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Peasant Farmsteads and Households in the Baltic Littoral, 1797

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Andrejs Plakans
Andrejs Plakans
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
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Extract

Although the empirical basis for the comparative study of the history of European family life is expanding, there remain extensive areas of Eastern Europe about which almost nothing is known. This situation weakens all generalizations about Europe as a whole, especially since those localities of Eastern Europe from which family data are available reveal formations very different from what obtains in the West. The most ambitious comparative study to date, Household and Family in Past Time (1972; edited by Peter Laslett and Richard Wall) has taken a long step in the direction of providing a comparative methodology, but even in this excellent volume Eastern Europe is represented by only three essays dealing with the best known of its areas, the Balkans. In the Preface of the work, Laslett suggests that future historical evidence from the eastern regions ‘may possibly go to show that the extremes of familial organization, from the simplest to the most complex, may have once existed within the confines of the European continent itself’.

Type
The Family and Economic Roles
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , January 1975 , pp. 2 - 35
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1975

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References

A fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities allowed the author to spend the academic year 1972–3 as Research Associate in the Department of Anthropology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and to finish this article. Joel M. Halpern, Peter Czap, Robert B. Wheat on, Gerald Soliday, and Eugene A. Hammel are thanked for their comments.

1 Household and Family In Past Time is published by Cambridge University PressGoogle Scholar and will hereafter be cited as Household and Family. The essays in question are by E. A. Hammel, Peter Laslett and Marilyn Clarke, and Joel M. Halpern, 335–427.

2 Household and Family, xi.Google Scholar

3 All the data discussed below is to be found in the J. G. Herder-Institut, Marburg a.d. Lahn, in the films made of the Riga Staatsarchiv, Riga, Latvia, in 1940. The reference for Daudzewas is Kuriandische Seelenlisten, Film A 94, Buch 55, 79–113.

4 Household and Family, 122–4.Google Scholar

5 Household and Family, xi.Google Scholar It should be noted that the hypothesis is based on historical evidence from Western Europe, primarily England and France, and also Tuscany, Corsica, and the Netherlands; Eastern Europe as represented by Serbia; Japan; and North America as represented by the American colonies.

6 Household and Family, 401.Google Scholar

7 The results of the eastward drive of the Teutonic Order are described in Marija Gimbutas, The Baits (London, 1963), 155–78.Google Scholar See also Bielenstein, August, Die Grenzen des lettischen Volkstammes und der lettischen Sprache in der Gegenwart und im 13. Jahrhundert (St. Petersburg, 1892).Google Scholar

8 A discussion of the formal relationships between the Polish sovereign, the Kurlandic dukes, and the Adelstand can be found in von Ziegenhorn, Christoph George, Staatsrecht der Herzogthiimer Curland und Semgallen (Königsberg, 1772).Google Scholar

9 Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii, First Series, Volume XXIII, No. 17, 222, 07 23, 1794.Google Scholar

10 For the publications of this group see Eesti ajaloolise demograafia bibliograafia (Tallinn, 1969).Google Scholar The historical demographer S. Vahtre has discussed the use of the soul-revisions for the Baltic area in ‘Talurahva vanuseliset koostisest Eestis hingeloenduste andmeil’, Studia historica in honorem Hans Kruus (Tallinn, 1971), 257–69.Google Scholar Vahtre's essay has summaries in English and German.

11 The most important surveys for the study of past Baltic populations are the Swedish-conducted Hakensrevisionen in the seventeenth century, which included information on a peasant family: when used in this sense one speaks of buying a whole Gesind. A male work-groups in each peasant holding. See Dunsdorfs, Edgars, Der grosse schwedische Kataster in Livland 1681–1710 (Stockholm, 1950),Google Scholar and Vidzemes arklu revizijas 1610–1638 (Riga, 1938).Google Scholar The 1638 revision has been published by Dunsdorfs, as Vidzemes 1638.g. arklu revizija (Riga, 1938–1941).Google Scholar Two similar surveys were conducted by the Kurlandic dukes in 1717–19 and 1747–8. Kurland's first Seelenrevision was in 1797, but the adjoining province of Livland, which had been acquired earlier by the Empire, had its first full one in 1782. Partial revisions had been carried out in Livland in 1717–28, 1743–56, and 1761–7.

12 Hammel's, method is described in full in Household and Family, 346–52.Google Scholar

13 See Svābe, Arvēds, An Agrarian History of Latvia (Riga, 1929), 58ff;Google Scholar and Jarvesoo, Elmar, ‘Agrotowns in Soviet Estonia’, unpublished paper delivered at the Fourth Conference on Baltic Studies, Chicago, May 1974.Google Scholar

14 Hupel, August Wilhelm, Topographische Nachrichten von Lief- und Ehstland (Riga, 1774–82), 57.Google Scholar The Baltic usage of the German term Gesind (pi. Gesinde) therefore differs from the normal German usage, in which Gesind means a group of servants only.

