confessions) were not preferred over Christian-Muslim intermarriages.

Possible explanatory factors In the next step, we shall look at possible explanatory factors for differences in the rates of religious intermarriage. The first group of factors concern spatial variation. Thus, we shall look at prefectures of birth and prefectures of residence. We can notice that there were much higher rates of religious intermarriage in the prefectures of Shkodra, Puka, and Kruja, while there were almost no religious intermarriages in the prefectures of Berati, Tirana South, and Tirana. As regards the prefectures

Siegfried Gruber

245

of birth, Kruja, Shkodra, and Puka again had the highest rates, but the order was different here. The other four prefectures had again almost no religious intermarriages reported. The second group consists of social and economic factors and includes variables about urban/rural residence, the husband’s occupational group, literacy, and the age group. Urban residents had higher rates of religious intermarriage, which confirmed our expectations. Couples with the husband engaged in the production sector had the highest rates of religious intermarriage, agricultural households had medium rates, and couples of white-collar workers had the lowest rates of religious intermarriage. There were not enough literate wives in this sample; therefore, we looked at the husbands’ literacy for comparison. Couples with literate husbands had higher rates of religious intermarriage. The youngest women had the highest rates of religious intermarriage and the oldest women had the lowest rates of religious intermarriage, which could be an indication of increasing rates of religious intermarriage during the decades before 1918. The third group contains variables about religion: the religion at the place of birth, the religion at the place of residence, and the religious homogeneity in the surroundings of both. People born in Catholic places or living in Catholic places had the highest rates of religious intermarriage. The second highest rates belonged to people coming from religiously mixed places or living in religiously mixed places. The territory of the Albanian population census of 1918 was divided into 114 local communities, which were of a similar religious homogeneity to that of the settlements. Half of them had a majority of one religion of at least 98 percent. A quarter of the communities had majorities of 80 to 97 percent and only one quarter had less religious homogeneity. The population of these local communities was distributed very similarly among these three groups. In comparing these groups, we can see whether there was an influence exerted by religiously different neighbouring villages. We can see much higher rates of religious intermarriage among religiously mixed communities. This is very much in line with our expectations. The fourth group contains cultural variables: ethnicity, the difference between the tribal and the non-tribal areas of Albania, and the difference between Ghegs and Tosks. Albanians were by far the largest ethnic group in the Albanian population census of 1918. The Slavic minority within this sample had much lower rates of religious intermarriage, while the very small group of Roma had very high rates of religious intermarriage. The tribal area in Northern Albania had much higher rates of religious intermarriage than the non-tribal area in Central Albania. Similarly the two major groups of Albanian dialects had different rates of religious

246

Marriages across Religious Boundaries in Albania around 1900

Table 8 Percentages of religious intermarriage by possible explanatory variables

Overall Spatial variation: prefecture of residence: Kruja Puka Shkodra Tirana Zhuri Tirana South Berati Prefecture of birth: Kruja Puka Shkodra Tirana Zhuri Tirana South Berati Social and economic factors: Urban Rural Husband’s occupational group: White-collar workers Sales and service workers Agricultural workers Production workers Others/not working/missing Husband’s literacy: literate Illiterate Age groups: 15 – 20 years 25 years 30 years 35 years 40 years 45 – 50 years 55+ years

percentage of group size religious (unweighted) intermarriage 3.5 4,759 5.8 9.9 14.5 0.6 3.1 0.3 0.1

105 217 464 1,088 1,612 758 515

15.8 5.1 10.2 1.1 0.9 0.2 0.7

203 217 384 1,076 1,572 769 538

7.8 3.4

319 4,440

0.2 2.6 3.6 7.1 2.0

120 183 3,113 653 690

8.1 3.4

188 4,571

5.7 3.5 3.2 3.7 3.6 1.9 2.1

602 739 954 692 723 608 305

Siegfried Gruber Religion: religion at residence: Muslim Catholic Orthodox more than one religion religion at birth: Muslim Catholic Orthodox More than one religion Religious homogeneity in local community at birth: 98 – 100 % 80 – 97 % Religious heterogeneity Religious homogeneity in local community at residence: 98 – 100 % 80 – 97 % Religious heterogeneity Culture: Ethnicity: Albanian Slavic Roma Tribal area Non-tribal area Ghegs Tosks Migration: Migration distance: Within prefecture To another prefecture No migration Migration group: Husband locally born and wife migrant Wife locally born and husband migrant Both migrants Household variables: Household typology: Simple family household Extended family household Multiple family household

247

0.5 12.8 0.9 10.5

2,752 224 111 1,672

2.2 10.5 1.3 8.6

3,822 542 237 158

2.6 4.6 9.6

3,190 910 570

1.8 5.7 12.6

3,035 1,028 696

3.3 1.2 26.1 6.8 1.9 4.2 0.2

4,216 512 30 1,164 3,595 3,486 1,273

0.9 29.1 4.7

4,205 333 221

3.4 4.7 3.9

4,108 221 430

3.6 2.5 3.7

1,506 703 2,549

248

Marriages across Religious Boundaries in Albania around 1900

Polygamous husband: Yes No Age difference to husband: Up to –18 years About -15 years About -10 years About -5 years About 0 years 3+ years Source: Kaser et al., Census of Albania.

1.3 3.7

396 4,363

4.0 3.5 2.8 3.3 4.2 4.1

703 609 1,139 1,414 642 111

intermarriage: the Ghegs in the North had much higher rates than the Tosks in the South. The fifth group is about the influence of migration on religious intermarriage: the three different groups of migrants in this study have been compared and the migration distance between the place of birth and the place of residence has been taken into account. Most migrations took place within the same prefecture and these people had rather low levels of religious intermarriage. People moving to a different prefecture on the other side had very high rates of religious intermarriage: almost every third person was married to a spouse of a different faith. The three migration groups in our study showed very few differences in religious intermarriage rates. The sixth and final group is about the possible influence of the household variables on religious intermarriage: the household typology, polygamy, and the age difference between spouses. There were almost no differences between different household types; only extended family households had slightly lower rates of religious intermarriage. Polygamous couples had lower rates of religious intermarriage than monogamous couples. The age difference between spouses had some influence: higher rates could be found among couples where the husband was very much older than his wife (at least 18 years) and among couples where the wife was older than or of the same age as the husband. The highest rates of religious intermarriage could be found for women moving from the prefecture of Shkodra to another prefecture: 87.2 percent (N unweighted = 23). Their number was quite small, but almost all of them married a husband with a religion that was different from their own at birth. Very high were rates could be found for women leaving the prefectures of Kruja (45.3 percent, N unweighted = 103) and Puka (22.2 percent, N unweighted = 50), too.

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Conclusions The data of the Albanian population census of 1918 reveal few cases of religious intermarriage, but a comparison between the religious denomination at birth and the religious denomination of the spouse shows higher rates of religious intermarriage. The census data do not disclose the religious denomination at birth and, therefore, this analysis can only be based on couples where at least one of the spouses was born in a place with only one religion and where this spouse left his or her place of birth. Within this group of people, considerable differences can be observed; the highest rates of religious intermarriage appeared in the prefectures of Shkodra, Kruja, and Puka, among the wives of husbands engaged in a production job, the youngest age cohort, Catholics, Roma, people born or living in a religiously heterogeneous environment, and especially among those women who migrated to another prefecture. Urban people had higher rates than rural people, literate people had higher rates than illiterate people, Ghegs had higher rates than Tosks, and the people from the tribal areas had higher rates than the people outside the tribal areas. Most of the assumptions could be validated, but migrant men actually changed their religion to a higher degree than migrant women. What still requires investigation is the reason why these people married somebody of a different religious denomination. In the tribal area it seems to have been the tradition of marriage preferences with certain fis, irrespective of the religious denomination. Outside this area, the migrant status as such might have had an impact.

References Bërxholi, Arqile. ed.. Atlasi gjeografik i popullsisë së Shqipërisë: Atlasi i Shqipërisë=Demographic Atlas of Albania. Tiranë: Shtypshkronja Ilar, 2003. Botev, Nikolai. “Nuptiality in the Course of the Demographic Transition: The Experience of the Balkan Countries.” Population Studies 44, 1 (1990): 107-126. Clayer, Nathalie. “The Bektashi Institutions in Southeastern Europe: Alternative Muslim Official Structures and their Limits.” Die Welt des Islams 52, 2 (2012): 183-203. Dojaka, Abaz. “Ekzogamia tek shqiptarët.” Etnografia shqiptare 5 (1974): 43-57. Durham, Mary Edith. Some Tribal Origins, Laws and Customs of the Balkans. London: Allen & Unwin, 1928.

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Marriages across Religious Boundaries in Albania around 1900

Elsie, Robert. (ed.). Der Kanun. Das albanische Gewohnheitsrecht nach dem sogenannten Kanun des Lekë Dukagjini kodifiziert von Shtjefën Gjeçovi. Pejë: Dukagjini Publishing House, 2001. Gjonça, Arjan. Communism, Health and Lifestyle: The Paradox of Mortality Transition in Albania, 1950-1990 (Studies in Population and Urban Demography 8). Westport, London: Greenwood Press, 2001. Gruber, Siegfried. “Marriage relations in Northern Albania.” Paper presented at SSHA conference, Minneapolis, USA, November 2-5, 2006. —. “Die albanische Volkszählung von 1918 und ihre Bedeutung für die Wissenschaft.” In SeinerZeit Redakteur Franz Seiner und seine Zeit (1874 bis 1929), edited by Helga Kostka, 253-265. Graz: Academic Publishers, 2007. —. “Marriage Patterns in Northern Albania in the Beginning of the 20th Century.” In Many Paths to Happiness? Studies in Population and Family History. A Festschrift for Antoinette Fauve-Chamoux, editet by Marie-Pierre Arrizabalaga, Ioan Bolovan, Marius Eppel, Jan Kok, Mary Louise Nagata, 404-426. Amsterdam: Aksant, 2010. —. “The influence of migration on fertility in Albania around 1900.” Annuario: The Albanian Yearbook of Historical and Anthropological Studies 1 (2011): 122-155. —. “Household composition and marriage patterns in Albania around 1900.” Balkanistic Forum (Balkanistiþen Forum) 1 (2012): 101-122. Hahn, Johann Georg von. Albanesische Studien. Jena: Mauke, 1854. Hajnal, John. “Age at Marriage and Proportions Marrying.” Population Studies 7, 2 (1953): 111-136. —. “European Marriage Patterns in Perspective.” In: Population in History: Essays in Historical Demography, edited by David Victor Glass, and David Edward Charles Eversley, 101-143. London: Arnold, 1965. Hall, Patricia Kelly, Robert McCaa, and Gunnar Thorvaldsen. Handbook of International Historical Microdata for Population Research. Minneapolis: Minnesota Population Center, 2000. Kaser, Karl, Siegfried Gruber, Gentiana Kera, Enriketa Pandelejmoni. 1918 Census of Albania, Version 0.1 [SPSS file]. Graz, 2011. Liebert, Erich. Aus dem Nordalbanischen Hochgebirge (Zur Kunde der Balkanhalbinsel. Reisen und Beobachtungen 10). Sarajevo: Kajon, 1909. Nicholson, Beryl. The census of the Austro-Hungarian occupied districts of Albania in spring 1918. A preliminary note on the manuscript (Centre for Scandinavian Studies Papers 5). Newcastle upon Tyne, 1999. —. “Women who shared a husband: Polygyny in southern Albania in the early 20th century.” The History of the Family 11 (2006): 45-57.

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Plakans, Andrejs and Charles Wetherell. “The Hajnal line and Eastern Europe.” In Marriage and the family in Eurasia: Perspectives on the Hajnal hypothesis (Life at the Extremes 1) edited by Theo Engelen and Arthur P. Wolf, 105-126. Amsterdam: Aksant, 2005. Rosenbaum, Mary Heléne. “Interfaith Marriage.” In International Encyclopedia of Marriage and Family, Second Edition, Volume 2: EaJu, edited by James J. Ponzetti, Jr., 907-912. New York etc.: Macmillan Reference, 2003. Seiner, Franz. Ergebnisse der Volkszählung in Albanien in dem von den österr.-ungar. Truppen 1916-1918 besetzten Gebiete (Schriften der Balkankommission, Linguistische Abteilung 13). Wien, Leipzig: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1922. Sklar, June L. “The Role of Marriage Behaviour in the Demographic Transition: The Case of Eastern Europe Around 1900.” Population Studies 28, 2 (1974): 231-247. Stahl, Paul H. Household, village and village confederation in Southeastern Europe (East European Monographs 200). Boulder: East European Monographs, 1986. Sundhaussen, Holm. Historische Statistik Serbiens 1834-1914. Mit europäischen Vergleichsdaten (Südosteuropäische Arbeiten 87). München: Oldenbourg, 1989. Valentini, Giuseppe. La legge delle montagne albanesi nelle relazioni della missione volante 1880-1932 (Studi albanesi, Studi i Testi 3). Firenze: Olschki, 1969. Whitaker, Ian. “Tribal Structure and National Politics in Albania, 19101950.” In History and Social Anthropology edited by I. M. Lewis, 253293. London etc.: Tavistock Publications, 1968.

Acknowledgements Research for this paper was conducted as a research scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock.

CHURCHES AND INTERFAITH MARRIAGES IN TRANSYLVANIA: FROM 1895 TO THE PRESENT IOAN BOLOVAN AND MARIUS EPPEL

Introduction In the summer of 2012, most of the citizens from the town of Baia Mare, in Northern Transylvania, were shocked after the local Hungarian newspaper, Bányavidéki Új Szó, published a call/ manifesto entitled “The New Cry for the Hungarians in Baia Mare.” Through this manifesto, several leaders of the Hungarian community drew attention to the danger of the Hungarians’ losing their ethnic identity because of several causes, among which was mentioned the increasing number of mixed marriages. “We, all the signatories of this manifesto (teachers, civilians and public figures, leaders of the churches responsible for the fate of the Hungarians in Baia Mare and the Baia Mare area) have been watching with concern the spreading of a way of thought and conduct that is leading to the loss of identity, threatening the very existence of our community. The disease whose symptoms are: the spreading of mixed marriages, the refusal of education in the mother tongue, exile, merging with the majority national body, the neglect of our own selves and lethargy have infected even the best people in our community... In our churches purely Hungarian marriages are hardly ever celebrated and Hungarian children are rarely baptised. YOUNG MEN! Try to be in each other’s company. Look for Hungarian friends, for Hungarian spouses. This would mean a somewhat confined life, orientated towards ourselves, but remember, it is this confinement that has preserved the most valuable communities in Transylvania for centuries on end. Let us lay down the law that shall guide you on your way: pull everything foreign out of yourselves. Let no foreign word, foreign cultures and foreign friends close to your heart because a foreign friend will easily become a foreign LOVER. And those who do not declare their love in their mother tongue for the first time will later, in all likelihood, choose the SONS OF ANOTHER NATION as their life partners. Do not fool yourselves that you will pull through in such cases.

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Look around among your acquaintances: how many children and grandchildren resulting from mixed marriages are Hungarian? Be true to your native place, to your life-giving roots. Read Hungarian books, listen to Hungarian music, get to know the Hungarian history. Be proud that you are Hungarians because that makes you unique, distinguishing you from the rest of the world.”1

Is this document representative for the manner in which the Hungarian ethnic community positioned itself in the past - and still does now - in relation to otherness? What about the other inhabitants of Transylvania, what attitudes did they use to adopt and what standpoint do they adopt today towards mixed marriages? An example from the past, referring to the Romanian population, which forms the majority in Transylvania and, for that matter, in the town of Baia Mare, is symptomatic and somewhat identical with the recent position expressed by the Hungarians from Baia Mare. Dr. Petru RâmneanĠu wrote in 1937: The duty that is incumbent on us and that we should seriously think about is to cultivate opportunities for all the Romanians to contribute with their individuality to tomorrow’s mosaic of our vitality, which will ensure us the place we deserve. We clearly do not need the infusion of any foreign ethnic element into our blood. Our nation can make progress, can rise, can contribute immeasurably to the development of the arts, of the sciences, of law and of anything that is good for us and mankind as long as it is grounded on our own solid ethnic resources, which are full of traditions... This enormous difference between the proportions of Romanian men marrying Hungarian women and of Hungarian men taking Romanian wives shows that the practice of exogamy is not due to a state of actual cohabitation. Hungarian women are engaged in actually ravishing the Romanian nation. We do not yet have a picture of the offspring of these families, in which the mother is Hungarian. We shall study the problem. But now we fear that many of the children born in these mixed families are learning the language of their mother and acquiring their feelings. It is logical to expect that since psychologically, a father plays a less important role than the mother in the child’s intimate life.”2

Before presenting the subject approached here, it is necessary to mention a few things about the history and the geographical area on which we shall focus in our study. Transylvania, which is the largest province of Romania today, consists of several counties: Alba, Arad, Bihor, Bistri‫܊‬a-Năsăud, Bra‫܈‬ov, Cara‫܈‬-Severin, Cluj, Covasna, Harghita, Hunedoara, Maramure‫܈‬, 1 2

“Noul strigăt pentru ungurimea din Baia-Mare”, Graiul MaramureЮului, 4-5. RâmneanĠu, InfluenĠa, 400-1.

254

Churches and Interfaith Marriages in Transylvania

Mure‫܈‬, Satu Mare, Sălaj, Sibiu, Timi‫ ;܈‬at the last census, their total population was 6,476,695 people. The region is inhabited mainly by Romanians (4,973,033 - 76.78%), Hungarians (1,256,595 - 19.40%), Roma (103,469 - 1.59%), Germans, etc. Since the Middle Ages, Transylvania has had a population structure dominated by three main nations (Romanians, Hungarians, and Germans) and six major denominations (Orthodox, Roman-Catholic, Greek-Catholic, Calvinist or Evangelical Reformed, Lutheran or Evangelical CA – Confessio Augustana, and Unitarian), accompanied by other nations and denominations which, taken together, have never accounted for more than 2 or 3% of the population. Specialists normally reserve the name Transylvania for the area surrounded by the Carpathians, but most people use the name for that part of Romania consisting of several regions that have had a more or less similar destiny across the centuries: historical Transylvania (which, between the middle of the 16th century and 1867, when it was annexed by Hungary, remained an autonomous principality under Turkish and, after 1699, under Habsburg suzerainty), Banat, Criúana, and Maramureú. These territories, grouped under the umbrella name of Transylvania, were gradually conquered by the Kingdom of Hungary starting with the 11th and the 12 centuries, partially came under Turkish control after 1541, and ended up under Austrian rule after 1699. Until World War I, Transylvania’s central and regional authorities remained almost exclusively in Hungarian, Saxon, and Szekler hands. This was the case because beginning with the 14th century, the Romanian majority was gradually denied any participation in the political, economic, or cultural life of their native province. Over more than a thousand years of living together, this ethnic and denominational diversity most likely shaped certain types of demographic behaviour typical for these peoples and denominations and led to mutual contacts and influences. Along the centuries, relations between the native Romanians and the other peoples that inhabited the Transylvanian space were neither pure and immaculate, nor horrible and disastrous. And this was most certainly the case in other European countries, where the majority population lived alongside significant ethnic or religious minorities. Despite the occasional conflicts, the local Romanians, Hungarians, Germans, and others also shared moments of cooperation and mutual struggle, of kinship and of unity of purpose.3

3

Rain, Familia etnic mixtă, 5.

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The Orthodox Church Antecedents Throughout time, in the position it has adopted on mixed marriages, the Orthodox Church in Transylvania has been guided by the provisions of the Bible, the approved canons and those established by the ecumenical or private synods. Irrespective of which we refer to, the idea that pervades these texts is coercive in nature, leaving little freedom of action insofar as the conclusion of this type of marriage is concerned. Thus, in line with the Pauline advice to the Christians that they should not marry unbelievers (II Corinthians 6, 14), Canon 21 of the local Synod of Carthage from 419 forbade the children of clerics to enter marriages with pagans or heretics. This was actually a reaffirmation of the provisions of Canon 31 of Laodicea from the year 343, which stated that mixed marriages were prohibited, in principle, and permissible only if the prospective nonOrthodox spouse converted to Orthodoxy. The Ecumenical Council in Trullo, held in Constantinople in 692, approved Canon 72 which prohibited mixed marriages, deemed to be sacrilegious.4 The canonical provisions were then included in several collections of ecclesiastical law; amongst the most well-known for the Serbian Metropolitan See of Karlowitz and, implicitly, for the Orthodox Church in Transylvania, were the Pravila or the Code of Laws and Kormþaia Kniga or the Rudder. During the eighteenth century, they were the main references on the issue of matrimony for the Orthodox clergy. Rescriptum Declaratorium Illyricae Nationis of 16 July 1779 and Systema consistoriale of 17 June 1782 brought no additions or amendments to the problem of mixed marriage. The two regulations focused mainly on the operation of ecclesiastical bodies in the Metropolitanate of Karlowitz. Reiterations of the subject occurred much later in Transylvania. Only in the middle of the 19th century was Bishop Andrei ùaguna forced to bring to the attention of his clergy the manner in which mixed marriages could be performed. His writings were largely the result of the echo that the Austrian Civil Code had had on all the regulations with a matrimonial character. His work of 1854, Useful Knowledge on the Business of Marriage for the Use of the Clergy and the Deanery Seats, was a complementary piece to another work destined for teaching, namely Elements of Canon Law (Sibiu, 1854). The booklet entitled Useful Knowledge on the Business of Marriage was conceived as a practical 4

Necula, TradiĠie, 320-2.

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Churches and Interfaith Marriages in Transylvania

guide on matrimonial aspects for the Orthodox priests and protopopes in Transylvania.5 The hierarch’s tone on the subject of mixed marriages was more conciliatory than that of the norms that had preceded it. Although he was inspired by their text when he wrote the booklet, ùaguna adapted it to modernity. He had a duty not to encourage the phenomenon; however, when such a marriage complied with the civil legislation, it was to be celebrated at the altar too, with the obligation of announcing it in both churches. ùaguna resumed this aspect in the Compendium and proposed that these marriages should be celebrated under both denominations.6 Initially, the only advantage such a marriage could bring to the Church was the baptism of the children in the Orthodox faith.7 In time, though, the benefits were also of a material nature. In the Archdiocese of Arad, for example, the diocesan synod decided in 1883 that the tax for those who chose a spouse of a different denomination should be increased, from 100 to 200 florins. The measure was one meant to discourage mixed marriages. The fact that the synodal deputies established a further fee of 50 florins for those who married girls from another metropolitanate reveals a concern for increasing eparchial funds.8

The secularisation of marriage and the reactions of the Orthodox hierarchy The political-ecclesiastical laws from the late 19th century intervened in ecclesiastical autonomy. The third law issued by the Ministry of Cults and Public Instruction from Budapest, Article XXXIII of 1894, covered the problem of registry books. While the Churches had been in their possession up until then, the new law stipulated that they would have to pass under state administration. Thus, from the perspective of the government officials, the role of the priests in concluding marriages was to be taken over by the civil servants. The difference compared to the previous years was that contracting a religious marriage complied with both canonical and civilian legality, being valid before the two authorities, civil and ecclesiastical. After the enforcement of the afore-mentioned legal article, civil marriage no longer enacted ecclesiastical effects too, just like religious marriage was not recognised by the state. Moreover, penalties

5

Bolovan et al., LegislaĠia, 37. Brie, Căsătoria, 37. 7 Săsăujan, Căsătoriile, 23-4. 8 Protocolul, 1883, 73. 6

Ioan Bolovan and Marius Eppel

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were provided for the clergy or the couples that concluded the religious ceremony first.9 Even before Article XXXIII was implemented, the Orthodox Metropolitan See of Transylvania, together with the two suffragan Dioceses of Arad and Caransebeú, categorically opposed its provisions. The same position was adopted by the Orthodox Consistory of Oradea, which operated autonomously on the administrative level and was subordinated to the Diocese of Arad only in spiritual matters. The Orthodox clergy, through the voice of the protopopes and the senior hierarchy, was of the opinion that the introduction of civil marriage itself could alter the sacrament of matrimony and, through it, the morality of believers. The priests declared they would not be able to implement such laws, which attacked the very being of the Church and asked the Metropolitan in Sibiu, Miron Romanul, to write a query to be read at one of the meetings of the Hungarian Parliament and then to intervene with the emperor.10 Amid differences between the government and the Orthodox Church, there were several acts of vandalism committed by the Hungarians. In Oradea, for instance, the headquarters of the consistory, some Romanian places of worship and schools were the target of such actions. As the local police were in some sort of complicity with the agitators, the ecclesiastical authorities were forced to seek the assistance of the Minister of Interior to defuse the ethnic tensions.11 By means of circulars, Bishop Miron Romanul encouraged the Orthodox clergy to prevent the local civil authorities from implementing the provisions of Laws XXXI and XXXIII. Under the decisions of the supreme ecclesiastical court, the National Congress of Churches (CNC), the Orthodox maintained that the validity of a marriage was given by the religious ceremony. Eventually, however, the Orthodox Church was forced to abide by the ministerial decisions. The instruction that Miron Romanul issued in 1895 recognized the need to comply with legal requirements relating to the dissolution of marriage, accepted the civil courts’ initial ruling on this issue, but reserved certain prerogatives for his Church. One of them referred to the presentation of the civil sentence before an ecclesiastical tribunal too when a decision of the Church was needed in a particular case. The Church would then decide, albeit in a different form, the route a couple was to follow with a view to concluding a marriage that was legally valid from the perspective of both the State and the Church. The couple had to initially appear before the priest, who was 9

Bolovan et al., LegislaĠia, 94. Protocolul, 1893, 74r-75v. 11 Protocolul, 1893, 83r-84r. 10

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Churches and Interfaith Marriages in Transylvania

informed of their intention to enter into marriage, after which the civil marriage was performed before the civil servant; then the spouses returned to the priest, who officiated the religious ceremony.12 During this time, the canons on certain moral, religious, psychological and physical impediments, which could obstruct the marriage, were observed. The emphasis the Church placed on the health of each of the spouses should not be perceived as discrimination. Just like the provisions of the Austrian Civil Code, the canons underscored the need for the wholesomeness of body and spirit, as they considered the main task of the family, the birth of children. In the text of the instruction issued by Metropolitan Romanul to the clergy and the faithful from the Metropolitan See of Transylvania, reference was also made to mixed marriages. Like ùaguna had done in the booklet Useful Knowledge about the Business of Marriage, Romanul resumed the provisions of the civil legislation on this subject from Law Article XXXII of 1894, after which he intervened by stating the official position of the Orthodox Church. Therefore, he urged the clergy to convince the parishioners who contracted such a marriage that all the children should be brought up in the Orthodox faith. The Metropolitan even suggested to the priests that they should influence the Orthodox spouse involved in a mixed marriage in the sense of not accepting, under any circumstances, to have the infants of their gender baptised anywhere else but in the Orthodox Church.13 It can be seen, therefore, that there was a more flexible attitude of the Orthodox clergy on the matter of mixed marriages than half a century before, when the Serbian Canon Nicodim Milaú had emitted the claim that all the children born in a “comingled” family should be baptised in Orthodoxy or that the priests should persuade the heterodox to convert themselves.14 The mutations that affected the attitude of the Orthodox Church and the other denominations in Transylvania towards intermarriage were largely due to the process of secularisation that had accelerated by the end of the 19th century. The modernisation of society, industrialisation and urbanisation facilitated the mobility of the population from the rural to the urban areas. Men proved to be more willing to change their social environment in pursuit of a working place, which led to their settling in other towns and marrying women of a different ethnicity or confession.15 For example, in the last decade of the 19th century, it could be noticed, 12

Bolovan et al., LegislaĠia, 95. Bolovan et al., LegislaĠia, 396-7. 14 Săsăujan, Căsătoriile, 23-4. 15 Bolovan & Bolovan, Familie, 128. 13

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259

throughout Hungary, that there was an increase in the number of mixed marriages. Their modification by 2% in the period 1896-1900 was primarily due to the legislative changes made by the Hungarian state in 1895, in particular the secularisation of the civil status records. The primacy of the state on the problem of marriages led to the liberalisation of religious intermarriage, and the Churches were forced to adapt to the new legislative context for pragmatic reasons, those of losing a large number of parishioners. Table 1 Interfaith marriages in Hungary between 1891-1900 Year

Number

%

1891

11,383

8.1

1892

12,610

8.8

1893

12,871

8.9

1894

13,170

9.1

1895

13,136

9.7

1896

14,362

11.3

1897

14,461

11.0

1898

14,709

10.9

1899

16,269

11.0

1900

16,616

11.2

In the Orthodox Metropolitan See of Transylvania there was the same upward trend of mixed marriages. The cause was the same as in the case of the other denominations: the political and ecclesiastical laws of the years 1894-1895. At that time, the Metropolitanate consisted of the Archdiocese of Sibiu, the Diocese of Arad, the Consistory of Oradea and the Diocese of Caransebeú. The statistical data presented by each at the National Church Congress in 1895, 1900 and 1903 show the actual number of mixed marriages. The analysis of the figures reveals that, in terms of the number of weddings performed, their biggest proportion characterised the jurisdiction of the Consistory of Oradea. The explanation was found in the migration of the Orthodox youth to the industrial centres of the area, but also in the fact that the ethnic and confessional diversity of the region’s population naturally imposed a communication between different ethnic and religious communities. According to the specialists, mixed marriage took, in this context, the form of a multiculturalism born of the need for coexistence. It should also be noted that, under the impulse

Churches and Interfaith Marriages in Transylvania

260

of modernity and personal emancipation, there began a process of dilution insofar as ethnic and religious determinisms were concerned. Men were more likely to enter into a mixed marriage, unlike women, who were more attached to the values promoted by the Church teachings throughout time. In the case of the Orthodox women, the first option for concluding mixed marriages were Greek Catholics, while men easily crossed ethnic barriers on their way to a marriage with a partner of another ethnicity.16 The proportion of confessionally mixed marriages kept increasing in the Orthodox Consistory of Oradea throughout the period covered in this case study. Mixed marriages registered a significant rise after the 18941895 laws. While in 1893 their share was 6.28%, in the following year it reached 7.49%. Despite the intensification of inter-confessional marital relationships, the Orthodox ecclesiastical administration from Oradea did not appear to be alarmed. The protocols of the consistorial meetings did not include the topic of mixed marriages on their agendas, which suggests that the phenomenon was quite ordinary at the end of the 19th century, and did not raise too many signs of concern. In the two Dioceses of Arad and Caransebeú, the impact of the legislation seems not to have been felt, because the percentage of mixed marriages generally remained within the same range. Unlike them, the Archdiocese of Sibiu registered an upward trend of mixed marriages, from 7.19% in 1894 to 8.63% in 1897. As in the case of the ecclesiastical unit from Oradea, on the territory included under the jurisdiction of the Archdiocese of Sibiu there was a large concentration of heterodox population, derived from the Saxon and Hungarian communities, to which was added a large number of workers who came from other areas to work in the factories from Braúov and Sibiu.17 Table 2 Interfaith marriages in the Orthodox Metropolitanate of Transylvania between 1891-1900

Year 1891

16

Ecclesiastical unit AS EA CO EC

Number of pairs wed 5,405 3,090 1,693 3,221

Number of mixed marriages

% mixed marriages * 86 94 78

* 2.78 5.55 2.42

Brie, Familie, 140-60. Protocolul, 1895, 103; Protocolul, 1897, 136; Protocolul, 1900, 139; Protocolul, 1903, 99. 17

Ioan Bolovan and Marius Eppel 1892

261

AS EA CO EC AS EA CO EC AS EA CO EC AS EA CO EC AS EA CO EC AS EA CO EC AS EA CO EC AS EA CO EC

6,077 3,758 1,824 3,457 5,575 3,653 1,559 3,291 5,793 3,353 1,507 3,186 4,045 2,585 1,043 2,909 4,739 2,369 886 1,929 4,623 2,512 836 2,143 4,557 2,435 854 2,338 5,379 2,799 1,098 2,769

* 103 113 97 * 95 98 93 417 98 113 98 148 68 74 67 386 43 65 68 399 48 51 63 323 45 49 65 369 48 66 70

* 2.74 6.19 2.80 * 2.60 6.28 2.82 7.19 2.92 7.49 3.07 3.65 2.63 7.09 2.30 8.14 1.81 7.33 3.52 8.63 1.91 6.10 2.93 7.08 1.84 5.73 2.78 6.86 1.71 6.01 2.52

1900

AS EA CO EC

5,509 2,885 1,212 2,569

446 69 58 76

8.09 2.39 4.78 2.95

Legend:

Archdiocese of Sibiu (AS), Diocese of Arad (EA) Consistory of Oradea (CO), Diocese of Caransebe‫( ܈‬EC) *The data is missing in the protocols of the National Ecclesiastical Congress

1893

1894

1895

1896

1897

1898

1899

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Churches and Interfaith Marriages in Transylvania

New attitudes in the 20th century The preoccupation of the ecclesiastical authorities with mixed marriages remained constant at the beginning of the 20th century. Besides reiterating ancient canonical prescriptions, which the metropolitan see regularly sent the subordinate clergy, the CNC meetings adopted a number of provisions or regulations meant to clarify the manner of ascertaining the situation of such marital ties when the situation demanded it. The Rules for Court Proceedings in Matrimonial Cases adopted by the CNC in 1912 emphasised that in the case of mixed marriages, the Orthodox courts only had jurisdiction over the Orthodox parties. It was stipulated that matrimonial cases were to be heard by the Deanery seat in the first instance, by the Archdiocesan Consistory in the second instance and by the Metropolitan Consistory in the third instance. Under the Regulation of 19 October 1912, Bishop Ioan MeĠianu sought to impose greater rigor in the parishes as regards the keeping of records for all marriages. He highlighted, on this occasion, the primary role that parish priests played in settling family disputes that could lead to divorce. A confessional matrimonial suit was started only after the divorce ruling had been issued by the civil courts. Following a preliminary analysis of the case, the priest drafted a report based on the spouses’ statements and submitted it to the archpriest together with the civil sentence. The Deanery seat met within 30 days of receiving the documents and decided on whether to grant the divorce or not. Divorce was officially pronounced only after the consistory analysed the decision reached by the seat. The documents were remitted to the parish priest, who, on the basis of the consistorial ruling, filed an action for the dissolution of marriage in the marriage registry, under the heading provided for such cases.18 The position of the Romanian Orthodox Church on the phenomenon of mixed marriages has remained the same even after its organisation as a Patriarchate in 1925. It reaffirms the entire validity of all the canons and ecclesiastical statutes issued on this matter, but although it does not encourage such marriages, when the situation requires it, it applies the principle of dispensation or indulgence. The Romanian Orthodox Church believes that every Christian has the right to enjoy the reception of the Holy Sacrament of Matrimony, which it associates with the salvation of the souls. Notwithstanding all this, the current official position of the Church was clearly expressed in Article 47 of the Rules of Procedure of the Disciplinary and Trial Authorities in the Romanian Orthodox Church, 18

Protocolul, 1912, 193-6.

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establishing that: “Clerics are obliged not to celebrate the Sacrament of Matrimony except for Orthodox spouses assisted by Orthodox godparents. Those of other faiths are required, before marriage, to fulfil the formalities for conversion to Orthodoxy.” The decision on whether mixed marriages may be concluded or not is left to the local bishop, who can give dispensation, but under the obligation that the heterodox spouse should convert to the Orthodox faith.19 In the context of ecumenical openness, the Romanian Orthodox Church sought to bring its enactments as close as possible to those of its sister Churches. During the meeting of the Inter-Orthodox Committee preparing the Holy and Great Synod of the Orthodox Church from Chambésy, in July 1971, which focused on the theme of impediments to marriage, the Romanian hierarchs made their position known. Guided by the principle of dispensation,20 they stated that they recognised the Sacrament of Marriage when the non-Orthodox spouse moved to Orthodoxy or agreed to have that sacrament officiated by the Orthodox priest. The Russian Orthodox Church was of the opinion that the celebration of the marriage ceremony between an Orthodox and a nonOrthodox could take place only if the non-Orthodox party recognised the importance of the blessing granted by the Orthodox Church. Because the Roman Catholic Church recognised the marriage between a Roman Catholic and an Orthodox, officiated by a Catholic priest, the Russian Patriarchate also decided to recognise the validity of a mixed marriage celebrated by a Roman Catholic priest, provided that the Orthodox bishop granted his assent. A much more rigid position in this dialogue was that adopted by the Greek-Orthodox Church, which did not recognise mixed marriages solemnised outside Orthodoxy and accepted the conclusion of such marriages under very special conditions. Closer to the ecumenical spirit was the Orthodox Church in Poland, which proposed that mixed marriages with all those validly baptised should be recognised.21 Each local Church maintained the right to decide on whether it applied the principle of dispensation in the conclusion of a mixed marriage. Outside the baptism of children resulting from a mixed marriage in the Orthodox faith, compliant with the canonical regulations in force,22 when the priest 19

Bel, Taina, 281-301. The canonical principle of ȠȚțȠȞȠȝȚĮ (dispensation) stipulated that a number of aspects should be considered in interpreting the canonical texts, ranging from the internal-external context to the strength of character of the clerics or laics, depending on the situation. 21 Bel, Taina, 281-301. 22 Floca, Drept, 31. 20

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must apply the principle of akriveia,23 the clergy may grant the exemptions necessary for the marriage between partners of different denominations.24 In actuality, the exemption for mixed marriages is generally granted in all the ecclesiastical units of the Romanian Patriarchate. There are also archdioceses that resort to the principle of akriveia and, consequently, the priests belonging to them do not celebrate mixed marriages. One such case is that of the Archdiocese of Suceava and RădăuĠi, which urged all the deaneries within its jurisdiction to comply with the decision. The circular issued by the Deanery of Suceava II, following the meeting of the Standing Eparchial Council of 12 February 2010, decided, in one of its points, that “when one of the spouses is of a different confession, the religious ceremony shall be officiated only after conversion to Orthodoxy. The parish priest shall prepare the one concerned through special catechesis, with full responsibility, lest the transition should be formal or fraudulent. Those coming from another confession shall give a written affidavit that they are converting to Orthodoxy out of their own belief and unconstrained by anyone.”25

The position of the Greek-Catholic Church Antecedents Unlike the Orthodox Church, the Greek-Catholic Church experienced, at the end of the nineteenth century, a more tortuous process insofar as the enactment of regulations was concerned, because of its attachment to the Eastern customs and practices and the attempt to make them compatible with certain provisions of Latin Canon Law.26 Prior to the promulgation of the Codex Juris Canonici by the Holy See in 1917, the Greek-Catholic Church was led, on the problem of matrimony, by the canonical norms of the Pravila or Koemþaja Kniga. In time, to this legislative legacy inherited from the Orthodox were added specialised works written by GreekCatholic canonists, such as Samuel Micu’s Dogmatic and Moral Theology on the Sacrament of Marriage or Petru Maior’s Procanon.

23

The principle of ĮțȡȚȕİȚĮ is used in canonical law with the sense of a strict enforcement of the letter of the law (the canon). This principle was used especially during the first eight Christian centuries, when the Church had to fight against countless heresies. 24 Necula, TradiĠie, 228. 25 Circulara, 2010. 26 Cârja and Cârja, Biserica, 154.

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The Holy See intervened repeatedly in the debates of the GreekCatholic Church through the apostolic nuncios in order to standardise ecclesiastical discipline and matrimonial law.27 The vision of the two Churches on marriage differed on several points referring to the indissolubility of matrimony, the marriage and remarriage of priests, the admission of married canons in the Chapter and mixed marriages between Catholics and a-Catholics; the latter were seen as valid if they were concluded with the passive assistance of a priest. A marriage concluded solely through the participation of the priest as a witness was, however, contrary to the Oriental practice, which stipulated its validity if it had the priest’s rite and blessing. The episcopal conference held in Blaj on 14 September 1858 debated the problem of mixed marriages, among other issues, in the presence of the apostolic delegation led by Nuncio Antonio de Luca. The representatives of the Holy See recommended only the passive assistance of the priest, which gave validity to such marriages, even though they were illegitimate from a sacramental perspective. The debates of the Greek-Catholic hierarchy on the pontifical position continued during the following years and led, in 1862, to the appearance of the only treaty for this Church in the 19th century, the work of the Bishop of Oradea, Iosif Papp-Szilágyi, entitled Enchiridion juris Ecclesiae Orientalis Catholicae.28 Mixed marriages were not treated separately in it, as was the common practice in other works of canon law. Paragraph 102 from the chapter dedicated to sacraments inventoried all the cases in which marriages could be celebrated between Catholics and Turks, Jews, pagans, sectarians, Protestant or schismatic Christians. As regards the last category, the Enchiridion brought nothing new and merely presented the Catholic perspective on intermarriage. It basically resumed the previous decisions of the Greek-Catholic episcopate and reiterated that a marriage between a Catholic and a non-Catholic was permitted but not encouraged, and when it took place, the recommendation was that the priest should not attend it only passively, but also to provide the blessing to the young spouses. It was an adaptation of the position expressed by the pontifical representatives on the twofold identity of the Greek-Catholic Church.29 Bishop Papp-Szilágyi mentioned in the pages of his treatise that the Church did not recognise the existence of marriages between Catholics and the unbaptised, because such a link was prohibited by the canons.30 27

For details, see Sima, Vizitele. Cârja and Cârja, Biserica, 43-4. 29 Ibidem, 45. 30 Bolovan et al., LegislaĠia, 71. 28

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Although he used works on Orthodox Canon Law in his explanations, the bishop intended to align, through his work, ecclesiastical life to the demands of Latin Canon Law.31 The discussions of the ecclesiastical authorities on the matter of mixed marriages continued during the First Provincial Synod in 1872. Chapter IX of the adopted decrees expressed once again the Greek-Catholic position on “comingled” marriages, as influenced by the Catholic matrimonial regulations. The Church disapproved the conclusion of such marital unions because of the danger inherent in the Catholic spouse ignoring his or her own confession. Where a mixed marriage could not be prevented, then those concerned had to seek exemption from the ecclesiastical authorities, along with the commitment to raise the children of both sexes in the Catholic faith. In 1875, inspired by the ecclesiastical context, Ioan RaĠiu, a Professor of Canon Law from the Seminary of Blaj, printed a book devoted exclusively to matrimonial matters, in which he included theoretical and practical regulations.32 Like the work entitled Useful Knowledge for the Business of Marriage from 1854, written by the Orthodox Bishop Andrei ùaguna, RaĠiu’s volume was meant to be a manual for theological schools and matrimonial courts on the matter of marriage, since the absence of such books was acutely felt. Consequently, RaĠiu’s Theological Lectures brought nothing new to the established Greek-Catholic matrimonial doctrine: it reiterated the provision that the non-Catholic spouse was required to raise the children in the Catholic faith and that the celebration of a mixed marriage required a dispensation from the pope, the only one who was entitled to grant it. Regarding the sensitive issue of the role that the priest should play in the celebration of marriage, RaĠiu mentioned two practices: one that was stricter, complying with the Catholic matrimonial prescriptions, in which the priest assisted passively, and a milder one, in which the priest blessed such a marriage. According to RaĠiu, there were three cases in which the Greek-Catholic Church did not encourage intermarriage: the danger that the spouse of Catholic might neglect his or her confession, the risk that children might be given another education than the Catholic one and the partners’ mutual access to the sacraments stipulated by the other spouse’s confession, which was forbidden by the Church.33 In conclusion, RaĠiu’s work was characterised by a balanced tone and presented information on the matter of mixed marriages in a 31

Cârja and Cârja, Biserica, 45. RaĠiu, PrelecĠiuni. 33 Cârja and Cârja, Biserica, 49. 32

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manner that was accessible to the clergy and that was consistent with the realities commonly encountered in the Transylvanian area.34 In time, besides these works that were fundamental for Greek-Catholic matrimonial law, the higher hierarchical institutions also issued other decisions, such as the Decrees of the Second Provincial Synod, held in Blaj in 1882. Their importance was, however, lower compared to the ones issued by the previous synod from 1872. They reiterated the general principle enunciated before on the problem of mixed marriages, whereby they were not encouraged, but could be concluded under papal dispensation. The work written by Archpriest Titus Bud provided similar information: printed in Gherla, one year after the provincial synod, it covered the subject of mixed marriages in two paragraphs of a chapter in his book.35 Another work printed in Gherla in 1891 was Professor Iuliu Simon’s Practical Instruction for Matrimonial Cases dealing with the “comingled religion.”36 Simon dealt extensively with the impediments to mixed religion as they were expounded on in the pontifical documents and decrees of the provincial synods. The novelty Simon brought on the subject of matrimony resided in mentioning the provisions of the “interconfessional law” of 1868, which stipulated that the children born in a mixed family should be raised differently, namely that boys should follow their father’s confession, while girls should follow their mother’s.37

Reactions to the introduction of civil marriage The reaction of the Greek-Catholic Church to the civil laws of the years 1894-1895 was similar to that of the Orthodox Church. In that context, the printing press of Blaj published a volume suggestively entitled The Political-Ecclesiastical Laws 1894 and 1895, together with the ministerial ordinances translated by the Metropolitan Consistory of AlbaIulia and Făgăraú. The book presents each enactment and analyses them both from the perspective offered by the state and from that of the GreekCatholic Church. It was intended to be a practical guide for the clergy, for whom the changes brought by the civil laws were explained. In addition to the many explanations in matrimonial matters, the volume informed the clergy of the fact that there was only one circumstance in which a religious marriage could be concluded before the civil marriage, namely when there was a lethal threat to the couple or to one partner. Matrimonial courts 34

Bolovan et al., LegislaĠia, 68. Bud, Îndreptar. 36 Simon, InstrucĠiune. 37 Cârja and Cârja, Biserica, 51. 35

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continued to exist, like in the Orthodox Church, and they had the same duties as before, including an analysis of the matrimonial grounds that questioned the validity of a marriage celebrated by a Greek-Catholic priest. It was stipulated that the civil court decision would only be binding in the civil sphere of the couple, without covering the ecclesiastical sphere or the sacramental part of the marriage.38 The publication of the civil laws created confusion and anxiety amongst the ecclesiastical communities. In order not to lose the number of believers or to enhance it, some Greek-Catholic priests intervened in the ecclesiastical life of the Orthodox parishes. For example, in 1897 the Orthodox priest Atanasie Hopârtean from ùpălnaca complained before the Orthodox Archdiocesan Consistory from Sibiu about the interference of the Greek-Catholic parish priest Candid Cristea, especially in matters pertaining to the conclusion of mixed marriages. Contrary to ecclesiastical practices, Cristea proposed his Orthodox fellow that in the case of mixed marriages, the Sacrament of Matrimony should be celebrated by the groom’s priest. The disputes between the Greek-Catholic and the Orthodox clerics in the case of mixed marriages often envisaged baptism and the registration of children in one of the confessions in question. As we have seen, the provisions of the Roman Catholic and the GreekCatholic Churches stipulated that a non-Catholic person should give his or her consent before marriage that the sons or the daughters who would be born of that union would be raised in the faith of the Greek-Catholic Church.39 The late 19th century enactment of the Greek-Catholic ecclesiastical law in matrimonial matters fit into a broader process of institutional organisation and the shaping of confessional identity. The discussions among the senior hierarchy on the subject of mixed marriages highlighted the attachment of the Greek-Catholic Church to the Eastern customs and practices and the difficulties inherent in squaring them with Latin Canon Law. However, some Greek-Catholic canonical elements concerning mixed marriages, such as discouraging a marriage between a Catholic and an a-Catholic, the granting of dispensations, the priest’s passive assistance to the conclusion of a marriage, as well as the commitment to raising children in the Catholic faith were elements that were adopted from the Latin Canon Law.40 .

38

Bolovan et al., LegislaĠia, 96-8. Drăgoi, Ortodocúi, 224-5. 40 Cârja and Cârja, Biserica, 52. 39

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The new perspectives of the 20th century The authority exerted by the Latin Canon Law over the Greek-Catholic Church in Transylvania and, after 1918, in Romania was highlighted by the provisions included in the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches/ Codex Canonum Ecclesiarum Orientalium (CCEO). It was published by Pope John Paul II under the Apostolic Constitution Sacri Canones of 18 October 1990 and it entered into force with effect from 1 October 1991. Thus, considering the already existing code, Codex Juris Canonici, a code of Canon Law that was binding for the Roman Catholic Church, and the Apostolic Constitution Pastor Bonum, referring to the internal organisation of the Roman Curia, we have a triptych representing a body of law for the entire Catholic Church. CCEO completes thus a large-scale legislative construction and answers the necessity of the Catholic Church to have a uniform legal basis for all the Oriental-rite Churches in full communion with the Catholic Church. The pages of the CCEO also tackle the problem of mixed marriages, as it is perceived in contemporary usages.41 In 2004 Mihai Todea, the Greek-Catholic Vicar of Cluj, commented in Pro familia, a specialised review, on the canonical provisions concerning mixed marriages under the CCEO and other Catholic legislations. Thus, he reminded the faithful and the general public interested in this subject that the provisions of the CCEO and of the Code of Canon Law (CCL) repealed 19th century provisions governing the impediments to concluding mixed marriages. Vicar Todea focused especially on Canon 813 CCEO, which, with reference to mixed marriages, states that it “relates to any marriage between two baptised spouses, one of whom is Catholic and the other a-Catholic.” When referring to the a-Catholic, the same canon “does not distinguish between what today we call Orthodox, Protestant and neoProtestant, even though, come to think about it, there is a higher degree of communion between the Orthodox and the Catholics than there is with the Protestants, because there are the same sacraments in the Catholic and Orthodox Churches and so is apostolic succession itself.” He pointed out that despite this, even though there was no longer a legal impediment to it, the marriage to an a-Catholic person must be approved by the local bishop. This approval should not, however, be understood according to the CCEO, as a dispensation, but only as prior permission. In the case of a mixed marriage, it was no longer required that the non-Catholic party should convert to the Catholic faith in time, for their freedom of conscience and 41

For the general presentation of CCEO and aspects concerning mixed marriages, see Salachas, Instituzioni¸ 310-1.

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religion was respected. The Church put thus the spiritual good of the spouses first but imposed the condition that neither party should refuse the obligations which the Catholic spouse had assumed with regard to the baptism and education of the children in the Catholic faith. This requirement was also entailed by Canon 1439 of the CCEO, providing certain penalties for the spouses or guardians who refused to baptise and educate the children in the spirit of the Catholic Church. In the case of mixed marriages, this canon is much more flexible and stipulates that if the parents do not fulfill that obligation, they will not fall under the provisions of the canon. In conclusion, Vicar Todea pointed out that the large number of mixed marriages required a fraternal collaboration between the Christian Churches and communities with a view to studying different aspects related to the matrimonial doctrine, its sacramental dimension, the ethical and moral demands, the canonical aspects and the pastoral-ecumenical implications.42

The Roman-Catholic Church and interfaith mixed marriages Antecedents The position of the Roman Catholic Church on mixed marriages was established at the Council of Trent in 1563, when it was required that such a marriage should be celebrated by the Catholic priest, after the couple’s prior assent that their children’s baptism and education would be made in the Catholic faith. The Tridentine provisions mentioned that in order for such marriages to be valid, it was necessary to have the spouses’ statement before the Catholic priest and two or three witnesses, announcements in churches and assistance from the clergy. In the actual celebration of a marriage, a Catholic priest was allowed only passive assistance which, as we have seen in the Greek-Catholic legislation, meant the participation of the priest in the ceremony only as a witness to the couple’s consent, without any ritual. His only obligation was to record the wedding in the marriage registry.43 The decisions of the higher Catholic authorities regarding mixed marriage have evolved over time due to the new political and ecclesiastical contexts that have emerged at the European level. Thus, after 1648, the Roman Catholic Church banned marriages between Catholics and 42 43

Todea, Căsătoriile. Săsăujan, Căsătoriile, 32.

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Protestants; in 1696 that decision was reversed and they were permitted because only the parity of baptism, and not of faith was at stake.44 In the early 19th century, the papal instruction of 22 May 1814, sent to the bishops in the German provinces of the Austrian Empire, stated that in the case of mixed marriages, the clergy should be allowed only passive assistance. The Catholic hierarchy in Hungary and Transylvania used, in this respect, a decree issued by Pope Gregory XVI in 1832, whereby trenchant opposition to recognising such marriages was relinquished.45 The papal instruction provided that in mixed marriages, the a-Catholic spouse should make every effort to know the truths of the faith of the Catholic Church, while the Catholic should seek the means whereby to convert the other to Catholicism. Also, in the consummation of marriage, the Catholic party was to receive from the other party guarantees that they would be in no way influenced in the exercise of their faith and that the children would be raised in the Catholic faith.46 If the a-Catholic did not accept raising the children in the Catholic faith, then the Catholic Church would assume the right to refuse the announcements, and the priest would not give his passive assistance.47

The Roman-Catholic Church and the Austro-Hungarian State The intervention of the Hungarian State in matrimonial matters under Law LIII of 1868 caused concern in the Roman Catholic Church, which advocated the continuation of the practices from before that year. The law in question overrode the prescriptions issued by the Holy See on mixed marriages and bound the parents who contracted such marriages to educate their children according to the gender criterion, i.e. the sons had to follow the father’s confession and the daughters the mother’s. The politicalecclesiastical laws of the years 1894-1895 allowed parents to freely determine their children’s confession, but most couples were nonetheless still guided by the legislation of 1868.48 In this context, we must remember that the Roman Catholic Church reaffirmed its stance on mixed marriages concluded in Transylvania by the Greek-Catholic Church in a statement issued in 1888. In the introduction, the Holy See motivated the drafting of the directive through its concern over the increasing number of mixed marriages. The papal authority condemned the possibility that a 44

Necula, TradiĠie, 229. Brie, Căsătoria, 40. 46 Săsăujan, Căsătoriile, 32. 47 Brie, Căsătoria, 40. 48 Stan, Căsătoriile, 490-1. 45

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confessionally mixed marriage might give rise to the relinquishment of one’s own confession. Under the instruction, the Roman Catholic Church requested the granting of guarantees by the non-Catholic party that it would refrain from exercising any pressure on the spouse towards the change of his confession and that it would not oppose, in any way, the education of the children in the Catholic faith. If these guarantees were obtained, then the couple could present themselves before the ecclesiastical authorities to ask for a dispensation to marry. The instruction provided practical advice on how the clergy should proceed if the couple wanted to conclude the marriage before the non-Catholic priest. Although such a practice was disapproved from the very start, the Holy See insisted that if it occurred, then the Catholic party should receive explanations that the non-Catholic priest represented only the person of the civil magistrate and that, consequently, such a marriage was tantamount to participation in a civil act, without any sacramental part.49 The Roman Catholic ecclesiastical legislation vacillated according to the socio-cultural and political context. In its dynamics, the Church adapted to the new realities but further kept some of its decisions unaltered by any external influence. Mixed marriages maintained their prohibitive character, even in the pages of the Code of Canon Law/ Codex Juris Canonici of 1917. The collection of laws imposed the obligation that both parents should insist that the non-Catholic spouse should convert to Catholicism.50 According to the Codex, there were four reasons why mixed marriages remained prohibitive. The first referred to the danger of the perversion of the faith for the Catholic party, meaning that the nonCatholic spouse could exercise a certain amount of authority over the Catholic spouse, who could be made to doubt about the truth of the Catholic faith. The second argument referred to the fact that mixed marriages exposed the children to the danger of being baptised and educated in another denomination. This was the pressure that the nonCatholic party, together with family and relatives, could exert in the sense of having the children baptised in their religion. Another explanation regarded the difficulty of spiritual unity and love between the spouses, which, according to the Codex, occurred when the non-Catholic was not baptised in the Catholic faith and resisted it. In this case, the religious discussions taking place in the family hindered the full spiritual communion of the spouses and obstructed the education of the children according to the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. The last 49 50

Bolovan et al., LegislaĠia, 81-2. Stan, Căsătoriile, 491.

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argument referred to the fact that mixed marriages exposed the Catholic spouse to “irreparable spiritual and temporal dangers,” meaning that the non-Catholic spouse could find grounds for separation or civil divorce and for contracting another marriage. Because the Catholic spouse could not obtain a religious divorce, he or she was forced to live a life of celibacy or illegitimately unite with another person.51

The contemporary positions of the Roman-Catholic Church After the debates that took place during the Second Vatican Council, the legislation promoted by the Codex of 1917 have undergone a number of substantial changes which have served to bring Christian Churches closer together. As regards mixed marriages, however, many issues have remained unresolved, but the 1967 Synod of Bishops reviewed the entire problem of mixed marriages and the solutions were outlined by Pope Paul VI in his 1970 apostolic letter entitled Matrimonia mixta. Along with setting the correct terminology for this type of marital union, more specifically, mixed marriages rather than the previous usages (marriages of mixed religions or of disparity of worship), the legal aspects governing the celebration of such marriages were also laid down. Thus, if a mixed marriage was between a Catholic and a baptised non-Catholic, the permission of the local bishop was required, and if the marriage was concluded between a Catholic and a person who was not baptised in Christianity, then the Catholic person had to request dispensation from the impediment of disparity of worship. There were also stipulated situations in which such a dispensation could not be granted and they referred in particular to the possibility of perverting the Catholic party or depriving the children of Catholic education. Thus, to prevent such hazards, the hierarchs had to consider three elements. The first referred to the need for the existence of a justified reason on the part of the Catholic spouse for celebrating a mixed marriage; the second referred to the catechetical instruction from the bishop or the parish priest, which could be done either in the presence of both parties, or separately; and the third pointed to the need for the provision of guarantees, that is the sincere promise of the nonCatholic spouse that he or she would not attempt to undermine the faith of the Catholic and would instruct the children according to the Catholic catechism. The current Catholic legislation on intermarriage is reflected in Article IV, Canons 813-816 of the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, 51

Pal, Căsătoriile, 472-3.

