Troisième Conférence Internationale d’Histoire Économique / Third International Conference of Economic History: Volume 4 [Reprint 2020 ed.] 9783111602196, 9783111226996

Citation preview

TROISIÈME CONFÉRENCE INTERNATIONALE D'HISTOIRE ÉCONOMIQUE

THIRD INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF ECONOMIC HISTORY

ÉCOLE PRATIQUE DES HAUTES ÉTUDES — SORBONNE SIXIÈME

SECTION

: SCIENCES

ÉCONOMIQUES

ET

SOCIALES

CONGRÈS ET

COLLOQUES

x

PARIS

MOUTON & CO MCMLXXH

LA HAYE

TROISIÈME CONFÉRENCE INTERNATIONALE

D'HISTOIRE ÉCONOMIQUE

MUNICH 1965 •

•

•

•

edited by D.E.C.

EVERSLEY

THIRD INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

OF ECONOMIC HISTORY

Publié sur la recommandation du Conseil international de la philosophie et des sciences humaines, avec le concours financier de l'Unesco. Honoré d'une subvention de l'État de Bavière.

© 1972, École Pratique des Hautes Études and Mouton et Co.

Printed in France

THE COST AND THE ROLE OF HEALTH IN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT SEÇTION V I

L a plupart des communications de cette section ont été publiées par le Professeur M . Perlman dans Comparative Studies in Society and History, Mouton & Co, éditeurs, L a Haye, sous le titre : " A Symposium: Disease, health programs and economic development." Deux autres communications ont paru dans des revues britanniques de grande diffusion ; celle de : P. E. RAZZELL, "Population change in eighteenth century England: A reinterpretation," in The Economic History Review, second series, X V I I I , 1965, pp. 312-332; et de : T . MCKEOWN & R . G . RECORD, "Reasons for the decline of mortality in England and Wales during the nineteenth century," in Population Studies, X I V , pp. 94-122.

DEMOGRAPHY AND ECONOMY Papers and Report of Discussion SECTION VII

edited by

D. E. C. EVERSLEY ( University of Sussex) assisted by J A N E S . WILLIAMS

PREFACE The papers presented here were those offered to Section VII of the Third International Conference of Economic Historians at Munich in August 1965, with some exceptions. Several of the scholars who had originally been asked to contribute papers were unable to do so, or unable to attend the conference. In some cases, summaries of papers had been sent to the organisers which did not materialise in the end. The editor's general introduction, which was circulated to participants beforehand, contained references to some of these papers which do not exist, and such references have been cut out. Several of the discussants at our sessions also referred to these summaries, and it has not been possible to remove all mentions without distorting the sense entirely. In several cases, we were given extensive statistical materials which were to have been explained orally at the meetings. Since the authors did not attend, these explanations were never given, and it has been necessary to omit these statistics. On the other hand, several of the authors of papers submitted lengthy statistical illustrations and graphs which have here been omitted to economise with space, where the paper is intelligible without these additions. At the end of the conference, all those who had taken part were asked to revise their contributions: either the invited papers, or the shorter papers read at the conference itself, or the interventions, discussion openings and summings-up made by individuals. Unfortunately very few of the participants did this, and the result has been some unevenness of presentation. Those papers which were fully revised, and those spoken contributions which were afterwards delivered to the editor, in some cases as late as 1968, have been printed extensively. In other cases, the editor has had to rely on notes made by himself, and Dr. Paul Deprez in the case of Session I, and these notes may not adequa-

14 tely represent what cases there may be notes on Session II time of that session

PREFACE

the contributor had in mind. We apologise if in some some distortion of the original intention. In particular, appear inadequate: but in any case the greater part of the was taken up by the reading of the four papers.

The editor would like to express his thanks to Prof Paul Deprez, now of the University of Manitoba, who gave great assistance in the preparation of this section. The final editing was undertaken with the assistance of Jane S. Williams, whose help is also gratefully acknowledged.

1968 University of Sussex

D.

E.

C.

EVERSLEY.

ADDENDUM Unfortunately, another four years have elapsed since the material in this volume was edited for publication. At the proof stage, a partial attempt was made to correct the more glaring chronological inaccuracies which have arisen (e.g. publications marked in the papers as "forthcoming", and long since published, have been given their proper reference.) Otherwise, however, no attempt has been made to contact authors yet again to persuade them to tell us how much of the research in progress in 1965 has now been published. Historical demography has made enormous strides in the last seven years. Readers anxious to discover what has happened during those years

are recommended to study the Annales de Demographie Historique published by the eponymous Société (Sirey,

March 1972 Greater London Council

Paris).

D. E. C. E.

INTRODUCTION

DEMOGRAPHY AND A SUMMARY

ECONOMICS: REPORT

by D.

E. C .

EVERSLEY

( University of Sussex)

i. Background Historical Demography has been the subject of a number of sessions at the conferences of the Congress of Historical Sciences. A session devoted to this topic at the X I t h Congress at Stockholm in i960 was introduced by M . Louis Henry, who may be justly regarded as the founder of the methodology of this discipline in modern times. 1 Since that time work has been proceeding under the aegis of a commission headed by Prof. Harsin (Liège), and a colloquium took place at Liège in April, 1963 to which some 30 papers were contributed. (Les Colloques et Congrès de l'Université de Liège. Vol. 35, "Problèmes de Mortalité", Université de Liège, 1965.) T h e demographers, as such, have also recently taken an increasing interest in the historical field. A t the meeting of the International 1. X l t h International Congress of Historical Sciences, Actes du Congrès, Stockholm, 1962, pp. 67 ff.; Rapports, Stockholm i960, vol. 1, p. 89 ff., "Emigration from N o r w a y , Causes a n d Characteristics," by Ingrid Semmingsen.

i6

D. E . C.

EVERSLEY

Union for the Scientific Study of Population in New York in 1961, a section was devoted to reports on the "Status of Research and Knowledge Concerning Eighteenth Century Populations", and another session discussed the "Problem of Relationship Between Population and Economic and Social Development. 1 " T h e International Union has since that time set up a permanent Commission for Historical Demography, under the chairmanship of M . Henry. T h e First Conference of Economic History, also at Stockholm, in i960, had no section devoted to demographic problems as such, but in the major division of the conference devoted to "Industrialisation as a factor in economic growth since 1700" a number of contributions referred to the crucial role of demographic phenomena in the assessment of equilibrium growth models. Perhaps the most important of these was that of P. Vilar, 2 "Croissance économique et Analyse historique", and we note in passing that M . Nadal, in his report on recent Spanish historical demography, singles out Vilar's contribution on Catalonia (1962) as the best account of the link between economy and population in that country. T h e same volume also contains a communication by D. Eversley which summarises the principal known networks of relationships between population movements and economic growth in England in the eighteenth century. 3 T h e meeting of Economic Historians at Aix-en-Provence in 1963 witnessed an unofficial session on historical demography in relation to economic change. A recent survey carried out in a number of European countries 4 confirms that an increasing number of scholars are at present investigating in regional and local casestudies the validity of the various theoretical models which have been propounded. A full bibliography of such work is being undertaken by M . Reinhard and A . Armengaud, and a number of national bibliographies have also appeared or will do so shortly. 5 References to

1. International Population Conference, N e w Y o r k 1961 ( L o n d o n , 1963), vol. I , p p . 537 ÎT., vol. I I , p p . 439 fF., reports by the late Prof. P. Bandettini a n d M . J o s e p h Stassart, respectively. C o n t r i b u t i o n s include those b y D c p r c z , N a d a l , S o m o g y i a n d Eversley, see below. 2. First I n t e r n a t i o n a l C o n f e r e n c e of E c o n o m i c History, S t o c k h o l m , Contributions and Communications, Paris i960, p. 35 fT., esp. 48-53. 3. D . EVERSLEY, " P o p u l a t i o n a n d E c o n o m i c G r o w t h before the T a k e - o f f , " op. cit., pp. 457 ff. 4. By D . Eversley a n d P. D e p r e z , w i t h the assistance of the R o c k e f e l l e r F o u n d a tion, a n d under t h e auspices of the I . U . S . S . P . 5. E . g . by Prof. B. H . SLICHER V A N BATH a n d his colleagues, relating to publications on the historical d e m o g r a p h y of the N e t h e r l a n d s , s u b m i t t e d to the C o l l o q u i u m at L i è g e , a n d since re-printed in A. A. G. Bijdragen, vol . 1 1 , 1964, p. 182 ff, a n d b y Miss L y n d a OVENALL for G r e a t Britain, published in 1965 as p a r t of the Introduction to Historical Demography in England (ed. W r i g l e y ) .

D. E. C. ËVERSLEY

I?

work in progress were submitted in the national reports circulated for this conference, especially those of Père Mois, Dr. Nadal, Prof. Goubert, and Mr. J . A. Faber, Prof. Slicher van Bath and his colleagues (of which only the latter is re-printed here). A collection of Essays, Population in History 1 incorporates reprints of some earlier important contributions to the subject, as well as new studies from a number of European countries, and a history of population in the United States of America by J . Potter.

2. The network oj relationships All our contributors agree that population change is inseparable from changes in economic or social structure. They do not wish to imply that there is a simple mechanism of linkage. Population growth may take place and induce industrial progress, or it may cause a decline in living standards and therefore a fall in consumer demand. Population may decline at the end of a period of economic expansion and thus accelerate a fall in production, or it may grow much more slowly as prosperity rises. Over-population and underpopulation are terms relative to natural resources, to the state of agriculture, and to the capacity of exporting industries to purchase subsistence from abroad. Migration may correct the imbalance of population and resources in two countries, or aggravate them under certain circumstances. In general, the models of the economists postulate that what is required is a rate of capital investment sufficiently high to produce a rise in per capita output (and income) faster than the rise in population. This capital may be internally generated in which case it needs to come either from a section of the population which will not reduce its consumption in order to invest, or from the population as a whole which may be subject to exploitation and unable to purchase its own product; or else the capital may be invested by foreign savers who may expect a return on their investment too high to allow internal consumption to grow at a sufficient rate to permit development to become self-sustaining. Consumption may grow at too high a rate to permit sufficient saving for further growth, and stagnation may ensue. Above all, population growth itself may be stimulated beyond the capacity of further capital growth, especially if rising standards of living reduce death rates very quickly. Economic growth, therefore, is always precarious: it is not a law of nature, and a number of our case studies show

1. E d , D . V . GLASS a n d D . E . C . EVERSLEY, Population

in History,

London,

1965.

i8

D. E. C. EVERSLEY

how difficult it is to achieve any long-term improvement in living standards. T h e main question therefore is this: what, in detail, are the mechanisms by which population change is translated into economic phenomena, and vice versa? Unfortunately, on this point, most of our contributors still remain silent. Since most of them have to confine themselves to global population figures, or, at best, crude fertility and mortality rates (in the absence of any knowledge about age structure), we still cannot tell why in one case increasing living standards lead to higher fertility and, in another, to smaller families; why in some cases increasing demands for labour are met fairly rapidly by higher nuptiality and fertility, and in others only by immigration; why infant mortality sometimes falls as real incomes rise, and in others remains practically stationery. We know now that only by the application of methods of family reconstitution (described principally in the contribution by E. A . Wrigley) m a y such questions be answered more adequately, and then only if we have exact data on economic changes corresponding with the observed demographic phenomena. But only in France have such reconstitutions as yet been undertaken on any scale, and in fact one might say that only one major study has been completed which investigates fully both population and economy in one area. 1 In the absence, then, of micro-analyses of a type which could answer our questions fully, we now endeavour to summarise very briefly some of the main categories of changes encountered, referring to those contributions where the reader may find some guidance.

3. Sources First, a word about sources. T h e papers submitted show very clearly the rich diversity of records now being exploited, in some cases for the first time, and affording some hope that similar material may in future be utilised elsewhere. M r . Hansen uses the records of the Danish aristocracy to reconstruct cohorts showing in detail the nuptiality, fertility and mortality of generations of Danish landowners (in fact reconstituting families in the process). 2

1. P. GOUBERT, Beauvais et le Beauvaisis, Paris, 2. Cf. T .

H.

i960.

HOLLINGSWORTH o n the British D u k e s

(in G L A S S a n d

EVERSLEY,

op. cit, above) and " T h e Demography of the British Peerage," special issue of Population Studies, London, N o v . 1 9 6 4 ; a l s o L . HENRY, Anciennesfamiliesgenevoises, I . N . E . D . , Paris, 1 9 5 6 ; S. PELLER, on the European aristocracy, in GLASS and EVERSLEY, op. cit.

D. E. C. EVERSLEY

19

Mr. Drake relies in part on the carefully kept and preserved ecclesiastical registration system in Norway (in common with Denmark) to reconstruct exactly the annual population movements. Prof. Jutikkala has access to corresponding Swedish/Finnish materials, including catechetical lists which have been extensively utilized by himself and others to determine the pattern of migration. M r . Wrigley uses English parish registers of unusual fullness, Prof. Kovacsics relies largely on taxation lists, and in the case of Holland, the following list of sources provided by Mr. Faber gives some idea of the variety of material to be tapped. 1. Population censuses, both general and local (Holland, Friesland, Overijssel, Veluwe, bailiwick of Bois-le-Duc). 2. Reports of the number of communicants (Holland, bailiwick of Bois-le-Duc). 3. Lists of men capable of bearing arms (Holland). 4. Reports of the numbers of hearths, homes and /or families (Friesland, Holland, Veluwe, bailiwick of Bois-le-Duc, Overijssel). 5. Tribute registers (Overijssel). 6. Poll-tax registers (Overijssel, bailiwick of Bois-le-Duc, Friesland). 7. T a x revenues of such necessities as corn and meat (Holland). 8. Parish registers (Holland, Friesland).

4. Regional studies Although each of our contributors was asked to deal with one country, there is clear agreement that studies on a national scale are almost impossible. T h e general pattern is one of regional inquiries. There is no simple definition of what a region is, except functionally: it is an area within which the greater part of the social and economic relationships of a given population may be comprised, given the state of technology and communications of the period investigated. This is, in every case, something less than a country, something more than a parish and rarely coincides exactly with civil or ecclesiastical boundaries. With such areas people inter-marry, have common family patterns, eat similar food, are affected by the same epidemics and crises of subsistence, sell on the same markets and speak the same dialect. Sometimes such regions may be further sub-divided according to local physical configurations or soil types. Mr. Blaschke shows the importance of the division of Saxony into agriculturally unproductive hill areas which become densely settled regions of mining and metallurgical industry, compared with the more fertile valleys which remain more thinly settled, and similar

20

D. E . C. EVÈRSLEY

distinctions can be drawn in neighbouring Bohemia ( M m e Petrânovâ, M m e Horskâ). When we examine these studies more closely, we see that often such regions have not been observed in an integral manner precisely because political boundaries intervene. Thus M m e Petrânovâ points out that the Sudety area of Bohemia resembles closely in its industrial and population structure the Lusatian region (Lausitz), and the Krusne Hory (Erzgebirge). Père Mois underlines the diversity of the four principal regions now being studied in a country as small as Belgium—Flanders, Brabant, Hainault and Liège have entirely different economies, and demographic histories, and even within Flanders, as M. Deprez demonstrates, the soil conditions lead to diversities of experience of a fundamental kind in areas only a few kilometres apart. Here, as in Saxony, the fertile agrarian region is of least interest: its population does not grow rapidly, and its main function is to supply increasing quantities of food to the urban and industrial sector. If population does increase by natural surplus in such areas, it is drained off to supply the regions of increased economic activity. Several contributors point out the importance of complementarity in adjoining regions. The most favourable case seems to be the one just mentioned, where a comparatively infertile region with industrial potential adjoins a fertile agrarian one, or there is medium-distance migration between two such regions under the same political control. Where, of course, there is no obvious industrial growth area to which population can migrate, we may have the phenomena of relative over-population much more severely, and conversely, the absence of a convenient reservoir of labour makes itself felt. We shall return to this point under the heading of migration. Where a region has a distinctive economy, such as Mr. Friberg's Dalarna region of Sweden, measurement of population growth in relation to industry is much easier, especially if it is geographically at some distance from the nearest similar concentration. By contrast, the Rhine/Ruhr area is very difficult to define in statistical terms.

5. European growth

patterns

One of the earliest by-products of the comparative work of the last few years has been the realisation that the phenomenon of accelerated population growth, mainly in the eighteenth century, is almost universal, and not confined to a few industrially relatively advanced countries. Holland obviously forms an important exception to this rule (Faber) — a country which reached a peak of industrial and

D. E. C. EVERSLEY

21

commercial development in the 17th century and then experienced comparative stagnation. Most countries experienced intermittent periods of stagnation and even declinc at one time or another, usually as a result of wars, prolonged periods of epidemics or harvest failure, and other crises which closely link economic and demographic occurrences. O w i n g to the accident of census-taking or other basis of enumeration, it is difficult to obtain strictly comparable data for different areas. But the similarity of the pattern is apparent. Most authorities now agree that the population of England and Wales, the most heavily industrialised nation in Europe, increased by between 80 and 100 % in the eighteenth century. But similar increases are recorded in countries in much earlier stages of industrialisation, or with purely agrarian economies. Kovacsics shows a growth in Hungary from 4.0 m. to 8.5 m. between 1721 and 1787, recovering from the earlier devastations of the Turkish period, under what is characterised as a feudal regime. Lassen shows an increase in Danish population of 100 % between 1660 and 1770 (again following the catastrophic period which is the special subject of his study). Friberg's Grangarde population roughly doubled, between 1660 and 1770. T h e area of Flanders studied by Deprez also nearly doubled between 1690 and 1800. From these data we might conclude that whatever causes were at work in Europe, declining mortality or increasing fertility, or both, must have been widespread in operation and to some extent independent of economic growth. But this would be dangerous. First of all, these are not in all cases reliable figures, with a tendency to underestimate population for the earlier period, thus making growth look more rapid than in fact it was. Secondly, national figures on the whole tend to be below these for certain regions (Flanders, Saxony, Grangarde), studied precisely because they were showing industrial progress, so that there is, as we shall see, usually a large migration factor in cases of really rapid increase. Moreover, the national figures in every case show wide variations, and it is these which will provide us with the clues we seek. In all European countries, the first half of the sixteenth century was disturbed by the Thirty Years' War, but the effects were unequal. In Saxony, as in most parts of Germany, the results were disastrous (though older accounts usually exaggerated the numerical extent of the devastation). W a r was also largely responsible for the Swedish falls in population from 1695 to 1720. In Bohemia, as we would expect, the pre-1618 position was not really recovered until the beginning of the eighteenth century (PetrdnovA), and Nadal demonstrates equally how the Napoleonic wars affected his country, though with less serious long-term results, since the first half of the nineteenth century still

22

D. E. C. EVERSLEY

saw a g r o w t h of 50 % . W e shall return to the subject of these crises a little later. T o sum u p this section of the papers, w e notice that there is need for a good deal of standardisation in chronology, in methods used to correct imperfect data, and in general, in the m e t h o d o l o g y of d e m o g r a p h i c reconstructions from imperfect d a t a , to i m p r o v e comparability. O n e e x a m p l e of this is the conversion of hearths (feux) into households or persons (e.g. in the case of Spain) — a n exercise w h i c h is frequently necessary in the history of the 17th a n d 18th century, but often lacks sufficiently precise indications of the basis of conversion. Similarly, periods of exceptionally fast or slow g r o w t h , or decline, need characterising in terms of the economic, social and political variables w i t h greater precision, a n d presentation needs in all cases to be a c c o m p a n i e d b y indications o f the state of the harvest, of prices and other indices of economic activity, of wars, or epidemics.

6. Population and labour supply: the agrarian sector Most of our contributors are agreed that agricultural techniques improved, especially in the eighteenth century, a n d that w i t h the exception of years of failure, the g r o w i n g population was fed b y the agrarian sector of the e c o n o m y w i t h o u t resort to m o r e than m a r g i n al international trade, w h i c h was mostly coastal in a n y case. This is almost a tautological statement, since the existence, a n d g r o w t h , of population proves this expansion, b u t it becomes m e a n i n g f u l w h e n we realise that in fact in most cases the food p r o d u c i n g sector shrinks relative to the industrial and c o m m e r c i a l sectors. I n G r a n garde, Friberg finds that neither arable nor stock-rearing agriculture needs extra m a n p o w e r , and that m i n i n g alone accounts for the increase, this sector g r o w i n g both b y natural surplus and migration. In a n u m b e r of areas, there is a clear distinction b e t w e e n territories of large farms (where indeed most of the increase in p r o d u c t i v i t y is recorded), and relatively fewer labourers are required, w i t h conseq u e n t e m i g r a t i o n ; and areas of small farms w h i c h m a y absorb more labour, especially where such regions also h a v e industrial occupations carried on in conjunction with agriculture, as was so often the case. T h e low-density, rich areas often h a v e low fertility, the others, high fertility, but whether this is d u e to their poverty, their semiindependence, or their industrial occupations, c a n n o t at present be shown. T h i s sort of society is f o u n d in several o f o u r contributions, e.g. M m e Petranova (Bohemia, w h e r e domestic industry w a s interspersed with larger capitalistic enterprises, w i t h d e m o g r a p h i c a l l y simi-

D. E. C. EVERSLEY

23

lar patterns); and Blaschke (Saxony), who stresses that industrialisation and increased labour force does not necessarily mean u r b a n proletarianisation, but may mean an increase in the category known to the tax authorities as "gardeners and cottagers", rather than "unsettled men in cities". In all these cases it is the industrial element in the agrarian sector which causes population increases, apparently. One wonders if this is a socially conditioned phenomenon, because in the only case amongst these papers (Kovacsics on Hungary) where a real labour shortage develops, in an area where there was plenty of cultivable land, population is apparently slow to respond, and agrarian progress is held up for want of hands — a situation not encountered elsewhere. Hungary, as we are told, was a sort of colony for Austria, a n d was to supply raw materials and food for the dominant country, but there seems to have been failure, for a long time, to ensure that the colony yielded enough production, a situation analogous to that encountered in the European overseas colonial empires in the 19th century. If this is a correct analysis, it explains why Hungary differs in this respect from the central and west European economies.

7. Labour supply: the industrial sector Few of our contributions deal with industry in the modern sense. Most of the industrial areas described functioned before the age of steam, i.e. production was either at the domestic level, or in widely dispersed minor concentrations which hardly ever dominated the agricultural region in which they formed enclaves, however important they might become at some future date. I n the case of Flanders (Deprez) there is a distinct tendency to concentrate population in those areas of poor or transitional soils where increases in agricultural production could not be expected, and there we have apparently a distinct case of the creation of an industrial proletariat, although again not urbanised, with a reduction "both of movable possessions a n d real poverty" for each individual family. Deprez describes this process as a kind of residual: population was growing, agriculture could not employ it, so it becomes available as a reservoir of underemployment, ready to be taken into the industrial system when required, and suffering whilst waiting. I n most cases industrialisation seems to have been accompanied by both immigration and high levels of fertility. We note that in Grangarde (Friberg) immigration may at times have been maledominated, since the work required a high proportion of the time of men who also had agricultural holdings — this is probably true of

24

D. E. C.

EVERSLEY

most European coal and iron areas, and if high fertility is achieved under these circumstances, it probably means early marriage and frequent births per married couple — though none of our contributors seem to be able to show just h o w this m a y be achieved. It is one of the gravest weaknesses of historical d e m o g r a p h y at present that so little has been discovered about the mechanisms which connect economic levels with marriage and variations in fertility, although by now the relationship of age at marriage to total fertility, for instance, is well-known to modern demographers. 1 A n o t h e r weakness is that definitions of occupational distributions are necessarily very imprecise. E a c h country adopts a different classification of its inhabitants, even in early nineteenth century census reports, so that once again comparisons become impossible. In H u n g a r y , the enumeration of 1777 (Kovacsics) lists 30,000 "industrialists", but less than 10,000 are in " m a n u f a c t u r i n g industry". These are insignificant proportions, but at least there we have information w h i c h we do not possess for most parts of western Europe. We must therefore define industrial populations in terms of what we think the prevailing economic activity of a region was at the time. T h e weakness of this is that we tend to take contemporary descriptions of the size of industrial undertakings too literally — often the " g i g a n t i c ironworks" turn out to be furnaces employing, at most, a few dozen men.

8. Population and consumption — the question oj living standards Most of the models of economic g r o w t h in w h i c h population is seriously considered bring out the importance of consumption levels. F e w economists now believe that a viable economy can be built u p on the basis o f a completely proletarianised working population — since this w o u l d assume that the entire product of industry is either consumed by the property-owning class, or exported. The former assumption is absurd because mass-production is based on precisely the type of commodity of w h i c h the wealthy are only limited consumers; the latter is unlikely because exports can only continue so long as imports are also maintained, and imports, in turn, w o u l d necessitate increased total purchasing power in the home market, unless they consisted entirely of luxury items. A n o t h e r w a y of looking at this problem is, of course, by ignoring

1. Cf. J . VV. Leasure, "Malthus, Marriage and Multiplication," Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly, Oct. 1963, Pt. 1, Vol. X L I , No. 4.

D.

E.

C.

EVERSLEY

25

theoretical models and e x a m i n i n g the facts about consumption levels — b u t this is not always possible. O f crucial importance in this connection is the question of mortality. It is b y now fairly generally recognised that in the long run the only possible w a y to reduce mortality at all ages is to raise living standards in the widest sense: by p r o v i d i n g education and medical treatment, by increasing food supplies and g u a r d i n g against famine, b y reducing working hours and accidents at work, by p r o v i d i n g charitable or public social services, or in a word, by environmental improvements 1 . O u r contributors v a r y in their a p p r o a c h to this set of problems. Blaschke, for instance, expressly states his belief that industrialisation in u p l a n d S a x o n y did not m e a n impoverishment, but Depress Flemish rural weavers did become proletarianised, as against the new middlemen. Sometimes the o l d e r industrial districts were the ones w h i c h experienced the reduction in living standards, in contrast to the c o m p a r a t i v e affluence o f the new industrial cities. (This contrast also applied to fertility: l o w in the older areas, high in the new ones, w h i c h in this context m a y be seen as a positive correlation of fertility and incomes). Whilst there is thus some d o u b t a b o u t h o w widespread the benefits of industrial g r o w t h were in the emergent industrial areas, there c a n be no d o u b t that the outstanding characteristic of the b a c k w a r d or feudal economies in the same period of time was the abject poverty of by far the greater part of the inhabitants. Kovacsics records, for 1 7 1 5 , nearly t w o thirds of the inhabitants as serfs and 13 % cotters, whilst at the end of the century most of the inhabitants are still returned as peasants or cotters. ( T h o u g h there is a surprising item in the H u n g a r i a n statistics: namely, nearly 200,000 out of a m a l e population of over 8 million were returned as " n o b l e s " — quite a broad g r o u p of consumers one w o u l d say, though apparently not broad e n o u g h to serve as a basis for industrialisation. One w o u l d like to k n o w more a b o u t these nobles — w i t h their dependents, a very large g r o u p indeed, p r e s u m a b l y extending to w h a t in E n g l a n d w o u l d be called the country gentry). O n e a p p r o a c h to the question of equilibrium rates of g r o w t h of population, production and consumption is that of the price level. But only J. Nadal mentions this factor — and in this case he is dealing w i t h early sixteenth century Spain, where he cites the rise in prices as evidence of population g r o w t h — but this pressure of course c a n only be successfully exercised if a part o f the population, at least,

1. T . M C K E O W N and R . G . RECORD, "Reasons for the Decline of Mortality in E n g l a n d and Wales during the Nineteenth C e n t u r y , " Population Studies, vol. X V I , No. 2, N o v . 1962.

26

D. E. C. EVERSLEY

has incomes to drive up the price of commodities. (A point sometimes overlooked by economic historians.) Incidentally, the period under review in Spain is that before the time when there m a y or m a y not have been a Hamiltonian silver influx effect. I f one carries this argument forward into eighteenth century western Europe, at a time of generally growing population, one then also finds that food and other prices are rising. T h e implications of this still need to be examined more carefully. Another approach to the same problem is that of the C a m b r i d g e G r o u p for the History of Population and Social Structure. They seek to establish the pattern of living through an examination of the static household structure as revealed by successive local census reports which throw light on the size of the household (as the hearth tax shows the size of the house), on the n u m b e r of domestic servants, apprentices, or living-in farm servants, often with clues as to occupations. This operation includes a re-examination of the most famous of English attempts to evaluate social and economic structures, that of Gregory K i n g , at the end of the seventeenth century, 1 where there was for the first time a real attempt to state the national income in terms of social class and occupational distribution. 2 Clearly we m a y examine this question also through the evidence of contemporary views on w h a t the accepted standard of living m a y have been. I have examined this question elsewhere 3 and it has received particular attention in some national studies, such as those of Connell. 4 This is particularly important at the comparative level, since where there is freedom of movement, the fact that one area has a distinctly higher standard of living than another is likely to lead to migration. This is clearly demonstrated, for instance, in the work of Jutikkala in the emigration from South Ostrobothnia over-seas to A m e r i c a , and from other under-privileged provinces to Finland's growing industrial regions. A l t h o u g h other authors are less specific about this consciousness, w e m a y take it for granted that any industrial area which recruits by migration can be characterised as being at any rate comparatively better off than an area which provides migrants, and it is hard to see how this affluence can be expressed

1. D . V . GLASS, " T W O

op. cit., ch. 8.

Chapters on Gregory King," in ed.

GLASS

and

EVERSLEY,

2 . Summarised in P . D E A N E and W . A . C O L E , British Economic Growth 1688-1g^g, Cambridge, 1 9 6 2 , ch. 1, based on Miss D E A N E ' S earlier work. 3 . D. E . C. E V E R S L E Y , Social Theories of Fertility and the Malthusian Debate, Oxford, '959; esp- ch. 4 . 4 . K. H. C O N N E L L , The Population of Ireland 1750-1845, Oxford, 1 9 5 0 ,

D. E. C. EVERSLEY

27

except in terms of greater consumption. (This even applies when the element of political or personal liberty enters into the migration). We shall return to some aspects of migration later. 9. Subsistence, crises and catastrophe Most of our contributors draw attention to the significance of crises of one kind or another for both the growth of population and the welfare of the economy. One may regard such an event as a human tragedy, but in almost every case it also marks an economic setback. T o some extent this follows from the logic of our last argument. Any reduction in total consumer power means under-used capacity — a state of affairs quite compatible with temporary labour shortages, for the capacity may be in terms of land or fixed capital. For any given industrial enterprise the loss of part of its market is significant even if, in the actual situation, all employable hands are more or less occupied. If this is so, then continuous economic growth cannot occur where population is periodically seriously reduced by famine or epidemic, and the work summarised here provides no exceptions to this rule. We encounter this type of crisis in Friberg's Grangarde in 1695/7, a crop failure which was not made good for thirty years, despite the industrial interests of the region. It is shown clearly here (and implied elsewhere) that such crises have their effects not only on the death rate but also on the birth rate, so that both labour shortages and consumer failure may have serious effects for some time to come. The further we go back in history the more serious these catastrophes seem to become — one of the most interesting of them being that in the eastern Islands of Denmark and the province of Skaene in 1659, which recalls accounts of the Black Death rather than the Great Plague in England. 1 There are many other similar instances in the seventeenth century, either connected with war (Petranova) or a combination of war, sickness and harvest failure (Wrigley, for the period 1645/6). In the light of these accounts it is not difficult to see why economic growth was relatively slow over so much of seventeenth century Europe, despite the fact that certain conditions necessary for industrialisation were already satisfied. It seems to have been a fact, as many of our contributors stress, that recovery is nearly always rapid, or at most takes about one generation, but this recovery only means the attainment of something like the pre-crises

1. A.

LASSEN,

Skaebneaaret, 1659, Aarhus, 1958.