15 These settlement types are discussed in Dunsdorfs, Edgars, Latvijas vēsture 1600–1710 (Uppsala, 1962), 273–86.Google Scholar None of these aggregations resemble the Western European village, since they lack any central organization.

16 See the article ‘Ciems’ in Latvju enciklopēdija (ed. Švābe, Arvēds, Stockholm, 1955–1961), 396–9.Google Scholar

17 See, for instance, the whole of volume two of Latviešu tautas dziesmas (ed. Švābe, Arveds et al. , Copenhagen, 1953).Google Scholar

18 Because of the size of parishes, the Luthern clergy had great difficulty in record-keeping of any kind, encountering the same problems as the Lutheran pastors in Norwegian parishes which resembled their Baltic counterparts in size and structure. See Drake, Michael, Population and Society in Norway 1735–1865 (Cambridge, 1969), 7–9.Google Scholar The parish Nerft and its estates are described in August Hupel, Wilhelm, Statistischtopographische Nachrichten von den Herzogthiimer Kwrland und Semgaln (Riga, 1785), 131–2;Google Scholarvon Bienenstamm, A., Geographischer Abriss der drei deutschen Ostseeprovinzen Russlands oder der Gouvernements Ehst-, Liv-, und Kurland (Riga, 1826), 413–14;Google Scholar and von Bienenstamm, A., Neue geographisch-statistische Beschreibung des kaiserlich-russischen Gouvernements Kurland (Mitau und Leipzig, 1841), 91–2.Google Scholar A lengthy continuous chronicle of important parish events, including a statistical survey of the Gesinde population for the years 1793, 1816, and 1825 can be found in the Nerft parish register volumes two to four, excerpted in Sloka, L., ed. Kurzemes draudiu kronikas, Pt. II (Riga, 1930).Google Scholar The histories of the individual estates of the parish can be found in Kurländische Gūter-Chroniken (Mitau, 1856–1895),Google Scholar edited by Friedrich von Klopmann and the Kurländischen Ritterschafts-Comité. See especially part VI of the 1895 edition, where the histories of the estates of Nerft, Gross-Salven, and Daudzewas are discussed.

19 See Seraphim, Ernst, ‘Gutsherr und Bauer in den baltischen Provinzen’, Deutsche Monatschrift für Russland (1912), No. 4, 289–306.Google Scholar

20 On patrimonial justice see Ziegenhorn, , Staatsrecht, 325–8,Google Scholar and von Hahn, Jürgen, Die bäuerlichen Verhältnisse auf den herzoglichen Domänen Kurlands im XVII. und XVIII. Jahr-hundert (Karlsruhe, 1911), 41–4.Google Scholar

21 In this discussion, of course, information about each socio-economic category must be gathered from extraneous sources, since the revision itself does not mention landholding.

22 von Hahn, , Die bäuerlichen Verhältnisse, 49–54.Google Scholar

23 The development of landlessness is discussed in detail for the patrimonial estates of the city of Riga in Liepina, Dz., Agrārās attiecības Rīgas lauku novadā 17.-18.g.s. (Riga, 1962), 128–58.Google Scholar

24 For a discussion of these terms see Liepiņa, , Agrārās attiecības, passim.,Google Scholar and Dunsdorfs, , Vidzemes arklu revizijas, 156–62.Google Scholar

25 Liepiņa, , Agrārās attiecības, 158–60.Google Scholar

26 Klaustiņš, R., ‘Der lettische Aufzögling und seine soziale Stellung’, Baltische Monat-schrift 76 (1913), 373–97,Google Scholar is helpful for the people covered by this category.

27 The measurement corresponds most closely to the ‘mean houseful size’ used by Laslett, , Household and Family, 383,Google Scholar in discussing the Belgrade population of 1733–4. The comparable figure for Belgrade is 7.14.

28 For a discussion of these criteria see Household and Family, 25.Google Scholar

29 Eighteenth-century peasant housing is discussed by Jaunzems, Jānis, Der kurische Bauernhof (Riga, 1944);Google Scholar see especially the plan on p. 44; and by Cimermanis, S., Laitvieš u tautas dzīves pieminekli. Celtnes un to iekārta (Riga, 1966), 33–54.Google Scholar A detailed discussion of the functions of eacn structure of the Bauernhof can also be found in Bielenstein, August, Die Holzbauten und Holzgeräte der Letten (St. Petersburg), I (1907); II (1918).Google Scholar

30 Berkner, Lutz K., ‘The Stem Family and the Developmental Cycle of the Peasant House hold: An Eighteenth Century Austrian Example’, American Historical Review 77 (04, 1972), 398–418CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Arensberg, Conrad and Kimball, Solon, Family and Community in Ireland (Cambridge, Mass., 1940), 135.Google Scholar

31 Goody, Jack, in his essay ‘The Evolution of the Family’ (Household and Family, 103–24) suggests (p. 106)Google Scholar that domestic groups should be understood to be simultaneously dwelling units, reproductive units, and economic units (this last being separated further into units of consumption and production). It is suggested here, however, that in European areas of late serfdom the service function of the domestic group must also be investigated in any explanation of aggregation.