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which came into force in 1991. Apart from some minor changes, it keeps the basic ideas of the previous legislation. Thus, it is stipulated that a marriage between two baptised persons, one of whom is Catholic and the other is non-Catholic cannot be concluded without the prior permission of the competent ecclesiastical authority. Before granting permission, the hierarch must make sure that in the new couple there is no danger of abandonment of the Catholic faith, and that the children will be able to follow the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. These pledges will be made only by the Catholic party, but the other party must be fully aware of the obligations of the Catholic party. The hierarch’s duty towards a mixed marriage is to keep watch over the spiritual life of the family and the children who will be born to it.52

The Reformed Church and the problem of interfaith mixed marriages Antecedents According to the Reformed (Calvinist) Church in Transylvania, marriage is a divine institution, but not a sacrament, as it is regarded in the canons of the churches described above. The Reformed ecclesiastical perspective is, from this point of view, mainly oriented towards the aspect of humanity and, for those who marry, it implies the existence of free consent and intense spiritual and material commitments. A mixed marriage will not be granted too much permissiveness even in this Church, but the law on this subject has evinced changes over time. The first body of laws that referred to mixed marriages and from which the Reformed theologians borrowed ideas was Approbatae Constitutiones from 1655. This law stated that religious difference was not an impediment to marriage if those requesting it were Christians. The Approbatae recognised the marriage between two people of different faiths, which, however, meant the Roman Catholic, the Reformed (Calvinist), the Evangelical (Lutheran), the Unitarian and the Greek-Catholic denominations;53 by contrast, mixed marriages to people of the Orthodox confession were accepted only starting in 1790.54 The decree of Joseph II, issued on 16 January 1782, provided for the possibility of concluding mixed marriages, but imposed compulsory 52

Codul Canoanelor. Brie, Căsătoria, 45. 54 Lukács, Premisele, 69. 53

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confessional education for six weeks for those who wanted to convert. As regards conversion, at the proposal of the Roman Catholic Bishop of Alba Iulia, Ignác Bathyány, Emperor Joseph II issued an order on 22 May 1782. Applied to the realities of the Transylvanian society, the provisions of the decree were ignored by the Catholic ecclesiastical authorities, who decided that the converts’ infants who were born before the conversion could not follow their parents’ faith, but had to be educated in the Catholic faith. Despite protests, the Supreme Consistory of the Reformed Eparchy of Transylvania elevated, in the Diet of 1790-1791, the ordinance of 22 May 1782 to the rank of a law.55 Consequently, for the Roman Catholic Church, the marriages between its faithful and Protestants were conceived as a means of converting the latter to Catholicism. Likewise, the children of a mixed, Catholic-Reformed marriage had to be raised in the faith of the Roman Church, to which the Protestant spouse had to give his or her consent before marriage. This situation continued after the issuance of the papal bull Quas vestro of April 1841, whereby a marriage celebrated before a Protestant priest was recognised as valid. A normalisation of the situation occurred only after the issuance of Article LIII of the Civil Law in 1868, which attempted to resolve the conflicts between the Roman Catholics and the Protestants on the conversions occurring within mixed marriages. Thus, conversions were allowed only if the person had turned 18, and the girls who at the time of marriage had not come of age were an exception.56 The celebration of marriage before a Reformed priest complied with the practices of this Church, despite attempts by the Roman Catholic Church to extend the right of its clergy to officiate a marriage that also involved a Catholic spouse. Prior to the appearance of the couple before the altar, their union had to be proclaimed over three Sundays in both churches, if the marriage was mixed. The purpose of the announcements was the same as in the Orthodox Church, in the sense that what was wanted was the involvement of the community in the marital process through the public disclosure of any impediments and, eventually, the recognition and acceptance of the new family among its ranks. If there was no impediment, there followed the final part of the process, namely the appearance of the youth before the priest to receive the blessing or the covenant.57 The religion of the children resulting from the marriage between a Protestant and a Roman Catholic has been the subject of fierce debate over 55

Lukács, Premisele, 71-2. Ibidem, 74. 57 Brie, Căsătoria, 46. 56

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time. Reformed matrimonial law stipulated that the sons should follow the father’s confession and the daughters their mother’s, except, that is, that had not made a different agreement at the engagement. The bargain practice was opposed by the state law, especially under Law Article LIII of 1868, which considered this type of contract a contravention. State intervention, however, reiterated the practice of the sons’ adoption of the father’s confession and the daughters the mother’s, with the possibility that after the age of 18 they should be able to change their denomination.58

Relaxation and opening At the beginning of the 20th century, the Reformed Church maintained its defensive attitude towards mixed marriages. The regulations governing intermarriage edited by the General Assembly of the Reformed Church in 1927 fully reflect this. Though not prohibited, such marriages were not encouraged. No prohibitions were formulated on them, except in the case of priests. At the beginning of the process of concluding a mixed marriage, the Reformed spouse was required to appear with the parents before the priest. The latter had a duty to warn the plaintiff about the obligations incumbent upon them in such marriage, to ensure that the Reformed spouse was capable of manifesting his or her faith in the new family context and that all the provisions relating to the children’s civil religion were complied with. Marriage could not only be performed by the Reformed priest, but he had a duty to try using different methods, such as periodical visits to the mixed families, or to attempt to limit the number of such relations, by way of an inner mission. Like in the Orthodox Church, mixed marriages were entered in a separate register that was to be updated periodically by the higher ecclesiastical authorities during the canonical visits. If the Reformed Church officials performed mixed marriages and baptised children in other denominations, they would incur losing their positions.59 A statistical situation drawn in the Reformed Church in the years 19231926 shows that of the 15,766 concluded marriages, 3,351 were mixed, i.e. a percentage of 21.25 %. Their distribution by gender indicates the fact that women were more likely to conclude mixed marriages. Regarding confessional preferences, the Reformed preferred Catholic or GreekCatholic partners over Unitarians, Orthodox, Lutherans and Israelites, as shown in the table below. 58 59

Lukács, Premisele, 82-3. Az erdély református egyházkerület, (1927): 70-3.

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At the Extraordinary Assembly of the Reformed Church of 30 January - 1 February 1937 what was discussed, among other topics of general interest, was the situation of the children born in mixed families. It was then established that in the case of children resulting from such marriages, where one parent was Orthodox or Greek Catholic, hence, of Romanian nationality, religious instruction should be made in Romanian.60 It was reaffirmed that the Reformed Church did not condone but accepted intermarriage. However, if one of the spouses in a mixed marriage was no longer able to freely practise his confession, it was considered that the union was degraded. Therefore, the Reformed Church demanded its clergy to offer the faithful the necessary knowledge regarding their rights, because its integrity could be defended thus.61 Table 3 Interfaith marriages in the Reformed communities from Transylvania between the years 1923-1926* Type of marriage

men

women

mixed marriages with Roman-Catholics

780

1,074

mixed marriages with Greek-Catholics

211

317

mixed marriages with the Orthodox

84

188

mixed marriages with Unitarians

178

264

mixed marriages with Israelites

12

19

mixed marriages with Lutherans

79

145

TOTAL 1,344 2,007 Source: Dr. Mákkai Sándor püspöki jelentése az erdélyi református egyházkerület 1927. augusztus 13-i közgyĦlésén, Cluj-Kolozsvár, 1927, pp. 5-6.

Confessionally mixed marriages in the Saxon and Swabian communities attending the Evangelical or the Lutheran Churches in Transylvania were almost insignificant in terms of density until the second half of the 19th century. According to the experts, the reasons for this refusal of the German population to cohabitate with other nations were, on the one hand, the concern for preserving their own identity, but also certain frustrations caused by a minority complex or the ideology of racial purity, which gained momentum in the early 20th century. The 60 61

Az erdély református egyházkerület (1937), 95. Vásárhelyi, A dolgozó, 31-2.

278

Churches and Interfaith Marriages in Transylvania

demographic historians’ analysis shows that in the period 1877-1909, the number of mixed marriages within the Evangelical community was constant, with a slightly upward trend. In the entire Evangelical community from Hungary, mixed marriages accounted for 18.6% in 1901, while among the Transylvanian Lutheran Saxons the percentage was modest, of only 8.19%.62 As shown by the analysis of some Evangelical communities from Sibiu, Cluj and Sebeú, the Evangelicals preferred Catholic partners when they entered mixed marriages (60% in the case of Sebeú) and only one-tenth were married to Greek-Catholic or Orthodox Romanians. The explanation was found in the Evangelicals’ caution against being assimilated in a period when confessional and ethnic identity overlapped, in the enlargement context in which secularisation was undergoing expansion.63 The position adopted by the Evangelical Church on mixed marriages differed from that of the Reformed Church in that it explicitly ruled against them. The Evangelical clergy had a duty to warn the parishioners about the negative repercussions on the children’s education, as well as about the comfort of the couple who, in the case of a union with a person of another denomination, would have been affected. In time, however, the Evangelical Church had to accept mixed marriages, and in special cases to celebrate it. In these few cases, however, a mixed family had to pledge before the Evangelical minister that it would raise the children in the Lutheran confession.64

The mosaic cult and mixed marriages The prohibition to contract a marriage with a Jew included in the canonical provisions of all the Christian Churches in Transylvania led to the percentage of the unions of this kind being almost insignificant. This, however, was also due to the position of the Jewish faith, which follows the Talmudic teachings, in which it is specified that a marriage, kiddushin, can only be concluded between Jews.65 The intransigence of the Christian canons, on the one hand, and the Jews’ lack of openness to exogamy, on the other hand, have decreased the possibility of mixed marriages being concluded among the inhabitants of Transylvania. To this is added the Hungarian state’s refusal to recognise the Mosaic religion and the refusal 62

Crăciun, Mariajele, 197. Ibidem, 201-2. 64 Brie, Căsătoria, 46-7. 65 Corjescu, 45-48. 63

Ioan Bolovan and Marius Eppel

279

of granting it full reciprocity and equality with the other religions in Hungary, which benefited from the prescriptions of Law XX, enacted in 1848. Only in the summer of 1849 did the Hungarian Parliament take concrete steps towards the empowerment and recognition of the Jewish faith.66 After this moment, the civilian legislation referred to the marriage of the Jews, as can be seen from the Imperial Patent of 29 May 1853 for the implementation of the General Civil Code in the Principality of Transylvania. Articles 123-136 describe the manner in which two Jews can contract a marriage, talk about impediments and the fact that the announcement of the marriage had to be published in the synagogue, and the celebration of the marriage by the rabbi had to be made in the language of the country in which he lived. The Code also refers to the provisions governing the separation from bed and board, which also applied to the Jewish communities and to divorce. Article 136 emphasised that the conversion of a Jewish spouse to the Christian religion did not entail the dissolution of the marriage unless it was subject to some impediments.67 Even after the Hungarian state officially recognised the equality of the Jewish religion with the other accepted religions in Hungary, the percentage of mixed marriages was not high in the last decade of the 19th century.

Conclusions The position adopted by the Churches in Transylvania on intermarriage has been unitary. Irrespective of whether they applied dispensation or akriveia to a higher or a lesser degree, each of them has opposed the conclusion of such marriages. All the confessions have aspired to have as many religiously non-mixed couples as possible in order to be able to maintain the unity of the faith more easily. If, however, they had to be celebrated, then the ecclesiastical authorities insisted that the education of children should be accomplished according to the doctrine of one of the spouses. That was where the confrontation between the confessions was waged, for each sought to exercise their right to promote their own catechism. The realities were more complex than the canonical provisions and, therefore, every Church had to resort to concessions. While in the 19th century the interfaith dialogue on the issue of mixed marriages encountered many difficulties, in the 20th century it found its balance in the field of ecumenism. However, no Church explicitly recognised, in the 66

Bolovan et al., LegislaĠia, 33, note 71. Bolovan et al., LegislaĠia, 134-6.

67

280

Churches and Interfaith Marriages in Transylvania

circumstances surrounding a mixed marriage, the right of the other Church. State intervention and secularisation have been the factors that have diminished, to some extent, the categorical discourse of the Churches. Apart from some areas where there are compact confessional blocks, every Church in Transylvania has realised, over the past decades that it will not be able to survive in a globalised world unless it relinquishes its retrograde vision and attempts, under the principle of ecclesiastical dynamism, to transform itself according to the needs of contemporary society. Translated by Carmen-Veronica Borbely

References Manuscript sources National Archives, Bihor County Directorate, Fond Episcopia Ortodoxă Română, Protocolul úedinĠei plenare a Consistoriului orădean din 3 aprilie 1893, file 601: 74r-75v. National Archives, Bihor County Directorate, Fond Episcopia Ortodoxă Română, Protocolul úedinĠei plenare a Consistoriului orădean din 13 noiembrie 1893, file 601: 83r-84r.

Printed sources Az erdély református egyházkerület Cluj-Kolozsvárt 1927. évi augusztus 13-15 napjain tartott közgyülésének jegyzökönyve, 70-3. ClujKolozsvár, 1927. Az erdély református egyházkerület Cluj-Kolozsvárt 1937. évi január hó 30 – február 1 – én tartott rendkívüli közgyülésének jegyzökönyve. Cluj-Kolozsvár, 1937. Circulara emisă de protopopiatul Suceava II, Arhiepiscopia Sucevei úi RădăuĠilor, Suceava, no. 44 (17 February 2010). Codul Canoanelor Bisericilor Orientale: 118-119, cf. http://home.arcor.de/arthurhopper/cceo_ro.pdf. Codul Civil Austriac, trans. Ioan Corjescu. Bucure‫܈‬ti, 1921. Graiul Maramure‫܈‬ului, Manifestul “Noul strigăt pentru ungurimea din Baia Mare” http://www.graiul.ro/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id =12582:manifestul-noul-strigt-pentru-ungurimea-din-baia-mare&catid=2:actualitate&Itemid=2#comment-797

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Protocolul Congresului NaĠional Bisericesc ordinar al mitropoliei românilor greco-orientali din Ungaria úi Transilvania, întrunit în Sibiu la 7/19 mai 1895. Sibiu, 1895. Protocolul Congresului NaĠional Bisericesc ordinar al mitropoliei românilor greco-orientali din Ungaria úi Transilvania, întrunit la Sibiu la 1/13 octombrie 1897. Sibiu, 1897. Protocolul Congresului NaĠional Bisericesc ordinar al mitropoliei românilor greco-orientali din Ungaria úi Transilvania, întrunit la Sibiu la 1/14 octombrie 1900. Sibiu, 1900. Protocolul Congresului NaĠional Bisericesc ordinar al mitropoliei românilor greco-orientali din Ungaria úi Transilvania, întrunit la Sibiu la 1/14 octombrie 1903. Sibiu, 1903. Protocolul Congresului NaĠional Bisericesc ordinar al mitropoliei românilor greco-orientali din Ungaria úi Transilvania, întrunit la Sibiu la 1/14 octombrie 1912. Sibiu, 1912. Protocolul despre úedinĠele sinodului eparhial din dieceza română grecoorientală a Aradului Ġinute în 1883. Arad, 1883. RaĠiu, Ioan. PrelecĠiuni teologice despre matrimoniu, impedimente, procedură, cu respect la teoria e praxa vigente în provincia metropolitană greco-catolică a Albei-Iuliei. Blaj, 1875. RâmneanĠu, Petru. “InfluenĠa căsătoriei asupra fertilităĠii úi etnicului unui neam”. Transilvania (Buletin de tehnică a culturii) 68, no. 5, (1937): 397, 400-1. Simon, Iuliu. InstrucĠiune practică pentru causele matrimoniale cu respect la disciplina vigentă în provincia bisericească gr[eco]-cat[olică] de Alba-Julia úi Făgăraú scrisă în usul păstorilor sufleteúti prin prof. dr. Iuliu Simon. Gherla, 1891. Vásárhelyi János. A dolgozó egyház. Püspöki jelentés 1937. Kolozsvár, 1937.

Secondary bibliography Bel, Valer. “Taina NunĠii ca dar úi misiune, temelie a familiei creútine. Familiile mixte úi problemele misionar-pastorale pe care acestea le ridică”. Anuarul Episcopiei Sălajului, CredinĠă úi viaĠă în Hristos IV (2012): 281-301. Bolovan, Ioan, Diana Covaci, Daniela Deteúan, Marius Eppel and Crinela Elena Holom eds. LegislaĠia ecleziastică úi laică privind familia românească din Transilvania în a doua jumătate a secolului al XIXlea. Cluj-Napoca, 2009.

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Bolovan, Sorina Paula and Ioan Bolovan. “Familie úi comportament matrimonial în Transilvania între anii 1850 úi 1914 (între tradiĠie úi modernizare).” In Om úi societate. Studii de istoria populaĠiei României (sec. XVIII-XXI). Omagiu profesorului Nicolae Bocúan la împlinirea vârstei de 60 de ani, edited by Sorina Paula Bolovan, Ioan Bolovan, Corneliu Pădurean, 107-134. Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2007. Brie, Mircea. Căsătoria în nord-vestul Transilvaniei (a doua jumătate a secolului XIX-începutul secolului XX). CondiĠionări exterioare úi strategii maritale. Oradea: Editura Universită‫܊‬ii din Oradea, 2009. —. Familie úi societate în nord-vestul Transilvaniei (a doua jumătate a secolului XIX-începutul secolului XX). Oradea: Editura Universită‫܊‬ii din Oradea, 2009. Bud, Tit. Îndreptar practice pentru păstorii sufleteúti. Gherla: 1884. Cârja, Cecilia and Ioan Cârja. “Biserica română unită úi dezbaterile asupra legislaĠiei matrimoniale în Austro-Ungaria (a doua jumătate a sec. al XIX-lea).” In Om úi societate. Studii de istoria populaĠiei României (sec. XVIII-XXI) edited by Sorina Paula Bolovan, Ioan Bolovan, Corneliu Pădurean, 146-160. Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2007. Crăciun, Bogdan. “Mariajele interconfesionale în comunităĠile lutherane din Transilvania, în epoca modernă.” In Căsătoriile mixte în Transilvania, secolul al XIX-lea úi începutul secolului XX, edited by Corneliu Pădurean, Ioan Bolovan, 194-215. Arad: Editura Universită‫܊‬ii ”Aurel Vlaicu,” 2005. Drăgoi, Macarie. Ortodocúi úi greco-catolici în Transilvania (1867-1916). ConvergenĠe úi divergenĠe. Cluj-Napoca: Presa Unievrsitară Clujeană, 2011. Floca, Ioan N. Drept canonic ortodox, legislaĠie úi administraĠie bisericească, vol. II. Bucure‫܈‬ti: Editura Institutului Biblic ‫܈‬i de Misiune al Bisericii Ortodoxe Române, 1990. “Noul strigăt pentru ungurimea din Baia Mare” in Graiul Maramureúului, July 17th 2013, 4-5. Lukács, Olga. “Premisele juridice ale căsătoriilor mixte în Biserica reformată din Ardeal, în secolele XVII-XIX.” In Căsătoriile mixte în Transilvania, secolul al XIX-lea úi începutul secolului XX, edited by Corneliu Pădurean and Ioan Bolovan, 67-87. Arad: Editura Universită‫܊‬ii ”Aurel Vlaicu,” 2005. Necula, Nicolae. TradiĠie úi înnoire în slujirea liturgică. GalaĠi: Editura Dunării de Jos, 2001.

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Pal, Maximilian. “Căsătoriile mixte în legislaĠia Bisericii Catolice: aspecte istorico-juridice”. Studia Theologica IV, 4 (2006): 472-3. Rain, Lily. Familia etnic mixtă: JudeĠul Covasna. Sfântu Gheorghe: Arcuú, 2001. Salachas, Dimitrios. Instituzioni di diritto canonico delle Chiese cattoliche orientali, 2nd edition. Bologna: Edizioni Dehoniane, 2003. Săsăujan, Mihai. “Căsătoriile mixte în lumina legislaĠiei bisericeúti ortodoxe, catolice úi protestante în Monarhia austriacă, în a doua jumătate a secolului al XIX-lea.” In Căsătorii mixte în Transilvania, secolul al XIX-lea úi începutul secolul XX edited by Ioan Bolovan, Corneliu Pădurean, 9-18. Arad: Editura Universită‫܊‬ii ”Aurel Vlaicu,” 2005. Sima, Ana Victoria. Vizitele nunĠilor apostolici vienezi în Transilvania (1858-1866), vol. I. Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2003. Stan, Liviu. “Căsătoriile mixte úi ultimele măsuri luate de Vatican în privinĠa lor”. Studii teologice, XX, 7-8 (1968): 490-1. Todea, Mihai. “Căsătoriile mixte. LegislaĠie úi consecinĠe în viaĠa familiei”, Familia creútină 1 (2004). http://www.profamilia.ro/revista.asp?id=2004_01_07

Acknowledgements This work was supported by a grant of the Romanian National Academy for scientific research, CNCS-UEFISCDI, project number PN-II-ID-PCE2011-3-0188.

Appendix

Churches and Interfaith Marriages in Transylvania

461,290

531,380 329,079

217,895

375,992

650,544

Mureú Satu Mare

Sălaj

Sibiu

Timiú

396,253

Hunedoara

Maramureú

304,969

Harghita

567,139

357,067

157,261

298,204 191,929

387,293

377,620

41,015

50,609

539,135

659,370

206,261

248,629

274,277

Covasna

458,666

505,442

Braúov

CaraúSeverin Cluj

377,445

259,843

549,752

277,861

307,117 354,061

BistriĠaNăsăud

327,258 409,072

Alba Arad

Romanian

Bihor

Stable Population Total

County

33,835

9,961

51,385

206,550 131,456

34,088

15,441

262,463

154,998

102,928

2,856

39,284

14,061

144,736

15,346 37,207

Hungarian

8,695

3,591

7,420

23,035 2,318

7,003

1,304

1,187

252

8,082

5,586

2,809

3,286

18,149

3,570 7,182

Romani

7,525

3,693

37

1,202 835

1,000

653

56

75

577

2,518

2,604

281

478

629 2,433

5,526

28

22

25 1,268

30,891

91

14

13

142

2,438

54

43

85

12 1,126

96

29

43 8

23

34

9

7

75

19

72

21

41

21 43

Of which, by mother tongue German Ukrainian Turkish

Table 1 The ethnic structure of Transylvania’s population in 2011

284

15

59

7

65 18

20

25

9

13

73

21

91

13

35

12 31

108

-

3 -

-

-

-

-

7

-

11

-

-

-

Russian Tatar

16,482

436

1,207

311 172

266

455

46

60

1,917

11,834

607

110

6,300

Another mother tongue 200 6,068

11,123

1,126

553

1,942 1,075

706

628

169

234

6,434

375

1,244

203

2,481

351 919

Undeclared mother tongue

Orthodox

282,000 162,055 139531 336,256 507,743

48,454 60,000 5,461 4,882 54,858

3,628 35,606 47,623 2,996 17,134 17,335 22,682 73,786 198,673 15,377 24,124

RomanCatholic

11,409 25,099 5,792 7,608 8,631

10,487 4,834 12,569 5,500 3,389 2,045 24,226 289 947 4,136 23,628 137,764 60,649 42,539 5,664 9,302

11,665 9,857 94,260 11,838 11,305 1,014 72,989 68,052 37,389 7,611 16,841

Greek- Reformed Catholic

1,892 2,006 8,299 3,070 9,738

3,567 15,882 21,839 2,353 1,677 11,092 7424 464 844 5,813 2,331

Baptist

9,354 10,339 10,518 4,827 27,885

7,207 29,689 38,133 20,589 10,727 9,187 21,451 4,783 565 15,570 17,613

Pentecostal

Of which, by religion

9,060 842 813 1,576 2,207

633 4,826 1,898 1,630 2,193 676 3,452 888 505 1,187 3,555 24,822 5,206 3,491 9,219 13,407

5,776 7,026 5,442 3,082 25,732 5,682 19,567 12,668 26,565 5,293 8,523

Adventist Another Church religion

2,698 634 337 526 1,178

646 726 1,080 371 1,037 304 2,455 879 715 819 967

No religion

546 155 101 440 1,220

179 504 551 129 863 192 1,957 70 127 445 395

Atheist

285

3,381 2,094 1,013 1,924 14,375

830 1,993 5,301 700 2,233 856 9,767 555 405 1,625 2,888

Undeclared religion

http://www.recensamantromania.ro/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Comunicat-presa_Rezultate-preliminare.pdf, accessed on 2 May 2013.

Mureú Satu Mare Sălaj Sibiu Timiú

Alba 282,640 Arad 298,129 Bihor 321,056 BistriĠa-Năsăud 228,673 Braúov 429,152 CaraúSeverin 225,894 Cluj 473,400 Covasna 43,827 Harghita 38,234 Hunedoara 338,377 Maramureú 360,425

County

Table 2 The confessional structure of Transylvania’s population in 2011

Ioan Bolovan and Marius Eppel

FAMILIES, MARRIAGES AND FREE UNIONS IN PORTUGAL HELENA DA SILVA

In the past, marriage was the most commonly chosen contract type because it gave more guarantees that families would preserve their privileges and wealth. What about nowadays, is this contract still chosen for the same reasons? Does marriage still play an important role in the Portuguese society? Is it still chosen as the main contract for establishing a family or are other contracts preferred? We will analyse the evolution of marriage over the past century, underlining who can marry, what are the prevalent types of marriages (religious or civil), as well as other aspects like age, kinship, mixed marriages and children born outside marriage. Finally, we will also pay attention to matrimonial regimes and illiteracy at the time of marriage1. This analysis will give us an idea about the evolution of families, marriages and free unions in Portugal as a whole. However, we will also underline several regional variations and draw a comparison with the situation in France, pointing out different practices and reasons behind certain behaviours. For this study, we have used several sources, especially statistical ones, produced by Statistics Portugal (INE) and the French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE). These two institutions have several series of data concerning marriage and other types of unions. We have used the Portuguese Statistical Yearbooks (published since 1908), different Demographic Statistics (conducted since 1907), as well as the Portuguese Census, including the latest one, carried out in 2011. The use of these statistics can easily be criticised because census methods and statistics were less developed and accurate then compared to nowadays. Nevertheless, we consider that they are a reliable source with regular data

1

I am very grateful to Paulo Teodoro de Matos for his advice on this article.

Helena da Silva

287

for the whole country, allowing us to follow this evolution over the past hundred years2.

The evolution of marriage rates In Portugal, marriage rates were quite low between 1900 and 1941 (around 6 or 7%) due to the difficult access to marriage. In 1941 marriage rates started increasing, continued to rise in the 1950s and 1960s due to the opening of the marriage market, reached a peak in 1975 and progressively decreased afterwards (Fig. 1)3. Figure 1 The marriage rate per 1,000 inhabitants in Portugal and France4 (19002012) 18 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 1900 1904 1908 1912 1916 1920 1924 1928 1932 1936 1940 1944 1948 1952 1956 1960 1964 1968 1972 1976 1980 1984 1988 1992 1996 2000 2004 2008 2012

0

Portugal

France

Source: Processing from INE, Anuário Estatístico [1908-2010], Estatísticas Demográficas [1907-2010]; INSEE, Statistiques de l'état civil et estimations de population [1901-2012].

Despite this increase, nuptiality dropped at several points in time, such as during the First World War, which can be explained by the Portuguese soldiers’ participation in this conflict. Another factor was the 1918 flu pandemic that killed over 60,000 people in Portugal, mainly young persons, especially women under 30 years old. The flu pandemic mortality

2

Cónim, Algumas características, 129-33. Bandeira, Demografia, 265-7. 4 In this article, we took into consideration Metropolitan France only. 3

288

Families, Marriages and Free Unions in Portugal

rate was even higher when linked with other diseases like enteritis and tuberculosis, which probably had an impact on the marriage market5. The highest number of marriages was reached in 1975 (103,125) thanks to the end of the New State dictatorship (1933-74) and the colonial war (1961-74)6, which allowed military men to return home and marry their fiancées. Besides, as a consequence of the former Portuguese colonies’ independence, many people left these territories, settling in Portugal. Furthermore, divorce became legal for couples married by the Catholic Church (under Canon Law), which contributed to the regularisation of different situations7. After this peak, the number of marriages decreased progressively, especially after the year 2000. In 2010 marriage rates reached the lowest of this period, with 3.8 marriages per 1,000 inhabitants in Portugal, far under the 10.9 marriage rate of 1975. This situation is not unique to Portugal, but similar to other Western European countries. For example, in 2010, the marriage rate was 3.9 per 1,000 inhabitants in France. There are numerous reasons behind this evolution, but we can mention the increased length of education for women, the higher number of working women and the women’s wider autonomy and freedom of choice. Therefore, women no longer see marriage as an obligation that will insure their economic survival or as an essential step towards building a family and, above all, they can freely choose their partner. As a result, they might never marry if they do not find someone that suits them or if they do not wish to. Marriage is thus seen less as a sacrament or a life commitment8. This also explains the increasing number of couples in cohabitation, of children born outside marriage and of divorced couples. Despite the decline in the number of marriages in Portugal, this contract still plays an important role in society, especially if we take into consideration that there is no other type of partnership, unlike in France for example, where the PaCS (Pacte Civil de Solidarité) was created in

5

Frada, A gripe pneumónica, 261-72. António de Oliveira Salazar (1889-1970) established the New State regime (Estado Novo), a nationalist, conservative, Catholic and anti-democratic dictatorship. In an attempt to maintain the Portuguese overseas territories, Salazar led the country into a colonial war, with armed conflicts in Angola, Mozambique, the Portuguese Guinea and the Portuguese State of India. This dictatorship was overthrown by a military coup on 25 April 1974, known as the Carnation Revolution. Meneses, Salazar. 7 Nunes, “Les Transformations,” 490-1. 8 Aboim, “Vidas conjugais,” 80, 98. 6

Helena da Silva

289

19999. In May 2010, same-sex marriage became legal in Portugal10. However, same-sex marriage rates are lower than expected, despite the possibility given to established couples to legalise their relation. In 2010, same-sex marriages represented 0.7% and 0.9% in 2011, or 266 and 324 marriages, respectively. These were mainly marriages between men (67% in 2010 and 68% in 2011)11. It is still too early to come up with an analysis since there are very few data on this subject. Nevertheless, the legalisation of same-sex marriage does not seem to be followed by an important number of unions, as the situation was in other countries, with a subsequent decrease (for example in Norway or Sweden)12. The other possibility for those that do not wish to marry is a free union (união de facto). Since 1977 people of different sex living in a free union have been recognised as couples, albeit without any obligations of assistance or cooperation. More rights have meanwhile been given to people who choose this type of conjugality, for example the right to a survivor’s pension, to a funeral allowance or a dependent person’s supplement, and equal fiscal benefits to those awarded to married couples13. Even so, free unions are still a minority. Because this type of union does not need to be declared, there is a lack of statistical information, which makes it almost impossible to study its evolution over the past hundred years14. Only since the 1991 Census have people been able to declare whether they live in a free union, although legally speaking, one’s marital status can only be “single”, “married”, “divorced” or “widowed”. This allows us to verify if free unions are chosen by a limited number of people, even though this number has strongly increased over the past twenty years. Despite this increase, there are also important differences across Portugal, with free unions being statistically more common in the region of Lisbon and the Tagus Valley and in Algarve. Couples still choose marriage more often in the north and the centre of Portugal and in the Azores and Madeira Islands15. In 2011, only 13% of the couples chose free 9

Same-sex marriage was legalised in France in 2013. Journal Officiel. Since 2001 free unions have been legally recognised for couples living together for over two years, including for same-sex couples, defining their fiscal rights, social protection and family home protection. Diário da República, 1853. 11 We can also mention five divorces registered in 2011, one of them involving a female couple. 12 Andersson et al., “The Demographics,” 247-64. 13 Aboim, “Vidas conjugais,” 89. 14 Leite, “A União de Facto,” 95-140; Nunes, “Les Transformations,” 488. 15 Leite, “Famílias,” 29, 35; INE, Inquérito, 21-3. 10

290

Families, Marriages M and Free F Unions in P Portugal

unions in Portugal, whhile 87% prreferred marrriage (53.3% % of the population w were couples)16; in France, 73.1% were m married, 22.6% % lived in free unions and 4.3% choose the PaCS (66.4% of thee population were w in a couple relatiionship)17. Free unions have always existed, but b they were often seen ass immoral relations, being disapprooved of by the Catholicc Church and d by the Portuguese society in genneral. Nowadaays, even if thhis image has evolved, free unions still do not seem to be preferred forr building a family f in Portugal, ass it is the casse in the Nortthern Europeaan countries. There is, however, a transformatiion underway y and probab ably in the following f decades thee situation will w be similarr to that in the Nordic countries. c Therefore, w we can concluude that marriage still playys a crucial ro ole in the Portuguese ssociety, even if it no longerr perfectly oveerlaps with thee passage to adult life;; it is a contract with important rights andd duties for th he couple, and it still offers its meembers a soccially recognissed status. For many, marriage is still a ritual that marks the t beginningg of a new liife and a commitmentt made beforee family and frriends18. marães (Portugaal) in 1958 Figure 2 A wedding in Guim

Source: Privaate archives.

16

INE, Censoos 2011, 26. Buisson annd Lapinte, “Le couple,” 1-4. 18 Torres, Cassamento em Portugal, 5-7. 17

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Types of marriages In France, marriage is a civil contract, signed at the City Hall during a civil ceremony, before the Mayor or one of his representatives. After it, if desired, there can be a religious ceremony, but it is the act signed at the City Hall that is considered to be the official one. In Portugal, the situation has changed over the past century and is slightly different now; although marriage is a civil contract, with a civil procedure, it does not necessarily include a civil ceremony. The 1867 Civil Code presented civil marriage as an option, stipulating that marriage could be either civil or religious. With the Republic (5 October 1910) and the decree of 1 December 1910, civil marriage became compulsory and only valid when celebrated in front of a government officer. The Portuguese population continued to choose religious marriage, so the 1911 Civil Code demanded that civil marriage should take place before the religious one (a similar situation to that in France). In 1940, during the New State Dictatorship (1933-74), a Concordat was signed, giving people the choice of a civil or a Catholic marriage (under Canon Law). At the same time, divorce was forbidden in the case of Catholic marriages, being allowed again only in 1975. The 1976 Constitution established civil marriage merely as an option and Catholic marriage was automatically recognised by the state (with one common ceremony for Catholic and civil marriages). In 2007, the situation changed in favour of religious liberty. Thus, all marriages celebrated in a religious community recognised by the Portuguese state are now accepted as civil marriages in a religious form. Since then, there have been three possible types of marriages: civil marriage alone, civil marriage celebrated as part of a Catholic ceremony and civil marriage celebrated in another religious form19. For the period between 1929 and 1939, the data reveal the numbers for exclusively civil marriages, as well as for civil marriages followed by a Catholic ceremony or by other religious ceremonies (in lower numbers, with a slightly higher presence of Protestant ceremonies). Between 1940 and 1954, the data present civil marriages, civil or canonical marriages succeeded by a Catholic ceremony and civil marriages followed by another ceremony. The data from 1955 on reveal only civil, Catholic and other cult marriages. They do not mention whether the latter were preceded or not by a civil marriage.

19

Chaves, Casamento, 101-6.

292

Families, Marriages and Free Unions in Portugal

The marriages between people of religions other than Catholic were really a minority, all these other denominations together never amounting to more than 1%. This reveals the religious structure of the Portuguese population (mainly Catholic). We can clearly see that Catholic marriages represented the majority, but their share has been decreasing since the end of the 1960s (Fig. 3). Civil marriage was then more common in the intellectual and artistic circles20. In 2010, Catholic marriages represented 42% of the celebrated marriages. Figure 3 Types of marriages in Portugal (1929-2010)

1929 1932 1935 1938 1941 1944 1947 1950 1953 1956 1959 1962 1965 1968 1971 1974 1977 1980 1983 1986 1989 1992 1995 1998 2001 2004 2007 2010

100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

Civil

Catholic

Other religions

Source: Processing from INE, Estatísticas Demográficas [1929-2010].

It is interesting to see that the percentage of civil marriages was high at the end of the 1920s (37.9% in 1929), due to a secular stream that declined during the New State dictatorship (1933-74), increasing slowly afterwards, and reaching 37.4% again only in 200121. Since 2007, civil marriages have become the majority, in a quite recent change, revealing the secularisation of marriage and the changes within the Portuguese society22. There are still differences between the north of the country, which is more Catholic, and the south, which is more secular. Thus, the number of civil marriages is higher in the Lisbon region, Algarve and Alentejo, being lower in the north and the centre of Portugal23. Civil marriage is also reinforced by the

20

Callier-Boisvert, “Remarques,” 93. Bandeira, Demografia, 332-4. 22 Nunes de Almeida et al., “Relações familiares,” 45-78. 23 Nunes de Almeida and Wall, “A família,” 35-7. 21

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rising number of remarriages and by the fact that previously married people do not usually choose Catholic marriage when remarrying24.

Civil status at marriage All along this period, the number of single people getting married has been the majority, and the number of single women has been superior to that of single men. The percentage of single people started decreasing in the 1980s, as a result of an increasing number of divorces and remarriages (Fig. 4 and 5). The remarriage of divorced people has been an evident trend since 1975, the moment when divorce was authorised in the case of Catholic marriages; this reveals that this change allowed the regulation of cohabitation cases (with divorce being authorised, these people could remarry). The increasing remarriage rates among divorced people also contributed to boosting civil marriage. We can also mention that divorced men tend to remarry more often than divorced women. This same difference can be seen in the case of the widowed, which is even more surprising, because the number of widows is higher than that of widowers. Remarriage has become less common for the widowed, including for men. There can be several reasons for this change: they may not wish to remarry because they are more independent after their spouse’s death, because the widow or widower may never fall in love, or because they wish to continue receiving their spouse’s pension. In this case, they will not remarry because this would mean losing the spouse’s pension. Thus, they will prefer to cohabitate with a new partner in a free, undeclared union. But in other cases, the widowed get married in Spain, where Catholic and civil marriage are independent of each other. Therefore, one can religiously marry in Spain and continue to be widows or widowers in Portugal25. If we resort to a comparison with France, the situation is quite similar, single people being the majority at the time of marriage. Although their number is higher in Portugal, this difference tends to reduce. Unfortunately, in the Portuguese case, the data are not mentioned after 2006, which prevents us from engaging in a deeper analysis. As for the number of divorced people that remarry, it is higher in France than in Portugal, an upward trend being detectible in both cases. The percentages of widowed persons who remarry are quite identical. 24 25

Pereira, Estratégias matrimoniais, 11-2. “Portugueses vão a Espanha.”

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Families, Marriages and Free Unions in Portugal

Figure 4 Men’s civil status prior to marriage in Portugal and France in percentages (1906-2010)

1906 1909 1914 1917 1920 1923 1929 1932 1935 1938 1941 1944 1947 1950 1953 1956 1959 1962 1965 1968 1971 1974 1977 1980 1983 1986 1989 1992 1995 1998 2001 2004 2007 2010

100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

PT Single Men FR Single Men

PT Widowers FR Widowers

PT Divorced Men FR Divorced Men

Source: Processing from INE, Anuário Estatístico [1908-2006], Estatísticas Demográficas [1907-2006]; INSEE, Statistiques de l'état civil [1946-2010]. Figure 5 Women’s civil status prior to marriage in Portugal and France in percentages (1906-2010)

1906 1909 1914 1917 1920 1923 1929 1932 1935 1938 1941 1944 1947 1950 1953 1956 1959 1962 1965 1968 1971 1974 1977 1980 1983 1986 1989 1992 1995 1998 2001 2004 2007 2010

100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 PT Single Women FR Single Women

PT Widows FR Widows

PT Divorced Women FR Divorced Women

Source: Processing from INE, Anuário Estatístico [1908-2006], Estatísticas Demográficas [1907-2006]; INSEE, Statistiques de l'état civil [1946-2010].

The behaviour is similar in these two countries if the comparison is made by gender, with only small differences. For example, French widowers remarry almost as much as the Portuguese ones, while Portuguese widows remarry less than the French ones.

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Age at first marriage Taking into consideration that first marriages represent the majority, we have decided to analyse the age of men and women at first marriage26. In the case of Portugal, the average age is quite irregular but during the 1980s it increased progressively, the difference between men and women being reduced. In 1913, women married at 22.5 years of age and men at 25.6, while in 2006 women married at 29.5 years of age and men at 3127 (Fig. 6). Figure 6 Age at first marriage in Portugal and France (1913-2011) 34 32 30 28 26 24 22 1913 1916 1919 1922 1925 1928 1931 1934 1937 1940 1943 1946 1949 1952 1955 1958 1961 1964 1967 1970 1973 1976 1979 1982 1985 1988 1991 1994 1997 2000 2003 2006 2009

20

Portuguese women French women

Portuguese men French men

Source: Processing from INE, Estatísticas Demográficas [1913-2011], Anuário Estatístico [1943-2011]; INSEE, Statistiques de l'état civil [1946-2011].

If we compare the cases of Portugal and France, we can see that between the 1950s and 1970s Portuguese spouses married at a later age than the French but this situation has been reversed since 1976, when the age at first marriage started rising in France, increasing the disparity between the two countries. This was probably due to several social and cultural differences. For example, going for longer periods of education was not yet common in Portugal, as it was the case in France. Other 26

We have calculated the weighted average for the age at first marriage of all women and then of all men, and they could marry a spouse who was single, widowed or divorced. 27 In 1955, a new category was created for women, under 14 years of age and between 15 and 19 years old, with a consequence on the calculated data, explaining the age increase this year.

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Families, Marriages and Free Unions in Portugal

reasons for these differences could be linked to cohabitation before marriage, which was common in France in the 1980s, when marriage would follow the birth of the couple’s first child, as well as to the use of contraception to postpone the decision of starting a family28. According to Nunes de Almeida, in 2000, Portugal had the lowest age at first marriage in the European Union, which reveals the importance of this age difference29. Even if French men and women still marry later than the Portuguese ones, this difference decreased during the 2000s, becoming less than one year in 2011. Lagging behind a few years, Portuguese couples seem to be adopting the same behaviours as the French ones. For example, the number of Portuguese couples that decide to cohabitate before marriage is growing, being four times higher in 2010 than in 199530. Therefore, couples seem to postpone marriage by choosing other types of conjugality, which explains the growing age at first marriage31.

Children born outside marriage In the beginning of the 1960s, the percentage of children born outside marriage in Portugal was significant (almost 10%), but it started going down irregularly until the end of the 1970s, when nuptiality was on the rise. Since then, nuptiality has been decreasing and the number of children born outside marriage has been rising progressively, being four times higher in 2010 than in 1980 (Fig.7). However, during the 1960s, having children outside marriage was a socially condemned behaviour in Portugal, being regarded as a transgression and entailing the stigmatisation of single mothers and their children. Nowadays couples living in cohabitation and having children outside marriage represent a socially accepted and normal behaviour32. Since the 1970s, the number of children born outside marriage has been increasing in France, being over 50% since 2007. Although the difference between the two countries has been reducing, in 2011, 55% of children were born outside marriage in France, while in Portugal this percentage was of 42.8%33. The reasons behind these behaviours can be 28

France Prioux, “L'âge,” 623-44. Nunes de Almeida, “Famílias,” 62. 30 INE, Estatísticas Demográficas. 31 INE, Inquérito, 24. 32 Aboim, “Vidas conjugais,” 86-8. 33 Sofia Aboim mentioned that in 2001 Portugal had the highest percentage of children born outside marriage in Southern Europe (Greece, Italy and Spain), 29

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linked with the higher number of couples that cohabitate before marriage in France, as previously seen. Figure 7 Children born outside marriage in Portugal and France in percentages (1960-2012) 60 50 40 30 20 10

Portugal

2012

2010

2008

2006

2004

2002

2000

1998

1996

1994

1992

1990

1988

1986

1984

1982

1980

1978

1976

1974

1972

1970

1968

1966

1964

1962

1960

0

France

Source: INE, Estatísticas de Nados-vivos [1960-2011]; INSEE, Statistiques de l'état civil [1960-2012].

On the other hand, a growing number of couples have children before marriage in Portugal, even though this behaviour is not yet as widespread as in France34. Between 1985 and 2009 the number of marriages with common children has tripled and doubled during the last ten years in Portugal. An average of 1.4 children was declared at the moment of marriage also between 1985 and 200935. Therefore, it seems that in Portugal, like in France, marriage is chosen after the birth of the first child, to give more juridical security to the newborn and to confirm a mature and stable relation. However, there still are strong differences across Portugal. The number of children born outside marriage is higher in the south (Algarve, Alentejo and Lisbon and the Tagus valley) and lower in the north and the Azores islands. These variations are linked to the number of free unions and their distribution across Portugal, as we have already seen. In 2001, the parents having a similar percentage to Belgium, Germany and Luxembourg. Aboim, Conjugalidades, 70. 34 Collet, “Un enfant,” 1-2. 35 The data indicate the number of marriages with previous children; for our calculation, we only took into consideration the children the spouses had in common. INE, Estatísticas Demográficas.

298

Families, Marriages and Free Unions in Portugal

of three fourths of the children born outside marriage were cohabitating at the time of their babies’ birth36.

Kinship According to the Portuguese 1966 Civil Code, any marriage between relatives in direct line of ascent or descent (father and daughter, grandfather and grand-daughter, great-grand-father and great-grand-daughter) is prohibited, and the same holds true for France. The marriage between relatives in collateral line, meaning sister and brother, is also forbidden, even when they have only one progenitor in common. The marriage between people with affinity in the direct line is also prohibited, for example between a father-in-law and his daughter-in-law, or between a mother-in-law and her son-in-law. The marriage between uncle and niece or aunt and nephew should be avoided since these are relatives in the third degree in a collateral line. Nevertheless, it is possible to have a permission signed by the civil registration officer if there are “serious motives that justify marriage” (for example, if the niece is pregnant). In case of marriage, the uncle or aunt cannot receive any profit by donation or will37. The Civil Code and the Portuguese law do not see any impediment to the marriage between a brother-in-law and a sister-in-law or between cousins. According to the data, marriage outside kinship has been the majority throughout the period (amounting to 100% in 1978 and 98.4% in several years). Between 1931 and 1950 the evolution was quite irregular; in the 1950s, the percentage of married people who were not related by kinship reduced slightly, only to become quite high later on, being higher than 99.5% since 1968 (Fig. 8). Where the spouses were related by kinship, the most common was the marriage between cousins. Between 1931 and 1960, this number was variable but important (around 1% of the total marriages), being particularly higher in the 1950s (1,099 cousin marriages in 1957, the highest in the period under study). It decreased quite quickly afterwards, especially in the 1970s, with only 18 cousin marriages in 1978, the lowest figure of this period. The evolution of cousin marriages was still irregular, being particularly reduced but stable since 1999 (less than 100 marriages). According to Collier-Boisvert’s study, marriages between direct cousins were still common in a recent period (the 1960s) especially in the higher 36 37

Nazareth, “População,” 38-9; Nunes de Almeida et al., “Novos padrões,” 374-5. Chaves, Casamento, 124-133; Coelho and Oliveira, Curso de Direito, 252-75.

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and the lower strata of the population. This was due to economic and social factors; for some families, the aim was to join land plots in order to have bigger fields, while for others it was only to avoid land sharing due to unequal inheritance practices, as this was the rule in the north of Portugal. Therefore, in these rural areas, the number of direct cousin marriages was quite significant38. Figure 8 Kinship and marriage in Portugal in percentages (1931-2006) 100.0% 99.5% 99.0% 98.5%

without kinship cousins

2003 2006

1997 2000

1988 1991 1994

1982 1985

1976 1979

1967 1970 1973

1961 1964

1955 1958

1946 1949 1952

1940 1943

1934 1937

1931

98.0%

uncles and nieces, aunts and nephews brother-in-law and sister-in-law

Source: Processing from INE, Estatísticas Demográficas [1931-2006].

Marriages between uncle and niece or aunt and nephew have been less frequent throughout this period (between 0 and 0.2%), evolving quite irregularly, with two high peaks. The first one - between 197939 and 1982 reached 115 marriages; while the second - between 1997 and 2000 registered 147 marriages in 1999, without any specific explanation. The number of uncles marrying their nieces was much higher than the one of aunts marrying nephews, but unfortunately this classification has not been mentioned during this period, so it does not allow for a deeper analysis to be carried out. As for marriages between brother-in-law and sister-in-law40, they were fewer than between uncle and niece or aunt and nephew, except at the end of the 1950s (reaching 0.1% with 36 marriages in 1956). They evolved irregularly, with a peak in 1979 and between 1997 and 2002 (reaching 55 38

Callier-Boisvert, “Remarques,” 102. The number of such marriages skyrocketed from 5 in 1978 to 64 in 1979. 40 Between 1931 and 1995, constant mention was made of marriages between brothers- and sisters-in-law, but afterwards reference was made only to the marriage of people related by some degree of affinity. 39

300

Families, Marriages and Free Unions in Portugal

marriages in 1999, the highest for the entire period), decreasing afterwards. During the studied period, the number of marriages between cousins significantly decreased (from 674 in 1931 to 70 in 2006). However, although irregular throughout the period under study, the number of marriages has remained steady between uncles and nieces, aunts and nephews and between brother-in-law and sister-in-law.

Mixed marriages As for the nationality of the fiancés in the case of mixed marriages, it should be noted that especially until the end of the 1970s, the majority of the marriages were concluded between Portuguese spouses (Fig. 9). From 1975 onwards, marriages between Portuguese and foreigners started increasing, probably as a result of the former colonies’ independence. Until 1975, marriages between Portuguese and foreigners usually stayed under 0.5%, being 0% in 1944. Afterwards, they increased progressively, amounting to more than 1.4% after 1982 and to over 10% in 2006. It was in 2008 that the highest percentage was reached (13%) as a result of migration and of the growing number of migrants arriving then in Portugal. Portuguese men tended to marry more foreigners than Portuguese women. Between 2001 and 2003, in cases of marriage between Portuguese and foreigners, it was more common to marry migrants from North America, Europe (the European Union and other Eastern European countries) or Brazil than from Africa, since there was an important endogamy between migrants from the former Portuguese colonies41. The number of marriages between foreigners in Portugal followed a similar evolution. This number was quite low between 1913 and 1975 (often 0%) and then it continued rising, reaching 0.2% in 1994 and a bit over 2% after 2007. We can add that according to the 1911 census, only 0.7% of the population was not Portuguese and this number decreased progressively, reaching 0.2% in 1950. After that it started increasing, doubling between 1991 and 200142. In 2011, 3.4% of the population declared themselves foreigners43. When comparing the Portuguese and the French situations, it is clear that in France the number of mixed marriages or between foreigners was

41

Lages et al., Os imigrantes, 83-6; Ferreira and Ramos, “Padrões de Casamento,” 79-107; Togni, “Os fluxos matrimoniais.” 42 Nunes de Almeida, “Famílias,” 46-7. 43 INE, Recenseamento.

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Figure 9 Mixed marriages in Portugal in percentages (1913-2011) 100% 96% 92% 88% 84%

1913 1916 1919 1922 1925 1931 1935 1938 1941 1944 1947 1950 1953 1956 1959 1962 1965 1968 1971 1974 1977 1985 1988 1991 1994 1997 2000 2003 2006 2009

80%

Between Portuguese

Between Foreigners

Mixed marriages

Unknown

Source: Processing from INE, Estatísticas Demográficas [1913-2011]. Figure 10 Mixed marriages in Portugal and France in percentages (1913-2011) 100 80 60 40 20 1913 1916 1919 1922 1925 1931 1935 1938 1941 1944 1947 1950 1953 1956 1959 1962 1965 1968 1971 1974 1977 1980 1983 1986 1989 1992 1995 1998 2001 2004 2007 2010

0

Portuguese spouses PT - Foreign spouses PT - Mixed couples

French spouses FR - Foreign spouses FR - Mixed couples

Source: Processing from INE, Estatísticas Demográficas [1913-2011]; INSEE, Statistiques de l'état civil [1946-2010].

higher than in Portugal (Fig. 10). This can be easily explained by the greater presence of migrants in France (over 10% in 2010) than in Portugal (3.4% in 2011) and by the two countries’ different geographical positions, France having a land border with eight different countries and Portugal having only one land border with Spain. However, the differences between Portugal and France concerning mixed marriage have decreased over the past years, reaching similar figures, despite the disparity in the number of migrants. This is a sign that mixed marriages may have been more common in Portugal than in France in relation to the migrants’ lower

Families, Marriages and Free Unions in Portugal

302

representation. It may also be that the data do not represent the reality, if we take into consideration that many migrants choose to marry in their home country, rather than in France.

Matrimonial regimes Figure 11 represents the data regarding the matrimonial regimes chosen in Portugal at the moment of marriage, between 1929 and 2006. The dowry system disappeared in 1977, when it was already a minority, having reached its highest percentage, of 0.7%, in 1941. Until 1967, the legal regime for couples that had not concluded a marriage contract was universal community of property (where pre-marital and marital property is owned in joint tenancy). Afterwards, the legal regime was community of property (spouses keep their own property and only marital property is owned in joint tenancy). Therefore, until 1967 the most commonly chosen matrimonial regime was universal community of property and then community of property. A growing number of couples have been choosing separation of property, with a peak of 9.5% in 1977. Moreover, since the beginning of the 21st century, this matrimonial regime has been chosen more often than universal community of property. This recent difference may be linked to the obligation of choosing separation of property when one of the spouses is 60 years old or older. Figure 11 Matrimonial regimes in Portugal in percentages (1929-2006) 100 80 60 40 20

separation of property

community of property

dowry system

universal community of property

Source: Processing from INE, Estatísticas Demográficas [1929-2006].

2005

2002

1999

1996

1993

1990

1987

1984

1981

1978

1975

1972

1969

1966

1963

1960

1957

1954

1951

1948

1945

1942

1939

1936

1932

1929

0

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Illiteracy The statistics also provide data about the illiteracy of the spouses at the time of marriage for the period between 1929 and 2006 (except between 1979 and 1984). Before 1929, the statistics mention if the spouses signed or not the marriage contract, but since these data are not reliable, we have decided not to use them. Figure 12 The illiteracy of fiancés in Portugal in percentages (1929-2006) 100 80 60 40 20 1929 1931 1933 1935 1937 1939 1941 1943 1945 1947 1949 1951 1953 1955 1957 1959 1961 1963 1965 1967 1969 1971 1973 1975 1977 1985 1987 1989 1991 1993 1995 1997 1999 2001 2003 2005

0 Men

Women

Total

Source: Processing from INE, Estatísticas Demográficas [1929-2006].

It comes as no surprise that the percentage of illiterate women at the time of marriage was higher than that of men, especially at the beginning of the studied period (Fig. 12). Also, at this first moment, almost all the spouses were illiterate (97% in 1929). However, this percentage decreased progressively, especially from the 1960s onwards, amounting to 50% of the total number of marriages in 1955. In 1999, marriages involving illiterate spouses still represented 1% of the total. These were possibly remarriages of elderly persons who never went to school. This evolution reflects the drop in the illiteracy rate in Portugal over the past decades.

Final conclusions In Portugal, marriage is still the only legal contract that can unite two people (including in the case of same-sex couples) and although the number of marriages is decreasing, marriage still plays a crucial role in the Portuguese society, where free unions are a minority. Even if couples choose to marry for different reasons, this contract gives them security and it is recognised by the state and the society.

304

Families, Marriages M and Free F Unions in P Portugal

Figure 13: A wedding in Braaga (Portugal) in 1975

Men wore rred carnations in their butttonholes, a syymbol of the Carnation Revolution thhat overthrew thhe New State Dictatorship D in A April 1974. Source: Privaate archives.

From am mong the diffeerent types of marriage, thee civil one is becoming b more imporrtant, attestingg the process of secularisattion and the decline d of Catholic maarriages. But this is also a sign of thhe growing nu umber of remarriages,, involving especially e div vorced peoplee. At the mo oment of marriage, thhe majority off the spouses tend to be siingle. Concerrning first marriages, tthe age of thhe spouses haas kept increeasing over th hese past decades, in Portugal as well w as in France, demonsttrating that marriage is no longer seeen as the paassage to adullt life or a w way out of thee parents’ home. Manyy couples chooose to cohabitate before m marriage, whicch is also visible in tthe increasing number off children boorn outside marriage. m Nevertheless, these behavviours are still less commoon in Portugaal than in France, a siggn of the impportance that marriage m still has in the Po ortuguese society. As for thhe marriage beetween spousees related by kkinship, it is a minority in Portugal and has beenn decreasing over o the past years. Illiteraacy at the time of marrriage has alsso dropped, being b insignifficant today; a deeper study on thhe level of edducation could reveal the existence of different marriage praactices in the latest decades. Concerningg matrimoniall regimes, community of property iss chosen by th he majority off the couples, followed at a great distance by separation of pro operty. Finallyy, the number of mixed

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marriages has been increasing rapidly in Portugal, especially since 1974, when a new political regime seems to have brought about profound changes in the Portuguese society and engendered new behaviours, including as regards marriage.