28

D. E. C. EVERSLEY

level, perhaps just in time for the next m a j o r setback. T h e early nineteenth century m a y be distinguished on the other h a n d , b y the relative absence of such catastrophes. T r u e , the N a p o l e o n i c wars left their mark on Spain and parts of G e r m a n y , but t h o u g h w e hear m u c h about this devastation, i m p r o v e d communications and international trade p r o b a b l y reduced the i m p o r t a n c e of the h a v o c . A n d the nineteenth century epidemics, notably of the cholera, though tragic and socially and politically s i g n i f i c a n t , 1 c a n n o t really be c o m p a r e d with the plague or even the smallpox of the eighteenth century. A b o v e all, the possibilities of m o v i n g food with reasonable speed from an area of relative superfluity to one of d r o u g h t or disease helps to keep mortality under control. T h e Irish harvest failure of 1846, though significant from the point of v i e w of emigration as well as British domestic politics, bears little resemblance to the kind of general disaster w h i c h is recorded in our papers for 1709/10 or 1740/2, w h e n there p r o b a b l y was no surplus food a n y w h e r e in Europe, as opposed to 1846, w h e n famine m a y h a v e been largely a matter o f administrative incompetence or malevolence. 2

i o. Marriage patterns and economic activity W e have already remarked that there is a general tendency to believe that the most immediate effect o f c h a n g i n g economic opportunity is o n marriage — both the age at w h i c h people m a r r y a n d the proportion of those ever-married (the two d o not a l w a y s m o v e together). But the variety of experience presented to us rules o u t a n y simple relationships of the kind that used to be current, e.g. the idea that the a d v e n t of rising living standards or u p w a r d social mobility lead to later or fewer marriages, or the equally simple opposite v i e w , often held by Marxists in the past, that marriage and economic opportunity are positively related. O n e of the clearest models of an e c o n o m y w h e r e it was easy to get land and subsistence and w h e r e marriage was therefore early and universal was that presented b y Cornell, w h i c h has h o w e v e r been latterly under attack from Drake a n d others, in relation to pre-famine Ireland. C e r t a i n l y it n o w seems as if m a r r i a g e (and possibly fertility) were not as high before 1846, and as l o w after that date, as was once believed. Drake himself, c o m p a r i n g t w o economies he knows well, that of I. Ed. L . CHEVALIER, Le Choléra : la première épidémie du XIXe sur-Yon, 1958. a. Cecil WOODHAM-SMITH, The Great Hunger, London, 1963.

siècle, L a Roche-

I). E. C. feVERSLEY

29

Ireland and that of N o r w a y , shows that outstanding changes in economic opportunity (e.g. in harvest yields or in the presence o f f i s h shoals in the case of coastal communities) m a y affect the pattern of marriages, but that the outstanding differences are those between groups whose whole social and economic structure was entirely dissimilar. Thus cottars would marry earlier than farmers, but their brides were often older than the bridegrooms, whereas the farmers married young brides: "That a farmer's bride should (unless she were a widow) be relatively young may indicate that the matter of a dowry was important (as it appears to have been), and that the possession of a dowry was a function of social standing rather than age. A girl's dowry would not be expected to increase by age. It was fixed by law. Norwegian inheritance laws allocated rigidly the proportion of the estate going to the first born, to sons and to daughters. Thus the pecuniary attractions of a farmer's daughter were known at an early age. Since competition for girl's dowries was keen, this would ensure that these women were several years younger than their husbands. The most perplexing feature of these age at marriage patterns is undoubtedly that where a relatively young man married a relatively old woman. For this goes against the common assumption that the earlier a man marries the younger his wife: a feature basic to the argument that widening economic opportunity which allowed a man to marry earlier, also meant a fall in the age at marriage of women. It is obvious, of course, that the earlier a man marries, the greater the number of women who are older than he. We would expect, therefore, that a man marrying at 20 would be more likely to marry a woman older than himself than a man marrying at 30 or 40. Some Irish statistics bear this out. (Census of 1926 ix. pp. 58-59). The Irish census of 1926, for instance, showed that husbands aged 15-19 years were on average 5-4 years younger than their wives; husbands aged 20-24 were on average 1-8 years younger than their wives, whilst those aged 30-40 years were on average 1-7 years older than their wives. Amongst Norwegian cottars this statistical bias in favour of marriage to older women was powerfully reinforced by a number of economic and social factors. Farmers looked for labour services not only from a cottar but also from his wife and children. A farmer was, therefore, interested in getting a potential cottar to marry women thoroughly experienced in farm work. A teenage girl was the very antithesis of his ideal. The cottar himself wanted, as a wife, a woman capable of running his croft whilst he was on his landlord's farm. He also wanted a woman who would help him stock the croft. Since the cottar on marriage was likely to be relatively young and unlikely as a farm servant living in to have earned much, he most needs to look elsewhere for the odd sheep, cow or pig, the kitchen utensils, the sticks of furniture and bed "linen". A girl who had worked perhaps a dozen years or more as a farm servant would be far more likely to have some of these things than a young girl only recently arrived in service."

30

D. E. C. EVERSLEY

This passage gives an idea of the complexity of the factors involved. There are several other interesting passages relating to the idea of marriage possibilities — social, economic, geographical, political. Jutikkala points out how much easier marriage becomes in a large city, and quotes German writers on the significance of the size of the effective community for this purpose — a point also taken up by a number of German social anthropologists. That the idea of "opportunity" is relative and not absolute is demonstrated by Hansen in relation to the Danish aristocracy, and his account of the effect of changes in wealth and income from the 16th to the 18th century is in this respect not fundamentally different from that of Koellmann in relation to 19th century Germany — i.e., positive relation of nuptiality and prosperity, or income-earning opportunities. One of the most succinct accounts of conditions regulating marriage is provided by M m e Petrdnova. In her study, the 16th and 17th century day labourers are shown to have small families due to late marriage — a situation easily imagined when combined with their low expectation of life. But industrial workers with hopes of employment for their children showed a different pattern. The question of the "generation interval" is of course crucial for total population growth, and is independent of whether early marriages produce more children or not: given any level of fertility and mortality, if five generations of marriages take place in a century instead of four (because the children marry at 20 instead of 25) then this factor alone may increase the population quite substantially, with severe consequences as regards, for instance, housing problems, and also for the economically active percentage of a given population.

11. Fertility As in the case of marriage, we find that there are two fundamentally conflicting views of the relationship between economic prosperity and fertility: that a higher standard of living encourages larger families, and that it encourages family limitation. Both views are encountered here, and both are of course based on experience. T h e fact seems to be that the positive effect on fertility is associated both with the very beginnings of the transition from subsistence economies to the more elevated standards of an industrial society, and with a very much later, modern stage, where general levels are so high as to make family limitation no longer such a drastic necessity. In between there is clearly a stage of struggles, of fears of losing one's niveau, of hopes of rising still further, which leads to smaller families.

D. E. C. EVERSLEY

31

W e cannot say from these contributions what the " n a t u r a l " level of fertility may be. Kovacsics presents crude birth rates of up to 55 per thousand, Friberg up to 42, Deprez up to 37. But these are crude rates, and may not be so startling when reduced to age-specific tabulations, which, however, are difficult to make because we do not know much about the age structure of these populations. Moreover, statistics are sometimes based on the known number of surviving children, so that low figures may be connected with high infant mortality and high figures with low infant mortality. (This may be at the root of some of M m e Petranova's fertility differentials.) T h a t here are significant differentials cannot be doubted. T h e poor, sandy, industrialising areas have higher fertility rates than either the rich agricultural areas of comparatively light settlement on the one hand, or of the towns on the other hand. (In Flanders the age-specific pattern is actually known, and therefore these differences may be substantiated). Friberg shows fertility fluctuations to be strongly correlated with harvests, at least so far as the early part of the history of Grangarde is concerned, though this hardly explains the falls in the twentieth century from a long-term oscillation around the mid-thirties to just over 20 per thousand in 1910 and finally eleven per thousand in 1930 — a serious state of affairs even if it is based partly on longer expectations of life amongst adults.

12. Mortality W e have already alluded to the significance of crises — i.e. times when mortality rose sharply — and the absence of such crises as a foundation for long-term steady growth. But there are other shortterm variations and differentials in mortality which are worth consideration. In general terms, a short expectation of life is economically wasteful especially where it involves the wage-earner. His dependents become an unproductive charge on the economy. If he is trained, then his training is wasted, and costs rise. Thus the nineteenth century utilitarian agruments for sanitary reform. In fact, we know very little about the connection between falling mortality and economic growth. Certainly mortality can fall over a long period without any direct benefit for the economy as such. O n the other hand, falling mortality, and especially infant mortality, is almost invariably a sign of improving environmental conditions. But this is largely a story of the nineteenth century, as most of our contributors agree. O n e universal feature of the accounts before us is that although the large catastrophes do not recur, there is very little improvement in long term general mortality rates. There are even

3*

t>. E. C. EVERSLEY

a n u m b e r of instances where mortality rises. T h u s D e p r e z hints that rural infant mortality m a y actually h a v e risen during the period of industrialisation, an observation one also records in E n g l a n d — perhaps because mothers were e n g a g e d in full-time work. O n the other hand, adult mortality in these areas m a y h a v e fallen. Petranova also comments on the very high infant mortality rates of the Bohemian industrialising areas, u p to 333 per thousand. Friberg does not separately distinguish infant mortality, but the total death rate drops appreciably only after 1800, and the strong correspondence of his birth and death totals for most years before that point of time makes us suspect that infant mortality is a large part of crude mortality rate. A f t e r 1800, peaks of births m a y be recorded without corresp o n d i n g rises in total deaths — w h i c h seems to suggest a great improvement in that respect. (But this relationship needs a great deal more w o r k i n g out w h i c h it has not so far received in m a n y cases). O n e of the most interesting aspects of this slow decline in mortality is that it seems also to apply to privileged groups. Hollingsworth has shown for the English aristocracy, presumably not subject to the ordinary hazards of famine and its associated diseases, a n d provided with better sanitary conditions than the ordinary people, that their decreased mortality precedes that of the population at large only by v e r y little. Similarly, Hansen's a c c o u n t of the Danish aristocracy suggests that they too suffered increased mortality at a time of economic decline (but a p p a r e n t l y more so than the population at large). W h e n w e look at long series of a n n u a l death rates, it also becomes apparent that these crude rates are not likely to yield m u c h further information. A p a r t from the years of crises, w h e n the total mortality rates rise to heights w h i c h rule out any explanation b y w a y of a c h a n g ing age structure, the normal variations over a period of time, and more especially, between different regions, m a y be w h o l l y or largely due to differences in the composition of the population and unconnected with health or the availability of subsistence. Those w h o describe i m m i g r a n t areas stress the high rate of natural increase, w h i c h is of course as m u c h d u e to the temporarily a b n o r m a l l y low death rate as to the equally temporarily a b n o r m a l l y high fertility of the population, apart from a n y real decline of age-specific mortality w h i c h m a y be connected w i t h good e m p l o y m e n t opportunities, and high real wages: and similarly, a p a r t f r o m a n y real rise in agespecific marital fertility w h i c h m i g h t be connected w i t h economic causes. In the same w a y , areas of emigration u n d e r g o a shift in age structure w h i c h is likely to lead to increased c r u d e mortality, w h i c h m a y or m a y not be additional to a general deterioration of standards w h i c h is the cause of emigration in the first place, and m i g h t lead

£>. E. C. EVERSLEY

33

to age specific increases in mortality. A n d again the parallel a r g u m e n t m a y be pursued in respect of changes in fertility in areas of emigration. O n all these questions, the sort of mortality rates w e find in most of our contributions shed little light.

13.

Migration

A l m o s t all our contributors stress the crucial importance of national and international migration in adjusting population to economic opportunities. A l t h o u g h there were several legal and physical obstacles to mobility, it is surprising to find with w h a t ease, in general, these shifts occur, at a n y rate over a period of a generation so that at the receiving end at least labour shortages seem to be remedied w i t h surprising speed. T h e same is not a l w a y s true, however, of areas of surplus population, since some pockets of extreme poverty a n d u n d e r - e m p l o y m e n t survive in certain fringe areas well into the nineteenth century and even after emigration to N o r t h A m e r i c a b e c a m e feasible on a large scale — though this m o v e m e n t did remove some of the largest masses of surplus of m a n p o w e r like those in Ireland, Italy and northern G e r m a n y . Beginning with domestic migration, the pattern seems to be quite generally that described in the classic case of the English industrial areas b y R e d f o r d a generation ago. 1 Friberg, in the m i n i n g districts of G r a n g a r d e has fairly exact statistics of the composition of his settlement as early as 1686, w h e n only just over half the inhabitants were of local origin, with as m a n y as 16 % c o m i n g from a distance, and the remainder from adjoining parishes. T h e r e is, as one w o u l d expect, some r o u g h symmetry in the pattern of migration, each successive increase in distance from the point of attraction yielding fewer migrants, but this must not be thought of in terms of concentric circles. M i g r a n t s m o v e along the m a i n lines of c o m m u n i c a t i o n , they prefer coastwide or river travel where this is available, they are h a m p e r e d b y political boundaries (and therefore, in G e r m a n y , m a y m o v e easily over some hundreds of kilometres within the same jurisdiction as a fraction of that distance across a frontier). In general the movement is from uplands to the plains, b u t clearly there are exceptions, as in the case of S a x o n y and B o h e m i a w h e r e m i n i n g and other industrial activities are bound to mountains or steep valleys w h e r e r a w materials and w a t e r p o w e r are available. Institutional factors clearly played a large part in determining the i . A . REDFORD, Labour Migration in England, 1800-1850, 2 n d ed. by W . H . C h a l o n e r , L o n d o n , 1964.

34

D. E. C. EVERSLEY

direction and volume or migration. In England, the Laws of Settlement were until recently believed to have been serious obstacles to free movement, but later research has thrown doubt on how effective this hindrance was. But Jutikkala has shown in his contribution that the system of legal protection operating in Sweden — Finland actually reduced mobility in the later part of the 19th century when other factors, such as urbanisation, would have tended to increase it. This was due to the stricter enforcement of existing legislation in the fact of rising burdens of poor relief — a phenomenon also familiar in England. A question which has been widely discussed in relation to migration is whether the "push" factors in the areas of origin of the migrants or the " p u l l " factors operating in the areas of destination had the greater effect. T h e distinction is probably unreal in many cases, since what matters is the differential in living standards, if the migration is in fact due to economic factors at all. But sometimes there are fairly clear indications. Jutikkala makes the valid distinction that whilst in the long run "push" factors are no doubt important, in the sense that some areas simply could not support a population of more than a given size, in the short run " p u l l " factors are of more significance — this can be shown by correlating migration figures with business conditions in the receiving areas. There are many variants to the general history of migrations. Lassen shows how after the great disasters in some of the south Danish territories young people flocked in from the north to take up the abandoned farms, until this movement was stopped by decree. Kovacsics on the other hand, in the course of his account of the population changes in "colonial" Hungary, demonstrates the effects of settling some 450,000 Germans in the monarchy — a migration which has its counterparts in those Austrian and German home territories from which the settlers came, not always a true "surplus" population, but pushed, bribed or tempted into ventures which did not always leave them in an improved position. There are also counterparts to these organised settlements in the expulsions of minorities from settled areas, though these movements become rarer in our period. Numerically, an important example is the expulsion of the Moors from Granada, but from a qualitative point of view, and especially with reference to economic development, the history of the Huguenots, the Pilgrim Fathers, or the Moravian exiles all tend to affect the changing structure of both the country of origin and the country of destination. Where such migrations can be traced from, and to, specified regions, their most important visible effect is on the age structure and this is stressed particularly by Deprez. Clearly this factor could

D. E. C. EVERSLEY

35

have the important effect of reducing fertility at both ends of the migration, though it is not a phenomenon that has so far been closely investigated.

1 4 . Conclusion of general

report

The factors listed here do not do justice to the summaries even of the papers submitted, and are intended merely as a starting point for later discussions in the light of the full text of the papers. But one cannot help remarking that with all the patient and often lengthy research which has gone into the preparation of the papers submitted, the amount of progress which has been made towards a satisfactory analysis of the relationship between population and economy is relatively slight in the five years since the Stockholm conference. This is probably due largely to the imperfection of the sources themselves. We have shown that in order to understand how population responds to economic pressures, and vice versa, we need to know not only total numbers, or crude birth, death, and marriage rates, but such vital information as changes in the age at marriage, infant and other age specific mortality rates, marital fertility, age and sex structure of migration, the social structure of families, mobility between classes and occupations, and other information of the kind which would enable one to trace more efficiently the mechanism of the relationships involved. Such studies have been begun in a number of regions, and for different sub-sections of national populations, but are not yet available in sufficient numbers to allow for general conclusions. It is hoped that as a result of the discussions based on the present papers, a greater measure of standardisation in these studies may be achieved.

THE ORIGIN

OF THE LABOUR

FORCE

IN

ENGLAND

by W . A . ARMSTRONG ( University

of

Nottingham)

These remarks are based on a contribution made at this conference. I hope to be able to identify the issues which are involved as a startingpoint for discussion, although English colleagues and other experts in the field will recognize that nothing new is being said. A prompt answer would once have been given to this question. T h e origins of the labour force were commonly held to be "institutional", as Professor Chambers has put it. M a r x laid great stress on the importance of the enclosure movement in driving country folk into the towns. " T h e expropriation and expulsion of the agricultural population, intermittent but renewed again and again, supplied... the town industries with a mass of proletarians 1 . " Subsequent historians took a similar view, 2 and as late as 1946 it was 1. K . MARX, Capital, vol. II, chapter 30. 2. E.g. J. L. and B. HAMMOND, The Village Labourer, 1911, ch. 4; The Town Labourer, 1917, ch. 1; G. D. H. COLE, Short History of the British Working Class Movement, 1925-7 (revised edition, 1948, p. 22), writes "The peasants, during the Industrial Revolution, were torn from the land and driven to live in the noisome factory towns".

40

W. A. ARMSTRONG

asserted that the industrial revolution in E n g l a n d , while coinciding with an unusually rapid population increase, " w a s aiso a period when other reasons for a swelling labour force were most in evidence; for example, the death of the peasantry as a class and the d o o m of the handicraft trades." 1 M u c h re-assessment of the effects of enclosure has been m a d e however. G o n n e r , in an exhaustive study of census returns, could find no general connection between enclosure and population c h a n g e ; 2 R e d f o r d , in tracing labour migration to the towns, stressed that there can h a v e been no widespread rural depopulation. 3 Davies showed that small occupying owners were as much in evidence in 1 8 1 5 as they had been in 1 7 8 0 in several countries. 4 C h a m b e r s has confirmed these findings for parts of the East M i d l a n d s . While enclosure doubtless had more severe effects on the small tenant farmers a n d cottagers, we are left in no doubt that the spilling over of the rural population into towns and industrial areas was mainly the result of a great upsurge in the size of the rural population since the population of the rural districts continued to rise after 1 8 0 1 . 5 R e c e n t historians have tended to lay stress on the economic benefits brought to the nation by enclosure, and h a v e emphasized that towns and industrial areas attracted l a b o u r from the countryside rather than being the last refuge of the dispossessed. 6 C h a m b e r s ' work in particular however throws into sharp focus the question of how f a r the population grew for " n a t u r a l " reasons, i.e. in response to f a v o u r a b l e economic changes. H o w f a r did the Industrial R e v o lution create its o w n labour f o r c e ? T h e appropriate models here are of respectable antiquity. 7 Population was long viewed as being able to g r o w only so long as there were means of subsistence available a n d to be h a d through incomeyielding employment. A n u p w a r d movement of agricultural productivity could bring about an i m p r o v e m e n t in mortality, migration to new centres of industry could have f a v o u r a b l e genetic side effects. M o r e importantly, economic development would lead to earlier 1. M. DOBB, Studies in the Development of Capitalism, 1963, p. 223. 2. E. C. K . GONNER, Common Land and Enclosure, 1912. 3. A. REDFORD, Labour Migration in England, 1800-1850, 1926, revised edn 1964, CH. 4. 4. E. DAVIES, "The Small Landowner, 1780-1832, in the light of the Land T a x Assessments," Economic History Review, vol. 1, no. 1, 1927. 5. J . D. CHAMBERS, "Enclosure and Labour Supply in the Industrial Revolution," Economic History Review, second series, vol. V , No. 3, 1953, p. 338. 6. E.g. REDFORD, op. cit., pp. 68-9; T . S. ASHTON, The Industrial Revolution, 1948, p. 26. 7. For the most part, what follows may be taken as the Malthusian view of population change; it was generally subscribed to by the classical economists of his day.

W. A.

ARMSTRONG

41

marriage, producing a flood or bulge of marriages followed by a similar bulge of births. On the other hand preventive checks (on marriage) or positive checks (on mortality) would come into play at times of adverse economic change. 1 We may briefly review the English evidence, for urban-industrial and agricultural areas in turn. There does seem to have been, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, an association between industrialization and higher fertility. Nottinghamshire parish register studies have shown that the number of baptisms per marriage was higher in "industrial" villages that in agricultural villages throughout the period 17301800; 2 as a group of Worcestershire villages went through the process of partial industrialization, fertility (baptisms per marriage) seems to have been rather higher after about 1790; 3 the recent global calculations by Deane and Cole suggest a rise in fertility in the North-Western region, in the second half of the eighteenth century. 4 It should be particularly noted that if registration of births was worsening with industrialization and urbanization, then the higher fertility of these districts would be understated by these authors, who generally used constant multipliers on the registered baptisms. 5 On the other hand, it seems unlikely that death rates fell in the towns or industrializing areas before 1850 — worsening registration would lead to the under-estimation of death rates in such places. English historians would probably all incline sympathetically to Connell's reflection — "We are left to wonder how the towns of the eighteenth century could possibly have shortened life more effectively than those of the 1830's." 6 In the countryside fertility was generally lower than in the districts previously referred to. It may indeed have been a little higher in the second half of the eighteenth century than in the first. The 1. For a useful categorization of possible relationships in this field see D. E . C . EVERSLEY, "Population and Economic Growth in England before the T a k e - O f f , " First International Conference of Economic History, Stockholm, i960. Contributions and Communications, p. 460. 2. J . D. CHAMBERS, The Vale of Trent (Supplement No. 3 to the Economic History Review, 1957, p. 5 3 ) . 3. D. E . C . EVERSLEY, " A Survey of Population in an Area of Worcestershire, 1 6 6 0 - 1 8 5 0 , " Population Studies, vol. X , 1 9 5 7 , p. 254. 4. P. DEANE and W . A . COLE, British Economic Growth 1962, p. 127. 5. N o correction factor was used by Chambers on the baptisms, while Eversley's was 1 . 1 5 throughout the period studied. DEANE and COLE used a lower ratio for 1 8 0 1 - 3 0 than for their earlier periods (see British Economic Growth, pp. 109-10) and if it is argued that the ratio used ought to have been higher rather than lower, their estimates of fertility for the later period would also be too low. 6. K . H . CONNELL, " S o m e Unsettled Problems in English and Irish Population History," Irish Historical Studies, Vol. V I I I , No. 28, 1 9 5 1 , pp. 2 2 9 - 3 1 .

42

W . A. ARMSTRONG

estimates for Nottinghamshire agricultural villages (Chambers), and for the agricultural regions of Deane and Cole, lend some support to this view. 1 The upsurge of the rural population more probably arose from a fall in the death rate. On the face of things, crude burial rates (per 1,000 population), seem to have fallen in Worcestershire, and in the Nottinghamshire agricultural villages. Regional death rates in the non-industrialized Deane and Cole regions seem to have fallen. 2 How far the results are affected by worsening registration must still be a matter for debate, but death-burial ratios over 1839-4.0 (the first years of civil registration) were 1 . 1 , 1.2, and 1.1 for these areas, 3 i.e. omission was probably not great enough to wipe out the falling death-rates noticed by our observers. Can we, then, go on to ascribe the growth of population (and thereby the origin of the labour force) simply to the operation of favourable economic developments in town and countryside? Certain difficulties remain. Firstly we have to bear in mind that, if more babies were born and if average family size grew, then infant mortality would have gone some way towards nullifying the potential increase of population. 4 (Especially if the larger families were to be found in urban areas.) Secondly, there is as yet little actual evidence of a widespread fall in the age at marriage. Thirdly, it is clear that population growth was well under way before the economic opportunities of industrialization were open to more than a small proportion of the population. 5 Fourthly, although it is clear that the total output of agriculture, and yields, must have risen, we cannot be sure that a per capita increase in the consumption of agricultural goods actually took place. 6 Lastly, it has not been possible to demonstrate clear linkages between the movement of economic 1 . CHAMBERS, Vale of Trent, p. 5 3 ; DEANE a n d COLE, op. cit., p. 1 2 7 . 2. CHAMBERS, op. cit., p. 5 5 ; EVERSLEY, op. cit., p. 2 6 3 ; DEANE a n d COLE, p . 1 2 7 . 3 . DEANE a n d COLE, op. cit., p p . 1 0 8 - 9 .

4. T. MCKEOWN and R. G. BROWN, "Medical Evidence Related to English Population Changes in the Eighteenth Century," Population Studies, vol. I X , 1955, P- 1335. A recent estimate suggests that about 30% of the labour force were employed in "manufacture, mining and industry" around 1800 (DEANE and COLE, op. cit., p. 142). This would include handicraft workers of course. In 1851 there were about 900 thousand men in the iron-machinery, cotton, wool, railway, coal-mining and shipbuilding trades -— or one in eight of the over 10 male population. Even then "the course was set towards the industry state, but the voyage was not half over". (See J. H. CLAPHAM, Economic History of Modern Britain, 1926, vol. I, ch. 2.) 6. The most recent general discussion of the problem of agricultural output, productivity and consumption is in DEANE and COLE, op. cit., ch. 2. Habakkuk has suggested that improved transport and marketing of food may have had favourable demographic effects, by reducing the possibilities of subsistence crises. (See the article mentioned under footnote 3, p. 44.)

W. A.

ARMSTRONG

43

variables and birth, death and marriage rates in the short-run. We lack sensitive indicators of real wages, of course, and usually have to rely on price series for foodstuffs. Marriage was certainly sensitive to such price changes, and a good inverse relationship between deviations from trend values in respect of wheat prices and marriages can be demonstrated for the period 1789-1815. Baptisms show the same tendency, although the amplitude of the variations between 1789 and 1 8 1 5 is much less pronounced. 1 No clear relationship between burials and price fluctuations has yet been established for eighteenth century England however. Professor Chambers, in respect of Nottinghamshire, has demonstrated that while food shortage and epidemics were often associated, epidemics could lead to demographic crises when food prices were low; the same cannot be said of food shortage acting alone. 2 The point here is that if the population variables were insensitive to short-run changes in food prices, then simple arguments relating population growth to long-term resource improvements need much qualification, at least as far as eighteenth century England is concerned. What can be said for reversing the essential order of change, starting with population change brought about by non-economic, fortuitous causes? Population growth, independently generated in the first instance, could have a stimulating effect on the demand side, 3 and it is certainly true that several English economic historians are coming round to the view that the strength of the home market as opposed to the export market has been sadly neglected in the past. 4 Habakkuk has recently drawn attention to the fact that an abundant and growing supply of labour at the going wage was favourable to profits and hence to capital accumulation. This would lead to a more rapid absorption of existing technical knowledge and hence increase the chances of making further technical progress. 5 If there exist difficulties in connection with the supposed translation 1. W . A. ARMSTRONG, " T h e population of England and Wales 1 7 8 9 - 1 8 1 5 " (prepared for the Twelfth International Historical Conference, Vienna, 1965, and published in Etudes et chroniques de démographie historique, Paris, 1965). T h e general trend of the argument in this paper may be found there, in an amplified form. 2.

C H A M B E R S , op.

cit.,

pp.

28-9.

3. Assuming that per capita income remained stationary, or at least did not fall so far as to outweigh the effort in the rise of the total number of consumers. 4. E.g. D. E. C . EVERSLEY, " T h e Home market and economic growth in England, 1750-80," in : ed. MINGAY & JONES, Land, Labour and Population in the Industrial Revolution. London, 1965. R . M . HARTWELL, " T h e Causes of the Industrial Revolution," Economic History Review, vol. X V I I I , No. 1 (1965), p. 178, writes that "the largest growth market must have been the home market". 5. H. J. HABAKKUK, "Population Problems and Europe: an Economic Development in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries," Papers and Proceedings of the American Economic Association. Vol. L I I I , M a y 1963, p. 6 1 4 .

44

W . A . ARMSTRONG

of population growth into effective demand and in the explanation of capital deepening, there are further problems involved in explaining how population could have grown independently, from forces of a fortuitous, non-economic nature. The development of hospitals and dispensaries are now held to have been of no importance in forcing down the eighteenth century death rate. 1 O n the other hand, the question of the significance of inoculation has recently been re-opened by Mr. Razzell. 2 The possibility of autonomous changes in the strength of virus organisms resulting from climatic change has been mentioned, as has the possibility of growing immunity. 3 It may perhaps be significant that at least one group of people (the dukes) were enjoying longer lives by the mid-eighteenth century than their predecessors, 4 while presumably their nutritional standards had been high throughout. T h e origins of the labour force for the industrializing state thus remain mysterious. It can certainly be said that migration was a relatively less important factor than was once assumed, and in any case the migrants were recruited from a growing rural population which needs explanation in turn. Professor Pentland has remarked on the reluctance of Deane and Cole to move from the "impregnable" position that population growth is both a cause and effect of economic growth. It seems to be wise to take up their position however, until we have many more local studies of population change drawn from our parish registers on the lines of the French examples.

1. M C K E O W N and BROWN, op.

cit.

2. P. RAZZELL, "Population c h a n g e in eighteenth century E n g l a n d — a re-appraisal," Economic by T .

History

Review,

Second Series, V o l . X V I I I , N o . 2.

M C K E O W N and R . G .

RECORD,

E n g l a n d and W a l e s during the nineteenth century," Population pp.

T h e tables p r o d u c e d

"Reasons for the decline

of mortality in

Studies,

X V I , 2, 1962,

102, 104, show that smallpox was far exceeded as a killer disease b y

several

others, in the 1850's and 6o's. 3. E . g . b y H . J . HABAKKUK, " T h e E c o n o m i c History of M o d e r n B r i t a i n , " of Economic

History,

X V I I I , 1958, p. 499, a n d CHAMBERS, Vale of Trent,

Journal

p . 32.

4. T . H . HOLLINGSWORTH, " A D e m o g r a p h i c S t u d y of the British D u c a l F a m i l i e s , " Population

Studies,

vol X I , N o . 1, 1957, p . 8.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF POPULATION IN AN AREA OF EARLY INDUSTRIALISATION : SAXONY FROM THE SIXTEENTH TO THE NINETEENTH CENTURY by K a r l BLASCHKE ( Dresden ) (Summary)

T h e historical importance of Saxony, one of the medium sized G e r m a n territories, is based on its economic and cultural achievements. In view of this fact, research into the Saxon population history has specific problems. Fortunately there are particularly favourable circumstances with regard to the records and sources, the exploration of which has given the following results. From 1550 to 1750 the population of Saxony grew from 550,000 to 1,000,000; from 1750 to 1843, t o 1,860,000 inhabitants. Therefore the increase during the first 200 years was the same as during the following 100 years, in every case nearly 100 % . In the first period the annual rate of increase amounted to 3.1 °/0o, in the second to 6.5 °l00. Alongside that must be considered the gigantic loss of men during the 30 years-war (about 1/3 to 1/2 of the whole population). Industrialisation in Saxony was beginning about 1830-1840. T h e rapid increase of population was accompanied by a progressive differentiation of social groups. T h e proportional development of the individual groups was as follows:

46

A B C D E

K. BLASCHKE

citizens unsettled men in cities farmers gardeners and cottagers unsettled men in villages

1550

1750

1843

26% 5% 50% 5% 13%

20% 16% 25% 30% 8%

16% 18% 14% 47% 5%

This means: the groups B and D, which were the main agents of the economic progress, of the professional and pre-industrial occupations, had the benefit of the economic development. T h e proportion of farmers decreased to a quarter, although there was no decrease of their actual number. A t the end of the period examined only the real farmers, that is, only 14 % of the whole population, were subjected to landlordship, the abolition of which in 1832 was a political and historical necessity. O n the other hand, too numerous a class of unsettled have-nots did not arise from the differentiation. T h e greatest increase occurred in the middle-class of rural gardeners and cottagers, people with a small house and land-property, occupied with professional employment. This class of people, and not an expropriated, property-and rootless proletariat, formed the majority of the working class of the early industrial society in Saxony. In spite of the increase and differentiation of population, the proportion of townsmen did not increase to a considerable extent. It came to the following percentages: 1550 : 31 %

1750 : 36 %

1843 : 34 % .

