Preliminary Programme

It is often claimed that inheritance and kinship lost importance as society became more and more commercialized. Up until 1863, Swedish property laws emphasized families’ rights to their lineage land, stipulating that inherited land should remain within the family. Since impartible inheritance practices also were prescribed, the wealth transmission between generations often resulted in one heir taking over the farm, while the others got some kind of other compensation. The main focus, both for families and for the state, was to secure the transmission of wealth to (at least) one heir, thereby enable families to maintain their economic and social status for generations. The abolition of these laws therefore implicates a transformation – in fact, almost every special regulation concerning inherited land was removed, the right to subdivide land was liberalized, and the state strongly supported an ideal of smallholders. But the old ideas came back. In the 1940s, state policy shifted to support more economically sound family estates. To accomplish this, the special regulations concerning inherited land were reinvented, with inspiration from both Norway and Germany. In this paper I will discuss these changing relationships between land, state and families, both concerning legislation debate, but also on the basis of the actual practice of land transmission. (Show less)

In our paper we will focus on the changing role of non-kin as part of the dynamics in households’ life-courses in order to get a better understanding of the interaction between various types of household members and the labour market. Elsewhere Bouman and De Moor (The commercial household, 2012) have argued that non-kin, both in the form of servants and lodgers were integrated in early modern Dutch households to compensate for the absence of intergenerational support, as a secondary consequence of the emergence of the European Marriage Pattern. Though earlier results have demonstrated that these additional household members were only temporarily part of households, and can be linked to specific types of households, it remains so far unclear at which moment in time during the life-course of households they moved in and to what extent the nature of their relationship to the head of household–both servants and labourers came with lesser “strings attached” than living-in kin- really created a greater flexibility for households. To tackle these issues we apply a life-course approach to the household. Households expand and decrease in size and as a result the need for, for example care related tasks, changes over time. Our article contributes to a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying servanthood and lodging and the role of non-kin in general in making the early modern household in an EMP-area work, despite the difficulties the high marriage age and nuclear composition of the household –also referred to as Nuclear Hardship-created in terms of intergenerational support. Our study builds on several sets of longitudinal data from family reconstitutions of Dutch villages for nearly the whole 18th century. In addition to the long time span, the data provide annual observations allowing for very detailed tests of our hypotheses on the role of non-kin over the life-course of the economic household. (Show less)

This paper aims to clarify how the villagers' family-household budgets came to be drawn up in rural areas of Japan during the transition to the market economy. It was after the mid-eighteenth century that the economic society of Japan saw the drastic transition to the market economy. Simultaneously ‘Ie’, which is the Japanese original family-household developed
to ensure that business, property, name and rank passed on to the next generation,emerged widely throughout rural society. Many villagers began to write
simple account books (Dai-fuku-cho) in order to administer their trades and properties and to do the accounts for their family budget. This paper focuses on
the villagers of Kami-shiojiri, Ueda, Nagano which was the centre of silkworm-egg production and trade in the central Japan region. From studies of their account books light is shed on the characteristics of and changes in the 'family budget'. Comparison with European family-household budgets is also included
for further understanding. (Show less)

It is a well-known fact that the economic role of the family was exceptionally significant everywhere at the beginning of capitalism. The family provided labour force, source of capital, and social networks as well. In Hungary, the economic system of capitalism began from the middle of the 19th century. The first leading branch became the milling industry with its centre in Budapest. My talk aims to present the importance of family relations in the enterprises of the milling industry in Budapest prior to the First World War (1850-1914). I will show, based on the research on the individuals involved, that there were not only family firms and small family enterprises, but families also owned or held a majority share-holding in corporations. Furthermore, the role of family networks can be detected in obtaining positions, providing financial support, and even in the inheritance of managerial or clerical posts from father to son. The example of the milling industry in Budapest supports the hypothesis that the basis of the capitalism in the 19th century Hungary was the family. (Show less)

This paper will use the evidence collected on the sources of potential household income in my book Food, Energy and the Creation of Industriousness: Work and Material Culture in Agrarian England, 1550–1780, and compare these with the changing price of food from year to year. As is well known there were wide changes in the price of bread and other foodstuffs every year depending on the quality of the harvest. Here I will attempt to understand how households dealt with these fluctuations when they spent their earnings, focusing in particular on the collections of household budgets made by Frederick Eden and David Davies as well as other farm accounts. (Show less)