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do concelho de Leiria. Lisboa: Sete Caminhos, 2005. INE. Anuário Estatístico [1908-2011]. Lisboa: INE, 1914-2012. —. Censos 2011 Resultados Definitivos – Portugal. Lisboa: INE, 2012. —. Estatísticas de Nados-vivos [1960-2011]. Accessed November 28, 2012. http://porbase.pt. —. Estatísticas Demográficas [1907-2011]. Lisboa: INE, 1913-2013. —. Inquérito à fecundidade e família: resultados definitivos 1997. Lisboa: Ine, 2001. —. Recenseamento Geral da População de Portugal [1911-2011]. Lisboa: INE, 1913-2012. INSEE. Statistiques de l'état civil et estimations de la population [19012012]. Accessed March 21. 2013. http://insee.fr. Journal Officiel 114 (2013). Loi nº 2013-404. Accessed July 10, 2013. http://www.journal-officiel.gouv.fr/frameset.html. Lages, Mário F., Véronica M. Policarpo, José Carlos L. Marques, Paulo Lopes Matos, and João Homem Cristo António. Os imigrantes e a população portuguesa: imagens recíprocas. Observatório da Imigração, 21. Lisboa: ACIME, 2006. Leite, Sofia. “A União de Facto em Portugal.” Revista de Estudos Demográficos 33 (2003): 95-140. —. “Famílias em Portugal: breve caracterização socio-demográfica com base nos Censos 1991 e 2001.” Revista de Estudos Demográficos 33 (2003): 24-38. Meneses, Filipe Ribeiro de. Salazar: a political biography. New York: Enigma, 2009. Nazareth, Manuel. “População.” In Portugal Social, 25-50. Lisboa: INE, 2003. Nunes, João Arriscado. “Les Transformations récentes de la famille et du ménage au Portugal (1960-1980).” In La Sociologie et les Nouveaux Défis de la Modernisation, directed by A. Teixeira Fernandes, and C. Lalive d’Epinay, 485-506. Porto: AISLF/Secção de Sociologia da Faculdade de Letras do Porto, 1988. Nunes de Almeida, Ana. “Famílias.” In Portugal Social, 51-68. Lisboa: INE, 2003. Nunes de Almeida, Ana, and Wall, Karin. “A família.” In Portugal Hoje, edited by E. Sousa Ferreira, 31-55. Lisboa: INA, 1995. Nunes de Almeida, Ana, Isabel Margarida André, and Piedade Lalanda. “Novos padrões e outros cenários para a fecundidade em Portugal.” Análise Social vol. XXXVII (163) (2002): 371-409. Nunes de Almeida, Ana, Maria das Dores Guerreiro, Cristina Lobo, Anália Torres, and Karin Wall. “Relações familiares: mudança e diversidade.”

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In Portugal, que modernidade?, organised by José Manuel Leite Viegas, and António Firmino da Costa, 45-78. Oeiras: Celta Editora, 1998. Pereira, Emília Maria Santos. Estratégias matrimoniais em Portugal – 1986. Lisboa: D.G.F., 1989. “Portugueses vão a Espanha para casar.” Público, January 7, 2001. Accessed May 21, 2013. http://www.paroquias.org/noticias.php?n=270. Prioux, France. “L’âge à la première union en France: une évolution en deux temps.” Population 4-5 (2003): 623-44. Togni, Paula Christofoletti. “Os fluxos matrimoniais transnacionais entre brasileiras e portugueses: género e imigração.” Master diss., ISCTE, 2008. Torres, Anália Cardoso. Casamento em Portugal, uma análise sociológica. Oeiras: Celta, 2002.

CHAPTER IV: THE EXPLICATIVE MECHANISM OF MIXED MARRIAGES

MIXED MARRIAGES THROUGH THE PRISM OF THE CONCEPT OF THE FOURTH DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSITION YULIA PROKHOROVA

This article deals with the globalisation of international migration, its role and place in the demographic evolution of the developed countries in historical retrospective, with emphasis on their future demographic development. The main attention is drawn to issues pertaining to the configuration of a new scenario of future demographic development in the countries of immigration, taking into account important demographic processes such as international population migration and nuptiality. This scenario is called “the fourth demographic transition.” The development of this scenario is connected with the changing place and role of international migration in the context of the evolution of demographic transition theory. Making reference to the concepts of the second and third demographic transitions, which are also discussed in this article, the main aim of the “fourth demographic transition” is to create a “new population” by way of promoting marriages between natives and migrants and the subsequent birth of children in such families.

Modern demographic trends in the world Bringing about impetuous changes that affect the global political and economic systems, globalisation processes result in the intensification of global migration. In spite of a short-term decline in the number of international migrants throughout the world, which is connected with the economic crisis, there has been an unprecedented growth of the international migration phenomenon, leading to the formation of a “nation of migrants,” the annual number of which is about 1.1 billion people.1 1

Sources: World Migration Report, IOM, 2011, pp. 49, 53; UNDP, Human Development Report 2009: Overcoming Barriers: Human Mobility and Development (New York, 2009); United Nations Department of Economic and

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214 million – classical migrants (re-settlers, immigrants); 105 million – migrant workers (250 million people, if their family members are taken into account); 22-55 million – illegal migrants; over 10 million – seasonal and frontier workers; 42 million – forced migrants (classical refugees, ecological refugees, deportees, etc., including Palestinian refugees); over 700 million – episodic migrants, including “economic tourists.”

So when speaking about the global prospects of international population migration, we could draw the conclusion that “the world has come into motion.”2 In the future, migration processes will continue regardless of real (for example, the attempt to build a border fence between USA and Mexico) and implicit (such as special laws, which try to contain migration flows) obstacles. This is especially true if we pay attention to the so-called demographic imbalance between the rich North and the poor South. This imbalance is characterised, on the one hand, by the rapidly growing population in the developing countries and, on the other hand, by the steady population decrease in some West European countries, which started in 1970s and exposes the developed world to the threat of extinction. This imbalance defines the special role of international migration in demographic development (see Table 1). It should be noted that in addition to international migration, the demographic evolution of the developed countries throughout the world is defined by the following trends: 1. The decline of fertility to the level of narrowed reproduction: 1.6 children per woman in the developed countries. Globally, the total fertility rate has decreased two times: from 4.9 children per woman in 1950 to 2.6 between 2005 and 2010. According to the UN forecast, this figure will decline even further: up to two children per woman in the period between 2045 and 2050, reaching thus the minimum required for the continuity of generations. 2. Changes taking place in people’s minds and affecting their reproductive behaviour. The proportion of families that deliberately refuse to have children is beginning to increase. According to the data provided by the Director of the Berlin Institute for Population and Development, Reiner Klingholz, the share of such households in Germany amounted to about 15% in 2012. It is difficult to say how many such families there are Social Affairs (UN DESA), Trends in International Migrant Stock: The 2008 Revision. 2 Massey et. al., Worlds in Motion.

o the Fourth Deemographic Traansition 312Mixed Maarriages throughh the Concept of

Table 1 Thee contribution of internatiional migratiion to popula ation growth in d developed and d developing countries Region

1985–19990 Net Percenntage of m migration migraation in rate, ‰ total population growtth, %

Developed countries Developing countries

1990–1995 Neet migraation rate, ‰

1,6

26,7

1,8

-

-2,5

-0,5

0,5

2005 5–2009

Percentaage Net Percentage of migraation migration of in total rate, ‰ migration populatiion in total growth, % population growth, % 455,0 3,0 54,0

-22,0

-

-1,7

1,0

Source: Worlld Population Prrospects 1996, 2010 Figure 1 Totaal Fertility Rate, 1950-2010

in other devveloped counntries, becausse, as far as we know, laarge-scale surveys on this issue have h not beeen carried ouut yet. From m indirect estimates, itt appears thatt this proporttion is not low wer than in Germany. G Indirect connfirmation that the share of such houuseholds is in ncreasing comes from m the growingg “child-free”” movement, which, unforrtunately, also appeareed in Russia inn 2006 and wh hich actually ppromotes the refusal to have childreen, under the slogan s “person nal freedom w without childreen.” If we

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add to this phenomenon the rather rapid growth of the so-called nontraditional marriages (such marriages have already been legally permitted in 14 European countries), the demographic future of these countries is disappointing: in fact, we can talk about the extinction of such civilisations. 3. The decline of mortality: in almost all the developed countries, life expectancy is over 70 years (with the exception of some Eastern European countries). The difference in life expectancy between the most and the least developed countries is 21 years. 4. The demographic aging of the population, as a consequence of fertility and mortality decline. According to recent data based on the report about the aging of the world’s population (2009) and the summary data on the aging of the world’s population and its development (2012) provided by the UN, the number of people aged 60 years and older increased from 205 million (8%) in 1950 to 688 million (11%) in 2006, reaching the level of 810 million people in 2012. Today every ninth person is aged above 60. According to forecasts for the year 2050, the number of such persons will increase to 2 billion people and will represent 22% of the total population. From 2050 on, the elderly will - for the first time in history - outnumber children (0-14 years). In Europe, the proportion of older persons is 21%. However, the proportion of older people in the total population is much higher in the developed countries: one in 5 - in Europe, one in 9 - in Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and one in 16 - in Africa. The share of persons aged 80 years and older is 14% of the population of 60 years and older. By 2050, 20% of the population will be aged 80 years and older, and the number of centenarians (100 years or more) will increase 10-fold: from 343 thousand in 2012 to 3.2 million by 2050. In connection with all the demographic trends we have outlined above, the developed world is currently facing a difficult choice: it can gradually die out (if it follows the path of the second demographic transition), lose its national and cultural integrity (if it follows the path of the third demographic transition), or create a “new population” with the help of the advantages entailed by international migration.

The evolution of the role and place of international migration in the theory and concepts of the second and third demographic transitions The new role of immigration processes in demographic dynamics is reflected in a number of theoretical constructions, among which demographic transition theory is the most widely recognised. The

314Mixed Marriages through the Concept of the Fourth Demographic Transition

evolution of this theory is related to the changing role and place of international migration: from the total elimination of the migration component to its leading role in the third demographic transition concept. Initially the proponents of this theory laid emphasis on fertility processes. That is why it is reasonable to use the concept of fertility transition or, as W. Zelinsky calls it, “vital transition. It was not by chance that in 1971 two important concepts appeared: the epidemiological transition concept set forth by A. Omran and the mobility transition concept developed by W. Zelinsky. They enriched the initial concept of demographic transition and helped transform it into a comprehensive and universal theory. It is quite clear now that the future demographic development of almost all the world’s developed countries will be affected by the in-flow of international migrants. This gives grounds to a variety of scenarios for their further development. Demographic transition theory has been developed by different authors over the past three centuries. Its beginnings date back to the 1800s, when Western European countries, France, in particular, faced a decline in mortality, followed by declining fertility rates. These processes challenged academics to think about population development trends and the possible consequences of shifts in natural population increase. At that time, the impact of international migration on demographic development was not taken into consideration. Various other causes were invoked then for the latter phenomenon, such as, for example, the lack of reliable statistical data on migration processes. However, this looks strange because in that historical period (1850-1939), non-return emigration from European countries was huge – nearly 60 million people.3 Between 1830 and 1890, a lot of demographic studies attempted to give an explanation for the phenomenon of declining fertility. This was especially the case of the French scientists’ works because France was the first country to face a stable decline of fertility from 1830 on. For example, A. Dumont believed that the beginning of this phenomenon was connected with the individuals’ failure to work for the society and with the growing prevalence of individual over collective needs.4 Another French scientist, P. Leroy-Beaulieu, assumed that the main reason of fertility decline resided in the changes affecting moral norms and traditions, which had a bearing on every concrete individual.5 Still, in the final version of classical demographic theory, minor attention was paid to moral factors. It is interesting that despite their different perspectives, both authors 3

Iontsev, “Theory and History of Studying,” 117. Dumont, Depopulation et Civilisation, 130. 5 Leroy-Beaulieu, Traite Theorique et Pratique, 614. 4

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intuitively laid down one of the main ideas of the second demographic transition: the transition from the bourgeois to the individualistic family model. It is also interesting to note that around the same period of time (19291934), several scholars from different countries independently came to formulate relatively similar ideas regarding the classification of the population of various countries based on combinations of fertility and mortality rates. For example, two works were published in 1929. One belonged to the Polish scientist Leon Rabinovich, and the second – to the American sociologist, philosopher and demographer Warren Thompson. L. Rabinovich’s book entitled The Problem of the Population in France was published in Paris in 1929. He wrote this fundamental research when he was only 22 years old even though he was not an expert in the field of demography (his main area of research, in which reached outstanding prominence, was criminology). Unfortunately, for a long time, Rabinovich’s fundamental work was cast into oblivion. However, the well-known Soviet demographer V. Borisov wrote that “it [the book] rose to the scientific standards of his time and, in any case, it did not fall behind A. Landry’s extremely popular book The Demographic Revolution, but, in some respects, surpassed it.” Perhaps this relegation of Rabinovich’s work to oblivion is due to the fact that his passion for demography was not carried any further. It is believed that the term “demographic revolution” was first introduced by A. Landry. However, Rabinovich’s book refutes this assumption. One of the chapters of his book contains an item called “demographic revolution,” in which L. Rabinovich examines demographic changes in the context of the industrial revolution. He claims that these changes followed the revolution with a certain time lag, though what gradually emerges is that he is not talking about a revolution, but about a transition. That is probably where the confusion of the terms originates from the connection between the notions of “demographic transition” and “demographic revolution,” which are still in use today. One of Rabinovich’s main achievements is his broad approach to the demographic situation in France, for besides the processes of fertility and mortality, he also explores migration processes. This is especially valuable because he was not a specialist in the field of demography, but understood the importance of migration and its impact on demographic processes. As we have already noted, in 1929 the American Journal of Sociology published an article written by the American sociologist Warren Thompson entitled “Population.” In this article, the author gave the first formulation of demographic transition in Anglo-American literature. He

316Mixed Marriages through the Concept of the Fourth Demographic Transition

identified three types of countries with different levels of natural population growth. In Group A, he included the countries that had already slowed down population growth and the countries that were on the threshold of population decline. The low levels of mortality in these countries and the rapid decline in fertility levels predicted, at first, the stabilisation of the population, and later, a population decline. This group included the countries of Western Europe, as well as the foreign countries where immigrants of European origin lived. In Group B he included those countries where fertility levels were high and where the death rates had begun to decline. As a result, the population of these countries was also beginning to decline. This group included the countries of Eastern and Southern Europe. Thompson noted that their demographic situation was similar to the situation of the countries in Group A 35-40 years before. Still, due to the fact that mortality rates declined more rapidly than in Group A, the levels of natural increase were higher than in Group A. The countries from Group C, in which the fertility and mortality rates were under control, were classified as “Malthusian.” This group, according to Thompson, contained 70 to 75% of the world’s population. Due to the lack of data, he embarked on the study of only three countries: Japan, India and Russia. For Russia, he predicted that population growth would be much faster than in India, due to the fact that our country had a much larger resource base. He believed that it would take the countries from Group C approximately 30-40 years to make the transition to Group B. Thompson also suggested that all countries would sooner or later move from Group B and Group C to Group A. Thompson did not believe that his typology and the concept of transition could be described as a theory. It is surprising that Thompson’s typology was not taken into account in the demographic literature for over 15 years. In this context, A. Landry published his classic The Demographic Revolution in 1934, in which he developed similar ideas with Thompson’s, even though he was not familiar with the latter’s work. In this work he developed his theory, his main argument referring to the rationalisation of the individuals’ behaviour in fertility matters.6 Landry used this aspect and the level of economic development to highlight the three stages of population development ௅ primitive, intermediate and modern ௅ which formed the basis of the first three-stage model of demographic transition. 6

Landry, La Revolution Demographique, 186.

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Landry’s theory about demographic revolution and the stages he outlined were revised by American scientists from the University of Pennsylvania after World War II. This occurred amid discussions about a new, post-war demographic evolution (which entailed that the development of the theory of demographic transition had shifted from Europe to the United States). In this case, the fact that population changes can have a significant impact on the countries’ development became a celebrated notion. In 1945, K. Davis, a scientist from Princeton University, published an article where the term “demographic transition” was used in the title.7 However, F. W. Notestein is generally regarded as the author of the “classical” theory of demographic transition. Within the frames of this theory, Notestein tried to explain the dynamics of European nations: “population growth has arisen due to a reduction in mortality. To be brief, the process of modernisation in Europe has led to an increase in the standard of living, better control over the disease and mortality decline.”8 As for fertility, this process, in Notestein’s opinion, was less sensitive to the process of modernisation. He further wrote that the causes of fertility decline were quite clear: in a society where mortality rates were high, people would do everything to ensure higher levels of fertility: their traditions, religion, moral beliefs, laws, marriage, family organisation ௅ all contributed to this. One should not assume that the introduction of contraceptive methods would reduce the birth rates. At most, it could only change people’s ideas about the size of the family. And these views, in turn, would be shaped by economic and social change. Notestein also pointed out the growth of individualism, the increasing desire of the population to settle in urban areas, to enjoy freedom from previous restrictions, the high costs of maintaining a large family, as well as focus on the “quality” of children, their health, education and welfare. He came to the conclusion that fertility decline was connected with the changes of the society’s goals: these goals were no longer aimed at ensuring the society’s survival, but at providing for the welfare and development of the individual. In a presentation made in 1946, Notestein declared that the theory he had constructed was universal and applicable to any country in the world. However, after the mid-1960s, the new demographic trends affecting the European population (the drop in fertility levels below the replacement level, the conscious refusal of parenthood in favour of self-development, 7 8

Davis, “The World Demographic Transition.” Notestein, Speech, 345-360.

318Mixed Marriages through the Concept of the Fourth Demographic Transition

the waning role and value of family and children in society) made the academic community doubt the universal character of the classical demographic transition hypothesis. Scholars attempted to understand if theory could shape the model of future demographic development amongst the European populations. The answer was negative. One of the reasons was that migration was ignored by the above-mentioned authors in their analysis. In 1987, the European demographers D. Van de Kaa and R. Lesthaege published the article “The Second Demographic Transition?,” which went unnoticed noticed by the demographic community because it was published in Dutch. However, these authors were the first to introduce the terms “the first demographic transition” and “the second demographic transition,” which outlined two different stages of demographic and social development in the European countries. In their view, the first demographic transition consistently describes and explains the decline of mortality in Europe and then, after 1880, the fertility decline, while the second demographic transition deals with the changes that typically affected the European population at the end of the 1960s and at the beginning of the 1970s. Van de Kaa and Lesthaege argued that in addition to changes in the level of fertility, there were important shifts in the structure of a family: the individualistic model had replaced the bourgeois model. That was followed by an increase in the number of divorces, by practices of co-habitation and extramarital births.9 The authors laid special emphasis on the changing causes of fertility decline. Earlier the main reason of fertility decline had been rooted in higher responsibility for children, their health, education, etc. (i.e. altruistic reasons) while in the last quarter of the 20th century, fertility decreased because of the individuals’ new emphasis on the value of self-development and their unwillingness to bear the burden of parenthood. The main shortcoming of this approach was the elimination of the migration component of population growth, which rendered the second demographic transition concept as over-simplified. In as early as 1987, Van de Kaa, separately from Lesthaege, tried to correct this lack in his monograph Europe’s Second Demographic Transition. When describing the first demographic transition theory, he underlines the huge role of emigration in reducing population pressure, which arose from the gap between fertility and mortality levels at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries.10 Further, within the 9

De Kaa, “Demographic Transition,” 91. De Kaa, “Second Demographic Transition,” 38-46.

10

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frames of the second demographic transition, Van de Kaa analyses migration flows in a historical context and their impact on the sex and age structure, the fertility levels and the integration of migrants into the host society. Van de Kaa notes that birth rates among immigrants are highly dependent on ongoing policies in the host country (for example, if there is a policy that fosters the immigrants’ family reunification, allowing wives to follow their husbands after a long separation, it can contribute to a temporary increase in fertility), as well as on the sex and age composition of immigrants, their marital status, education level, etc. The author notes the risk that immigrants might not be able to significantly improve the fertility situation in the host country, because they may adopt the fertility behaviour of the host society. Van de Kaa underlines that Europe is becoming a region that combines a multitude of cultures, and this is not a forecast, but an inevitable reality. Therefore, governments should solve the problem of choosing the most appropriate policy toward immigrants as quickly as possible and opt for either tight control or promotion. Ironically, the dilemma of migration policies in Europe has not been solved even nearly 30 years later. The milestone of this concept was the report Van de Kaa submitted to the European Population Conference (Hague, 1999), entitled “Europe and its Population: The Long View.” In this report, he presented a model of the second demographic transition, which includes the value of net migration (Figure 2). This figure shows the role migration plays not only in the evolution of demographic transition theory, but in actual demographic development. In constructing the curve of net migration, Van de Kaa relies on a study written by Hatton and Williamson, who have identified four stages of migration from Europe to the United States: the introduction phase, the growth phase, the phase of saturation, the decline phase.11 He tries to understand what phase of migration countries from various parts of Europe are in now. Van de Kaa’s conclusion is that not all countries go through all these 4 phases, but migration pressure on Europe will keep growing in the near future, and migration policies will become increasingly tougher.

11

De Kaa, “Demographic Transition,” 94-5.

o the Fourth Deemographic Traansition 320Mixed Maarriages throughh the Concept of a the Second Demographic T Transitions Figure 2 Moddel of the First and

Source: V Van de Kaa, 19999

Yet, desspite van de Kaa’s K rather extensive e studdies, in the th heory and concepts of the first and the second deemographic trransitions, mig gration is not a leadinng componennt of demograaphic developpment. D. Co oleman, a professor off demographyy from the Un niversity of O Oxford, endeav voured to fill this gap and in 2006 he h proposed th he concept off the third dem mographic transition. Inn his latest woorks, he has continued c to ddevelop this co oncept by reference to the example of the UK an nd several othher European countries. c The main iddea of the conccept resides in n the followingg issues: 1. “In some developed coountries a rapid change in tthe compositiion of the populatioon according to national or ethnic oriigin, arising from the direct annd indirect efffects of immigration in thhe last few deecades, is already aapparent. 2. Projectioons on plausibble assumptio ons imply, wiithin the con nventional time-scaale of projectioons, a substan ntial alterationn of the compo osition of that popuulation whichh if continued in the longer term would leead to the displacem ment of the orriginal populaation into a miinority position.”12

12

Coleman, ““A Third Demoographic Transittion,” 10.

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Coleman notes that within a few decades, age-specific fertility rates in Europe will be very low and that there is a contradiction between the desired and the actual number of children: in surveys conducted in most European countries, women say they would like to have two children, but these statements are eroded by “the deteriorating trends in reproductive plants of not only women but also men” (for instance in Germany and Austria). In parallel with these processes, the author notes that immigration has become a major force in many European countries and in some cases (such as in Germany and Italy), it helps to stop population decline, while in others (Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway) it stimulates significant population growth. Then Coleman asks a logical question: what is to be done in the current situation? An important role in answering this question belongs to the migration policy measures that have been adopted in response to the results of forecasts. But the problem lies in the fact that many governments may not realise or take into account the consequences of the measures they adopt. For example, the active integration policy can lead to unfavourable results for immigrants and for native Europeans because of the existence of massive cultural, racial and religious differences. There is a problem of changing the interpretation of human rights: now it is the rights of immigrants rather than of native people that come to the fore. All this, according to Coleman, creates conditions for the disappearance of the old values shared by the majority. As a result, most of Europe’s population will comprise people of mixed origin (as a result of the so-called “absorption and hybridisation of groups”). Thus, Coleman sees the future of the developed countries shrouded in “darkness”: European civilisation will be replaced by Asian civilisation. Coleman offers some actions to prevent this future: (1) to raise fertility levels among native people, (2) to involve more and more women in economic activity, getting additional labour force, (3) to suspend or significantly reduce the levels of migration. It is difficult to disagree with the statement about the necessity to increase European fertility levels to at least the replacement level. Moreover, some Europeans have already reached this level. However, it is hardly possible for the developed European countries to reach the level of extended replacement in the foreseeable future. There are a number of reasons for this point of view, for example – changes in relation to children, which are described in the second demographic concept, the development of the so-called “childfree” phenomenon, which emerged in America in 1993 and expanded to Russia in 2006, the spread of gay marriages, etc. In society, the reactions to such couples may be different,

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but from a demographical point of view, only one reaction is possible – a negative one. As regards the statement about the need for a more active involvement of women in economic activity, the experience of the USSR shows that such an involvement of women, without taking into account their marital status and number of children, will have an exclusively negative impact on their reproductive behaviour. As for the third statement, we would like to note that in our view, restricting and, even more, preventing new flows of migrants is almost impossible. International migration has become so globalised that stopping it with the help of prohibitive measures would not be a successful idea. Moreover, limiting the legal forms of migration would entail large scales of illegal immigration, which is already taking place at present. At the same time, we would like to note that despite all the criticism brought against the concept of the third demographic transition as a kind of scenario for the future demographic development of some countries, it has played, in our view, an important role as a warning against negative developments continuing in the future, unless, that is, the negative trends that are currently underway come to a stop. This concept has shown that in the 2010s, the world is confronted with the dilemma of its demographic future: the question at stake is which way of demographic development we should choose. Let us note that the classical theory of demographic transition, unfortunately, does not provide an answer to this question or to many other issues related to future demographic development. For example, it does not explain why some countries in Central Asia have not gone through all the stages of classical demographic transition, but “jumped” right into its last stages, beginning to approximate the Western model of demographic development. Caldwell drew attention to this issue in the mid-1970s, when he wrote about the “Westernisation” of fertility in the developing countries.13 At the present time, in our opinion, we can talk not only about the “Westernisation” of fertility, but also about the “Westernisation” of other demographic processes, the adoption of this way of life in its most negative forms, to which the world wide web known as the “Internet” greatly contributes and in which international migration plays a role.

The concept of the fourth demographic transition As shown above, at the beginning of 21st century, international migration has become an important factor that contributes to a particular 13

Caldwell, “Transition Theory,” 321-66.

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path of demographic development. In this case, it may have “negative” and “positive” effects, although we consider that population migration represents a purely positive phenomenon, which may have negative influences only if its nature is misunderstood and incorrect migration policies are adopted. Proceeding from this thesis, in 2010, Professor V. Iontsev proposed a different demographic scenario for future demographic development, which was designated as “the fourth demographic transition” and was co-developed in scientific research with Y. Prokhorova. The term “demographic transition” is used not only in reference to a certain continuity with past demographic evolutions, but also because it is the best way to underline the evolutionary nature of this path of development. The main role was played by the emergence of the concept of the third demographic transition, because it was in opposition to it that a different scenario for the demographic future (which, in our opinion, is more optimistic and more viable) was proposed. Let us note that ordinal numerals coming after the second, for example, the third, the fourth and another possible numbers, do not imply that the concepts they qualify are necessarily sequentially ordered in time. In other words, they refer to different possible scenarios of the future demographic development of the entire world, as well as of its regions and countries. The main idea of the proposed concept is that migration can be a positive phenomenon for future demographic development, as it takes into account national and global interests by promoting marriages between native people and migrants. Here we would like to emphasise that we are not talking about marriages between people of different nationalities in general, but about marriages between immigrants and the native population. The main criterion is that their citizenship should be different. During the development of this scenario in real life, the most important aspect will be the formation of a new population, by which we mean the population formed and developed on the basis of demographic processes such as international migration and nuptiality. This new population should have high reproductive attitudes and relevant qualitative characteristics that meet all the development requirements in the 21st century. As soon as it was launched, the concept of the fourth demographic transition immediately gave rise to several myths that we would like to address. The first myth is that encouraging marriages between migrants and the indigenous population may lead to ethnic tension and the aggravation of interethnic relations. However, such effects have already taken place in a number of countries, but only in those cases where the state conducts the wrong policy of adaptation and integration or attempts to stall the solutions to these problems (the policy of creating enclaves);

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secondly, when the society purposefully injects an atmosphere of hostility, hatred, xenophobia against migrants; thirdly, as a result of the ignorance and lack of understanding manifested by the majority population towards the essence of these problems. It should be emphasised that all these fears in society arise when not only the rights of migrants but also the rights and freedoms of the indigenous population are violated. A second spreading myth is that intermarriages between migrants and indigenous people are basically unstable and nonviable. However, according to the USSR’s historical experience in this field, this thesis is not confirmed. Thus, in a study conducted by the Soviet scientist A. Susokolov, a special place was occupied by the question of the stability of interethnic marriages in comparison with mononational marriages.14 It should be noticed that this problem has been insufficiently studied. However, one of the conclusions of this study was that the stability of mixed marriages was determined by the closeness between the cultures of the people who were married. Of special interest was the question regarding the children who were born in inter-ethnic marriages, regardless of their stability. One of the conclusions of the above study was that the number of children in interethnic families was a kind of “compromise” between the average numbers of children in nations with different levels of fertility. These children carried the “cultural norms of both their parents’ nations.” They tended to be more tolerant, less focused on cultural differences and more focused on similarities between different ethnic groups. That is why children resulting from such marriages can be crucially important as regards the formation of a new type of population, which is more tolerant and free from prejudices. These children can be a sort of foundation for a sounder society, where relations are built on tolerance and mutual respect. In discussions on the idea of the fourth demographic transition, other myths that may appear could be the result of misunderstandings and a lack of knowledge on the subject under study. As for the reality, historical experience suggests that the fourth demographic transition has already begun or is beginning to place in several countries (Russia, the USA, Canada, Australia, Germany, etc. – see Diagram 2) and the idea of interethnic marriages goes back to ancient times. Alexander the Great considered the mixing of nations as one of the main factors that could lead to the rescue and development of his empire.

14

Susokolov, “Inter-Ethnic Marriages.”

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Figure 3 Mixed marriages in some parts of the world 30

28

Japan Japan

25

22

South Korea South Korea

20

Taiwan

15

14

13 10

13.7 13.7 11.3 11.3

Taiwan Italy

10

Italy

5 5 1 0

3.5

5

5

Germany Germany France

Source: plotted according to data from The Economist “Herr and Madame, Senor and Mrs,” 12 November 2011.

The experience of some countries shows that the share of the so-called inter-ethnic marriages (marriages between natives and immigrants) has been constantly increasing in the past two decades. In France, for example, 51% of all marriages are mixed-marriages. In these marriages, 60% of the men are married to French women. According to the data of the German Bureau of Statistics, by the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the percentage of mixed marriages in Germany had reached 11%. Meanwhile, the number of marriages between German women and male migrants had exceeded 18,000 families, while the number of marriages between German men and female migrants was 23,000. Russia also has great historical experience in this area. Take, for example, the Mongol-Tatar yoke and the emergence of a population from marriages between Russians and Mongol-Tatars: this led to the development of huge areas in Russia (the Urals, Siberia, Central Asia, the Far East, Kazakhstan, the Caucasus, or the Baltic States) by means of population migration. Later there was an attempt in our country to create a specific nation called the “Soviet people.” There was a policy targeted “at the formation of a psychological climate of communication between

326Mixed Marriages through the Concept of the Fourth Demographic Transition

different nations.”15 This policy helped the authorities to maintain the integrity of the State and its stability, thereby solving economic, social and demographic tasks. The available data can ensure the success of such policies. In 1959, there were 5.2 million inter-ethnic families (10.2% of the total number of families), in 1979 – 9.9 million (14.9%), and in 1989 – 12.8 million (17.5%). This means that every 6th family included persons of different nationalities.16 Thus, ethnic marriages have already become one of the instruments with which countries can solve their problems within the existing negative demographic situation, by taking into account the phenomenon of rising migration. In this way migration can play a positive role and remove ethnic-based tensions in society.

References Caldwell, John Charles. “Toward a restatement of demographic transition theory.” Population and Development Review, 3-4 (1976): 321-66. Coleman, David. “Immigration and ethnic change in low-fertility countries: a third demographic transition.” Population and Development Review 3 (2006): 441-446. —. “Immigration and Ethnic change in Low-fertility Countries – a third demographic transition in progress?” Scientific Series International Migration of population: Russia and the Contemporary World 20 (2007): 11-46. Coleman, David and Rowthorn, Robert. “Who’s Afraid of Population Decline? A Critical Examination of Its Consequences.” Demographic Transition and Its Consequences. A Supplement to Population and Development Review 37 (2011): 217-248. Davis, Kingsley. “The world demographic transition”. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (1945): 1-11. Dumont, Arsene. Depopulation et Civilisation: Etude Demographique. Paris: Goodman, 1890. Iontsev, Vladimir. International Migration: Its Theory and Research History. (In Russian). Moscow: Misl’ 1999. Iontsev, Vladimir and Prokhorova, Yulia. “Population Migration in the Theory and the Concepts of Demographic Transition. What Path is Possible for Russia?” (In Russian). Russian Demographic Development: Demographic Policy Tasks and the Enhancement of 15 16

Susokolov, Inter-Ethnic Marriages, 9. Topilin, The Interaction between Migration, 125.

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Social Population Support: Materials of Russia. Scientific-practical conference. 19-20 April 2011. Iontsev, Vladimir “The current population crisis in light of the fourth demographic transition” (the speech presented in Ekaterinburg, 2013). Landry, Adolph. La Revolution Demographique. Paris: INED, 1982. Leroy-Beaulieu, Paul. Traite Theorique et Pratique d’Economie Politique. Paris: Librairie Guillaumin et Cie, 1896. Massey, Douglas and Arango, Joaquin and Hugo, Graeme and Kouaouci, Ali and Pellegrino, Adela and Taylor, Edward. Worlds in Motion: Understanding International Migration at the End of the Millennium. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005. Notestein, Frank. Speech in Population and Development Review, 9(2), 1983: 345-362. Susokolov, Alexander. Inter-ethnic Marriages in the USSR. (In Russian). Moscow: DIALOG-MSU, 1999. Topilin, Alexey. The Interaction between Migration and Ethnic Processes. (In Russian). Moscow: Econom-Infrorm, 2010. Van de Kaa, Dirk. “Europe’s Second Demographic Transition.” Population Bulletin, 1 (1987): 1-59. —. “On International Migration and the Second Demographic Transition.” Scientific Series “International Migration of population: Russia and the Contemporary World.” 10 (2002): 73-84. Zelinsky, Wilbur. “The Hypothesis of The Mobility Transition”. Geographical Review 61 (1971): 219-249.

THE MARRIAGE OF EUROPEANS AND JEWS IN ALGERIAN TOWNS IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: OPEN TO OUTSIDERS OR NOT? GUY BRUNET

The territory of the present-day Algerian Republic was conquered by the French army at the end of fights which started in 1830 and lasted for about 15 years. The French authorities very soon contemplated the possibility of a new population coming over from the home country. But the process was rather jerky, notably on account of the fact that the French settlers were attracted to the territory in the years following the victory, and also on account of the utter failure of the first agricultural ventures. It is a fact that the characteristics of the soil, climate and sanitary environment got the better of the first settlers’ goodwill. Some disagreements as to the definition of a “good” settler,1 or the relegation there of the political opponents after the fall of Second Republic and Louis Napoleon Bonaparte’s coup d’état in 1852, can also be evoked. Most of the settlers, who had arrived in Algeria against their will and with no preparation, went back home as soon as they could. All the same, a new population, born of migrants from Europe, developed and struck roots on Algerian territory. Side by side with the settlers from France were many migrants from other European countries, notably Spain, Italy and Malta. This population from Europe developed beside the “indigenous” population, as the French authorities called it. This “indigenous” population, already present on the territory before the military conquest, was mostly composed of Arabs, of Muslim denomination, but it also included, more particularly in towns, a Jewish minority.2 According to the code of “indigenousness”, Muslims were not 1

Sessions, “Paradoxe des émigrants,” 63-80. Out of 34,000 Jews or so in the 1866 census, 80 percent were living in towns. (Taïeb, “Juifs du Maghreb,” 92).

2

Guy Brunet

329

citizens, but French subjects with very limited civil rights, and came under traditional Koranic law, notably as regards civil matters such as marriage. Very few of them were actually granted French nationality, and marriages between the natives and the European settlers remained an exception.3 On the other hand, most Jews were granted French nationality as a consequence of the Crémieux Decree (1870), but marriages between Jews and the European settlers were also a rare occurrence, at least in the beginning, on account of their religious particularism. However, while the main outline of the history of European population in Algeria in the 19th century is well known, in-depth studies have not been carried out yet.4 The purpose of the present article is to understand how a population of European origin came into existence on the Algerian territory and, more particularly, in Algerian towns. We will address immigration, but also the matrimonial behaviour of the migrants. The study will rest on the perusal of marriage certificates, which were recorded in the registers of births, marriages and deaths (registres d’état civil) after the French fashion, the Algerian territory being divided after the end of the Second Empire into three départements, Algiers, Oran, and Constantine, on the model of the French départements. These registers, concerning Europeans, were well-kept.5 Now, while living in the same towns, did these French, Spanish, Italian, Maltese and other migrants and Algerian Jews, mix quickly to form a homogeneous population, or did the selective choice of a spouse lead to the coexistence of different populations according to their migratory origin? It must be stressed that university studies on the subject are extremely rare, the history of the European population in Algeria remaining mostly memorial and focusing on an idealised vision of the past, with the result that it is difficult to reconstruct the identities on the French metropolitan territory.6 A comparison between 3

Among the 44,816 marriages recorded in Algeria between 1830 and 1877, only 120 (0.27 percent) appear to have joined a “European” (man or woman) and a native (man or woman) (Ricoux, Démographie de l’Algérie, 91). 4 The most accurate study was carried out by Kateb, Européens, 2001. For a quick review of recent studies, see Blais et al., “Long moment,” 17-19. 5 The registers are kept at the “Centre des d Archives de l’Outremer” in Aix en Provence. They have been digitised, and are available on site http://www.anom.irel/. The marriages of “indigenous” Arab Muslims in the period we are studying were not recorded, on account of their juridical statutes, whereas the marriages of Jews were included in the registers most of the time. In the town of Algiers, they were recorded in specific registers, and then annexed to the “European” registers. 6 It must be remembered that a high proportion of the “Europeans” who left Algeria in 1962 had been born on Algerian soil. When the descendants of Spanish,

330

The Marriage of Europeans and Jews in Algerian Towns

two marriage cohorts (1867 and 1900-1901) will enable us to see whether any changes regarding the choice of a spouse took place.

Migration and marriage: the birth of a population of European origin in Algeria In the 1830s, only bold settlers left Europe for Algeria, but after the 1840s, the territory was considered sufficiently “pacified” to allow the development of a population stemming from immigration. At first, there was a twofold colonisation: military, with former soldiers turning into settlers, but also agricultural or civil, thanks to migrants from various European countries. Quite a few studies are available as regards agricultural implantations, notably the creation ex nihilo of hundreds of villages built after the same standard plan, with the town-hall, church and school standing in the centre, and houses and tillable land all around. However, the times were hard to begin with. The French government had decided on the implantation of around 40 agricultural centres, so between 1848 and 1851, the settlers were housed in wooden sheds and had to work hard at clearing the ground for cultivation. Within a few years, half of these 20,500 settlers had given up.7 In the 1850s, there appeared a tendency to put together, in the same village, French people coming from the same area or foreigners coming from the same country, as it was deemed preferable not to force people of different origins to live side by side. Thus, a given village was peopled by settlers from Minorca, another one by settlers from Bade and Prussia, yet another one by people from Alsace. That is how the rural population remained the majority and was distributed according to its European origins. In 1886, city-dwellers represented only 20 percent of the population in the Oran département, 15 percent in the Algiers département, and 10 percent in the Constantine département. Before 1870, European implantations were restricted to the northern coast of Algeria or thereabouts, and were never more than ten miles or so inland.8 Towns remained modest in size, the main one, Algiers, numbering Italian or Maltese migrants arrived in France, it was not like home coming for them, but more like the discovery of another territory. Some historians have coined the word “a-patriation”, and prefer it to the usual term of repatriation (Baussant, “Exils et construction,” 29-44; Savarese, “Après la guerre”: 491-500; Abécassis and Meynier, Pour une histoire franco-algérienne, 2008. 7 Yacono, Histoire de l’Algérie, 118. 8 Note that five out of the nine main Algerian towns studied in the present article are harbours.

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about 30,000 “European” inhabitants in 1855, 40,000 in 1866, and 58,500 in 1882. Some towns developed from a very small nucleus indeed: Bône, a modest market town in the east, saw its “European” population grow from 750 in 1833 to 10,000 in 1861, given the afflux of Italian and Maltese settlers. The afflux of migrants from France, but also Spain, Italy and Malta ensured a quick growth of this population (+164 percent between 1846 and 1866), which was to double between 1866 and 1886, and to keep growing between 1886 and 1906 (+46 percent). Table 1 Estimated number of the “European” population living in Algeria in the second half of the nineteenth century French

Other “Europeans”

All

Percentage of other “Europeans”

1846

46,339

49,780

96,119

51.8%

1866

122,219

94,871

217,990

43.7%

1886

261,666

203,154

464,820

43.7%

1906 514,065 166,198 Source: Kateb, Européens, 187

680,263

24.4%

It must be pointed out that in the first stages of the colonisation, there were as many Europeans coming from countries other than France as there were French citizens. According to the 1866 census, French settlers represented 56.3 percent of the “European” population, Spaniards 26.7 percent,9 Italians 7.6 percent, Maltese 4.9 percent, Germans 2.5 percent and people of various other nationalities 2.1 percent.10 The subsequent decline in the population of non-French Europeans can be explained in part by the systematic naturalisation, from 1865 onwards, of the “Europeans” present in Algeria. The Senatus Consultum stated that migrants coming from a country other than France would be able to apply for citizenship at the end of a three-year stay on the territory. The 1889 law granted French nationality to all the children born to settlers from Europe.11 9

D. Reher gives the figure of 158,071 Hispano-Algerian residents present on North-African territory at the end of the 19th century. He insists that many of them went home. See Reher, “L’Espagne,” 548-549. 10 Ricoux, Démographie de l’Algérie, 43 11 Blévis, “Citoyenneté française,” 25-47.

332

The Marriage of Europeans and Jews in Algerian Towns

French

Spaniards

Italians

Maltese

Other “Europeans”

Algiers

69.1

21.3

5.2

1.5

2.9

100 N=217,420

Oran

45.7

44.7

1.6

0.2

7.8

100 N=242,571

Constantine

75.2

2.5

17.4

9.0

4.0

100 N=114,016

Total

59.4

27.0

6.1

2.4

5.1

100 N=584,008

Total

Département of residence

Table 2 The distribution of the inhabitants in relation to their national origin and their département of residence on Algerian territory in 1896

Source: Demontès, Peuple algérien, 65.

One of the characteristics of this migratory colonisation movement lies in its important feminine minority. Whereas it is true that men largely outnumbered women in the first stages of the colony, from 1847 onwards, there were 100 women to 148 men, the ratio moving toward parity later on.12 In 1851, Dr Boudin put forward the figures of 38,047 women and 53,351 men, indicating that the birth rate in Algeria was higher than in metropolitan France, “a circumstance which seems to indicate that the numerical inferiority of females does not necessarily imply the inferiority of the fertile part of the population.”13 The statistics given by V. Demontès14 make it possible to estimate the relative importance of the different European components of the population on the territory according to national origin, at the end of the 19th century. French settlers outnumbered the others everywhere, but there were almost as many Spaniards in the Oran département. In the east, where the French represented three quarters of the “European” population, there

12

Yacono, Histoire de l’Algérie, 216. Boudin, Colonisation, 7. 14 Demontès, Peuple algérien, 65. 13

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333

were more Italians and Maltese, the latter tending to remain in harbour towns. This immigrant population from Europe included many unmarried people, favouring a high marriage rate; however, during the first decades of the European presence, the number of women remained small, and the sexes only reached a balance under the Second Empire, even though the marriage rate was still dependent on the military, economic and sanitary context. It is well known that marriages tend to be less numerous in times of crisis. As regards the whole Algerian territory under French control, there were about 2,500 marriages a year between 1874 and 1878, according to the registers of état civil. The figures reached 3,000 a year in 1888, 4,200 in 1898 and 4,500 in 190215, an evolution which reflects the growth of the “European” population in Algeria. For the whole period between 1874 and 1903, the gross marriage rate was about 73 per thousand,16 which was not very different from its values in metropolitan France back then. According to M. Bodin’s calculations, put forward by Demontès,17 the rate between 1887 and 1891 would have reached 72.6 in France, 76.9 in Italy and 56.4 in Spain. Thus the marriage rate of the “Europeans” in Algeria at the end of the 19th century would have been quite close to what it was in their home countries, with the exception of Spain, where access to marriage had become more difficult at the end of the 19th century.18 This is how a new “European” population came to life in this colonial context: the “European” population and the “indigenous” population lived practically apart from one another, sharing the same towns, but in different, albeit sometimes neighbouring areas. In the main towns, “Europeans” were sometimes the majority (Algiers, Oran, Bône), whereas the natives were more numerous in other towns, such as Blida, Tlemcen and Sétif. Throughout this analysis, in order to avoid handling too many numbers, towns will be grouped together into three different areas, corresponding to the three départements created by the French administration: the Oran département in the west (Oran Tlemcen, Mascara and Mostaganem), the Algiers département in the centre (Algiers and its suburbs and Blida), and the Constantine département in the east (Constantine, Bône and Philippeville).

15

Demontès, Peuple algérien, 194. Demontès, Peuple algérien, 197. 17 Demontès, Peuple algérien, 199. 18 In Spain, the marriage age rose during the last decades of the 19th century, and access to marriage became more difficult. See Reher, “L’Espagne”, 537-539. 16

334

The Marriage of Europeans and Jews in Algerian Towns

Table 3 Main towns: the population in 1882, and the number of “European” marriages in 1867. Population in 1882

Number of “European” marriages in 1867

Algiers

70,700

388 *

Oran

58,500

177

Constantine

38,400

86

Bône

22,000

94

Tlemcen

18,400

35

Philippeville

18,200

81

Mostaganem

12,700

47

Blida

11,000

59

Mascara

15,500

**

31

Ensemble 998 * In detail: Algiers “European” (262), Algiers Jews (37), Algiers Mustapha district (62), Algiers Bouzareah district (18), Algiers de El Biar district (9) ** Population in 1901 Source: Populations:www.populstat.info/Africa/algerie.htm. Marriages: personal counts, registers of marriages.

For these nine towns, where the largest numbers of marriages were recorded, as well as for the three peripheral areas of Algiers, the 1867 marriages certificates have been systematically examined, which has led to a database covering about 1,000 marriages. It must be stressed that because the population was largely composed of migrants from different countries, it was sometimes a difficult and lengthy undertaking for the would-be spouses to gather the documents which were requested in view of the wedding, notably the spouses’ birth certificates and the consent of their parents, who had stayed in their native country and with whom they had sometimes lost touch. Thus, more than six months could elapse before all the documents were actually available. Moreover, these documents were often written in different languages and, therefore, had to be translated into French. It was also often necessary for an interpreter to be present at the wedding so that some brides and bridegrooms could understand the administrative phrases used by the registrar.

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Marriages celebrated in the main towns in 1867: endogamy among “Europeans” in relation to their origin In 1867, the “European” population present on Algerian territory was composed of two different groups: one the one hand, people born on the European continent, and, on the other hand, the offspring of European migrants on Algerian soil. Among the population who got married in the year 1867, the former were still the majority by far. It is now possible to study the choice of a spouse according to national or geographic origin19.

The migratory origin of spouses In marriage certificates, the spouses’ place of birth is indicated with all due precision: for people born in France, both the name of the commune and that of the département are mentioned. For those from Spain or Germany, it is the name of the commune or that of the province which is given. The indications are less precise for spouses born in Italy, as the name of the commune is not always followed by that of the province. What is striking is that most of the spouses who got married in 1867 were immigrants born on the European continent. Such was the case of almost nine men out of ten (87.8 percent), and almost seven women out of ten (68.6 percent). It can therefore be said that a population was being constituted with the essential migratory contribution of newcomers. Among the male spouses, those from France represented a small majority (58.2 percent of the total figure). They represented a bigger part of the population in the Oran and in the Constantine areas than in the Algiers area. The second biggest group was formed by Spaniards (16.3 percent of the total), but the geographical distribution was very uneven: though they represented a quarter of the male spouses in the Oran area, i.e. in the western part of the Algerian territory, they were fairly rare in the Constantine area, i.e.; in the eastern part of the same territory (4.2 percent). The next group of immigrants was that of Italians, their distribution being opposite to that of Spaniards: they were numerous in the Constantine area (12.3 percent), and almost non-existent in the Oran area (2.8 percent) and in the Algiers area (3.8 percent). The reason probably lies in geographic proximity, the Oran area being just opposite the Spanish 19

In 1867, Italy and Germany had not yet reached political unity. It therefore seems preferable to speak in terms of territory rather than nationality. Likewise, “Europeans” born on Algerian soil are here regarded as born on this territory, and not as having such or such nationality.

The Marriage of Europeans and Jews in Algerian Towns

336

peninsula, whereas the Constantine area is closer to the Italian peninsula20. These Italian migrants came from different places, but a few groups of relative importance could be found in harbour towns in the Constantine area, such as Bône and Philippeville. Considering a total of 94 marriages in Bône itself, 16 male and 18 female spouses here had been born in Italy. Table 4 The distribution of male spouses in relation to their native territory and the area where the marriage was celebrated. Marriages in the main Algerian towns in 1867. Areas where the marriages were celebrated - % Native territory

Algiers area

Oran area

Constantine area

Total

Algeria

18.1

6.6

8.0

12.1

Spain

18.1

24.5

4.2

16.3

France

54.4

62.4

60.2

58.2

Italy

3.8

2.8

12.3

5.7

Malta

1.6

0.0

11.1

3.6

Other European country

3.5 *

3.1 **

4.2 ***

3.6

Outside Europe

0.4 ****

0.7*****

0.0

0.4

100 (N=447)

100 (N=290)

100 (N=261)

100 (N=998)

Total

* Germany (8), Belgium (1), Denmark (2), Switzerland (5), ** Germany (6), Belgium (1), Gibraltar (1), Switzerland (1), *** Germany (10), Switzerland (1), **** Morocco (1), Tunisia (1), ***** Morocco (1) Source: personal counts, registers of marriages

20

In the 1860s, Italian migration to Tunisia was limited, on account of the lack of infrastructures and of the political uncertainties as regards the future of the territory. See Loth, Peuplement italien 73. The Italian consular authorities counted 16,685 Italians in Algeria in the 1866 census, with more than 9,000 in the Constantine area (Ibid.,113).

Guy Brunet

337

The same held true for the Maltese: they represented a sizable proportion of male spouses in the Constantine area, close enough to their native island, but were totally absent from the Oran area, which is farther from their homeland. A close analysis of the towns in the Constantine area reveals that the Maltese were particularly numerous in Bône, a harbour (19 percent of male spouses), but virtually absent in inland Constantine (1 spouse only). It must be noticed that Malta’s contribution was more important than that of the large Italian islands, Sardinia or Sicily, even though they were more densely populated. One particular group was that formed by the male spouses born in Algeria. They cannot be considered migrants, since they were born on Algerian territory, but they were the descendants of the first couples of “European” immigrants who had lived there. The marriage registers do not mention their parents’ geographical origin, their father’s and their mother’s extractions being perhaps different and making it impossible to insert them in any of the other groups. On average, they represented 12.1 percent of the male spouses, but were much more numerous in Algiers. The reason may lie in the fact that it was there that the first births took place, and also perhaps in the migration of the early settlers from the first villages created in the neighbourhood. Most of what has been said regarding male spouses is valid about women too: there were more Spaniards in the Oran area, as well as more Italians and Maltese in the Constantine area. Though women born in France were more numerous, they represented only 40 percent of the female spouses, compared to the Frenchmen, who stood for 58.2 percent of the male spouses. This does not mean that the number of female “European” immigrants was higher: there were simply more women born in Algeria, representing 31 percent of the female spouses, compared to the 12.1 percent male spouses. This was the case particularly in the Algiers area, where they even outnumbered (38.3 percent) the women born in France (36.7 percent). This difference between the sexes can partially be accounted for by the fact that women got married at a younger age. Young female spouses under 25 years of age were born in the 1940s, when there was already a population from Europe in Algeria, whereas the men, aged 30 or over, had been born before the arrival of the first settlers. As a final remark, it can be pointed out that out of 29 women from Germany, 16 were from the Duchy of Bade, in Western Germany.

338

The Marriage of Europeans and Jews in Algerian Towns

Table 5 The distribution of female spouses in relation to their native territory and the area where the marriages were celebrated. Marriages in the main Algerian towns in 1867. Areas where the marriage was celebrated - % Native territory

Algiers area

Algeria

38.3

27.9

23.4

31.4

Spain

19.2

26.9

6.5

18.1

France

36.7

39.3

46.7

40.1

Italy

2.0

1.7

11.5

4.4

Malta

0.2

0.0

6.5

1.8

3.1 *

4.2 **

5.4 ***

3.9

0.4 ****

0.0

0.0

0.2

Other European countries Outside Europe

Oran area

Constantine area

Total

Total

100 100 100 100 (N=447) (N=290) (N=261) (N=998) * Germany (8), Belgium (1), Cyprus (1), Suisse (4), ** Germany (9), Gibraltar (2), Switzerland (1), *** Switzerland (2), **** Cuba (1), Tunisia (1), Source: personal counts, registers of marriages

Marriage and national origin Let us first examine the choice of a spouse in relation to the national origin of both spouses. It must be stressed that the choice of a spouse was also dependent on a linguistic factor: in Algeria, the dominant language was French, and school always represents a step towards the linguistic unity of a population. However, in the early stages of the colony, most immigrants spoke mainly their own language, and a man from Spain would have had difficulties understanding an Italian woman, just like a man from Germany would have found it hard to converse with a French or a Maltese woman. Now, fewer than six marriages out of ten (58.7 percent) joined together two spouses from the same territory. It is true that the people born in Algeria could, depending on their origin, speak or understand one language other than French. On the other hand, one

Guy Brunet

339

common denominator among all these “Europeans” was the fact that the religion they practised, if they did practise one, was the Catholic religion. As for the choice of a wife in relation to the husband’s origin, it turns out that men born in France married a woman from France three times out of five (62.7 percent) and a woman born in Algeria close to one time out of five (22.9 percent). This tendency to marry a woman born on the same territory could also be noticed among Spaniards, as 62 percent married a woman who had been born in Spain. Most men born in Algeria (64.5 percent) married a woman born there too, while 15.7 percent preferred a woman born in Spain, and 9.9 percent a woman born in France. If the choice of a husband is analysed in relation to the wife’s country of origin, the picture is quite different because of the difference in proportions already pointed out as regards sex and origin. Thus, there were fewer women (400) born in France than there were men (581), and more than nine out of ten women born in France married a man born in France too. Marriage was more open among women born in Spain: a little more than half of them (55.8 percent) married a man from Spain, but one out of four married a man from France, and one out of ten a man born in Algeria. Many women born in Algeria married a man from France (42.5 percent), 23.5 percent a man born in Algeria, and 17.9 percent a man born in Spain. Table 6 The distribution of marriages in relation to the male and female spouse’s native territory. Marriages in the main Algerian towns in 1867. 6A. Male spouse’s native territory

Female spouse’s native territory - % Algeria

Spain

France

Italy

Malta

Other

Algeria

64.5

15.7

9.9

3.3

5.0

1.7

100 (N=121)

Spain

34.4

62.0

1.8

0.0

0.0

1.8

100 (N=163)

France

22.9

7.7

62.7

2.4

0.0

4.3

100 (N=581)

Total

31.4

18.1

40.1

4.4

1.8

4.2

100 (N=998)

Total

The Marriage of Europeans and Jews in Algerian Towns

340

6B Male spouse’s native territory

Female spouse’s native territory - % Algeria

Spain

France

Total

Algeria

24.9

10.5

3.0

12.1

Spain

17.9

55.8

0.8

16.3

France

42.5

24.9

91.0

58.2

Italy

5.1

4.4

1.5

5.7

Malta

5.1

1.7

1.0

3.6

Other

4.5

2.8

2.8

4.0

100 (N=313) 100 (N=181) Total Source: personal counts, registers of marriages

100 (N=400)

100 (N=998)

So, it must be said that observations depend on whether it is the choice of a man or the choice of a woman which is studied. However, one fact is certain: the population that was born in Algeria was the outcome of much interbreeding: from then on, in the main towns, more than four marriages out of ten involved spouses with different territorial origins. Besides the three origins already commented on, immigrants from Italy, Malta, Germany and Switzerland also became integrated through their marriage to spouses of a different origin. When the question is studied from the angle of Algerian geographical areas, differences are relatively small, being mostly due to the imbalance between the different groups. Thus, in the towns of the Constantine area, where immigrants from Italy and Malta were more numerous, half of the men from Italy married a woman who had been born there, and one third of the men born in Malta married a woman from the same island. In the Oran area, where 39.3 percent of the women came from France, 97.4 of them married a Frenchman. Jews represented a special case, however. They were involved in 47 marriages, and in each case both spouses were Jewish; moreover, unlike the “Europeans”, most of them had been born on Algerian territory. Only four Jewish men could be considered immigrants, as they had been born elsewhere (2 in Morocco, 1 in Tunisia and 1 in France), and only one woman had not been born on Algerian territory (but in Italy).21 It can 21

That woman had been born in Livorno, home to an important Jewish minority.

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therefore be said that this part of the population was far more endogamous than the population of European origin and that it kept developing without engaging in mixed marriages with the settlers from Europe.