T h e pre-industrial development of economy and population was not restricted to the cities, but was equally distributed over cities and villages. There was no prevention or inhibition by law of the genesis of a large rural professional and manufacturing activity. In consequence, the industrialisation of Saxony included large rural regions. T h e effect of this fact was a considerable regional differentiation. T h e mountain districts became the main locations of Saxon industry, with a high density of population, because in the mountains there existed all the prerequisites of early industrial development: mineral wealth, wood, water-power, a favourable climate for flax-growing. O n the other hand, the mountain climate and the miserable nature of the soil did not allow an intensive agricultural activity. Conversely, the plain regions, with favourable climate and fertile soil, showed good prerequisites for agriculture, but there were missing the

K.

BLASCHKE

47

bases of industrial development and population increase. In 1843 there were in Saxony, on the one hand, rural districts with 125, 139 and 154 men per square kilometre; but on the other, districts with 32 and 26. This regional differentiation of the population, beginning in the pre-industrial period, has existed unaltered since the 16th century up to to-day. T h e densely populated areas were built up probably partly by an inland migration, but chiefly as a result of a higher fertility, which is proved by the record documents. Between 1774 and 1789, the mountain regions show throughout a greater balance in favour of the birth-rate than do the plain regions. Also, documents from 1765, 1772 and 1812 confirm the fact of different birth-rates in towns and villages. There are notices about Saxon cities, which show only a small balance in favour of or even a birth-rate smaller than the number of deaths. O n the other hand, we find a high birth-rate for near, rural environs of these cities. T h e notable increase of population since the 16th century did not turn out to be a difficult problem of population policy and did not effect a noteworthy emigration during all the centuries, but on the contrary the increase kept abreast with the general economic development and the augmentation of employment. Population and economic growth had a permanent effect on each other. T h e augmentation of the population did not produce political pressure in the form of territorial expansion, but effected an intensification of economic powers. T h e development of the population in Saxony from the 16th to the 19th century was a homogeneous process including the preindustrial and the actual industrial period. T h e industrialisation after 1830/1840 was in a position to build on the foundation laid during the pre-industrial period, with regard to the number, the social differentiation and the regional distribution of the population. There was no break between pre-industrial and industrial development, but the one was the logical further development of the other *.

* A l l these problems are d e m o n s t r a t e d in the b o o k : K a r l h e i n z BLASCHKE, Bevòlkerungsgeschichte von Sachsen bis zur industriellen Revolution, W e i m a r , 1967.

ÉVOLUTION ET EN

DÉMOGRAPHIQUE

ÉVOLUTION

FLANDRE

AU

ÉCONOMIQUE

DIX-HUITIÈME

SIÈCLE

par P. DEPREZ (Gand)

Il n'entre pas dans nos intentions de présenter ici des résultats de recherche entièrement nouveaux. Nous nous bornerons à examiner, ou plutôt à réexaminer, les corrélations qui ont existé entre l'évolution démographique et l'évolution économique et sociale en Flandre. L a période envisagée va de la fin du x v n e siècle et le début du x v m e jusque vers les années 1800. Notre terrain de recherches fut, comme par le passé, la Flandre et plus précisément l'actuelle province de la Flandre orientale ayant comme capitale la ville de Gand. Notons aussi que, pour la présente communication, nous avons presque uniquement puisé dans la « littérature » disponible. Afin de donner une idée plus ou moins précise de l'importance du matériel chiffré qui a servi dans cette communication, mentionnons qu'il se rapporte à une population d'environ 70 000 unités au début et 130 000 à la fin de la période envisagée. Cela dit, rappelons brièvement que l'on distingue en Flandre trois régions à structures économiques différentes. Il y a d'abord la partie fertile où les grandes exploitations agricoles sont prédomi-

5°

P. DEPREZ

nantes. O n la trouve surtout sur le littoral de la mer d u N o r d et le long des rives de l'estuaire de l'Escaut. Puis apparaissent diverses zones de transition entre les étendues fertiles et les espaces sablonneux dont nous parlerons immédiatement. U n e des caractéristiques d e ces zones de transition — constituant la m a j e u r e partie de la F l a n d r e centrale — est q u e l'on y trouve quelques industries rurales et q u e les exploitations y sont en général très petites. Enfin il y a la partie sablonneuse qui couvre grosso modo le nord des provinces actuelles de la Flandre orientale et occidentale. L e sol n ' y est pas fertile et l'industrie rurale s'y est fortement développée surtout p e n d a n t la période que nous étudions. Notons tout de suite que nous n'examinerons pas ici la partie fertile de la Flandre : en effet, le n o m b r e de données qui s'y rapportent est trop limité pour permettre des conclusions valables. Précisons, a v a n t de c o m m e n c e r notre exposé p r o p r e m e n t dit, que nous ne séparerons pas les aspects d é m o g r a p h i q u e s des aspects économiques et sociaux : ils ne sont d'ailleurs pas séparables et le faire ici serait trahir l'idée conductrice de cette c o m m u n i c a t i o n . Examinons d ' a b o r d l'évolution d u chiffre de la population dans les d e u x groupes de régions qui nous intéressent, c'est-à-dire les parties sablonneuses et intermédiaires. Dans la partie sablonneuse, la plus industrialisée en somme, la population a a u g m e n t é plus q u e dans la zone de transition où l'industrie était nettement moins importante. Entre le d é b u t et la fin d u x v m e siècle, le chiffre de la population est passé de l'indice 100 à celui de 186 pour le premier groupe et de 182 pour le d e u x i è m e groupe. A priori cette différence est bien minime et pour ainsi dire insignifiante. M a i s il en est tout autrement si nous distinguons la région de transition située au nord et à l'ouest de G a n d de celle qui se trouve dans le pays d'Alost, c'est-à-dire à peu près à m i - c h e m i n entre G a n d et Bruxelles. Il en résulte que l'accroissement de la population est plus fort dans le premier de ces d e u x groupes (indices : 200 contre 100 pour les villages autour de G a n d et seulement 172 contre 100 pour les villages d u pays d'Alost). C e t t e différence est trop importante pour être passée sous silence. Il y a dans cette augmentation de la population une g r a d a t i o n : la plus forte se situe dans la région de transition à proximité de G a n d , puis vient la région sablonneuse et finalement les villages du pays d'Alost. Cette g r a d a t i o n correspond p o u r ainsi dire parfaitement a u x différents niveaux d'industrialisation. L'industrie rurale s'est développée plus largement dans les villages de la région de transition gantoise q u e dans la partie sablonneuse et elle a régressé dans les villages d u pays d'Alost. Donc, première constatation : il y a corrélation entre le degré d'industrialisation et l'accroissement

P. DEPREZ

51

de la population. Mais nous apporterons tout à l'heure quelques restrictions importantes à cette constatation. Ces différences régionales sont confirmées par d'autres éléments, et tout d'abord par les taux de natalité. Examinons en premier lieu ceux de la fin du x v m e siècle. Dans la partie sablonneuse l'on note 37,2 naissances d'êtres vivants pour mille habitants. Dans le premier groupe des villages de transition ce taux n'est guère différent (17 pour mille), mais dans les villages du pays d'Alost ce taux oscille entre 34,7 et 32,3 avec une moyenne de 32,9 pour mille. Donc, apparaît de nouveau cette différence entre les parties industrialisées et non industrialisées. Notre remarque est d'ailleurs corroborée par les résultats que donne l'analyse de l'évolution des taux de natalité au cours du x v m e siècle. Partout ce taux a diminué. Cette diminution est la plus forte dans les villages du pays d'Alost, elle est moindre dans les villages à sol sablonneux et très faible dans les villages de transition autour de Gand, où l'expansion de l'industrie rurale fut très considérable. Un autre élément de confirmation est le vieillissement de la population et les rapports entre les différents groupes d'âge. A u début du siècle la population est plus âgée dans les régions non-industrialisées. A u cours du x v m e siècle se manifeste un vieillissement de la population flamande, mais de cette évolution ressortent de nouveau les mêmes différences : vieillissement plus fort dans les villages où l'industrie rurale est sans grande importance, vieillissement moindre dans les villages industrialisés ou semi-industrialisés. Restent deux éléments d'appréciation fort importants qui, à vrai dire, ne sont pas examinés systématiquement en Belgique : la mortalité et la fécondité. Certes, un effort louable est fait de temps à autre dans ce domaine de recherches, mais jusqu'à présent sans aucune continuité. C'est le taux brut de la mortalité qui est le plus révélateur. Les premiers résultats donnent l'impression — on ne peut pas dire davantage — que la mortalité a augmenté au cours du x v m e siècle et que cette augmentation a été plus considérable dans les régions de transition que dans les régions industrialisées. Quant à l'évolution de la mortalité notons aussi que le taux brut de celle-ci a diminué au cours du x v m e siècle dans les parties dotées d'une industrie rurale. Dans les autres par contre, il a augmenté. Disons encore, avec toutes les réserves nécessaires, que vers la fin du siècle les taux bruts sont plus élevés dans les régions fertiles que dans les parties industrialisées. L'examen de la fécondité nuptiale en Flandre ne peut être que très superficiel et les conclusions à en tirer sont aléatoires. Par conséquent, nous nous bornerons à dire que la fécondité nuptiale semble avoir été inférieure dans les régions de transition. Cette constatation, faite

52

P. DEPREZ

d ' a p r è s l'espacement des naissances, l'âge a u p r e m i e r m a r i a g e , l'âge respectif a u p r e m i e r et a u d e r n i e r enfant, et les r a p p o r t s naissances/mariages, confirme d o n c les différences relevées d a n s les t a u x bruts de natalité. Voilà d o n c les quelques éléments d ' a p p r é c i a t i o n d o n t nous disposons actuellement. C o m p a r é e s a u x autres régions les zones industrialisées se caractérisent p a r u n accroissement de la p o p u l a t i o n plus considérable, u n t a u x b r u t de n a t a l i t é plus élevé et u n e m o i n d r e d i m i n u t i o n d e celui-ci a u cours d u siècle q u i nous occupe, u n t a u x b r u t de décès infantiles et u n e fécondité n u p t i a l e plus élevés. Il i m p o r t e m a i n t e n a n t d e m e t t r e ces constatations en r a p p o r t avec l'évolution sociale consécutive à l'évolution économique. Le développ e m e n t de l'industrie agraire a eu, d a n s les régions en question, u n effet néfaste sur l'évolution sociale. C e t effet se t r a d u i t en p r e m i e r lieu p a r u n a p p a u v r i s s e m e n t poussé d u prolétariat de l'industrie rurale, qui a vu d i m i n u e r aussi bien le m o n t a n t m o y e n de son avoir mobilier q u e sa propriété foncière, ce qui lui en restait é t a n t d e plus f o r t e m e n t endetté. En revanche, d a n s les régions non-industrialisées cet appauvrissement, q u i semble avoir été u n m a l généralisé, n ' a pas pris de proportions aussi i n q u i é t a n t e s : la m a j e u r e partie des biens immobiliers a p p a r t i e n t à la p o p u l a t i o n r u r a l e ; la d i m i n u t i o n d u cheptel est bien moins considérable de m ê m e q u e le décroissement d u m o n t a n t m o y e n des biens mobiliers. Il semble d o n c avéré q u ' a u x v m e siècle industrialisation ne soit pas synonyme de prospérité, bien a u contraire. Le d é v e l o p p e m e n t de cette industrie rurale, dérivée et d é p e n d a n t e de l'agriculture doit être considéré c o m m e u n m o y e n p o u r pallier le sous-emploi qui va s'aggrav a n t sans cesse d a n s les régions sablonneuses. L'accroissement d e la p o p u l a t i o n y était tel q u e l'agriculture ne suffisait plus à lui assurer d u travail. Ainsi, de gagne-pain s u p p l é m e n t a i r e a u x siècles précédents, cette industrie r u r a l e est devenue, a u cours d u x v r a e siècle et d a n s les régions les moins fertiles d e la F l a n d r e , le m o y e n d e subsistance p a r excellence d e la plus g r a n d e p a r t i e d e la p o p u l a t i o n rurale. Quelles sont m a i n t e n a n t les conclusions à dégager des différentes données q u e nous venons d ' a n a l y s e r ? D a n s les parties industrialisées, moins fertiles et p a r t a n t plus pauvres, la situation d é m o g r a p h i q u e est plus favorable qu'ailleurs, et elle s'y d é g r a d e moins q u e dans les autres régions. On peut donc dire qu'une situation économique défavorable a eu un effet favorable sur la structure et l'évolution démographiques. D a n s les parties plus favorisées d u point d e v u e é c o n o m i q u e la p o p u l a t i o n s'est a c c r u e plus l e n t e m e n t , le t a u x de natalité est plus bas, les t a u x de m o r t a l i t é plus élevés, le vieillissement de la p o p u l a t i o n plus a v a n c é et la fécondité n u p t i a l e inférieure.

P.

DEPREZ

53

A une structure économique favorable correspond donc une situation démographique qui l'est moins, et une évolution économique et sociale favorable va de pair avec une évolution démographique moins favorable.

Ces conclusions, il convient de le souligner, semblent trouver une confirmation dans les recherches actuellement en cours non seulement en Belgique, mais aussi dans d'autres pays. Si nos résultats peuvent déconcerter un peu les historiens, ils n'ont pourtant rien de surprenant : nous retrouvons les mêmes différences, les mêmes contrastes dans les différentes parties du monde actuel.

M A R I T A L

A G E

P A T T E R N S

I R E L A N D

A N D

IN PEASANT

N O R W A Y ,

SOCIETIES:

1800-1900

*

by M. ( University

DRAKE

of Kent at

Canterbury)

I I n recent years, d e m o g r a p h i c historians f r o m a n u m b e r of countries h a v e e n g a g e d in a lively controversy a b o u t the m e c h a n i c s of p o p u lation g r o w t h in E u r o p e , d u r i n g the late eighteenth a n d early nineteenth centuries. 1 T h a t the rate o f population increase accelerated * Part I of this paper is to be found in "Marriage and Population Growth in Ireland, 1 7 5 0 - 1 8 4 5 , " Economic History Review, 2nd Series, X V I , 1963, pp. 3 0 1 - 1 3 ; Part I I , in "Malthus on N o r w a y , " Population Studies, X X , No. 2, November 1966, pp. 175-196 (and at greater length in Population and Society in Norway, 1735-1865, which the C . U . P . published in 1969). Part I I is also discussed in a slightly different form in M . Drake's contribution to the International Seminar in Demography, held at Edinburgh University in 1967, under the title "Age at Marriage in the PreIndustrial West". I . J . D. C H A M B E R S , " T h e Vale of Trent, 1670-1800," Economic History Review, Supplement 3, London, 1957. K . H. C O N N E L L , The Population of Ireland 1750-1845, Oxford, 1950, and "Some unsettled problems in English and Irish population history, 1750-1845," Irish Historical Studies, V I I , 1 9 5 1 . D. E. C. E V E R S L E Y , " A Survey of population in an area of Worcestershire from 1660-1850," Population Studies, X ,

56

M.

DRAKE

sharply in this period in many areas is generally agreed, but there is, as yet, no agreement on whether this acceleration was due primarily to a rise in fertility or to a fall in mortality. One aspect of the controversy has centred upon the causes and effects of differences in the age at marriage. Underlying this discussion have been two assumptions: the first, that the most important cause of fluctuations in the birth rate was the age at marriage: the second, that the most important cause of fluctuation in the age at marriage was the level of economic opportunity. Increasing employment would, it is argued, often lead to earlier marriage, and the earlier the age at marriage, the greater the number of births. Both assumptions are obviously plausible but, in the period with which we are concerned, difficult to substantiate for lack of reliable statistical material. The most detailed and coherent exposition to date remains that of Dr. K . H. Connell in The Population of Ireland 1750-1845 (Oxford 1950). According to Dr. Connell it was easy throughout much of Ireland to obtain a holding sufficient to support a family from the 1780's onwards. This was due partly to rapidly rising grain prices which led landlords to divide their properties into a large number of small tenancies so as to increase their rent rolls; and partly to the willingness of the peasantry to rear their families on a diet consisting of little else than potatoes, a crop notoriously economical of land. High agricultural prices also resulted in considerable quantities of marginal land being brought into cultivation, thus adding to the stock of holdings. There was, in these years, little incentive to postpone marriage in the hope of bettering one's lot, since holdings were 1956-57, a n d "Population a n d E c o n o m i c G r o w t h in E n g l a n d before the "Take-ofF": S o m e notes o n m e t h o d o l o g y a n d the objects of future research," Contributions to the First International Conference of Economic History ( S t o c k h o l m , i960), Paris, i960. H . GILLE, "The D e m o g r a p h i c History of t h e N o r t h e r n E u r o p e a n Countries in the E i g h t e e n t h C e n t u r y , " Population Studies, 3, 1949-50. H. J . HABAKKUK, "English P o p u l a t i o n in the E i g h t e e n t h C e n t u r y , " Economic History Review, 2nd ser. V I , 1 9 5 3 , a n d " T h e E c o n o m i c History of M o d e r n Britain," Journal of Economic History, X V I I I , 1958. Eli F. HECKSCHER, "Swedish P o p u l a t i o n T r e n d s before the Industrial R e v o l u tion," Economic History Review, 2nd ser. I I , 1949. K a r l F. HELLEINER, " T h e V i t a l R e v o l u t i o n R e - c o n s i d e r e d , " Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, X X I I I , r 957- J o h n T . KRAUSE, " C h a n g e s in E n g l i s h Fertility a n d M o r t a l i t y , 1 7 8 1 - 1 8 5 0 , " Economic History Review, 2nd ser. X I , 1 9 5 8 ; " S o m e I m p l i c a t i o n s of R e c e n t Work in Historical D e m o g r a p h y , " Comparative Studies in Society and History, I, 1 9 5 8 - 5 9 ; "Some N e g l e c t e d Factors in the E n g l i s h Industrial R e v o l u t i o n , " Journal of Economic History, X I X , 1959. W i l l i a m L. LANGER "Europe's Initial P o p u l a t i o n E x p l o s i o n , " American Historical Review, X I X , 1963. T . MCKEOWN a n d R . G. BROWN, " M e d i c a l E v i d e n c e R e l a t e d t o English P o p u l a t i o n C h a n g e s in the E i g h t e e n t h C e n t u r y , " Population Studies, I X , 1 9 5 5 - 5 6 . T . MCKEOWN a n d R . G . RECORD, " R e a s o n s for the D e c l i n e in Mortality in E n g l a n d a n d W a l e s d u r i n g the N i n e t e e n t h C e n t u r y , " Population Studies, X V I , 1962. G . UTTERSTROM, " S o m e P o p u l a t i o n P r o b l e m s in Pre-Industrial S w e d e n , " Scandinavian Economic History Review, V I I , 1959.

M.

DRAKE

57

rack-rented. Indeed early marriage with its promise of a large family meant additional help on the land and the prospect of some protection in old age. After 1815 agricultural prices fell. Peasants found it increasingly difficult to produce, as landlords did to collect, the promised high rents. As the landlords reversed their policy of sub-division, in the hope that a less numerous tenantry would be a more prosperous one, more able to pay its rent, the peasants, faced with famine in bad years, saw the folly of their total dependence on the potato. Holdings were now less easy to obtain, the age at marriage rose, emigration increased. These related trends were reinforced in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by the memory of the Great Famine of the late 1840's: by the Land Acts which, in transfering ownership of the land to the peasant strengthened his desire to pass on the holding intact to a single child; by the fall in the death rate which delayed the passing of land from father to son; and by the slow rate of agricultural improvement which limited the amount of employment on the land. 1 Some arguments against this explanation of Ireland's population history during the last century and a half have appeared elsewhere. 2 From the point of view of the topic under discussion, three arguments are of particular importance. First, Dr. Connell has been unable to demonstrate statistically the frequent assertions of contemporaries that marriage in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Ireland was exceptionally early. What statistical evidence there is points to the conclusion that contemporaries grossly exaggerated the earliness of marriage. 3 For example, a number of observers in the province of Connaught in the early 1830's put the average age at marriage of labourers at 19 years or possibly less. T h e statistical evidence for the same period collected by the Census commissioners in 1841 put the average age at about 25 years. 4 Second, although the age at marriage rose in Ireland during the second half of the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries, the rate at which it did so was quite slow. Thus about 70 % of women entering their first marriage in 1830 were under 25 years of age. By 1891 the proportion had only dropped to 65 % , although 1. K . H . CONNELL, The Population of Ireland 1750-1845, O x f o r d , 1950, a n d " P e a s a n t M a r r i a g e in I r e l a n d : its Structure a n d D e v e l o p m e n t since the F a m i n e , " Economic History Review, 2nd ser. X I V , 1962, 502-23, passim. 2. M i c h a e l DRAKE, " M a r r i a g e a n d P o p u l a t i o n G r o w t h in I r e l a n d , 1 7 5 0 - 1 8 4 5 , " Economic History Review, 2nd ser. X V I , 1963, 307-13, a n d R . C . GEARY'S r e v i e w of K . H . C o n n e l l , 'The Population of Ireland, 1750-1845, in Studies, D u b l i n , D e c e m b e r

i95°-

3. DRAKE, op. cit., p p . 302-5. 4. Ibid., p. 304.

58

M.

DRAKE

in the next two decades it was to drop to 51 % . 1 These figures suggest that there was not sufficient flexibility in the age at marriage mechanism to produce, unaided, a rapid rise or fall in the birth rate, in view of the fact that in nineteenth century Ireland a fall of five years in the age at marriage of women was needed to produce one more child per completed family. 2 The third and possibly most significant weakness in Dr. Connell's exposition is that the economic and social pressures he describes had their prime impact on the age at marriage of men, whereas it is the age at marriage of women that is usually considered to have the greater influence on fertility. Dr. Connell was aware of the point, but as he relegated it to a footnote 3 he can hardly be said to have attached much importance to it. He appears in fact to have assumed that a rise or fall in the age at marriage of men would lead to a parallel rise or fall in the age at marriage of women. That such was not necessarily the case appears from an examination of marriage in nineteenth century Norway.

II Like Ireland, Norway had fifty years of rapid population growth in the course of the nineteenth century. 4 Throughout this period of growth she remained a peasant society. Norwegian farms were small, 5 but unlike the bulk of Irish farms, they were either owned outright by their occupiers 6 or held on relatively easy terms. The work on these farms was carried out by the farmer and his family, by 1. Calculated by Dr. K . H. Connell from the Reports of the Registrar General of Ireland. I am grateful to Dr. Connell for allowing me to use this calculation. 2. Statistical Abstract of Ireland ¡gSg, Dublin, 1963, Table 30, p. 39. T h e average number of children born per 100 married women recorded in the census of 1 9 1 1 , whose marriages had lasted from between 0 - 3 4 years and who were married between the ages of 1 5 - 1 9 , was 5 7 5 . For those married between the ages of 20-24 the number was 488 and for those married between the ages of 2 5 - 2 9 it was 4 0 1 . 3. CONNELL, The Population of Ireland, 1750-1845, pp. 5 3 - 4 , footnote 1. 4. Between 1 8 1 5 and 1865 the population of N o r w a y increased from approximately 900, 000 to, 1,700, 000 (c 9 0 % ) . For more detailed figures see Statistiske Oversikter 1948, Norges Offisielle Statistikk X . 178, Oslo, 1949, Table 7, p. 3 1 . 5. A survey in 1 8 7 0 revealed that some 5 7 % of Norwegian farms harvested on average 5 5 bushels of grain and 8 2 . 5 bushels of potatoes as well as fodder for 0.5 horses [¿u?.], 3-4 cattle and 7 sheep or goats. A further 2 4 % harvested an average of 247.5 bushels of grain and 3 3 0 bushels of potatoes and maintained 2 horses, 1 5 cattle, 30-40 sheep and 2 pigs. O . J . BROCH, Kongeriget Norge og Det Norske Folk, Kristiania, 1876, pp. 90-91. 6. Of the 102,827 Norwegian farmers in 1845 some 7 7 , 7 8 3 (or 7 6 % ) were freeholders. BROCH, op. cit., Tillaeg, X X I , p. 36.

M.

DRAKE

59

servants living in, and by cottars who in return for a small holding, provided labour services. W e find then two kinds of land-holding. O n the one hand farmers whose holdings varied in size but who usually employed some labour other than that of their family for at least part of the year; and, on the other, the cottars whose holdings were small enough to be worked by the cottar and his family in their spare time, after they had fulfilled their labour services. Often such a holding was no more than a potato patch with a little grazing for a cow and perhaps a few goats. These two groups — the farmers and cottars — married at different ages. When Eilert Sundt, the Norwegian sociologist, made a statistical examination of their marital age patterns in the 1850s he found that the cottars in Southern Norway, on average, married at around 28 years of age. 1 This came as a considerable shock to "educated" opinion that held, as in Ireland, that the lower classes married recklessly and without thought in their late teens or early twenties. T h e average age at first marriage of farmers was around 30 years. W e might expect the cottars' wives to be younger than the farmers'. The reverse was in fact the case: the average age of farmers' wives in Sundt's sample entering their first marriage being about 26 years; that of cottars' wives about 27 years. 2 Sundt does not break down his figures to give us the range of variations behind these averages. H a d he done so it is probable that the average figure would have been shown to conceal the often wide gap between the ages of husbands and wives. Thus if we examine the 1801 census of population in two rich agricultural parishes of Hedmark in eastern Norway, we discover that almost a quarter (23.6%) of the cottars were at least five years younger than their wives and almost another quarter (23.9%) were from 1-4 years younger. This pattern, where almost 5 0 % of the men were younger than their wives, was repeated in two other sample areas on the west coast (Ryfylke and Sunnmore). In two mountain areas (Hallingdal and 0sterdalen) the proportion was nearer one-third. 3 As one would expect, from Sundt's figures cited above, this particular age differential was much less apparent amongst the farmers. Thus in the same area of Hedmark as mentioned earlier, only 9 % of the farmers were as much as five years younger than their wives, whilst only a further 1 3 % were from 1-4 years younger. With the exception

1. Eilert SUNDT Om Giftermaal i Norge, Kristiania, 1855, T a b l e 30, p. 197. 2. Ibid., p. 197. 3. These figures are taken from my Cambridge University doctoral thesis (1964), Marriage and Population Growth in Norway 1750-1845. I hope to publish a version of this shortly.

6o

M. DRAKE

of one group of farmers — those in Sunnmore — this pattern was repeated in the other sample areas. 1 T h e causes of these variations are not immediately apparent. Farmers' sons, we suppose, married later than cottars' sons because their expectations were greater. T h e y wanted a farm which was likely to come to them either by inheritance, which would involve waiting for the death or retirement of parents; or by purchase, which might mean saving over a number of years; or by marriage to an heiress. 2 Since marriage for farmers' children was so closely tied up with property it is perhaps not surprising that the choice of partner was of considerable concern not only for the children directly involved but also for the other members of the family. T h e arranged match 3 which Dr. Connell has described in late nineteenth century I r e l a n d 4 was a common feature throughout nineteenth century Norway. Marriages between the farmer and cottar class were few. Eilert Sundt discovered that in his sample 7 9 % of the farmers' sons married farmers' daughters. Only 1 2 % of the cottars sons did so. 5 A cottar too needed a holding and might well be allowed to take one from an ageing relative. Often, however, he was given the right to clear one and as his master wanted him at his strongest, permission to do this might well be granted whilst he was relatively young. T h a t a farmer's wife should be some years younger than her husband is not unexpected, when we remember that, as the daughter of a farmer, (which in the overwhelming majority of cases she was), she would have some property. As Norwegian inheritance laws allocated rigidly the proportion of the estate going to the various children, the pecuniary attractions of a farmer's daughter would be known at an early age. T h e amount was a function of her status rather than her age. Her eligibility for marriage was unlikely to increase with age and as we would expect competition for girls with property to be keen, we would expect them to marry somewhat earlier than their brothers. T h e most perplexing feature of these Norwegian age at marriage patterns is undoubtedly that where a relatively young man married a relatively old woman. For the common assumption, shared as we 1.

Ibid.

2. SUNDT, op. cit., p. 203. Thomas FORESTER, Norway in 1848 and i84g, London, 1850, pp. 80-81. 3. For some references to this see the material collected by Instilutlet for Sammenlignende Kulturforskning. Bondesam funnsavdeling. Gards — og grannesamfunn, 13 Nordre Hedmark 1.58; 57a Sumnmor 1.59; 57c Heroy 1.58; 24 Hallingdal 1.57. 4. CONNELL, "Peasant Marriage in Ireland: its Structure and Development since the Famine," loc. cit., 2 n d ser., X I V , 1962, pp. 502-23. 5.

SUNDT,

op.

cit.,

Table

27,

p.

190.

6l

M. D R A K E

noted above by Dr. Connell, is that the earlier a man marries, the younger his wife: a feature basic to the argument that widening economic opportunity would have as great an impact on the age at marriage of women as upon their husbands. It is obvious, of course, that the earlier a man marries, the greater his choice of women whose age exceeds his. W e would expect, therefore, that a man marrying at 20 years of age would be more likely to marry an older woman than a man marrying at 30 or 40. For example the Irish census of 1926 revealed that men aged 15-19 years were, on average 5.4 years younger than their wives, that men aged 20-24 years were on average 1.8 years younger, whilst those aged 30-34 were on average 1.7 years older than their wives. 1 Amongst Norwegian cottars this statistical bias in favour of marriage to older women was powerfully reinforced by a number of economic and social factors. Farmers looked for labour services not only from a cottar but also from his wife and children. 2 A farmer was, therefore, interested in getting a potential cottar (often one of his own farm servants) to marry a woman who was a thoroughly experienced farm worker. 3 A teenage girl was the very antithesis of his ideal. T h e cottar himself wanted a woman capable of running his holding, whilst he was at work on his landlord's farm. He also wanted a woman who would help him stock his holding. As the son of a cottar and unlikely as a servant living in to have accumulated much in the way of kitchen utensils, furniture or bed "linen", not to speak of the odd sheep, cow or goat he would expect his bride to bring some of these goods with her. 4 A young girl, in all probability the daughter of a cottar and only recently arrived in service would be far less likely to be well endowed in this regard, whatever other attractions she may have had, than one who had worked a dozen years or more. It was, for instance, the custom in some areas for a servant girl to be given a cow after fifteen years service on a farm. 5 We have then two marital age patterns, the one for the farmer the other for the cottar class. Actual practice, however, did not always fit these models. For instance in some areas where farms were very small, comparable in size to the cottars' holdings elsewhere, the 1. Census of Ireland, 1926, I X , pp. 58-9. 2. Ingrid SEMMINGSEN, Husmannsminner, Oslo, I960, pp. 44-5; 55, 75. J- C . Lous, Om Husmandsvasenet, Kristiania, 1851, p p . 52, 107; A . HELLAND, Norges Land og Folk... Hedemarkens Ami, Kristiania, 1902, p. 655. 3 . S U N D T , op. cit.,

pp. 215-

221.

4. Ibid., p. 2 2 1 ; Eilert SUNDT, Om Sadeligheds — 1857, p p .

Tilstanden i Norge, Kristiania,

90-91.

5. Instituttet for Sammenlignende Kulturforskning...,

13 Nordre H e d m a r k 1.14.

62

M.

DRAKE

children of farmers left home in their teens to become servants on other farms, and we find them adhering to the cottar marriage model. These farmers' children moved in a milieu similar to that of the cottars' children elsewhere and to that extent their marital age pattern was determined by the same factors. Thus in parts of Sunnmore on the west coast there were few cottars in 1801. Here 2 3 % of the farmers in their first marriage were five years or more younger than their wives and a further 2 4 % were younger by between one and four years. 1

III If, as seems likely, the age at marriage of women in such peasant societies as nineteenth century Norway, was determined by a complex of social, economic and sex-ratio factors and was not a simple function of the age of their husbands, we need, perhaps, to re-examine our earlier assumptions. Such a re-examination might profitably concentrate on the variability of the age at marriage of both sexes under changing economic conditions and between different occupations. Some Norwegian evidence 2 on both these points suggests that the

TABLE

1

Percentage of brides and bridegrooms

(neither previously

under 25 years of age in some 0stfold

parishes,

married),

1 816-95

*

BRIDEGROOM

BRIDES

N U M B E R OF MARRIAGES A L L AGES

1816-25

3'-4

5'-7

1,060

1826-35

30.5

885

1836-45

37-5

50-3 56.6

1846-55

35-3

50-3

1,261

1856-65

32-5

53-4

1,500

1866-75

35-2

56.8

2,007

1876-85

37-3

56.0

2,039

1886-95

38.4

57-2

1,847

YEARS

957

• Calculated from marriage registers in the parishes of T u n e (1816-95) : Borge (1816-60); Ons0y (1816-60); Glemmen (1816-95); Skjeberg (1816-85); Ostre Fredrikstad (1816-47; 1857-95); Sarpsborg (1859-95); Vest-Fredrikstad (1871-95).

