Preliminary Programme

In this paper I study the lutheran minority in Paris during the revolution, and how they were integrated in local urban society through marriages, neighbourhood and workplace. For this study I have used the marriage registers for the Swedish church in Paris. The church was for a long time the religious centre for the lutherans in Paris. (Show less)

The paper highlights the influence of urban centres on rural social networks. Two rural parishes in 19th century Westphalia (Western Prussia) are studied. One parish had strong connections to a nearby town (Soest) and was strongly integrated in agrarian product markets, selling products to the flourishing Ruhr area. The other parish was situated in a protoindustrial region and suffered from deteriorating markets for homespun yarn. Relationships with neighbouring towns were less developed, while social networks within the parish showed a larger density. The source material for these two places presents an excellent opportunity for a Social Network Analyis. It consists of family reconstitutions, including godparents, tied up through nominal record linkage with data on landed property, land markets and credit markets. The paper will focus on marriage links between local families. It will ask how the presence of an urban based upper class within the countryside changed local social structures, and whether clientelism or class society are adequate concepts for social networks in these places. (Show less)

The Frisian port town of Harlingen experienced a period of economic prosperity in the 17th century. Population rose from approximately 2,000 inhabitants in 1550 to about 9,000 in 1650. From the point of view of spatial economics this development took place in the slipstream of Amsterdam's rise as the capital of world trade. Internally, however, the economic and social structure of Harlingen was characterized by the prominence of an endogamous, predominantly Mennonite, business elite. The members of this Mennonite 'family' dominated the Harlingen economy until the middle of the 19th century. Being excluded from political functions because of their religious affiliation, a growing number of them became active in the fields of medicine, law and theology. During the 18th century an enlightened intellectualism became a typical (and perhaps also conspicuous) characteristic of this elite.

In our paper we want to focus on the different networks – especially the family network - that tied the Mennonite business elite of Harlingen together. Thereby we will address two key issues:

Methodological: how can we represent networks without depending on vague notions? Are recent contributions to the graph theoretical analysis of kinship networks of any use?

Historical-anthropological: how did the factor of belonging to specific networks effect individual behavior? How do family networks and other social networks match? (Show less)

Remarriages were common practice in early modern France, although remarrying widows and widowers were often the target of community actions expressing public disapproval. Nevertheless, remarriages helped reconstitute family cells and economic units. They also had an impact on the broader community by linking more families together. In this paper, I want to explore how remarriages contributed to the formation or the strengthening of social networks in the Toulouse region in the second half of the 18th century. This contribution is part of a larger project on remarriages and blended families in the Toulouse area, for which I have put together family histories based on marriage contracts and other notarial and judicial documents. By following the trajectory of these families, it will be possible to analyze how remarriages affected the social networks by creating new economic ties (through dowries and other obligations) and alliances, but also by generating conflicts (inheritance disputes, unsettled financial aspects from the first marriage) that would threaten existing family networks. (Show less)

Nowadays many studies on social or demographic history are using the choice of witnesses at civil wedding as a good indicator to explore the structure of social and familial networks of people. This paper aims to present a first synthesis of the results coming from the european countries where Napoleonic Code has influenced marriage legislation. Impacts of urban/rural residence, of gender, of socioeconomic belonging, etc., of the spouses are tested. Thus we particularly insist on the great evolution that occurs during the XIXth century in the number of kins selected by brides and grooms, which is the consequence of a phenomenon of wedding ceremony "privatization". This situation makes more difficult any comparison between panels from different periods. (Show less)