Spouses born in France: a widespread intermixing As mentioned before, most men born in France (62.6 percent) married a woman who had been born there too. Was this national endogamy also a local endogamy, with men from one area choosing women from the same area? It must be remembered that in 19th century France, endogamy often existed within districts, or even communes. Between 1840 and 1869, in Meulan, for instance, a little town close enough to Paris, 16 percent of the spouses had been born in the town itself, and 24 percent within a 16-mile radius; only 10.9 percent had been born outside the département.22 However, things were quite different in the Algerian towns. Table 7 The distribution of male and female spouses born in France in relation to their native area. Marriages in the main Algerian towns in 1867 (%). Male spouses

Female spouses

Together

South East

20.7

23.5

21.9

South West

22.5

24.8

23.3

West

9.3

6.3

8.1

North

3.3

3.3

3.3

North East

20.9

22.5

21.6

Centre East

11.1

9.8

10.5

Centre

6.4

4.8

5.7

Paris area

6.0

5.3

5.7

100% (N=400)

100% (N=979)

Total

100 (N=579)

Source: personal counts, registers of marriages

22

Lachiver, Population de Meulan, 94.

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The Marriage of Europeans and Jews in Algerian Towns

Before we study the marriages, it seems necessary to have a look at the geographical origin of the spouses. Although the precise commune was mentioned in the marriage certificates, we will only consider the problem from the angle of the départements, or of relatively large areas23. There were spouses from everywhere in France involved in these marriages celebrated in Algeria in 1867, and it can be said that populating this territory was a national matter. 86 out of the 89 départements that metropolitan France24 consisted of at that time provided at least one male spouse, and 79 at least one female spouse.25 On the other hand, contributions differed widely. Although they were among the most densely populated regions in the country, the Paris area and the North, for instance, contributed but slightly. The areas in which the contribution was the highest were found in the southern half of the country, either in the south west (from Gironde to the Pyrénées), or in the south east (from the Rhône Valley to Languedoc and Corsica). In the south west, the highest number of spouses was to be found in the Pyrenean départements and in Haute Garonne, whose préfecture was Toulouse, the biggest town in the region. In the south eastern quarter, the highest number of spouses was found in Corsica and in Bouches du Rhône, whose préfecture was Marseilles, the biggest town in the region, and also in Hérault. The high number of spouses coming from Corsica must be underlined, as the population was not very dense in that département. Apart from southern France, the north east also provided many spouses, even though that area was quite a long way from Algeria. The départements close to the German border, such as Bas-Rhin, Haut-Rhin and Meurthe, must also be mentioned as the providers of a large number of spouses. Such was the case, too, with Haute-Saône, despite the limited importance of its population. With origins as diverse as these, it was practically impossible to marry someone born in the same département. Thus only forty marriages took place between people born in the same département, out of the 364 marriages celebrating a union between two spouses born in France. In most cases, the two spouses came from different départements and even, sometimes, from very different areas. In Algeria, it was not uncommon for 23 These geographical areas have been conceived for the present analysis and do not correspond to the administrative divisions of the country. 24 One man born in Guiana and one born in Martinique, French overseas possessions, must be added to the 579 men included in the present chart. 25 For men, only the Lozère, Mayenne and Seine-et-Oise départements, and for women the Calvados, Cher, Côtes-du-Nord, Gironde, Indre, Indre-et-Loire, Landes, Loir-et-Cher, Nièvre et Orne départements are not mentioned.

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a man from Alsace to marry a Pyrenean girl, or for a man from Provence to marry a girl from Brittany, a very rare occurrence in metropolitan France at that time, except perhaps in Paris, where immigration played an important part. This is how marriages brought about a widespread intermixing of populations on Algerian soil, whether it was the case that a person born in France married a spouse from another country, or two people coming from different French areas got married. Of course, endogamy did exist, but it only played a very minor role. For instance, five women out of ten born in Corsica and, to a lower extent, 8 women out of 27 born in Pyrénées Orientales married a man from the same département. But these two départements were among those which provided quite a large number of spouses and, therefore, made endogamy possible. Exceptionally, a few départements only occasionally contributed to the Algerian marriage rate. It is to be noticed that the only woman from Haute-Vienne (she was born in Limoges, actually) married, in Algiers, one of the four men born in the same town. Now, did these two people meet in Algeria, or had they met in Limoges before coming over? In this particular case, it must be said that endogamy was not only geographical, but also socio-professional, as the male spouse was a merchant, and his bride’s father a travelling salesman.26

Spouses born in Spain: a local recruitment, and a clear tendency towards endogamy Things were completely different when it came to spouses from Spain, who represented 16 percent of the male spouses, and 18 percent of the female spouses. Being a colonial power, France contributed as a whole nation towards populating the Algerian territory. On the other hand, only a few Spanish provinces were involved. Two thirds of the 344 spouses coming from Spain (69.7 percent) were born in Alicante, a small province in SouthEastern Spain, and one out of seven (14.8 percent) in the Balearic Islands. The contribution of the other Spanish provinces to the Algerian marriage rate was very limited, except for the Murcia and Valencia provinces, bordering on Alicante. The spouses from Alicante could come from parishes situated either on the coast or close to the Mediterranean (Calpe, Benidorm, San Vincente des Raspeig), or inland in the mountains (Novelda, Elche, Crevillente). Some of these parishes provided as many as twenty spouses each in the 26

Marriage certificate dated 4 July 1867, Algiers.

The Marriage of Europeans and Jews in Algerian Towns

344

Algerian towns in 1867, far more than most French communes, it must be pointed out. Tables 8 The distribution of male and female spouses born in Spain in relation to their native province. Marriages in the main Algerian towns in 1867 (%). Province

Male spouses

Female spouses

Together

Alicante

60.1

66.9

63.7

Balearic Islands

17.2

12.7

14.8

Murcia

7.4

3.9

5.5

Valencia

1.8

2.2

2.0

Catalonia

2.5

1.1

1.7

Andalusia

1.8

2.8

2.3

New Castile

0.6

0.6

0.6

Guadalajara

0.0

0.6

0.3

Unspecified

8.6

9.4

9.0

Total 100 (N=163) Source: personal counts, registers of marriages

100 (N=181)

100 (N=344)

Most of the spouses originating in the Balearic Islands came from Minorca, more precisely from the parish of Mahon. It must be added that these Spanish immigrants’ presence was very different according to the towns: spouses from Alicante were numerous in the Oran and Algiers areas, while those from the Balearic Islands tended to gather around Algiers, keeping clear of the Oran area. However, apart from this geographical distribution, it is interesting to study the way in which couples were formed when both spouses had been born in Spain. When looking at the 54 marriages between two spouses originating in Spain registered in the Algiers area, we can see that, contrary to what has been noticed about spouses born in France, provincial endogamy was quite important among those born in Spain. Out of these 54 men, the 36 men who had come from Alicante chose a woman born in the same province. It was the same with the eleven women from the Balearic Islands, all of whom married a man from the same islands. More than that, there was even village endogamy, as in the case of the marriage between Miguel A..., a carter, and Filomena P..., for instance: both lived in Oran,

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but had been born in the parish of San Miguel de Salinas, in the province of Alicante.27 Miguel S..., a day-labourer, married Maria V...: they both lived in Philippeville, but had been born in Tarbena, in the province of Alicante.28 Many examples can be found among spouses born in Aspé, Novelda or Elda, who acted in the very same way and married a spouse from their native parish.

The turn of the century (1900-1901): more and more native spouses Marriages in Algiers Let us have a look at Algiers, the main town of the Algerian territory, a few decades later. The population of the town expanded at great speed during the second half of the 19th century, as an effect both of the immigration from Europe and of the rural depopulation of the Algerian territory, which affected the “Europeans” as well as the natives. Thus the population of towns grew from 103,000 inhabitants in 1886 to about 174,000 in 1906 (+68.9 percent). Meanwhile, the number of “Europeans” and Jews went from 81,000 to 134,000 (+65.4 percent), and that of the “native Muslims” from 22,000 to 40,000 (+81.8 percent). As a result, the proportion of “Europeans” and Jews within the population of Algiers declined slightly (from 78.6 percent to 77 percent); however, it still represented the majority. It was not until the middle of the 20th century that the “native Muslims” represented half of the population of Algiers.29 In the town of Algiers proper, without taking into account the neighbouring communes which were part of the built-up area, the average number of marriages involving “Europeans” and Jews was 516 a year between 1890 and 1899, with a low in 1893 (467) and a high in 1899 (571). The number kept growing in the early 20th century, with 598 marriages in 1900, 601 in 1901, 580 in 1902, and 614 in 1903.30

27

Marriage certificate dated 14 February 1867, Oran. Marriage certificate dated 3 August 1867, Philippeville. 29 Breil quoted by Kateb, Européens, 273. 30 The following analysis is based on a complete study of the marriages celebrated in 1900 and in the first months of 1901, representing 894 marriages out of the 1,202 that were recorded during these two years (74.4 percent). 28

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346

Table 9 The distribution of spouses in relation to their native territory. Algiers 1900-1901 (%). Native territory Algeria

Male spouses

Female spouses

49.9

62.1

Spain

13.3

15.0

France

29.1

16.8

Italy

4.5

4.4

Malta Other European countries Outside Europe Total

0.6

0.2

1.0 *

0.2 **

1.7 ***

0.8 ****

100 (N=894)

100 (N=894)

* Belgium, Denmark, Russia, Switzerland, ** Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Switzerland, *** Argentina, ‘Barbaria’, Morocco, Palestine, Peru, Tunisia, Turkey, **** Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia Source: personal counts, registers of marriages

Compared with 1867, there was a marked progression in the number of spouses born on Algerian territory. More than half a century after the conquest, as immigration from Europe was still going on, there existed a population of European origin born on Algerian soil,31 whose importance could not be denied, as it represented half of the men, and more than six women out of ten. This represents something of an obstacle for the present analysis, as it is impossible to determine the exact impact of former migratory flows. It could be assumed that the fact that someone bore a name commonly found in Italy or Spain was a sign of their migratory origin, but such an assumption would be both risky and inaccurate, for, even if it did account for the origin of the spouse’s father, it would not account for this same spouse’s maternal origin, which might well have been different, as an analysis of the marriages celebrated in 1867 indicates. All in all, what can be said is that the French still represented the majority among the male spouses born on European soil, even though the population of Spaniards had increased since 1867. The proportion of Italians had also slightly gone up, but remained small, while the population of Maltese spouses had kept decreasing. 31

At that time, the phrase Français d’Algérie, which mentioned both a person’s nationality and the territory on which he or she lived, was in common use. When the population of European origin left in 1962, the term Pieds-noirs became usual when referring to “Europeans” who had been born in Algeria.

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In 1900-1901, the population of female spouses born in France was only slightly superior to that of Spanish female spouses. This was similar to the situation noticed among the men, confirming the fact that immigration from Spain was as important as immigration from France during the final years of the 19th century. The population of women born in Italy had slightly decreased, that of Maltese women remaining very small.

Total

Outside Europe

Other European countries

Italy

Spain

France

Female spouse’s native territory

Algeria

Male spouse’s native territory

Table 10 The distribution of marriages in relation to both spouses’ native territory, Algiers 1900-1901.

343

33

48

12

7

3

446

Spain

36

81

1

1

-

-

119

France

143

13

96

6

1

1

260

Italy

14

5

1

20

-

-

40

Other European countries

10

1

3

-

-

-

14

9

1

1

-

-

4

15

555 134 150 39 Total Source: personal counts, registers of marriages

8

8

894

Algeria

Outside Europe

Endogamy in relation to the spouses’ native territory apparently dominated, since six marriages out of ten (60.9 percent) can be found in the chart’s great diagonal. However, it would be an exaggeration to say that the unions between two “European” spouses born on Algerian soil were systematically endogamous. Though the proportion remains indefinite, these marriages united two people born on Algerian territory, it is true, but their families could very well have come from different European countries.

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The Marriage of Europeans and Jews in Algerian Towns

More than three times out of four (76.9 percent), a man born in Algeria married a woman who had been born there too. When this was not the case, the female spouse had been born either in France or in Spain. The men born in France also most frequently married a woman born on Algerian soil, but the proportion was smaller (55 percent). They married a woman born in France, like them, more than one time out of three (36.9 percent). They only seldom married a woman from another European country, however. Just as noticed thirty years earlier, the men born in Spain were more endogamous than those born in France, as almost seven out of ten (69.1 percent) married a woman born in their native country. It was exceptional (two cases only) for a man born in Spain or in Italy to marry a woman born in France, which goes to show that, in 1900, intermixing had not yet become a normal practice among the “Europeans” who had settled in Algeria. Female spouses of European or Jewish origin born on Algerian soil were particularly numerous and more than six out of ten (61.8 percent) married a man who had been born in Algeria too. Unlike male spouses, many more of them married a man born in France than one born in Spain. Contrary to the men born in France, the majority of the women born there married a man of the same origin. Just like thirty years earlier, the reason lay in the gender imbalance among the population (there were more male than female spouses born in France). Like the men born there, the women born in Spain showed a clear tendency towards endogamy (60.4 percent), but to a smaller degree, which may be accounted for by a slight gender imbalance among this population. Even though such a case remained a minority, it is to be noticed that in the case of 19 marriages, a woman born in Spain or Italy wed a man born in France. Just like in 1867, the migratory movement from metropolitan France to the Algerian territory was a national matter, and there were spouses from most French départements. The south east was the largest provider of spouses of both sexes, notably the Bouches du Rhône, Corsica and Hérault départements. Next came the south west, with the Haute-Garonne and Pyrénées-Orientales départements, even though the region’s contribution had declined since 1867. On the other hand, the Centre East’s contribution was higher than earlier, particularly among women, notably in the Rhône, Ardèche and Drôme départements. However, the main changes concerned North-Eastern France, a part of which (Alsace-Lorraine) had been annexed by the German Empire in 1871. Whereas more than one out of five spouses born in France (21.6 percent) came from this area in 1867, only one in eleven (8.6 percent) did

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so in 1900. When the area was occupied by the German army, 1,200 families or so left Alsace for Algeria in the 1870s to escape the new domination. The migratory flow was short-lived, however, and few spouses married in Algiers in 1900 and 1901 originated in that part of the country. Table 11 The distribution of male and female spouses born in France in relation to their native area. Marriages in Algiers 1900-1901 - %. Male spouses

Female spouses

Together

South East

26.5

28.7

27.3

South West

16.9

19.3

17.8

West

13.1

9.5

11.7

North

5.4

2.7

4.4

North East

8.8

7.3

8.3

Centre East

12.7

17.5

14.4

Centre

6.2

7.3

6.6

Paris area

9.6

8.0

Total 100 (N=260) 100 (N=150) Source: personal counts, registers of marriages

9.0 100 (N=410)

National statistics concerning the beginning of the 20th century The observations we have made concerning the town of Algiers can be analysed in a wider perspective, considering the statistics drawn up by Demontès in 1906 for the whole Algerian territory during the years 1903 and 1904. He characterises the spouses according to two definitions: on the one hand, an administrative definition - their nationality - and, on the other hand, a biological definition - their “blood”. Thus a man descended from parents born in Spain but having French nationality was defined as having “Spanish blood”, but French nationality. While such an approach makes the analysis of the choice of a spouse more accurate, it also makes it more complex. Demontès remarks that 62 out of 100 men of “French blood”, i.e. descended from French parents, married a woman of “Spanish blood”, but most of the latter (40) had French nationality, only 22 having stuck to their Spanish nationality. Out of these same 100 men of “French blood”, 26 married a woman of “Italian blood”, but most of these (19) had French

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The Marriage of Europeans and Jews in Algerian Towns

nationality. Demontès concludes that French men preferred to marry women “born in Algeria who had automatically become French”, because they had known the same living conditions as children, had received the same education and had the same way of life.32 By applying the same method to the behaviour of women, it appears that out of 100 women of “French blood”, 38 married a man of “Spanish blood”, but that most of these men (30) had French nationality. Likewise, 34 married a man of “Italian blood”, but most of them (22) had become French.33 The outcome was that few women of “French blood” lost their nationality by marrying a man of another nationality. After going through the marriages involving different nationalities, Demontès draws the following lesson: “whereas Frenchmen readily agreed to marry girls of another nationality, Frenchwomen seemed reluctant to accept such unions. It was just the other way round with Spaniards: young girls easily married foreigners, while young men did not look for such unions.”34 Demontès thinks that such behaviour concerning the choice of a spouse in relation to nationality or “blood” was the effect of a hierarchy between the Europeans nationalities present on Algerian soil: “Whereas the girls from Spain, Italy, or Malta, or other European countries felt promoted when they married one of our fellow countrymen, representing the Nation which ruled over Algeria, the French women considered they lowered themselves and felt morally humiliated.”35 As for the marriages between “Europeans” who had been granted French nationality, Demontès points out that the nationality change did not affect the choice of a spouse: there was a clear preference for the choice of a spouse of identical “blood”.

Conclusions During the previous centuries, as Europeans migrated to other continents, some new populations were born. These pioneers sometimes took the place of the native population, which was outnumbered and pushed away from the inhabited areas. Such was the case in North America. The population from Europe sometimes mixed to a high degree with the natives and with former slaves from Africa, as was the case in Brazil. The population of European origin living in Algeria followed a 32

Demontès, Peuple algérien, 229. Demontès, Peuple algérien, 230. 34 Demontès, Peuple algérien, 228. 35 Demontès, Peuple algérien, 231. 33

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different pattern. Marriages with natives were very scarce, as the two populations lived side by side with very little intermixing. On the other hand, unions between “Europeans” of different origins were numerous. There existed differences according to sex, notably because of the imbalance between the numbers of young men and women from the various countries involved in populating the Algerian territory. However, in the beginning at least, migrants from Spain tended to privilege provincial or even village endogamy. At the very beginning of the 20th century, more than sixty years after the first “European” settlers had arrived, new generations were born and raised on Algerian soil. These men and women could not be considered migrants, but the descendants of immigrants. They had experienced the same living conditions during their childhood and adolescence, gone to the same schools, shared the practice of the French language, and most of them had French nationality. It can be assumed that these common factors outweighed the antagonisms due to their migratory origins, whether ancient or recent36. These young men and women of European descent, who had been born on Algerian soil, then formed the majority among the spouses married in 1900 and 1901, thus modifying behaviour as to the choice of a spouse. In such a way, by constantly integrating newcomers while retaining, in its midst, a growing population of individuals born on Algerian territory, the “European” population not only developed greatly, but also became more homogeneous. At the beginning of the 20th century, it was truly a French-speaking population that was developing in North-Africa, in a territory which was part and parcel of the French Republic. The “indigenous” majority’s achievement of political independence at the end of a bloody war put a hurried stop to this period of history, as it is well known. In the main, these “Europeans” were “apatriated” to France around 1962,37 and the history of the “European” population of Algeria came to an abrupt ending. 36 According to a witness of Maltese origin quoted by J. Verdès-Leroux, “We had lost all connections with Malta, the steam-roller of the French schools had been at work, but with our consent (…). We were heading towards assimilation, but back in our grand-parents’ day, a Maltese and a Frenchman would not have addressed one another.” See Verdès-Leroux, Français d’Algérie, 209. 37 The usual term is “repatriated person”, which indicates that someone is sent back to his native country. However, some of the “Europeans” who had been living in Algeria and came to France in 1962 and the following years had no connection whatsoever with France, while others considered North-Africa as their homeland. See Falaize et al., “Migration”,151-90.

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The Marriage of Europeans and Jews in Algerian Towns

References Abécassis, Frédéric, and Gilbert Meynier. Pour une histoire francoalgérienne. En finir avec les pressions officielles et les lobbies de mémoire. Paris: La Découverte, 2008. Baussant, Michelle. “Exils et construction de la mémoire généalogique: l’exemple des Pieds-Noirs”. Pôle Sud 24 (2006): 29-44. Blais, Hélène, Claire Fredj and Emmanuelle Saada. “Un long moment colonial: pour une histoire de l’Algérie au XIXe siècle”. Revue d’Histoire du XIXe siècle 2 (2010): 7-24. Blévis, Laure. “La citoyenneté française au miroir de la colonisation”. Genèses 53 (2003): 25-47. Boudin, Jean Charles Marie. La colonisation et la population en Algérie. Paris: Baillière, 1853. Breil, Jean. La population en Algérie. Etude de démographie quantitative. Rapport au Haut Comité Consultatif de la population et de la famille, T.II, Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1957. Demontès, Victor. Le peuple algérien. Essais de démographie algérienne. Alger: Imprimerie algérienne, 1906. Falaize, Benoît, Anne-Marie Granet-Abisset and Françoise Lantheaume, “Migration, culture et représentation”. In Pour une histoire francoalgérienne. En finir avec les pressions officielles et les lobbies de mémoire, edited by Frédéric Abecassis and Gilbert Meynier, 151-190. Paris: La Découverte, 2008. Kateb, Kateb. Européens, “Indigènes” et Juifs en Algérie (1830-1962). Représentation et réalités des populations. Paris: Institut National d’Etudes Démographiques, 2001. Lachiver, Marcel. La population de Meulan du XVIIe au XIXe siècle. Etude de démographie historique. Paris: SEVPEN, 1969. Loth Jean. Le peuplement italien en Tunisie et en Algérie. Paris: Armand Colin, 1905. Prochaska, David. Making Algeria French. Colonialism in Bône, 18701920. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press and Paris: Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, 1990. Reher, David S. “L’Espagne: Nuptialité, fécondité et mortalité.” In Histoire des Populations de l’Europe, vol II (1750-1914), edited by Jacques Dupâquier and Jean-Pierre Bardet, 532-548. Paris, Fayard, 1998. Ricoux, René. La démographie figurée de l’Algérie. Etude statistique des populations européennes qui habitent l’Algérie. Paris: Masson, 1880.

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Savarese, Eric. “Après la guerre d’Algérie. La diversité des recompositions identitaires des pieds-noirs.” Erès. Revue Internationale des Sciences Sociales 189 (2006): 491-500. Sessions, Jennifer. “Le paradoxe des émigrants indésirables pendant la Monarchie de Juillet, ou les origines de l’émigration assistée vers l’Algérie.” Revue d’Histoire du XIXe siècle 41 (2010): 63-80. Taieb, Jacques. “Les Juifs du Maghreb au XIXe siècle. Aperçus de démographie historique et répartition géographique.” Population 1 (1992): 85-104. Verdès-Leroux, Jacqueline. Les Français d’Algérie de 1830 à aujourd’hui. Une page d’histoire déchirée. Paris: Fayard, 2001. Yacono, Xavier. Histoire de l’Algérie, de la fin de la Régence turque à l’insurrection de 1954. Versailles: Editions de l’Atlanthrope, 1993.

SENTIMENTAL RELATIONS AMONG ITALIAN MEN AND MIGRANT WOMEN: HOW MIGRATION AFFECTS PLACE AND TIME IN THE MAKING OF MIXED COUPLES SARA SETTEPANELLA

Choosing a partner is a relevant parameter to consider in examining how exogamic behaviours take place in contemporary Central Italy, in addition to understanding what makes it possible for people from different countries to meet and the time and location of such encounters. This paper will take into consideration the dynamic of the encounters of 17 “mixed” couples, composed of Italian men and migrant women coming from Latin America and Eastern Europe. The choice of this field is deeply connected to the positions occupied by women in the geography of international power, which organises unequal access to the globalised market of labour, including in the host societies. The feminisation of migration is a pivotal pattern of current migration trends. Since the 1980s, when the first feminist scholars complained about a lack of studies on women as active subjects of migration1, or against the tendency to consider them passive, following only the male partner’s project, there has been an increasing interest towards a gender perspective on migration. The first attempts come from what Hondagneu-Sotelo2 defined as “Women and migration” with two directions. The first, called “add and stir,” reflected the effort to include also women as social actors across the migration process. The second one - “women only” - turned to women as the main interlocutors, replacing men, in a similar process. Both perspectives had limits, in that they reproduced a segregation3 which paralysed and fragmented the phenomena of migration. They were also

1

Kofman, “Female birds of passage a decade later”. Hondagneu-Sotelo, “Gendering migration”. 3 Gabaccia, Introduction, xi-xvi . 2

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based on the theory of sexual roles as separated, with functionalist echoes, and on a complementary rather than a dynamic analysis. The introduction of a meso point of view, which also looks at the institution of family, the State and networks as constructed according to gender, with different positions in relation to power access, has opened a global dimension of the phenomenon.4 This perspective has also introduced the awareness of a different ascendancy of migratory policies on men and women.5 The transition to a relational and performative gaze on gender identities6 has given more relevance to subjects and multiple identities. Research approaches to migration have reached increasing complexity as they also consider the possibility of empowerment7 and the experimentation of new roles. As a matter of fact, the migration process is also an ambiguous phenomenon. As a result of the new mobility acquired and the new domestic balance, migration could become a gradual means of women’s empowerment. However, access to the labour market remains utterly segmented - firstly as migrants and secondly as women. They are limited to low-level jobs, often built upon gender distinction, and to work-related spaces traditionally assigned to women, such as the domestic and sexual spheres, care for the elderly and childcare. The high female presence in these sectors inevitably supports gender stereotypes and creates a market organised on criteria pertaining to gender and ethnicity. The symbolic and wide overlapping of gender and national origin in these sectors modifies not only the ways these women are imagined by society, but also the way they present themselves to the community. The interrelation between these women’s condition as migrants and the discussion of gender roles, entrenched by stereotypes and the ethnic segmentation of global economic policy, is considered a shaping force in modelling sentimental encounters. For these reasons, the importance of a perspective which would capture both the structural and the subjective dimension of gender has led me to choose couples in which the female partners work or worked in carerelated jobs or the sex market. Literature on this topic is flourishing even in the Italian context. There are two approaches that are mainly used. The first one could be considered a macroscopic perspective, considering the global division of the job market and of the care market.8 The global 4

Sassen, “Città globali e circuiti di sopravvivenza”, 236. Grieco and Boyd, “Women and Migration”. 6 Butler, Gender Trouble. 7 Morokvasic, “Migration, Gender, Empowerment”. 8 Ehrenreich and Hochschild, Donne Globali. Tate, colf e badanti. 5

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division of reproductive labour entails different access to economy and power and ethnic and gender intersectionality.9 The other branch examines the internal dynamic of domestic work and the relationship between employer and worker.10 The presence of female migrant workers in Italy suggests some elements regarding the roles they played in national economies and in gender-related changes. The Welfare State’s decline, mainly in Southern Europe has placed the social reproduction burden on families. Longer life spans and progressive population ageing have been the reasons for bringing the relative quality of life to higher standards of care. The pressing demand for external support for the elderly, child care and domestic service in general has been absorbed by migrant women. A key role has also been played by gender transformations. The growth of women’s participation in the job market has not been combined with a parallel restructuration of the domestic division of labour, such work remaining a female prerogative. The increasing double presence of women both in and outside the home has pushed many to ask for external help. The women’s need to work is a reason for the requirement of support being granted by other women, from abroad. Gaining a different work role and still contributing to their position in the household could only be possible by giving custody of their loved ones to other women; shaping what has been defined as a care chain11 or transnational Welfare.12 In order to accommodate and summarise all these tensions, the theoretical frame proposed by Pessar and Mahler could be an important instrument for discussing the positions of sentimental relations born in this context13. The model called Gendered Geographies of Power looks at migration from a gender perspective, considering: 1) social and geographical spaces shaped by gender (bodies, family, State); 2) the building of individual social location, from the possibilities of the individual thinking about him/herself and organising his/her practices in keeping with the hierarchy of ethnic belonging, sexuality and ethnicity (but also age, skills, etc); 3) power hierarchies, in which individual positions are modelled by different types of access to power and which act by modifying the social actors’ agency.

9

Andall, Gender, Migration and Domestic Service. Parrenas, Servants of Globalization. 11 Hochschild, “Global Care Chains and Emotional Surplus Value”,131. 12 Pastore and Piperno, “Welfare Transnazionale”, 2. 13 Pessar and Mahler, “Gender and Transnational Migration”, 5-9. 10

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The perspective of the present study is not merely a reflection on statistical results,14 which show that more Italian men are sentimentally involved with foreign women than vice versa. The area of inquiry has been Val Vibrata in the Teramo district (Abruzzo), which occupies - both geographically and economically - a middle position between the southern and the northern parts of Italy. Over the past few years, this area has experienced fast economic development (even if it is affected by an economic crisis today), marked by petty capitalism and a post-Fordism scenario. For this reason, the area attracts the highest number of foreign citizens, mainly female ones, from abroad compared to the whole territory.15 As regards the data on marriages between Italian men and foreign women, the striking point is their number is much higher than that of marriages between Italian women and foreign men. At the time of this research, ISTAT16 spoke about 15% (36,918)17 of the total amount of marriages in which at least one of the partners had different citizenship. 7.6% of marriages are between Italian men and foreign brides. The reverse phenomenon (Italian women married to foreign citizens) is much less intensive, representing only 2.9%.18 The brides’ countries of origin are the same as those of the migrant women, i.e. European Union, Eastern European countries and countries in Latin America. The two large geopolitical areas are far from being comparable, but even if the complexity of the picture is undeniable, they are linked as out-migration zones from which migrant women often find, in Southern Europe, similar access to the labour market, in care-related jobs or as sex workers. The field hypothesis was to verify the intersection of the two issues, heterogamy and women’s migration flows, and to see how they influence each other in the case of sentimental relations. In order to study the overlapping of the two phenomena, I decided to conduct, within an ethnographic approach, open-ended interviews with 17 couples, using a biographical method with both partners. Six of the couples included

14

It is important to note that statistical data on mixed unions are underestimated because they do not consider common law couples too, which, indeed, as I could notice from the field, are numerous. 15 The main proveniences are Albany (5,364), Romania (4,543) and China (3,033). 16 Italian National Institute of Statistics. 17 Istat, “Il matrimonio in Italia”, 4. 18 In Abruzzo, the average is quite similar: the 7.9% represents marriages between Italian men and foreign women and the reverse is around 1.9%.

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women from Central and South America and the rest (eleven couples) from Eastern Europe.19 For these reasons, the coordinates of the first meeting are not casual and they put in question rules of social action as regards the preference for or disfavour of specific areas to which possible partners may belong. But it also indicates the condition of the individual as ascribable to the status of being “a partner.” Exogamy will be specified by the existence of any area of nationality, class, language and age (excluding the one to which the respondents belong) which is frequently preferred, as well as of other areas where their inclination is impeded, even if only on a symbolic level. For this reason, I will consider the migratory project and a gender perspective as key terms of my thesis, intending to show which spaces (geographical, symbolical, and temporal) are involved in these phenomena. What does it mean for the new couples if the first encounter usually takes place in a private house where the women work? Why is there a huge age difference between the partners? I will address and analyse which spaces are traversed by these new couples, starting from their first meeting, and what effects these have on the organisation of the new couples. Firstly, I considered the location of their first meeting place. 11 couples met at their workplaces, which included four categories: private houses, night clubs, factories and restaurants. These four workplaces reflect a gender-based difference: the former two attract mostly feminine employees, the latter two are spaces where both women and men work. The geography/place of the first meeting soon reveals that the place of work is not a neutral factor but a relevant space to start a relationship. The possibilities of sentimental encounters in these cases are determined by the actual opportunities for migrant women to start friendships that lead to love both during and outside working hours. I will show, with the help of some excerpts from the interviews, how the first encounter in a factory or a restaurant tends to be narrated and what it can reveal about the constitution of the couples.

19

11 Women come from Eastern Europe, more specifically: 1 from Croatia, 1 from Russia, 3 from Bulgaria, 4 from Poland, 2 from Romania. 6 women come from Central and South America: 1 from Mexico, 1 from Bolivia, 1 from Uruguay, 1 from Venezuela, 1 from the Dominican Republic.

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How did you meet? (Monika, Bulgaria) “My husband and I had a casual first meeting He came to the restaurant where I worked. At the very first moment, I didn’t consider him or look at him. Nothing. “Please,” (he said) “give me your number”, but I didn’t want to because, you know, there’re always the same people who check you out as a single girl, and they want only to seduce you. He left his number, after a while I decided to write to him and after a period of time our story began, but nobody would have imagined that we would be a couple, get married and have a child. Everything happened by chance, nothing was programmed, and no one knew it beforehand. It happened, that’s all.”

Just like in a restaurant, some had their first encounter in a factory, where it is possible for foreign women to work with Italian men. This is where Evelina, from Poland, met her future partner. Like in the previous extract, in this story the male partner seems to have been more active. The meeting overlapped with the personal job history of Evelina, though there was a subtle shift that was often noticed, which is part of the reason they became a couple. Migration experiences and jobs worked at during them may represent the frame of circumstances surrounding a couple’s birth. How did you meet? (Evelina, Poland) “In a factory. I worked with bags and he came to pick them up. We’ve known each other since then. One time he asked me: “Do you like motor bikes?” “Yes I do like them,” I answered. We made one trip, then another one. At that time I was almost anorexic, I worked a lot, day and night, at the factory and as a care giver in private house. I was under stress. I was very tired but I needed to work and I told myself “I will eat later and later...” but then I met him, I started eating... I started loving him. He has helped me.”

A different place for a first meeting may be a private house or, in a similar respect, a night club. They are meaningful places, firstly because they are workspaces where only (or mainly) women are employed. Four couples have met in private houses as workers, and at the moment of the encounter, all the women were living in the house where they worked in eldercare (as badanti), as baby sitters or domestic servants, reflecting the trend of domiciliary work in the care market. This is a deeply connoted space where pre-industrial work relations coexist with flexibility, job insecurity and personal involvement, typical of post-Fordism. The house is, furthermore, associated in western culture with something to rent as a

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living space, it is a seat of privacy and feelings, and not a place to do business or have a business relationship in. For these reasons, the boundaries of the job profile are always threatened by an excess of emotional engagement with the person who receives care and, at the same time, by the possibilities of isolation and exploitation. The ambiguousness of family connections could absorb the worker, obliged to communication based on helpfulness and emotionality. At the same time, the house is a special place with a proper geography, a proper outside and inside: nobody could enter it accidentally. It is not a place open to everyone (even if there is the presence of a worker there, as discussed in this case), and people who get in are linked by personal connections. It is a space which exposes the migrant woman to a close relationship with Italians, even if these could be limited to a group of relatives and neighbours of the elderly person. There is a certain social exposure of the professional figures of servant women, whose relational skills and emotions are required, and the payees. These elements are deeply connected with the workers’ gender identity. A woman is one who gives care, thinks through how she feels and is a care depository for her beloved and for others. This exposure is also determined by the migrant’s identity: isolation often coexists with the supposition that the migrant women’s life projects are addressed only to earn money, that they are full of self-abnegation, sacrificing their privacy and their rights. At the same time, the nature of a migrant woman’s work demands a certain degree of deep intimacy with her employer. Family gatherings are often inclusive, raising the prospect of women becoming part of the familial group, with unexpected consequences. The house meetings are very often led or organised by third persons (neighbours, the kinship network), who play the role of intermediaries and introduce the female migrant into the house of the male partner. Let us consider some of these cases: (Carmela, Colombia) “I was taking care of my sister’s mother-in-law and I remember that he stopped there once with his cousin’s husband. Why did you stop there?” (Davide) “Ehhh I don’t remember... how could I remember? I was there by chance.” (Carmela, Colombia) “Surely they said: here’s a foreign woman, here’s a girl and surely, curious as they are…you know…” (Davide) “No, no… It was not for this reason that we had dropped by. Not for this reason!!” (Carmela, Colombia) “However, after that day, just like that, he would come by the house to meet me, get in and start chatting, but... It wasn’t me who started the relationship at the beginning!”

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The second case is similar: (Maria, Uruguay) “I was working with a child. He used to work in the field. There was Ninetta, his parents’ relative, who was an old woman and saw me. Because he wasn’t married yet (he was an old man, 37 years old), she said, “Fernando passed by and he looked at me,” but I didn’t realise anything.” (Fernando) “Wait. I was working on the lorries and she was very far away. I did look at her. When I returned home, the phone rang, Ninetta was on the line and she said: “If you want to speak to the one you were looking at... come to where she lives.” Who had I been looking at?? “The girl wallking by with the child.” I hadn’t seen anyone…” (Maria) “He saw me!!” (Fernando) “I ate and Ninetta said, “I will go with you to the house, I will show you where it is.” I went there, she was playing with the child. I introduced myself. The old woman made me enter: “Come, come, go in!!” It was 2 p.m. and I came out at 2 a.m.!!”

These stories are similar for different reasons. Maria and Carmela excite curiosity in the little community for two reasons. Firstly for being strangers and secondly because of their gender, for being young women. They are looked upon as available bodies, reported about to other people, and their arrival in the community (potentially dangerous, as they are very different) is circumscribed to a way of knowledge led by relatives and friends who justify the approach. There is no casualness, even if both David and Fernando try to suggest it. They were both introduced into the domestic space where women were working by a third person, and this reduced not only the distance between roles and spaces, but also the cultural gap. Even in these stories women seem to occupy a passive role; an indepth analysis of the interviews would reveal that theirs is a strategy, in De Certeau’s sense,20 which stresses their behaviour aimed exclusively at work. But even more important, it is a way to rebut accusations of a union of convenience. We can consider the night club just like we considered the private house. The former is a place that by its nature determines the exposure of working women to encounters. Even more, it is a place where the job fosters an encounter between the genders, as there is an atmosphere of sexual willingness and pseudo-erotic company. Two couples met in this place. During their interviews, the women’s jobs and their meeting places

20

De Certeau, L'Invention du Quotidien, 59-90.

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were sort of taboo, associated with the stigma of prostitution and the thin boundaries between show business and sex work. Encounters in these job places are characterised by special emotional labour, as suggested by Hochshild,21 for these are jobs where a key role is played by ‘feeling control’ and the correct management of emotions. We could start by the suggestion - offered by the Italian scholar Gaia Peruzzi’s analysis22 - that there should be a correlation between social work and the tendency to sentimental entwinement. The paradox that a similar conclusion puts in question is how the overlapping between a job identity based on “feminisation” and the exacerbation of gender characteristics could influence these relations, and how social actors could emancipate themselves. For the moment, we could say that the interviewed men said they had fallen in love with their partners exactly because of the elements that made them suitable for care or because they belonged to the sex labour market. The encounters take place in spaces which establish the frame in which the couple will develop. These places are, indeed, connoted by representations of migrant women. At the same time, these spaces are socialised and socialising because of a crossing network of relatives, coworkers, friends and neighbours. After spaces, it would be useful reflect upon ages of encounter. Analysing the ages at the moment of the first encounter, we could give both a geographical and a temporal extension to the space of exogamic choice. The biographical data analysis of the sample and the comparison with the statistical data on homogamic unions would cause one to question the ways in which the respondents could represent their ideal partners and how this could influence the development of the couple. The age average at the first meeting is 42.7 years old for men and 34 years old for women. The age difference is 8.4 years. Compared to the Italian average,23 the age is 33.0 for men and 29.9 for women, and specifically in Abruzzo, the district of research, it is 33 for men and 30 for women. This element reflects two pivotal trends in the life histories 21

Hochschild, The Managed Heart. Peruzzi, Amori possibili, 102-108. 23 Data come from Istat, “Caratteristiche dei matrimoni”. Age averages are quite different according to different areas of national origins. The couples where the woman comes from Central and South America have a higher age gap, of 9 years. By contrast, where the woman comes from Eastern Europe, the age gap is lower, 1-2 years. The younger age of women also reminds us that many of them come from area where age at the first marriage is lower. This could be the reason why many couples are born after a previous relationship or marriage. 22

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collected: most of these are second marital experiences, that is, the encounters happen between separated, divorced and widowed persons. The second issue is the high presence of unmarried women and older men. Age difference in the collected data is quite high but it is even higher in specific cases. In 7 couples it is over 10 years old, with a maximum of 20 years. Age difference is usually not directly considered a problem source for the couple, but there is always a discussion by social actors about society’s reactions and there is concern about silent sanctions from the community towards an imbalanced union. An example about the meanings of these differences could come from the history of Elena (38) married to Armando (48): (Elena, Romania) “Many women who come here from Romania do not tell the reality of their lives to the people here. Someone finds a man who is 70-80 years old, he dies in 1-2 years and she’ll get everything from him. But it’s not always like that, because for me, marrying a man like that… I can’t accept it. With my husband, we have a 10-year age difference between us. Is it too much? Probably... Then when I cross the streets and people ask me “Are you his daughter?, Is he your grandfather?,” and worse, if your children are his grandchildren… It’s a mess!!! You need to stand your ground… there’s a scale for marriage, even in marriage there’s a scale. A woman who is 50 years old and marries a 65-year old man is acceptable, they are the same more or less …because everyone becomes senile at that age, but you know a 35-year old woman wants to dance, go around, and the old man can’t move, then maybe they’ve gone too far.”

There exists, in both perceptions and practices, a proper age of feelings. This builds a hierarchy of values denoted by age, according to which relationships are evaluated. Actually it is not the age difference that is dangerous for the couple but the values it carries. The negative image Elena describes puts in question the identity representations of individuals according to age, whose inversion reverses the given symbolic meanings. It also mentions a vision of the couple as a space of interchanges, of material goods but above all of identities, which is a recent way of looking at the couple. A relationship is represented as a parity space, where the link between the parts, as individuals, must be as egalitarian as possible. For this reason, an age gap would represent a lack of balance for personal identity, for one’s own needs. This idea about couples and relationships is quite recent and historically situated. This new type of relations is characterised by equality between members and a sense of fulfilment for those involved. Concepts such as engagement and intimacy are central to it. It is impossible not to

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call to mind the reflections of Kauffman24 and Giddens25 upon these issues. All the words, idiomatic expressions and sentences in the interviews display the feeling of freedom, stressing the idea of the casualty of the encounter. The choice of a partner does not follow rules, and theoretically everyone could choose and freely create their own sentimental paths. The rhetoric of spontaneous and unselfish romantic love is proudly affirmed by the actors. Material or symbolical profits which could call into question the spontaneity of passion are eschewed. According to these ideals, the couples in question are not dissimilar to same nationality couples, but there are elements which mark the difference. First of all, whilst recounting their history, more women than men incline to emphasise that theirs are far from self-absorbed or devious behaviours, like deliberately planning the relation to gain a higher status. This is not to claim that migrant women are more inclined to romantic love ideals, but instead to reflect upon the common idea that migrant women do not share this ideal at all. Using Elena’s metaphor, the street, the society frowns upon relations which reveal an inequity among the parties. Migrant women are subjected to two big stigmas. The sentimental relation is often suspicious because the higher legal vulnerability of a female migrant’s status is often associated with the idea of the male partner getting duped so that she may obtain legal and material benefits. This stereotype is pivotal to all the narratives. For this reason, evoking the element of chance, falling in love at first sight, even in cases where it is hard to hide the mediation of a third party, is a defensive strategy. Mixed couples are often targets of social disapproval, even more so when there is an age gap between the spouses. Another example comes from Monika, who also speaks of a “right age” and about her first announcement to her parents. (Monika, Bulgaria) “My parents were glad, they reacted naturally… because I was a certain age and it was logical that after staying here all these years it was probable, even logical that I would have found a boyfriend here, not there. They took it easily for the fact that I talk Turkish, I was 30 years old. It was normal and they were happy.”

The first exposure of the couple to its network of relatives could be a source of conflicts but may be softened by the age of the partner.

24 25

Kauffmann, Sociologie du couple. Giddens, The Transformation of Intimacy.

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The stereotype of the avid woman who uses her youth and beauty also appears in this other conversation with Sophia, 25 years old (married to Roberto, 46 years old). What are your close friends’ opinions about you as a couple?? (Sophia, Romania) “They say that I am with him for his money... maybe the Italians also think the same about me... this is the only way people think... especially if there is an age gap… but if I have to stay with a man only for his money, I don’t need to search for him in another country, Romania has quite big cities with people of all nationalities. I didn’t need to come here.”

The marriage market is not a closed space, with given boundaries; however, it is the individual inside the market who creates the boundaries in relation to their values.26 Changing individual values to access the marriage circuit entails modifying and creating other preferences. This produces a double tendency: on one hand, the differences within the individuals and the couples interviewed mark spaces of exclusion for partner choice, but on the other hand, they show new spaces, where values should obtain new validation. This idea could be validated considering also the histories regarding older single men. The union is in some way organised by relatives, but in the sense that they find a potential partner in the single migrant woman, who is young, far away from her family and, for some time (as in our case), available to stay in the arrival country. Using Bourdieu’s word’s, “les plus défavorisés peuvent être condamnès a étendre l’aire gèographique pour compenser la restriction sociale de l’aire sociale dans laquelle ils peuvent trouver des partenaires.”27 Some topics emerge from the narratives as relevant. The first refers to couple-timing, which underlines the fortuity and the contingence of the first meeting. The second one is connected to the woman’s condition as being alone (or perceived as alone) in a foreign country. The third is connected to the job. The women interviewed often told me that their job was of primary interest and the migrant project would exclude other experiences. Their representation of themselves as workers has a double role. On one hand, the particular economic and legal frame of the national states of Southern Europe pushes immigrants and, specifically, immigrant women to be represented only by their job as a 26 27

Sinibaldi, «Com’è la vite ci metti ‘u palo». Bourdieu, Le bal des célibataires, 234.

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way to obtain rights and respect. On the other hand, speaking of themselves as workers often means not wishing to betray the migrant project, the expectations of their family members about migration, as organised and undertaken in order to support the family. These two elements are very important in shaping the sentimental relation, because the woman’s position is always pressured in between these needs and the decision to start a relation which could bring the migrant project to an end through her permanent settlement in the migrant country. These three big macro subjects recur often in the interviews and also mark the daily practices of the couples. The further choices of the couples, to marry or have a common-law marriage will often be the result of mediation between obtaining civil rights and being recognised as a sincere union. For this reason, self-presentations lay emphasis on choice. The necessary commitment of the women to bridging the gap created by their definitive absence from their homelands (the relation with these men from the host country may reinforce their separation from their relatives) could bring about new forms of connectedness, with the birth of or re-union with children, through transnational maternity. The ethnographic sample reflects a wider trend, where mainly men are attracted by an exogamic relationship. The first encounter is not only the result of the superior presence - in quantitative terms - of migrant women in the territory, often employed in jobs that are more socially exposed and more in contact with Italian society. The interviewees tell about these women and men openly searching for an ideal partner, as the high number of dating websites specialised in meeting foreign woman shows. It is essential to remember that the areas from where the potential female partners come are the same as those in which migration flows originate. Because of this, partner choice is the also result of the overlapping between the political and social dimensions of migration, and “Otherness” derives from hierarchical access to society. The representation of “Otherness” is a blend of gender representation and racism, intersecting in unexpected ways. The foreign woman is presented through two huge and recurring macro-portrayals. The first insists on hyper-womanliness and old-fashioned femininity, with features of meekness, while the second highlights an erotically available body. In your opinion, why are there so many Italian men looking for non-Italian women? (Livio, married to a Russian woman) “Because women from Eastern Europe are more uninhibited... and also because of the Eastern women’s appeal. They’re of the Slavic race, they’re tall, beautiful, nice figures. And

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then there’s the fact that they are foreign. Generally the man feels stronger when you are an immigrant, and I’m bigger than you, but this fact makes the Slavic woman more appreciable, because with Russian women it’s not like this, they are stronger than you. At home, my wife is in charge.”

Women’s bodies are rewritten as erotic and as a space of power. A geography comes out in relief, where the partners’ homelands are outlined by the men’s desires, or as Nicole Constable notes, “sites of desire that are formed by confluences of culture, border crossings, exchanges, and fluid terrain.”28 In opposition to this first representation, another one appears with a different but complementary feature which speaks about hypermasculinised women. They are seen as deceitful and avid, with an active sexuality, used as an instrument of fraud. In opposition with the sweet housekeeper there is the prostitute. Closely related to the more pronounced masculinity of some women, the men in mixed couples are often described as passive and submissive to the wives (or to the mothers), or as violent and backward Italian men. Two spheres of representation are at work in the couple, strong stigmas often used by the society or by the kin group in approaching the new relations. This does not mean there are no possible cases of fictitious unions, merely for the sake of documents, or cases of domestic violence. What I want to bring to light is the strategic use of stereotypes. Inversions or subversions are used to reverse complementary representations and produce different practices and discourses. One of the strategic and located practices is that adopted by someone who tactically identifies himself with a stereotype. Frequently narratives reveal the imbalance characterising gender relations, and the gap caused by feminists and the women’s movements seems to be bridged by the arrival of foreign women. This does not coincide with the practice of the couple, which could be completely opposite and propose new gender roles, also due to the empowerment reached through migration and to the different gender balance experiences of foreign women in our country. It is interesting to see that for men and women in mixed couples, the support offered by similar narratives is often a way to justify themselves and find a frame shared with the society, for an exogamic choice is always at risk of becoming a source of scandal. (Evelina, Poland) “Why do Italian men look for foreign women? There is a reason. Italian women want too much, they want to exploit men. We are 28

Constable, “Cross-Border Marriages,” 7.

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Sentimental Relations among Italian Men and Migrant Women used to working and preparing meals when our husband comes back from work. We let a man feel as a man should, as the head of the house, as the master. So the poor Italian also feels better.”

The social actors of the couple are engaged in the management of multiple stereotypes. It is not only a flux of power which determines them, but also the mental efforts undertaken by the partners, who reject attempts to be made essential and the others’ interpretation of them as mere instruments. In conclusion the boundaries within which men and women move create a new space that responds to an enlargement of the marriage area in Central Italy, with different and multiple tendencies. The arrival of women from elsewhere, who work in the territory, produces a little paradox, connected to migration and its role in the society of arrival. Meeting places are crossed by women as workers and by men as employers or clients. Thus, exogamic areas are broadened but attendance spaces are not extended. Workplaces become not only encounter spaces but also give shape to the circumstances in which encounters happen. The cultural distance from the countries from which these women come creates an ambiguous dimension with uncertain boundaries. The stereotypes and the representations of foreign women are barely concealed. Theirs is a close, mediated otherness, but stereotypes could be an instrument turned in their favour. The creation of spaces of alliance on territorial preference is fulfilled in complex ways. Foreignness is connected to a relative closeness given, for example, by work identity, in which gender and ethnicisation could establish frontiers of choice. Contemporary couples occupy both the inside and the outside of the genealogical and social space. The inside - because the daily presence of foreign women in work spaces and their insertion in local kin networks, even if sometimes fought against, represent a reality which modifies the dynamics of family making. The couples are deeply entrenched in the local marriage dynamics and they are part of kinship transformations. They are inside also given the representation of closeness narrated by the two partners, who present the exogamic choice as an answer to transformations affecting gender relations in Italy. But these couples are also located outside society. Being a foreigner and a migrant is perhaps more acutely felt by the couple, whose dynamics and inner reorganisation reflects, in some ways, the experience of the migrant subject in the national public space. At the same time, as a transnational couple, they may project themselves elsewhere, where the difference is a source of social and cultural capital, for example for their offspring. The mixed couple is engaged with field strength. The creation of stereotypes which

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use the terms of national difference could be a way to reduce the scandal and move the discussion of individual rights against a broader background. The ways couples meet actually reveal something more about love in our societies. The little intermediations, the encounters staged by the groups of relatives or fostered by gender imaginings and Orientalism29 and all the ways to rationalise exogamic choices put in question the element of free individual will which seems to be the only frame of sentimental relationships. We can speak about the higher exposure of mixed couples in comparison with other “homogamic” couples, which foregrounds and reveals what is usually private and concealed, namely other ideals that are no less persuasive, such as romantic love and spontaneous feelings and relationships.

References Andall, Jacqueline. Gender, migration and domestic service. The politics of black women in Italy. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000. Andall, Jacqueline, and Raffaella Sarti. eds. “Servizio domestico migrazioni e identità di genere in Italia dall’Ottocento ad oggi.” Polis/ʌȠȜȚı,18 (2004). Anthias, Floya, and Gabriella Lazaridis eds. Gender and migration in Southern Europe. Women on the move. Oxford: Berg, 2000 Bourdieu, Pierre. Le bal des célibataires. Crise de la société paysanne en Béarn. Paris: Edition du Seuil, 2002. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. New-York-London: Routledge, 1990. Catanzaro, Raimondo, and Asher Colombo. Badanti & Co. Il lavoro domestico straniero in Italia. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2009. Constable, Nicole. “Cross-Border Marriages, Gendered Mobility, and Global Hypergamy.” In Cross-Border Marriages; Gendered Mobility, and Global Hypergamy in Transnational Asia, edited by Nicole Constable, 1-16. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania. 2005. De Certeau, Michel. L'Invention du Quotidien. Paris: Union générale d'éditions, 1980. Ehrenreich, Barbara, and Arlie R. Hochshild eds. Donne Globali. Tate, colf e badanti. Milano: Feltrinelli 2004. Gabaccia, Donna. Introduction to Seeking common ground; Multidisciplinary studies of immigrant women in the U.S., edited by Donna Gabaccia, xixvi. Westport: Praeger, 1992. 29

Said, Orientalism.

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Giddens, Anthony. The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love, and Eroticism in Modern Societies. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992. Grieco, M. Elizabeth, and Monica Boyd. “Women and Migration: Incorporating Gender Into International Migration Theory.” In Migration Information Source Washington, D.C.: Migration Policy Institute. 2003. Accessed May 22, 2013. http://www.migrationinformation.org/Feature/display.cfm?id=106 Hochschild, Arlie R. “Global care chains and emotional surlplus value.” In On the edge: Living with the global capitalism, edited by Will Hutton, and Anthony Giddens, 130-136. London: Jonathan Cape, 2000. Hondagneu-Sotelo, Pierrette. “Gendering Migration: Not for feminists only and not only in the household.” Working Paper Series 363 (2005). Istat. “Il matrimonio in Italia”, Last modified April 8, 2010. Accessed March 16, 2011. http://docs4.istat.it/www/wpcontent/uploads/2010/11/testointegrale201 00408.pdf?title=Il+matrimonio+in+Italia+-+08%2Fapr%2F2010++testointegrale20100408.pdf Istat. “Caratteristiche dei matrimoni: indicatori sintetici regionali, in Istat, Il matrimonio in Italia”, Last modified 2010. Accessed March 16, 2011. http://docs4.istat.it/www/wpcontent/uploads/2010/11/testointegrale201 00408.pdf?title=Il+matrimonio+in+Italia+-+08%2Fapr%2F2010++testointegrale20100408.pdf Kauffmann, Jean-Claude. Sociologie du couple. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1993. Kofman, Eleonore. “Female birds of passage a decade later: gender and immigration in the European Union.” International Migration Review 2 (1999): 269-299. Massey, Douglas. Space, Place and Gender. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1994. Morokvasic, Mirjana. “Migration, Gender, Empowerment.” In Gender Orders Unbound. Globalisation, Restructuring and Reciprocity, edited by Ilse Lenz, Charlotte Ullrich, and Barbara Fersch, 67-97. Farmington Hills: Barbara Budrich Publishers, 2007. Parreñas, Rachel S. Servants of Globalization: Women, Migration and Domestic Work. Stanford: Stanford University, 2001. Peruzzi, Gaia. Amori possibili. Le coppie miste nella provincia italiana. Milano: Franco Angeli, 2008. Pessar, Patricia. R., and Sarah J. Mahler. “Gender and transnational migration.” Paper presented at the International Conference,

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Transnational migration: comparative perspective, of Princeton University, Princeton, 30 June-1 July, 2001. Accessed March 14, 2012. . Pastore, Ferruccio, and Flavia Piperno. “Welfare transnazionale. Un ambito strategico di intervento per la cooperazione decentrata?” Cespi, discussion paper (2006). Accessed June 8, 2011. http://www.cespi.it/SCM/strand2/welfare%20transnazionalePiperno.pdf Said, Edward. Orientalismo. L’immagine europea dell’Oriente. Milano: Feltrinelli, 2002. Sassen, Saskia. “Città globali e circuiti di sopravvivenza.” In Donne Globali. Tate, colf e badanti, edited by Barbara Ehrenreich, and Arlie R. Hochshild, 233-253. Milano: Feltrinelli, 2004. Signorelli, Amalia. Migrazioni ed incontri etnografici. Palermo: Sellerio, 2006. Sinibaldi, Silvia. “«Com’è la vite ci metti ‘u palo» La mediazione matrimoniale tra uomini toscani e donne calabresi (1959-1990).” In La mediazione matrimoniale. Il terzo (in)comodo in Europa tra Otto e Novecento, edited by Wanroij Bruno. Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2004.

WIVES AND MIGRANTS— MOTIVATION, ADVANTAGES AND CHALLENGES: FIVE CASE STUDIES CRISTINA TÎRHA‫ ܇‬AND VIOREL SÎRCA

The goal of the research The main purpose of our exploratory research is to examine, in a qualitative manner, the processes whereby Romanian women “married to foreigners” attempt to cope with the problems of old-new identity and the cultures to which they belong as Romanians migrating to various host countries. In this study we will tackle the experience of migration through the lens of a female perspective, selecting five Romanian women who are married to foreign citizens and are currently living in Germany, Italy, Jordan, Greece, and Syria. All these women had at least one child and at least three years of marriage at the time of the research (2012). The starting point of this research is the manner in which these women, who are “married to foreigners,” structure their new lives. Our analysis consists in qualitative interviews applied to five emigrant Romanian subjects married to “foreigners.” Three of the women are married to European citizens and live in EU countries, while the other two have spouses from the Middle East, where they emigrated (Syria and Jordan, respectively). The in-depth interview method should provide a comparative insight into the mixed marriages between Romanian women and foreign citizens, by highlighting various themes characteristic of such life events; the method will also allow us to take into account the evaluation of their married life after a couple of years spent as wives and migrants. The resolve to migrate, its motives, the way it is translated into action, the encounter with the country of destination, the different manners of settling into it, the way one adjusts to changes and the stages one goes through, together with the ensuing psychological processes ௅ all constitute various parameters of the more or less predictable biographical trajectory

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of these individuals. In the case of immigration prompted by marriage, the decision-making process is, indeed, a very personal one. Using a qualitative perspective, the particular goals of this study are: to identify the ways these women perceive the collective identity of the new society into which they have been absorbed and the level of their identification with it or with parts of it at various times ௅ from their immigration to the moment of our research; to explore the impact of this new identity on their inclusive identities and the different interactions between their old and new “selves.” The research deals with the implications of immigration upon the migrants’ integration stages and (changing) identities within the context of feminine gender. The study will describe the way in which adaptation leads to the construction of new self-identities, which are developed and formed through several social-demographic variables (the subject’s age at the moment of emigration, work skills, and family balance), and will emphasise the events that have a bearing on the experiences of migration, in experiential terms.