I. Michael DRAKE, unpublished doctoral thesis, a. Ibid.

M. DRAKE

63

age at marriage of women is much more stable than that of men. South-west 0stfold, along the eastern shores of Oslo-fiord, was one of the few areas in Norway to experience major industrial growth in the second half of the nineteenth century. Superficially this had little impact on the age at marriage of either men or women (Table I). Between the decades 1816-25 an o r about 70,000 persons). Towns with an industrial character (Haarlem, Leiden, Delft and others) did not increase their numbers after 1650, or only on a very small scale, while after 1680 a rapid decline set in. Between 1680 and 1750 decline and stagnation of growth is predominant. It is not until the second half of the 18th century that a certain growth of the number of inhabitants can be ascertained in certain towns and parts of Holland. But most o f this growth was offset by a slow decline in other regions. O n the whole, the period between 1750 and 1800 can be considered as a period of demographic stagnation. An explanation for these developments is not easy to give at the moment, in view of the complex character of the Dutch economy. Opinion on the position of the Dutch economy in the second half o f the 17th century and in the 18th century will need revising when viewed in the light of the results of the demographic investigation. Too much attention has been focused on commerce and the stockmarket when assessing this position. T h e outflow of Dutch money to government securities and to foreign countries will for this very reason have to be interpreted as an expression of the decay of the domestic economy. It cannot be doubted that shipping in particular decreased rapidly as a source of employment. T h e same happened in fishing. T h e depression of industry appears clearly from the decline of the cities with a predominantly industrial character. Owing to a combination of factors agriculture experienced a very serious crisis in the first half of the 18th century. Presumably one of the reasons for the developments in Holland is the universal slowing down or stagnation in the economic growth in Western Europe. T h e weakening of the position in national and international economic competition is probably another reason. It is likely that this was not only brought about by mercantilistic measures in the surrounding countries, but also by the extremely high cost of production. Probably one of the most important reasons for this was the high burden of taxation, which in its turn was the consequence of the many wars in which the Republic became involved. Owing to these wars the national debt assumed enormous proportions. This made it impossible to adapt the burden of taxation to the tendency to decline in the economy.

Friesland T h e following picture can be given of the demographic development of this province;

J. A. FABER

71

1. Considerable growth in the 16th century and in the first half of the 17th century (in 1 5 1 1 : 75,000 to 80,000 inhabitants; in 1689: 129,000 inhabitants, that is, an annual increase of 0.27 to 0 . 3 1 % in the period 1511-1689; besides, the development must already have reached its peak before the latter year: around 1650 an estimated number of 140,000 inhabitants). Growth was greatest in the towns (annual increase 0 . 5 1 % ) , in the middle and south-western part of the province (annual increase 0.34%) and in the sandy regions to the east (annual increase 0.34%). 2. Stagnation in the second half of the 17th century and the first half of the 18th century (1689: 129,000 inhabitants, 1744: 135,000 inhabitants; an annual increase of 0.08 % ) . Real decline in the towns and in the cattle-breeding area in the western part of the province (in both an annual decrease of 0.09 % ) . Stagnation in the middle and south-west (1689: 16,500 inhabitants, 1744: 16,500 inhabitants) and an insignificant growth in the arable farming districts to the north (annual increase 0 . 1 1 % ) . In the eastern sandy regions a continuous rise (annual increase 0.49%). 3. A renewed growth from about the middle of the 18th century onwards (1744: 135,000 inhabitants, 1815: 173,000 inhabitants; an annual increase of 0.35%), especially in the arable farming districts to the north (annual increase 0.48%), in the middle and south-west (annual increase 0.50%) and in the sandy regions to the east (annual increase 0.45%). T h e economic development, connected with the demographic data, can be outlined as follows. T h e period 1500-1650 is one of economic growth. T h e general price-level is on the increase and in several sectors of the economic life a marked expansion takes place, viz. in ocean shipping, in peat-digging, in inland navigation, in trade and industry. T h e growth of the population is consequently greatest in the towns and in rural areas where peat-digging, as well as commerce and navigation connected with that peat-digging, creates much employment, viz. in the sandy regions to the east as well as in the central and south-western area. T h e period 1650-1750 is characterized by stagnation in the economic growth. T h e price-level is under continuous pressure. T h e prices of the agricultural produce in the province of Friesland are declining. Taxes, and other charges such as dike-duties, do not drop simultaneously. Consequently the profits in agriculture are greatly reduced. This situation is aggravated by the cattle-plague. The depression is shown, among other things, by falling rents and several symptoms that indicate a more extensive use of the soil. In the cattle-breeding areas the population declines at this period. T h e economy of arable farming districts in slightly less vulnerable and

72

J. A . FABER

consequently more resistant from a d e m o g r a p h i c a l point of view. In the eastern p a r t of the province the p o p u l a t i o n is still on the increase. Here the peat-digging continued to require l a b o u r forces, while in the agricultural sector e m p l o y m e n t was less susceptible to general economic fluctuations. M o r e o v e r , in these regions people did not suffer too m u c h f r o m the cattle-plague and the high dike-duties. In the towns, especially as far as they were strongly directed towards the domestic e c o n o m y of the province of Friesland, a decline of population predominates in this period (Harlingen, 1689: 8,800 inhabitants, 1744:7,100 inhabitants; Sneek, 1689: 4,400 inhabitants, 1744: 3,700 inhabitants). A f t e r 1750 there is a period of renewed economic growth. Prices again show an u p w a r d tendency, n o t a b l y the price of butter, which was of vital importance to the province of Friesland. Stock-breeding intensifies its production b y an increased care o f grasslands and by the raising of more cattle. Population in the grassland area increases. T h e largest g r o w t h of the population, however, now occurs in the bog-peat areas in the middle of the province on account of the flourishing, labour-intensive, bog-peat-digging from 1750 onwards, as well as in the northern arable areas w h e r e the means o f support show a considerable expansion as a consequence of the general introduction of potato-growing. D e m o g r a p h i c a l l y the towns l a g behind the country during this period, because several industries as well as ocean shipping — notably after 1780 — meet with increasing foreign competition. T h i s had important d e m o g r a p h i c consequences for some towns along the Z u y d e r z e e (Staveren 1744: 1,400 inhabitants, 1815: 600 inhabitants; H i n d e l o o p e n 1744: 1,900 inhabitants, 1815: 1,200 inhabitants).

Overijssel T h e province of Overijssel consists of three political parts: Salland, T w e n t e and V o l l e n h o v e ; in addition there are three large towns (Zwolle, Deventer, K a m p e n ) a n d sixteen small towns. T h e soil of Salland is fertile along the rivers Y s e l and V e c h t , but the rest consist of sand and heath like the whole of T w e n t e . V o l l e n h o v e has marshy lands in w h i c h large lakes c a m e into existence during the 17th and 18th centuries as a result of bog-peat-digging. T h e medieval tribute registers of S a l l a n d and T w e n t e h a v e some d e m o g r a p h i c interest because o f the heads of the families in the villages that h a v e been entered (Salland 1397, 1429, 1433, 1445, 1457, 14.74 and 1490; T w e n t e 1475, 14.95 a n d 1499). T h e users of the soil and the proprietors are registered in the assessment lists of

J . A. FABER

73

1520 (Salland), 1601 and 1602 (Salland and Twente). Registers of die poll-taxes exist from 1675, 1723, 1764, 1765 and 1767, in which the persons over 16 or 17 years are mentioned. Censuses were taken in 1748 (with the structure of the households), in 1795 (with the occupations) and regularly during the 19th and 20th centuries. The demographic development of the total population of Overijssel was as follows: ca. 800 '475 1675 1723 1748

iq,ooo 52,000 70,000 97,000 122,434

1764

>795

1811 1815 1830

132,000

134,104 143,141 147,653 178,895

1849 1869 1889 1909 1930

215,112 254,051 295,445 382,880 520,788.

A decrease or stagnation set in at the end of the 15th century (after 1475), followed by a moderate increase during the 16th century. Twente suffered heavily from the devastations of the Eighty Years' War (1568-1648). People then emigrated from that region to Amsterdam and other towns in Holland. When peace was restored a sharp rise occurred in Twente between 1675 and 1748, at first especially in the small hamlets; later on the population concentrated in the villages with the parish churches and in the towns in Twente. The population increase of Salland during the 17th and 18th centuries was more regular, as was also the increase in the Veluwe at the other side of the river Ysel (see Veluwe). We can observe a population decrease in some towns along the coast of the Zuyderzee such as Kampen, Vollenhove, Kuinre and Blokzijl and also in some villages in this region. Such a development agrees with the one along the whole Zuyderzee basin (see Holland and Friesland). A stagnation set in after 1764 in the whole of Overijssel. The increase was resumed after 1795. During the first half of the 19th century the population growth of Overijssel was slightly higher than in general in the Netherlands (till 1869). The population increase in Twente (1675 to 1750) was not due to immigration but to an excess of births over deaths. The farms were overcrowded, the building of new houses was lagging behind the population growth. Probably the new possibilities in the textile industry led to a reduction of the marriage age. The percentage of children under 10 years of age in the rural areas was very high (26%). The same sharp rise in population is also found in the adjacent German regions, the dioceses of Münster and Osnabrück. After 1763, the textile industry in Twente worked under severe difficulties in consequence of growing foreign competition from Flanders, Silesia and Great Britain. Conditions were so bad that in many towns and villages more than 5 0 % , and even 6 0 % , of the population

74

J. A .

FABER

belonged to the poor. Housing and hygiene conditions were inconceivably bad. After 1763 diseases broke out again and again. The acreage of the cultivated grounds increased only slightly during the period from 1675 to 1750: new arable was not reclaimed, there was an extension of the meadows, some rich townspeople made new afforestations. The disproportionate development of the population on the one side and of the acreage on the other led to great changes in the rural social stratification. In the sandy regions the number of family-sized farms remained almost the same, the number of cottagers grew rapidly and a poor landless proletariat of weavers came into existence. In the stock-breeding regions cottagers were unknown. There was a wide gap between the rich stock-farmers and the servants and day-labourers. In this region shipping and bogpeat-digging were means of subsistence for a large part of the people: they were peat-workers, shippers, fishers, ships' carpenters, sailmakers, ropemakers, and ships' chandlers. 1

The Veluwe The Veluwe is a district of the province of Guelderland, situated north of the river Rhine and west of the river Ysel. It is one of the sandy regions of the Netherlands. The high sandy soils in the central area of the Veluwe were mostly uninhabited. They consisted of heaths and inland dunes. The district was chiefly inhabited along the slopes of the chain of hills and on the medium-high sandy soils and sandy-clay or clay soils on the borders. In 1526 this area had about 36,000 inhabitants and in 1800 around 68,000. In broad outlines, the population developed as follows : a) In the 16th century and in the first half of the 17th century there was only a modest growth (annual increase: 0 . 1 % in the period 15261650). b) Between 1650 and 1750 the increase accelerated (annual increase in this period 0.29%). The growth took place mainly in rural areas (annual increase 0.39%); there was hardly any increase in the urban population. Growth was relatively moderate in the narrow strip along the coast of the Zuyderzee where stock-farming predominated. c) After 1750 the rate of growth increased (annual increment 0.42%) in the period 1749-1795. The stagnation in urban growth 1. L i t . : B. H . SLICHER V A N BATH, Een samenleving onder spanning; geschiedenis p«n het platteland in Overijssel, Assen, 1957, 768 p p .

J. A . FABER

75

came to an end. T h e rate of growth in the rural areas was only slightly retarded (annual increase 0.35%). Unlike the development elsewhere, e.g. in the province of Holland, there were no great demographic upheavals in that of the population of the Veluwe. There was a steady growth. Between 1500 and 1800 the population approximately doubled. T h e growth of the population more or less kept pace with the increased resources. Fresh economic opportunities occurred repeatedly, enabling the population to continue its growth on a modest scale, viz.: a) Reclamation of wasteland, creating new resources. Reclamation activity was particularly great in periods of rising corn prices. b) Expansion of buckwheat cultivation on the higher soils in the period 1550-1650 as a result of the increasingly favourable price of buckwheat compared to rye. Consequently it was possible for a greater number of persons to live in the same area. c) Intensified land use between 1550 and 1650 resulting from this expansion of the buckwheat cultivation. d) During the period of agricultural depression (1650-1750): 1. Increased cultivation of cash crop, viz. tobacco, along the southern borders of the Veluwe and in the "Gelderse Vallei". Tobacco was a valuable cash crop that required much labour and therefore offered new opportunities for the smallholdings employing several members of the same family. Tobacco-growing was a solution for a group of the population that would otherwise have been liable to become paupers. 2. Establishing of a large number of paper-mills (water-mills) along the eastern edge of the Veluwe and its southern borders. Papermaking was practised in small scale enterprises occupying mainly the family and a few servants. 3. Expansion of the cottage textile industry (spinning, weaving, wool-carding). This — unlike the situation in Twente — was only important in a few centres. T h e greater increase of the population after 1650, originally due to a structural change in agriculture (b and c), was not only provided for by these new economic developments, but possibly even given an extra fillip. e) Introduction of the potato as a new arable crop in the second half of the 18th century. Together with tobacco (which suffered from foreign competition) the potato became an important product on which the smallholdings could rely. With rising food prices the potato provided a cheap and excellent foodstuff. It was also important to health as a source of vitamin C in the diet of the period. f ) T h e establishment of small cottage-farms on the wasteland (commons), most of which were illegal, although some were permitted by law. Such small farms were able to continue as there were various

76

J. A. FABER

ways in which the family could earn extra money. In addition to the daily wages they received from well-to-do farmers, there was work in the woods in winter, peeling bark, excavating streams for the paper-mills, spinning and weaving, binding besoms, collecting bilberries (the Veluwe bilberries went to Amsterdam), etc. Very often the workman went to Drente for seasonal labour in the spring to peel bark, and in summer to Holland or Friesland, first to cut the grass and then to mow wheat and oats. These were typical features from the end of the 18th century onwards, but from 1500 during the whole period under discussion the possibility of creating smallholdings was a factor that stimulated the growth of population. 1

Town and bailiwick of Bois-le-Duc

In the second half of the 12th century and during the 13th century, the population in this area rapidly increased. About 1375 the number of the population fluctuated around 60,000. After that date we see a rapid growth until about 1460, which continues in the town, but the rural distincts are in a state of stagnation and decline up to 1500. After this there was a general revival until 1550. The population increased to about 110,000. A century later this number was 1 0 % lower after a period of general stagnation and of local decline, particularly in Bois-le-Duc. In the second half of the 17th century we find some growth, which continues at a reduced rate till after 1750 and then at a greater rate until 1800 and later. In 1805 we count more than 135,000 inhabitants. The rise of the prices of corn in the 12th and 13th centuries had stimulated reclamation activities to such an extent that there was great haste in restricting the use of common land. The development entirely fits into the European framework. Connected with this is the expansion of the duchy of Brabant to the north and the foundation of Bois-le-Duc as a fortress (about 1 1 8 5 ) at the border. This town was growing rapidly, in view of the large extensions of 1250, 1 3 1 8 and 1352. The prosperity of the town — and partly of the countryside — was founded on the export of products of town and regional handicraft (woollen and linen cloth, leather goods, knives, pins and nails) and on the intensive transit traffic (e.g. herring, wine, salt, cattle) between Bruges — later Antwerp — Bergen op Zoom and Holland on one hand, and the Rhine district on the other. Rural textile industry underwent a substantial expansion in the beginning of the 1. H. K. ROESSINGH, « Het Veluwse inwonertal, 1526-1947, » A.A.G. Bijdragen, 11 (1964), pp. 79-150.

J . A. t'ABEfe

77

14th century and was most flourishing about 1500. In both periods this development was a reaction to the stagnation in agriculture. Together with the military operations against Guelderland after 1450, this agricultural stagnation even led to a drop in the population in the rural area, mainly in the north-eastern part. After 1500, reclamation increased on account of the improvement in the market for agricultural products. About 1500 the competitive position appeared to be weakened in the industry and transit traffic of Bois-le-Duc. Especially during the beginning of the Eighty Years' War, financially strong employers migrated to the north and the military operations broke the urban and regional force of expansion. T h e treaty of Munster brought a relief but not a recovery of the position. Only the woollen industry in Tilburg enjoyed the protection of Amsterdam — the other products in Brabant were considered to be foreign goods in the Republic. T h e greatly reduced transit traffic of Boisle-Duc was mainly directed to Liège. In the 17th and 18th centuries the agrarian production determined the prosperity of the region, but only in so far as it was not ravaged by war. It was not until after 1760 that the rising corn and butter prices together with the increase in potato-growing and the expansion of the agricultural acreage led to a substantial growth in the population. Summary Comparison and combination of the data that were recorded for the various regions leads to the following, broadly outlined, overall picture for the entire Netherlands: In the period from 1500-1650 demographic growth predominates in the Netherlands. This growth is especially great in the towns and in rural districts where next to agriculture other sectors already occupied an important place in the economic life or came into full development at this period: in the towns (industry, trade and shipping) and in rural areas (fishing, shipping and peat-digging) of Holland; in the towns (industry, shipping and trade), in the sandy regions (peat-digging) and in the middle and south-west (shipping) of the province of Friesland. Stagnations in the growth occur in the second half of this period in the bailiwick of Bois-le-Duc and in the province of Overijssel on account of the war situation. T h e period 1650-1750 is characterized by stagnation and decline in the towns and rural areas involved in shipping and trade, some industries and cattle-breeding (North Holland and the Zuyderzee areas of Friesland, Overijssel and the Veluwe). A moderate to considerable growth occurs in the bailiwick of Bois-le-Duc, the sandy

j . A. FABEft

regions of Friesland, the rest of the Veluwe and Overijssel. Here, other resources were developed together with the traditional agriculture — probably under the favourable conditions of a lower level of costs — such as textile industry, peat-digging, paper-making, cultivation and processing of tobacco. These economic activities still showed a relatively flourishing condition in this period of stagnating economic growth and were able to offer employment to a growing population. After 1750 there are several signs of growth again, above all in the agrarian sector, where rising prices and a change to more labourintensive crops — especially the potato — favourably influenced the means of subsistence. Moreover, in the province of Friesland bogpeat-digging is developed on a large scale, and this also stimulated inland trade and navigation. But foreign trade and shipping, together with several industries, had no part in this revival of the second half of the 18th century. The last quarter of this century in particular was very unpropitious for these sectors. Consequently, in the regions and towns of Holland and Friesland involved in the foreign trade, shipping and export industry, there is demographic stagnation and sometimes even a population decline at this period. A drastic stagnation also occurs in the industrial area of Twente, which in the previous periods had undergone an excessive increase in its population.

POPULATION IN

A

MINING AND

ITS

DISTRICT ECONOMIC

GROWTH IN

SWEDEN,

1650-1750,

BACKGROUND1

by N. FRIBERG ( University of Stockholm)

Approach to the problem In Sweden the development of the population in each parish can as a rule be followed from the year 1749 when the first official Swedish population statistics, the famous so-called Tabellverket, began. But, even for the period before Tabellverket, it is possible to get a sort of population statistics for special districts of Sweden. These statistics, however, have to be worked out on the basis of ecclesiastical parish-registers, a very hard job indeed, but through such investigations we are able to study in detail the growth and the structure of population even during the 17th century. This paper is meant to show firstly how far we can get with the aid of the old Swedish parish-register material in an investigation of the development of the population, and in the second place it is 1. Partly published in Geografiska Annaler, H. 4, 1956, pp. 395-442, as " T h e growth of population and its economic-geographical background, in a mining district in central Sweden, 1650-1750: A methodological study."

8o

N. FRIBERG

intended to throw some light upon the economic background to that development. As research region we chosed a mining district, named Grangârde, in the middle of Sweden. The old sources of information for this region are in general very good. As research period we chose the century 1650-1750, for which time the population growth hitherto is but little known in Sweden.

Material and methods The sources for population statistics before Tabellverket are mainly the above mentioned ecclesiastical parish-registers, such as the socalled ministerial books (i.e. registers of baptisms, burials and marriages) and, above all, the catechetical lists (husjorhdrslangder). The earliest ones of these ecclesiastical registers date back to the first half of the 17th century. They are kept in the different church archives. The old catechetical lists in Sweden are of two main types viz : I. lists only of persons who had been examined on their knowledge of Scripture. We call these lists incomplete catechetical lists. II. Lists covering all persons, both children and adults. We call these lists complete catechetical lists. Of course, the last-mentioned group is the most important one from the viewpoint of population studies. We do not know how many complete catechetical lists there are in the Swedish church archives from the time before 1750, but it must be a lot of them. It is however a very great and time-spending task to investigate all these catechetical lists in order to get a more extensive population statistic for the old Sweden. Before the statistical working up of the ministerial books and the catechetical lists it is of course necessary to undertake a detailed documentary criticism with the aid of different registers. The parishregisters are best controlled through collating with one another. In Dalecarlia for instance, I have collated the registers of births with the registers of deaths for the nearest following years and found that on an average 96% of the names of the dead persons were also to be found in the register of births. Similar comparisons of individuals carried out on the registers of marriages and deaths point in the same direction. One can thus refer to the Dalecarlian registers of births, marriages and deaths as being for the 17th century good statistical sources. Exceptions from the rule are few. 1.

N.

FRIBERG,

Dalamas befolkning pa 1600-talet, Stockholm, 1954.

N.

8l

FRIBERG

T h e establishment of the accuracy of the catechetical lists requires comparison with several sources, including those of secular origin, and must be varied from the one list to the other. T h e investigations of the old complete catechetical lists in Dalecarlia have in general proved them to be reliable instruments in a statistical study of the population. T h e first task to be done by the investigation of a catechetical list is fixing the date of the drawing-up of the list. T h e dates found on the documents themselves have often been added afterwards and can be quite wrong. T h e simplest way of ascertaining the true date is by comparing the names in the catechetical list with those in the registers of births, marriages and deaths. T h e calculation of the population is then to be done for the point of time when the catechetical list is drawn up, the list being in general most carefully kept during the first period of its existence. As sources of information for the economic life, we use the annual taxation lists for grain-tithe, pig-iron-tithe, live-stock and seed lists, land registers, etc. Such taxation lists are in Sweden generally available from the middle of the 16th century. T h e y are mostly to be found in Kammararkivet, Stockholm. In our investigations, we have person for person connected the ecclesiastical catechetical lists for certain years with the corresponding secular taxation lists.

A.

POPULATION

CONDITIONS IN T H E

MINING

DISTRICT

OF

GRANGÀRDE

Construction of the population curve T h e catechetical lists of Grangarde give us five adequate population figures before Tabellverket 1749, namely for the end of the years 1663, 1677, 1686, 1 7 1 8 and 1 7 3 1 (Fig. 1, curve V I ) . T h e population curve between these reliable points must be constructed with the aid of figures for yearly births and deaths in the parishregisters, which in Grangarde begin around the year 1630. Generally, there are no migration data available in the parish-registers. Only the net result of migration as between the different census years can be calculated with certainty. Such a calculation shows that we have a relatively great migration gain in Grangarde during the period of 1663-1686, and heavy migration losses from 1686 to 1749, especially during the periods 1 6 8 7 - 1 7 1 7 and 1 7 3 1 - 1 7 4 9 . T h e conversion of the net migration to correspond to single years

82

N. FRlBERG

does of course imply a factor of uncertainty. On the whole, however, the net migration played such a slight role in the development of the population of Grangarde that even rather great miscalculations of the yearly result of migration can scarsely give rise to a misleading error in the population curve. Only for the period 1 6 8 7 - 1 7 1 7 are the figures in part somewhat less reliable.

Analysts of the population curve T h e population curve shows a very marked increase in the population f r o m the beginning of the 1660's to the middle of the 1690's. D u r i n g this short period, the population has actually been more than doubled, corresponding to an annual increase in the population of 25-30 jper thousand. Of the increase only about 10 per cent derives from irmmigration. In t;he middle of the 1690's, the great catastrophe appears. In connection with the persistent failure of the crops in the years 16951697, we find a tremendous rise in mortality. Besides, the number of births in the years 1698 and 1699 was scarcely more than half the noirmal figure. Probably there was also a relatively pronounced emigration. It took 25-30 years to make good the depletion due to the disastrous failures of the crops during the latter half of the 1690's. T h e first decades after the great Scandinavian war ( 1 6 9 7 - 1 7 1 8 ) constitute a favourable period from the viewpoint of population growthi. From the year 1720 to the year 1737, the population of Grangiarde increased by nearly 3 0 % , despite an apparently constant migratiion-loss. T h e population curve for Grangarde is characteristic even for other iminir.g districts in Middle-Sweden. For purely agricultural regionss, the situation however is somewhat different (Fig. 2, Skarkind, Gistad,, Girdeby). T h e growth of population during the 17th century is here; not as pronounced as in the mining districts except for the period 168092. The great catastrophe by the middle of the 1690's also appears in mosst of :he agricultural parishes. The first decades of the 18th centuryy shew a rapid growth of population but the catastrophe about 11740 is but little marked. Crop failures, of course, are of smaller effect iin regions with surplus production of grain than in marginal agricultural districts. T h e more rapid development of population in the mining districts than iin agricultural regions depends above all on the high birth rates irn Beigslagen.

N.

FRIBERG

83

Births T h e natural growth of the population, i.e. the difference between the n u m b e r of births and deaths, has been the decisive regulator for the development of the population of G r a n g a r d e (Fig. 1, curves I, II and V I ) . T h e general birth-index m a y be calculated with rather great certainty right from the middle of the 17th century. W e can observe great fluctuations (1645-49 37-38°/ 00 , in the 1680's, 1710's and 1750's about 42°/00)- For the 1850's, there is a decline to 36.6°/00. In the present century, the modern exceptional decrease in birthindex begins with 21.8°/ 00 in the 1910's and 11.2 00 i n the 193*-*® (Fig. 3). T h r o u g h connections with the yearly harvests, it c a n be proved that the number of births generally varies in accordance with the harvest results. It is obvious that the harvest constituted an important nativity-regulating factor during the 17th and 18th centuries, even if it was by no means the only one.

Deaths T h e number of deaths has been subject to much greater fluctuations than has the number of births. Several great peaks of mortality can be noted, for instance in 1698, 1708, 1718, 1738-42 and 1772-73 (Fig. 1, curve I I , and Fig. 3). T h e exceptional and more persistent failures in the crops have in almost every case entailed an enormous rise in the mortality. Sometimes, however, a marked excess mortality m a y set in independently of any catastrophes in connection with the harvest.

Marriages T h e n u m b e r of marriages in general shows more pronounced fluctuations from year to year than the number of births and deaths (Fig. 1, curve I I I ) . High figures for the marriage index can be noted during the latter half of the 1640's, during 1670-85, 1700-1715, the 1720's, 1740's and the first half of the 1750's. L o w marriage indices characterize, inter alia, the 1650's, the first half of the 1690's a r i d the latter half of the 1710's and the 1730's. U n d o u b t e d l y , the v a r y i n g economic conditions played an important role in the variations in the marriage indices.

84

N.

FRIBERG

Natural growth oj the population

T h e variations in births, deaths and marriages caused special periods of increased and decreased nativity. Longer periods of excess nativity appear during the 1660's, 1676-95, 1700-1708, 1710-16, 1720-32 and before all during the long time of peace from about 1820 until about 1920 (Fig. 3). Phases with deficient nativity are outlined in the 1670's, 1690's, 1740's, about 1810, 1840 and in the 1930's.

B. ECONOMIC

BACKGROUND

The population curve for Grangarde gives evidence of a very marked increase in the population of the parish. During the period 1650-1750 the population increased by over 1 8 0 % ; merely during the three decades 1660-1690, as mentioned above, it was doubled. How was such an explosive increase possible? There were three basic lines of occupation in Grangarde which had to grant this rapidly growing population stock a permanent livelihood, v i z . : 1) agriculture, 2) the raising of cattle and other live-stock, 3) mining. Which of them was most important?

Population growth and agriculture

T h e connection of the growth of population with that of agriculture is relatively easy clear, since we have through the grain-tithe a continuous survey of the yield from cultivation of grain. T h e criterion is, however, not without exceptions, specially not for the 18th century. T h e curve for the development of the grain-tithe in Grangarde during the period 1650-1750 indicates that the harvests increased almost at the same rate as the growth of population up to the middle of the 1680's (Fig. 1, curve V I I I in connection with curve V I ) . Thereafter, the harvest yield per individual must have decreased. Especially as regards the cereals rye and barley, this must be the case as the farmers successively abandoned the cultivation of these more high quality cereals for bread for a production of predominantly oats and mixed seed for horses. T h e tithe curve seems at all events to make clear that the marked increase in the population of Grangarde was only to a small extent based upon an extension of the agricultural activities.

N.

FRIBERG

85

Population growth and stockraising

It is unfortunately not possible to throw any real light upon the development of stockraising during the 17th and 18th centuries. W e can, however, study the amount of live-stock during the first half of the 17th century. T h e figures are in no way high. Other districts in Central Sweden often showed higher figures. It appears that the miners, who constituted nearly half of the households, owned considerably more cattle than the rest of the population. Their particular stock of horses was due to the special need, in mining, for beasts of burden. A comparison, somewhat uncertain on account of the inadequate sources, with the conditions obtaining at the beginning of the 19th century, shows that the amount of live stock had somewhat decreased in the interval in relation to the population. W e therefore can assume that the live-stock raising did not in itself constitute any particularly active factor for the actual development of the population.

Population growth and mining

There remains the mining. It is well-known that ever since the Middle Ages Grangarde has been an important mining district. But did mining play so great a role in the economic life of Grangarde during the period 1650-1750 that it regulated the growth of population ? A comparison between the production results of mining and the growth of population is possible. Just as we have tithe lists for grain, we have access to tithe lists for pig-iron (Fig. 1, curve V ) and for certain years also for bar-iron. With adjustments we can get approximate figures for the iron production during shorter periods, for instance during the latter half of the 1680's. T h e development curve for the production of pig-iron and the population curve (Fig. 1, curve I V in connection with curve V I ) , show without doubts so great a correspondence that it may be postulated that mining and its development forms the essential economic background to the growth of population in Grangarde in older times. This postulate seems very realistic, especially if you make a comparison between the economic production results of agriculture and mining. It can be calculated that the value of the yearly iron production in the 1680's was nearly 46,000 "silverdaler" (dollars), while the cultivation of grain yielded at least 4,500 "silverdaler". In other words, mining was a far more important line of occupation than was

86

N. FRIBERG

farming in Grangarde in the 1680's. Probably mining also exceeded stock raising in importance. T h e economic life of Grangarde was based for the most part on the necessity of paying for a big import of grain for bread by the export of iron products. T h e relation in price between iron and grain thus became decisive for the economic position in the parish. T h e great importance of mining in the economic life of Grangarde can be demonstrated in many ways. About 30% of the households owned blast-furnaces or shares in such. A number of villages could be described as pure mining villages.

Labour supply In the 1680's, about 60% of the working time of men in Grangarde 15-62 years old, was required for the mining industry. It appears clear that at this time the male labour force in Grangarde was rather too low if mining was to be kept at a high level and during expansion. W e also find that there was an immigration to Grangarde during the latter half of the 17th century, and that several men from outside the parish worked in the Grangarde mining industry.

