Millennium of Family Change: Feudalism to Capitalism in Northwestern Europe

Acknowledgments vii        
Introduction     1                
1 - Labour-power, Family Forms and the Mode-of-Production Concept         9   
 Towards an Expanded Mode-of-Production Concept 10        
 Human Labour-Power and Its Production          14 
 Conceiving of Family Forms in Modes of Production 22             
 Patriarchal Power and Family Relations         30            
2 - Peasant Family Forms in The Feudal Mode of Production                 37         
 Origins of Feudal Land Inheritance and Peasant Family Forms 43         
 Feudal Synthesis in the Early Middle Ages                   56        
 The Manor, the Village and the Peasant Holding              78    
 The Division of Labour between Spouses                      83         
 Peasant Stratification                                      87    
 The Mode of Seigneurial Exploitation and the Reproduction         
  Cycle of Labor-Power                                       91     
 Peasant Inheritance Customs and Strategies                  96       
 Mate Selection, Betrothal and Wedding Rituals              108          
 Widows and the Family Cycle                                117       
 Household Composition and Divergent Family Cycles          121 
 From Overextension to Crisis                               126       
3 - Population and Changing Family Forms in the Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism            
 Part I - Late Medieval Crisis and the Origins of the Western European Marriage Pattern 133       
  The Shifting Balance of Power in the Wake of the Black Death   136       
  Continuity and Change in Peasant Stratification                141     
  Tenure Shifts and Inheritance Forms                            143    
  Land Availability and Inheritance Norms                        148         
  Origins of the Western European Late Marriage System           150      
  Demographic Recovery: 1450-1600                                157        
  Economic Recovery and Deteriorating Wages: 1450-1600           159     
  Peasant Polarization                                           162         
 Part II Proletarianization and Changing Family Forms                                  166        
  Proletarianization and Capital Accumulation                    172      
  The Land-Poor and the Landless, the Settled and the Vagrant    174       
  Early Proto-industrialization: The Kaufsystem                  181     
  Foundations of the Western European Marriage Pattern           184    
  Seventeenth-Century Stagnation and the Last Feudal—Agrarian        
  Cycle                                                          190     
  Proletarian Self-Expansion before 1750?                        194 
  Domestic Service in Husbandry                                  197        
 Part III The Population Boom: Springboard to Industrial Capitalism - 200       
  The Agricultural Revolution and the Decline of Service         202       
  The Verlagssystem’s Expansion and Shifts in the Conjugal    
  Division of Labour                                             205         
  The Mortality Decline after 1750                               208     
  Explaining the Population Boom                                 212    
  Migration and Regional Demographic Trends                      219       
  Proletarianization and the Rise of Extramarital Childbirth     225      
  The Demographic and Industrial Revolutions                    229 
4 - Conclusion     
 Family Change from Feudalism to Capitalism   223 
 Western European Marriage and the Rise of Industrial Capitalism  239       
 Women and Patriarchy in the Transition to Capitalism             242          
Appendix: A Note on the Brenner Debate    247              
Notes 255   
Bibliography 307        
Index 333