Theoretical background Relating to social processes and the personal struggle of the migrant individual within society, the majority of the classical sociological and psychological approaches are focused on theories and concepts such as the theory of conflict, which explains migration through inter-group conflict, or the psychoanalytical approach, which describes migration as a significant experience of separation and loss. Until three decades ago, just a small number of studies were interested in the ways in which new individual identifications and identities are created following migration, neglecting the differences between migrants of various types, affected by diverse pull-push factors, such as the political and social issues in both their origin countries and the absorbing countries. A turning point has occurred in the last thirty years, when a large number of studies have started to show the mechanisms and effects of the immigrant’s self-image construction and self-confidence upon the new social reality represented by the host country. A few decades ago, the lack of research on the psycho-sociological factors of migration (centred on individuals who had experienced it) was detrimental to the development of a theoretical and conceptual framework. The perspective on individualsocial interrelations characterised by the concept of “cultural absorption”

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began to lose its influence during the 1970s1: other concepts, such as “cultural interweaving,” “cultural contact,” “acculturation,” “cultural diversity,” “dialogue,” and “multi-cultural identity” seems to have replaced it completely,2 as a mark of the paradigmatic change in the social and psychological sciences. These new approaches were the expression of a new direction manifested both in the research field and in the society’s outlook: the acceptance of alterity, the “otherness” of the immigrants which the absorbing society no longer had any intention of assimilating or of ignoring its cultural patterns, but rather tried to establish a dialogue and a comprehensive relationship with it. All this reflected the changes recorded in the value system of the Western societies and, therefore, a series of new studies gave expression to the voice of the immigrant, presenting the immigration process in a different light, mainly by placing the immigrant as an individual at the core of the following issues: the emigration decision based on rational choice, integration, the adaptation process, and the experience of absorption into the new society as the centre of the migration process at an individual level. The main concept of this new research trend is integration, which covers the acculturation process at an individual and micro-group level.3 The integration process implies different meanings for different social actors. The importance of access to education, work, health services, to social protection in general, forms the core of the agreement in governmental policies. Integration includes more than language and work (and work-related benefits). Nevertheless, there are certain problems that are harder to define, involving a mixture of individual and social factors.4 Social participation represents a major stake, particularly for women, many of whom are separated by marriage from their own origin-families, sometimes performing paid work and having a new family in a (new, even strange) host society. The other important concept used in our analysis is the identity change of the individual due to immigration. Both individual and social identities are involved in this twofold process.5 A central component of a person’s identity is the sense of belonging, constructed and developed within a person from an early stage over the entire course of one’s life.6 In part, the act of emigration breaks off the ordinary process of enculturation within 1

Triandis, Social Behaviour, 19-23. Negy et al.., “Ethnic Identity,” 335-6. 3 Negy et al., 341. 4 For the contemporary challenges to European integration, related to cultural diversity and common policies, see Zetterholm, National Cultures. 5 See Tajfel and Turner, “The Social Identity Theory,” 13-14. 6 See Lickel et al., “Varieties of Groups - Group Intuitivity,” 224, 227. 2

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the culture in which one grew up and learned to behave according to its values in a natural way,7 turning it into an acculturation process.8 Thus, the natural process of enculturation is interrupted and a new, alternative process begins.9 The concept of acculturation strategies10 (see figure 1) is an extension of Berry’s previous concept [1980] of acculturation attitudes.11 They are frequently associated with acculturative stress.12 Figure 1 Acculturative strategies

Low Cultural maintenance of the old culture

separation

marginalisation

High integration

assimilation

Cultural adjustment to a new culture Source: adaptated from Berry, “Acculturation and Adaptation in a New Society” 1992, 83

Methodological framework In our case studies, the interpretations are based on qualitative methodology, in which the rational choice paradigm and the acculturation model are used interactively on a continuum in the process of interpreting 7

Hofstede, Cultures and Organizations. First defined by Redfield, “Study of Acculturation,” 149-150. 9 See Berry, “Acculturation and Adaptation.” 10 Created by Berry, “Immigration,” 15-18, 65. 11 Berry, “Acculturation and Adaptation,” 70-71. 12 See Berry et al., “Acculturative Stress”; see also Bourhis et al., “Interactive Acculturation Model,” 380. 8

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the data. Literature13 sees a combination of quantitative and qualitative research as the most suitable approach for examining multifaceted phenomena and recommends using qualitative research with the addition of quantitative findings for a work that has this kind of goals. The pattern of this research implies both perspectives, as we continuously compare the narrative themes identified in our five subjects’ life stories (at the microsocial level) with the results of the quantitative research that was undertaken (at the macro-social level) across a representative sample of European citizens in 2000-200614 and that analyses, among others issues, the attitudes adopted by the native population in the host countries towards immigration and the integration of migrants. In-depth interviews15 were constructed as “narrative interviews.”16 The instrument was an interview guide which enabled us to steer the individual life stories through several major life course items. The interviews with the five Romanian women involved in mixed marriages (married to “foreigners”), now living in other countries than their origin country, consisted of two parts: a narrative part and a complementary interview (a semi-structured part) and were conducted in November 2012 - February 2013. The guided themes of the qualitative interviews were: migration images in the “traditional” collective mental history; the life course perspectives; gender roles; the importance of religion, culture and ethnicity; the married couples’ expectations about their new lives; the values with which work, the education of children, and family are invested; an evaluation of their married life after a couple of years spent as the wives of foreign citizens. Following the tenets of scholarly literature, we have encompassed in our qualitative analysis both individual and community/societal factors that are likely to foster integrative success in the case of an immigration experience: A) The individual level taken into account comprised: age; sex; education, profession; context (family and work); turning point in life; emigration motivations; life course expectations; resources (and/or abilities); values (work, family, children’s education); degree of integration/marginalisation. B) The societal level was approached from a twofold perspective: the society of origin (political context, economic situation, cultural background); the host society (political context, attitudes of the host society - population - towards immigrants, material benefits, and social-cultural differences). 13

Creswell, Research Design; IluĠ, Abordarea calitativă. BIB, PPAS. 15 See Johnson, “In-depth Interviewing,” 122-7. 16 Chase, “Learning to Listen,” 85-92. 14

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The data analysis of the interviewed narratives relies upon two models: the formative model17 and the explanatory model for personal stories.18 The interpretive analysis combines these models, directing each story text in its own way, according to its content, enriching and making the information and its meaning more distinct. In our exploratory study, the research limitations are: a) The sampling size is not large enough to support theoretical generalisations; optimally, this exploratory study should be extended from micro-research to a mezosocial level (by focusing on a representative sample population of Romanian women married to citizens of other countries); b) The fact that other national groups of emigrant women also have identity and integration/adaptation issues that are more or less similar with our five cases of Romanian women narrows, to some extent, the scope of the data obtained herein; better knowledge and a more representative scale image of an extended qualitative approach could be acquired if a comparison were undertaken between this group of Romanian women and other national groups, with a view to highlighting the challenges they face, their level of integration and perceived identity.

Five women: general description and declared level of integration The Romanian women investigated in our case studies are characterised by different social and demographic variables: Table 1 Social and demographic characteristics of the Romanian women married to “foreigners” Subject (A,B,C, D,E)

17 18

Age Married Host for country

Number of children

Education Education level of wife level of husband

A

49

29 years

Germany

1

High school

B

26

3 years

Italy

1

Middle school

Gergen and Gergen, ”Narrative and Self,” 40-4. Kupferberg et al., “Figurative Positioning,” 3-9.

High school Elementary school

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C

32

11 years

Jordan

3

D

30

7 years

Greece

2

E

35

10 years

Syria

4

High school University degree Middle school

University degree Middle school University degree

Source: data collected from semi-structured interviews.

From a subjective point of view (declared perceptions), the integration levels of each woman’s profession are presented below: Table 2 Declared integration level according to women’s professions Subject A. Office worker -High level Subject B. Family (enlarged/ father-in-law) business worker - Medium level Subject C. Housewife - Low level Subject D. Professional (physician) - Medium level Subject E. Domestic worker (handcraft artisan) - Medium level Comment: As we can see, the medium level of perceived integration is quite predominant. The relation between the low level of perceived integration and the lack of a profession (in terms of a formal work place) is obvious in the case of Subject C (the housewife). A high level of integration is relevant for the oldest woman, Subject A (49 years old), who has been married for 29 years and lives in Germany.

Source: data collected from semi-structured interviews, as well as from in-depth interviews for the comment.

Findings based on the life stories: a synthesis of the narratives according to the study’s major themes The life stories mostly focus on the details of how the women under study struggled to cope with the critical economic and social reality in Romania before their emigration, and also on the difficult financial issues of their families in the origin country. These narratives seem to be expressions of survival and defence mechanisms, usually found on a flight-fight continuum, a positive comparison being made between the old and the new home, wherein they try to justify, to themselves, their choice in favour of the emigration solution: “I was in Romania a few months ago – in Turda. And I saw lots of old women trying to sell home-made food around the markets, without a vending stand, just putting it on a carpet in the street. I stopped and asked

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one of them why she did this and she explained to me that all the women I saw were widows or had retired and had a small pension, and that no one wanted to give them jobs. Selling traditionally prepared food was the only option they had to survive, she said. ‘And what about your children?,’ I asked her. ‘They have to earn a living for their families,’ she said. The image of these women has not left me since then. Too little interest for the others’ life in Romania… Why is that? Everyone says to themselves: ‘I’m taking care of my own family’ and then shut the doors to their houses. Let the government take care of others. Whether they are old or sick, we don’t care... And there are no charity organisations, groups that provide assistance, no church associations, nothing. In Jordan, as far as I know from my present life – this kind of situation can’t exist. There is greater sensitivity towards others, caring and honouring the poor and especially the older people.” (Subject C)

It appears that in their life stories, the five Romanian immigrant women choose to reject or deny the situations they were not comfortable with by appealing to social-national reasons. From a personal point of view, they do this so as not to spoil the picture of their personal realities, which most of them described as positive during their interviews (Subjects: B, C, D, E). A slightly different attitude is recorded from Subject A, who got married in Germany almost 30 years ago: “My father’s difficulty was not about coping with the hard economic situation prevailing at that time, but with an inferior status ... because he felt inferior, as an unqualified worker in various factories under the Romanian communist regime. I don’t remember any more outbursts or discussions on this subject later, but I remember that it was a discomfort, a kind of shame back then. But in my childhood, I and my family were not really in financial distress as far as our daily bread went... We knew the good days would come. My marriage in Germany right after I graduated high school, during political hard times, was something like a mobilisation of the whole family. I was unique... My mother took to learning German. She couldn’t speak it but she borrowed a book from a school and, with this and the help of a dictionary, she tried to learn how to speak German to me, and even to write me letters in German. My father was very proud of my marriage, and all the Romanian neighbours have looked at him differently since then. I was a poor Romanian girl who had succeeded in life because I had got married in the West to an ‘original’ German man! Ha!” (Subject A)

The social and economic changes that gradually occurred after the 1989 political turning point resulted in different waves of negative phenomena afflicting the Romanian citizens and the image of the society.

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More than twenty years after the beginning of the large wave of immigration from the former communist countries, less economically developed than the hosting ones, this country seems to be, even today, unprepared for the democratic, Western world. The women in the research group grew up in the context of challenging realities because of their East Europeanness (the communist regime, followed by demographic transition) but despite the literature that exposes a gap between the two different mentalities (Eastern and Western), most of these women do not describe any contradiction concerning this twofold (old and new) identity: “I didn’t realise it at first, when I was young, but the older I grew, the more I began to think that political and social constraints are like a prison for the spirit... especially regarding the overall attitude towards women. I like the freedom of choice that they (Germans) have and that they are not obliged to follow conventional norms regarding their place in society and other such things.” (Subject A)

The difficulties that women went through - individually and as members of the Romanian nation – are mentioned in the narrative. For example, Subject D has confessed that during the first two years abroad, after having obtained a medical university degree in Romania, she deeply felt a wave rejection from the Greek society as a whole: “I felt that I should never have left home and joined my husband but I received strength from my parents’ home and my new husband’s family, of course, encouragements that forced me to go out and do physical work, according to my qualifications at first. My work colleagues, the uneducated ones, called me a ‘Romanian communist’, and saw me as a kind of political spy... for them, Russia and post-communist Romania were one and the same ‘soup.’ But this changed after two long-long years... I became physically sick for a period of time and could not learn the language well, which was a kind of attempt to suppress this undesirable situation. I was a doctor, I wanted to work, to prove who I was, that I could cure and treat Greek patients, as a ‘communist’ Romanian...” (Subject D)

This type of seclusion and lack of interest in the surroundings following the experience of migration reduces the immigrant’s social involvement and functioning. The classical acculturation stages are obviously traversed throughout the migration process of Subject D’s life trajectory. For Subject E (who got married and immigrated to Syria ten years ago), the struggle to cope with “the external world” was resolved by a kind

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of “family orientation.” To expresses her inner strength, she verbalises this strategy in the following words: “I reacted emotionally once... but calmed down later, and my husband’s family was so understanding and helped me a lot to comprehend the new social rules and customs.” (Subject E)

In her description of the event, the narrator adopts formal devices such as repetition and quotation. She repeats concepts, such as ‘inferiority’ or ‘outbursts,’ which acquire a central significance in the narrative and she quotes her husband’s words about the event. For the narrator, these two linguistic resources attest to the importance of the topic they address. Through them, she makes it possible for us to understand that the psychological strength she derived from the Romanian culture and was expressed through silence and restraint in her efforts to cope with a Muslim environment had been undercut by her feelings of inferiority in Syria – the place that was supposed to be her real homeland. This split apparently undermined the Romanian social and national component of her self-image and led to an intensified acculturation effort in her completely new societal and familial context. The same struggle to negotiate between maintaining national identity and adopting family-oriented solutions is reflected in the narratives of Subject A, living in Germany, having emigrated from Romania before 1989; she points out in her story that initially she perceived her original Romanian identity negatively because of the negative experiences she had had about it (i.e. the rejecting attitude adopted by her neighbours and work colleagues). “At that time I also had several negative experiences involving my being an immigrant and sometimes, although not often, I was called a ‘stinking Romanian’ which hurt, but I didn’t let this go too deep. I keep this memory with me so that I won’t forget the process” (Subject A).

On the other hand, her Romanian identity is described positively because of the connection, in her consciousness, with the accepting and supportive treatment she experienced in her new family, which resulted in her completely changed attitude towards the new society: “The family... I really love it, not in the sense that it doesn’t allow one to step outside its norms, but I love the special connection that exists between people. Family is about caring, about responsibility, family teaches you to understand reciprocity and support in their daily forms.”

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This transformation reached its peak when the narrator took the decision to evolve from being just a woman and a wife who accepted the roles positively associated with her identity ௅ to becoming an office worker with a strong professional awareness: “I had a positive experience as an office leader after five years of hard work, and I also thought that the best way I could help run things was through my personal example. I felt that this was an opportunity to be myself.”

Subject A has a stable and prestigious position at her work place, as she declares in the interview, and one adult child, who has his own personal and “successful” life. Since individuals are, among others, defined by their social identities, as social identity theories maintain,19 they tend to strive to achieve positive social identities in order to acquire positive self-esteem. The central position within this global identity is occupied by the newly constituted family, the mixed one, representing an anchor for integration. On the basis of this approach and in the light of the unpleasant experiences some of these women went through, they have chosen their new mixed national identities – which are derived from their old ones as Romanians and their new ones as new citizens of a foreign country, and also as the mothers of culturally mixed children. Subject C, married for 11 years and living in Jordan, says that she has reached success in life by investing in her children’s education, despite the fact that she is a housewife and has no a professional background. Narrator C’s involvement in her own children’s education is expressed here: “I believe in education. This is the supreme way for a person to accomplish one’s potential and to gain the respect of others. I think that people have to examine how far they can go and allow themselves to learn. This is not always inherent to a person’s inclinations – and this is where education should step in. If you mark out clear boundaries for your children, you point them in a certain direction, giving them the pleasure to study, not through coercion but through encouragement, attraction.”

The interpretation here focuses on the compensatory strategy concerning one’s life goals – what she intended to do in her life and did not succeed in at that time is now projected into the goals for her own children’s lives. Concerning integration in a Muslim family and society, Subject C explicitly declares her identification, even now, with the three 19

Tajfel and Turner, “The Social Identity Theory,” 8-21.

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fundamentals she describes as the ethnic-cultural characteristics of a Romanian: “The fact that I am integrated here doesn’t mean that I have abandoned the ideas and rules I grew up with and was educated towards… I strongly identify with them too.”

Concerning the extended family’s prestige, she holds an ambivalent point of view: “I know that in the Western world they don’t appreciate family relations for kinship issues are quite often seen as non-important in the new couple’s life and in the eyes of society.”

Subject E, married for ten years and living in Syria, says in her story that she has found a way to express this identity and that, through it, she can continue to structure the mixture that her family represents, her children being “Romanian-Syrian”: “The process took a number of months and it was excellent. I liked what they did there… Today I am more reserved in my ideas and see the overall complexity. Perhaps I have been influenced by my non-religious education at home, by the more balanced, more open and less religious atmosphere. Lately I have been less concerned with my religious or social identity. Now I am trying to get more in touch with myself, with my individual issues, with my financial independence and my children’s education.” “I want to educate my children in the wider culture and in the Muslim culture, in the Christian culture as well. .... I want to give my children a clear education and not what I think is a collection of nice things. We experienced a crisis during our first years here, when we said: “Enough, we’re packing our things and going back to Romania. We can’t give our daughters the things they need, a good future.” But we have the support of the family here, we have a house, and love. Where could I best raise my children? Probably here. In any case not where I was born (Romania), my parents are very poor, my relatives very selfish, anyway, the entire society is selfish in Romania... we hope we’ll be able to go to Switzerland or America, for the sake of our children’s future.”

She also intends to help others structure their selves. Therefore she talks about her personal example when she brings up the subject of education: “My confidence came… from my ability to serve a personal example,” and later in the interview: “I believe in personal example – it’s the central idea in education.” And as regards influence: “to influence is to bring yourself into that place and, by doing that, to begin to work. This is

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what makes your work important and helps you impart your skills to others.” In terms of personal identity, Subject A declares: “All the values that I grew up with and was educated towards. They are part of me. I also identify with them and even wanted to preserve them and pass them on to my child, which I really did. In Romanian culture, we have a good sense of honesty and friendship, anyway, even though the society is poor and corrupted. Of course there are also some issues that present difficulties for me, mainly those that are based on stereotypes, but now I don’t care about this.”

Subject B (married in Italy for three years) describes herself in such terms as the following: “The approach here is more open. I love and identify with the simple way of life in Italy. I get up in the morning, wash my face, put on something and go out to work in our restaurant. This gives me a feeling of freedom. I know that there are a lot of immigrant women that like to be more elegant, to be coquettish in their dress, in their make-up – but I like the free style, and I fully enjoy it.”

Related to the women’s gender role, Subject B feels more and more attached to what she becomes as an “Italian”: “I like behaviours involved in attitudes towards women. I liked the freedom of choice they had and that they were not obliged to follow the conventional norms concerning their place in society.”

Her outlook on this matter was different from that of her parents and grandparents. We have two subjects who declare their deep sense of belonging to the host society, suggesting a good integration level. These women are the youngest in our study group (26 years old, and 30 years old respectively): “I began to feel Italian and I liked it. At first, this was just a feeling but now I began to think like this.” (Subject B)

In the last section of Subject D’s narrative, she points out the good relations she has formed with Greeks because of the cultural similarities she feels she shares with them. She gives a testimony about this type of personal relationships in a positive light:

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“When I first met my Greek neighbours, I established contact with them quite quickly and I think this is because we had a lot of things in common from a cultural point of view, such as family orientation and relationships, clan relations.” (Subject D)

Subject A declares that her integration in society is mediated by a sense of work: “This is what makes your work significant and that’s how it was with me. And yes, the things you absorb at home do influence you even when you oppose them. I had to change my opinion regarding ‘what a stranger I am and how rejected I feel’ during these long years, through hard and honest work.” (Subject A)

Conclusions Having investigated these women’s perspectives on their own socialeconomic and psychological motivations and perceived outcomes in their marriage, this research has yielded results showing that the problems that can occur may be caused by: adaptation issues in the first years (women subject A, C, E); labour market openness to immigrants (woman subject C, E); a more or less severe perception of social isolation during the first stages of immigration (A, C, D, E). Concerning the women’s education level, the results found striking differences among the investigated women coming from different educational backgrounds: the least educated woman (E), living in a traditional society framed by Muslim rules, reported getting into a social, economic, legal or emotional vacuum or being subordinated as a woman, and having to depend strongly on the husband and his family. Her escape consists in raising and educating her children, and her integration and usefulness are evinced in the familial area. Related to the host country culture (the West European or the Middle East areas), we have found differences pertaining to the husband’s disavowal of his wife’s lifestyle (Subject C), and complaints about religious values, especially concerning the social and religious education expectations for the couple’s children in the Muslim extended families (Subject E), problems resolved in the family after the couple endured a moment of crisis. Associated with this, we have found significant differences between the attitudes they have adopted in the various host countries where these married women have lived and, consequently, between the different education levels of the interviewed women.

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Wives and Migrants—Motivation, Advantages and Challenges

Values and attitudes related to gender roles show that, as a general pattern, a “modern” approach to gender roles and task division is preferred even in mixed couples involving a Romanian wife and a Middle Eastern husband. Results from a comparison between the qualitative results and PPAS Quantitative data conducted in 200720 show, at a descriptive level, that the Population Policy Acceptance Survey data are not basically in contradiction with the opinions of the women included in our study. Four of the interviewed emigrant women (A, B, D, E) perceive that their lives are in the area of permanence and integration. They seem to be satisfied with their married lives and with the host society, having a new identity, which may be a mixed one, but it is nonetheless stable and uncontradictory, without internal antagonisms. These four women feel mostly “at home” in their husbands’ countries and in their “foreign” families, at work and in the community as well. The value of the individual developmental path (the Subject A) presents as “immigrant success story” is illustrative here, in terms of the Western social expectations imposed on a modern, professional woman. The Romanian women’s migration (for marriage and/or work reasons), together with their acculturation process, profoundly affects their family lives, representing equally a challenge to their previous embedded gender roles. These women also have to adjust their values to the dynamics of a new family life and a new culture.

References Atkinson, Rita L. Introduction to Psychology. Orlando: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publishers, 1990. Bayart, Jean-François. The Illusion of Cultural Identity. London: C. Hurst & Company, 2005. Berry, John W. “Immigration, Acculturation, and Adaptation.” Applied Psychology: An International Review 46 (1) (1997): 5-68. —. “Acculturation and Adaptation in a New Society.” International Migration 30 (1992): 69-91. —. “Globalisation and acculturation.” International Journal of Intercultural Relations 32 (2008): 328-336. Berry, John W., Uichol Kim, Thomas Minde, and Doris Doris. “Comparative studies of acculturative stress.” International Migration Review 21 (1987): 491-511. 20

BIB, Population Policy Acceptance Study.

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Bourhis, Richard Y., Lena C. Moise, Stephane Perreault, and Sacha Senecal. “Towards an Interactive Acculturation Model: A Social Psychological Approach.” International Journal of Psychology 32(6) (1997): 369-386. Accessed 12 December 2012. doi: 10.1080/002075997400629. Chase, Susan E. “Learning to listen: narrative principles in a qualitative research methods course.” In Up Close and Personal: The Teaching and Learning of Narrative Research, edited by Ruthellen Josselson, Amia Lieblich, and Dan P. McAdams, 79-100. Washington DC: American Psychological Association, 2003. Accessed 3 February 2013. doi:10.1037/10486-000. Creswell, John W. Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approach. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2003. Gergen, Mary M., and Kenneth J. Gergen. “Narrative and self as relationship.” Advances In Experimental Social Psychology 21 (1998): 17-53. Hofstede, George. Cultures and Organizations, Intercultural Cooperation and Its Importance for Survival. London: Harper Collins, 1991. IluĠ, Petru. Abordarea calitativă a socioumanului. Iaúi: Editura Polirom, 1997. Johnson, John, M. “In-depth interviewing.” In Handbook of Interview Research: Context and Method, edited by Jaber F. Gubrium, and James A. Holstein, 103-120. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2001. Kupferberg, Irit, David Green, and Ishak Gilat. “Figurative positioning in hotline stories.” Narrative Inquiry 11 (2002): 1-26. Accessed 6 February 2013. doi:10.1075/ni.11.2.07kup. Lickel, Brian, David L. Hamilton, Grazyna Wieczorkowska, Amy Lewis, Steven J. Sherman, and Neville A. Uhles. “Varieties of groups and the perception of group intuitivity.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 78(2) (2000): 223-246. Accessed 21 January 2013. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.78.2.223. Maxwell, Joseph A. Qualitative Research Design: An Interactive Approach. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1996. Negy, Charles, Tara L. Shreve, Bernard J. Jensen, Nizam Uddin. “Ethnic Identity, Self-Esteem, and Ethnocentrism: a Study of Social Identity versus Multicultural Theory of Development.” Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology Vol 9(4), (2003): 333-344. Accessed 10 November 2012. doi: 10.1037/1099-9809.9.4.333. Redfield, Robert, Ralph Linton, and Melville J. Herskovits. “Memorandum on the study of acculturation.” American Anthropologist, 38 (1) (1936): 149-152. Accessed 11 November 2012. doi:10.1525/aa.1936.38.1.02a00330.

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Tajfel, Henri, and John Turner (1986). “The social identity theory of intergroup behavior.” In Psychology of Intergroup Relations, edited by Stephen O. Worchel, and William G. Austin, 7-24. Chicago: Nelson Hall Publishers, 1986. Triandis, Harry. Culture and Social Behavior. New York: McGraw Hill, 1994. Zetterholm, Staffan (1994). National Cultures and European Integration. Exploratory Essays on Cultural Diversity and Common Policies. UK, Oxford/Providence: Berg Publishers, 1994. —. BIB - Bundesinstitut für Bevölkerungsforschung (coordinator of project), Wiesbaden, Germany - Charlotte Höhn. Population Policy Acceptance Study (PPAS) – The Viewpoint of Citizens and Policy Actors Regarding the Management of Population Related Change, DIALOG, - EU Research on Social Sciences and Humanities. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, Printed in Belgium (2007). pdf: EUR23124. http://ec.europa.eu/research/research-eu/social-sciences.

THE ROLE OF EDUCATION IN ETHNICALLY MIXED MARRIAGES MIHAELA HĂRĂGU‫܇‬

Introduction Marriage implies a choice for a long-term relationship with a person who shares similar values, norms, life-styles, leisure activities, tastes, intellectual erudition, and who uses socioeconomic resources to produce family economic wellbeing. All resources, whether cultural or socioeconomic, are pooled together for the benefit of common activities in marriage. Even if similarity of traits has been found as the dominant pattern in marriage choices, there are trade-offs among characteristics: homogamy on some dimensions may be more important than on others. This is the case with ethnically mixed marriages: even if cultural differences are fostered from the beginning, education has become a more important characteristic, being a good indicator for both the cultural and the socioeconomic resources a spouse would bring into marriage. Assessing the role of education in ethnically mixed marriages is the aim of the present research. We view education as a complex variable in the marital process, linked with both the cultural and the socioeconomic characteristics of the spouses. That is why we consider that education may compensate for the cultural differences existing when spouses are of different ethnicities and, moreover, that similarity in education may substitute for similarity in ethnicity. We shall test these assumptions using a sample from the 2002 Census in Romania, made available by the Minnesota Population Center.1 We are aware that we study a stock of married couples and not the marital process itself and that this might introduce some biases. Moreover, we are aware that census data refer to a level of education that might differ from the education level at the moment of marriage. That is why we treat our results with caution and we do not 1 Minnesota Population Center. Integrated Public Use Microdata Series, International (IPUMS-International) (2011).

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The Role of Education in Ethnically Mixed Marriages

make any causal inferences about the marriage process. Our aim is to investigate how different educational characteristics are linked with the chances of being part of an ethnically mixed marriage.2 There is a large body of literature on intermarriage and education with regard to inter-racial marriages or marriages between immigrants and residents, which refers mainly to immigration countries such as the US or the UK. Usually empirical research on the topic has been focused on groups of immigrants or groups with low socio-economic status, and the discussions are in terms of low- and high-educated ethnic/immigrant groups and social status exchange, cultural adaptability or enclave effects.3 Nevertheless, not all minority groups are immigrants or under-privileged.4 This is the case with our research. With the aim to gain more insight into the patterns of interethnic marriages, we study the role of education in ethnically mixed marriages between Romanians and other minority groups that have long been living in the same country and in the same region. We focus in our research on Transylvania, the region of Romania where 90% of ethnically mixed marriages occur.5 Even though we do not distinguish in our analysis among different minorities, they are mainly Hungarians, a group that have a very similar socioeconomic status with the Romanian majority.

Theoretical considerations Scholars agree that marriage patterns are the result of the interplay of three elements: the individuals’ preferences for certain characteristics in a spouse, the influence of the social group of which they are members and the constraints of the marriage markets. 6 Regarding the issue of preferences, virtually all research on marriage choice found homogamy (marriage between individuals with similar

2

Examples of studies using similar approaches are Fu and Heaton, “Racial and Educational Homogamy”, van Ham and Tammaru, “Ethnic Minority–Majority Unions in Estonia.” 3 Qian, “Who intermarries?”, Fu and Heaton, “Racial and Educational Homogamy”, Chiswick and Houseworth, “Ethnic intermarriage”, Furtado, “Human Capital.” 4 O’Leary and Finnas, “Education. ” 5 According to Census 2002 data. 6 Kalmijn “Intermarriage and homogamy”, Kalmijn, “The Educational Gradient”, Qian, “Who intermarries?”, O’Leary and Finnas, “Education ”, Chiswick and Houseworth, “Ethnic Intermarriage.”

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characteristics) as the dominant pattern.7 In his economic approach to marriage, Becker (1974) argues that positive assortative mating, that is “a positive correlation between the values of the traits of husbands and wives”8 is generally optimal. The benefits from marriage are most efficiently utilised when individuals marry persons with similar characteristics, such as intelligence, education, age, health, race, language, ethnicity, religion.9 Distinguishing between complementary and substitutive traits, Becker (1974) argues that the marriage of persons with similar characteristics is optimal in the case of complementary traits, such as intelligence, age, ethnicity etc., while the marriage of persons with different characteristics is optimal in the case of substitutive characteristics, such as the socioeconomic resources (income). Becker’s central assumption here is that rewards of marriage result from the division of paid and domestic labour within the household. More specifically, marriage occurs most likely between a person who has an advantage in earning money (usually the man) and a person who has an advantage in domestic labour (usually the woman).10 Becker’s assumptions about the role of socioeconomic resources do not hold nowadays, since women’s participation in the labour market has dramatically increased. Under these new circumstances, one expects similarity in socioeconomic status, too, when choosing a marriage partner.11 Among the characteristics of the potential spouses, seen as resources they would bring into marriage, sociologists consider the socioeconomic and cultural ones as the most important. Socioeconomic resources produce economic well-being and status12, while cultural resources include values, norms, life-styles, leisure activities, tastes, intellectual erudition, styles of speech and life experiences.13 When married, individuals pool these resources together for the benefit of common activities in marriage: rearing children, the purchasing of a house and other consumer durables,

7

Becker, “A Theory of Marriage”, Schoen et al., “Ethnic and Educational”, Kalmijn, “Status Homogamy.” 8 Becker, “A Theory of Marriage”, 300. 9 Becker, “A Theory of Marriage”, Chiswick and Houseworth, “Ethnic intermarriage.” 10 Becker, “A Theory of Marriage”, Kalmijn, “Status Homogamy. ” 11 Kalmijn, “Status Homogamy”, Kalmijn, “Intermarriage and homogamy. ” 12 Kalmijn, “Intermarriage and homogamy.” 13 Kalmijn, “Status Homogamy.”

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The Role of Education in Ethnically Mixed Marriages

the spending of leisure time, all of these leading to family well-being, confirmation and affection.14 Ethnicity and education shape the preferences for the goods jointly consumed in the household, such as language, cuisine, holiday celebrations, or liberal gender roles, spending leisure time or political views15, and marriage market participants may therefore want to match on these two characteristics. Ethnicity is a cultural resource in the marital process, while education is a more complex variable. On the one hand, education is strongly related to taste, values and lifestyles, which are cultural characteristics. On the other hand, education is strongly related to income and status, which are socioeconomic characteristics. And education is a proxy not only for the cultural and socioeconomic resources that a person has at the moment of marriage, but for the future, too. This happens because the process of marriage formation is surrounded by uncertainty. Given that people often marry at young ages16, some essential traits in the process of marriage formation are not yet clearly formed and they may develop only as adult roles are assumed.17 In other words, uncertainty comes not only from imperfect information about the existing characteristics of the spouses, but also from the characteristics that may develop in the future. As a consequence, people who are searching for marriage partners have to rely on proxies for future development. Education plays the major role here. Kalmijn (1991) states this very clearly: “education is not only an important determinant of the spouses’ cultural resources before marriage, but it may also function as the prime indicator of the spouses’ cultural and socioeconomic characteristics after marriage. This double function of education may well make it the most important factor in marriage selection”. 18 Regarding the link between ethnicity and education in the marital process, many researchers have shown that persons with higher levels of education are more likely to enter a mixed marriage.19 Various authors have identified different ways through which general education may affect the probability of mixed marriage and they are linked with preferences and 14

Kalmijn, “Intermarriage and Homogamy”, Chiswick and Houseworth, “Ethnic Intermarriage.” 15 Furtado, “Human Capital.” 16 Romania is known to have an early tempo for marriage formation. 17 Oppenheimer, “A Theory of Marriage Timing.” 18 Kalmijn, “Status Homogamy”, 502. 19 For example, Stevens and Schoen “Linguistic Intermarriage”, Fu and Heaton, “Racial and Educational Homogamy”, Chiswick and Houseworth, “Ethnic Intermarriage.”

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opportunities. Persons with higher education may have spent more time among people of diverse ethnical backgrounds; not only have they been more likely to meet people of different ethnicities, but this may have influenced their interethnic attitudes. They may have less prejudice toward ethnic minorities and an increased understanding of members of other groups20; or highly educated persons may benefit from greater autonomy from the constraints of the family and community of origin, since pursuing higher education may involve greater geographical mobility and greater distances from the family of origin.21 Based on this, one could consider that choosing a spouse of a different ethnic origin may increase the degree of uncertainty surrounding marriage (given that they start with a series of cultural dissimilarities), but education may compensate for these cultural differences. This line of thought brings us to the first hypothesis: Better educated persons are more likely to be in an ethnically mixed marriage than lower educated ones. Since education is strongly related not only to income and status, but also to taste, values and lifestyles, similarity in education may substitute for the similarity of other cultural characteristics that is lacking in a mixed marriage, such as ethnic similarity. Kalmijn (1991) found (for the US) a reverse of the relationship between religious and educational homogamy. In the past, those who married within their faith were more likely than others to marry within their educational group as well, while in recent times those who marry outside their faith are more likely than others to marry within their educational groups. The author’s conclusion is that “interfaith unions have become increasingly endogamous with respect to education” 22 and these might be indications that “education has replaced religion as a factor in marriage selection”.23 As Schoen and collaborators (1989) argued, “persons with equivalent resources need not be similar with respect to all the characteristics relevant to marriage choice. An overall equivalence can result from a balance of plusses and minuses in different areas”.24 Consequently, our second hypothesis is: Ethnically mixed couples show a higher degree of educational homogamy than endogamous couples.

20 Qian, “Who Intermarries?”, O’Leary and Finnas, “Education ”, Chiswick and Houseworth, “Ethnic Intermarriage”, Kalmijn, “The Educational Gradient.” 21 O’Leary and Finnas, “Education”, Chiswick and Houseworth, “Ethnic Intermarriage.” 22 Kalmijn, “Shifting Boundaries”, 797. 23 Ibidem. 24 Schoen et al., “Ethnic and Educational Effects”, 618.

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The Role of Education in Ethnically Mixed Marriages

Data and method For this investigation, we use the 10% sample from the national census conducted in 2002 in Romania, made available by the Minnesota Population Center25. The focus of our analysis is on married couples, so we keep in our sample only the married persons. Analysing existing marriages at a particular point in time, instead of adopting a life-course perspective on marriage formation, might introduce some biases. First, we investigate couples that have survived marital dissolution, and second, spouses’ education may have changed after marriage. However, this provides a better understanding about the ethnic and educational structure of marriages that have lasted.26 We investigate the married couples from both the men’s and the women’s perspectives, since the same inter-ethnic marriage may have different meanings if either the husband or the wife belongs to an ethnic minority. Consequently, we work with two samples of approximately equal sizes27. Since the possibility of marrying an ethnically different spouse is an important determinant of marriage patterns, and this possibility depends on the composition of local marriage markets, group size and residential segregation, we shall limit our investigation to Transylvania, a region where the most consistent ethnic minority in Romania, namely the Hungarians, are best represented. There are 19.6% Hungarian ethnics in Transylvania, 3.4% Roma, 0.7% Germans and 1.6% other ethnicities, compared with 6.6% Hungarians, 2.5% Roma, 0.3% Germans and 1.2% other ethnicities at the level of the whole country28. It is, then, no surprise that 90% of all the mixed marriages in the country occur there. We do not differentiate between ethnic minorities in our analysis; we differentiate only between Romanians, as the majority, and other ethnicities. But as suggested by the above figures, most mixed marriages are between Romanians and Hungarians. From the point of view of a Romanian, he/she may marry a Romanian, which would make this an endogamous marriage, or he/she may marry an ethnic minority member, which would make this a mixed marriage. From the point of view of an ethnic minority person, he/she may marry a 25

Minnesota Population Center. Integrated Public Use Microdata Series, International (IPUMS-International) (2011) 26 Fu and Heaton, “Racial and Educational Homogamy.” 27 The difference between the sizes of the two samples may be due to a higher proportion of missing information for the men. 28 According to Census data from 2002.

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Romanian (mixed marriage), a different ethnic minority person (mixed marriage, too), or he/she may marry a person of the same ethnic minority (endogamous marriage). We distinguish among all these situations in our analysis. The dependent variable is the type of marriage according to the spouses’ ethnicity: this could be a mixed marriage or an endogamous one. From the point of view of a Romanian, marriage has two categories: endogamous or mixed, while from the point of view of an ethnic minority person, it has three categories: endogamous, mixed with a Romanian, and mixed with another minority member. We include in our analysis married spouses of all ages and of different ethnicities and we study the role of education and educational homogamy on the probability of being in an ethnically mixed marriage. For the purpose of our analysis we use logistic regression: binary when we approach it from the point of view of a Romanian, and multinomial when we approach it from the point of view of an ethnical minority member. The binary logistic regression is a type of regression used to identify the strength of independent factors on a dichotomist dependent variable that represents the occurrence or non-occurrence of a particular event. The dependent variable has the value 1 for the occurrence of the specified event and 0 for the non-occurrence. In our case, the event of interest is a mixed marriage. The multinomial logistic regression allows for the dependent variable to have more than two categories. The results are in the form of odds ratios, and we therefore have a reference category for each variable, relative to which we can determine the odds ratio, when controlling for the other variable. In the case of multinomial logistic regression, there is also a reference category for the dependent variable. Our independent variable is education. For testing the first hypothesis we use educational attainment, differentiated among five categories: primary, lower secondary, upper secondary, post secondary and university, and for the second hypothesis we use educational homogamy, which is when the spouses have the same educational attainment (coded 1 if affirmative, coded 0 otherwise). We control for other factors, too, in our analysis: the place of residence (urban/rural) and the respondent’s birth cohort (before 1926, 1927-1946, 1947-1966, after 1966), as well as other types of homogamy: occupational (when the spouses have the same occupation) and age homogamy (when the age difference between the spouses is smaller than 3 years).

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The Role of Education in Ethnically Mixed Marriages

Results The (married) women sample consisted of 171,108 persons and the (married) men sample of 169,379 persons. We see from Table 1 that 6.3% of the Romanian women and 5.3% of the Romanian men marry inter-ethnically. The share of mixed marriages in the case of ethnic minorities is higher. 12.6% of the minority women marry a Romanian husband, and 3.7% marry another minority husband. 12.8% of the minority men marry a Romanian wife and 3% marry another minority wife. For both Romanians and ethnic minorities, men show a slightly stronger preference for endogamous marriage than women. Table 1 Sample distribution by spouses’ ethnicity

Romanian

Wife

Romanian

% of married Romanians

122,332

93.7%

% of Ethnic married minority Romanians 8,170

6.3%

Husband 122,276

94.7% 6,806 5.3% % of Different % of Same married ethnic married ethnic Romanian minorities minority minorities minority

Ethnic minority

% of married minorities

Wife

5,101

12.6%

1,519

3.7%

33,986

83.7%

Husband

5,161

12.8%

1,196

3.0%

33,940

84.2%

Source: Minnesota Population Center. Integrated Public Use Microdata Series, International (IPUMS-International) (2011). Author’s calculations.

We shall now proceed to testing the first hypothesis. Since the dependent variable (type of marriage) is different when the respondent is Romanian and when he/she belongs to an ethnic minority and the regression type is different, we shall present the results separately. We can see that the first hypothesis is confirmed for both women and men: better educated persons are more likely to be in an ethnically mixed marriage than lower educated ones (Table 2). For women, the relative odds ratios for primary and lower secondary education are significantly lower than in the case of a university degree, which means that women who achieved primary or lower secondary education are less likely to be in an ethnically mixed marriage than better educated women. But there is no difference between women with a university degree and those with upper or post-secondary education. For men, persons with primary, lower and

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upper secondary education show lower chances to be in an ethnically mixed marriage, compared with men with a university degree. Table 2 Results of the binary logistic regression models for Romanian women and men. Effect of education and other control variables Romanian women Significance Persons Exp(B) level

Romanian men Persons Exp(B)

Significance level

Respondent’s education primary 18,296 0.79 0.000 13,834 0.44 lower 42,045 0.87 0.002 29,355 0.64 secondary upper 55,505 1.00 0.910 63,769 0.90 secondary post 5,237 1.03 0.661 8,227 0.98 secondary university 9,419 1 13,897 1 Birth cohort 1966 40,619 1 29,462 1 Residence rural 54,013 53,678 1 1 urban 76,489 1.61 0.000 75,404 1.43 Source: Minnesota Population Center. Integrated Public Use Microdata International (IPUMS-International) (2011). Author’s calculations.

0.000 0.000 0.004 0.707

0.452 0.225 0.038

0.000 Series,

Regarding the two control variables, we see that the older cohorts showed less attraction for mixed marriage, compared with the youngest cohorts, but only in case of women; for men there is an increased attraction to mixed marriage only from cohorts 1947-1966 to the youngest ones. For both Romanian women and men, the chances to be in a mixed marriage are visibly higher for urban residents, compared with their rural counterparts.

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The Role of Education in Ethnically Mixed Marriages

Table 3 Results of the multinomial logistic regression models for ethnic minority women and men. Effect of education and other control variables Minority women

Minority men

Exp(B) Significance level Exp(B) Marriage with Romanians Respondent’s education primary lower secondary upper secondary post secondary university

0.3 0.45 0.64 0.64 1

0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000

Birth cohort 1966

0.91 1 0.96 1

0.428 0.950 0.264

Residence rural urban

1 2.65

0.000

0.41 0.46 0.64 0.75 1 0.27 0.63 0.91 1 1 2.61

Significance level

0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000

0.000 0.000 0.017

0.000

Marriage with another minority member Respondent’s education primary lower secondary upper secondary post secondary university

0.65 0.65 0.61 0.8 1

0.001 0.000 0.000 0.153

0.67 0.49 0.59 0.87 1

0.002 0.000 0.000 0.339

Birth cohort 1966

0.74 0.6 0.67 1

0.081 0.000 0.000

0.62 0.82 0.84 1

0.004 0.019 0.023

Residence rural 1 1 urban 2.12 0.000 1.78 0.000 Source: Minnesota Population Center. Integrated Public Use Microdata Series, International (IPUMS-International) (2011). Author’s calculations.

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399

Our first hypothesis is confirmed for minority women: compared with women holding a university degree, women with lower education are less likely to be in an ethnically mixed marriage compared with a homogamous marriage, for both cases (namely for mixed marriage with a Romanian man or mixed marriage with another minority man). Nevertheless, the effect of education is stronger in case of mixed marriages with Romanians. Regarding the control variables, there is no variation by cohort for the odds of being in a mixed marriage with a Romanian man, but the younger birth cohorts show a higher attraction for marriages with another ethnic minority than older ones. Urban resident minorities show higher odds of being in a mixed marriage than rural residents. The effect of education for minority men is very similar to that for women, confirming the first hypothesis, too. The similarity holds for the control variables, too, with the exception of the variation by birth cohort in the case of marriages with a Romanian wife: the attraction towards this form of mixed marriage has increased in time, and has done so more visibly than for mixed marriages with another minority woman. We can see that for both Romanian women and men, persons who have the same education as their spouses are more likely to be in a mixed marriage. In other words, educational dissimilarity is too high a source of uncertainty to be supplemented with ethnic dissimilarity. On the other hand, since education is an indicator for actual cultural and socioeconomic resources but also for the future, people with similar education levels feel it is safer to marry a person with a different ethnic background than a persons with a different education level. Not only educational homogamy appears to play an important role when it comes to forming endogamous or mixed marriages, but also occupational and age homogamy. Both Romanian women and men that have a similar occupation or age to their spouses are more likely to be in an ethnically mixed marriage, compared with persons with dissimilar spouses. It appears that finding a spouse similar on different dimensions (education, occupation, age) matters more than the common ethnic background. The control variables (birth cohort and residence) have same effect as in the previous models, for both Romanian women and men.

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The Role of Education in Ethnically Mixed Marriages

Table 4 Results of the binary logistic regression models for Romanian women and men. Effect of educational homogamy and other control variables Romanian women Significance Persons Exp(B) level Educational homogamy No 51,902 1 Yes 78,600 1.59 0.000 Occupational homogamy No 70,961 1 Yes 59,541 2.88 0.000

Romanian men Significance Persons Exp(B) level 52,024 77,058

1 1.21

0.000

70,631 58,451

1 2.20

0.000

Age homogamy No 67,488 1 67,484 1 Yes 63,014 2.32 0.000 61,598 1.75 0.000 Cohort 1966 40,619 1 29,462 1 Residence Urban 76,489 1.57 0.000 75,404 1.59 0.000 Rural 54,013 53,678 1 Source: Minnesota Population Center. Integrated Public Use Microdata Series, International (IPUMS-International) (2011). Author’s calculations.

The situation looks different when we adopt the perspective of the minority person and his/her marriage choices (Table 5). And it looks different for the two cases of mixed marriages: the educational homogamy of the spouses has a negative effect in the case of a marriage with a Romanian, and a positive effect in the case of a marriage with another minority member. The educational similarity of the spouses lowers the chances of being in a marriage with a Romanian, while it increases the chances of being in a marriage with another minority. These effects hold for both women and men. It appears that for a minority person the marriage with a Romanian is not seen as bringing too much dissimilarity and there is room for educational and occupational differences between spouses. This is not the situation when a minority person marries another

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401

Table 5 Results of the multinomial logistic regression models for ethnic minority women and men. Effect of educational homogamy and other control variables Minority women Minority men Exp(B) Significance level Exp(B) Significance level Marriage with Romanians Educational homogamy No 1 1 Yes 0.79 0.000 0.9 0.001 Occupational homogamy No 1 1 Yes 0.9 0.005 0.9 0.002 Age homogamy No 1 1 1.05 0.113 1.01 0.715 Yes Cohort 1966 1 1 Residence Urban 3.13 0.000 3 0.000 Rural 1 1 Marriage with another minority member Educational homogamy No 1 1 Yes 1.88 0.000 1.48 0.000 Occupational homogamy No 1 1 Yes 4.97 0.000 3.23 0.000 Age homogamy No Yes Cohort 1966 Residence Urban Rural

1 3.23

0.000

1 2.3

0.000

0.35 0.35 0.69 1

0.000 0.000 0.000

0.44 0.62 0.96 1

0.000 0.000 0.640

2.08 1

0.000

1.87 1

0.000

Source: Minnesota Population Center. Integrated Public Use Microdata Series, International (IPUMS-International) (2011). Author’s calculations.

402

The Role of Education in Ethnically Mixed Marriages

minority spouse. Here educational homogamy becomes relevant again: spouses with similar education levels are more likely to be in a minorityminority mixed marriage than spouses with different education levels. Occupational and age similarities become important as well.

Summary and conclusions Through this study we aimed to gain more insight into the patterns of ethnically mixed marriages. Considering that a marriage between spouses of different ethnicities implies certain cultural differences, we built on the assumption that other characteristics, such as education, may be more important for the marital process and may compensate for this initial ethnic dissimilarity. Indeed, education is believed to be the most important factor in marriage selection, since it is an indicator for both the cultural and the socioeconomic resources of the spouses, and, moreover, an indicator for both the current and the future characteristics of the spouses. Choosing a partner with a similar education background may substantively reduce the degree of uncertainty that surrounds marriage choices. Building on these arguments, we investigated whether better educated persons are more likely to be in an ethnically mixed marriage than lower educated ones and whether ethnically mixed couples show a higher degree of educational homogamy than endogamous couples. We conducted our investigation on a subsample of the 2002 Romanian Census consisting of married couples. The data included both partners in a couple and these individuals are dependent, so we separately analysed women and men. We investigated the married couples from both the men’s and the women’s perspectives, since the same inter-ethnic marriage may have different meanings depending on whether the husband or the wife belongs to an ethnic minority. We did not distinguish among different minorities but only between the majority (Romanian) and the minority status. For the situation of a Romanian marrying a minority spouse, we found for both men and women that better educated persons are more likely to be in an ethnically mixed marriage than lower educated ones. We found similar results from the perspective of a minority person, whether a man or a woman: compared with higher educated persons, those with lower education are less likely to be in an ethnically mixed marriage than in a homogamous marriage, for both situations (mixed marriage with a Romanian or mixed marriage with another minority). Regarding the effect of educational homogamy on the chances to be in a mixed marriage, we found different results for the different situations.

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Educational similarity matters when a Romanian marries interethnically and when a minority person marries another minority spouse. In this case, the spouses with similar educational levels are more likely to be in a mixed marriage than in an endogamous one. Similarity on other dimensions (occupation, age) plays a similar role. Educational homogamy has the opposite effect in the situation of a minority person that marries a Romanian. In line with our theoretical argument, it appears that, from the point of view of a minority person, the marriage with a Romanian does not imply a high degree of uncertainty, which might be compensated by educational similarity, but, on the contrary, it leaves room for more dissimilarity (spouses with different education levels are more likely to be in a mixed marriage). In other words, the fact that the marriage is with a majority person is more relevant for the future of the couple than the existing differences between the spouses, including the ethnic background. For all situations analysed we found that higher education is linked with higher odds to be in a mixed marriage. And with the exception of minority persons marrying a Romanian spouse, we also found that educational similarity between husband and wife means higher chances to be in an ethnically mixed marriage. Both the educational level of the individual and the degree of similarity between one’s own and the spouse’s education are important variables shaping the patterns of mixed marriage. Marriage choices are guided by the search for similarity; nevertheless, ethnically mixed marriages have always existed and will continue to exist. Scholars have shown that marriage choices are surrounded by uncertainty and choosing a spouse of a different ethnic background may increase it. This means that similarity on other characteristics has become more relevant. Education is such a characteristic that may reduce the uncertainty of the marriage choice, being a good indicator of the spouses’ tastes, values and lifestyles, as well as income and status. We are aware of the limits of our investigation, which come mainly from the analysis of a stock of married couples instead of a life-course approach to the marital process itself: selection of surviving couples, possible changes in education level from the marriage to the moment of the census. The present analysis could be improved, though, by studying the patterns of exogamous marriages considering each minority separately. Nevertheless, we think that we have contributed to the understanding of the patterns of mixed marriage in a region where Romanians and other ethnicities, mainly Hungarians and Germans, have lived together for a long time.

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References Becker, Gary S. “A Theory of Marriage.” In Economics of the Family: Marriage, Children, and Human Capital, edited by Theodore W. Schultz, 299-351. UMI, 1974. Chiswick, Barry R., Houseworth, Christina. “Ethnic intermarriage among immigrants: human capital and assortative mating.” Review of Economics of the Household 9 (2011):149–80. Fu, Xuanning, Heaton, Tim B. “Racial and Educational Homogamy: 1980 to 2000.” Sociological Perspective 51 (2008): 735-58. Furtado, Delia. “Human Capital and Interethnic Marriage Decisions.” Economic Inquiry 50 (2012): 82–93. Kalmijn, Matthijs. “Shifting Boundaries: Trends in Religious and Educational Homogamy.” American Sociological Review 56 (1991): 786-800. —. “Status Homogamy in the United States.” American Journal of Sociology 97 (1991): 496-523. —. “Intermarriage and homogamy: Causes, patterns, trends.” Annual Review of Sociology 24: 395–421. —. “The Educational Gradient in Intermarriage: A Comparative Analysis of Immigrant Groups in the United States.” Social Forces 91(2012): 453-76. O’Leary, Richard and Finnas, Fjalar. “Education, social integration and minoritymajority group intermarriage.” Sociology 36 (2002): 235–254. Oppenheimer, Valerie Kincade. “A Theory of Marriage Timing.” American Journal of Sociology 94 (1998): 563-91. Qian, Zhenchao. “Who intermarries? Education, nativity, region, and interracial marriage, 1980 and 1990.” Journal of Comparative Family Studies 30 (1999): 579–97. Schoen Robert, Wooldredge John, Thomas Barbara, “Ethnic and Educational Effects on Marriage Choice.” Social Science Quarterly 70 (1989): 617-30. Stevens, Gillian and Schoen, Robert. “Linguistic Intermarriage in the United States.” Journal of Marriage and the Family 50 (1988): 267– 79. van Ham, Maarten and Tammaru, Tiit. “Ethnic Minority–Majority Unions in Estonia.” European Journal of Population 27 (2011): 313–35.

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Acknowledgement This work was supported by a grant of the Romanian National Academy for scientific research, CNCS-UEFISCDI, project number PN-II-ID-PCE2011-3-0188.

CHAPTER V: MIXED MARRIAGES, CONTINENTAL AND TRANSCONTINENTAL MIGRATION: CONTINUITY AND CHANGE

TRANSNATIONAL INTERMARRIAGE AND CULTURAL TRANSFER: NORWEGIANS IN AMSTERDAM 1621-1720 SØLVI SOGNER

Marriage not only connects two individuals, but has implications for their families and the groups to which they belong. The present paper is inspired by the recent transnational turn in history,1 and deals with intermarriage between persons of different nationalities. We are increasingly becoming aware of the shortcomings of the nation state in understanding us, the past and today’s society. The Peace of Westphalia (1648) may be seen as a historical divide as regards the ordering of the map of Europe by nations. The borders of the nation state, however important, have not proved final and they are certainly not impenetrable. People, ideas, concepts, goods, technologies, institutions, networks, language, culture, ways of doing things have crossed borders, and borders may have been superimposed on individuals against their will. International migration and democratic development have made us increasingly aware of the contribution to societal development made by individual agents. Comparative history may highlight the differences thereof, often presuming the existence of hierarchical relationships: one nation may learn from another, upper social groups being the first to adopt new ways of behaviour. National development may be better understood within a larger context, in constant interplay with the external world and as an outcome of transnational impulses borne by individuals. These impacts are not exclusively mediated by the omnipotent state as guardian and doorkeeper or by trend-setting privileged groups, but may originate within the population at large. New ideas, new ways of doing things, new things to covet, new commodities to buy, and new fashions to adopt – our ancestors will have experienced these urges as vividly as we do today. Important historical changes do not necessarily stem from above. Contacts between “ordinary people” across borders may have had far reaching 1

Tyrell, Transnational History.

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implications. International processes are tightly bound to concrete, tangible relations between individuals. The present case study deals with Norwegian immigrants in Amsterdam in the 17th century.2 Contemporary Dutch sources speak of nooren and de Noorse Natie, Norwegians and the Norwegian nation. A listing from 1662 of members of the Lutheran Church in Amsterdam explicitly refers to “noorse, deense en oosterse volcheren”, Norwegian, Danish and Baltic people. Individuals are regarded as representatives of nations, different “peoples” or “folk.”3 A transnational intermarriage pattern was well documented in Amsterdam 1621-1720, involving individuals of the labouring classes. The paper will document this phenomenon, and discuss its implications for cultural transfer. The term “transnational intermarriage” used here refers to marriages contracted in Amsterdam between Norwegians and partners from other nations.