Immigration T h e immigration to Grangarde can already partly be studied for the 17th century. Unfortunately, we have no available lists of immigrants for the time but there is, on the other hand, a unique series of birthplace data in the catechetical lists. In the year 1686, for instance, as many as 1 6 % of the population in Grangarde, 1 5 % of the men and 1 7 % of the women, came originally from other parishes. Only 5 6 % of the inhabitants (60% of the men, and 5 3 % of the women) were born and domiciled in the same village. Nearly 60% of those born outside the parish came from the adjacent parishes (Fig. 4). O n l y 12-13% of the immigrants had their birth places at a distance of more then 40-80 km from Grangrade. A t the beginning of the 19th century there was a remarkable change in the situation. O n l y 9 % of the population were now born outside the parish. T h e decline of the iron production had successively diminished the immigration during the 18th century.

FIGURE

J

Growth of the population and census figures, and development of the production of pig-iron and grain according to tithe in Grangarde 1650-1750. I. Births as °/0o ( T h e hatched fields between the curves I and I I denote the I I . Deaths as % (relative excess nativity. I I I . Marriages as °/0oI V . Pig-iron production (approximate figures). V . Pig-iron tithe (Dotted line 1649-1666 includes also pig-iron tithe from temporarily tax-free blast-furnaces. Dotted line for the 1680's denotes tithe without the crown blast-furnace Krabbsjo). V I . Population (Small circles in the population curve for the year 1749 and 1750 mean figures taken from the official demographic statistics, Tabellverket. Small circles before that time indicate the results of censuses carried out by the author on the basis of old catechetical lists. Broken line indicates more uncertain figures). V I I . Taxes persons. V I I I . Grain tithe. I X . Nominal percent, of taxed persons. 1 Skpd. = 194.5 kg- 1 tunna = about 4 bushels. Source: N . FRIBERG, " T h e growth of population and its economic-geographical background, in a mining district in central Sweden, 1 6 5 0 - 1 7 5 0 : A methodological study", Geografiska Annaler, H . 4, 1 9 5 6 , p. 3 9 8 .

N. FRIBERG

89

«

u -O

«W ¡3

O

-s

3 •s-

FIGURE 4

Distribution area of birth-places of persons domiciled in Grangdrde 1686. The hatched area above Grangarde parish. Persons born abroad are marked in borders. The three biggest circles denote the parishes of Norrbarke east of Grangarde, where 152 Grangarde inhabitants were born, St. Tuna north-east of Grangarde where 59 Grangarde inhabitants were born and Nya Kopparberg to the south, where 47 persons domiciled in Grangarde 1686, were born. Source: N . F R I B E R G , " T h e growth of population and its economic-geographical background, in a mining district in central Sweden, 1 6 5 0 - 1 7 5 0 : A methodological s t u d y " , Geografiska Annaler, H . 4, 1 9 5 6 , p. 427.

CHANGES AND OF

THE THE

IN

THE

DEMOGRAPHIC DANISH

WEALTH CHARACTERISTICS

A R I S T O C R A C Y , 1470-1720 by

S. A .

HANSEN

( Copenhagen )

Demographic investigations of aristocratic populations constitute a fascinating field of research for economic historians. On the one hand because it is normally possible to carry such investigations back to an earlier period than for the rest of the population; and on the other hand because the data available on aristocratic populations are more exhaustive even than those usually available to a modern statistician for demographic analysis. For these reasons it will frequently be possible on the basis of such data to find answers to questions which are usually unanswerable in the case of ordinary population groups. However, the difference between the living conditions of the aristocracy and of the rest of the population will rarely permit any direct inferences from such investigations of aristocratic groups to the population as a whole. The main interest, therefore, to be derived from i. The following article is a brief survey of the most important questions discussed in my book Adelsvteldens Grundlag (The basis of aristocratic rule), 345 pp., Copenhagen, 1964.

S. A .

92

HANSEN

demographic investigations of such population groups attaches to the more limited objective of coming to a clearer understanding of the demographic characteristics of these aristocratic groups themselves. In view of the political and economic influence wielded by such population groups, an understanding of these characteristics will, however, often throw side-lights on really crucial problems of economic history. For the Danish aristocracy, the period between the Reformation in 1536 and the establishment of absolute monarchy in 1660 was both politically, economically, and culturally the high-water mark in their history when they had a dominant influence on the supreme executive, legislative, and judicial state functions. The changes in the basis on which the political power of the Danish aristocracy in this period rested constitute an instructive instance of a development determined by the interplay of economic and demographic factors.

Technical

aspects

T h e purpose of this article is to report briefly on the results of studies by the present author into the changes in this basis for aristocratic power. As an introduction, however, it will be appropriate to pay some attention to the technical aspects of these studies. In the first place, there are, as far as the author is aware, several new features in the techniques used. In the second place, there should not be any difficulty in using these techniques for solving similar problems in other European countries where the aristocracy has likewise for some centuries had a dominant influence. T h e majority of these countries have at their disposal data similar to those used in this study, that is to say reliable genealogical source material which has stood up to historical criticism, and topographical information on larger manors. T h e genealogical information concerning the Danish aristocracy has been utilized for fairly detailed population statistics. T h e basis for this has been individual cards made out for each member of the Danish aristocracy who has been alive during this period. The information transferred to the cards includes name, year of birth and death, cause of death, year of marriage with name, estate, year of birth, and year of death for the spouse, further the number of children in the marriage. In cases where the individual has been independently received into the aristocracy, the year of reception is also given, and in cases of emigration the year of emigration. This demographic material has been used for a large number of purposes. Primarily for a reckoning of the number of aristocratic

S. A .

HANSEN

93

individuals at a number of points in time with ten-yearly intervals through the period. In this way a number of "censuses" have in principle been taken of the population which is comprised by the concept of the Danish aristocracy. Furthermore, the cards have furnished the basis for reckonings of the movements of the aristocratic population, including immigration, emigration, births, and deaths. With the possession of this material there is a much better opportunity for discovering the causes behind the changes in the aristocratic population. In principle the most important economic factor, the land holding of the aristocracy, has been treated similarly. The basic material here consists of individual cards for each manor. The information on these cards includes year of establishment and disestablishment, if any, assessment for land tax, and the year in which the main building was built. Further, ownership, if possible with name, estate, and occupation of owner, for the years 1475, 1500, 1525, 1550, 1600, 1625, and every tenth year from 1660 to 1720. Finally these manor cards contain details of all known changes in ownership, including name, estate, and occupation of buyer and seller, manner in which ownership changed, and year of change in ownership. This material has been the point of departure for a large number of different statistical studies of facets of the land ownership of the Danish aristocracy. In the first place it has been possible to count the number of manors at the dates mentioned and to find their distribution of groups of owners, such as the Crown, the Church, various groups within the aristocracy, and commoners. These latter are further subdivided by occupation (farmers, townspeople, military and civil officials, etc.). Further, it has been possible to tabulate the establishment and disestablishment of manors and the amount of new building of manor-houses. Finally, it has been possible to collect figures for changes in ownership of manors, distributed by type of change : ordinary sale, family sale, exchange of land, donation, confiscation, etc.

Economic conditions The material which has thus been brought together has proved valuable for illuminating fluctuations in the conditions of the aristocracy. Some of the most important results of an analysis of this material will appear from the following. Readers who are interested in greater detail may find this in my book (op. cit.). The economic basis for aristocratic rule consisted predominantly in the ownership of privileged land. As compared with conditions

94

S.

A.

HANSEN

further south, the Danish aristocracy had only a modest income from industry, trade, and financial activities. This means that for evaluating the material conditions of the estate the most important circumstances are those concerning the extent of aristocratic landownership and changes in this. It must be presumed, therefore, that the fluctuations in the number of manors sold will be among the best indicators of changes in the economic position of the aristocracy. Periods with few sales indicate stability in ownership, while a high number of sales characterizes a period as one with large fluctuations in the distribution of landownership. Table i contains a tabulation of changes in the turnover of manors. T h e number of sales registered is given here as percentages of the

TABLE

I

Turnover of manors in per cent per decade

TOTAL TURNOVER

YEARS

SCANIA ETC.

THE WHOLE COUNTRY'

4.8

2.8

4.8

4.O

2.7

6.6

2.6

3-i

54 2-9

THE ISLANDS

JUTLAND

1540-1559

5-7 94 3-5 3-5

1560-1569

4.6

:570-l579

5-3

5-6 3-o 2-3 0-3 9-1

1580-1589

7.2

6.1

'590-1599

4.2

3-2

1475-1499 1500-1519 1520-1539

L/F WHICH ACTUAL SALE

30 1.0

2.8

i-9

2.1

'•3

2.7

6.8

3-9 5-3

6.2

3.8

3-9

3-2 7-9

2,2

1600-1609

7.0

10.9

12.0

9.8

1610-1619

12.7

16.1

11.7

14.2

11.6

1620-1624

20.2

30.0

22.4

19.6

1625-1629

20.2

10.8

21.0

17.6

1630-1639

23-5 21.4

134

22.5

1640-1649

25-4 25-3 15-8

5-6

17-3

13.2

17.4

13.6

1650-1659

16.6

22.4

16.2

1660-1669

5t-9

41.6

—

194 45-8

40.6

1670-1679

'54

23-7

29.2

26.3

—

27.6

1680-1689

42.0

36.6

—

38.8

34.8

1690-1699

39-9 37-7

36.8

—

38.1

1700-1709 1710-1719

32.0

34-2 3°-5 25-5

33-8 294

—

i. Total turnover, apart from family sales and exchange of land.

35-5 30.5

1

S. A. HANSEN

95

average number of manors in each period in private ownership, except for manors belonging to entailed estates which are not freely marketable. T h e fifth column in the table gives separately those sales which are specially affected by economic changes, that is to say ordinary non-family sales and forced sales. A comparison between these figures and the total figures in the fourth column show major divergencies only in the period 1570-1599, when a specially large number of exchanges of land took place in connexion with the endeavours to assemble Crown lands in largers units.

TABLE 2 Forced sales of manors

FORCED

YEARS

ALL

SALES

SALES NUMBER

I N PER C E N T OF A L L SALES

18.3

I 4 7 5 - I 5 I 9

153

28

1520-1599

2 1 7

11

5-I

1600-1619

186

16

8.6

1620-1629

169

24

14.2

1630-1639

1

7 5

5

2-9

137

12

8.8

1640-1649 1650-1659

157

13

8-3

1660-1669

310

76

24-5

1670-1679

192

27

14.1

1680-1689

259

4I

15.8

1690-1699

243

15

6.2

1700-1709

223

14

6-3

1 7 1 0 - 1 7 1 9

188

32

17.0

It will be seen that in the period before 1520, 4-5 per cent of all manors changed hands every decade through ordinary non-family sales and though forced sales. T h e turnover rate was thus twice as high as during the following 40 years. T h e special tabulation of forced sales in Table 2 shows that these large changes in manor ownership in the initial period are above all due to difficult economic conditions. More than 20 per cent of the sales registered for this period are definitely known to be forced sales. T h e percentage Oi forced sales is thus larger than for any of the succeeding periods, except for the catastrophic decade 1660-1669. T h e period 1520-1599 was characterized by aristocratic strength,

96

S. A .

HANSEN

both economically and politically, and as was to be expected a high degree of stability prevailed in landownership. O n l y 2-3 per cent of manors changed hands each decade, forced sales fell to only 5 per cent of the total turnover. Already in the beginning of the following century, however, sales figures reflect the beginning difficulties; during 1600-1609 the turnover rate rises to almost 8 per cent, in the next decade it continues upwards to 11-12 per cent, and during the fiveyear period 1620-1624 it reaches a relative culmination with a figure of almost 20 per cent. Simultaneously forced sales rise from 8 per cent of all sales to 9 per cent and 22 per cent, respectively. T h e growing sales figures in this period are undoubtedly due to the agrarian crisis in the beginning of the 17th century and to the less favourable economic conditions which now succeed the 60 years of permanent prosperity during the price revolution, the result being an increase in indebtedness and consequent foreclosures. T h e seriousness to the aristocracy of the fall in prices in the beginning of the century, with the attendant debt crisis, is seen from the fact that not even the devastations in Jutland in the second half of the 1620's during the occupation of the peninsula (1627-1629) could keep the sales figures at a corresponding level; indeed the percentage of forced sales to all sales fell from 22 in the first half of the 1620's to some 7 in the second half. During the last 30 years of aristocratic rule sales remain at a comparatively high level. Forced sales, however, reach a new low in the 1630's with about 3 per cent, but rise already in the following decade to 8-9 per cent. During this period the main element of instability in the economy of the aristocracy was due to the fluctuating prices caused by the continued alternation between starvation and glut in Germany during the Thirty Years' War. T h e number of manors offered for sale was augmented by internal causes, rising wage costs, an increase in taxes, and a substantially increased debt burden at higher rates of interest. It is a characteristic feature of the sales statistics for these years that on the whole the turnover of manors in Scania was far below the level obtaining in the other provinces. Together with the continued establishment of new manors and the continued building of manor houses in this province, it is evidence of specially favourable conditions here. The aristocratic manors in Scania had twice as many tenant farmers as manors in other provinces. Presumably the more consolidated economic circumstances resulting from the larger-scale manors here have contributed to the greater power of resistance to economic depression evidenced by the comparatively modest sales figures for this province. T h e manor turnover in the 1660's, during which 40 per cent

S. A. HANSEN

97

of all manors were sold, show graphically how serious the collapse was, caused by the Swedish Wars, by the abolition of aristocratic privileges, and by the depressed market for agricultural products. T h e seriousness is emphasized by the fact that about 25 per cent of all sales represent forced sales. T h e persistent high turnover rate of 25-35 P e r c e n t f ° r period after 1670 is in part an after-effect of the liquidation of the old aristocracy as an economically important factor, in part a result of the continuing agrarian depression. O u t of these two factors the first contributed heavily to the widespread forced sales (amounting to 14-16 per cent) in the i67o's and the 1680's. During the following two decades, however, when a larger number of manor owners belonged to the new, economically better consolidated, groups of owners, forced sales were already reduced to some 6 per cent of all sales. T h e decade 1710-1719, when the more important military events of the Great Nordic W a r took place, shows a small fall in sales, but almost a tripling of the percentage of forced sales. This increased pressure on manor owners was not due to price conditions. Sales prices for agricultural products were fairly unchanged, and prices for purchased goods rose only moderately. T h e many forced sales must rather be regarded as partly due to the crippling tax burden caused by the war, and partly to some unfavourable harvest years resulting in widespread arrears of rent. A survey of the statistical manor history, especially the sales, gives a basis for a subdivision into four distinct periods: 1. T h e late-medieval crisis, characterized by considerable fluctuations, comprising the 45 years from 1475 to 1520. 2. T h e period of the price revolution and of economic stabilization, 1520-1600. 3. T h e final phase of aristocratic rule with a beginning price decline and increasing instability, 1600-1660. 4. T h e period of the collapse and of the continuing agrarian depression, 1660-1720. With this division into periods as a framework, we shall treat in the following the changing economic background to large scale farming and the consequences of this for the position of the aristocracy. T h e first period, 1475-1520, is characterized by opposite price movements for the two main products of Danish agriculture at that time: grain and bullocks. Cereals still suffered from the late-medieval price decline, while the fairly considerable price increase for cattle anticipated the subsequent price revolution. In this way cattle prices relative to grain improved, possibly by 100 per cent, during this period. This change brought greater wealth and a strengthened power position for the aristocracy in the cattle-producing regions of the country, Jutland and Scania, whereas the opposite development

98

S.

A.

HANSETI

could be observed in the grain regions of the Islands. This differing price development for agricultural products led to a great increase in manor turnover, and especially many smaller grain-producing manors on the Islands changed hands and were disestablished. T h e gainers, as regards land ownership, were a new higher aristocracy which during this period amassed large complexes of scattered holdings. This development was, as far as can be seen, accompanied by important demographic changes. In Table 3 it is attempted to show in more detail the connection between disestablishment of manors during this period and the number of extinct families. Province by province the table shows a close agreement between the percentage of disestablished manors and the percentage of extinct families. T h e highest percentages, of 37 and 39 per cent, are found in Lolland-Falster. T h e n follows Zealand, where by the way there is rather less agreement, with percentages of 30 and 40, respectively. In Funen and Jutland all percentages are close to 20, and in the provinces east of the Sound both relative figures are even lower.

TABLE

3

Disappearence of manors and of aristocratic families

PROVINCES

ARISTOCRA- DISAPPEAR- DISAPPEARANCE A N C E IN PER C E N T

TIC MANORS

ARISTOCRATIC FAMILIES

1475-151

g.

EXTINCT FAMILIES 1475-1519

EXTINCT FAMILIES IN PER CENT

1475

1475-1519

Zealand Lolland-Falster Funen T h e Islands, T o t a l Jutland Scania, etc.

114 65 127 306 344 IOI

34 24 25 83 64 12

30 37 20 27 19 12

57 18 49 124 142 46

23 7 11 41 3° 8

40 39 22 33 21 17

T h e W h o l e Country

75'

159

21

312

79

25

1475

It is then an open question what causal relation lies behind these parallel movements. Is the reduction of the number of families caused by the decrease in the number of manors ? O r is the explanation the opposite one that the growing frequency of extinct families has been the cause of the disestablishment of manors? O r is it possible to find any common causes behind both movements? A counting based on the very unreliable pedigree literature for this

S. A . HANSEN

99

period shows a decline in the aristocratic population from 1480 to 1519. This result, coupled with the fact that the surviving written sources are increasing in amount during the period, would seem to indicate that there was, in fact, a true fall in numbers. However, the population statistics which it is possible to calculate from the meagre sources are not such as to allow any absolutely certain conclusions. O n the other hand, what has already been said about the economic tendencies in this period allows us to sketch a hypothesis which looks very probable. It is evident that the decline both in the number of manors and in the number of families is largest in the primarily grain-producing areas (Zealand and Lolland-Falster) and least in the areas where bullock-rearing was of special importance (Jutland, Funen, and Scania). T h e very lowest figures, only 6 per cent, for disestablished manors are found in the counties of Vejle, Ribe, and Skanderborg, the areas closest to the recognized cattle markets of Ribe and Kolding. These figures indicate that differences in wealth between the various geographical areas of the country may have been decisive for the disappearance of manors. This assumption is strengthened by the considerable amount of mortgaging found when manors changed hands and by the many forced sales. Although it is not possible to reject the theory that a real population decline took place, the strikingly large number of very modest families found among last owners of disestablished manors makes it probable that cases of purely heraldic death, of movement down into the peasantry, have played a very important role in this development. Another feature which points in this direction is that out of the approximately 70 families which were extinguished or disappeared in other ways between 1480 and 1520 the overwhelming majority, were modest families of esquires, whereas extremely few may be said to belong to the higher aristocracy or to the more well-to-do part of the aristocracy. W e may conclude therefore that the decrease found was probably partly due to a lower biological reproduction within the aristocracy and partly to a social decline by which considerable parts of this aristocracy disappeared as historically known families. T h e following period, the price revolution from 1520 to 1600, marks the culmination of the economic, social, and political position of the Danish aristocracy. Besides their inflationary gains as land owners, the aristocracy also gained a considerably improved position thanks to the changes in price relations to the advantage of agricultural sales products. In this country the tenants paid rent in kind to the owners of the manors in this period. In addition, the aristocracy farmed the demesne land themselves. Both these circumstances ensured that the inflationary gains came unabridged into the pockets

IOO

S. A .

HANSEN

of the aristocratic manor owner. In this respect developments in this country are thus more clear-cut than in England and other countries with a more advanced money economy. T h e increased wealth of the aristocracy found expression in the fact that the building of manor houses reached an absolute peak during this period. Simultaneously the turnover of manors declined to an absolute minimum, the like of which has not been observed in any earlier or later period. These circumstances point towards a quite extraordinary economic and social stability for the Danish aristocracy in this period. T h e same stability seems to have been prevalent with regard to the demographic development. T h e demographic material is, indeed, not very reliable prior to 1600, but the uncertain evidence available seems to indicate some increase in numbers for the aristocracy. O n the one hand the death rate was lower than in the following periods, and on the other the marriage frequency seems to have been comparatively high. It should be remembered here that the Reformation in 1536 led to the abolition of the celibacy vows for clerics which in the immediately preceding period prevented about 10 per cent of all aristocratic men from marrying. Simultaneously the prosperity in this period permitted a very high marriage rate. In this period, which was so prosperous for the aristocracy, there were, however, already in a single field signs of a beginning weakening. This refers to the changes in occupational structure. Around 1520 the Danish aristocracy was engaged in a number of non-agricultural pursuits, and this continued in the immediately following decades. Besides farming their manors, aristocrats were then frequently engaged in selling their own products, in ordinary export trade, in shipping, and in moneylending. During the following half-century this occupational differentiation disappeared almost completely. This left the aristocracy with the exploitation of its manors as almost the only source of income. This development weakened the position of the aristocracy on two counts. In the first place an important economic incentive disappeared with the more differentiated occupational structure, leaving the way open for a stagnation of energy and initiative. In the second place the one-sided dependence on agriculture, now prevalent, made the estate much more sensitive to economic changes. This should, indeed, turn out to be catastrophic under the increasingly unfavourable conditions for agriculture in the following time. These began to influence the fortunes of the aristocracy immediately after 1600. T h e constant or slightly falling prices, which during the years 1600-1660 succeeded the price revolution, already weakened the economic position of the aristocracy. Simultaneously,

S. A .

HANSEN

101

unfavourable quantitative changes took place which influenced both the income and the expenditure of the aristocracy. As regards income, it is evident that the frequently recurring production crises, exacerbated by the warlike events in this period, had a decisive influence. Above all, sales of Danish agricultural products were diminished and made more difficult in step with the population reduction in Europe caused by the Thirty Years' W a r and the wars following it. A m o n g expenditures that burdened the aristocracy were increasing tax claims and rising financial demands for the education of the sons. O n account of the absence of suitable schools in this country, this had to take place through lengthy foreign travels of 6 to 7 years' duration. This gave rise to a considerable amount of borrowing, and especially during the period 1640-1660 there were many forced sales of manors with this background. Demographically, the period was characterized by a limited decrease in the aristocratic population on account of a higher death rate. In the main this was a general European phenomenon caused by the epidemics of the Thirty Years' War. These demographic changes will be discussed in more detail in the following section. T h e total catastrophe for the Danish aristocracy, sociologically, economically, and demographically, came only in the period after 1660. T h e price decline of the agrarian depression now contributed heavily to the deterioration in their fortunes. T h e great j u m p in mortality after the war with Sweden in 1658-1660, reducing Denmark's population by 15-25 per cent, made it difficult for the aristocracy to find tenants for its farms. In addition the tax burden was much augmented, and the provinces east of the Sound were lost together with the richest possessions of the aristocracy. Finally, the sheltered sociological position of the aristocracy simultaneously came to an end with the establishment of absolute monarchy in 1660. Under these circumstances the old aristocracy was soon displaced from its former preserves. Manor sales rose, so that about 40 per cent of all manors changed hands during the decade 1660-1669. During this period and the following decades a complete upheaval was, consequently, accomplished in landownership. In 1660 the old Danish aristocracy still possessed all privately owned manors, except for 2 or 3 per cent, mostly manors temporarily taken over by commoner creditors, cf. Table 4. Already ten years after the establishment of absolute monarchy, however, the possessions of the old aristocracy, that is of the families received into the aristocracy before 1660, were reduced to three quarters of all manors, and in 1690 only a little more than half are left. Even this does not exhaust the loss of manors; in 1720 the old aristocracy had only some 35 per cent of

102

S. A .

HANSEN

all manors left, and ten years later this percentage seems to have been reduced a little more, to about 33. During the same 60-year period the new aristocracy created by the absolute monarchs had succeeded in acquiring a little more than one fifth of all manors. T h e greater part of the manors lost by the old aristocracy, however, did not go to the new aristocracy, but to a mixed bag of new possessors, mixed both with regard to estate and to occupation, being in part commoners, and in part aristocratic immigrants who had not been received into the Danish aristocracy. This group had already ten years after the introduction of absolutism acquired nearly a quarter of all manors, and in 1720 it possessed about 45 per cent of the manors.

TABLE

Manors

T h e old aristocracy T h e new aristocracy Commoners Total

4

by state of owner, percentages

1660

1670

97-4

73-7 3-6

2.6 100.0

—

1680

1690

1700

1710

1720

61.9 10.2

51-9

44.0 16.1

38.5

35-3

12.4

22.7

27-9

35-7

39-9

42-9

20.7 44.0

100.0

100.0

100.0

100.0

100.0

100.0

18.6

T h e occupational distribution of these non-aristocratic proprietors gives a clear impression of the mixed composition of this new class of landowers, cf. Table 5. Together, owners of rural origin and townspeople make up about 30 per cent of all non-aristocratic owners throughout the period. It is characteristic, however, that the town element is specially important initially (about 25 per cent already in 1670) and is then gradually reduced, whereas proprietors of rural origin show a corresponding increase through the period. This change is eloquent evidence of the economic conditions of the time: a large part of the many townspeople became manor owners as a result of debts owed to them by the old aristocracy in 1660, but the deepening agriculture depression obviously soon persuaded them that it was prudent to liquidate investment in agriculture. N o doubt the difficult conditions also explain why those new proprietors who had a previous training in agriculture, for instance as bailiffs, managers, or clerks of manors, owing to their intimate knowledge of farm

S. A. HANSEN

IO3

TABLE 5 Manors owned by commoners by owner's occupation, etc., percentages

Rural owners Townspeople Civil servants Military officers Foreigners Other commoners Total

1670

1680

1690

1700

1710

1720

6.9 24-5 28.3 10.7 12.0 17.6

12.4 18.8 28.7 11.4 6.4 22.3

17.8 >5-7 29-3 12.4 6.6 18.2

'9-9 15-5 29-5 17.4 3-7 14.0

22.9 9.0 32.6 18.1 2.8 14.6

24.2 9-6 28.0 17-7 2.4 18.1

100.0

100.0

100.0

100.0

100.0

100.0

management had the best chances to keep and extend their land holdings. The table also shows that the civil servants of the absolute monarchy were soon able to settle down in the manors lost by their old aristocratic predecessors in the Chancery and in the local administration. Already by 1670 this group had acquired nearly 30 per cent of all manors belonging to commoners, and this percentage remained relatively unchanged throughout the period. That we find no rising tendency for this group was exclusively due to the fact that the civil service was the way to power and influence above all other occupations in this period; consequently this group of proprietors was constantly being thinned out through elevations to the new aristocracy. In the course of the period members of the military services also succeeded in obtaining a sizeable stake in manor ownership. In step with the importance of the military services their share of the manors owned by non-aristocrats increased from some 10 per cent in 1670 to about 18 in 1720. In total the numerous officials of the absolute monarchy accounted for about 45 per cent in 1720 of the manors belonging to commoners. The group of foreign owners consisted mainly of non-aristocratic businessmen who, like the Danish townspeople involved, obtained Danish aristocratic manors by virtue of their creditor position, men like the Portuguese jew Manuel Texeira (Dragsholm), the Dutchman Leonhard Marselis (Dueholm), the Hamburg merchant Simon Foch (Rodkilde), and Marcus Kohlblatt from Kiel (Spottrup). Characteristically, the number of manors owned by this group showed the same declining tendency as those owned by Danish townspeople — and no doubt the reason was the same, liquidation of unprofitable

104

S. A . HANSEN

investments. The group Other Commoners in Table 5 is mainly a residual group whose occupational status it has not been possible to decide with certainty. T h e aristocratic influence was equally quickly as in land holding reduced in the most important government offices. Instead of such important appointments, the old aristocracy had to content itself with ill-paid posts in the government service, especially in the military services.

TABLE 6

Occupational distribution of the aristocracy in 1623

1625

NUMBER

CENT

&

I 00

7

T H E OLD ARISTOCRACY

T H E NEW ARISTOCRACY

NUMBER

NUMBER

1700

PER

an

PER

CENT

Manor Owners Other Rural Occupations Townspeople Civil Servants Military Officers U n k n o w n Occupation

776

84

290

54

26 46 16 26

3 5 2 3

7 4 35 188

1 6 35

29

3

19

3

Total

9'9

100

543

100

1700

PER

CENT

114

75

'3 26

8 17

—

153

100

Table 6 gives an instantaneous picture of the occupational structure 40 years after the establishment of absolute monarchy, that is to say at a time when the effects of the new social order had had time to take root. For comparison a similar distribution is shown for the time before the economic difficulties of the aristocracy assumed an acute shape. T h e year 1625 has been preferred for this purpose, because unusually exact information is available on the occupations and incomes of the individual aristocrats in that year. This occupational grouping shows clear differences between the occupational structure of the old aristocracy in 1625 and in 1700, and between the old aristocracy and the new aristocracy created by the absolute monarchs in 1700. Manor ownership, which in 1625 was the basis for the existence of about 85 per cent of the aristo-

S. A .

HANSEN

105

cracy, had shrunk by 1700 in the case of the old aristocracy to a share of some 50 per cent. Simultaneously three-quarters of the new aristocracy had succeeded in acquiring manors. For that part of the old aristocracy which did not own manors the military services had then become the predominant way of earning a living. No less than 35 per cent of the whole estate had by 1700 become an ill-paid military service aristocracy without any attachment to manor ownership. This quota was materially larger than for the new aristocracy (17 per cent), which was, besides its more frequent manor ownership, more often than the old aristocracy to be found in the generally better paid and more influential posts in the civil service. These very sudden and violent changes in the material fortunes of the aristocracy were accompanied by an almost equally drastic decrease in the number of aristocratic individuals, that is from 1576 in 1660 to 864 in 1720, or a diminution to 55 per cent, A more detailed analysis of the causes of this decline will be given in the following section.

Demographic

fluctuations

T h e knowledge of the demographic characteristics of the aristocracy is derived from the counts based on individual cards which were mentioned in the section on Technical Aspects. Table 7 gives the main results of these counts separately for the following groups: 1. T h e old aristocracy (families received into the estate before the establishment of absolute monarchy), subdivided into a) families received into the estate before 1500 (medieval families), and b) families received into the estate during the period 1500-1660 (newly received aristocracy). 2. T h e new aristocracy (families received after 1660). W h a t is immediately seen from the table is the quantitative relation between the two groups of newly received aristocrats. It is of interest here to note how relatively modest the addition was which was achieved through the 160 years after 1500, mainly through immigration of German aristocrats. In the year 1660 the newly received aristocrats and their descendents counted less than 400 people, corresponding to some 25 per cent of the whole estate. Economically and socially its importance seems to have been even smaller. T h e new aristocracy, whose intrusion came in a period when the old aristocracy was weakened both economically and politically, was much more quickly able to make itself felt demographically. Already in 1710, 50 years after the establishment of absolute monarchy, this

io6

S. A .

HANSEN

aristocracy had reached a number which the newly received aristocracy took 160 years to attain. By an analysis of the changes in Table 7 it will be reasonable to

TABLE

7

Number of aristocrats by groups

THE OLD ARISTOCRACY

NEWLY RECEIVED ARISTOCRACY

MEDIEVAL FAMILIES

MEN

WOMEN

MEN

1550 1560

1.054 1,006

821

61

15

849

82

31

1570 1580

892

853

91

44

864 857 816

117 126

63

1590 1600

859 856 818

130

1610

801

1620 1630

734 724

83 96 116

1640 1650

727

799

201

669

717 614

222 232

133 152 160

569 498

220

178

177

444

159 141

185 176

570 552

1680

489

1690

459 404

1720

63

173 185

1660

1710

158

WOMEN

798

1670

1700

796 821

345 284

397 388 361

THE NEW ARISTOCRACY

119 108

125

157 132 111

TOTAL

MEN

WOMEN

TOTAL

I."5 1,088

836

983 981

897 922

!,95I 1,968 1,880

983 946

919 901

959

892

907

937

909 928

923 932 869

891

880

MEN

WOMEN

_

_

—

—

—

—

1,903 1,902 1,847

—

—

—

—

—

—

1,851 1,844

—

—

—

—

1,832

—

—

1,860

—

—

1,760

—

— —

802

774

1,576

—

772 666

747 683

I,5I9

32

13

618

620

I,349 1,238

" 7 138

63 105

545 464

554 520

1,099

158

132

199

392

472

984 864

175 218

25'

attempt to separate the changes due to immigration and emigration, including naturalization and heraldic death. Only then will it be possible to calculate the natural population movements. In Table 8 we have a number of figures for the old aristocracy alone which afford a basis for a direct comparison of the net effect of migrations with the changes due to natural population movements. These figures show how migrations have normally influenced the aristocratic population in an upward direction, but also how net migration — except for the years 1660-1669 — has been far lower than

S.