Transnational intermarriage in Amsterdam The emigration is documented in the Dutch marriage banns registers which cover the period 1578-1810. The focus here is on the hundred years 1621-1720.4 This period represented the time of maximum migration. It was also a period of repetitive wars in Scandinavia – 1625-29, 1643-45, 1657-58, 1658-60, 1675-79, 1700-21 – which possibly triggered more people than usual to emigrate from Norway to Amsterdam. Tolerant Amsterdam was a magnet of attraction to immigrant labour of all faiths. It was the third largest and probably the richest city in Europe at the time, with a staggering population growth from c. 30,000 in 1585 to a stabilised 200,000 from 1670 onwards. The growth was due to an enormous immigration and a thriving economy. Amsterdam was a hub in European economic life, a challenge and an object of envy to more 2

Sogner, “Og skuta lå i Amsterdam…”. Kuijpers, Migrantenstad, 139. 4 Cf. Hart, Geschrift. The protocols are kept in the City Archive of Amsterdam. Head archivist, Dr. Simon Hart, made these precious sources available to researchers by constructing a card register, serving as a key to the place of origin or home port of the prospective grooms and brides. I am grateful for having been given access to the original protocols and for having been allowed to photograph the entries that concern Norwegians. I have transcribed the entries 1621-1720. These transcriptions are now being proofread at the National Archives of Norway and will be made accessible on internet. Amsterdam was not the only, but certainly the most important destination for immigrants from Norway to the Netherlands in the period. 3

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prominent countries than Norway.5 Norway’s total population in the 1660s is estimated to have been 440,000. The discrepancy between sender and receiver was a matter not only of numbers, but of economic, cultural and political development as well. One way for the City authorities to keep track of these hoards of newcomers was to register at least those who decided to marry and presumably settle down. The marriage banns registers are unique for that time. People intending to marry had to register at the City Hall, where they were listed by name, age, civil status, original home address/port of departure, parents (alive or not), street address, names of witnesses. If able to sign the marriage banns register, they did so; otherwise they put a cross. For men occupation is always given. For women, however, this piece of information is non-existent – in the legal thinking of the time, women’s social position was determined by marriage: women were regarded as “engaged to be married,” “married” or “widowed.”6 The information on migration provided by the marriage banns has a distinct and obvious flaw: Those who did not marry escape us. Dutch historians estimate that “at least 60% of the immigrants stay out of sight in the certificates of intended marriage.”7 Membership lists of the Lutheran Church in Amsterdam – sporadically also listings of crews – give information also about people who never married. However, we are best informed about the people who got married. The fact that immigrants married, settled and became part of the city’s population gives a certain guarantee for stable contacts.8 All marriage banns registered at the City Hall of Amsterdam 16211720, where one or both of the contracting parties hailed from Norway, have been registered in a database (Table 1).9

5

de Vries and van der Woude, First Modern Economy. Maclean, Renaissance Notion of Woman. 7 Kuijpers, Migrantenstad, 336. If so, it would raise the number of immigrant Norwegians 1621-1720 to c. 20,000. 8 Sogner and van Lottum, “Immigrant Community,” 153-68. Some travelled even further, cf. Evjen, Scandinavian Immigrants. 9 Combined with records from the Lutheran Church of Amsterdam, the data base would enable family reconstitution. One example: Magnus Andries and Barbara Pieters, both from Oslo, took their banns in Amsterdam on 16 February 1658, married in Amstelveen on 3 March, and christened five children in the Lutheran Church in Amsterdam 1657-1666, cf. van Lottum en Sogner, “Het verhaal,” 65-79. 6

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Table 1 A Nationality of the prospective brides of Norwegian grooms in Amsterdam 1621-1720

N NL S and DK D Other Unknown TOTAL

Numbers

%

2,085 1,371 551 348 24 467 4,846

43 28.3 11.4 7.2 0.5 9.6 100

Table 1 B Nationality of the prospective grooms of Norwegian brides in Amsterdam 1621-172 Numbers

%

N 2,002 61.9 NL 232 7.2 S DK 522 16.1 D 211 6.7 Other 58 1.8 Unknown 211 6.4 TOTAL 3,236 100 Source: Sogner 2012, Figure 4.6, p. 81. The database contains 4,911 grooms (65 entries are removed as incorrectly entered) and 3,275 brides (39 are removed as incorrectly entered).

Some 8,000 immigrant Norwegians were registered as prospective marriage partners in Amsterdam between 1621 and 1720. Male immigrants dominated – the sex ratio was 149 men for every 100 women – but the number of female immigrants was unexpectedly high. Roughly 70% of the Norwegians marrying in Amsterdam 1621-1720 chose either a compatriot or a Dutch person for a spouse. This was the case for both men and women, but far more Norwegian men married Dutch women than there were Norwegian women who married Dutch men – 8% as against 7%. Norwegian male immigrants were clearly more popular on the marriage market than Norwegian women – marriage to a native being generally considered positive. The dominant intermarriage pattern was Nordic-Dutch, consisting of Norway, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands and comprising 82% of the Norwegian grooms and 85% of the Norwegian brides. A German

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component amounted to about 7% for both genders. Few marriage partners hailed from more exotic places. Age at marriage for men was 27.8, for women 26.2. The computation is based on the rounded ages as they are presented in the sources. For the 17th century we have no comparable Norwegian data, but the ages found compare well with age at marriage in the Norwegian countryside in the eighteenth century, based on parish registers.

The popular character of the timber trade with the Dutch The Dutch came to Norway to buy timber. The Dutch “mother-trade,” carrying cereals from the Baltic in exchange for salt and wine from the Mediterranean, passed by Southern Norway. Norwegian forests were still growing right down to the coast, which made it convenient for the Dutch to buy beams and boards in the nearest natural harbour. The Dutch needed timber to build ships, dikes, dams, walls, urban constructions. “Amsterdam stands on Norway” was a saying of the time – referring to the innumerable beams and poles used in the city’s foundation system – “forming a kind of subterranean forest.”10 2,000 annual calls by Dutch ships are estimated for the 1600s.11 The Dutch also took an interest in the rich Norwegian copper mines, which were set in production in the mid-1600s. This was, however, a highlevel money game, carried out in part on the stock exchange in Amsterdam, at a far distance from the people actually working in the pits.12 The contrast to the face-to-face relationship of the timber trade and the maritime connection is self-evident. The timber trade was a small-scale enterprise. The simple water-driven saw mill, introduced by the Dutch in the late 1400s, was a dynamic stimulant. Initially, it only called for investments like buying an axe and a saw blade. The farmer would cut down suitable trees growing on his farm – trees having no value until a buyer appeared – and set up a simple saw mill in a nearby waterfall. A lively trade connection developed, evidenced in the customs rolls from the 1500s onwards. A direct face-to-face connection between buyer and seller, at a distance from privileged cities 10 Jacobaeus, Maar, Holger Jacobæus’ Rejsebog. Even stone was exported for foundation purposes and as ballast; cf. rock-strewn slopes on the coast named Hollandsura. 11 Rian, Den nye begynnelsen, 95f. 12 van Bochove, Economic Consequences, 101 ff.

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and burgher influence, was the characteristic trait of this interchange. The Dutch skippers would anchor up in harbours where it was convenient for the farmers to bring the timber. They brought cereals, salt, textiles, herring, liquor, wine, hops, cheese, beans, tobacco, spices, gingerbread, dried fruit, ship’s biscuits, soap, hemp, flax, bricks, tiles, iron pots, glassware, earthenware, clay pipes, et cetera – as well as ready money and credit.13 During the period when the old Dutch timber trade was still active, until c. 1700, it retained its “folksy” character – the same skippers sailing the same routes, 2-4 times annually in the sailing season, year after year in their Noordvaarders – ships specially constructed for the transport of timber. These trading activities never developed into a professionally organised company structure, as other overseas activities the Dutch pursued did. As time passed, however, the Norwegian coast was de-forested, customs control sharpened, the timber trade was regulated, city privileges were strengthened, and large scale operations were launched. An epoch was coming to an end. Merchant capitalists invested in the river transport of logs from the inexhaustible inland forests of Eastern Norway. Norwegian timber exporters changed business contacts, markets and supply areas – indeed they themselves changed: A rich Norwegian bourgeoisie appeared, who were able to turn the tables to their own advantage. England now became the main importer of Norwegian timber. An English connection developed, on a larger scale, economically outshining the past, and being very different from the popular character of the Dutch connection, which now sank into oblivion. Something was gained, something was lost. In its heyday, however, the Dutch connection had provided a setting, stimulating cultural transfer through individual contacts between mainstream people.

The maritime character of the migration to Amsterdam This was a seaborne migration related to maritime activity. Nine out of ten Norwegian grooms were sailors or worked in related professions. Six out of ten Norwegian brides married sailors. People settled on the coast, and kept in touch by sea. The Dutch were also a seafaring people, and they recruited sailors in Norway. The naval authorities saw it as advantageous if only they could be called back in time when needed! The Dutch connection was a major stimulus for keeping abreast of the latest 13

Fløystad, “Skuter,” 106-35.

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developments in maritime technology. At the time Amsterdam was the centre for hiring sailors. The Dutch connection was an enduring phenomenon and can be traced in immaterial as well as material culture. Dutch words are thus an important element in the vocabulary of the Norwegian language, above all regarding maritime expressions. Dutch influence was particularly strong in the southern part of Norway.14 No less than 53% of the Norwegian brides and grooms in Amsterdam came from the three southernmost counties Aust-Agder, Vest-Agder and Rogaland. Travel by sea outweighed the problem of long distance. The Norwegian maritime history of this early period is sadly dated.15 The great leap forward in Norwegian shipping did not take place until the late eighteenth century. Before then, Norwegian sailors seem to have related to the Dutch labour market as a stable and well-known alternative. Amsterdam was the most important hiring market. A recent Dutch thesis highlights job opportunities and wage gaps as the main explanation for the influx of sailors from Scandinavia to the Netherlands;16 two separate North Sea migration systems are distinguished, one centring on Amsterdam, the other on London. The British system hardly attracted sailors from Scandinavia at all, whereas the Dutch system attracted 15% of its migrant sailors from Scandinavia.

The migration of women Norwegian men migrated to Amsterdam to seek a living at sea. What about the women? Women of the labouring classes worked to earn their living, whether married or not.17 A sailor’s wife, however, was not only a co-provider, she was also a de facto sole care-giver during her husband’s absences at sea. So what did these immigrant women do for a living? The Dutch labour market offered a wide range of work opportunities for women: “Although there is a lack of reliable quantitative information, we meet them in a large number of industries: paper mills, oil pressing mills, salt refining, calico printing, silk manufacture, most other textile industries, pipe and earthenware factories, brickyards, brewing industry, sugar refining, in the tobacco industry, on the bleaching fields, as hecklers, 14

Sogner, “Popular contacts,” 185-98. Worm-Müller , Norske. See, however, Sætra, International Labour. 16 van Lottum, Across the North Sea, 190-195. Only 25 grooms and 5 brides in my database come from the system centering on London. 17 Keough, Slender Thread, where the active co-providing role of the married “plebeian women” is a case in point. 15

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as spinners, and so on.”18 This may have been the general situation, but how do we connect to the specific cases? In recent years considerable research has been done on the Dutch women’s work. According to a recent thesis, “source material for Norwegian working women is scarce; next to the confession books and some fragmented records in the marriage banns, no usable serial sources have been found.” Out of a total of 181 cases in the criminal records of Amsterdam 1600-1725 involving Norwegian women, the woman’s profession is specifically stated only in 37 cases: The majority worked in domestic service or as cleaning and laundry ladies, the rest in industry, commerce and trade.19 In Norway women of the labouring classes also worked for their living. A woman’s standard life course was going into service for some years, then marrying, if possible. For women the wage gap in Amsterdam may also have been attractive.20 A vicar in South Norway comments on servants’ wages in 1711, “It is women’s wont, as soon as they acquire a little sense and go into service among strangers, that they’d sooner go to Holland, Bergen or east, to obtain some little improvement in wages and clothing, compared to what they can obtain among the people here.”21 While the 17th century was the Golden Age of the Dutch Republic, Norway was experiencing what Henrik Ibsen later called “the 400 years’ long night” – a sobriquet that stuck, and refers to Norway’s union with Denmark 1380-1814, the Danish period.22 The trek to Holland and the close encounters with the Dutch, however, have earned part of the period, c. 1550-1750, the nickname of the Dutch period, Hollendertiden.23 On the one hand, the new Dutch Republic, liberating itself from Spanish supremacy (the armistice of 1609, the peace treaty of 1648), represented a hotbed for revolutionary new ideas: religious tolerance, the viability of a republican constitution, international maritime law based on the idea of Mare liberum. These great new ideas found a wide response among the intellectual classes in Europe, and are essential parts of our common European heritage.

18

van der Woude, “Sex ratio and female labour,” 65-78. Sundsback, Life-experiences, 252, 316. Confession books=criminal records. 20 Sogner, “Scandinavian women,” 31-48. 21 The National Archives of Norway: Lista og Mandal. Fogderegnskap 1711. 2554. Vedlegg 2. Hitterø sogn. 22 Sicking, Dutch Light. 23 Løyland, Hollendartida i Norge. Art historians distinguish a Dutch period, cf. Engelstad, Hollendertiden i Norge. 19

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On a more mundane level, which is our concern, the Dutch Republic offered a rich array of new material attractions, job opportunities and practices. The most obvious comparison is to how America appeared to Europeans in the 19th century. Direct popular contact among the labouring classes served as a stage of learning, learning by doing.

Why link cultural transfer to intermarriage? Contact on a personal level may have important implications on a cultural level. In the early modern period, the transfer of knowledge was highly dependent on individual contact, far more so than in our modern society, where de-personalised knowledge can be mediated through ever more sophisticated technological means. Family represents stable contact. Familial contact is a strong force, family relations are regulated by law, and tend to be stable and long lasting. Of course, the Dutch connection may well have exerted an influence and had an impact quite independently of the intermarriage phenomenon. We do not have to marry a Chinese to enjoy chop suey and use chop sticks. However, a contact founded on familial ties and based on a contract recognised under the law tends to stabilise, prolong and multiply personal contacts. The Dutch marriage banns provide a wide range of information beyond the actual couples, information concerning other people with whom the couples stayed in contact. We get regular information on witnesses who may have been or were explicitly stated to be relatives or friends. Sporadically, if the bride – more rarely the groom – was under age, we are informed about the parents’ consent, received in written form from Norway. Family ties create economic ties. Norwegian probate courts listed inheritors abroad. Untimely deaths in the Netherlands – mortality among sailors was high – raised the problem of wage arrears to be transmitted to inheritors in the homeland, as witnessed by certificates from Norwegian courts. In addition, there are extant personal letters, exchanged between family members.24 Such letters have surfaced in the archives, at times undetected 24

The National Archives of Norway, Kjeldeskriftavdelingen: Letter of 7 May 1661, transcribed from original in the Regional Archives in Kristiansand; Letter of 25 June 1690 in the County Archives of Aust-Agder, Reg. nr. AA 205; Letter of 15 May 1698 in the Regional Archives of Kristiansand, Private Archive nr. 141, document nr. 20. Letters from the Prize Papers, The National Archives at Kew, High Court of Admiralty 30/225, transcribed in Adri P. van Vliet, ‘Een

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for centuries.25 Little gifts were at times enclosed – tobacco, gunpowder, money. The Dutch were at the forefront of Europe in terms of literacy and the postal service, also by sea. The letters give unequivocal evidence that familial contacts were closer and more important than we may have previously presumed, for lack of indications to the contrary. Why else are we so taken aback by them? Literacy was advantageous for sailors careerwise, and we have indications that Norwegian sailors were fully competitive on this point, at least later in the eighteenth century.26

Innovations in the family household Arrowheads and potsherds are treasure troves for archaeologists. Ethnologists read history from old buildings. “Archaeology in the archives” may also be useful for historians. What impact may the Dutch connection have had on the expectations for life that mainstream people could reasonably entertain? Broad layers of society may personally have acquainted themselves with upcoming modernity and a sweeter domestic life. This may have been caused by personal experience, or through relatives or friends – perhaps through persons married and living in Amsterdam. Improvements in material life were a realistic prospect, and had come within the reach of mainstream people. The lively contact with Amsterdam as witnessed by the inter-marriage phenomenon was coterminous with ground-breaking changes in the mainstream people’s living conditions. It cannot be ascribed to particular individuals, but the interconnectedness meets the eye. Traditionally, in medieval times an ordinary family dwelling in the countryside was a one-storey, windowless building, with an open hearth and a smoke vent in the ceiling to let the smoke out and some light in. From about 1550, however, one of the big revolutions in Norwegian building history took place. The North European Renaissance house with glazed windows and chimney-connected fire places or iron stoves – building elements familiar among the elite – was now gradually adopted by the population at large. Earlier, social distance may have caused problems and prevented a wider diffusion of such elements to the population at large. This transition was pioneered in South Norway, and is seen as connected to the introduction of the water-driven sawmill, an vriendlijcke groetnisse’. Brieven van het thuisfront aan de vloot van De Ruyter (1664-1665), Franeker, 2007. 25 van Gelder, Zeepost. 26 Sogner, “Og skuta lå i Amsterdam…,” 75; van Lottum and Poulsen, Bo, “Estmating levels,” 67-82.

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improved economy as a consequence of the timber export, and of a closer contact with the Netherlands. 27 A recent history of the region Agder in South Norway gives a thorough analysis of material culture regarding building history. Much of the evidence – bricks, tiles and window panes – is gone forever, destroyed in rebuilding over the centuries.28 Literally speaking, “the age of enlightenment” was gradually opening up for mainstream people. “Worldly happiness” and mass consumerism at an unprecedented scale were becoming available across the North Sea, reachable within only a few days, depending on the wind. 29 A more comfortable home life came within the reach of broader strata of the society. The baking oven may serve here as a symbol of the modernisation of family life. Barley and oats were the dominant cereals in the Norwegian climate, but unlike wheat and rye, these cereals lack gluten and are unsuitable for baking leavened, fermented or “bakery” bread. Instead they served as a basis for porridge and flatbread – crisp, flat unleavened bread, baked on an iron griddle or a flat stone in the open hearth.30 For centuries, baking ovens and leavened bread had been primarily an urban or upper class phenomenon. When, in 1607, a public house to cater for the passing maritime traffic was licensed by the King on the South Norwegian island of the pilot harbour of Merdø, it will have been equipped with a baking oven.31 In 1644, the Dutch artist Allaert van Everdingen made a drawing of a house with two chimneys in the nearby sea port of Risør; one chimney obviously connected to a baking oven. So when, in 1746, a farmer in South Norway noted in his diary that he had installed a baking oven,32 it was an overdue action. Our great peripatetic sociologist and demographer Eilert Sundt (181775) was an observer of popular culture. After five years of field research in the 1860s, walking crosswise and lengthwise through Norway, collecting information in response to a prize-competition on “Women’s housework and means to improve it,” he concluded that the cleanliness of people living on the coast stood out compared to that of people in the interior.33 On his visits along the southernmost coast, he had observed that in the 27

Christensen, Norske byggeskikken, 122f. with reference to Hamran, “Sørlandets bygningskultur.” 28 Fløystad, Agders historie. 29 Sarti, Europe at Home; Schuurman, de Vries, van der Woude, Aards Geluk. 30 Visted and Stigum, Vår gamle, 73-115. 31 Hamran, “Søsterkake og bakerovn,” 15-22. 32 The County Archive of Aust-Agder: Brømnesboka, j.nr. 423/1974. 33 Sundt, Om Renligheds, 134-6.

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pilot harbours Dutch cleanliness ruled. People had a “methodically planned habit of changing slippers or wooden shoes when entering or leaving the house” in order not to soil the floor. Sundt also quoted another observer of the same area who had highlighted the local habit of receiving guests, “laying the table with a white table cloth, crockery, knives and forks just as nicely as city people do.” Other household innovations, adopted by the middling ranks of society, and assumed to be of Dutch origin are the drop-leaf table, the extension table, glazed tiles behind the fireplace, faience jars, rose painting, ornamentation based on the acanthus vine, doors split in the middle that keep little children in and farm animals out. Dutch influence was strong in textiles: The spinning wheel replaced the spindle, the traditional vertical loom was replaced by flat Dutch looms. Knitting was introduced. Woollen cloth and knitted woollen stockings even became export articles in the 1630s and 1640s.34 A linen press was a rare novelty as well as a status symbol, used as it was to smooth linen or canvas sheets, another novelty.35 Everyday consumer articles got worn out and thrown away, or were re-used in new ways. Women’s dress was influenced as well. Imported Dutch “nightshirts” for women – worn partly hidden under a bodice, hence the name – became fashionable.36 When the long drawnout emigration period was coming to an end, c. 1800, young women, return migrants to South Norway, were nicknamed “hollændsker” [Dutch women] because of their long jackets and strange head gear, and better-off families preferred house maids with experience from Holland.37

Concluding remarks Contacts across borders between “ordinary people” may have had far reaching implications. Women of the labouring classes made up a considerable part of the migrants to Amsterdam. Intermarriage with Dutch spouses took place. Interesting innovations in mainstream domestic life were documented in Norway at the time, most pronounced in South Norway, which has the best documented, the most intimate and the longest lasting Dutch connection.

34

Fløystad, “Tekstileksport,” 99-110. Fløystad, “Skuter,” 106-35. The Oslo newspaper Aftenposten 10.11.2007, interview with art historian Carsten Hopstock; Fløystad op. cit., 298 36 Røgeberg, “Kvinners gangklær,” 111-28. 37 References in Sogner, Ung i Europa, 65. 35

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References Christensen, Arne Lie. Den norske byggeskikken. Oslo: Pax, 1995. de Vries, Jan and van der Woude, Ad. The First Modern Economy. Success, Failure, and Perseverance of the Dutch Economy, 1500-1815. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Engelstad, Eivind S. Hollendertiden i Norge. Oslo: Oslo Kunstindustrimuseum, 1937. Evjen, John. Scandinavian Immigrants in New York 1630-1674. Minneapolis: K.C. Holter, 1916. Fløystad, Ingeborg. Agders historie 1641-1723. Bergen: Agder Historielag, 2007. —. “Skuter, skip og oversjøiske forbruksvarer.” Aust-Agder-Arv. Årbok (2012): 106-35. —. “Tekstileksport fra Agder og Rogaland på 1600-tallet. Ullhoser og vadmål.” Heimen 46 (2009): 99-110. Hamran, Ulf. I Sørlandshuset: hus, interiør og inventar 1650-1910. Oslo: Huitfeldt, 1985. Hamran, Ruth. “Søsterkake og bakerovn.” Aust-Agder-Arv (1991): 15-22. Hart, Simon. Geschrift en Getal. Dordrecht. 1976. Jacobaeus, Holger, Vilhelm Maar. Holger Jacobæus’ Rejsebog, 16711692. København: Gyldendal, 1910. Keough, Willeen Keough. The Slender Thread. Irish Women on the Southern Avalon, 1750-1860. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. Kuijpers, Erika. Migrantenstad. Hilversum: Verloren, 2005. Løyland, Margit. Hollendartida i Norge 1550-1750. Oslo: Spartacus, 2012. Maclean, Ian. The Renaissance Notion of Woman. A Study in the Fortunes of Scholasticism and Medical Science in European Intellectual Life Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 80 Rian, Øystein. Den nye begynnelsen 1520-1660. Aschehougs Norges historie. Bd. 5. Oslo, Aschehoug, 1995. Røgeberg, Kristin. “Kvinners gangklær. Skiftene som kilde til kvinners klesskikk på 1600-1700-tallet.” Skiftene som kilder. Skrifter fra Norsk lokalhistorisk institutt. 31 (1996): 111-28. Sætra, Gustav. International Labour Market for Seamen, 1600-1900. Kristiansand: Agder College, 1996. Sarti, Raffaella. Europe at home. Family and material culture 1500-1800. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002.

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Schuurman, Anton, de Vries, Jan, van der Woude, Ad. Aards Geluk. De Nederlanders en hun spullen van 1550 tot 1850. Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Balans, 1997. Sicking, Louis et al., eds. Dutch Light in the “Norwegian Night”. Maritime Relations and Migration across the North Sea in Early Modern Times.Verloren: Hilversum, 2004. Sogner, Sølvi. “Og skuta lå i Amsterdam…” Et glemt norsk innvandrersamfunn i Amsterdam 1621-1720. Oslo: Aschehoug, 2012. —. “Popular contacts between Norway and the Netherlands in the Early Modern Period”. In The North Sea and Culture (1550-1800), edited by Juliette Roding and Lex Heerma van Voss, 185-98. Hilversum: Verloren, 1996. —. “Scandinavian women to Amsterdam in the Dutch Golden Age: migratory strategies”. In Femmes sans frontières. Stratégies transnationales féminines face à la mondialisation, XVII-XXIE siécles, edited by Marie-Pierre Arrizabalaga et al., 31-48. Berne: Peter Lang, 2011. —. Ung i Europa. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1994. Sogner, Sølvi and van Lottum, Jelle. “An immigrant community? Norwegian sailors and their wives in 17th century Amsterdam.” The History of the Family 12 (2007): 153-68. Sundsback, Kariin. Life-experiences, social mobility and integration. The migration of Norwegian women to Amsterdam and Hoorn, 1600-1750. Saarbrücken: LAP Lambert Academic Publishing, 2012. Sundt, Eilert. Om Renligheds-Stellet i Norge (1869). Gjøvik: Gyldendal, 1975. Tyrell, Ian. What is transnational history? 2007. http://iantyrrell.wordpress.com/what-is-transnational-history/ van Bochove, Christiaan. The economic consequences of the Dutch. Economic integration around the North Sea, 1500-1800. Amsterdam: Aksant, 2008. van Gelder, Roelof. Zeepost. Nooit bezorgde brieven uit de 17de en 18de eeuw . Amsterdam/Antwerpen: Atlas, 2008). van Lottum, Jelle. Across the North Sea. The impact of international labour migration, c. 1550-1850. Amsterdam: Aksant, 2007. van Lottum Jelle and Poulsen, Bo. “Estmating levels of numeracy and literacy in the maritime sector in the late eighteenth century”. Scandinavian Economic History Review. 59, 1 (2011): 67-82. van Lottum Jelle en Sogner, Sølvi. “Het verhaal van Magnus en Barbara. Migratiegeschiedenis in het klein”, Holland. Historisch Tijdschrift 2 (2007): 65-79.

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van der Woude, Ad. “Sex ratio and female labour participation in the Dutch Republic”. In Socio-economic consequences of sex-ratios in historical perspective, 1500-1900, Proceedings, Eleventh International Economic History Congress, edited by Antoinette Fauve-Chamoux and Sølvi Sogner, 65-78. Milan: Universita Bocconi, 1994. Visted, Kristoffer and Stigum, Hilmar. Vår gamle bondekultur 2, Oslo: Cappelen, 1971. Worm-Müller, Jacob S. Den Norske sjøfarts historie: fra de ældste tider til vore dager. Bd. 1-6. Oslo, Steenske forlag, 1923.

MIXED MARRIAGES AMONG FRENCH IMMIGRANTS IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, 1880-1950 MARIE-PIERRE ARRIZABALAGA

The study of marriage strategies and practices among first-generation immigrants in the United States in the late 19th century and the early 20th century has been a useful tool for the measurement of new immigrants’ integration processes over time and the nature of their community formation and evolution over time. What kind of communities did firstgeneration Europeans form in the United States between 1880 and 1950? The historiography on these issues is extensive.1 The approaches and methods are also very diverse. They lead to a wide range of conclusions, some of which are sometimes contradictory. While some researchers have used a macro-structural approach used in historical demography to analyse census lists in their study of European immigration and integration processes, others have used various other kinds of demographic sources, as civil registers, and different other methods, as micro-longitudinal ones, used in historical demography and historical anthropology, as genealogies, but also in sociology and ethnography, as interviews, to come to other, additional, and perhaps different conclusions on the same issues.2 1

The historiography on immigration into the United States is indeed extensive. Reference works are listed in Harzig & Hoerder, What is Migration History, as well as in Ueda, A Companion to American Immigration. 2 The methods and approaches on the study of migration are numerous. Researchers in historical demography have used censuses as a major source to propose macro-structural analyses of migration, in the tradition of the French school of Historical Demography. See Louis Henry and Alain Blum’s Techniques d’analyse en Démographie Historique. Since the 1980s, however, researchers have diversified their methods and approaches, proposing micro-longitudinal analyses of migration, using methods derived from microhistory, gender history, and oral history, with multidisciplinary approaches from sociology, social anthropology, and ethnography. See major researchers’ methodological discussions in Peter Burke’s publication on Historical Writing. See also Jan Lucassen and Leo Lucassen’s methodological discussion in their collective publications entitled

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In their studies on marriage practices researchers have been able to prove that many first-generation European immigrants in the United States married men and women of their nationality and lived in specific quarters in cities.3 Regarding the French case, the historiography has concluded that marriage practices among first-generation French immigrants were often endogamous and their integration processes slow. Their children, by contrast, often married men and women of other nationalities, people whose parents originated from other European or American countries. Their marriage strategies were more exogamous and their integration processes were complete. In the end, researchers have concluded to gradual and sometimes slow integration processes among first-generation French immigrants, long processes which were often completed by their second-generation descendants. Further analysis on these issues has subsequently led researchers to conclude that first-generation French immigrants opted for endogamous marriage strategies to maintain their culture and their identity (and perhaps their language too) in an attempt to preserve their roots and perhaps pass their heritage on to the next generation. Such strategies also allowed some of these French immigrants to later return to France (generally to their region of birth) with their families after a few years spent in America. These conclusions sustain even further researchers’ assertions on firstgeneration French immigrants’ endogamous marriage patterns, their weak integration strategies, and their transnational experiences and cultures in California.4 Yet were these marriages so endogamous? Using the case of French immigration into Kern County (just North of Los Angeles) in California since 1880, and sources such as the California census lists of 1920 and Kern County’s naturalisation applications after 1880, this paper will argue that marriage patterns among early French immigrants were more mixed than the historiography has argued. This had an impact upon French settlement patterns in the region, upon French immigrants’ life experiences, and their transnational identity.

Migration, Migration History, History: Old Paradigms and New Perspectives (2005). 3 This is an approach which the scholars from the Chicago School of Sociology and their followers took. 4 See contribution in the collective publication edited by Donna R. Gabaccia and Vicki L. Ruiz, entitled American Dreaming, Global Realities.

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Sources and methods Several factors justify researchers’ inclination to conclude to endogamous marriage practices among first-generation French immigrants in California between 1880 and 1950.5 These factors are related to the nature of the sources available and the use researchers have made of them. The most common sources used for the study of marriage patterns have been the U.S. census lists which provide a wide range of personal information on all households (all their members’ name, age, marital status, profession, birth country, parents’ birth country, citizenship, date of arrival, residence, property ownership, among other information).6 From the data, researchers have assumed that two people originating from the same country, who spoke the same language (that of their country of origin), whose parents originated from the same country, all of whom having the same nationality, married within their culture. As a result, their marriage practices and strategies were assumed to be endogamous, corresponding to choices which responded to immigrants’ desire to perpetuate their culture and language, and maintain ties with their roots so that they could eventually return to their home county. This paper will show that the macro-structural analysis of U.S. censuses is indeed a useful method for the study of immigration and of immigrants’ marriage and integration processes in the United States, yet it overestimates the level of endogamy among first-generation French immigrants. What was the nature of French immigrants’ marriages in California? Did the French men and women massively marry within their culture? This paper will indicate otherwise. It is not because a French man and a French woman married that they married within their culture. We will argue that couples composed of two French nationals originating from two different areas of France actually married outside their cultural environment so that in reality their marriage strategies were exogamous. Their sole common backgrounds were their French citizenship and the French language which they had learned at school but rarely spoke at home (if at all).7 Though a macro-structural study of U.S. censuses may 5

Mary Grace Paquette published articles and books on the French in Kern County, the most significant being her book entitled Lest We Forget, which we will discuss later. She also wrote Basques to Bakersfield in 1982. 6 On the history of U.S. censuses, their content, and their characteristics, see Paul Schor’s book, Compter et Classer. 7 Many of the cultural groups in the periphery of France, along the Alps and the Pyrenees or in Brittany and Corsica for example, did not speak French. While some spoke a French dialect, others spoke a different language altogether. In an

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overestimate the degree of endogamy, the censuses remain useful tools for an evaluation of the degree and the nature of exogamy, making it possible to locate the French men and the French women who had married other nationals (European or American), as we will see. Similar questions may arise from the study of marriage certificates in the United States. This source also provides researchers with a number of personal information on couples (their names, ages, places of residence, countries of birth, and professions), as well as on their parents (their names, countries of residence, countries of birth, and professions). The cross-analysis of the information derived from marriage certificates with the information derived from the censuses enriches and completes the data set, information about women (their maiden names, birthplaces and birthdates) and the couples’ parents (their profession and residence) being more precise in the certificates than in the censuses. Censuses and marriages certificates however are not sufficient sources to complete an indepth study of French immigration into Kern County, California after 1880. One reason is that not all marriage certificates are accessible, some couples getting married before immigration (in France) and others outside Kern County. In addition, certificates do not identify couples’ exact birthplaces. Yet this information is necessary to determine their regional origins and identities in France. Consequently, at the micro-longitudinal level, it is necessary to collect additional data to complete the analysis. It is however important at this level of the analysis to add that marriage certificates remain a useful source indeed, one which provides precise information on couples’ witnesses and on their parents (their names, ages, residences and professions). This information will be helpful later in this research project for the analysis of family, social and cultural networking and more importantly, for the study on the nature of the French community. Researchers who have only used censuses and marriage certificates to measure endogamy or exogamy have often concluded to endogamous attempt to get all French to read, write, and speak the French language, the French government voted the Guizot law making primary education for boys mandatory in 1833 and the Ferry laws in 1881 and 1882 making primary education free and mandatory for all children, boys and girls. Thus all French children became literate and were forced to learn French at school. This did not mean however that they spoke French at home and that they all had a common culture and background. On the contrary, to this day, each region maintains a unique identity, culture and lifestyle. Therefore, in France, when two French people from two different French regions married, their marriage is considered as exogamous. This definition also applies for the French who got married in the United States.

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marriage practices because they have assumed that two people originating from the same country had the same cultural background. Yet, this assumption is not valid for many European countries, including France, where several different cultural groups speaking different languages and having different histories cohabitate within their boundaries. The crossanalysis of the censuses and the marriage certificates alone make it impossible to determine whether two married people indeed originated from the same region in France. In the absence of information related to the couples’ and their parents’ exact birth places (their village, town or city of birth), it is impossible to determine whether these marriages were really endogamous and/or about their degree of endogamy. In order to provide an in-depth discussion on this issue, other sources must be used to complete the data. The most valuable sources are the naturalisation applications, available at the Court House of Bakersfield, the capital city of the County. Though some of the French residents of Kern County never applied for US citizenship or did so elsewhere in the United States,8 the applications of those who did apply in Bakersfield constitute valuable documents for the analysis of French marriage patterns, practices, and strategies in California over time. This is the only data set which systematically indicates the applicant’s exact birth place and birth date as well as his or her spouse’s.9 The cross-analysis of censuses, marriage certificates and naturalisation applications (data later to be crossed analysed with civil registers and Probate/succession records in France and in California) will therefore contribute to determine precisely the extent and the degree of endogamy among first-generation French immigrants in Kern County, California between 1880 and 1950.

8

The first naturalisation application in Kern County dates back to 1884. Yet, many French residents of the county had immigrated into the United States in the 1970s, or even before. According to the census of 1920, they had applied for naturalisation and had been granted citizenship before 1884. Either the applications were destroyed or they had applied in other California county seats (Los Angeles or San Francisco for instance). 9 Among the male applicants in the 1920s, many were young single men in their early twenties. As they applied for citizenship, these men wished to permanently live in the United States, perhaps because they had failed to return to France during World War One. As deserters, they had no choice but to request U.S citizenship. In any case, they probably married later. Future research will have to complete the information on these young men’s family situation (with their marriage certificates).

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The argument which I will make in this paper is first that there were more mixed marriages than what the historiography has argued.10 More first-generation immigrants actually married outside their cultural and linguistic backgrounds than the 1920 census indicates. This had a tremendous impact on the conclusions that can be made on French immigrants’ level of integration processes. The second argument which I will make here (and develop in future research) is that French immigrants in California did not perpetuate their home culture. Instead they recreated a French identity, close to the original one but different because only some aspects of their home culture were preserved in California. French immigrants also absorbed aspects of other French cultures. This was because various French groups originating from very different regions of France with distinct cultural and linguistic backgrounds intermarried, mingled, and merged together in Kern County. Finally, these French grew more “American” as a result of their relations with their American friends, neighbours, and coworkers. Thus the French culture which French immigrants, men and women, transmitted to their future generations in Kern County was a hybrid Franco-American culture. The purpose of this paper (and of future research) will be to analyse the specificities and uniqueness of this hybrid culture, and the processes which led to its formation over time.

A French case study: historiography California has been attracting French immigrants for several centuries, starting in the eighteenth century, a long time before California was integrated into the United States in 1850.11 Many were the younger sons of farmers and businessmen in France, men who were excluded from inheritance and who ventured to the United States where economic opportunities were better, and in any case, more attractive than in French cities.12 They emigrated to build a new life and start a business of their 10 The historiography on the French in Kern County is not extensive. The reference in the domain is Mary Grace Paquette (1978), whose contributions we will later discuss. 11 On the French in California before 1850, see Michel Le Bris, Quand la Californie était française. 12 On the issue about unequal inheritance practices responsible for massive emigration, see Nicole Fouché, Émigration alsacienne aux États-Unis (chapter 5). See also Marie-Pierre Arrizabalaga, “L’émigration des pyrénéennes en Amérique du Nord” & “Cent ans d’émigration basque française” & “Basque diaspora, eighteenth – twentienth century”.

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own.13 According to Annick Foucrier, the French who had settled in California before 1850 originated from different parts of France: from Brittany and the Bordeaux region in the West, the Alps and AlsaceLorraine in the East, and finally the Pyrenees (most notably the Basque Country and Bearn) in the South.14 In her thorough research work, she convincingly argued that California first attracted seamen and weavers from Brittany as well as wood workers and wine growers from Gironde (around Bordeaux). She also argued that after 1850 a greater number of French immigrated into California. They were ranchers, farmers, and businessmen who participated in the development of California, taking advantage of the land acquired from Mexico after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848. Indeed once integrated into the Union in 1850, California attracted even more French men and women, not only because of the Gold Rush but also because of California’s extraordinary economic and commercial potentials for business, agriculture (farming and ranching), and construction (railroad, canal, power plants). The French population of California, according to the U.S. censuses, grew from 8,462 in 1860 to 21,341 in 1930 (the peak of French immigration into California in the early 20th century). With World War One, the restrictive quota laws of 1921 and 1924, the Depression, and World War Two, the French population declined to 18,448 in 1950. It then increased again when California experienced a second wave of massive French immigration after 1950 so that by 1990 the French population reached a new peak at 25,507. Among the cities of California, Los Angeles and San Francisco were the most attractive ones. Actually, San Francisco was the strongest magnet city in California in the late 19th century and early 20th century as the French population grew from 2,203 in 1860 to 6,908 in 1920. Later, the population considerably declined so that it reached 2,192 by 1990. The city of Los Angeles, though less attractive at first, increasingly attracted French settlers and through the period, from 317 in 1870 to 8,164 in 1990.15 Today Los Angeles welcomes the largest French community in California. Yet who were the French men and the French women who resided in California in the period between 1880 and 1950? Where did they come from? What kind of French community did they form? What can be added to the contributions made by Annick Foucrier and Mary Grace Paquette, 13 This argument can be made about several groups of France. See references by Marie-Pierre Arrizabalaga (2008, 2010 & 2013) as well as those by Annick Foucrier (1999) & Nicole Fouché (1992) among others. 14 See Chapter 2 of Annick Foucrier’s book, Le rêve californien. 15 Annick Foucrier, Le rêve californien, 21-23.

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two major specialists of French immigration into California? In this paper I will focus on the study of marriage patterns and practices among the first-generation French men and women residing in Kern County between 1880 and 1950. In the process I will use various methods and approaches (defined hereafter) in order to explore these French men’s and women’s experiences, choices, and destinies. I chose Kern County because as the historiography indicates, many French immigrants settled there in the period between 1880 and 1950 and because it was a rural area. A great deal is known about French settlement in urban areas (Los Angeles and San Francisco in particular) but less on their settlement in rural areas. Kern County did attract many French men and women, most of whom, as we will see, originated from rural areas in France. According to the U.S. censuses, the French population of the County grew from 26 in 1870, to 559 (the peak year) in 1920, down to 363 in 1950 and 202 in 1990.16 What characterises this population and the French community? According to Mary Grace Paquette, the French community in Kern County was rather dense and closely knit.17 Her research offers an illustration of the type of French settlements which emerged in Southern California in the second half of the 19th century through the first half of the 20th century. She studied French settlement in Kern County using socio-anthropological and sociological methods. Her findings were based on archival research, field work, and interviews with French immigrants and their descendants in the 1970. With the methods which were known and used then, she produced a thorough study on the French community in the county. In her demonstration, she was able to show how tight the French community of Kern County was, until recently. The French intermarried and as French families, they formed a “little France” whose members were involved in various economic activities such as agriculture, mining, oil extraction, and other small businesses (as hotels, bakery). While some resided in the isolated mountain areas of the county, most preferred to live in and around the city of Bakersfield (the county capital). She also told many success stories about specific members of the community, their life, career, activities, as well as about French celebrations (as the July 14th celebrations), hence Kern County’s strong French cultural heritage. This led Mary Grace Paquette to make her strong argument on the “Frenchness” of the community. Her intent was to show 16

See Annick Foucrier, Le rêve californien, p. 21. The French population of Kern grew from 26 in 1870, to 80 in 1880, to 210 in 1890, to 365 in 1900, to 539 in 1910, to 559 in 1920, to 499 in 1930, to 380 in 1940, to 363 in 1950, to 233 in 1980, to 202 in 1990. 17 Paquette, Lest We Forget, 1978.

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how “French” the French of Kern County had remained over time and why the French heritage of the county has survived until today. It is this heritage which explained the opening of Le Club Français de Bakersfield in 1974, a club which promoted the French culture in the county and served as a meeting place for early French immigrants’ descendants and more recent French immigrants.18 Mary Grace Paquette’s reconstitution of the French community in Kern County in the late 19th century and the 20th century using interviews and family reconstitutions is highly valuable and rich in genealogical information. Yet she perhaps focuses too much her attention on the “Frenchness” of the French community, often ignoring their differences and their diverse cultural, linguistic, and regional backgrounds. In addition, she failed to consider French women’s experiences, only making brief comments on their traditional lifestyle (often considered as both wives and servants) and on their compliance to traditional family values. French women are presented as passive followers rather than actors of their lives or decision-makers. For Paquette, French women had no life experiences of their own. Not once did she try to demonstrate how French women used their personal, educational and professional capital or agency to act by and for themselves. This work (and future ones) will make amends to this research gap. It will start with a demonstration arguing that French women did not just follow the men but actually made choices of their own. Indeed, in the same way as the men, some French women married outside the community and therefore emancipated themselves from their culture. They were actors of their lives and therefore contributed in their own way to the society and to the community. There is therefore more to be known about these French men and women of Kern County in the period. This will be done using newer methods (microlongitudinal analysis) and newer approaches (gender), some which have emerged since Paquette’s works were first published. This particular paper will thus analyse the lives and experiences of the French men and women of Kern County using multidisciplinary approaches and methods with the intent to highlight gender differentiated experiences and destinies.19 The focus will here lay upon men’s and 18

Paquette, Lest We Forget, 151. On the discussion related to transatlantic migration, gender migration, and women’s migration experiences, see Peter Burke in New Perspectives on Historical Writing; Donna R. Gabaccia & Vicki L. Ruiz (Eds.) in American Dreaming; Loretta Baldassar & Donna R. Gabaccia (Eds.) in Intimacy and Italian Migration; Donna R. Gabaccia (Ed.) in Seeking Common Ground; Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo (ed.) in Gender and U.S. Immigration. On the use of gender 19

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women’s marriage experiences, stressing on their capital or agency as active actors of their lives in an attempt to evaluate their emancipation and integration processes in Kern County. I will propose a new assessment of first-generation French immigrants’ marriage patterns and strategies through the macro-structural analysis of the 1920 census, cross-analysed with the naturalisation applications from 1880 until 1974. This will lead to a micro-longitudinal study of marriage practices which I will consider from a gender perspective.20 For the purpose of the current demonstration, I will only consider the married population and argue that French marriages were indeed more mixed than what the historiography has argued. As a result, the French heritage in Kern County reflected a form of “Frenchness”, a Franco-American one which emerged from French and non-French interrelating, intermarrying, and living together. In the process, French immigrants absorbed various cultural values and attitudes from different other French cultures and from the U.S. culture due to their cohabitation with French people of different cultures and with Americans in Kern County. These cultural encounters inevitably affected the nature of the French culture which emerged in Kern County. What do the census of 1920 and the naturalisation applications tell us about French marriages, French men’s and French women’s experiences, and the French community of Kern County?

The nature of endogamy from the census of 1920 An analysis based upon the macro-structural study of the 1920 census of Kern County in California leads us to make the same assertions as past researchers, such as Paquette, who concluded to high endogamous marriage practices and slow integration processes among first-generation French immigrants. Yet we will see in the following demonstration that the macro-structural analysis of the U.S. census lists alone is not sufficient for researchers to reach convincing conclusions on the nature of endogamy or exogamy within a particular population in the United States. It will require the cross analysis of census lists with other sources as the naturalisation applications. This cross analysis will show that marriages were not as endogamous as earlier argued. Finally, the paper will adopt a gender approach, one which analyses both men’s and women’s agency in approach in historical research, see also Joan Scott, “The Evidence of Experience” & “Gender: A Useful Category.” 20 Later in this research work, I will cross-analyse the above collected data with those of the French couples’ marriage certificates, civil records, and the inheritance or Probate records both in the United States and France.

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their migration experiences and their participation in the community formation.21 For the purpose of our demonstration we will begin the macro-structural analysis with the study of the 1920 census list alone and consider the data about French immigrants’ marital practices only. In the process, the paper will show why the U.S. census lists alone are not sufficient sources to make convincing conclusions on endogamy or exogamy. The analysis of the computerised data derived from the 1920 census lists indicates that there were 543 first-generation French immigrants residing in Kern County, California, of whom two thirds were men and one third were women (see Table 1). This French population represented about 1% of the total population of the county which in 1920 came to 54,843 people. Among the men, about half of them were single and the other half were married. In addition, about 10% of the men declared themselves widowers (25 cases out of 362) or divorced (7 cases out of 362). Among the women, by contrast, 8.3% of them only were single (15 out of 181 women). Most were married women (142 out of 181 or 78.5% of the population) and few were widowed (23 out of 181) or divorced (1 case). Table 1 The French in the census of Kern County in 1920, by sex and marital status Men Single 168 (46.4%) Married 162 (44.8%) Widowed 25 (6.9%) Divorced 7 (1.9%) Total 362 (66.6%)

Women 15 (8.3%) 142 (78.5%) 23 (12.7%) 1 (0.5%) 181 (33.4%)

Total 183 (33.7%) 304 (56.0%) 48 (8.8%) 8 (1.5%) 543 (100%)

The data clearly reflect a reality prevalent in the rural areas of frontier states such as California in the early 20th century. At first these areas attracted young single men only as a result of the hard living and working conditions which characterised the early years of the development of the frontier territories. These were bare, unexplored, unexploited, and therefore unwelcoming lands to which young single women were not attracted, hence their small number. The women who had settled in Kern County by 1920 were therefore married women, most of whom lived in 21

On similar studies related to immigrant women’s experiences in California, see Carol Lynn McKibben, Beyond Cannery Row & Suzanne M. Sinke, Dutch Immigrant Women.

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the largest towns of the County, and Bakersfield in particular. Similarly, the few single women lived in towns and worked mostly in the services (hotel, restaurant or private families) or as employees in small businesses (bakery, laundry and other shops). While men had a wide range of opportunities to make a good living working in farms, ranches, gold or silver mines, canal construction, railroad construction, oil companies, electrical companies, or other small businesses, the women for their part had limited opportunities. At least it appeared so because census takers in 1920 rarely indicated married women’s professions. The picture which they drew of married women was that of spouses who took care of the home and the children (as housewives) and who were rarely employed. The reality however was probably different. It is difficult to imagine that these women living sometimes in very harsh, isolated, unwelcoming areas did not contribute in some ways to the society and to the family income.22 Census takers managed to draw a traditional, patriarchal picture of women writing “none” to identify women’s profession. In their paternalistic mind, they could only conceive women as reproducers rather than producers. This is confirmed by other aspects of the data. French women married men who were around ten years older. These were established men who could support a family and secure a livelihood to their children. That explains why married women’s average age was 38 in 1920 while married men’s age was 47. French couples had 2.4 children on average (with a maximum of 8 children) and their households were composed of 4.9 people on average (with a maximum of 12 people in one household).23 A closer look at French couples’ life and experiences in Kern County will probably allow us to draw a different picture of French settlement and this will be completed later through a micro-longitudinal analysis of both men’s and women’s migration trajectories, their life course experiences, their marriage practices, and their professional environment and contributions. Along the same line, when looking at marriage patterns in the census, the data give a skewed representation of first-generation French men’s and French women’s origins in 1920. Looking at French residents’ birth country and their parents’ birth country, it is possible to determine the origins of the couples (provided that the husband, the wife, and/or the children are listed together on the census list). It is also possible to determine the birth country of widows’ and widowers’ spouses when the 22 On this issue, see Marie-Pierre Arrizabalaga, “Las mujeres pirenaicas”; “L’émigration des pyrénéennes en Amérique du Nord” & “Les Basques dans l’Ouest américain”. 23 These data exclude boarders or roomers, especially among the French who owned hotels and who housed up to 20 boarders.

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children are listed together with the surviving spouse. The 1920 census lists indicate that there were 308 married men and women of French birth (as Table 2 shows). Among them, around 80% of the men and the women had married someone born in France. As a result, when using U.S. census lists, it can be asserted, as in the past, that a large majority of the firstgeneration French immigrants of Kern County were men and women who had married other first-generation French. This could lead us to conclude that marriage strategies among first-generation French immigrants were indeed endogamous, assuming that these French men and women originated from the same region and that they had the same cultural and linguistic background. At this stage of the analysis, using censuses only, it appears that endogamy was rather strong among first-generation French immigrants. As a result, their integration process must have been slow. Yet was endogamy so strong indeed? Table 2 Marriage and endogamy in the census of Kern County in 1920 Married man With French spouses 122 (80.25%) With European spouses 8 (5.25%) With American spouses 22 (14.5%) Total 152 (49.4%)

Married women Total 122 (78.2%) 244 (79.2%) 12 (7.7%) 20 (6.5%) 22 (14.1%) 44 (14.3%) 156 (50.6%) 308 (100%)

The data must be analysed more thoroughly, in a way which leads us to question strong endogamous strategies among first-generation French immigrants, and women in particular. Indeed, despite the high level of intermarriage within the French community in Kern County, women had a slightly greater tendency to marry outside the community. Indeed, 12 of them (7.7%) had married other Europeans (against 8 for men (5.25%)) and 22 others (14.1%) had married American men (against 22 for men (14.4%) in that situation). Thus a total of 34 French women (21.8%) had married outside the community and therefore favoured exogamy while 30 French men (19.75%) had. Women’s exogamy stands out even further when closely looking at the women who married American men. Indeed, among the 22 French men who had married women born in the United States, 12 of them had married American women whose parents were French. By contrast, only 3 of the 22 women had married men born in the United States and whose parents were French. Thus exogamy was stronger among French women who married Americans. At this stage of the analysis, it thus appears that women’s marriage practices were slightly more exogamous than French men’s. The macro-structural analysis of the census data here reaches its limits. It does not allow further analysis of

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endogamy or exogamy, leading us to change approach and perspective, to use other sources and to choose a micro-longitudinal approach and a gender perspective in order to analyse French marriage patterns in greater depth and further determine the degree of endogamy, among the French. This is precisely what naturalisation applications allow to complete.

Endogamy from the cross-analysis of the 1920 census and the naturalisation records The naturalisation records are extremely useful sources for the study of endogamy and exogamy among the first-generation immigrants because, at the micro level, they provide a large number of biographical information upon applicants: their names, their origins, their migration experiences from departure until the date of their naturalisation application, and their families’. The most valuable biographical information concern applicants’ and their spouses’ exact birthdates and birthplaces. The data make it possible to identify their region of birth in France and therefore to determine their cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Thanks to the naturalisation applications, it is thus possible to establish whether French men and French women indeed married men or women from the same region in France and therefore whether their marriage strategies were truly endogamous.24 Did the French men and women marry within their culture (endogamy) or outside their culture? For the purpose of this research, I computerised all French naturalisation applications archived at the Court House of Kern County in Bakersfield. A total of 245 French residents applied for U.S. citizenship between 1880 and 1974.25 Among them, there were 160 men (about two thirds of all French applicants) and 85 women (about one third of all French applicants) (See table 3 below).26 Among these 245 applicants, two 24 Endogamy in the social sciences refers to marriage alliances between people who have the same regional and cultural backgrounds while homogamy refers to marriage alliances between people who have the same social and professional backgrounds. These are issues which will be addressed in much greater details in the larger research project. 25 The first French application was signed in 1884 in Bakersfield, yet the first applicant to become naturalised did so in 1910. The last applicant to become naturalised did so in 1974. Many other French residents applied for citizenship but they did so in other county seats, as Los Angeles and San Francisco. 26 A number of the early French immigrants residing in Kern County probably applied for citizenship at the Court House of Los Angeles when it was not yet possible for them to file an application for citizenship in Bakersfield.

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thirds were married and one third single. While the large majority of the unmarried applicants were young men in their twenties (75 of them or 92.6%) who had recently immigrated and who had not yet married and settled down as families, only a few women were unmarried (6 of them, that is 7.4% of the single women). For the study of marriage strategies, we will consider half of the married couples from the U.S. census of 1920. These couples were those whom we also identified in the naturalisation records: 85 married men (about half of the French men who applied for U.S. citizenship) and 79 married women (more than 90% of the French women who applied for U.S. citizenship). As the data is rather complete on them, we will be able to determine whether their marriages were truly endogamous or exogamous. Table 3 French applicants for US citizenship in Kern County, by sex and marital status Single Married Total

Men 75 (46.9%) 85 (53.1%) 160 (65.3%)

Women 6 (7.1%) 79 (92.9%) 85 (34.7%)

Total 81 (33.1%) 164 (66.9%) 245 (100%)

The information on birth places indicates that most of the French applicants originated from four regions of France: Hautes-Alpes (a high mountain area of the Alps, most commonly known as Dauphiné) and the French Basque Country (in the Western part of the Pyrenees) (see Table 4). In addition, there were immigrants from Bearn (a region neighbouring the French Basque Country along the Pyrenees) and from Alsace-Lorraine (a borderland between France and Germany in the North East of France).27 The French from Hautes-Alpes and Alsace-Lorraine were those who had immigrated in the 1870s and 1880s (according to the census of 1920) in

27

These were regions with historical emigration traditions in the United States. For additional reading, see Nicole Fouché, Émigration alsacienne aux Etats-Unis; Adrien Blazquez, Émigration de masse; Ariane Bruneton-Governatori & Jacques Staes. Cher Père et tendre mère; Henry de Charnisay, L’Émigration bascobéarnaise en Amérique; William A. Douglass & Jon Bilbao, Amerikanuak ; Du Béarn aux Amériques; Pierre Lhande, L’Émigration basque; Claude Mehats, Organisation et aspects de l’émigration; Mary Grace Paquette, Basques to Bakersfield; Beltran Paris, Beltran; Alberto Sarramone, Les Basques en Amérique.

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the early years of European settlement in Kern County and therefore earlier than any of the other groups.28 Table 4 Origins of French applicants for U.S. citizenship in Kern County, by sex* Men Women Total Hautes-Alpes 46 (29.3%) 17 (20.7%) 63 (26.4%) Pays Basque 79 (50.3%) 36 (43.9%) 115 (48.1%) Bearn 5 (3.2%) 6 (7.3%) 11 (4.6%) Alsace-Lorraine 4 (2.5%) 4 (4.9%) 8 (3.3%) Other areas of France 23 (14.7%) 19 (23.2%) 42 (17.6%) Total 157 (65.7%) 82 (34.3%) 239 (100%) *Six missing cases due to incomplete information: three men and three women

The above data thus indicate that the largest group among the French applicants was composed of French Basques, followed by those originating from Hautes-Alpes, then Bearn, and finally Alsace-Lorraine.29 There were men and women from other parts of France but their numbers were small for each group. There was one immigrant from Paris, but also one from Corsica, one from Brittany, one from Provence, one from Nord, among others. At this stage of the analysis, it is significant to highlight that most of the French applicants originated from borderlands of France, along the Eastern borders between France and Italy (for Hautes-Alpes), between France and Germany (for Alsace-Lorraine), and along the Southern border between France and Spain (for Bearn and the Basque Country). These French immigrants had thus grown up in areas where people spoke different languages or different dialects of French and had different cultures. At the time France was not a nation of one culture, but one of many cultures. Depending on where people came from, they had distinct cultures and spoke distinct languages or dialects. It is possible to imagine that, as a result of their distinct cultural origins, the French of Kern County had difficulty to communicate and to understand one another. For instance, the French men and the French women of the Alps 28 Many from French from Alsace-Lorraine emigrated after the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. As they refused to become Prussian, they migrated to other regions of France and to the United States. One of their destinations was California. 29 Many of the French immigrants who had settled in Kern County before 1900 applied for US citizenship in Los Angeles, hence the small number of applicants from Hautes-Alpes and Alsace Lorraine in Bakersfield. Additional research will be completed to retrieve the missing information.