A.

107

HANSEN

the natural population movement through births and deaths. With regard to the surplus of births the decade 1660-1669 w a s > by the way, the only period in which this was positive, although too modest to outweigh the population loss caused by the cession of provinces to Sweden. T h e other periods were characterized by a deficit of births, the largest being found in the decade of the Seven Years' War, 1560-1569, when it amounted to 212, but an almost equally large

TABLE

8

Changes in the numbers of the old aristocracy

NUMBER YEARS

1560-1569 1570-1639 1640-1649 1650-1659 1660-1669 1670-1719

SURPLUS OF BIRTHS

IMMIGRATION SURPLUS

— 212 —142 — 120 — 206 + 26 — 627

6 83 20 22 -83 — 28

T O T A L INCREASE

— — — — — —

206 59 100 184 57 655

one in the 1650's, the last decade of the large European population crisis. Considerable deficits of births, of the order of 120-125 per decade, were found in the 1640's, the first decade of the population crisis, and more permanently during the period of decline for the old aristocracy after 1670. In contrast, the natural population movements were almost in equilibrium during the long period from 1570 to 1639, when the deficit of births did not amount to more than about 20 per decade. From about the middle of the 16th century it is possible to calculate the demographic basis of the aristocracy with a reliability which permits specially detailed analyses. T h e following survey of the demographic development will, therefore, only deal with the period after this juncture. Table 9 attempts to illustrate the development through a calculation of some important figures. These are a number of the traditional, summary demographic relations, such as birth, death, and marriage rates calculated on the mean population of the period. In the table these figures are calculated decade by decade for the total

io8

S. A .

HANSEN

old aristocracy, and furthermore summarized for characteristic periods. T h e Seven Years' War with Sweden, 1563-1570, was incomparably the single event that had the greatest influence on the demography of the aristocracy. Mortality rose by about ten per cent in this period compared to the previous decade, even though the widespread plagues during the years 1552-1554 had hit many aristocratic families, too. T h e summary death rate thus reached the figure of 28.5 per cent, a level unequalled until the decade of the K a l m a r War, 1610-1619. W a r deaths alone accounted for 63 aristocrats. In addition, the long drawn-out affected the birth rate more in a downward direction than any other known event. T h e summary birth rate for both the decades 1550-1559 and for 1580-1589 was about 26.5 per cent, which seems to have been a fairly normal TABLE

9

Summary birth, death, and marriage rates for the old aristocracy, rates per decade

MEAN

POPULATION

DEATHS

BIRTHS

MARRIAGES BY

MEN

VYEARS TOTAL

M E N ONLY

NUMBER

P E R CENT

NUMBER

P E R CENT

NUMBER

i550-1559

1,960

1560-1569

I >924

I57°-I579

PER

CENT

I,IOI

524

26.7

516

26.3

160

1,035

454

23.6

548

28.5

118

I 1.4

1,892

982

409

21.6

406

21-5

173

17.6

1580-1589

1.903

982

504

26.5

516

27.1

185

l8.8

1590-1599

1,875

964

419

22.3

482

25-7

151

15-7

1600-1609

1,849

953

505

27-3

513

27.7

172

18.0

1610-1619

1,848

933

5°9

27-5

525

28.4

145

'5-5

1620-1629

>.835

908

469

25.6

485

26.4

139

15-3

1630-1639

1.843

919

520

28.2

5 "

27.7

153

16.6

1640-1649

I,8IO

909

454

25-1

574

3i-7

150

16.5

1650-1659

1,668

847

459

27-5

665

39-9

148

17-5

1660-1669

1,547

792

483

31.2

457

29-5

1,434

719

346

24.1

5*2

35-7

154 107

'9-4

1670-1679 1680-1689

1,294

682

330

25-5

429

33-i

102

15.0

1690-1699

1,144

582

298

26.1

428

37-4

9°

15-5

1700-1709

1,042

504

278

26.7

390

37-4

85

16.9

1710-1719

924

428

207

22.4

327

35-4

77

18.0

>550-1599

1,912

1,023

462

24.2

494

25-8

158

1600-1639

1,846

929

500

27.1

509

27.6

152

15-4 16.4

1640-1659

1,735

877

457

26.3

619

35-7

i49

17.0

1660-1669

1,547

792

483

31.2

457

29-5

154

19-4

1670-1719

1,176

577

292

24.8

4 ' 7

35-5

92

'5-9

'4-5

14-9

s.

A.

HANSEN

109

level, as seen also from the figures for the early 17th century. During the Seven Years' War, however, the birth rate sank to 23.6 per cent, and as will be seen the effect on the number of births continued even more strongly during the following period, when the rate reached a low of 21.6 per cent. It is also reasonable to assume that the effect of the Seven Years' W a r was again felt in the period 1590-1599 when a new decline set in in births. T h e relatively low marriage rate in this decade at least seems to indicate that the small birth cohorts from the time of the Seven Years' W a r had now, thirty years later, reached marriageable age. There is much to be said for the view that the exceptionally low death rate of 21.5 per cent in 1570-1579 was also one of the consequences of the Seven Years' War. Firstly, the very high child mortality of that time meant that total mortality could be reduced considerably in a period with few births, such as 1570-1579. Secondly, it is a phenomenon which is also found in connection with other plague-ridden periods, for instance after the Karl-Gustav Wars, 1657-1660, that death, so to say, took advance payment, because the infectious war-time diseases took a heavy toll of old and weak individuals. M a n y deaths which would otherwise have occurred in a later period were thus moved forward to the war years, while the first few years of peace showed a low mortality thanks to the more favourable age distribution and better health of the survivors. Except for the years when the Seven Years' W a r left its mark, the period 1550-1599 was characterized by a general demographic stability. T h e birth rate for the normal decades 1550-1559 and 15801589 was about 26.5 per cent and the death rate in the interval 26.3 — 27.1 per cent. For the total population, that is to say, there was pretty nearly equilibrium between births and deaths. O n the whole, these demographic relations persisted during the first 30 years of the 17th century, now with an average birth rate of 27.1 per cent and a death rate of 27.6 per cent, an increase which must chiefly be ascribed to the improved quality of the statistical data. Not till the 1640's and the 1650's do we find a fundamental disequilibrium between births and deaths which was almost exclusively due to the rise of the death rate to the abnormally high level of 35.7 per cent. Neither birth rates nor marriage rates, on the contrary, did yet differ appreciably from the average for the previous 30 years. T h e increase in the mortality of the aristocracy in the years after 1640 and notably in 1650-1659 affected the higher aristocracy and the rest of the aristocracy in fairly equal measure; no doubt it was just one instance of that poor state of sanitation which characterized conditions in general in this country around the middle of the 17th century.

lib

S. A . HANSEN

T h e Torstenson Invasion caused widespread epidemics of typhoid fever from the beginning of 1644 which had not yet ceased in 1645. In the years of harvest failure, 1648 and 1649, widespread cases of scurvy further undermined national health. T h e 1650's were marked by a large number of extensive epidemics. T h e demographic movements within the aristocracy in the postwar decade 1660-1669 still reflected the development which we know to have taken place for the rest of the population. T h e death rate fell to 29.5 per cent, materially less than in both the immediately preceding and the following decades. Death had reaped in advance in 1650-1659, and extinguished a number of substandard lives which under more normal conditions would have ended in the decade 1660-1669. Completely opposite tendencies were at work with regard to the marriage and birth rates. Both these demographic relations reached absolute maxima of 19.4 per cent and 31.2 per cent, respectively. In the years after 1670 a real demographic revolution took place. T h e demographic relations for the aristocracy were subject to sutch large changes that in fact we can speak about a completely new population structure. T h e summary death rate for the whole period was as high as 35.5 per cent, almost corresponding to the level of the two decades of the population crisis, 1640-1659. O n the other hand, both the birth rate and the marriage rate were lower than in any other period of this century. Already a first superficial glance at these figures shows that the explanation of the changes is practically wholly to be found in the decline in the marriage rate. For in relation to the number of marriages contracted by aristocratic men, the number of births did not differ substantially from one period to another. A n inspection of the summary relations in the table, therefore, leads to the preliminary conclusion that the old aristocracy was in a state of continuous population decline in the period 16701719, characterized by a deficit of births of 10.7 per cent per decade, and that this decline was partly due to a higher summary death rate and partly to a lower marriage frequency than in the last normal decades of aristocratic rule, 1600-1639. In the following section this conclusion and the causes behind it will be tested further through a series of more detailed investigations. Before this, it should be noted that the decline in the aristocratic population was completely divergent from the general demographic development in this country in the period in question. Around 1660, the total Danish population has been estimated to have been between 410,000 and 455,000 people, and in 1720 it was probably about 743,000.

S. A .

Ht

HANSEN

Mortality

T h e summary death rates contained in Table 9 indicated an increasing mortality for the aristocracy during the 17th century. In order to give sufficiently clear answers to questions relating to mortality we need to work with extensive and exact subdivisions of the data, above all by age-groups. Only for the higher aristocracy is the quality of the available mortality data sufficient to permit a comparison of the age-specific death rates for the birth cohorts 1650-1699 with those of the previous periods, that is for the half-

TABLE

10

Survivors out of 100 newborn.

The higher aristocracy

MEN

WOMEN

BIHHT COHORTS

Age: 0 years 10 — 20 — 30

40 50

60 70 80

1550-1599

1600-1649

100

100

—

56

100 76 66 48

45

37

—

35

—

— — —

77

72

22 8 2

27 16 6 2

1650-1699

71

62

1550-1599

100 80 -

1600-1649

1650-1699

100

100

77

71

74

43

62

69 53

50

31

53

42

42

32

32 24

14

23 11

4

3

22

42

13

30

6 2

63

15

6

centuries 1550-1599 and 1600-1649. Table 10 mortality for the higher aristocracy is shown as a series of survival tables. It must be emphasized that the division into the three periods 1550-1599, 16001649, and 1650-1699 (in the following called periods 1, 2, and 3, respectively) in all the following tables refers to the cohorts born within the respective periods. T h e survival tables show for all age groups a larger number of surviving men in period 1 than in period 2, and again a lower number in period 3. T h e main tendency for women is the same, merely with the single exception that the survival table for period 3 shows a tendency towards a greater vitality for the older age groups, as illustrated by the larger number of survivors from age 60 upwards.

S. A. HANSEN

A more clear-cut picture of the intensity of mortality at the various ages can be derived from the age-specific death frequencies in Table 11. These frequencies for 15-year age groups, qx, x + 15, are percentages calculated from the survival tables by relating the number of deaths within each age group to the number of living people who entered the age class. In the case of the men, the death risk increased continually through the three periods. T h e only exception is found for the oldest age group, 45-59 years, which in period 3 showed a beginning improvement in vitality as compared with period 2. As mentioned before, this tendency was found even more markedly for the women. For these the lower mortality in period 3 as compared with period 2 was

TABLE Mortality

11

in special age groups (per 100 entrants into the group)

Men Birth cohorts

0-14 years '5-29 — 30-44 — 45-59 —

Women

1550-1599

1600-1649

1650-1699

1550-1599

1600-1649

1650-1699

26 24 28 46

28 33 32 52

32 37 40 50

23 19 23 38

26 28 29 40

32 26 28 33

a reality for all age groups from 15 years upwards. As compared with period 1, however, only the age groups above 45 years showed increased vitality. What has been brought to light here is enough to confirm the impression that the mortality of the Danish aristocracy developed unfavourably during the 16th and 17th centuries. This development diverges to some degree from the tendencies which have been found elsewhere in mortality in this period. Sigismund Peller, who studied the mortality of the families of the European monarchs, could observe a steady and continued improvement in vitality from 1480 to 1779 for the age groups above 50. Hollingsworth observed similar tendencies in his studies of mortality in British ducal families. Furthermore, Louis Henry came to results of the same character in an investigation into cohort mortality for patrician families in Geneva for the same three periods which have been illuminated here for the

S. A .

HANSEN

"3

aristocratic population. For the Geneva population the continued increase in vitality from period i over period 2 to period 3 could, by the way, be observed both for men and women and from age 40 upwards. It is easiest to get an impression of the character and size of this divergence from the known general European tendency by observing the death risk for the young age groups where such tendencies seemingly were most in evidence. It is a common feature in Europe that the half-century of the Thirty Years' W a r resulted in a death frequency for men between 15 and 49 years which was higher than that of the previous 16th century, but also higher than in the following 50 years. Peller finds this for the families of monarchs, and the investigations into mortality in Geneva similarly show a rise followed by a decline both for men and women in the ages 20 to 40. In the case of the Danish aristocracy, the mortality of young men also rose from period 1 to period 2 in accordance with the general European trend. It is a special feature for the Danish aristocracy, however, that the increased mortality for young men in period 2 was not succeeded by a decline in period 3, but by a continued increase. This concentration of the higher death risk specifically among the younger age groups, those most engaged in economic activity, points towards the changed economic circumstances as the cause of the higher mortality in this period. It is obvious that the fact that after 1660 officer posts succeeded manor ownership as the dominant source of income for the old aristocracy must have caused a considerable increase in death risk, both on account of the lower economic position of the new occupation, of its localization as a town occupation, and of the larger number of unmarried men in the estate. It should be clear that under these circumstances the aristocracy was less well protected against epidemics and less able to utilize the advances in preventive medicine emphasized by Peller. It would seem that the rise in the mortality of the higher aristocracy from the birth cohorts 1600-1649 to those from 1650 to 1699 was very largely an excess mortality due to the decline in the social position of this group. This assumption is supported by other material regarding mortality in period 3, material which is reliable enough to show the differences in vitality between the old higher aristocracy, the rest of the old aristocracy, and the new aristocracy. This material is presented in Table 12 in the form of survival tables. T h e first impression given by these survival tables is that the differences between the mortality of the higher aristocracy and the rest of the old aristocracy were on the whole modest. T h e figures were clearly influenced by the approximation of the living conditions

S. A. HANSEN

of the two groups to each other through the lowering of the standard of the higher aristocracy after the establishment of absolute monarchy. It is even the case that for all age groups the vitality of the men in the higher aristocracy was a little lower than for the rest of the old aris-

TABLE

Survivors out of 100 newborn.

12

Birth cohorts

i6§o-i6gg WOMEN

MEN AGE HIGHER O T H E R OLD ARISTOCRACY A R I S T O C R A C Y

0 years 10 —• 20 — 30 — 40 — 50 60 — 70 — 80 —

NEW ARISTOCRACY

HIGHER ARISTOCRACY

O T H E R OLD ARISTOCRACY

NEW ARISTOCRACY

IOO

IOO

IOO

IOO

IOO

IOO

71

72 66

78

71

75

80

73

63

67

74

59

50

51

56

62 43

48

31

37

22 13

6 2

27

46

42

35

32

22

24

7

11

3

3

15 6

17

40 30 21 13 5

43 39 3I 17

8

tocracy. This difference in favour of the lower aristocracy was presumably due to the fact that this group did not have to adjust to similar occupational changes during this period as the higher aristocracy. No doubt, it further contributed to a lowering of the vitality of the higher aristocracy that this group was specially prone to attempt to continue the foreign travels of the young men, with the attendant higher mortality, as long as possible. T h e difference in frequency of death between the men of the higher aristocracy and of the rest of the old aristocracy was, indeed, at its maximum in the interval in which foreign travel took place, the age group 1 5 to 20 years. For the men among the new aristocracy the vitality was higher than that of the men of the old aristocracy for all ages below 45 years. N o doubt, we have here once again differences of occupation behind these facts. T h e new aristocracy was in this period, far more than the rest of the aristocracy, an estate of manor owners, and besides this mainly employed in the higher civil service, but much more rarely as officers in the armed forces. These occupations were obviously subject to a far lower death risk. T h e better social position of the

S. A .

HANSEN

"5

group is also seen from the fact that its child mortality was appreciably lower than that of the rest of the aristocracy. O u t of the children of the new aristocracy only about 25 per cent died before their fifteenth year, whereas the percentage was 29-32 for the old aristocracy. T o sum up the survey of the mortality of the old aristocracy: before the birth cohort 1650-1699, observations do not differ significantly from those for other contemporary population groups, except for what is explicable by the unreliability of the data or by special death risks in connection with the particular functions of the group. Both the deterioration in the old aristocracy's vitality from the period 1600-1649 to 1650-1699, and the lower death risk for the new aristocracy in the latter period, on the other hand, would seem to be instances of real changes and of real differences, caused according to the available evidence by the decline in the position of the old aristocracy, while the new aristocracy stepped in as inheritors.

Frequency of marriages and births

T h e male legitimate reproductivity probably fell less steeply after 1670 than would be suggested by a first inspection of the figures for marriages contracted in Table 9. A n adjustment follows from the facts that the larger number of marriages contracted by the birth cohort 1600-1649 were to some extent in existence after 1670 and that, on the other hand, the effects of the large decline in marriage frequency which characterized the birth cohort 1650-1699 fell partly in the period after 1720. These circumstances make it advisable, for evaluating the effects of the lower marriage frequency on the reproduction of the aristocracy, to base this evaluation on another measurement which is more exact for this purpose. Such a more appropriate measurement is furnished by the concrete number of years lived in marriage by the male aristocracy in each period, in which they have had an opportunity of propagating the race, cf. Table 13. These figures for the number of years in marriage are a suitable basis for a more detailed evaluation of the changes in fecundity of the aristocracy. T h e last column in Table 13, containing the computed number of births per ten years in marriage, offers a direct contribution to this. It will be seen that these relative birth figures showed a quite considerable stability. It is particularly remarkable that the period 1670-1719 as a whole did not show any tendency to a decline below the level of fecundity which was normal in the beginning of the 17th century. O n the other hand, it is of small importance that the fecundity after 1670 was somewhat higher than in the last phase of

116

S. A .

HANSEN

aristocratic rule; that was the time of the great population crisis, marked by many abnormal demographic features. In reality the period 1660-1669, with the many newly contracted marriages, was the only one with a fecundity exceeding the average for 1670-1719, in which period only the very last decade with its economic troubles showed a specially low fecundity. This should have shown that the population decline for the old aristocracy after 1660 cannot have derived from any unfavourable change in the biological factor, fecundity in marriage. For the

TABLE

13

The time lived in marriage by men above 30 years, the old aristocracy

Y E A R S L I V E D IN M A R R I A G E

YKARS

TOTAL

BIRTHS

NUMBER

OF Y E A R S L I V E D NUMBER

PERCENTAGE OF A L L

YEARS

TOTAL

P E R T E N YEARS IN

MARRIAGE

8

254

55

1640-1649

3

636

2

257

62

454

2.0

1650-1659

3

219

2

008

62

459

2-3

1660-1669

3

069

1

720

56

483

2.8

1670-1679

2

876

I

494

52

346

2-3

1680-1689

2

632

I

366

52

330

2.4

1690-1699

2 4 4 4

I

203

49

298

2-5

1700-1709

2

071

I

077

52

278

2.6

1 7 1 0 - 1 7 1 9

1

712

956

56

207

2.2

1600-1639

1 4 8 8 0

2

2.4

1 4 8 8 0

8 2 5 4

55

1640-1659

6 8 5 5

4

265

62

9 1 3

2.1

1660-1669

3

9

1

720

56

483

2.8

1670-1719

11

735

6

096

52

I

003

2.4

1600-1639

O 6

2

OO3

459

2.4

marriage frequency, however, so large a fall in the level has been shown that this, in conjunction with the increased mortality mentioned, explains the demographic contraction. It now remains to find the factors responsible for the tremendous decline in the marriage frequency. Chronologically, this decline is found in a period with economic depression combined with a loss of political position, especially for the higher aristocracy. When seen in conjunction with the fact that the decline in marriage frequency is heaviest for the higher aristocracy, notably for the men,

S. A. HANSEN

II7

and more especially for the younger man, this points towards social and economic causes as decisive. In order to verify such a socio-economic hypothesis for the failing reproduction of the old aristocracy, we need to combine the data regarding marriage frequency and fecundity, etc., with the data found for the changes in the occupational structure of the aristocracy, cf. Table 6. This has been done in Table 14, which shows the differences in distribution by marriage status, on the one hand between the various groups of the estate (old aristocracy — new aristocracy), and on the other hand within each of these groups between various occupations (manor owners — military officers — others). As in Table 6, figures have been prepared for the years 1625 and 1700. The age intervals given in the heading refer to the age distributions of the populations in question at the relevant times. The information in this table confirms the predominant influence of occupation on marriage frequency. According to the standard calculation, about 61 per cent of manor owners aged 20 or more in 1625 were either married or previously married. This extremely high rate seems to have a particular characteristic of manor owners, for

TABLE

14

The percentages of married or previously married men among aristocratic men 1625 and IJOO by occupation and age

20-30 YEARS

30-40 YEARS

40-50 YEARS

50-60 YEARS

6 0 YEARS AND OVER

A L L ACE GROUPS 1

14

69 50

87

91

93

60.7

4

62

86

100

47.8

18

68

90

62.0

32 29

68

87 73

96

10

42.1

62

60

79 75

1625 Manor owners Others

¡700

Old aristocracy : Manor owners Others of these military officers New aristocracy: Manor owners Others Standard age distribution

10

13 '5 3i

75 25

78

100

100

100

100

50

27

19

12

11

1 . S t a n d a r d c a l c u l a t i o n b a s e d on an a v e r a g e of t h e a g e d i s t r i b u t i o n s f o r 1 6 2 5 a n d 1 7 0 0 .

38.2 62.1

47-9 100

n8

S. A . HANSEN

simultaneously only about 48 per cent of non-manor owners were married or previously married. T h e impression of the decisive influence of occupation on marriage status is fully affirmed by the data from the time after the establishment of absolute monarchy. For manor owners of the old aristocracy, the percentages of married or previously married men were quite as high in 1700 as in 1625; for all age groups the percentage J 625, non-manor owners lay was 62 as against 61 in 1625. A s far below manor owners in marriage frequency in 1700, too. As compared with conditions in 1625, the total level had decreased somewhat in 1700, from 48 per cent to 42 per cent. As far as can be judged, however, this last difference was due to a changed occupational composition of the group of non-manor owners. T h e largest number within this group in 1625 was a city patriciate with a marriage frequency as high as 66 per cent, that to say higher than that of the manor owners. In 1700, on the other hand, 75 per cent of the landless aristocracy were employed in the military services, and as will be seen from the table their marriage frequency was as low as 38 per cent. If the city patriciate is left out of account in 1625, a calculation for the rest of the group "Others" shows a marriage frequency of 42.8 per cent, that is approximately the same figure as for 1700. In view of the changeover after the establishment of absolute monarchy in the direction of employment of the old aristocracy in the military services, the very low marriage frequency for military officers is probably the most important feature illustrated by Table 14. O n the whole, the marriage frequency in the military services was at a level about 40 per cent below that for manor owners. As far as can be seen, the very restricted number of marriages among military men was partly due to legal obstacles and partly to real economic difficulties involved in marrying. Just as might be expected, the level is particularly far below that of manor owners — less than one h a l f — for the younger age groups between 20 and 40 years, for whom insufficient promotion opportunities were a special obstacle to marriage. The figures contained in the table for the marriage frequencies of the old aristocracy in 1625 and in 1700 may be summarized in the simple conclusion that no demonstrable changes took place in the propensity to marry, if only the separate occupational groups are regarded separately. T h e manor owners remained a group with a very high marriage frequency, and the non-manor owners — apart from the city patriciate which was only of major importance in 1625 — had at both dates a marriage frequency which was about 40 per cent lower than that of the manor owners. T h e decreasing marriage frequency which has been observed for the old aristocracy as a whole

S.

A.

"9

HANSEN

must, then, be exclusively due to the changes in the occupational composition of the aristocracy towards higher numbers in groups with an occupationally conditioned lower marriage frequency, that is to say above all a transition from manor ownership to employment in the military services. The parallel figures in the table for the marriage status of the new aristocracy are of interest through their almost complete agreement with the figures for the old aristocracy, which in this respect was fully on a par with the new governing class. For manor owners there are, on the whole, no divergencies to be found between the propensity to marry of the new and the old aristocracy. For non-manor owners the difference in occupational structure was again responsible for the higher level, 48 per cent as against 42 per cent for the old aristocracy, seeing that among the new aristocracy the group "Others" contained relatively many more well-paid civil servants with a high marriage frequency than the case was for the old aristocracy. T h e rather small contingent of military men among the new aristocracy, on the other hand, did not show any higher marriage frequency than those among the old aristocracy. T h e similarities between the two groups of the estate, recurring from one occupation to another, serve to emphasize once more that the different occupational structure, and not possible biological deviations, was the decisive factor for the total marriage frequency of the groups. We have thus found occupational structure to be the only demonstrable factor behind the changes in the marriage frequency of the old aristocracy. The question is then whether the same factor also caused variations in fecundity. Table 1 5 is meant to illustrate this

T A B L E

1 5

Birth rates in marriages contracted by aristocratic men living in 1625 and 1700, by occupation

M E M B E R OF BIRTHS PER 1 0

Manor owners, — — — — Military men,

MARRIAGES

1625 1700, old aristocracy 1700, new aristocracy 1700

A L L AGE GROUPS 1

10-20 YEARS

20-30 YEARS

30-40 YEARS

31

3°

42

34

1

35

35

37

32

41

36

36

43

3°

35

36

4

1 . S t a n d a r d c a l c u l a t i o n b a s e d o n a n a v e r a g e of t h e a g e d i s t r i b u t i o n s f o r 1 6 2 5 a n d 1 7 0 0 .

120

S. A . H A N S E N

question. The basis for this table is a calculation for each of the groups treated of all the marriages contracted during their whole lifetime by the aristocratic men living in 1625 or 1700, as the case may be. Furthermore, the number of children which they had has been counted. These statistics have served for calculating the measure for fecundity used in the table, namely the number of births per marriage. Accidental deviations due to the small number of observations may be responsible for the rather ill-defined tendencies of the figures for the various age groups. However, the standard calculation for all ages gives a much clearer picture. Calculated as the number of births per marriage, the fecundity found for the men living in 1700 shows no demonstrable difference, neither between the two groups of the estate, the new and the old aristocracy, nor between military men on the one hand and manor owners on the other hand. For the men living in 1625 fecundity was a little lower, probably because the reproduction of the younger age groups fell largely in the period of the population crisis, 1640-1659, when the number of births was generally low. Taken as a whole, the fecundity in relation to the number of marriages contracted was characterized by a remarkable constancy from one group of the estate to another and from one period to another, the demonstrable differences being, as far as can be judged, due to causes other than occupation. It seems to be evident that fecundity did not decrease from 1625 to 1700. Whether it actually increased can hardly be decided from the data available, because the first of these years fell during the Thirty'Years' War, which was the cause of many demographic abnormalities. But we may at least leave out of account the idea that the

TABLE

16

Reproduction rates 1625 and

ijoo.

M A N O R OWNERS

1700 MILITARY MEN

1625

1700. O L D ARISTOCRACY

1700. N E W ARISTOCRACY

a) Initial generation b) Boys born to this generation

609 647

268 216

122 I 11

257 «34

_ , . /100 b\ Reproduction rate 1 1

106

81

91

52

S. A. HANSEN

121

decline of the aristocracy after 1660 could be due to a fall in fecundity. It is tempting to try to find a more summary expression of the reproduction conditions of the male aristocracy, based on the observations regarding the demographic conditions of the various groups of the aristocracy to which attention has been drawn in the foregoing. This attempt has been made in Table 16 on the basis of calculations for the same groups treated in the previous table. The reproduction rate has been computed as the ratio between the actual number of boys born to the age groups in question (between 10 and 40 years in 1625 and 1700, respectively) and the numbers of these groups at birth. The numbers at birth have been calculated from the numbers of the age groups in 1625 or 1700, as the case may be, using the experiences from the survival tables. The reproduction rates have been calculated with 100 as base. Figures above 100 accordingly mean that an age cohort of 100 newborn aristocratic boys actually had more than 100 boys born to them in their lifetime, that is renewed or reproduced the families with a larger number than their own. It will be seen that these actual reproduction rates are only positive for the manor owners in 1625. Only this group, then, lived under such favourable demographic conditions that it was able to reproduce itself. In 1700 the same applied neither to the manor owners of the old aristocracy nor — what is more remarkable — to those of the new aristocracy, which lacked 19 and 9 per cent, respectively, in the full number of births. Seeing that it has been shown earlier that neither the marriage frequency nor the fecundity was falling off for any of these groups, the decrease in the reproduction rate must in this case be solely due to the higher death risk in this period. For the military men the reproduction rate was not far above 50. That is to say that within this group 100 newborn boys would during their whole lives not become fathers of more than about half as many boys. As shown before, it was, besides the growing death risk, above all the decline in marriage frequency which caused this lower reproduction. The low reproduction rates recorded for the old aristocracy after 1660 explain the tremendous decline of this group. Even manor owners could not reproduce themselves fully owing to the increasing mortality, and for the growing group of military men — 35 per cent of the old aristocracy in 1700 — the reproduction conditions can only be termed catastrophic.

122

S. A .

HANSEN

Conclusion

T h e causes of the fall in numbers of the old Danish aristocracy after the establishment of absolute monarchy should now be clear. There was no decline in the fecundity of the group. O n the contrary, the fall in numbers was solely the result of a rise in mortality and a decrease in marriage frequency. With regard to the higher mortality, it is probable from a comparison with other population groups that it has been caused by the deterioration in the economic position of the old aristocracy. With regard to the falling marriage frequency, the attribution to this cause is quite certain. It has, in fact, been possible to demonstrate that the decreasing marriage frequency is exclusively localized among that part of the old aristocracy which lost its manors and had subsequently difficulties in creating the economic basis for marriage. This is especially the case for holders of military posts, for which a marriage frequency can be shown that is 40 per cent lower than that of the manor owners. T h e conclusion of this study of the Danish aristocracy is that its demographic development was very extensively influenced by changes an economic circumstances. Economic difficulties must be given a major part of the blame for the diminution of the aristocratic popuiltion towards the^end of the^Middle Ages. Stil 1 more clearly did deterioration in status figure as the cause of the reduction of this former political power élite, during a period of only 60 years after 1660, to a group of small size and insignificant influence.

MIGRATION IN FINLAND IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE by E . JUTIKKALA

( University of Helsinki)

I . SOURCES

From 1751 onwards the clergy in Sweden and Finland submitted annual figures for births, deaths and marriages to the Royal Chancery, and every third — from 1775 every fifth — year parish rectors reported on the total population of the parish. No direct information exists on migrations between parishes. However, if the population figures given at three or five year intervals are assumed to be correct, the migration gain or loss in each parish may be calculated by comparing the differences in population totals with natural population increases in the intervals between reports. This method has been employed in some works on local history which sought to provide complete data on population changes. Most recent research (Rosenberg and Hoffren, see below) shows, however, that the population figures reported by the clergy are so inaccurate that the actual migration gain for the five-year period may become a loss, or vice versa, by this method. Nor can the earlier history of migration be based on the extremely deficient and unreliable reports of in-migrants

124

E.

JUTIKKALA

and out-migrants given by the clergy from 1775 to 1810 in rural parishes and from 1775 onwards in towns. Some congregations have primary sources on migration dating from the 18th century, but it was around 1820 that they became common, at least in the county of Uusimaa. From this time on, the congregational records contain lists of in-and out-migrants or at any rate collections of the certificates (for in-migrants) or copies of the certificates (for out-migrants) from which the lists of migrants were composed. There is no reason to assume that these sources were essentially more deficient than the lists of all those baptised or buried in the parish, registers of which had been kept since the 17th century and which were practically complete as early as in the 19th century. However, the catechetical lists of the town of Kuopio for 1801-1860 show 465 in-migrants and 378 out-migrants without a migration certificate. As the totals of in-migrants and out-migrants reported by the clergy in the corresponding period were 7,247 and 5,149, respectively, about 6-7 per cent of the migration in this town appears not to have been entered if the migration book-keeping in the first half of the 19th century. The resultant error, however, probably does not change the general picture of migration and it seems to change very little the figures for migration gain or loss. If, now, the decrease or increase in the population of the congregation for a period of five years is worked out from the migration loss or gain calculated with the help of the migration lists and the number of births and deaths, and if the figures obtained for the number of inhabitants differ considerably from those reported by the clergy, it is, consequently, the number of inhabitants and not the figures denoting population changes that must be corrected. The Central Statistical Office has collected yearly since 1878 the figures for the population movements of all parishes, worked them into statistics and published them. Since 1 9 1 7 , the annual changes in the population on the civil register, which was established in that year, have been added. However, this readily available material has some minor and two more serious weaknesses for a study of migration. Prior to a legislative reform of 1930, there were many cases of a lag of some years between the actual migration and its entry in the congregational records. This factor of error does not, of course, affect periods of several years. F a r more serious is the fact that Finland's parishes are vast in area, many of them after industrialisation was well established consisting of both rural and urbanised districts; the intra-parochial migration between them is thus not seen at all in the statistics. Before the rural parishes bordering on towns began to be incorporated in the urban district in the 1920's, they housed a considerable proportion of the

E.

JUTIKKALA

125

population of the whole aggregation; however, the migration from purely rural parishes to suburban parishes does not appear in the statistics as a movement between the rural districts and towns but as intrarural migration. This drawback can be eliminated by treating far-urbanised parishes which belong administratively to rural districts as urban settlements. But the line has to be drawn arbitrarily and often results in an error the other way: extensive areas of rural and dispersed settlement are included in towns. However, the population statistics of many other countries present corresponding problems to the research worker. Secondly, congregational population book-keeping and the population statistics based on it have not taken emigration into account for a long time: a person who moved to America remained a member of his home congregation, and only when the often greatly delayed tidings of his death were received from overseas was he or she removed from the register. One of the reasons for this practice was that a great many of the emigrants left for America to earn money, seriously intending to return home; and many did return. The publication of emigration statistics based on passport lists began in 1893 as a separate series of the official statistics. The figures for the pre-1893 period were calculated by Dr Toivonen (see below) from the same passport lists. Separate emigration statistics do not, however, give a picture of the net .emigration because only departures, not returns, are entered in them. A summary estimate will have to suffice, and the number of returning emigrants remains the weakest point in Finland's population statistics. However, if the purpose of emigration research is not to elucidate the influence of this phenomenon on the population and population structure of different districts, but is to survey how the tendency to emigrate has varied in different times and districts, it is enough to know the gross number of persons that have emigrated.

2.

MIGRATION

STUDIES

The most important of the works of local history which deal with demographic history in detail are the history of Helsinki (Helsingin kaupungin historia ; volume I I I : 2 which concerns the period 18091875 appeared in 1 9 5 1 , volume I V : 2 for 1875-1918 in 1957, and volume V : 1 dealing with the period 1918-1945 in 1962); and the history of Turku in 1856-1917 (Turun kaupungin historia, published in 1957). In the first of these two works, H. Waris, SV.-E. Astrôm and J . Siipi write about population and social conditions, and the latter was written by E. Jutikkala. In the Atlas of Finnish History

126

E.

JUTIKKALA

(1949), J u t i k k a l a illustrated the migration loss or g a i n in each parish d u r i n g t w o periods, 1878-1917 and 1918-1939. R . L e n t o in his doctoral dissertation Maassamuutto ja siihen vaikuttavat tekijàt Suomessa vuosina 1878-1939 (Internal migration and factors affecting it in F i n l a n d in 1878-1939, 1951) reviewed from m a n y different aspects internal migration from the y e a r in w h i c h officiai migration statistics begin to W o r l d W a r I I . A n n a - L e e n a T o i v o n e n in her doctoral dissertation Etelâ-Pohjanmaan valtamerentakainen siirtolaisuus 1867-1930 (Emigration overseas from Southern O s t r o b o t h n i a in 1867-1930, 1963) dealt with the period of large-scale emigration to A m e r i c a from the p a r t of the country where this m o v e m e n t w a s strongest (p. 17). T h a n k s to A . R o s e n b e r g , a great a m o u n t of p r i m a r y material preserved scattered in congregational archives and not yet treated has b e c o m e available for research. In his doctoral dissertation: Muuttoliike Uudenmaan làànissa esi-industrialistisen Kauden Lopulla 1821-1880 ( M i g r a t i o n in the country of U u s i m a a at the end of the pre-industrial period 1821-1880), he examines 701,000 individual cases of migration in the county of U u s i m a a . J . H o f f r e n ( " M u u t t o l i i k e K u o p i o s s a vuos 1782-1860" ( M i g r a t i o n in K u o p i o , 1782-1860) (Historiallinen Arkisto, 60, 1966) examines migration in a small town population, in 1850: 3,000. Internal migration after W r orld W a r I I , was studied b y T . Purola in his doctoral dissertation Maassamuuton vilkkaus ( T h e velocity of internal migration, 1964). It deals w i t h the years 19511955, w h e n social and economic conditions were not essentiallydifferent from those today and within w h i c h , because the period is short, no developmental trends could e m e r g e ; hence, it illustrates better the behaviour of the modern c o m m u n i t y t h a n historical demog r a p h y . Purola first uses correlation analysis to ascertain the demog r a p h i c and economic and social factors that increase out-migration a n d in-migration in the c o m m u n e s and examines the migration streams between 16 regions into w h i c h he divides the w h o l e country, regions w h i c h are not identical w i t h the counties e m p l o y e d in the official population statistics. T h e r e has been emigration to S w e d e n in the post W o r l d W a r I I period on such a scale a m o n g the country's Swedish-speaking population that this l a n g u a g e g r o u p has diminished in absolute terms. Little wonder, then, that the phenomenon has interested m a n y Swedish-language researchers in Finland. D e s e r v i n g of special mention a m o n g them are K . W . P i p p i n g and I d a V a n H u l t e n - P i p p i n g , w h o h a v e dealt w i t h the A l a n d Islands (Den âlàndska ungdomens emigration/The emigration o f A l a n d youth, 1961) a n d K . - E . Forsberg's study in O s t r o b o t h n i a (Emigrations-och flyttningstendenser i Svenska Osterbotten/Emigration a n d migration tendencies in Swedish Ostrobothnia, 1964). T h e a i m o f these writers w a s to indicate the factors of emigration. Forsberg did it partly

E.

JUTIKKALA

127

by comparing the conditions in communes where emigration was strong with those where it was weak; partly, and primarily, by asking a sample of the population why they remained in their native commune, migrated or emigrated. The sample survey covered three generations. A similar questionnaire by the Pippings in the Aland Islands was sent to members to five generations. The problem is contemporaneous and the approach typically sociological, impossible to use in historical demography. Nevertheless, some of the findings of Purola and Forsberg will be mentioned below as they may provide additional information on the problems of the earlier periods. The following is only partially a report of the studies cited. Considerable use is made of the numerical material published in them, but the present writer has partly calculated the ratios in a new way and partly drawn his own conclusions for which the authors in question are not responsible. Some of these conclusions are already contained in the present writer's paper Geographical Distribution of Emigration in Finland (International Population Conference in Vienna 1959)3.

MAIN

PROBLEMS

a) Geographical mobility Mobility means in the following the sum of in- and out-migrants in per cent of the population. Of the writers quoted, Lento espouses Thomas's definition (mobility = either in-migrants or out-migrants in per thousand of the population, whichever is smaller), but it is easy to calculate the mobility figures in accordance with the above definition on the basis of the figures published by him. Mobility can be calculated only for domestic migration as there is no information on returning emigrants. However, were it possible to take emigration into account it would not in practice affect the figures in the table for the period prior to 1880, nor would its increasing effect on the figures during the emigration boom of 1880-1930 be very great. Although the studies concerning mobility do not covcr the country as a whole except since 1880, the significance of the results is increased by the parallel course of the observations made in different areas. It is the consensus that the pre-industrial agrarian society was static also in the sense that most people lived and died in the locality in which they were born. Only the development that occurred in agriculture during the era of industrialisation "hat zur Folge, dass ein grosser Teil der früher organisch mit der Landwirtschaft ver-

128

E. JUTIKKALA

wachsenen, der gleichsam beständigen ländlichen B e v ö l k e r u n g entwurzelt, mobilisiert, Flugsand w i r d , " to use Sombart's words (Der moderne Kapitalismus I I I : i , 1927, p. 372). T h e figures for Finland ( T a b l e 1) do not concur w i t h this preconceived view. In Helsinki, w i t h small exceptions, d u e chiefly to business fluctuations, mobility diminished from the 1830's to the 1920's. In the latter decade, it was less than a third of w h a t it h a d been in the former. It m a y be pointed out that a capital city, a n d especially Helsinki w h i c h g r e w extremely rapidly into a large town, is sui generis. W h e n a t o w n grows large, its g e o g r a p h i c a l mobility decreases as it becomes easier to c h a n g e j o b s or get married within the boundaries. This conformity to rule was established empirically b y Heberle and M a y e r in G e r m a n y (Die Grosstädte im Strome der Binnenwanderung, 1937). In addition, Helsinki enjoyed an exceptionally strong stream of population for a couple of decades after the government was m o v e d to the new capital in 1819, followed b y the university in 1828. T h e highest mobility figure was established also in T u r k u , the former capital, in the earliest of the five-year periods d u r i n g w h i c h mobility was studied there, i.e. 1856-1860. M o b i l i t y decreased b y nearly a half in fifteen years, and showed no appreciable rise until W o r l d W a r I. T h e decrease cannot be explained on the grounds that T u r k u h a d g r o w n so large that a c h a n g e of j o b or choice of spouse could be done primarily within the confines of the city: T u r k u ' s population g r e w very slowly in the third quarter of the 19th century a n d was only 2 1 , 1 3 3 in 1875. T h e mobility o f K u o p i o in the first half of the 19th century was higher than in the period 1921-1939 in towns w i t h a population of 2,000-5,000 (12.5 % ) according to Lento. M o b i l i t y in the rural districts of the county of U u s i m a a increased between the end of the 1820's a n d the end of the following decade. H o w e v e r , as the numerical series for the county as a whole do not begin until the y e a r 1820, it w o u l d be bold to conclude that the trend was continuous. Extrapolation of this kind is not supported b y the d a t a for the eight parishes from w h i c h migration records h a v e been preserved ever since the y e a r 1806; mobility appears to h a v e been higher in them in the 1810's than in the 1820's. It is certain in any case that mobility decreased steadily from the end of the 1830's (a couple of increases by one decimal point cannot be taken as significant) at least u p to 1880. T h e subsequent mobility figures, w h i c h do not a p p l y n o w to all parishes classifiable as rural districts administratively but refer to actual rural settlements, returned to the level of the 1830's. T h e peak of this d e c a d e c a n p r o b a b l y be ascribed to the construction work in Helsinki, raised to the status of the country's capital, w h i c h assumed proportions unprecedented in Finland a n d w h i c h mobilised great masses of population in the

E. JUTIKKALA

tag

county containing the capital. But of the 268,000 persons w h o out-migrated in 1821-1880 from one of the parishes of U u s i m a a , only 57,000 m o v e d to Helsinki. A l t h o u g h Helsinki's d e v e l o p m e n t and d r a w i n g p o w e r were important factors in the migratory movement in U u s i m a a , they were not the m a i n factors: throughout the period in question the majority of those w h o took out a migration certificate from a rural parish did so to m o v e to another rural parish. H e n c e , w h e n mobility decreased it did so chiefly because o f the contraction of the migration b e t w e e n rural parishes; migration between the different villages o f the same parish, on w h i c h no information is available, obviously also diminished then. Finland's industrial take-off m a y be said to h a v e occurred in the 1870's, i.e. industrialisation started then. T h e mobility figures for Helsinki and T u r k u did not g r o w m u c h even after this decade, and the mobility figure for the 1920's was smaller than that for the 1890's in all u r b a n settlements. A notable increase occurred in the 1930's, b u t in 1951-1955, the period studied b y Purola, the rate d r o p p e d to 8.3 % . T h e g r o w t h o f the mobility of u r b a n settlements was slowed d o w n b y the increase in their m e a n population, for the reasons already referred to above. N o such factor was in play in rural parishes, but the increase in mobility was modest there, too, prior to the 1930's. A s late as 1951 - 1 9 5 5 mobility in the rural districts was 7.4 % , roughly the same as in the rural districts of the county of U u s i m a a over a h u n d r e d years earlier. T h e facts for Finland b y no means give the impression that mobility increased essentially during the drive to economic maturity. O n the contrary, they show indisputably that it decreased at the end of the agrarian period and in the phase of early industrialism. Besides, the decrease was actually slightly steeper in reality than T a b l e 1 indicates: it must be r e m e m b e r e d that the older the data the more incomplete they must be considered. C o n g r e g a t i o n a l records relating to migrants at the beginning o f the 19th century were shown a b o v e to be unreliable and the error is consistent: a part of the cases is missing. Surprising though these observations m a y seem, they c a n be explained. 76 % (1831/1835, 1851/1855 and 1871/1875) of the gainfully employed population migrating from one rural parish to another in the rural districts of the county of U u s i m a a were agricultural workers; if the small tenant farmers (torppari) liable to w o r k on the parent estate are included as labourers, the ratio rises to 90 % . T h e r e are no reliable statistics for that period on the distribution o f gainfully occupied population in terms of occupational and social groups, b u t it is certain that not even the entire farming population, to say nothing of agricultural labour, accounted for nine-tenths of the population of rural parishes. T h e last-mentioned

130

E. JUTIKKALA

was thus far more mobile than the population as a whole and if it were possible to follow the population streams within the parish, from one village to another, the difference would probably only grow. T h e idea of a locally tied population in the rural villages of the past has its origin in the farmers. In Finland, too, where they were not serfs, they mostly cultivated the parental farm from one generation to another. In drawing this picture agricultural labour was forgotten, and the farm labourer was not at all rooted to the locality in pre-industrial society; he was extremely mobile. T h e series beginning with 1880, reported by Lento, shows that the mobility in the rural settlements of different counties up to the end of World W a r I was strongly correlated with the average field area of farm holdings. In the inter-war period, again, the increase in mobility was small or nil where it had previously been fairly high (e.g. Table 1, the administrative district of Uusimaa). These facts concur very well with the observation on the earlier period that rural migration was above all the migration of agricultural labour. Where the average farm size was large the proportion of agricultural labour was also usually high prior to World W a r I. However, when rationalisation of farming occurred in these districts, it reduced the number of agricultural workers and thus neutralised the increase in mobility which was caused by urbanisation and was felt with full force in the counties where holdings were small and the amount of hired labour had always been small. It must be added for the sake of clarity that the correlation between the number of agricultural labourers and mobility does not mean that there was any connection between agricultural labourers and the migration loss. Farm labour moved back and forth from village to village and parish to parish, but its abundance did not necessarily result in under-employment and a resulting population pressure. Still to be explained, however, is why mobility directly decreased in the third quarter of the 19th century, a time when there were certainly no technical or structural changes with a contractive effect on the most mobile section of the population, agricultural labour, in relation to the total population. Rosenberg adopted institutional factors as the explanation. In Sweden-Finland the economic policy of the mercantile system included the system of legal protection: every member of the peasantry who neither owned nor rented land nor pursued another occupation was liable to acquire legal protection by hiring himself out for another's service. Although these regulations could not be fully enforced, at least persons without legal protection could be prevented from moving from one parish to another. Under a statute issued in 1788, the parish could refuse to admit workers without a permanent j o b and old or otherwise "less

E.

JUTIKKALA

able-bodied'' servants. L a t e r amendments to the statute did not change the permissive system essentially. I t was in force until 1879. In the middle of the century, a beginning was m a d e w i t h enforcing the statute more strictly because the burden of poor relief had g r o w n : the n u m b e r of poor had increased a n d they were cared for more effectively. In 1861-1880, a total of 274 persons were refused permission to m o v e into the five parishes studied in detail b y Rosenberg. T h e n u m b e r of direct refusals of in-migrant was not very great, b u t the indirect effect of the threat was doubtless m u c h greater. T h e changes that occurred at the end of the period studied b y Rosenberg m a y well h a v e been d u e to such refusals: the proportion of y o u n g and of u n m a r r i e d persons g r e w ; that of married persons, their children and of the elderly decreased.

b) Push and pull in internal migration after 1880 A c c o r d i n g to the observations of some G e r m a n researchers at the turn of the last century, the population loss was directly proportional to the extent of large-scale land ownership. Research on migratory movements in Europe between the wars, w h e n a considerable part of the continent was in the same phase of economic develo p m e n t as G e r m a n y had been around the end of the 19th century, shows that the observations from G e r m a n y are not of general application ( D u d l e y K i r k , Europe's Population in the Interwar Years, 1946, p. 148). T h e region of Finland that suffered the greatest loss through internal migration was the eastern interior, w h e r e the n u m b e r of large estates was small, and the greatest emigration was from southern and central Ostrobothnia, where there were h a r d l y a n y large estates. O n the other h a n d , the eastern interior h a d a greater n u m b e r of landless families dependent on occasional work than other rural parishes in F i n l a n d at the turn of the century. T h e i r difficulties in earning a living m a y be regarded as a push factor. T h e significance of push in the net loss from internal migration in different districts cannot be gainsayed for the period 1880-1940 as a whole. But in the short-term fluctuations of migration it is the pull factors that c o m e to the fore. T h e m o v e m e n t from purely rural districts to aggregations varied in the 1870's a c c o r d i n g to business conditions, but with the curve for migration u p to around 1910 l a g g i n g a y e a r behind the curve for the business cycle. T h i s l a g m a y have been due in p a r t to the i n a c c u r a c y of the migration statistics (p. 124). But this could not h a v e been the principal reason, as the lag b e g a n to disappear t w e n t y years before the migration book-keeping was corrected. T h e m a i n reason m a y h a v e been that the information

132

E. JUTIKKALA

on jobs available and on the fluctuation in these vacancies spread slowly to the rural districts in older times. Had the reason for the short-term variations in migration been a push factor, the velocity of migration should have increased in the year after a poor harvest, in periods of unemployment, and when the birth rate 15-20 years earlier had been above average and the generation entering the labour market was more numerous than average. How were things in reality? At least in the county of Uusimaa and in Helsinki and Turku, mobility decreased in the period 1866-1870, still remembered as the "poor years" because of the many serious crop failures, when famine and epidemics raised the death rate to an average of 38.6 per mille. Also in the period studied by Lento, the years of a poor harvest failed to increase migration from the rural districts, indeed tended to reduce it. While reducing the demand for the products of the home market industry, they also weakened urban economic life and thus its attraction. There is no reliable information on unemployment from the pre-World War I I period, but the fact alone that migration showed a positive correlation with business booms proves that it was weaker than usual in periods of unemployment. Purola's study, in which temporal variations are not manifested, shows that there is no correlation between the rate of unemployment in a commune and its out-migration rate, not even if the possible counter effect of in-migration to the respective commune is allowed for. The absence of correlation may be due in part to the technical statistical consideration: Finland's unemployment statistics in those years included persons working at the State unemployment relief work sites which probably even attracted people to the locality. According to Lento, migration neither accelerated nor retarded in the years 1880-1940 in accordance with the changes in the age structure of the population. Revising earlier studies, Lento shows that not even the variations in the birth rate before the industrial take-off caused corresponding variations in migration 15-20 years later. Rosenberg's figures on the county of Uusimaa do not give a uniform picture in this respect. In his conclusion concerning the push and pull factors, Purola states that mass migration is a "continuous population stream in every direction and that the 'net fallout' in every district is small in ratio to the total volume of the stream. This net fallout must be considered to depend above all on the ability of more developed districts with urban industries to place the population, and not so much on the need for the backward districts to push 'excess population' to be borne along by the stream." The pull factor is thus

E. JUTIKKALA

133

o v e r w h e l m i n g l y m o r e significant t h a n push, a t least in m o d e r n migratory movements. T h e o u t c o m e o f the m i g r a t i o n in the p e r i o d 1878-1939 w a s a g r e a t e r c o n c e n t r a t i o n o f the p o p u l a t i o n in the southern parts o f the c o u n t r y w h e r e most o f b o t h the o l d u r b a n settlements a n d o f those t h a t arose d u r i n g this t i m e w e r e l o c a t e d . This geographical centralisation t r e n d w a s w e a k e n e d in the i n t e r - w a r p e r i o d b y the extensive, a l t h o u g h u n h o m o g e n e o u s , a r e a w h i c h o r i g i n a t e d in the rural district o f southern F i n l a n d — a n d also p a r t l y o f C e n t r a l F i n l a n d — the p o p u lation o f w h i c h d e c l i n e d o n a c c o u n t o f internal m i g r a t i o n . A t the s a m e t i m e , the p o p u l a t i o n o f the r u r a l parishes o f n o r t h e r n F i n l a n d g r e w , p a r t l y b e c a u s e o f the h i g h n a t u r a l increase, p a r t l y b e c a u s e o f the smallness o f their m i g r a t i o n loss. T h e r e w e r e u p to W o r l d W a r I I o n the eastern a n d n o r t h e r n b o u n d a r i e s o f F i n l a n d parishes w h i c h e v e n e n j o y e d a m i g r a t i o n g a i n a l t h o u g h their p o p u l a t i o n relied solely o n p r i m a r y industries. E s p e c i a l l y prior to W o r l d W a r I, l a n d c l e a r a n c e a t t r a c t e d settlers f r o m elsewhere in F i n l a n d to these districts. T h e increased need for l a b o u r , h o w e v e r , c a m e p r i m a r i l y f r o m the forests o f these regions w h i c h b e c a m e e c o n o m i c a l l y e x p l o i t a b l e in this late phase. T h e m a i n p a r t o f the r a i l w a y n e t w o r k w a s c o n s t r u c t e d d u r i n g the p e r i o d o f L e n t o ' s study a n d the r a i l w a y w a s t h e n the most i m p o r t a n t m e a n s o f c o m m u n i c a t i o n in d o m e s t i c traffic. It w a s interesting, therefore, to see h o w the l i n k i n g o f a district w i t h the r a i l w a y n e t w o r k a f f e c t e d its m i g r a t i o n m o v e m e n t s . T h e a n s w e r is c o m p l e x . Railways w e r e o f t e n l y m p h vessels w h i c h o n c o m p l e t i o n c a r r i e d a n e x c e p t i o n a l l y l a r g e n u m b e r o f p e o p l e a w a y f r o m b o t h the r u r a l parishes a l o n g the line a n d f r o m the towns. H o w e v e r , there w e r e a g r e a t m a n y e x c e p t i o n s s u c h as the parishes in w h i c h j u n c t i o n s w e r e established. A f t e r t h e W i n t e r W a r (1940) a o n e - t i m e a n d e x c e p t i o n a l historical f a c t o r i n f l u e n c e d m i g r a t i o n in F i n l a n d for some y e a r s : the resettlement o f the i n h a b i t a n t s , a b o u t 11 per cent o f F i n l a n d ' s total p o p u l a t i o n , f r o m the t e r r i t o r y c e d e d to the U S S R u n d e r the M o s c o w P e a c e T r e a t y in d i f f e r e n t parts o f F i n l a n d , c h i e f l y in the industrialised south-west.

c)

To be a migrant or an emigrant

O f the e m i g r a n t s o f 1865-1930, 160,000, i.e. 45 per cent, set o u t f r o m the O s t r o b o t h n i a n p a r t o f the a d m i n i s t r a t i v e district o f V a a s a , a n a r e a c o n t a i n i n g o n l y 13.5 p e r c e n t o f the c o u n t r y ' s p o p u l a t i o n in 1890 1 . I t is thus n o t surprising t h a t F i n l a n d ' s e m i g r a t i o n research 1. T h e figures apply to a district treated by Jutikkala in his Geographical bution. T h e area studied by Toivonen is slightly smaller.

distri-

134

E. JUTIKKALA

has concentrated on Southern Ostrobothnia and that one of the predominant problems has been why emigration should have been concentrated in this province. The problem was not simplified by the knowledge that southern Ostrobothnia had long been one of Finland's most prosperous districts where the great number of landowning farmers was regarded as a feature of the social structure. Emigration was not heavy in Finland's poorest areas, in the eastern interior. Nor was it concentrated in the south-western provinces where, before 1918, the majority of the rural population were the tenants of large landowners. Hence, the geographical concentration of emigration puzzled an economist (O. K . Kilpi) at the beginning of the century who tried to explain it with a narrowly materialistic interpretation. The economic history of southern Ostrobothnia does, it is true, contain features which lend themselves to the economic explanation and support the push theory: the subsidiary earnings of the farming population were dwindling in the latter half of the 19th century, and the poor forests were unable to provide such sources of earnings and work in South Ostrobothnia as they could in the interior of the country after the breakthrough in forestry in the 1870's. Besides, the social structure of the rural population in South Ostrobothnia at the turn of the century did not differ from that in the rest of Finland as sharply as has generally been believed; this difference only assumed substantial proportions with the spread of emigration, and the small number of landless families in South Ostrobothnia — especially after World War I — was obviously a consequence of emigration as well. However, Toivonen does not claim that the emigrants tried to escape a lowered level of living; on the contrary, she offers as a criterion of the relative "surplus" population a situation in which the home district failed to offer opportunities for raising the level in accordance with the desired standard of living. This standard was set by economic progress in the other provinces and by the concept, born of the traditional prosperity of South Ostrobothnia, that the home province could not be inferior to the neighbours. The main problem is thus: why did the rural districts of South Ostrobothnia (and of the rest of Ostrobothnia) send their "surplus" people overseas while the rest of Finland sent its inhabitants to population centres within the country? The century long isolation of Ostrobothnia from the rest of Finland reduced the attractiveness of Finnish industrial centres, and American society, where "all were masters and mistresses" appealed especially to Ostrobothnians, in whose home province the difference between persons of standing and the common people was not as sharp as elsewhere in Finland, In the course of the centuries the transport

E. JUTIKKALA

135

of tar to the river estuaries, seafaring pursued by the peasants, and shipbuilding work far from home had made the Ostrobothnians mobile. Moreover, living in large villages in South Ostrobothnia created a mass spirit which demanded that the sons and daughters of one family moved off when those of another did so. It is more difficult to perceive the origin of the initiative and enterprise of the South Ostrobothnians and compare these characteristics with those of the other provinces, but it cannot be denied that many political and ideological movements have originated in South Ostrobothnia. Neither is there any denying that manslaughters per 100,000 inhabitants in South Ostrobothnia in the middle of the 19th century were up to ten times as numerous as in all Finland. The question that remains to be clarified is why South Ostrobothnia was at once the stronghold of revivalism and of emigration, although the pietists, both clergymen and lay leaders, condemned emigration. Toivonen's opinion that isolation tended to induce the men and women leaving Ostrobothnia to emigrate overseas is supported by Purola's observations on the migration streams between Finland's sixteen regions. South Ostrobothnia has no migration ties exceeding a certain velocity rate with any of the other fifteen regions. The only similar region in this respect is the small archipelago region formed by the Aland Islands. The historical continuity with earlier emigration appears in the emigration to Sweden from the Swedish speaking part of Ostrobothnia which gained such proportions in the 1950's and 1960's (p. 6). It has been shown by Forsberg that today the movement from well-to-do parishes and medium-sized farms of families engaged in a service industry is usually to the home country, but from poor parishes and small farms to Sweden. Had the same difference been observed between migrants and emigrants during the phase of emigration overseas, the above theory that Ostrobothnians did not depart readily for the home country as they were used to social independence and a relatively high standard of living would have to be abandoned. But conditions have changed greatly from those at the beginning of the century: schooling spread later and it became possible in the more prosperous parishes and on medium-sized farms to give the children an education adequate enough for them to attain an indépendant position and a higher standard of living on moving to another domestic district. Few had these opportunities in the boom period of emigration to America.

136

E.

JUTIKKALA

TABLE

Mobility in certain areas (the percentage of in-migrants plus out-migrants of the mean population, yearly averages)

TOWNS YEARS

AND

OTHER URBANISED SETTLEMENTS

a)

" P U R E " RURAL AREAS a)

RURAL

EICHT

PARISHES IN THE

PARISHES

RURAL

C O U N T Y OF

IN

UUSIMAA

UUSIMAA

b)

c)

THE

THE

TOWN

TOWN

THE TOWN

OF

OF

HELSINKI

TURKU

OF KUOPIO

F)

/)

d)

1801 -05 !

1806-10

6.8

1811-15

7.8

11.0

1816-20

7.8

12.8 12.4

1821-25

6.3

7-3

1826-30

6.7

7.2

"831-35

7.4

15-3

1836-40

7.6

'5-7

}

7-4

•3-7

1846-50

7-I

11.6

1851-55

6.8

12.0

1856-60

6.9

13.8

11-9

1861-65

6.0

" • 9

9.8

1866-70

5-5

9.0

7-I

1871-75

5-3

8.2

6-3

1876-80

5-5 3-5

1886-90 1891-95 1896-1900

3'6 77I 11,740

18,614 196,870

L e g a l population 4,311,041

Social stratification of the male population Clergymen Nobles Clerks a n d nonoratio Town-citizens a n d artisans Peasants Succcssor of town citizen a n d peasant Cotter etc. Soldier on leave Other occupation Jews Boys aged 1 to 1 2 Boys aged 1 3 to 1 7 M a l e Population

4.387 83,871 509.823

129,854

4.723 183,995 38,124 983,871 267, IOI

39,533 994,627 278,066

116,027 159,260 922 46,387 ',095 179,370 51,877

3,553.613

3,576,198

734.843

511.976 788,993

513,990 793.554 5,215 181,983

4,929 92,783 635,939 630,017 952,814 6,137 228,370 40,628 1,173,997 329,943 4,311,041

During the census of 1784/85, 68 free royal towns with privileges, plus 589 rural towns and 10,797 villages, were counted in Hungary. The settlements had about 550 inhabitants. One settlement consisted on average of 83 houses. One house was populated by 6.6 persons, one family consisted of 5.3 inhabitants. Also, the towns were sparsely populated — they mostly had about 5,000 people. Owing to the backward production conditions even the largest town, Debrecen,

J. KOVACSICS

J 45

had only 29,000 inhabitants. T h e population density was also low, viz. 31 in Hungary, 24 in Transylvania, 39 in Croatia-Slavonia per square kilometre. According to the counts in 1784/85, the ratio of women to men was 97: 100. Differentials of the two sexes may be found partly in the fact that, owing to the immigration that took place in the 18th century, the male population grew more. Another reason is that the census ordered by Joseph II was more accurate with respect to men than it was to women. Data relating to social stratification, as shown by the table, may be attributed only a limited significance. T h e y are not suitable for the purpose of more thorough analyses and conclusions, owing to the fact that the columns are not homogeneous and do not correspond entirely to the categories enumerated in the side columns, which is in line with the military purpose of the census. With the help of contemporary literature, 1 however, it may be stated that both the industrial and the trade occupations were rather backward in the period under review. Scarcely half of the town population (366,000) lived on industry. According to the 1777 gubernial conscription, there were 30,921 industrialists in Hungary whereas the workers engaged in the manufacturing industry numbered only 9,365, and the miners numbered 30,000. T h e economic policy of Charles I I I and Maria Theresia was not aimed at developing the industry and trade of Hungary. Their intention was that Hungary, a country engaged in farming and animal husbandry, should be a colony o f Austria. T h e paper concludes by analyzing the interdependence of the political and economic views of the period on the one hand, and the population growth on the other.

1. M . SCHWARTNER, Statistik des Königreichs Ungarn, Pest, 1809-1811.

THE

POPULATION

OF

DENMARK

1650-1960 by A. LASSEN ( Copenhagen )

T h e D a n i s h p a r t of the D a n i s h - N o r w e g i a n - H o l s t e i n m o n a r c h y is believed to h a v e h a d a b o u t 800,000 inhabitants at the m i d d l e of the seventeenth century, b u t in the d e c a d e 1650 to 1660 it was hit b y three catastrophes as far as p o p u l a t i o n is concerned. S k i n e , H a l l a n d a n d Blekinge h a d to be seceded to S w e d e n , epidemics r a v a g e d the lands east o f the G r e a t Belt before the wars o f C h a r l e s X , w a r acts a n d n e w epidemics d u r i n g the w a r w i p e d o u t g r e a t parts of the p o p u l a t i o n in northern Schleswig, southern J u t l a n d a n d F u n e n . T h e part o f the r e a l m w h i c h lay inside the present frontier must h a v e h a d a b o u t 580,000 inhabitants in 1650, b u t in the f o l l o w i n g d e c a d e 120,000 w e r e lost, b r i n g i n g the p o p u l a t i o n figure d o w n as l o w as 460,000 (Aksel Lassen, " T h e P o p u l a t i o n of D e n m a r k in 1660." T h e Scandinavian Economic History Review, vol. X I I I , no. 1, 1965). I n 1769 the p o p u l a t i o n figure in the same area w a s near 900,000 a n d the question is h o w it h a d been possible to fill a g a p of 440,000. A c c o r d i n g to the c h u r c h registers, h o w e v e r , the situation d u r i n g the period 1650-1769 in the various parts o f the r e a l m must h a v e

148

A . LASSEN

developed approximately as shown by the following table (all figures in thousands):

TABLE

Copenhagen P o p u l a t i o n 1650 Population excess 1650-60 P o p u l a t i o n 1660 Excess 1660-1769 Migrations P o p u l a t i o n 1769

ZealandHornholm 160

35

— 10 25

— 3i + 89 83

—

30

130 1 1 3

— 26 2I7

Funen etc.