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had cultural and linguistic backgrounds which significantly differed from those of the French men and the French women of the Pyrenees. Even within the Pyrenees, the French of Bearn did not share the same culture and did not speak the same language as the French from the Basque Country. They might have felt close because of their common citizenship, yet the reality was that they did not share the same cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Their sole common ground was the French language which they had learned in primary school but rarely spoke at home (if at all).30 Yet for Americans, they were all French citizens and as such, they were all considered as members of the French community. This is probably what united them despite their differences, making the community appear as a cohesive entity but a relative cohesion considering its various components. But who did these French applicants really marry? Did they marry men or women of their region? To what extent were their marriages endogamous? Before starting our analysis, it is important to bring up the issue about women and citizenship. Until 1920, women, no matter their citizenship, were not legally allowed to apply for U.S. citizenship. They had no civil, voting and citizenship rights. They were granted their parents’ citizenship and when they married they automatically took their husbands’ citizenship. As a consequence when French women married U.S. citizens or if their foreign husbands had earlier been granted U.S. citizenship, they automatically became U.S. citizens. Thus many French women became U.S. citizens due to marriage and without applying for it. These French women therefore never appeared in the data. In the same way women born in the United States could lose their U.S. citizenship after marrying an alien (a non citizen). Thus before 1920, the women who married an alien were entitled to their husbands’ citizenship. In the same process they lost their father’s citizenship, whether they wanted it or not.31 The data show a few cases both in the census of 1920 and the naturalisation records of women who were born as U.S. citizens, yet became aliens after marrying a foreign-born man. They only regained their U.S. citizenships after their husbands were granted U.S. citizenship. After 1920, the situation changed drastically for women. With the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, women obtained civil, voting and citizenship rights which entitled them to U.S. citizenship in their own right and name. As a result, after 1920, US-born women who married foreign30

See comments on note 7 above. I encountered several cases of U.S.-born women who had married a foreign-born man before 1920 and who in the process had lost their U.S. citizenship through marriage. After 1920, they had to file a naturalisation application in order to regain their citizenship back. 31

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born men remained U.S. citizens. In addition foreign women, whether they were married or not, could apply for U.S. citizenship in their own name (even if their foreign husbands did not). The data indicate that among the French immigrants, 82 women applied for citizenship in their own name after 1920, most of whom originated from Hautes-Alpes and the Basque Country (see table 4). This phenomenon is significant in that it is an indicator on the way French women in California assumed greater rights and power over time, something that we will reconsider later in our discussion. The cross-analysis of the naturalisation applications and the 1920 census at this stage of the analysis provide detailed information about 156 French men and women (see Table 5). They represent about 60% of the naturalisation applicants and about half of the French married population of the 1920 census. The data derived from the naturalisation applications thus completed those of the census data.32 Thanks to the cross analysis of the two sources, we are able to consider the women who before 1920 acquired their U.S. citizenship through marriage and who therefore did not apply for citizenship. These women consequently escaped the analysis based upon the naturalisation application. Definitely the use of several sources and their cross analysis have positive effects on this analysis. Table 5 Marriage and origins of spouses in Kern County Married man With French spouses 50 (64.9%) With non-French spouses 27 (35.1%) Total 77 (49.4%)

Married women 51 (64.6%) 28 (35.4%) 79 (50.6%)

Total 101 (64.7%) 55 (35.3%) 156 (100%)

What the data derived from the cross-analysis of the 1920 census and the naturalisation presented in table 5 indicate is that about 65% of the French men and women married other French. Therefore, exogamy was greater than what the data derived from the 1920 census indicated (that is about 80%, in Table 2). This analysis on endogamy and exogamy however is incomplete. Did these French men and women marry within their cultural and linguistic backgrounds? When looking at the exact birth places of the 156 men and women, it appears that endogamy is even weaker (see table 6). Indeed the data in table 6 indicate that only 46.2% of 32

Additional research will later be performed to complete the data. Indeed, subsequent research work will involve the consultation and computerisation of the civil records (births, marriages and deaths records) and the inheritance (Probate) records in France and the United States.

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the French men and women married men and women originating from their home region in France. These were mainly men and women from Hautes-Alpes and the Basque Country. Thus less than half of the French of Kern intermarried within their culture while the majority married other French, Europeans or Americans. The data thus highlight stronger exogamy than the historiography indicated as 18.6% of the French married French from other regions of France, 10.9% married other Europeans, and finally 24.3% married Americans. Among those who married Europeans (10.9%), they chose men and women from France’s neighbouring nations (from Spain, Italy, and Germany in particular). Many more, however, considered marriages with Americans, some of whom were of French decent. Though it is perhaps early to make a final statement, one may however argue that many of the men married American women of French decent, perhaps from their parents’ birth region. By contrast French women rarely married American men of French decent. Thus French women married outside the French community or French of different cultural backgrounds, probably more than men did. They seemed to have a stronger desire to emancipate themselves from their family and culture. Later research will provide answer as to why French women married more outside their community than men. What can be added at this level of the analysis is that these marriage strategies were probably determined by the marriage market, which was more favourable for French women, many of whom willingly married men of different cultures, and more unfavourable for French men, especially for those who wished to marry French women from their region of birth. Only additional research will allow us to determine whether French men married outside the community by choice or only because the marriage market within the French community of Kern County (and perhaps Los Angeles too) was unfavourable for them. What do the data about the French community? Table 6 Origins of spouses in the naturalisation applications of Kern County With spouses of the same region With spouses of other French regions With European spouses With American spouses Total

Married man 35 (45.5%) 15 (19.5%)

Married women

Total

37 (46.8%) 14 (17.7%)

72 (46.2%) 29 (18.6%)

8 (10.4%) 19 (24.6%) 77 (49.4%)

9 (11.4%) 19 (24.1%) 79 (50.6%)

17 (10.9%) 38 (24.3%) 156(100%)

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The French community in Kern County – Preliminary conclusions What does this first stage of the research indicate regarding the nature of the French community in Kern County, California in the late 19th century and the early 20th century and women’s role in this process? As the censuses of the county indicate, the French population grew slowly but steadily from 1870 until 1920. The early settlers came from Hautes-Alpes and Alsace-Lorraine, regions along the Eastern borders of France, later to be joined by French men originating from the Basque Country and Bearn, regions along the Southern border of France. While many of those who originated from Hautes-Alpes were born in neighbouring villages in Dauphiné and seemed to constitute a network of immigrants who had early connections in France, the French from Alsace-Lorraine came as dispersed groups who did not necessarily organise their migration to California. This was because they escaped a serious political situation in their region of birth, its annexation into Prussia after the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. While the French from Hautes-Alpes faced difficult economic realities at home and envisioned emigration as a response to unequal inheritance practices and land shortage, those from Alsace-Lorraine escaped political realities, more so than economic ones. These early immigrants settled in Kern County between 1870 and 1900. Their settlement was dispersed, many of whom were sheep raisers or miners residing in the distant, isolated, unwelcoming lands of the county. At the time there was therefore no French community. Among them, endogamy was high, many immigrating with their wives and family or marrying women of their region. With time however, other groups settled in Kern County, especially men and women from the Pyrenees, Bearn and the Basque Country in particular. A number of them continued to settle in the isolated mountain areas of the county as they were attracted by the great mining and sheep raising opportunities. A larger number of them, however, settled in cities, such as Bakersfield, the capital city of the county, as well as in Tehachapi, Delano, and Maricopa. By 1920, it appears that a French community had emerged in the county. According to the 1920 census, many French resided in towns rather than in the hostile, isolated, unwelcoming areas of the county. French families in these remote areas remained closely-knit, their marriages endogamous, and their family values more traditional and patriarchal than elsewhere. There the economy revolved around mining, sheep-raising, and construction (railroads, canal), leaving no place to women’s employment. In Bakersfield, however, life was more welcoming

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for both the French men and the French women. There emerged a “French quarter” where the French could assemble, especially in and around the nine French hotels which had opened by 1920, five being located on Humboldt Street in Bakersfield. There were other, smaller French communities scattered around the county, around French hotels, one in several smaller towns of the county: Delano, Maricopa, and Tehachapi. They welcomed new French immigrants and made their settlement easier. French settlement in Bakersfield had grown more diversified by 1920, marriages being more exogamous, resulting from the cohabitation of French from different parts of France and with Americans. Women had opportunities which did not exist in the smaller towns of the county. That is probably why more and more of them preferred settling in Bakersfield than in other isolated, unwelcoming places. In Bakersfield, employment was diversified, French men having opportunities working for the railroads, canal construction, electrical plants, and oil companies. Others opened their own businesses: restaurants, bakery, laundry, and crafts shops. Did the French who intermarried or associated one another do so because they were French or because they had common economic or professional interests? Later research will tell. What roles did French women play in the community formation? It is clear that at the beginning of French settlement in Kern County in the late 19th century, French women played a minor role. They immigrated as families: with their parents or more commonly, with their husbands. They followed the men in an attempt to make their settlement safe and secure. As families, they lived in isolated, unwelcoming areas of the country. With time, however, women played a greater role for themselves and within the community. It appears that French women grew more independent and more autonomous, acting more and more as decision-makers in their own life and within their family. French women’s marriage patterns and strategies signified greater autonomy. Indeed more of them married men of different cultures (especially Americans), not because the marriage market within the French community was unfavorable. On the contrary, many French unmarried men were available in the County. French women’s marriage market was therefore very favorable, French single men outnumbering French single women (see table 1), especially in the rural areas of the frontier states. French women thus had many marriage options, to choose among French, European, and American men. The data indicate that more and more of them chose American husbands, one with a stable, regular, and perhaps better job, and who could secure them a better life perhaps in cities.

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An analysis of female employment also speaks for French women’s contribution in the labour market. Census takers in 1920 hardly ever indicated married women’s occupations. That does not mean women did not work or did not contribute to the family economy. Most self-employed men, especially sheep raisers, farmers, hotel owners, and small business owners, succeeded in their enterprise because, as the French women interviewed indicated, their wives worked with them, as partners, often in charge of the management and the finance of the business. This shows that French women had human and professional capitals which were assets for the success of the family business. Yet only the men were declared business owners in the 1920 census. By contrast French women were defined as “keeping the house” and therefore depicted as living in their husbands’ shadow. The reality was quite different. French women’s contribution to the family income was actually considerable. This emerges when analysing the life and experiences of the widowed and divorced women. Indeed, when French women became widows or divorced their roles and powers as women and as business owners clearly showed. Indeed according to the 1920 census, they raised their family alone and declared themselves as household heads and property owners (proprietors of the family house and/or the family business) in their own name. In their wills, these selfemployed men had entrusted their wives with the family assets, thus acknowledging that they, as women, were indeed capable of managing the family business alone, even when the children were old enough to take over. In these circumstances, one can argue that these French women did not assume family headship and business ownership only from the moment of their husbands’ death. It was a role which they had probably assumed all their life. In the process, before and after their husbands’ death, they were able to assume all family and business responsibilities and to provide for the family. As they did, they never remarried. Another aspect which shows French women’s increasing roles and powers as women can be drawn from the numerous naturalisation applications which they completed after 1920, even when their husbands sometimes refused to apply. Indeed, after the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, many French women took advantage of their new legal rights to apply for U.S. citizenship and for some of them, to ask for a divorce. More women assumed their new rights and asserted their authority. Not only did French women apply for citizenship in their own name but they also accepted to come forward as witnesses for other French applicants (men and women). This is an indicator of French women’s willingness and perhaps determination to integrate faster in the American life, perhaps

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faster than the French men. It is clear that women assumed their new rights to forge a new, more independent identity in California. The nature and degree of this independence still need to be determined.

Conclusion The research is definitely incomplete and more needs to be done in order to answer the many questions which remain unanswered. Yet this paper shows the premises of a community which developed patterns of gradual consolidation in the late 19th century and the early 20th century. Additional micro-longitudinal research needs to be completed in order to refine the analysis. Future analysis will involve the elaboration of detailed family reconstitutions among French immigrants. The research will consider their life-cycle evolution from their place of origin until the place of settlement in California. This will be done using not only the naturalisation applications, the US censuses from 1880 until 1940, but also the civil registers and the probates or inheritance records, both in France and in California. The cross-analysis of all these documents will further demonstrate that the French community in Southern California began emerging in the late 19th century, each member desiring to maintain their culture, their family values, and probably their language too, at first. This community however evolved over time as new comers joined the community, men and women who did not originate from Hautes-Alpes and Alsace-Lorraine alone but more and more from other regions of France, especially from the Pyrenees, notably Bearn and the Basque Country. These French groups later grew more open to one another and eventually to other peoples besides the French. Strongly endogamous at first, their marriage patterns later grew more and more exogamous, perpetuating only some aspects of the French family culture and identity. At this stage of the analysis, we can argue that with time French women appeared more and more as actors of their lives and greater participants in the community than the historiography has argued. The 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution highly contributed to this evolution. French women then made more decisions about their life (citizenship), participated more in public life (as witnesses in marriage certificates and naturalisation applications), and in the labor market, fully assuming their family and business responsibilities after their husbands’ death or after their divorce. More research needs to be completed in order to better understand and further determine the extent of French women’s roles and powers in their family, the local economy and the U.S. society in Kern County, California. The research will proceed with this demonstration,

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determining further the nature of the French community, its heritage in Kern County then and today, and women’s place and roles in the process.

References Arrizabalaga, Marie-Pierre. “Basque Diaspora, Eighteenth – Tuentienth Century”. In The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration, edited by Immanuel Ness, 6 pages. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2013. —. “Cent ans d’émigration basque française en Amérique du Nord: Synthèse et nouvelles perspectives (1860-1960)” in Émigration de masse et émigration d’élite vers les Amériques au XIXe siècle. Le cas des Pyrénées basco-béarnaises, réuni par Adrian Blazquez, 113-155. Orthez: Editions Gascogne, 2010. —. “Las mujeres pirenaicas y la emigración en el siglo XIX.” Mujer y emigracíon : una perspectiva plural, Cátedra UNESCO 226 sobre migracións (2008): 107-131. —. “L’émigration des pyrénéennes en Amérique du Nord aux XIXe-XXe siècles.” Les femmes et l'émigration en Amérique du Nord / Women and Emigration to North America. Histoire sociale - Social History (Marie-Pierre Arrizabalaga as guest editor), 40:80 (novembreNovember 2007): 269-295. —. “Les Basques dans l’Ouest américain, 1900-1910.” Lapurdum V (2000): 335-350. Baldassar, Loretta & Donna R. Gabaccia (Eds.). Intimacy and Italian Migration. Gender and Domestic Lives in a Mobile World. New York: Fordham University Press, 2011. Blazquez, Adrien (réuni par). Émigration de masse et émigration d’élite vers les Amériques au XIXe siècle. Le cas des Pyrénées bascobéarnaises. Orthez: Editions Gascogne, 2010. Bruneton-Governatori, Ariane & Jacques Staes. Cher Père et tendre mère… Lettres de Béarnais émigrés en Amérique du Sud (XIXe siècle). Biarritz: J. & D. Éditions, 1996. Burke, Peter (Ed.). New Perspectives on Historical Writing. University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania University Press, 1993. Charnisay, Henry de. L’Émigration basco-béarnaise en Amérique. Biarritz: J. & D. Éditions, 1996. Douglass, William A. & Jon Bilbao. Amerikanuak, Basques in the New World. Reno, Nevada: University of Nevada Press, 1975. Du Béarn aux Amériques! Histoires d’émigrants. Pau: Bulletin n° 7 de l’Association Mémoire Collective en Béarn, 1992.

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Fouché, Nicole. Émigration alsacienne aux Etats-Unis, 1815-1870. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1992. Foucrier, Annick. Le rêve californien. Migrants français sur la Côte Pacifique (XVIIIe – XXe siècles). Paris: Belin, 1999. Gabaccia, Donna R. (Ed.). Seeking Common Ground. Multidisciplinary Studies of Immigrant Women in the United States. London: Praeger, 1992. Gabaccia, Donna R. & Vicki L. Ruiz (Eds.). American Dreaming, Global Realities. Rethinking U.S. Immigration History. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006. Harzig, Christiane & Dirk Hoerder, with Donna Gabaccia. What is Migration History? Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010. Henry, Louis & Alain Blum. Techniques d’analyse en démographie historique. Deuxième édition. Paris: Editions de l’INED, 1988. Hondagneu-Sotelo, Pierrette (Ed.). Gender and U.S. Immigration. Contemporary Trends. London: University of California Press, 2003. Lhande, Pierre. L’Émigration basque. San Sebastien: Elkar, 1910. Le Bris, Michel. Quand la Californie était Française. L’épopée des chercheurs d’or français en Californie (1848-1854) à travers leurs mémoires, journaux, récits et lettres. Saint-Amand-Montrond: Le Pré aux Clercs, 1999. Lucassen, Jan & Leo Lucassen (Eds.). Migration, Migration History, History: Old Paradigms and New Perspectives. Third revised edition. Bern: Peter Lang, 2005. McKibben, Carol Lynn. Beyond Cannery Row. Sicilian Women Immigration, and Community in Monterey, California, 1915-99. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006. Mehats, Claude. Organisation et aspects de l’émigration des Basques de France en Amérique, 1832-1976. Vitoria-Gasteiz (Spain): Servicio Central de Publicaciones des Gobierno Vasco, 2005. Paquette, Mary Grace. Basques to Bakersfield. Bakersfield, California: Kern County Historical Society, 1982. —. Lest We Forget. The History of the French in Kern County. Fresno, California: Pionner Publishing Co., 1978. Paris, Beltran (as told by William A. Douglass). Beltran. Basque Sheepman of the American West. Reno (Nevada): University of Nevada Press, 1979. Sarramone, Alberto. Les Basques en Amérique. Anglet: Atlantica, 2004. Schor, Paul. Compter et classer. Histoire des recensements américains. Paris: Éditions EHESS, 2009.

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Mixed Marriages among French Immigrants in Southern California

Scott, Joan. “The Evidence of Experience.” Critical Inquiry, 17, 4 (1991): 773-797. —. “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis.” The American Historical Review, 91, 5 (1986): 1053-1075. Sinke, Suzanne M. Dutch Immigrant Women in the United States, 18801920. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002. Ueda, Reed (Ed.). A Companion to American Immigration. Oxford (UK): Blackwell Publishing, 2006.

SOME CONSIDERATIONS ABOUT THE MARRIAGE MARKET FOR MIGRANTS IN ALMIRANTE BROWN (BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA) AT THE END OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY CLAUDIA CONTENTE

The mass migration of Europeans to Argentina began during the middle of the 19th century. This movement would reach its zenith at the beginning of the 20th century. The arrival of migrants in Buenos Aires was far from being a new occurrence, for the sustained development of agricultural activities had attracted waves of migration from the onset of colonisation in the 17th century. In fact, the migrants who arrived from diverse horizons significantly contributed to settling the region by pushing back the border established with the Indians1. The migrants particularly came from other regions of the vice-royalty of the River Plate until the beginning of the 19th century. This wave was then progressively replaced by another one that originated in Europe, which went on to surpass completely the traditional “micro”- migration from other regions. After the Revolutionary and a series of civil wars that lasted for approximately 50 years, the Argentine national territory was reunified in 1861, and the authentic economic boom started, evolving in parallel with the development of the State and its institutions. During this period, the Argentine state took measures to attract new inhabitants as it made considerable efforts to get to know and direct this flow of migrants. Argentina was beginning to consolidate its position during this time as an exporter of agricultural products to the international market. 1

For a general view of the population of the countryside of Buenos Aires and its evolution throughout the nineteenth century, Mateo, “La sociedad”, 73-116. As for the border with the Indians and the process of colonisation, Ratto La frontera, 247-268; Ortelli, “La frontera”, 155-77.

450

Some Considerations about the Marriage Market for Migrants

The province of Buenos Aires particularly benefitted from this prosperous economic conjuncture, which required an abundant workforce; it was thus converted into an attractive destination for new settlers.In 1869 the first national census of the population was carried out. The first waves of European migration had already been established in 1895, by the time that the second national census was conducted.2 In previous studies, I analysed the population of the countryside of Buenos Aires by consulting the first national census that was conducted in 1869. I focused in particular on the migrant population and their possibilities of being inserted into the labour market3. This first census did not allow me to identify the families in the zones that I studied. It obviously prevented me from identifying family structures or analysing, as I will try to do here, the married couples and the marriage preferences of the different communities that lived in the district of Almirante Brown. We know that matrimony has different aspects (aside from the romantic one) and raises multiple questions about what is at stake; all can overlap and ultimately condition an individual’s ability to select a spouse. Families’ strategies for social reproduction or the transmission of patrimony, as well as other interests that families or communities have, can exert social pressure that limits or conditions an individual’s choice. Despite these limitations, the volume of the migratory flow that arrived to the area under consideration makes it possible to deduce from the spouses´ choices evidence about the behaviour of the native-born and immigrant community. My analysis is centered on the zone of Almirante Brown. This district is located about 40 kilometers south of the city of Buenos Aires and covers about 11,000 hectares. As it was founded in 1873 at the expense of neighbouring districts (Quilmes, San Vicente and Lomas de Zamora) I will not be able to compare directly the information taken from the census of 1895 with the data from 1869, although in some cases I will be able to compare my information to data that from the census that was carried out in the province of Buenos Aires in 1881.4 This zone was chosen because, as I have just explained, the countryside of Buenos Aires has always been particularly dynamic in the framework of the regional economy and areas close to the capital, such as Almirante Brown, were intensively farmed.

2

Segundo Censo, Tomo II, CLXX; Massé, “El tamaño”, 143-56. Contente; Barcos, “El impacto”. 4 Only the printed edition of the census that was completed for Buenos Aires in 1881 still exists, as the census records themselves, which made it possible to draw the conclusion that were published, have been lost. 3

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The established settlers therefore encouraged migrants to move to the district, as they needed agricultural workers. It is important to point out that the migrants that worked in the countryside of Buenos Aires were not only of European origin. They also came from other American countries, especially Uruguay and Brazil, Migrants also continued to come from other regions of Argentina 5. The questions of migration and the insertion of migrants in different zones of Argentina through their marriages in particular have interested historians for a number of decades. They have generated an abundant historiography that will certainly help us to establish comparisons and to advance in several aspects. Specific zones of Argentina, in particular the city of Buenos Aires, and the areas of Córdoba, Tandil, and Rosario have already been analysed and these studies often make use of sources that are more apt for in-depth analyses than the one that I have completed here.6 We should keep in mind that censuses offer the undeniable advantage of providing a global vision of a given population, namely the inhabitants as a whole. They allow us to avoid the distortion that the microperspective tends to introduce as it singles out and focuses exclusively on one precise sector of a society. While a larger scale prevents us from completing a certain type of analysis, it has the advantage of allowing us to raise pertinent, concrete questions about the sectors that engage our attention through the general “map” that it presents. As we have stated, however, they also present certain limitations when realising studies such as the one underway here. They notably do not allow us to have an idea of more subtle factors such as cultural or religious values that are equally giving meaning to the social organisation. For example, it is well-known that the first generation of immigrants is characterised by pronounced endogamy while the subsequent generations tend to be more open to marriage with people of different origins.7 Given that Argentine nationality was acquired automatically by birth, the marriage between two

5

In this census, those who migrated from other zones of Argentina represented 2.7% of the Argentines. The census does not reveal the birthplace of 2.8% of Argentines. As regards the migrants from other American countries, the Uruguayans represent 3.7% of the foreigners, while those that came from other countries (Brasil and Paraguay essentially) did not even constitute 1% of the nonnative population. 6 Szhuchman, “The limits,” 24-50; Silberstein, “Inmigración y,” 161-190; Otero, “Una visión,” 343-378; Otero, “Patrones diferenciales,” 199-228; Baily, ”Marriage patterns,” 32-48; Míguez et al., “Hasta que”, 771- 808. 7 Otero, Estadística 143; Otero, “Una visión”; Silberstein, “Inmigración y”.

452

Some Consideratiions about the Marriage M Markeet for Migrants

children of IItalians, born in Argentina, would be reggistered as thee union of two Argentines. Nuptialitty is a behaviiour that depeends to a greaat extent on social and cultural facttors, as well as a on the circu umstances andd dynamics th hat family groups are ssubject to at a given historiccal moment. I am well awarre that by basing this study on naationality as its i principal pparameter in order to observe marrriage patternns, I am simpllifying a realiity that obvio ously was much more complex. For this very reason the census of 1895 willl allow me to o offer a preliminary analysis, as I have just statted, before prooceeding to stu udy other sources, in pparticular parish records.

The popu ulation of Almirante A B Brown In the 18890s, Almirannte Brown wass inhabited byy 5,738 residen nts: 3,039 (53%) were men8 and 2,699 were wom men. 2,807 inndividuals (49 9%) were younger than an 20. These results indicatee that its popuulation profilee can thus be characterrised as youngg and growing g, based on thee most commo only used model.  Figure 1 Alm mirante Brown, 1895. 1 Populatio on



8

According tto the national census, the oveerall populationn of Argentina was made up of 52.8% oof men, a figuree similar to the average for Alm mirante Brown.

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The proportion of men was similar to the overall average in Argentina even though the presence of migrants was greater in Almirante Brown. According to general data for the province of Buenos Aires, there were 309 migrants for every 1,000 inhabitants, while in Almirante Brown there were 401 migrants for every 1,000 inhabitants registered in the census because farming had become so intensive there, which created the corresponding need for workers 9. And if we focus on the most active cohorts of the population, that is the individuals aged between 20 and 49, the migrants ascend to 660 out of every 1,000 inhabitants. The masculinity rate was 112 men for 100 women, even if it masked important differences that depended on age. For example, it reached 130 for those aged between 20 and 49, as the presence of migrants is greater. Let us now examine the origins of the population as a whole. While Argentines were 60% of the inhabitants, the Italians were the largest group of foreigners, representing 22% of the population. The other two important groups, the Spanish and the French, made up 13% of the population, while the other nationalities scarcely represented 5% of the foreigners. Figure 2 Almirante Brown 1895, Origins of the Population

Italians, 22% Argentines , 60%

9

French, 6% Spanish, 7% Others, 5%

Foreign migrants represented, on average, 25.4 % of the overall population of Argentina.

454

Some Considerations about the Marriage Market for Migrants

Figure 3 Almirante Brown 1895: Origins of the Migrants Others, 12% Spanish, 17% French, 16%

Italians, 55%

As I previously explained, Almirante Brown did not exist as an administrative unit when the first national census was conducted. Therefore I cannot compare this information to the results from the previous census. I can, however, offer some indications by using the data from San Vicente in 1869. This locality had to cede land so that Almirante Brown could be created. The information from the census of the province of Buenos Aires in 1881, which included Almirante Brown, will equally be taken into consideration. So, we see that if the Italians were the largest migrant community in San Vicente in 1869, they did not make up 10% of the residents; by 1895 they had become 22.1%. French migrants did not constitute 5% of the population, while the Spanish were 4.5%. The interesting point here is that the proportion of women had increased progressively with the passage of time (Chart 1). For example, Italian females had come to represent 37% of the Italian population of Almirante Brown as compared to 16.4% in San Vicente in 1869, and other groups of migrants demonstrate the same trend. Such a change indicates that temporary or individual migration had given way to immigration, to witsettling down definitively in the new land.       

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Table 1 Almirante Brown 1895, Evolution of the presence of Women among the Migrants of European Origins % of the Total Population S.Vicente 1869 Italians French Spanish

9,6 4,8 4,5

% of Women in the Community

Almte. Brown 1881

Almte. Brown 1895

S.Vicente 1869

Almte. Brown 1881

Almte. Brown 1895

25,7 9 6,7

22,1 6,5 6,7

16,4 26 22,4

30,1 30,9 24,1

37 38 31,7

The masculinity rate is the lowest for the local population, being 76 men for every 100 women. It is due in part to the mortality induced by the period of wars for the oldest cohorts. It is without a doubt equally related to the mobility of the men seeking better opportunities in other areas.10 Table 2 Almirante Brown 1895, Masculinity rate Global Population 112

20-49 years old 130

Argentines

86

76

Italians Spanish French

171 217 162

175 213 174

And if we consider the masculinity indices in terms of the origin of the inhabitants, we can see signs of the forms that migration had taken on. Thus, given the greater presence of women, I can say that while single men continued to represent the majority of Spaniards, the Italian and French groups now included more women and entire families migrating, with masculinity indices of 175 and 174 respectively. Foreign men are therefore at least partially making up for the absence of local men. Without a doubt, this situation would have facilitated the integration of migrants for they would have then had more opportunities to start a family.

10

Cacopardo and Moreno, “Cuando los hombres”, 13-40.

456

Some Considerations about the Marriage Market for Migrants

The census registered few foreign-born children. Only 73 out of 1,66511 of those that were of European origin were younger than nine, which means 4.3 % of the total. This fact illustrates a point that I previously made, namely that children born in Argentina were considered Argentine, and so the origin of the family was rapidly “dissolved”, as least with respect to the administrative aspect. Let us focus now on the cohorts made up of individuals between 20 and 49 years of age, so as to limit, as far as possible, the incidence of mortality and concentrate on the sectors of the population with the greatest presence of migrants for this preliminary analysis of the presence of migrants and the marriage market in Almirante Brown. First, I should point out that if Argentine men represented 26% of the registered males, they amounted to 32% of the bachelors and 21% of the married men. These findings have led me to propose that they had problems finding a wife. It should nevertheless be mentioned that sources point to the existence of illegitimate unions among the local population. The census obviously does not register them and therefore I cannot estimate how common they were.12 Now, the Italians formed the other extreme. Representing 42% of the men included in the census, they amounted to 51% of the married men and 31% of the bachelors. The French and Spanish males are between these two extremes. Their percentage of bachelors was superior to the overall percentage of men and that of married men was inferior to their presence in the population. If I stop and compare how marital status was distributed according to nationalities and cohorts, a few important elements can be discerned.

11

It includes all the Europeans (41 Italian, 15 French, 10 Spanish, 2 Portuguese, 3 English and 2 Russian children), who represented 3.2% of the community, the French 4% and the Spanish 2.6%. 12 H. Otero points out that in about 1914 one out of every five children born was the result of a common-law marriage, which gives us an idea of how common “unofficial” unions were even if the census does not register them. Otero “Familia, trabajo” 63-100. Illegitimacy can be detected in the area practically from the very foundation of the district, which is equally true for the rest of the countryside of Buenos Aires, Moreno, “Sexo, matrimonio” 61-84.

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Figure 4 Alm mirante Brown 1895, Single Meen by Age Grouup

100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

Argentiines Italianss French Spanish h

20-29

30-39

40-49

Figure 5 Alm mirante Brown 1895, Single Wo omen, by Age G Group

50 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0

Argentiines Italianss French Spanish h

20-29

30-39

40-49

Women in particular prresented the most m markedd contrasts. While W the proportion oof single fem males dropped among Italiaan and French h women over the couurse of time, it continued to be significcant among Argentine A women, andd to a lesser extent among g Spaniards; tthese findingss contrast

458

Some Considerations about the Marriage Market for Migrants

with what was observed in Tandil, where the proportion of the single women included in the census who were older than 30 is very low.13 As for the males, 30 to 40% of men in Almirante Brown remained single after 30, just like in Tandil. This average, nevertheless, conceals different realities. For example, more than 60% of Italian men between 30 and 39 years were single, though the percentage dropped to 30% in the next cohort. This difference could indicate many things, other than the capacity of Italian men to find a wife eventually. It could also be related to the arrival of younger, single migrants or to the departure of older men. In sum, it could be tied to the evolution of the migratory flow, and its impact on the “marriage market” and not just to the marriageability of Italian males. In any case, it can be equally inferred that some groups got married more easily than others, just as it has been noted for other areas. It is significant that Italian women were the most successful in the marriage market, even though they were quite numerous (324), 92% were married, and only two were spinsters over thirty-five. On the other hand, of the 427 Argentine women, only 58% were married, while the single women made up 34% of the population (158 in all and 25 were older than 35). The men demonstrated a similar pattern. If 65% of the Italian men were married, the percentage of married Argentine men barely reached 44%, a percentage very close to that of the French who were married (43%). We therefore see that the bachelors represented all the nationalities even if the French and Spanish predominated, while among the older spinsters, Spanish and Argentine females predominated.

Whom did the locals and migrants marry? One of the principal inconveniences of using a census as a source of historical information is that it does not allow us to know which migrants were already married when they settled down in the zone under consideration. In addition, it is virtually impossible to know which marriages that took place in Almirante Brown were decided upon before the future spouses arrived, as they could be married on either side of the Atlantic. Given that it was often the domestic group that decided to send one of its members to the other side of the ocean, the choice of a spouse could equally be strongly influenced by the family, as I explained above.14

13 14

Otero, “Patrones diferenciales.” Silberstein, “Inmigrantes y” 101-135.

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Argentine men proved to be the most homogamous, as 91% of them were married with Argentine women, though some did marry women of other origins, in particular Italian women. This result is not at all surprising, if we bear in mind that their possibilities of meeting a foreign female as a potential spouse were very limited, as there were very few nonnative women there.15 The notable point is the very strong endogamy that characterises Italian women, just as they demonstrated in other areas.16 We therefore see that Italian women were not only the most likely to get married, but that they also prefer to marry an Italian (80%).17 The same conclusions can be made for French females, as 75% married a Frenchman, even if some did marry Spaniards. I do have to underline here that the census registered individuals of Basque or Catalan origin as being Spanish or French. Even if they could have been born on the other side of the international border, they shared their own very strong culture, even though the census does not allow us to identify it. Thus, in these cases, the nationality they were attributed would no longer be the appropriate parameter to consider. In Tandil, another region of the province of Buenos Aires that was further from the capital than Almirante Brown, the Italians were characterised by their openness to marrying women of different origins, while Spanish men demonstrated the opposite behavior.18 Nevertheless, this pattern does not appear to have been the case in Almirante Brown. There, Spaniards were the most likely to marry women from other countries. There also existed other factors that without a doubt should be taken into consideration, such as the concrete possibilities of meeting a potential wife within their own community, and the “flow effect”, considering that probably at that time the Italian community would have been receiving a significant flow of recent arrivals, which would create more possibilities for finding a mate in the same community.19 15

A point that was equally emphasised for other zones, see, for example, Miguez, et al., “Hasta que.” 16 Endogamy, native men and exogamy native women, etc. Ibidem. 17 Based on the case of Rosario, C. Silberstein considers that it is the result of both the oversupply of Italian men and the limitations imposed on the sociability of women of the same nationality. Silberstein “Inmigración y”. 18 Míguez, Eduardo et al, “Hasta que”. 19 The “scale effect” could also have been at work here, as it established a relation between the size of the receiving community and the immigrant; according to this theory, the size of the community favours endogamy, which means that in a rural or semi-urban zone, the immigrants would be more exogamous than in a densely populated zone. Devoto, “Las migraciones” 69-107; Míguez, et al., “Hasta que”; Otero, “Redes sociales”, 81-105; Otero, “Una visión”; Otero “Endogamia”.

460

Some Considerations about the Marriage Market for Migrants

Conclusions What can be concluded from the findings that have just been presented? First of all, I was only able to explain several trends here; it would consequently be risky at this point to confuse them with preferences that were influenced by other factors such as the period when the migratory wave began, the size of the community, age, or the place of residence. We can nevertheless state that the census shows, on the one hand, that Argentine men in Almirante Brown, just like in most of the other regions of Argentina that have been studied, fared the worst in the marriage market.20 They increasingly experienced problems finding a wife while, at the same time, they underwent a process of proletarianisation, though for different reasons.21 The “oversupply” of bachelors, in addition to the cultural prejudices that favoured immigrants, as they were considered to be more hard-working and capable than the local population, thus implied permanent bachelordom for a considerable number of Argentine men.22 On the other hand, much has been written about migrants’ marriages as being two sides of the same coin, that is, a way of integration when they married locals or an attempt to preserve their cultural identity when they married someone from their own country. It is clear, however, that the immigrants were more likely to meet a mate, in particular, the female immigrants, especially the Italian women. It is also worth emphasising that the information I gathered about Almirante Brown contrasts significantly with that from other zones such as Tandil. For example, we should recall that the Spaniards were the most endogamous there while they were the most exogamous in Almirante Brown.

As for the chronological evolution of the waves of migration, Devoto and Rosoli, La inmigración italiana; Moya, Cousins and, 19; for a comparison between the Italian and Spanish waves of migrations. As for the French migrants, Otero, “Redes sociales.” 20 In Córdoba it would have been more difficult for the nonnative males to find a wife than for the locals. Culture and economic norms would have also been responsible for the geographic endogamy that characterised the migrants. cf. Szhuchman “The limits.” 21 For example Contente, Familias en or for the case of Quilmes, a nearby zone that also ceded land for the foundation of Almirante Brown, Santilli, Quilmes. 22 Given that they had more opportunities to meet a potential spouse, foreigners even married at a younger age than the Argentines did, while the age at which the native-born married increased according to Raquel Gil Montero as cited by Otero, Estadística, 142-9.

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We should not forget either that the results by nationality also conceal the chronology of the arrival of each group. Some had obviously started to arrive earlier; the French and Spanish waves settled down before the Italians. Due to these differences, what we have identified is also the result of a longer period of adaptation and hence represents their more complete integration.23 National identity is a fact that is immediately graspable, but without a doubt it is not the only factor that comes into play when picking a lifelong mate. It is probably not even the most important one. Other parameters have to be considered, such as the spatial distribution of the members of the different communities in order to analyse the possibilities that the people could meet, the literacy rate or occupations that could have influenced the choice of a spouse. In conclusion, the analysis of the census has allowed me to delineate an outline of the principal characteristics of the matrimonial composition and will orient my future research by consulting other sources, which will allow me to add more elements in order to better understand this phenomenon.

References Published Sources Censo General de la Provincia de Buenos Aires. Demográfico, agrícola, industrial y commercial, verificado el 9 de Octubre de 1881, Buenos Aires: Imprenta de El Diario, 1883. Segundo Censo de la República Argentina. Mayo 10 de 1895, bajo la dirección de Diego G. de la Fuente, Buenos Aires: Taller Tipográfico de la Penitenciaría Nacional, tres tomos, 1898.

Bibliography Baily, Samuel S. “Marriage patterns and immigrant assimilation in Buenos Aires, 1882-1923.” The Hispanic American Historical Review 60, 1 (1980): 32-48. Bjerg, Maria and Hernán Otero. Inmigración y redes sociales en la Argentina Moderna. Tandil: CEMLA – IEHS, 1995. Cacopardo, María Cristina and José Luis Moreno. “Cuando los hombres estaban ausentes: la familia del interior de la Argentina decimonónica” 23

Otero, “Patrones diferenciales”.

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Some Considerations about the Marriage Market for Migrants

in Poblaciones Argentinas. Estudios de demografía diferencial, edited by Otero, Hernán and Guillermo Velázquez, 13-28. Tandil: PropiepUnicen, 1997. Contente, Claudia. Familias en la tormenta. Tierra, familia y transmisión de patrimonio en el Río de la Plata, San Vicente y La Matanza durante los siglos XVIII y XIX. Buenos Aires: Editorial Prometeo, Buenos Aires, 2014, forthcoming. Contente, Claudia and María Fernanda Barcos. “El impacto de la migración europea en los pueblos de la campaña de Buenos Aires. Un estudio de casos a partir de las Cédulas Censales del Primer Censo Nacional de Población (1869).” Paper presented at the III Congreso Latinoamericano de Historia Económica, XXIII Jornadas de Historia Económica de la Asociación Argentina de Historia Económica, Universidad Nacional del Comahue, San Carlos de Bariloche, October 23-27, 2012. Devoto, Fernando. “Las migraciones de las marcas y la Argentina, la cuestión de la escala y las posibilidades de una tipología regiona (1882-1927).” Estudios migratorios latinoamericanos 13, 38, (1998): 69-107. Devoto, Fernando and Gianfausto Rosoli. La inmigración italiana en la Argentina. Buenos Aires: Biblos, 1985. Massé, Gladys. “El tamaño y el crecimiento de la población desde la Conquista hasta 1870”. In Historia de la Provincia de Buenos Aires. Tomo 1: Población, ambiente y territorio, ed. Hernán Otero, 143-156. Buenos Aires: UNIPE- EDHASA, 2012. Mateo, José. “La sociedad: población, estructura social y migraciones”. In Historia de la Provincia de Buenos Aires, Tomo III, by Marcela Ternavasio (dir) De la Organización provincial a la federalización de Buenos Aires (1821-1880), 73-116. Buenos Aires: Unipe/Edhasa, 2013. Míguez, Eduardo José; María Elba Argeri; Maria Mónica Bjerg and Hernán Otero. “Hasta que la Argentina nos una. Reconsiderando las pautas matrimoniales de los inmigrantes, el crisol de razas y el pluralismo cultural”. The Hispanic American Historical Review 71, 4 (1991): 771- 808. Moreno, José Luis. “Sexo, matrimonio y familia: la ilegitimidad en la frontera pampeana del Río de la Plata, 1750-1850.” Boletín del Instituto de Historia Argentina y Americana ”Dr. Emilio Ravignani”, 3ra serie, nº16 y 17 (1998): 61-84. Moya, José. Cousins and strangers. Spanish inmigrants in Buenos Aires, 1850-1930. California: University of California Press, 1998.

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Otero, Hernán. “Una visión crítica de la endogamia: reflexiones a partir de una reconstrucción de familias francesas, (Tandil, 1850-1914)”. Estudios Migratorios Latinoamericanos 15-16 (1990): 343-378. —. “Patrones diferenciales de nupcialidad en nativos e inmigrantes. Tandil (Buenos Aires), 1850-1914.” Anuario del IEHS, VI, (1991): 199-228. —. “Redes sociales primarias. Movilidad especial e inserción social de los inmigrantes en la Argentina. Los franceses de Tandil, 1850, 1914”. In Inmigración y redes sociales en la Argentina Moderna, edited by en Maria Bjerg and Hernán Otero, 81-105. Tandil: CEMLA – IEHS, 1995. —. “Familia, trabajo y migraciones. Imágenes censales de las estructuras sociodemográficas de la población femenina en la Argentine, 18951914.” In As idéias e os nùmeros do gênero. Argentina, Brasil e Chile no século XIX, by Eni Mesquita de Samara, 63-100. Sao Paulo: Hucitec-Cedhal-Vitae, 1996. —. “Estadística censal y construcción de la Nación. El caso argentino, 1869-1914 ». Boletín del Instituto de Historia Argentina y Americana “Dr.Emilio Ravignani”, Año 3, Nº 16-17 (1998): 123-149. —. “Endogamia e integración de inmigrantes en la Argentina moderna. Balances y perspectivas desde un enfoque regional”. In Seminario sobre población y sociedad en América Latina 2000 (Seposal 2000) edited by in Mario Boleda and M. Cecilia Mercado. Salta: Asociación Argentino-Chilena de Estudios Históricos e Integración Cultural, Gredes, Universidad Nacional de Salta, 2001. —. Estadística y Nación. Una historia conceptual del pensamiento censal de la Argentina Moderna. 1869-1914. Buenos Aires: Prometeo Libros, 2006. Otero, Hernán. (Ed.) Historia de la Provincia de Buenos Aires. Tomo 1: Población, ambiente y territorio. Buenos Aires: UNIPE- EDHASA, 2012. Ortelli, Sara. “La frontera y el mundo indígena pampeano (1516-1820)”. In Historia de la Provincia de Buenos Aires, Tomo II, Buenos Aires de la conquista hasta 1820 by Raúl Fradkin, Raúl (director), 155-177. Buenos Aires: Unipe/Edhasa, 2012. Otero, Hernán and Adela Pellegrino. “Compartir la ciudad. Patrones de residencia e integración de inmigrantes en Buenos Aires y Montevideo durante la inmigración masiva”. In El mosaico argentino. Modelos y representaciones del espacio y su población, siglos XIX-XX ed. by Otero, Hernán, 19-69. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI de Argentina editores, 2004.

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Ratto, Silvia. La frontera bonarense (1810-1828): espacio de conflicto, negociación y convivencia, Publicaciones del Archivo Histórico de la Provincia de Buenos Aires. La Plata: Estudios sobre la Historia y Geografía Histórica de la Provincia de Buenos Aires, 2003. —. “La frontera y el mundo indígena”. In Historia de la Provincia de Buenos Aires, Tomo II, De la Organización provincial a la federalización de Buenos Aires (1821-1880) ed. by Marcela Ternavasio: 247-268. Buenos Aires: Unipe/Edhasa, 2013. Santilli, Daniel. Quilmes, una historia social. I - Desde la reducción hasta la caída del rosismo. La historia vista desde los pobres, Quilmes: El monje editor, 2013. Silberstein, Carina, “Inmigración y selección matrimonial. El caso de los italianos en Rosario (1870-1910)”, Estudios migratorios latinoamericanos 6, nº 18, (1991): 161-190. —. “Inmigrantes y trabajo en Argentina: discutiendo estereotipos y construyendo imágenes. El caso de las italianas (1870-1900)”. In As idéias e os nùmeros do gênero. Argentina, Brasil e Chile no século XIX by Eni de Mesquita de Samara: 101-135. Sao Paulo: 1996. Szhuchman, Mark D. “The limits of the melting pot in urban Argentina: marriage and integration in Córdoba, 1869-1909.” The hispanic American Historical Review 57, 1 (1977): 24-50.

MARRIAGE BEHAVIOUR AMONG IMMIGRANTS: MONTEVIDEO 1860-1908 MARÍA M. CAMOU AND ADELA PELLEGRINO

Introduction The aim of this study is to examine levels of marriage endogamy1 in the flows making up the “immigration flood” and among what is considered the native population.2 Marriage is studied by a variety of disciplines, including sociology, anthropology, demography, psychology, biology, history and economics. It is important in social analysis because it reflects different dimensions that make up social organisation. “Among all the rites of passage that mark out the course of human life, marriage is particularly important from the social as well as from the biological point of view. No other institution is both more universal and more stable in its aim, and none is so subject to the changes that occur in society.”3

1

Some authors use the terms endogamy and homogamy in a similar way, but others prefer to use the word endogamy to refer to marriages between members of ethnic and national groups and homogamy for marriages between people who are homogeneous as regards social status. We have adopted the latter approach. 2 For the Uruguayan population, we considered individuals classified by nationality as “Oriental“ (sic) in the data records we reviewed. This is a reference to the official name of the country, i.e. República Oriental del Uruguay. Obviously, this population is also the product of several components: the indigenous population living in the territory prior to colonisation, the predominantly Spanish and Portuguese immigrant population that inhabited the territory during the colonial period, the population of African origin that was introduced as slaves and the different waves of American indigenous populations, mainly of Guarani origin, which, according to several authors, moved into Uruguayan territory after the dissolution of the Jesuit Missions. Data records also include as “Oriental” the Uruguayan-born children of immigrants who came to the country in the postindependence period. 3 Girard. Le choix du conjoint.

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Thanks to research in social history and historical demography, we can reconstruct the modalities connected with this “rite of passage” in different historical stages and different cultural regions. In pre-industrial societies, marriages were part of a family’s social reproduction strategies and they were usually agreed by the two families, without the bride and groom being involved in the decision. What is more, not only were the actual couple excluded from the selection process, they also had no say in whether they would get married or at what age: these matters were resolved in the realm of strategies which became the “norms” of social behaviour. An approach from the vantage point of economic history, influenced by Sen’s point of view and his notion of empowerment, has revived discussion of the importance of incorporating European marriage patterns into studies of economic and social development. Marriage systems that are more egalitarian between the sexes – in that the couple have greater freedom as to choice of partner and the age to get married – have enabled women to participate more in the labour market and increase their social capital.4 The transformations that have occurred in contemporary societies, at least in those where Western patterns predominate, include changes in the norms that govern marriage. Parallel to the development of individual rights and the dissolution of family production systems, the choice of a marriage partner has progressively become more of a personal decision than a family one. In addition, the fact that people move around much more has tended to expand the geographical “meeting space” and thus, to some extent, has broken ecological endogamy. Even so, studies about the choice of a marriage partner in contemporary societies show there are considerable levels of homogamy in the social strata, and that these levels remain strong among ethnic and religious minorities.5

4

De Moor and Van Zanden. The European Marriage Pattern. It is not possible to review all the studies devoted to this type of analysis. The largest one we are aware of is the above-mentioned study by Alain Girard, whose aim was to analyse marriage in France in the late 1950s. A new survey conducted in 1984 by INED updated the information from that time (Bozon and Héran. “Finding a spouse”. In the United States there is considerable literature that has examined this matter both in terms of social homogamy and as regards endogamy in ethnic or national groups. Among others we may mention, Hollingshead, “Cultural Factors in the Selection of Marriage Mates,” Kennedy, “Single or Triple Melting Pot?”, Mac Caa, “Isolation or Assimilation?”, Kalmijn, “Intermarriage and Homogamy.”

5

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Marriage and integration models in immigration countries In countries that have received large migratory flows, the study of marriage among the different national or ethnic groups has been seen as one of the possible ways to measure levels of immigrant integration and to identify the specificities of the society whose conformation is based on diverse contributions from this variety of populations and cultures. In the United States, this kind of study has developed considerably and the results have served as support for ideological orientations linked to theoretical models of assimilation and integration into North American society.6 In the River Plate region, various authors have sought to define the characteristics of a society built up from successive waves of immigrants. In the context of Argentina, José Luis Romero7 maintained that the integration of immigrants’ children into Argentine society quickly led to the formation of a hybrid type of society. Gino Germani, on the other hand, argued that the impact of immigration in Argentina was so great that “The outcome of the massive immigration was not that a foreign mass was absorbed or assimilated in the sense that it became like the native population or identified with it. In any process of this type there are two kinds of influence at work, since the structure of the immigration country and its “national” character (in the most neutral sense of the term) are affected by the people who immigrate, and at the same time these newcomers acquire some of the country’s modalities and integrate into its structure. In Argentina this process caused the pre-existing native social type to virtually disappear (at 6

These models were ideological in the sense that they regarded integration in American society as an ideal. Each one represents a period of U.S. history and the corresponding contemporary vision of the ideal model of society. Although each model contained different proposals, they have been defined as the Anglo conformity model, which assumed that the new immigration floods should be assimilated into the dominant culture in the receiving society which was imposed by the first occupiers of the land, and that the dominant English language and culture should be incorporated and assimilated. This “melting pot” view embodies the idea that a new nation would emerge from the assimilation of the diverse cultures that made up American society. The cultural pluralism model incorporates the idea that American society is a result of the coexistence of diverse cultural and ethnic identities, joined by a single great nation ideal and shared political participation. Assimilation theories that were supported by anti-racist movements in the 1960s were based largely on different theoretical approaches involving acceptance of the view that “multiple loyalties” matched well with the American identity. 7 José Luis Romero, “Argentina”, 32-48.

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Marriage Behaviour among Immigrants: Montevideo 1860-1908 least in the main immigration regions and centres) and led to the destruction of the part of the social structure that corresponded to that type. In its place there emerged a new type that was still not well defined, according to some, and a new structure... Under the impact of this immigration the old cultural forms practically dissolved.”8

In his ethnic-national typology, Darcy Ribeiro9 places Uruguay and Argentina in the category of Transplanted Peoples, which according to his definition “…are the modern nations that were created as a result of European migration into new spaces in the world, where they sought to rebuild ways of life that were essentially identical to those in their country of origin.”

With reference to the participation of immigrants from Europe in the subsequent development of the middle classes in Uruguay, Germán Rama says their integration was largely due to fact that the society established previously was not consolidated in the country, and the immigrants had possibilities to insert themselves into that society. “If the society had been consolidated in terms of the values and norms of a national culture, it would have been more difficult for the immigrants to integrate into it because they would have been reduced to forming closed foreign communities marginalised by society, and would have had their own system of stratification distinct from that pertaining in society as a whole.”10

In Argentina, various authors have analysed immigrants’ marriage behaviour as a measure of social integration. In line with the theoretical discussion in the United States, they examined endogamy and exogamy levels among immigrant and native populations and tried to ascertain whether the process of absorbing immigrants had caused a “melting pot of races,” or whether, on the contrary, there were factors that indicated cultural pluralism, at least for a period of time. Pioneer studies by Savorgnan11 served as a basis for work by Gino Germani, who asserted that “Cross-marriage was another essential instrument for participation and integration into the life of the country.” Argentine historiography accepted the hypothesis that the “melting pot” process had taken place and indeed that Argentina was a prime example of this 8

Germani, Política y Sociedad, 276. Ribeiro, Las Américas, 9. 10 Rama, El ascenso de las clases medias, 23. 11 Savorgnan, “Matrimonial Selection,” 59-67. 9

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phenomenon. However, subsequent studies by Szuchman and Baily cast doubt on the notion that cross-marriage was prevalent in Argentine society, and presented empirical evidence that there were considerable levels of marriage endogamy in Córdoba in the period 1869-1909 and in the city of Buenos Aires from 1882 to 1923. In a 1987 study, Ruth Seefeld questions the application to Argentina of theories used in the analysis of North American society, and maintains that the native society in Argentina “is a very poor match as regards the functions that the theory attributes to the receiving society, namely that it offers a certain demographic base and a relatively integrated socio-economic, political and cultural structure in the process of expansion.” She considers that “while there was a pre-existing elite of ‘decent people’ (who were mostly criollos, i.e. they were born in the country) that controlled political and economic power in society at that time, the demographic base was too small to be able to talk of a receiving society.”12

These conclusions indicate that there were endogamic trends among the immigrants and that these were accentuated if we consider the parents’ nationality of origin. “The melting pot of races did not occur among the immigrants themselves – although some groups were more closed than others – but it did occur, to some extent, among their children and grandchildren. In fact, this was a River Plate kind of melting pot in that it was a fusion among the descendants of immigrants with different origins in which the criollo element – being Argentine for at least three generations – was almost not present at all.”13

In a 1991 study, Miguez, Argeri, Bjerg and Otero14 analysed marriage endogamy patterns among the immigrant and native populations in Necochea and Tandil. The authors aimed to present information about foreigners’ and natives’ marriage conduct in contexts different from those examined in previous studies. They researched rural and “new urban-rural” contexts and sought to refute Baily’s suppositions that assimilation must have been more rapid and complete in Buenos Aires and other urban areas than in rural areas.15

12

de Seefeld, “La integración social”, 205. de Seefeld, 231. 14 Míguez et al., “Hasta que la Argentina”, 781-808. 15 Baily, “Marriage Patterns”, 47. 13

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Furthermore, these authors undertook a more complex analysis of the “marriage market” of immigrants and natives by including other kinds of factors in the interpretation and validity of the results obtained. They considered the causes that might underlie endo- or exogamic conduct: the arrival rates of newcomers, the size of the groups analysed, the differential situations of “offer” and “demand” in the marriage market depending on the composition by sex of the groups analysed, levels of interaction among the communities studied, the strength of networks linking immigrants to their societies of origin, and the relevance of adding factors to do with social inclusion to factors of cultural identity. These authors’ results indicate that we should bear in mind the incidence of some of the factors mentioned above, and take account of the specific characteristics of the region where the study was carried out. One of their conclusions is precisely that when seeking global explanations at the national level, it is important to consider the specificities of each regional context. Lastly, they say it is necessary to learn more about so-called “qualitative” aspects to be able to evaluate the concrete forms of social inter-relations that operate in immigrants’ conduct. The application in the River Plate countries of the approach based on ideological models elaborated in the United States and the attempt to identify a “melting pot” process in these countries are questionable insofar as the immigration processes in the two contexts have different characteristics. Immigration flows and the establishment of colonies in the United States took place in chronologically successive centuries. This meant that each new group had to try to integrate into a society with different levels of consolidation and at different stages in terms of occupying new land. The first flows were mainly made up of English, German and Nordic people (the group that would later come to be called the WASPs (White Anglo Saxon Protestants), who came into a territory they could populate and were confronted by an indigenous population. This group had a large landsettlement and farming component. The next major inflow was that of the Irish, who were Catholics rather than Protestants. They came from a society that had been severely pauperised by crises in farming, they found it more difficult to access land, they found themselves subordinate to the population that had arrived before and they occupied the lower strata in the receiving society. Something similar happened with the subsequent migratory flows from Southern and Eastern Europe, which mostly came to the United States at the end of the 19th century and the early years of the 20th. These immigrants had to integrate into an urbanised society that was in the process of industrialisation; they had very limited access to land and they were almost all absorbed into urban areas. The integration pattern of migrants from Latin

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America into North American society was similar. These successive flows not only had their own ethnic, cultural and religious characteristics, but they also arrived in successive waves over time, which made for the coexistence of groups that tended to identify themselves as ethnic entities. This process was nourished by the double effect of discrimination on the part of the groups that had established themselves previously and the newcomers’ desire to maintain their own identity. Another important element to bear in mind when making comparisons is that European immigration into the River Plate region towards the end of the 19th century was mainly Italian and Spanish, and to a lesser extent French, so as regards religion, the newcomers were not incompatible with the previously-settled population. In the United States, the national groups that arrived as immigrants tended to be endogamic, and this only began to break down in the third generation. However, the data still reflect a high concentration of inter-marriage among the members of the main religious groups (i.e. Protestants, Catholics and Jews). The comparison between immigrant integration processes in Argentina and Uruguay is based on historical contexts and migratory modalities that are similar. A study of levels of marriage endogamy among immigrants in Uruguay can contribute to filling a gap in our understanding of this phenomenon in the River Plate region.