I

Northern Jutland

IOO

95

20 80 66 146

Southern Jutland

—

134 - 3 6 98

95

140

65 —

19

141

—

17

221

Northern Schleswig

56

580

56

— 120 460 436

88

896

— 24 32

In the course of the 109 years Copenhagen grew from about 25,000 to 83,000 inhabitants. High mortality figures are partly due to the fact that the number of immigrants was so great. Natives as well as immigrants died in the capital, and there were a number of great epidemics, of which especially the one in 1 7 1 1 , which took its toll of nearly 25,000 dead, is inscribed in the annals of Copenhagen. The migration to Copenhagen during this period therefore exceeded the actual number of people living in the city at the time of the census in 1769. In Copenhagen, seat of the reigning monarch, was situated the Court, the central administration, the army and navy, the various commercial and industrial monopolies and the university for the entire monarchy, and consequently this city continuously attracted part of the excess of births from Denmark proper as well as from Norway and the duchies. The growth of the capital then implies that the present Danish territory outside Copenhagen not only itself was able to fill the gap between a population figure of 435,000 in 1660 and 815,000 in 1769, but also yield from its excess of births to the growing population of the capital. Church registers and birth and death records give evidence in favour of this point of view. On the basis of birth and burial figures from 30 parishes in Zealand it has been possible with a reasonable degree of certainty to calculate the overall development in the rural parishes of Zealand (table 2). The excess was relatively much bigger in the first period after 1660 in the districts on Funen and in southern Jutland and northern Schleswig which were so heavily ravaged by the plague. While only 1 1 8 children were born per 100 deaths in the rural parishes on

A. LASSEN TABLE

149

2

BIRTHS

BURIALS

STILLBORN CALCULATED S PER CENT

135,000 151,700 170,000 182,600

6,700 7,600 8,500 9,100

128,300 144,100 162,300

1750-1779

151,700 178,300 186,100 200,200

I73>5°°

23,400 34,200 23,800 26,700

Total

716,300

640,100

31,900

608,200

108,100

1660-1689 1690-1719 i720-i749

R E A L DEATHS

EXCESS

Zealand during the first thirty years after the conclusion of peace in 1660, in a number of parishes m northern Schleswig 165 children were born per 100 deaths. On the other hand it was hard to maintain an excess of births in the northernmost and westernmost parts of Jutland, where the "excess" of youth was shared with the war — and plagueravaged areas in the beginning of the period. The rural parishes of Zealand had about 100,000 inhabitants in 1660 and about 180,000 in 1769 and were able to push 25-30,000 into the capital. Jutland was able to give even more, and migration to Copenhagen from the other parts of the monarchy or from foreign countries has not necessarily been unduly great. In the following century (1770-1870) Denmark, outside the capital

TABLE

NORTHEAST ZEALAND

Population 1870 Excess 18701901 Migrations — Population 1901 Excess 1901-30 Migrations — Population 1930 Excess 1931-60 Migrations — Population 1960

R E S T OF ZEALAND

367

168 +

+

+

129

664 210

17°

1,044 256

294

1,594

—

FUNEN ETC.

302

327

111

121 - 6 3

75 337

125 — 61 401 92 — 66 427

385 145 - 4 8 482 120 - 5 6 546

3

NORTHERN JUTLAND

SOUTHERN N O R T H E R N JUTLAND SCHLESWIG

466

322

183 —

79

426 231 — 90 567

211

—

115 663

236 - 6 3 638 3'9 - 7 8 878 326 —

7I

I>I33

155 45 —

52

148 45

—

15

.78 65

— 22 221

PRESENT DENMARK

1,939

864 — 203 2,598

1,075 — 122 3,550

1,070 - 3 6 4>584

A. LASSEN

15°

and the immediate surrounding area (northern Zealand), pushed off at least 70,000 of its excess of births, and since 1870 the overall picture (fig. 1) looks like this (in thousands) taking into account that the figures for northern Schleswig at the time of the First World War are somewhat dubitable: The draw factor was evident during the time of the absolute monarchy. With big state investments and the running expenses of the state institutions, Copenhagen attracted manpower from the rest of the realm, and this was continued and strengthened under democratic rule. Northern Schleswig on the other hand is a clear example of the result of the push-factor (period 1870-1901). Danishminded young people emigrated in great numbers during this period, because after the moving of the frontier in 1864 they would otherwise have been forced to do German military service. Others who did not have German citizenship were expelled by the Prussian authorities. The way the foreign rule set back the development of northern Schleswig is illustrated by the following comparison of the population density per square kilometre between different parts of Jutland in i860 and 1 9 2 1 :

TABLE 4

Northern Schleswig Eastern Jutland Northern Jutland Western Jutland

I860

1921

GROWTH

G R O W T H , PER C E N T

37 39

42 73 50 36

5 34 23

»4 87 85 125

27 16

20

After the reunion with Denmark in 1920 the growth in population in northern Schleswig kept up with that of other parts of Jutland. The importance of migrations to the development of an area can be seen from a comparison between population figures and birth and death figures in Arhus-Skanderborg and Randers counties showing the development over the entire period 1700-1960 (table 5). The figures in brackets are calculated on the assumption that there were no migrations during the decades in question, but very likely Randers county had almost the same number of inhabitants as Arhus-Skanderborg county in the year 1700. The net migrations

A. LASSEN TABLE

RANDERS COUNTY (fig.

INHABITANTS

1700-1719 1720-1749 1750-1779 1780-1799 1800-1839 1840-1869 1870-1900 1901-1930 1931-1960 i960

5

2)

A R H U S - S K A N D E R B O R G COUNTIES ( f i g . 3 )

A V E R A G E FIGURES

AVERAGE

INHABITANTS

FIGURES

FIRST YEAR

BORN

DEAD

Exc.

FIRST YEAR

BORN

DEAD

Exc.

(32,100) (36,000) (42.500) (45.900) 49.900 66,200 95,900 118,900 150,500 170,200

1,173 1,312 1,389 1,425 i,77o 2,797 3,57i 3,563 3,175

975 1,097 1,274 1,255 1,317 i,92i 2,157 1,755 1,587

198 215 "5 170 453 876 1,414 1,808 1,588

(33,400) (37,600) (44,500) (49,500) 53,300 80,800 125,300 186,400 260,500 359,800

I,I95 i,347 1,573 1,680 2,037 3,533 5,014 5,694 6,059

990 1,116 1,410 1,365 '>5'5 2,327 2,943 2,784 3,034

205 231 163 325 522 1,206 2,071 2,910 3,025

cannot be followed during the eighteenth century, but have since 1800 taken the following course:

TABLE

6

RANDERS

ARHUS-SKANDERBORG

1801-1839 1840-1869 1870-1900 1901-1930 1931-1960

— 1,800 + 3,400 — 21,100 — 22,800 — 27,900

+ 6,700 + 10,300 — 3,100 — 13,200 + 8,500

Total

— 70,200

+

9,200

The total number of births in Randers county amounted to 467,000 during those 160 years, in Arhus-Skanderborg counties the figure is 693,000, and number of deaths amounted to 277,000 and 396,000 respectively, as a consequence making the excess of births 190,000 and 297,000 respectively.

152

A.

LASSEN

FIGURE

I

The population growth in different parts of Denmark

1870-1960

A.

LASSEN

FIGURE

1700 172o I I

175o I

1 7 8 o I800 I I

153

2

387o I

I840 I

19oo I

193o I

i960 I

17o.2oo 15o.5oo 3571

118.900

-'3563 3175

2797

95.900

_

66.200

1770

49.900

M°o°o

1339

^czzzzt=d

UT? [ m & i ^ f 1 2 7 4 975 _L 1700 172o

175°

, 1921

1425' 1255

T755

1317

_L 1 7 8 o I800

Randers Amt iyoo-ig6o

2157

J. 184o

(Population,

_L 187o

1900

births and deaths)

1587

193o

i960

A.

154

LASSEN

FIGURE I?oo

1720

1750

1780 I800 I

I _

3 I840

1870

I

I

I

1900

1950

1960

359.800

«

260.500

/ /

/ /

/

6059

'5694 186.400 5°14 /

/

i

4 /

/

,(

3533

125.Joo

/

0 / /

2943

/

80.800

2oJ7

500

¡00 1195

1347

1573

1680

'1410

~1}65




z

'C bo

CO CT) (N CTI c 0 c o

co CO

Tf

CT)

CO c o O co

O CO

co in

O O

co 0 •H

~

co 0

10 co CO r ^

g ì

co co

Th c o 0 co

iO c o 0 co

rCTI

IO IN CO

m IO IO Ó •n 0 i O IO 1 0

O Tf

-

«

g

a H «

CT)

_

co 00 m

I-I IO Ci

CT)

O co

IH

10 co IH CT) CT)

"t

CO

03

1

; T3 C

CT> O

CD r-- c o c o c o r-IH IN

IO 0 H HT

r^ Ci m

Tf

r"t —

IO 0 tìCT: CT; CO Tt- CO

Tf

CO

CO

Tt- CT) CT) co co co in 0 0 co co co r-

IN

CT)

•H

*H

ih"

CO TÍ-

CT)

¿CT)

Ci c o

Tt-

r^

Th IH

CT)

CT)

O)

CT)

lÓ 0 CT)

CT)

i6o

H.

C.

PENTLAND

These allow, then, for seven series of eighteenth century population movements: (i) Nottingham agricultural villages (34 of them); (2) Nottingham mining villages (12); (3) Nottingham industrial villages (14); (4) North Worcestershire (12 parishes); (5) Pembrokeshire (13 parishes); (6) Leeds township; (7) the rural and industrial townships surrounding Leeds. These seven series presumably are far short of the "decade" of parish studies once recommended by Professor Habakkuk. They also have defects, aside from mistakes in arithmetic which I have been able to correct. T h e Leeds series only go back to 1734, and the Pembroke series to 1720. Both of Dr. Eversley's studies were made for rather different purposes than mine, and suffer somewhat in adjustment. In the Pembrokeshire study, the number of parishes recorded varies, and the allowance for this has had to be arbitrary. For Worcestershire, the original annual data were not available, and some arbitrariness was again necessary to break the data into five-year periods. There are three reasons why hypotheses derived from this limited number of studies may nevertheless be justified. In the first place, the studies provide a certain balance of economic conditions (though a much less satisfactory geographic balance), even including (in Pembrokeshire) a representative of those out-districts of Britain for which the Industrial Revolution brought much pain and little pleasure, and, in Leeds town, that type of population centre in which burials were characteristically well ahead of baptisms until after 1770, so that population had to be sustained by large-scale immigration. Secondly, the series available demonstrate remarkable demographic consistencies, especially in their main movements, so that the hypothesis that the main fluctuations which they exhibit applied also to the population of England as a whole seems a reasonable one, at least until some evidence appears to overthrow it. A third justification for use of these series is the extreme deficiency of other statistics of English population growth in the eighteenth century, based almost wholly on parish record figures for every tenth year assembled by John Rickman. These provide a certain general idea of population movements, and Deane and Cole have demonstrated that it is possible by ingenious use of them to establish some striking hypotheses about regional variations in rates of natural increase and migration. 1 Nevertheless, it is the purpose of this paper to show that the traditional statistics inspire far too gradual an impression of population

1. P. DEANE and W . A . COLE, British Economic Growth, i688-ig^o, 1962, pp. 99-123.

Cambridge,

11. C. PENTLAND

161

change, thereby obscuring rather than illuminating its relationship to economic growth. It should be said, as well, that this paper is primarily concerned with fluctuations in the volume of natural increase, much more than with absolute measures or the delicate questions of birth, death, and marriage rates. Since variations in natural increase can be dependably apparent even from very deficient statistics, there is more justification for relying on a few parish records. O n the same basis, natural increase here means, simply, "Baptisms-Burials", without any attempt to correct either series to get accurate absolute numbers, and despite the falsity of the implicit assumptions that the defects of baptism and burial figures are uniform with each other and consistent over time and space. It is not apparent that the trends of population change are obscured by these defects, or that arbitrary corrections would diminish them.

The parish

record

The seven local series are presented in the accompanying Table I in aggregates of natural increase (Baptisms-Burials) for five and ten year intervals, along with a set of indices derived from these aggregates, and a simple average index of the indices. Weighting each area equally in this way seems preferable to weighting by the absolute totals of natural increase in each. However, the index derived from the absolute totals does not vary markedly from the one shown here. This is so because the series move pretty consistently with each other except for Pembrokeshire, which has a small absolute weight and is raised in importance by giving it equal weighting in the series shown. These series were not intended and cannot pretend to provide statistics of the absolute population of England as a whole in the eighteenth century. However, it is necessary in order to show the nature of the trends suggested by local studies, and may in any case be a matter of curiosity, to set these trends against absolute population statistics. Accordingly, in Table 2 the total populations which parish records would suggest are compared with Griffith's figures. 1 Griffith's series is thought to be the best of those available, but it happens also to have an almost perfect fit with the parish series for the decades, 1780-1800. Using Griffith's absolute values for these 1. G. T . GRIFFITH, Population Problems of the Age of Mallhus, Cambridge, 1926, p. 18. Estimates by Griffith and others appear in B. R . MITCHELL and P. DEANE, Abstract of British Historical Statistics, Cambridge, 1962, p. 5.

H . C.

PENÍLAND

co co N

HH lO CO o lO iñ iñ

'959> pp- 4 5 0 - 4 6 1 ) . I h a v e also a r g u e d that this c h a n g e , w h i c h seems to h a v e c o m e in Britain only a little sooner than in C a n a d a , a b o u t 1 8 3 5 , represents an important e c o n o m y . O n the other h a n d , I would not a r g u e that a condition of chronic l a b o u r surplus is either socially h e a l t h y or propitious for economic a d v a n c e . T h e more f a v o u r a b l e situation comes later, w h e n a capitalistic labour market is combined w i t h a l a b o u r supply shaped to the v o l u m e of d e m a n d . 2. In respect to the voluminous literature on the s t a n d a r d of living, it appears to the writer that it has been shown that the real w a g e s of skilled workers rose in the first p a r t of the nineteenth century, but that the traditional conclusion that the lot of the unskilled was worsened still stands. C o n t r a r y views sometimes seem to be based on v e r y low estimates of eighteenth century conditions, connected in turn to a very late dating of the Industrial R e v o l u t i o n . T h i s p a p e r has suggested that substantial g r o w t h occurred in the second half of the eighteenth century and that living standards rose significantly.

H. C. PENTLAND

189

tional improvements. It is not surprising, then, that economic growth slowed, and consisted in a widening rather than a deepening of capital. 1 Population growth, still reflecting economic conditions, slackened also. Unfortunately, it requires about two decades for changes in the volume of natural increase to make their impact on the labour market. 8

1. H . J . HABAKKUK, Population Problems and European Economic Development in the Late Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, p . 6 1 6 . 2. E x a m i n i n g British p o p u l a t i o n statistics, I h a v e n o t b e e n a b l e to f i n d a n y t i m e in the n i n e t e e n t h c e n t u r y w h e n a d r o p in the i n c r e m e n t o f y o u n g p e r s o n s e n t e r i n g the l a b o u r force ( r e l a t i v e to t o t a l p o p u l a t i o n ) d i d n o t c o i n c i d e w i t h a n i m p r o v e m e n t i n e c o n o m i c c o n d i t i o n s , n o r w h e n a rise in the r e l a t i v e v o l u m e o f e n t r a n t s d i d not c o i n c i d e w i t h a w o r s e n i n g . T h e s e v a r y i n g c o n d i t i o n s a r e also r e f l e c t e d closely in the rates o f m a r r i a g e a n d b i r t h , t h o u g h t h e r e is a n i n d e p e n d e n t d o w n w a r d t r e n d o f births t o w a r d s t h e e n d o f the n i n e t e e n t h c e n t u r y . The rhythmic inter-relationship between economic growth a n d population growth w h i c h has b e e n a r g u e d for the eighteenth c e n t u r y thus appears p e r p e t u a t e d in the nineteenth. T h e c o i n c i d e n c e s a r e t o o n e a t n o t to a r o u s e s u s p i c i o n , i n c l u d i n g t h e w r i t e r ' s : other forces must sometimes override the b a l a n c e of the l a b o u r market. It has b e e n p o i n t e d o u t t h a t t h e 1 7 7 0 ' s f a i l e d to f o l l o w t h e r u l e a n d so d i d t h e p e r i o d 1900-1910.

L'INFLUENCE DES SUR

LES

CENTRES

DÉVELOPPEMENT INDUSTRIELS

STRUCTURES

DÉMOGRAPHIQUES DU

DU

SEIZIÈME

ET AU

ÉCONOMIQUES,

SOCIALES

EN

DIX-HUITIÈME

BOHÊME

SIÈCLE

(Etude comparative avec les autres pays de l'Europe centrale) par A. PETRÂNOVÂ ( Prague)

Dans l'état actuel des recherches démographiques, nous constatons qu'il ne suffit pas de déterminer les lois qui régissent les structures sociales de longue durée telles que le féodalisme (la société pré-industrielle), il faut aussi trouver les rythmes de régulation des périodes plus courtes, les caractéristiques fondamentales qui font l'homogénéité des lois économiques et sociales. Pour l'historien contemporain l'influence des conditions économiques sur l'accroissement de la population ne fait aucun doute, mais les points de vue diffèrent quant au caractère et à l'étendue de ces influences. Depuis quelque temps on parle beaucoup d ' u n modèle économique dans les différents pays d'Europe. En ce sens, pour la période s'étendant du x v i e au x v m e siècle l'on peut dire de ses lois économiques qu'elles constituent un tel modèle. Mais celui-ci avait-il son équivalent au plan démographique et p a r t a n t au plan social dont il ne peut être dissocié ? Les pays tchèques possèdent des sources de nature à fournir des éléments de réponse à ces questions. I n d é p e n d a m m e n t des statistiques de l'État, qui remontent aux années soixante-dix du x v m e siècle,

192

A.

PETRÀÎÎOVÂ

nous disposons de certaines sources plus anciennes, en relation avec l'activité des institutions d'administration patrimoniale (des seigneurs), des percepteurs et de l'Église. Ainsi, d'importance considérable apparaît telle liste assez détaillée d'un recensement de la majeure partie du pays tchèque effectué en 1651 dans un dessein de contre-réforme religieuse. De semblables recensements qui portent sur la population entière — enfants inclus — appartiennent aux sources moyenâgeuses systématiques, singulièrement précoces dans l'Europe centrale. Quant aux recensements partiels de toute la population d'un domaine ou d'une ville, ils existent à partir des années soixante-dix du x v i e siècle. O n peut étudier la situation antérieure particulièrement à partir des cadastres, des registres des naissances et des registres des contributions. Dans la seconde moitié du x v n e siècle les sources de la démographie augmentent surtout par suite de l'accroissement de la documentation des catégories mentionnées plus haut, mais aussi grâce aux recensements de la population rurale — instaurés par l'appareil administratif seigneurial en raison de leur utilité pour les grands propriétaires fonciers (Mannschajtsbiicher) — et aux recensements d'ordre religieux. L'étude comparative des archives de certains pays de l'Europe centrale, notamment d'Allemagne, de Pologne, de Hongrie et d'Autriche, peut déjà servir de fondement aux recherches à poursuivre dans le même sens. Il faudra naturellement élargir celles-ci non seulement par la coordination des travaux, mais aussi par l'explication des méthodes communes, dont la nécessité est évidente. 1. Nos méthodes ont fait leur preuve et leur valeur s'affirme dans les travaux actuellement en cours. Nous avons notamment cherché un plan initial groupant les renseignements de base et les autres indices démographiques, retrouvés également pour la période suivante, qui dispose d'un plus grand nombre de sources et qui ne manque pas des matériaux nécessaires à l'analyse critique avant l'élaboration statistique. Il n'est pas nécessaire de démontrer la légitimité de la méthode statistique représentative, consistant dans le choix de sondages à plusieurs degrés. Il s'agit non pas d'un réseau de sondes, choisies mathématiquement ou au hasard, mais d'un choix réfléchi quant à l'ensemble des aspects importants à l'aide desquels nous voulons élaborer ce thème. L a méthode du choix représentatif nous semble constituer un moyen terme applicable à l'étude du macrocosme comme à celle du microcosme dont les méthodes respectives présentent par ailleurs des différences irréductibles. A notre avis, le procédé thématique peut coordonner au mieux l'extension et la profondeur des études de microcosmes, nécessaires à la connaissance d'un trend général. En même temps, il ne faut pas perdre de vue l'ensemble du développement des indices démographiques, comme par exemple

A . PETRÁÑOVÁ

»93

l'évolution naturelle de la population, la natalité, la mortalité, etc. 2. U n des indices f o n d a m e n t a u x est la densité de la population et ses différences géographiques. Q u a n t à ces différences, en étudiant la situation dans la première moitié d u x i x e siècle et en remontant j u s q u ' à la fin d u x v m e siècle, nous en découvrons les constantes qui, dès la fin d u x v n e siècle, apparaissent de façon manifeste. D é j à forte à cette époque dans certaines régions d u nord d e la Bohême, dans celles d e Litomëricko, Boleslavsko, H r a d e c k o , etc., la densité d é m o g r a p h i q u e est considérablement moindre dans quelques-unes des régions méridionales et occidentales. Il n'est pas possible d'expliquer cette situation par l'influence des conditions de la nature, car dans le sud de la Bohême, la plus forte densité de population se trouve dans les régions montagneuses qui sont aussi les moins fertiles et les plus hérissées d'obstacles naturels. O n peut dire q u ' à l'époque étudiée, une situation analogue existait dans les pays avoisinant l ' E u r o p e centrale. E n effet, les zones montagneuses de S u d e t y en Silésie, avec leur exploitation minière et leurs industries drapière et toilière, les régions de Lusace, celle de K r u s n é H o r y en Saxe, où le coefficient de production non agricole est encore plus g r a n d q u ' e n S u d e t y , sont au tournant des x v i e et x v n e siècles, et m ê m e plus tard, celles qui présentent la plus grande densité de population. L a différence est sensible entre la densité de ces régions et celle de certaines autres des pays baltes, par exemple la Poméranie, le M e c k l e n b o u r g ou les zones fertiles de l ' A l l e m a g n e d u Centre. D e m ê m e q u e dans les régions tchèques avec leur g r a n d e densité et dans les autres régions analogues, la structure des propriétés rurales y est caractérisée par le parcellement de la terre, qui s'est intensifiée a u x v i e siècle. N o u s rencontrons une telle situation par exemple en H a u t Palatinat, en Bavière, en A u t r i c h e . L'urbanisation dans les pays plus peuplés est assez grande, particulièrement à partir d u x v i e siècle, favorisant l'accroissement des petites agglomérations et des villes qui prennent parfois le caractère de centres industriels et artisanaux. D e m ê m e à la c a m p a g n e l'industrie et le métier assurent pour une g r a n d e p a r t la subsistance des habitants. Si nous observons la densité croissante des agglomérations, nous constatons qu'elle est provoquée par l'extension des secteurs « industriels », d é j à déterminés par le système d'entreprises à base de capitaux qui s'instaure lors d u d é v e l o p p e m e n t d u c o m m e r c e européen et mondial. Plus tard, particulièrement au x v i e siècle, l'augmentation de la densité est liée à un facteur constant : le développement de la production dans les manufactures et celui de la production à domicile qui s'y rattache. C e fait est patent surtout dans les régions où règne l'industrie textile et verrière. P o u r la c a m p a g n e , le processus de différenciation sociale est le m ê m e q u ' a u x x v i e et x v n e siècles : les pays

194

A. PETRÀftOVÀ

de grande densité, où se développe la production « industrielle », se caractérisent par u n g r a n d parcellement de la propriété agraire. C e processus s'accentue encore dans les villes. L e pourcentage des h a b i tants qui en étaient réduits à chercher leur subsistance dans des activités autres que l'agriculture féodale et la petite production corporative, augmentait sans cesse. M a l g r é ces caractéristiques, propres a u modèle d é m o g r a p h i q u e d u x v i e au x v m e siècle, on ne peut pas supposer que la corrélation se réalise sans faute au cours de toute l'époque envisagée. Les situations économique et d é m o g r a p h i q u e ne sont pas nécessairement liées par une interdépendance automatique, bien qu'elles s'influencent réciproquement. 3. La natalité et la mortalité ne s'étaient pas essentiellement modifiées du x v i e au x v m e siècle. Les résultats des recherches faites j u s q u ' à présent, en ce domaine, bien qu'elles aient été sporadiques et peu homogènes, tendent à le prouver. L a peste, la famine, les guerres continuaient à peser lourdement sur la mortalité. Q u a n t à la fécondité, d u r a n t cette m ê m e époque, sa courbe varie en fonction de la situation sociale des familles. A la c a m p a g n e le n o m b r e m o y e n des enfants, tel qu'il ressort des recensements effectués parmi le menu peuple, était plus grand dans les familles moins pauvres que chez les j o u r naliers. A u x x v i e - x v n e siècles on rencontre chez ceux-ci des familles de d e u x ou trois enfants, tandis que chez les premières, le chiffre de trois à quatre enfants est f r é q u e n t ; dans certains territoires, particulièrement au nord de la Bohême, il monte m ê m e à quatre ou cinq. O n peut expliquer ce phénomène par le fait que les journaliers se marient à un âge plus a v a n c é que les autres, mais il ne faudrait pas en conclure qu'ils n'aient pas eu d'autres enfants a u p a r a v a n t . L e groupe des établis au contraire forme une structure symétrique d'après les degrés d ' â g e et c'est p o u r q u o i il faut attirer l'attention sur lui. M ê m e q u a n d le nombre d'enfants, inscrits par famille sur les listes de recensement, ne peut être considéré c o m m e une preuve directe de fécondité, parce que sont enregistrés les seuls enfants vivants, il en constitue néanmoins un indice indirect. L a natalité est en fait plus élevée, c o m m e le montrent aussi bien l'analyse des registres q u e le taux élevé de la mortalité infantile. A u x x v i i e et x v m e siècles, la mortalité infantile fut extrêmement forte si on la compare à celle de la seconde moitié d u x i x e et à celle d u x x e siècle. L e fait est lié a u x conditions générales du niveau de vie c o m m e à celles de l'hygiène et de la salubrité. E n s ' a p p u y a n t sur les résultats des recherches effectuées dans les villages de la Bohême d u N o r d , on peut estimer que plus d ' u n tiers des enfants nés vivants sont morts à moins de u n an. 54 à 55 % des enfants nés vivants meurent a v a n t d'avoir atteint l ' â g e de vingt ans. C e t état de chose est égale-

A.

PETRÂftoVÀ

195

ment confirmé par les recherches de même ordre faites dans les grandes villes. Dans le quartier pragois de Saint-Nicolas, suivant les registres de l'état civil compris entre 1696 et 1788, 31,38 % d'enfants nés vivants sont morts avant un an, 22,86 % sont morts entre trois et sept ans; au total, 58,34 % sont décédés avant d'avoir atteint vingt ans. (L'étude a porté sur 19 685 personnes dans le quartier précité.) L a natalité extraordinairement élevée fut contrebalancée par une mortalité tout aussi forte, de sorte que le niveau des populations pouvait se stabiliser durant certaines périodes non soumises à des phénomènes générateurs de modifications trop importantes. L a démographie se caractérise donc alors par l'âge moyen relativement peu élevé de la population et par la succession rapide des générations. D'ailleurs, ce sont là, à n'en pas douter, les traits principaux de la société préindustrielle. Concernant la différence entre le nombre d'enfants observé dans les familles pauvres et moins pauvres des zones pour la plupart agricoles et celles des régions où la production « industrielle » se développait déjà avant la guerre de Trente ans, le peu d'expansion de la population appartenant aux groupes sociaux inférieurs qu'attirait la production manufacturière, malgré son niveau de vie peu élevé, s'explique par l'absence de toute distorsion entre celui-ci et les besoins réels. Au contraire, dans les branches d'activité qui, à la naissance des rapports capitalistes, commençaient à tomber sous la dépendance du capital commercial (au x v i e siècle ce fut en premier lieu la production textile), la main-d'œuvre infantile pouvait fort bien être utilisée pour contribuer à la subsistance de la famille. D'où accroissement de celle-ci en Bohême septentrionale avec augmentation corrélative de la densité de sa population. L'importance de ce facteur économique ne doit cependant pas être surestimé et il faut se garder d'y voir la seule cause des transformations démographiques générales qui eurent lieu à cette époque. 4. Les transformations fondamentales qui subissent l'influence de la situation économique plus immédiate, prennent naissance à la base même de reproduction de la population, c'est-à-dire dans son contingent familial. En ce sens, dans la société préindustrielle, l'importance de la famille était grande. Le pourcentage d'enfants naturels était relativement peu élevé. De 1686 à 1788, dans un quartier pragois, sur un nombre total de 22,892 enfants vivants, le taux des enfants naturels fut à peine supérieur à 7 % . C'est ici qu'il faut s'orienter vers l'étude de ces catégories d'âge des personnes contractant mariage et aussi vers celle du nombre des mariages conclus. Le fait caractéristique de la société pré-industrielle, selon les sources tchèques du x v i e au x v m e siècle, réside dans les différences des degrés d'âge des personnes lors de leur mariage suivant les groupes sociaux

ig6

A. PETRÁÑOVÁ

envisagés. Tandis que chez les enfants des petits producteurs inlépendants (artisans et paysans) on constate en général une graide diversité quant à l'âge auquel ils se marient, il en va tout autrem:nt pour les catégories sociales occupant une position subalterne dam la production, par exemple, journaliers, domestiques, compagnons, etc. Ceux-ci se mariaient relativement tard ou restaient même célibataires. On opposait souvent mille obstacles au mariage des donestiques. De la possibilité de contracter mariage étaient compléteront exclus les groupes de mendiants et de vagabonds qui c o n s t i t u a i s , il est vrai, une réserve permanente de main-d'œuvre journalièr. : à ceux-ci les règlements de police interdisaient directement le mariage. La régulation de la base de reproduction fut subordonnée aux conditions sociales des catégories mentionnées. L'amélioration de la sitiation sociale et la perspective de subsistance meilleure constituaient des facteurs extrêmement importants aussi bien en faveur de l'abaisement de la limite d'âge au moment des mariages que de l'augmtntation du nombre de ceux-ci. Et ce fut justement l'essor du volune de la production (non seulement dans les zones où celle-ci était en v)ie d'évolution du fait de l'apport capitaliste, mais aussi ailleurs gn.ce au développement de la division territoriale du travail et à la spécialisation territoriale de la production et du commerce dans les régims agricoles) qui augmenta les espérances des groupes sociaux d'être en état de pourvoir à la subsistance de leurs familles. Ce fait est d'y à particulièrement évident à partir de la seconde moitié du xvi e siè;le dans les zones de la Bohême septentrionale où la densité démogaphique marque une tendance ascendante. Dans la période étudiée un autre élément décisif fut encore la nuison à soi qui était souvent une nécessité avec — particulièremint à la campagne — une parcelle de terre. Tout cela s'applique notanment à des producteurs à domicile (tisserands et fileurs) liés au capial commercial par l'intermédiaire de facteurs ou de commissionnaiES. Il ne faut pas cependant se représenter l'accroissement de la densté ou celui de la natalité comme une courbe nettement et régulièrem