Montevidean society in the second half of the 19th century Uruguay had a civil war that lasted from 1843 to 1852 and was called the “Great War.” After it finished, a new model of society came into being in Montevideo, and in the course of the second half of the 19th century it developed its own distinctive characteristics. The official line when the war ended was that there were “neither winners nor losers,” but in fact the outcome made for the consolidation in the country of the international economic system, dominated by a vigorous industrial and commercial European bourgeois sector that imposed its liberal ideology and its merchandise on the rest of the world. A process of change began in Uruguay and from 1870 onwards the country incorporated technological innovations in response to the demands of the external market. Modernising elements were introduced into the livestock sector, mainly promoted by an elite that was convinced of the need for change in a sector that up to that time had functioned essentially as an extractive industry. Hence sheep farming was introduced, livestock breeds were improved and the open range started to be fenced in. In the urban sector, which was dominated from the very beginning by the capital city, the main activities were trade and commerce,

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financial speculation, the progressive construction of infrastructure and services, and the expansion of housing. In this context the immigrants worked as artisans or developed small businesses. Historical studies enable us to reconstruct some aspects of the social structure at that time. Uruguay’s Wars of Independence and their consequences until the “Great War” partly dislocated the system of social stratification that had been established in the colonial period. In his study of the patrician class, Real de Azúa stated that “After 1851 the patricians, or what remained of them, resumed pursuit of their goals of 1835: to establish an independent nation with vigorous economic development based on technical and cultural modernisation and a flexible class structure. But conditions were not the same. As we have seen, the “Great War” had raised the economic process to a whole new level that had nothing to do with the patricians...”16

Lucía Sala and Rosa Alonso point out that the formation of society in Uruguay was not confronted with the enormous class differences that pertained in the plantation countries or colonies. However, they maintain that at that time society was very stratified; it had a pyramid structure consisting of a wide base in which “the people, the absolute majority of the country’s scant population, were a motley conglomeration of dominated classes and ethnic groups.” There was a sector of middle class, which was swelled by immigration and consisted of artisans, small entrepreneurs and small traders in the cities and towns and in Montevideo in particular, and at the top there was “a mercantile-agrarian oligarchy with its essential categories of ‘doctors’ and ‘caudillos’.” 17

The impoverished colonial patricians had since colonial times incorporated into their ranks the “new rich,” many of whom were foreigners. More recent research confirms this panorama of a very unequal society. Bértola (2000) estimated the evolution of the Gini index for 1870-2000 and found that inequality in Uruguay worsened between 1870 and 1910. This was a period in which land prices increased considerably and land ownership was heavily concentrated as a consequence of the insertion of this economic sector, which was largely based on livestock, in international trade. Inequality among workers also increased because the unskilled workforce (including many immigrants) expanded and there was a scarcity of skilled labour. The

16 17

de Azúa, El Patriciado Uruguayo, 11-112. de Touron et al., El Uruguay, 103.

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insertion of immigrants in this period was conditioned by the fact that workable land was unavailable and housing in urban areas was expensive. This research has modified our knowledge about the subject and shown that life was more difficult for these waves of immigrants than was previously thought. Argentina differed from Uruguay in that its economy was more diversified as it produced cereal crops as well as livestock products, and this made for greater insertion by immigrants. This is reflected in migratory inflows that increased over a longer period than was the case in Uruguay. The fact that there were groups of immigrants in these countries adds another dimension to the study of social structure and of the inter-relations between the social sectors. The subject of groups that maintain their own national or ethnic identity is connected to their positioning in the different socio-economic strata, but there are weighty factors that act as limiting barriers in this inter-relation, such as native groups’ resistance to incorporating “foreigners” and ethnic or national groups’ defensive struggles to maintain their identity. After the Great War, Montevidean society underwent a consolidation process that continued until the end of the century. The values that triumphed in this period had to do with “progress” in the 19th-century sense the term, which amounted to “barbarism” being driven out by “discipline,”18 and also involved an effort to consolidate social structures. Large numbers of immigrants were arriving throughout the period, and their incorporation was a factor in how society came to be structured.

The impact of immigration There were considerable immigration flows into Uruguay starting in the very early years of the nineteenth century. Uruguay was among the countries with the highest proportion of immigrants at that time. The newcomers were unequally distributed across the territory: their impact on total population was greater in the south-west and in and around the city of Montevideo than in the rest of the country. Our focus in this study will be mainly on immigration from Europe during the period. In some cases we will indicate the population of Brazilian or Argentine origin because they amounted to a considerable sector in the phenomenon of immigration in the nineteenth century. Even so, given the characteristics of the “populating process,” this kind of immigration from neighbouring states very often only reflects what could 18 The concepts “barbaric” and “discipline” are used in accordance with the meaning given them in Barrán 1990.

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be defined as migratory movements within a region that historically had strong common roots quite apart from the borders established by the old empires or during the formation of the independent countries in question. Table 1 Percentage of foreigners in the total population TOTAL URUGUAY 1860 1908 MONTEVIDEO 1860 1884 1889 1908 Source: National Census of 1860 and 1908, and Census of Montevideo 1884 and 1889

33.5 17.4 47.7 44.4 46.8 30.4 the Department of

Table 2 Percentage of each nationality among foreigners URUGUAY Italians French Spanish Others Montevideo Italians French Spanish Others

1860 13.0 11.7 23.8 51.5 1860 27.3 22.1 28.2 22.3

1908 34.4 4.6 30.3 30.7 1884 45.1 10.1 30.4 14.4

1889 46.6 8.3 32.4 12.6

1908 42.6 5.4 36.3 15.7

Source: National Census of 1860 and 1908, and Census of the Department of Montevideo 1884 and 1889

The majority of the immigrants from Europe were from the sectors of independent workers or artisans, although some of them later rose into the higher classes in rural areas. Powerful landowners of Brazilian or European origin joined the richest landowners who were already in the country. In urban areas an increasing proportion of foreigners moved into the large-scale import and export sector.

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Throughout the period, there was immigration by elite groups, which stood apart from the mass influx of foreigners that took place mostly in the 1880s and 90s. Some of these were English and they came as part of the process of the British Empire’s economic expansion in the world, but there were also Spanish and French immigrants who were important merchants in the export trade or landowners, and they immediately took their places in the high social strata. There is no evidence to suppose that the Italian inflow into Uruguay included migrants of this type, but in Buenos Aires, on the other hand, there was elite immigration and these individuals were the main promoters of the massive immigration flood that came later. The normal immigrants’ chances of insertion and upward social mobility were greater during the first stage of the process because of social dislocation among the native population, which made for spaces in which the newcomers were not restricted by barriers. This observation holds well in general over the period, but perhaps it applies more strongly the further back in the century we go. Most of the immigrants who came to these shores were from the less developed parts of Western Europe, but emigration to the Americas was part of a great transformation the whole of European society underwent in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The people who settled in Uruguay had diverse regional and social origins so the cultural traditions they brought with them responded to different models of societies, but still the drastic rupture caused by migration to the New World must have wrought far-reaching changes. Migration does not only mean breaking away from a place of origin and an effort to adapt to a new society, it also involves the selection of the people who emigrate. These would have tended to be individuals who were more determined to solve their economic or other problems than the people who remained behind, and also individuals who were more disposed to make and accept changes.

Marriages in Montevideo: Methodology The study of endogamy has been tackled with various types of methodologies. In this study we propose to examine endogamy among the more representative national groups of immigrants and contrast this with the Uruguayan population in the second half of the nineteenth century and first decade of the 20th. An understanding of what is called “the marriage market” involves several types of considerations. The assumption that the choice of spouse is not a random phenomenon has been sufficiently demonstrated, and although individual decision has gradually been taking over from family or

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group decision, there are normative and social constraints that tend to make marriage “with someone alike” predominant. In this paper we take into account only one factor of equality, which is that the two marriage partners share the same national origin. Other considerations such as the social status of the parties, which probably affect their education, are not taken into account in this case, although we acknowledge that both factors have a role inside national communities and an influence on the likelihood of mixed marriages. It must also be noted that we rely on local marriage records and our sample is limited to marriages performed in Montevideo. A lot of evidence supports the conclusion that the immigrants’ “marriage market” transcended the borders of the country because it was fairly common for men to migrate alone in the first instance and then visit their homeland to meet their previously-selected partner in an arranged marriage, or to “choose” a bride in their home region. Because of the characteristics of our sources, in this study we do not take account of an associated behaviour, namely the spread of “singleness” as a social phenomenon. Many studies have shown that in different societies a considerable proportion of the people do not get married. In pre-industrial European societies, delaying marriage until the couple were older, and having a proportion of the population that did not establish stable conjugal unions, were among the self-regulatory mechanisms of population growth. It should also be noted that, even when the influence of the Catholic Church was important in Latin America, marriage as a behavioural norm was not as universal as it had been in pre-industrial European societies and that free union was a fairly widespread practice. In our research, it has not been possible to include these aspects, but a study that contains standards of behaviour in pair formation and research into people who diverge from such institutional norms as religious or civil marriage would enrich our knowledge of the subject we are seeking to analyse. The way endogamy levels are measured involves certain decisions, and the first is to define the indicator that best captures the phenomenon we want to explain. Moreover, it is important to use measures that enable us to make comparisons with other societies where immigration was also a mass phenomenon. The simplest and most common way to measure this phenomenon is the “endogamy rate,” which is the ratio between the number of endogamous marriages and the total of marriages. The weakness of this indicator, as has been noted, is that when different communities are analysed their size intervenes decisively in the results. This indicator

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actually shows marriages between different national groups, but we are also interested in the degree of interaction between these communities beyond the influence of group size and the balance between the sexes as determining factors. Segalen and Jacquard19 (1971) proposed an index of endogamy that sought to represent a given value with respect to two extreme models: a model of panmictic20 marriage and a homogamic model. The advantage of this index is very simple interpretation: values have a ranking between 0 (interbreeding) and 1 (homogamy), and the influence on the results of the size of each category is eliminated. Alan Gray21 (1987) studied endogamy in different immigrant groups in Australia and proposed a measure of “social distance” that, unlike the above indicators, is calculated differently for men and for women, and seeks to separate opportunities from preferences in the choice of spouse. The opportunity that a person from group A will meet a person from group B is a variable calculated from the weight of each group in the total of the contracting parties. Preferences derived from marital behaviour patterns would be the chances that these two people would choose each other. Gray’s method analyses marriage between two groups: those who marry endogamically and those who do so with “others,” but it does not to investigate the different options involved in exogamous marriage. This proposal was discussed in the journal Population Studies by Robert Mc Caa.22 He argued that Gray’s effort to break down marital behaviour into opportunities and preferences is important since it makes it possible to take account of the differential weights of the genders in each group and focuses on the issue of exogamous marriage as an indicator of integration. His objection is that the social distance index fails to isolate the effect of group size and preferences. As an alternative he proposes a methodology based on log-linear modelling to calculate the probability of endogamous marriages, assuming maximum and minimum limits determined by the size of the reciprocal subset. This procedure has an advantage over Gray’s because it reduces the effect of group size on the overall result. Probabilistic estimate models also support the inclusion of other explanatory variables in the model. A controversial point between the two proposals is the concept of “the marriage market” that they consider. For Gray there is no possibility of calculating the limits of the marriage market, even using census data and 19

Segalen and Jacquard, ”Choix du conjoint et homogamie”, 487-90. The panmictic model rests on the assumption of complete randomness of the conjugal unions. 21 Gray, “Intermarriage,” 365-79. 22 Mac Caa, “Isolation or Assimilation,” 155-66. 20

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considering the population “at risk” of marriage, because it is impossible to establish the real proportion of single people (we do not know which of them intend to marry and which not). Another weakness of the calculation is that married people are also potentially at “risk” to remarry, and yet another weak point is that the choice of a partner may not be confined to the territorial limits of a specific country. A more sophisticated linear logarithmic model is developed by Jones.23 His research is aimed at interpreting the evolution of the trend of “marrying someone alike” in the Australian population and comparing the intensity of this trend in different national groups. His model incorporates an ethnic component into marriage between different nationalities, i.e. it considers endogamous marriage between persons of different nationalities but belonging to the same ethnic group. The inclusion of this variable allows a better fit of the model and deepens our knowledge of the phenomenon as it goes beyond merely using a “country of birth” classification. In this paper we analyse the information on the marriage behaviour of immigrants and Uruguayans in Montevideo in the period 1860-1908. Our sources of information are the marriage records of the Curia Archive of Montevideo. We have surveyed the full data about marriages performed in years ending in 0 and 5 from 1860 to 1880 and in 1884. Up to this date, since civil marriage was introduced, we take into account civil marriages performed in the years 1904 and 1908, in accordance with data published by the Monthly Statistical Boletin Municipal of Montevideo. The data is of percentages of marriages performed between spouses of the same nationality, and the indices are calculated in line with a procedure used by Baily in Argentina and taken up by Miguez and others. In this way we fulfil one of our goals for this work, i.e. to establish comparisons between this phenomenon in Argentina and in Uruguay. Moreover, we process the information in line with the standards used by A. Gray for Australia. This is an indicator that although it shows the limitations above, it introduces some changes in the estimation that we believe enhance the information.

Main Results The endogamy rate, that is the proportion of marriages between people of the same nationality, shows clear behavioural trends: Uruguayan men had a very strong tendency to marry women of their own nationality. 23

Jones, “Etnic Intermarriage,” 27-42.

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Table 3 Endogamy rates Montevideo, 1860-1908 Uruguayan

Italians

Spanish

French

M

W

M

W

M

W

M

W

186

85

42

60

88

56

83

82

81

1865

81

37

71

90

53

85

86

84

1870

84

40

66

82

64

78

67

71

1875

81

36

69

86

66

88

74

73

1880

84

43

70

88

60

85

46

53

1884

85

44

56

78

58

87

64

47

1904

89

64

43

71

56

80

33

50

1908

87

76

35

48

53

68

19

24

Sources: Marriage records and Boletin de Estadístico Municipal de la Ciudad de Montevideo

This trend remained virtually unchanged throughout the period. Uruguayan women tended to marry foreign men (about 60%) in the period of the greatest influx of immigration (1860-1884), but this decreased in 1904 and 1908 when the proportion of foreign men in the total of men of marriageable age decreased. Spanish and Italian men married women of their own national origin in proportions ranging from 50 to 60%. Toward the end of the period a difference between these two groups emerged and the Italians showed a greater tendency to exogamous marriage. Among the French, whose numbers were fewer, the change was very significant, especially at the end of the period: marriages were highly endogamous in the period of greatest influx and highly exogamous in 1908, when the weight of this group in the population as a whole became very small.

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Marriage Behaviour among Immigrants: Montevideo 1860-1908

Table 4 Sex ratio of the Uruguayan and Inmigrant Population 1859-60 Total Uruguayans Immigrants Argentineans Brazilians Spanish French Italians

65 153

204 147 149

1884 119 91

1889 118 88

1908 104 93

170 106 218 173 132 178

167 98 128 173 118 175

138 98 105 146 96 144

Source: Census Departamentales 1884, 1889 and Censos Nacional 1908 Note: Data of 1859-1860 – own calculation based on Ciudad Vieja y Ciudad Nueva Padron de Montevideo

Among foreign women the tendency to inbreed was higher than among foreign men simply because there were more men. For both men and women the trend over the period was for endogamy to decrease, but women still had higher levels. In all cases, Spanish men and women maintained a greater tendency to endogamy than the Italians or the French. The results of applying the Savorgnan index expressing endogamic levels (on a scale of 1-0) indicate that the tendency of Uruguayans to inbreed was practically stable over the period with a slight downturn towards the end. A similar phenomenon occurred with the Spanish, although this group retained high levels of endogamy. For the Italians there was clearly a significant decrease towards the end of the period. When men’s and women’s behaviour is considered separately, Gray’s marital index of social distance differs significantly from Savorgnan’s for Uruguayan men and women. Uruguayan men started from higher levels in 1860 and fell to very low levels in 1908. The trend among women was similar but started at much lower levels, i.e. endogamy among Uruguayan women was low in the beginning and lower at the end of the period. The level of endogamy among Spanish men and women was stable throughout the period considered. Among Italians, the endogamy levels of men and women dropped considerably during the course of the period and fell to levels similar to those of the French, even when the numbers and proportional weights of these immigrant influxes were substantially different.

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Table 5 Endogamy index Uruguayans

Spanish

Italians

1860 0,48 0,60 0,67 1865 0,44 0,61 0,74 1870 0,47 0,62 0,64 1875 0,44 0,66 0,69 1880 0,44 0,63 0,68 1884 0,43 0,62 0,55 1904 0,45 0,59 0,48 1908 0,37 0,54 0,32 Source: own calculation based on Baily, Marriage patterns

Table 6 Marital index of social distance Uruguayans Spanish M W M W 1860 0,67 0,37 0,55 0,73 1865 0,68 0,34 0,57 0,79 1870 0,67 0,36 0,60 0,69 1875 0,67 0,32 0,57 0,70 1880 0,57 0,32 0,56 0,71 1884 0,55 0,31 0,53 0,71 1904 0,32 0,27 0,57 0,73 1908 0,17 0,18 0,57 0,69 Source: own calculation based on Gray, Intermarriage.

Italians M W 0,61 0,79 0,66 0,77 0,59 0,68 0,61 0,70 0,60 0,72 0,51 0,64 0,43 0,65 0,37 0,60

Our data are based on marriage records and they allow us to analyse, for the period 1860-1880, another feature of the prevailing marriage system: age at marriage. When we compare women’s age at marriage we find different behaviours: while the average age of marriage of Uruguayan women was 20, the Italian average was 21 and that of the French and Spanish 24. This delay in marrying could be interpreted as an indicator that women had higher status24 (Van Zanden 2011), but in our data the delay is not associated with differences in preference for endogamous or exogamous marriage, as the average ages in the two groups are very close. This result leads us to discard, in the first instance, an association between the two variables.

24

Van Zanden, In Good Company, 9-10.

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Marriage Behaviour among Immigrants: Montevideo 1860-1908

When we compare the results for Montevideo to those for Buenos Aires, we can see that endogamous marriage rates are significantly higher in all cases in the latter. The perceived trends for Spanish and Italian immigrants in Montevideo and Buenos Aires are not similar. In Buenos Aires we found increasing levels of endogamy over the period among Spanish men and stable levels among women of this origin. Endogamy among Italian men and women decreased but remained at levels markedly higher than in Montevideo. Endogamy among Argentinean men and women was higher throughout the period but decreased at the end, which is the opposite of what happened in Montevideo among Uruguayan women. Table 7 Proportion of inmarriage BUENOS AIRES

1860-64 1865-69

Argentineans M W 95 70 92 64

Italians M W 81 95 78 92

Spanish M W 50 79 52 75

French M W 83 87 71 76

1871-74

91

55

84

93

59

82

72

78

1875-78

89

51

76

93

61

80

70

71

1882-86

86

54

73

90

53

76

60

64

1887-92

80

49

70

91

69

80

67

65

1893-97 77 49 67 86 1898-02 75 54 64 82 1903-07 74 52 56 80 Source: de Seefeld, “La integración social”

63 66 70

78 76 76

64 52 41

59 47 40

The Savorgnan index indicates a lower endogamy rate for Uruguayan couples than for Argentineans (Montevideo and Buenos Aires). Among Italian couples, endogamy levels in the two cities were similar in the 1880s but towards the end of the period there was a much greater fall in Montevideo. Among Spanish couples, towards the end of the period endogamy levels increased in Buenos Aires and decreased in Montevideo. What are the factors that could affect the differences in behaviour between Montevideo and Buenos Aires?

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Table 8 Endogamy index BUENOS AIRES 1882-1883 1886-1887

Argentineans 0,52 0,57

Italians 0,68 0,71

Spanish 0,53 0,64

1890-1891 1893-1894 1896-1898

0,48 0,45 0,46

0,68 0,64 0,63

0,72 0,65 0,63

1899-1901 1902-1903

0,45 0,44

0,60 0,58

0,64 0,64

1905-1906 1907-1908

0,41 0,44

0,53 0,56

0,65 0,71

Source: Baily, Marriage patterns

First, there is an effect from the size of cities. It is plausible to think that in larger cities the integration of immigrants into society was more complex while in smaller cities the chances of meeting and interaction were greater. Miguez and others25 focus on this situation by comparing data from Buenos Aires and Tandil. These authors conclude that less densely populated areas can “soften cultural heterogeneities and create areas of sociability between individuals and families from different backgrounds.” Second, the intensity of the immigration flood in the stages in which the influx of immigrants was higher produced feedback and generated more opportunities for endogamous encounters. In the first decades of the 20th century in Argentina, the weight of the total immigrant population was higher than in Uruguay, where the proportion of newcomers was considerably less. In both cases, in the older communities that had stopped receiving significant influxes of new immigrants over an extended period, such as the French, endogamic rates decreased appreciably. The sex ratio in Spanish and Italian communities was high in both cities. In Montevideo it was higher among the Spanish and slightly lower among the Italians. However, this difference does not seem to be of a magnitude that could account for the differences observed in the levels of endogamy.

25

Míguez et al., “Hasta que la Argentina,” 795.

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Marriage Behaviour among Immigrants: Montevideo 1860-1908

Table 9 Marital status by sex and nationality of origin

Single Married Widower

Uruguayans Total M 60,0 69,1 32,5 28,6 7,5 2,2

Single Married Widower

Uruguayans Total M 61,4 71,1 31,3 26,4 7,3 2,4

MONTEVIDEO 1884 Immigrants W Total M W TOTAL 52,8 37,9 44,9 25,7 45,9 35,6 54,1 50,3 60,8 46,3 11,6 8,0 4,8 13,5 7,8 MONTEVIDEO 1889 Immigrants W Total M W TOTAL 54,0 35,3 42,1 23,6 44,5 35,0 56,0 53,0 61,3 47,3 11,0 8,6 4,9 15,1 8,2

Single Maried Widower Divorced

Uruguayans Total M 62,3 68,9 32,2 29,1 5,4 1,9 0.1 0.1

MONTEVIDEO 1908 Immigrants W Total M 56,6 31,1 36,9 34,8 56,5 56,6 8,4 12,2 6,3 0.1 0.2 0.2

W 22,9 56,4 20,6 0.2

Total 43,8 46,6 9,4 0.2

Source: Censos Nacionales and Censos del Departamento de Montevideo Note: Population over 14. Percentage.

There is another aspect that needs further research, namely incorporated social norms regarding the institutionalisation of marriage. The data from the census show a greater trend to celibacy in the Uruguayan population than in immigrant groups. First, the age structure: even when we consider as a reference population just people over 14 years old, we find that the number of young Uruguayans was significantly greater than that of young immigrants. A second aspect is the influence of different cultural norms and regulations. In Latin America in general and also in Uruguay, free unions or non-institutionalised unions were fairly widespread. These free unions were not captured by the census and it is possible that people living in this situation were classified as single. Another aspect to consider is permanent celibacy (people not married at the age of 50 or above). In many societies there is a sector of the population that remains outside marriage and this operates as the society’s regulatory mechanism to limit population growth or the excessive division of family assets. The levels of permanent celibacy in the Uruguayan

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female population in 1908 (22.5%) suggest that these mechanisms may have been functioning in Uruguay during this period. There are some further aspects that ought to be analysed and we mention them here as suggestions for possible future research. First, the extent to which many apparently exogamous marriages are really exogamous should be checked. It is likely that a large proportion of them actually involved the first and second generation offspring of previous immigrants, and these would feature in the records as Uruguayans. Furthermore, when mixed marriage partners are classified by country of birth this might hide ethnic identities, such as in the case of the Spanish and French Basques. Finally, it could be rewarding to add to the analysis of endogamy by nationality some attributes derived from social stratification. Marriage with foreigners probably had a very different meaning in society depending on social levels. It is likely that it occurred much less in the higher levels than in the lower strata except when foreigners were particularly valued by the upper class, as were the English. Among the general population, mixed marriage may have been a mechanism for social mobility, especially for women, taking into account that in the world of work immigrants were usually more successful in building careers. In the light of our results it can be concluded that: a) As regards marriage between immigrants and Uruguayans, the process of the integration of immigrants into Uruguayan society was slow and there was a significant tendency to endogamic marriage. We can hypothesise that if the national origin of the parents were taken into account, this trend would be even more marked. b) There were greater numbers of men among immigrants and greater numbers of women in the Uruguayan population of Montevideo, and this resulted in differentiated exogamy levels between the sexes. c) Comparisons between different nationalities of origin lead to the conclusion that the tendency to exogamy was higher among the Italians than in the Spanish population. d) Finally, we note that although high levels of endogamy were found in Montevideo in the period, these were lower than the levels found in studies of the city of Buenos Aires. The aim of this study was to analyse one aspect of the integration of immigrants into Uruguayan society. We believe that, based on this research, it is possible to advance hypotheses about some other facets of the matter and thus advance in the study of the formation of Uruguayan

486

Marriage Behaviour among Immigrants: Montevideo 1860-1908

society (or more specifically, that of Montevideo). However, given the complex nature of the phenomenon, we believe it is necessary to tackle other aspects of the subject to be able to draw more definite conclusions.

References Baily, Samuel. “Marriage patterns and inmigrants assimilation in Buenos Aires (1882-1923).” Hispanic American Historical Review 60, 1 (1980): 32-48. Barrán, José Pedro. Historia de la sensibilidad en el Uruguay. Montevideo: Ediciones de la Banda Oriental, Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias, 1990. Bértola, Luis. Income Distribution and the Kuznets Curve: Argentina and Uruguay since the 1870s. Second LACLIO Conference, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000. Bozon, M. and Héran, F. “Finding a spouse. A survey of how French couples meet.” Population 44, 1 (1989): 91-121. Camou, María Magdalena and Pellegrino, Adela. “Dimensioni e caratteri dell` immigrazione italiana in Uruguay, 1860-1920.” In: L' emigrazione italiana e la formaziones dell' Uruguay modern, 37-75. Torino: Edizzioni della fondazione Giovanni Agnelli, 1993. Camou, María Magdalena and Pellegrino, Adela. “Una fotografía instantánea de Montevideo.” In: Ediciones del Quinto Centenario. Tomo 2, 125-187. Montevideo: Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación, 1992. De Moor, Tine and Van Zanden, Jan Luiten. The European Marriage Pattern (EMP) and labour markets in the North Searegion in the late medieval and early modern period. Utrecht: Global Economic History Network, 2005. Freundlich de Seefeld, Ruth. “La integración social de los extranjeros en Buenos Aires: según sus pautas matrimoniales: pluralismo cultural o crisol de razas? 1860-1923.” Estudios migratorios latinoamericanos 1, 2, (1986)pp. 37-48. Germani, Gino. Política y Sociedad en una Epoca de Transición. Buenos Aires: Paidós, 1966. Girard, Alain. Le choix du conjoint. Une enquete psycho-sociologique en France. Paris: I.N.E.D.-P.U.F. Coll. Travaux et Document, Cahier No 70, 1981. Gray, Allan. “Intermarriage: Opportunity and Preference.” Population Studies, 41 (1987): 365-379.

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Halperin Donghi, Tulio. “La integración de los inmigrantes italianos en Argentina. Un comentario”. In: Las inmigración italiana en la Argentina. Buenos Aires, Devoto, F., Rosoli, G. Eds., Ed. Biblos, 1985. – pp.90-98. Hollingshead, August B. “Cultural Factors in the Selection of Marriage Mates”, American Sociological Review 15 (1950): 619-27. Jones, Frank. L. “Etnic Intermarriage in Australia, 1950-52 to 1980-82: Models or Indices?”, Population Studies 45 (1991): 27-41. Kalmijn, Matthijs. “Intermarriage and Homogamy: Causes, Patterns, Trends.”, Annual Review of Sociology 24 (1998): 395-421. Kennedy, Ruby Jo Reeves. “Single or Triple Melting Pot? Intermarriage Trends in New Haven, 1870-1940.” American Journal of Sociology 49 (1944): 331-339. McCaa, Robert. “Isolation or Assimilation? A Log Linear Interpretation of Australian Marriages, 1947-1960, 1975, and 1986.”, Population Studies, 43(1989): 155-66. Míguez, Eduardo José. et al. “Hasta que la Argentina nos una: reconsiderando las pautas matrimoniales de los inmigrantes, el crisol de razas y el pluralismo cultural.” Hispanic American Historical Review 71, 4 (1991: 781-808. Rama, Germán. El ascenso de las clases medias. Montevideo: Arca, Editores Unidos, 1969. Real de Azúa, Carlos. El Patriciado Uruguayo. Montevideo: Asir, 1961. Ribeiro, Darcy. Las Américas y la Civilización. Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1972. Romero, José Luis. Argentina: Imágenes y Perspectivas. Buenos Aires, 1956 cited by Baily, Samuel L. “Marriage patterns and Assimilation in Buenos Aires 1882-1923”, Hispanic American Historical Review 60, 1 (1980): 32-48. Sala de Touron, Lucía and Alonso Eloy, Rosa. El Uruguay comercial pastoril y caudillesco: sociedad, política e ideología. TºII. Montevideo: Ediciones de la Banda Oriental, 1991. Savorgnan, Franco. “Matrimonial Selection and Amalgamation of Heterogeneous Groups.” Population Studies Supplement to vol. 3 (1950): 59-67 Segalen, Martine. and Jacquard, Albert. “Choix du conjoint et homogamie”, Population 3 (1971): 487-498. Van Zanden, Jan Luiten. In Good Company: About Agency and Economic Development in Global Perspective. Stellenbosch: Stellenbosch Economic Working Papers, 2011.

THE COSMOPOLITANISM OF TRANSNATIONAL FAMILIES VIORELA DUCU AND ÁRON TELEGDI-CSETRI

Transnationalism and cosmopolitanism are key terms of the last decade in social sciences and the humanities; they have stirred up much attention and debate in research within these fields.

Transnational families Linda Basch, Nina Glick Schiller and Cristina Szanton Blanc1 noticed that the migrant subjects of their research had developed transnational practices not addressed by migration theories at the time (migration theories served the nation-state and treated migrants as either exit groups – emigrants – or as entry groups – immigrants). Thus, the theory of transnationalism emerged within the context of migration: the theory of the processes through which migrants build and maintain multiple social relationships, linking their society of origin to the one hosting them.2 Migrants and their descendants remain active in their country of origin, while they integrate into the host country in multiple ways: social, economic, religious, political and cultural.3 Bryceson and Vuorela define transnational families as: “families that live some or most of the time separated from each other, yet hold together and create something that can be seen as the feeling of collective welfare and unity, namely family-hood even across national borders.”4

Whereas traditionally a household meant a number of people living together and participating in the fulfillment of basic reproductive and 1

Basch et al., Nations Unbound, 17 Levitt & Sørensen, “The Transnational Turn,” 21 3 Levitt & Sørensen, “The Transnational Turn,” 21; Baldassar et al., Families Caring Across Borders 145 4 Bryceson & Vuorela, The Transnational Family, 2002, 3 2

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productive duties, researchers in the field of transnational families have reassessed the idea of a household based on cohabitation and taken into consideration the spatial separation of its members. For example, in a transnational family, one or more adults (parents or grown-up children) produce income abroad, whereas other family members are responsible for the reproductive, social and consumption duties in the home country. This collaboration as regards the life of the household exists without the active members’ living together. Besides studies aimed at conducting direct research on transnational families, there also exist subfields of this topic. Thus, within the framework of research on transnational families, the following subfields can be listed: research on transnational motherhood5, which focuses on the strategies mothers adopt to exercise their motherhood in relation to their children left in the home country; transnational childhood research6, focusing on children involved in migration; transnational fatherhood research7 on the strategies fathers resort to in order to exercise their role as parents in relation with the children left behind; transnational couplerelationships,8 analysing the implications of transnationalism for couples. The 1990s brought forth two major perspectives in migration studies: gender and transnationalism.9 As a direct consequence of the two approaches, transnational family studies have intensified and many publications have appeared on this topic, approaching it from multiple perspectives and most often focusing upon the functioning and daily practice within such families. One of the interpretive trends stresses the rupture and disintegration of families in a transnational setting, the difficulties they encounter, and the negative effects that leading separate lives has on the family members. Another, more recent trend focuses upon the fact that transnational families in fact do manage to build their own identity and maintain their 5

Hondagneu-Sotelo and Avila, “The Meanings of Latina Transnational Motherhood,” 17; Erel, “Reconceptualizing Motherhood,” 127-146; LARG, Transnational, multi-local motherhood, 25, ParreĖas, “Mothering from a distance,” 361–90, Children of Global Migration, 35; Raijman et al., “International Migration, Domestic Work and Care Work,” 727-749, Schmalzbauer, “Searching for Wages,” 1317-1335. 6 Orellana et al., “Transnational Childhoods,” 572–91, Dreby, “Honor and Virtue,” 32–59. 7 Pribilsky, “Aprendemos a convivir,” 313-334, Avilla, Transnational Motherhood and Fatherhood, 45. 8 Pribilsky, “Aprendemos a convivir,” 313-334. 9 Levitt & Jaworsky, “Transnational Migration Studies,” 129-156.

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The Cosmopolitanism of Transnational Families

functionality.10 The forces binding these families may be stronger than the physical and legal forces that separate them.11 Through emotional and financial bonds, they succeed in building a social space that allows them to maintain their unity, especially through modern technological means of communication, which help keep a common direction between two worlds. Although mainly centred on close family (husband-wife-children or father-mother-children) relationships, trans-national family studies also take into consideration the broader family (encompassing grandparents, brothers, sisters, in-laws, grandchildren, nephews and nieces, uncles and aunts). The way in which migrants manage to keep in touch with the elderly at home, providing them with financial and emotional support and care is also emphasised. The link between the feminisation of migration and the development of transnational family studies appears mostly with reference to the gendering of the household and of family relationships. Migrant women manage to provide financial resources for the family and, hence, they are more likely to redefine traditional power relationships within the couple or even to free themselves from dominating relationships.12 Pribilsky13 stresses the fact that not only women’s migration leads to redefining gender relations. Migrant men abroad need to cope with tasks that, before their migration, were the duties of women: shopping, cooking, cleaning, etc. Women left behind must also take over the tasks otherwise done by men (engaging in temporary work to produce money).

Transnationalism and cosmopolitanism On the one hand, there is the camp of those who underline the distance/difference between the two terms (transnationalism and cosmopolitanism). Transnationalism pertains to everyday existence, to given facts and actions; there is a transnational way of living and acting, through overcoming borders, but also through a deep involvement in the transnational spaces created within each country involved in the transnational process (at least two). Cosmopolitanism is considered rather a state of mind, an attitude, an intellectual venture, an ample all-

10

Levitt & Jaworsky, “Transnational Migration Studies,” 129-56. Herrera Lima, “Transnational families,” 2001, Vourela, “Transnational Families,” 77–93. 12 Morokvasick, “Birds of Passage are also Women,” 886-907, “Settled in Mobility,” 7–25, “Migration, Gender, Empowerment,” 69-97. 13 Pribilsky, “Aprendemos a convivir,” 313-34. 11

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encompassing perspective on the whole world, thus becoming somewhat elitist and selective. On the other hand, ever more voices14 are emphasising the strong link between transnational existence (whether we talk about people, economic institutions or social and political organisations) and the growth of a cosmopolitan consciousness. Researchers15 have already shown the significant positive correlations between transnational social practices and cosmopolitan attitudes: the more and the deeper people get involved in transnational social practices, the more they tend to develop cosmopolitan attitudes. The mechanisms that explain these correlations have not yet been shown; hence, there is space for more debate and dilemmas concerning the “possible” relationship between transnationalism and cosmopolitanism.

Transnational and cosmopolitan families Our project starts from these premises and asks the following research questions: Do transnational families tend (more than others) to become cosmopolitan families? How do they do that? During Viorela Ducu’s PhD16 research, we have learned that transnational families tend to “force” their functioning, especially when it comes to maintaining their integrity; this would be the case of transnational families evincing transnational motherhood, which are seen in many countries, Romania among them, as “bad/wrong” families,17 What these families tend to do is try harder to succeed in their transnational practices – and one “engine” that has kept their functioning in motion is that of the families “displaying”18 themselves as “good” ones.19 Transnational families are ever more numerous, due to globalisation and the cosmopolitan way of life towards which people are tending; still, they are not yet accepted socially as a “right” way of functioning. They share the fate of other “new” ways of family organisation: lone parents, families with internationally adopted children (especially when the child is 14

Vertovec, Transnationalism, 9. Mau, Mewes and Zimmermann, “Cosmopolitan attitudes,” 1–24. 16 Viorela Ducu: Transnational Motherhood: the Case of Romanian Women. PhD thesis, duration of the programme: 2007-2011 17 Parreñas The Gender Revolution in the Philippines, 29, “Homeward Bound,” 301–23, “Transnational Mothering,” 195-213. 18 Finch, “Displaying Families,” 65–81. 19 Ducu, “Women in the Lives,” 3- 20, Romanian Migrant Women’s Response,” 195-213. 15

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The Cosmopolitanism of Transnational Families

of another race), homosexual families, ethnically mixed families, etc. Within transnational families, there are differences of public acceptance depending on the expectations and the mentality of the communities, on these families’ different forms of organisation. Thus, the easiest to accept and the least debated is the type of transnational family where an adult son or daughter migrates – since it has become self-understood, at least in Romania, that children should create their own life during adulthood. Similarly, in the case of the parents’ migration, it is easier to accept that a father leaves in order to provide for his family, but if the migration of a mother is at issue, tolerance decreases.

Displaying families Displaying is, in fact, the sum of all the actions that families as units, through their members, undertake in order to show others that this family functions as one. Finch20 has defined and argued the importance of “displaying” for the existence of families. She argues that family practices should be recognised as such by others and by the families themselves as well; in order to make sense, family practices tend to be shared to others as a way of “displaying” the family. According to Finch21, displaying is essential in a social context where family relationships are becoming more diverse and fluid. The critical factor is that observers should recognise an action as conducive to displaying the family in order for this to be validated as such. This is potentially problematic insofar as observers may consider that certain relationships are so different from their preconceived notions about family life that they might refuse to recognise certain acts as constitutive of displaying the family, regardless of its members’ intention. Almack’s example22 is an illustrative case: in her study, she shows many lesbian mothers who argue that other parents have refused to recognise their partners as co-parents, on an equal footing with these other parents’ heterosexual partners. Similarly, transnational family practices may seem so contrary to preconceived notions about family life that they may also be rejected by observers as legitimate family displaying23.

20

Finch, “Displaying Families,” 65–81. Finch, “Displaying Families,” 65–81, “Naming Names,” 709-725. 22 Almack, “Display Work,” 1183-1199, Harker, “Geopolitics and family,” 1183-9 23 Heath et al., Displaying connectedness?, 11. 21

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Given the fact that this “displaying” is so important for all families, but especially for the transnational families under discussion here, we consider that it should be seen as a trigger for developing a cosmopolitan attitude.

Cosmopolitan families The present research has revealed how multiple worlds meet in the starting worlds of the communities of origin, both the migrants and those left behind living in these worlds. Thus, in one community, one may feel the direct influence of several destination countries – Spain, Italy, England, or Ireland – and this requires a complex way of relating to them. This mix of multiple destinations impacts not only transnational families, but also their communities, from the services developed towards maintaining these multiple links, such as international transport companies, to the lifestyle adopted by those at home, who may organise their households “like the ones in Spain,” “the ones in Italy” “or “like in England,” etc. Even families without migrants may borrow from the lifestyle of their neighbours, either in a symbolic sense – by receiving certain items of foreign origin as gifts or buying them – or in a practical sense, by managing their own household after the received models. Moreover, until recently, marriages in villages in Romania used to occur based on the criterion of spatial proximity, whereas now we can observe marriages between Romanians from different corners of the country, the spouses having met abroad. The impact of multiple migrant networks upon transnational community members, both at home and abroad, has not as yet been sufficiently studied, although it would be worth addressing this subject not only from the perspective of the multiple ethnicities these networks create in the target communities, but also through the lens of other consequences that these diverse modes of concomitant living may have. Our research has emphasised the way in which multiple worlds meet in the departure communities, these worlds being inhabited both by the migrants and by those staying at home. Thus, the direct influence of multiple target countries – Spain, Italy, England, Ireland – can be felt in a one and the same community, imposing upon those at home a complex way of relating to numerous countries. The cases are not rare when those at home have family members in different countries. For example, Marilena (Maria’s mother) has two migrant daughters, who live together with their families in Italy and, respectively, in Spain. She, in turn, travels to both countries to help her daughters raise their children.

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The impact that this cocktail of multiple destinations has upon the communities, going beyond these transnational families, ranges from services developed toward maintaining these multiple links, such as foreign transport services, to the way of life of those at home, who organise their households “like in Spain,” “like in Italy,” “like in England,” etc. Even families without migrants may borrow from the lifestyle of the neighbours, in a symbolic sense – accepting objects “brought from abroad,” as gifts or buying them – or in a practical sense, by managing their own household according to borrowed models. In such transnational communities, one can observe influences ranging from the display of foreign objects, such as cars with foreign plates during the periods when the migrants are on holidays; to the most unexpected forms of assimilation (one family even brought a guard dog from Spain). The impact of these transnational influences can be noticed directly in the quality of housing. The houses built by migrants are large, spacious, with very modern fittings: luxury bathrooms with running water, central heating, even floor heating, kitchens with state-of-the-art utilities, furniture with modern accessories, home tools, entertainment electronics, but also computers and communication gadgets. This spectacular, accelerating modernisation of transnational communities is also reflected in people’s way of life. A schoolmistress from such a community states the following concerning families with migrant members: “…their homes are cleaner, the migrants’ children are better dressed, they are more civilised and cleaner, since their parents saw you have to behave like this where they went, and they imposed this upon those at home as well. Implicitly, through competition, the other children are also better cared for, and the other women are also more attentive to cleanliness in their homes.” (Mălina)

With the target countries as a ground for comparison, migrants have developed sharp criticism against services in Romania and the “incompetent” administration of the Romanian state system, which offers: “…bad quality services, although people working there are paid from our money, whereas in Spain they have Romanian speakers if you go to the hospital. There, wherever you go, they treat you with respect, here they don’t take notice of you, they yell at you and all of them want a bribe” (Vera’s husband).

Another direct consequence of this transnational way of life is the fact that given the frequent visits the non-migrants pay their relatives and

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friends abroad, openness to ethnic and national otherness emerges. There are many children and elderly people who have travelled to large cities throughout Europe, but have never been to Bucharest. An old woman of 84 recounted how last year she stayed in Madrid for 6 months, in order to help a granddaughter with her baby, although she had never before been farther from home than Bistri‫܊‬a. All these departures from the country, associated with the stories of migrants who have to cope with otherness, may cause a decline in nationalism and ethnicism even within the communities of origin. The mutual visits among transnational family members represent a strategy of maintaining the bonds between them, which was very often mentioned by my respondents. We were much surprised by this result, since at the beginning of the research, we had been aware of the migrants’ visits back home, especially during summer, often mediatised together with the long queues at Romanian borders, but we had not realised that this flux of visits was continuous and reciprocal, those at home going quite often abroad, in order to spend their vacations/holidays with their loved ones or to help them. “I had 7 days of vacation when my in-laws came, and we went on a trip to the islands, in Spain” (Viki) “Last time I didn’t come home for a year and five months, but she came over to me. As for me, I couldn’t wait to come home! I’d been checking all the calendars: I have just one more day, I have just one more hour! On the last day I didn’t go to work! They understood I’d been away from my family (…) Now I am on holiday for a month. June, July and August are the vacation months. There are 3 sections, two in which the large machines are and one where we work on the small machines. There they take vacations in fractions, 15 days at a time. They let me go for a whole month. Even last year, I didn’t go back on time, but after 6 weeks, and they understood, they paid me and didn’t end my contract.” (Mia) “It was more difficult with mother’s parents, they are old, they were afraid to get on the plane, but taking the bus would have been a disaster for them. They hadn’t met for so long and for them it was a shock when they came home. They were also happy, but the emotions were really high.” (Matilda) “We talk to those at home over the phone, they come to see us. As for coming home, we get one month off in August and we also come for Christmas, but this year we also came in February. We come here quite often. Mom spent her winter with us, my sister-in-law Lina came to see us, friends come too.” (Lola)

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The children whose parents are abroad spend much time with them. Most of the vacations are spent with the parents, and when they don’t come home, the children travel to them. The lives of these children are split into two, school in Romania, with relatives, vacations abroad, with the parents. There they make friends, Romanian and foreign, and we can even talk about children with two homes: the one in the country and the one abroad. “Q – from here, from this village, are there many children abroad? A – Yes, but only for the vacation, then when they are back, they go to school in Bistri‫܊‬a or in Năsăud.” (Nora’s mother-in-law) “In March we came home for Easter for three days, me and Călin. We’d been missing Alin. We came again in August, and again for the holidays, three times a year. In summer I went over with him, two months each year. One year it was my mother who came, the other my mother-in-law. I only did night shifts in order to be able to be with the kid.” (Maria) “I took her with me to Spain on vacation, this year she came for one month; we came back together. There, in Spain, she likes it, because she goes to the swimming-pool, to the lake. Last year she stayed for two months. She came earlier, since she’d had her high-school exam, she came alone with the transport company, with whom we get along very well. We need to give her power of attorney since she is not 18 yet. (…)” (Mia)

The presence of migrants during the summer holidays is a phenomenon that is noticed by the entire community, it is like a prolonged celebration, given the large number of community members who come back for a short while; it becomes a holiday atmosphere for everybody, and even nonmigrants seize the occasion to meet relatives and neighbours. “They come home in around July, August. August is richer, proof is that you cannot go out by car, there are so many of them.” (Pavelescu) “The journey by coach is two days and two nights. This time we came by car, and we set off on Saturday morning at 6, and we were at home on Sunday evening at 10; it’s a 3,300 km drive. (…) (Vera’s sister-in-law) it took me now three days on the road because I queued for 4 hours in Italy and I also waited in line in Austria; and I waited for an hour, almost two, in Hungary. Now it’s the holiday season and it’s very busy. (…) Many Romanians come back to the country. You need to plan things two weeks ahead in order to come this way.” (Vera’s husband)

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Migrants do not always manage to come home as often as they would like to because of their duties abroad, but they try to reach home within the limits of their possibilities: “The first two years we didn’t come home, then I came for a vacation every year, only I did, my husband didn’t come. He had to work. We both had to work.” (Vera); “We kept in touch with my family on the Internet, on Yahoo. I could come once a year, but since I went to college, I had the summer exam session, then the winter session, so it got more difficult for me to come.” (Monica)

Over the past years, low-cost airlines have started to operate in Romania, too. Wizz Air and Blue Air have taken the lead among them, due to their policy of connecting the main migration zones from Romania with the main target zones abroad. Thus, many cities in Romania are directly connected with the main migration areas in Italy and Spain, but also with other zones that are the targets of migrants – cities in France, Great Britain, Germany, etc. Until quite recently, marriages in Romanian villages used to be held in their spatial proximity, whereas now we may notice that marriages to Romanians from other corners of the country - the spouses having met abroad - are much preferred to marriages with people of other nationalities. A father intervened fast and forcefully by travelling there when he heard, in the village, that his son “was seeing an Ecuadorian woman in Spain” (Mariana); he was very happy when he managed to separate them and determine his son to “take one of our Romanian women from Pite‫܈‬ti.” (Mariana) “I saw her in Spain for the first time, they were together. They’d waited for us in the bus station. Er, it was going to be fine! I wished she’d been at least from the area, if not from the village! But it’s good she is from Romania. Before he talked to a very beautiful Ecuadorian woman; when his father went there, it was like this. The girl’s family had a bar, shops. His father wanted to separate him from her, to let him find a girl from Romania, should he ever want to come back to the country. It was with great difficulty that his father managed to separate them.” (Mariana)

Daria, from Cluj County, who migrated from the position of a lone transnational mother (her husband had divorced her a few months after the baby’s birth), found her soul-mate in Spain: a Romanian from Bihor County. Viki, from Bacău County, whom we met in the house of the in-laws from Bistri‫܊‬a County, migrated to England alone, from the position of a

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medical nurse in Romania, to work as a care-provider for elderly people and, in addition, to do house cleaning unofficially. There she looked for a life partner. Initially she tried to have a relationship with a foreigner (“Arab”), but she gave up, since: “Boys over there, the English, have a completely different lifestyle from ours. They work to live their lives.” (Viki)

Then she met Puiul: “With Puiul it was different, we both worked hard to save up money. The English don’t know what this means, they live on credit: their holidays, their clothes, their cars are on credit. They don’t put themselves to any stress. The guys there don’t build houses like we do.” “Migration brought me an apartment and a husband right from Romania.” (Viki)

These forms of openness lead to changes in mentality, and comments such as “if there were laws here like in Spain, Romanian men wouldn’t afford to kill their wives” are ever more frequent and they demonstrate a change in mentality taking place in places of departure through the influence of migrants. Through the respect towards their young, shown through the strong migrants’ wish to secure the best possible education for their children, associated with their self-respect (for example, “I will not go back to be mocked and underpaid,” as Vera’s husband said), migrants offer those at home a model of aspiring to a better life and education and of respecting themselves. Here we would like to highlight the growth of a cosmopolitan consciousness at the family level: it is not important for my research if one or another family member shares cosmopolitan convictions; what interests me is the way in which the family as a group reveals and appropriates behaviours and implicitly cognitions that are cosmopolitan, leading to a cosmopolitan attitude being adopted by the family as a whole. If in one of the most general senses, cosmopolitanism means being a “citizen of the world,” being a member of a transnational family makes you learn to live as if you had at least a double citizenship (depending on the number of migrants in the family and the number of countries involved) even if you have never migrated yourself. Moreover, if in the country in which the members of your family belong to the majority (usually the country of origin) you witness acts of ethnic discrimination, it is you who tends to get revolted rather than another member of the local majority, since you can “feel” the impact that discrimination may have on

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another member of your family, in another country, where he/she is in a minority (the country of destination). In our field research, we have observed this rise of an anti-discrimination consciousness – in Romania, minority populations are still the targets of discrimination attacks, especially the Roma, mostly when they have family members in Italy, where Romanians may become the targets of heavy attacks, with Spain and the UK to follow. Then this awakening of a consciousness of otherness may extrapolate over to the whole of humanity. This is just an example. In our field research, we have also come across other signs that a cosmopolitan attitude is developing within transnational families: the diversification of the family menu through the introduction of a variety of dishes from all over the world, not just traditional ones; the tendency of family members to learn as many foreign languages as possible; the interest in global justice, especially if some of the family members went through unpleasant situations (illegal migration; being arrested for unauthorised employment, etc.); concern for international politics, decisions on this level having an impact on the lives of their families; the tendency to accept and celebrate as many and varied traditional holidays as possible; openness towards other religions – something that is quite a challenge for Romanians, most of whom are profoundly Orthodox. The migrant members of transnational families interact in the countries of destination not just with the majority population there, but also - and often more deeply - with other migrants they share the burdens of migration with: there may, for example, be Romanians living in the apartment of Ecuadorians and sharing it with Algerians. We have retained the case of a mother and her daughter, who was born and partly raised in Italy: they learned good Spanish from the Ecuadorian landlady who allowed them to stay at home with her own children, the mother often leaving the daughter to babysit them when she went to work. The Ecuadorian lady from Italy became a kind of “relative” for the nonmigrant members of the Romanian transnational family – for the grandparents and the two older children. A step further in this discourse is, of course, highlighting the fact that we expect the degree of appearance and manifestation of a cosmopolitan attitude to differ also depending on the type of family. In other words, if we are talking about a mixed transnational family, especially if the partner is from another country or of another race, we expect that it will tend to become a cosmopolitan family, since the challenges of acceptance and cognitive transposition are already greater in this type family.

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We need to specify here that Romanians have greater openness to establishing internationally mixed families than other Eastern-European migrants,24 but this does not mean that acceptance is so easy and quick. For example, clear evidence is provided by the case of a mother who was very proud of her son marrying a “Moldavian woman of ours”25 even though he had wanted to marry an Ecuadorian woman, but the family had been against it and sent the father to Spain to separate the boy from the foreigner. The interesting part is that until quite recently, marrying interregionally in Romania was a rarity and something undesirable; now, under the menace of the “stranger,” it has become a reason for joy. In this research project we are trying to identify: whether, when and how transnational families adopt cosmopolitan attitudes. Throughout history, some socially high-ranked transnational families have displayed the adoption of cosmopolitan attitudes, but as mentioned earlier, we think that these are fit not only for them, but for “ordinary” people, too. Therefore, we would like the subjects in my research to be typical transnational families, and to focus on well-known transnational families as comparative examples. Moreover, in trying to overcome methodological nationalism and aiming to reach methodological cosmopolitanism,26 we would like to include, in the samples, transnational families with members living in different countries (of origin as well as destination). In order to have a fuller image, we are aiming at transnational families that are “different” in more than one sense: mixed, with homosexual as well as heterosexual members, from different social classes, with different social-political positions: refugees, illegal migrants and with different levels of education and culture. Our intuition is that the education and culture of the members of a family obviously matter in developing the cosmopolitan attitude of the family; but the existential constraints they have also matter. In other words, cosmopolitanism pertains not only to intellectual families, but also to those constrained materially, especially if they are transnational and forced to think in plural worlds. The more one accepts different worlds, the more one can appropriate the world as a whole.

24

Robila, Eastern European Immigrant Families, 35 Moldavia is a region of Romania, and the mother comes from Transylvania, the region we are in right now. 26 Beck and Sznaider, “Unpacking cosmopolitanism for the social sciences,” 381– 403. 25

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Acknowledgements This research has been co-financed through the project CRITICAL FOUNDATIONS OF CONTEMPORARY COSMOPOLITANISM supported by a grant of the Romanian National Authority for Scientific Research, CNCS-UEFISCDI (code: PN-II-RU-TE-2011-3-0218, contract no. 98/05.10.2011)

CONTRIBUTORS

Carmen ALBERT, Museum of the Mountainous Banat, Re‫܈‬i‫܊‬a Marie-Pierre ARRIZABALAGA, Université de Cergy-Pontoise, France Ioan BOLOVAN, Faculty of History, Babe‫܈‬-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca Guy BRUNET, Université Lyon 2, Lyon Maria M. CAMOU, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de la República, Udelar Claudia CONTENTE, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona Bogdan CRĂCIUN, Centre for Population Studies, “Babe‫܈‬-Bolyai” University, Cluj-Napoca Helena DA SILVA, Université du Havre, Le Havre Viorela DUCU, “Babe‫܈‬-Bolyai” University, Cluj-Napoca Lumini‫܊‬a DUMĂNESCU, Centre for Population Studies, “Babe‫܈‬Bolyai” University, Cluj-Napoca Marius EPPEL, Centre for Population Studies, “Babe‫܈‬-Bolyai” University, Cluj-Napoca Siegfried GRUBER, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock Mihaela HĂRĂGU‫܇‬, Centre for Population Studies, “Babe‫܈‬Bolyai” University, Cluj-Napoca Daniela MÂRZA, Centre for Population Studies, “Babe‫܈‬-Bolyai” University, Cluj-Napoca Tanya MATANOVA, IEFSEM-BAS, Sofia

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Bogdan MATEESCU, University of Bucharest Mihaela MEHEDIN‫܉‬I, Faculty of History, “Babe‫܈‬-Bolyai” University, Cluj-Napoca Mihaela MUDURE, Faculty of Letters, “Babe‫܈‬-Bolyai” University, Cluj-Napoca Mihai MURE‫܇‬AN, “Babe‫܈‬-Bolyai” University, Cluj-Napoca Adela PELLEGRINO, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de la República, Udelar Aura COMĂNESCU PINTEA, “Babe‫܈‬-Bolyai” University, ClujNapoca Alexander PINWINKLER, University of Vienna Yulia PROKHOROVA, Lomonosov State University, Moscow Claudiu Petru RUSU, “Babe‫܈‬-Bolyai” University, Cluj-Napoca Alina Cecilia SAVA, “Babe‫܈‬-Bolyai” University, Cluj-Napoca Viorel SÎRCA, Faculty of Sociology and Social Work, “Babe‫܈‬Bolyai” University, Cluj-Napoca Sara SETTEPANELLA, University l’Orientale of Naples Sølvi SOGNER, University of Oslo Florian Dumitru SOPORAN, Center for Transylvanian Studies, Cluj-Napoca Valeria SORO‫܇‬TINEANU, “Lucian Blaga” University, Sibiu Áron TELEGDI-CSETRI, New Europe College (NEC) Bucharest Cristina TÎRHA‫܇‬, “Avram Iancu” University, Cluj-Napoca Constan‫܊‬a VINTILĂ-GHI‫܉‬ULESCU, “Nicolae Iorga” Institute of History, Bucharest, Department of Sociology, University of Bucharest