32 von Hahn, , Die bäuerlichen Verhältnisse, 67–9.Google Scholar

33 The meaning of this measurement is discussed in von Hahn, , Die bäuerlichen Verhältnisse, Appendix I, 97–101.Google Scholar

34 The male work group was commonly used in Baltic cadasters as an element in the calculation of the value of holdings. An assessment of the total labor needs of a Gesind, however, would need to include females as well.

35 The parish register for Nerft contains three Gesinde listings for the years 1793, 1816, and 1825, which give the name of the Gesind, the number of its inhabitants, and the name of the current Wirth. Serfs commonly had no surnames. A comparison of the Christian names of 1793 Wirthe with those of 1797 Wirthe and of surviving fathers in 1797, and the names of potential heirs in 1797 with the names of 1816 Wirthe provides corroboration of the practices of vertical inheritance and primogeniture. This evidence is not wholly reliable, however, due to the absence of surnames as well as the limited number of Christian names the Kurlandic peasantry drew on for its children. The latter problem creates the possibility that the potential heir ‘Jānis’ in 1797 is not the Wirth ‘Jānis’ in 1816, who may have been a newcomer into a Gesind recently abandoned. Secondary literature speaks of inheritance ideology, but no studies of actual practice have been carried out. See the introductory essay on inheritance beliefs ‘Mantojuma tiesības’ in Latviešu tautas dziesmas (Švābe, Arvēds et al. , eds., Copenhagen, 1953), II, 83–6.Google Scholar

36 Cf. the study of Balkan godparenthood by Hammel, Eugene A., Alternative Social Structures and Ritual Relations in the Balkans (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1968).Google Scholar

37 Household and Family, 23–46.Google Scholar

38 Household and Family, 375–400, 106–10.Google Scholar

39 It is probable that Laslett's term ‘houseful’, used in the case of Belgrade, will be useful in analyzing such Baltic population centers as Riga, Mitau, and Libau; and that his concept of ‘household’ will serve well in the analysis of such settlement types as the southeastern Kurland hamlet of Egypten, from which a household list appears in the parish register for the years 1752–4. Here coresident married brothers are still a common fixture, but Knechte, Mägde, Einwohner, etc. comprise a minimal part of the total population. The Gesind, however, is a settlement type differing in many respects from residential quarters in a city and peasant homes clustered in hamlets.

40 This measurement goes a step beyond Laslett's ratio 5 (Household and Family, 133), by excluding not only those groups which could be termed inmates and lodgers but also those which could be called servants. Cf. table for household structure in Belgrade on 394.Google Scholar

41 Household and Family, 383.Google Scholar

43 Household and Family, 410–16.Google Scholar

43 The interplay of demographic rates with economic constraints and opportunities in making the zadruga a ‘process’ rather than a static condition is dealt with in detail by Hammel, E. A. in Household and Family, 335–72.Google Scholar How modernization has ‘reformulated’ rather than ‘destroyed’ the zadruga is explained in Halpern, Joel M. and Anderson, David, ‘The Zadruga: A Century of Change’, Antropologica, N.S. XII (1970), 83–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Halpern, Joel M. and Halpern, Barbara Kerewsky, A Serbian Village in Historical Perspective (New York, 1972), 16–44.Google Scholar

44 Household and Family, 336–7.Google Scholar

45 The possibility for Hungary is suggested by Table II in Hammel, E. A. and Laslett, Peter, ‘Comparing Household Structure Over Time and Between Cultures’, draft copy, portions of which have appeared in Comparative Studies in Society and History 16 (1974), 73–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

For Karelia see Voionmaa, Väino, Somuen Karjalaisen heimon historia (Helsingfors, 1915).Google Scholar

46 See Plakans, Andrejs, ‘Peasants, Intellectuals and Nationalism in the Russian Baltic Provinces’, Journal of Modern History (09 1974).Google Scholar

47 Cimermanis, , Latviešu tautas dzīves pieminekli, 35Google Scholar; von Hahn, , Die bäuerlichen Verhältnisse, Beilage V and VI.Google Scholar

48 Švabe, Arvēds, Latvju kultūrgs vēsture (Riga, 1923), I, 23.Google ScholarDunsdorfs, Edgars, Latvijas vēsture 1500–1600,Google Scholar argues contra Švābe that there is no basis for believing the extended family (lielğimene) to have existed in the Baltic area in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This, however, does not answer the question of the extended or multiple family household, which need not have (as Dunsdorfs imagines) upwards of forty people to have complex character.

49 Regarding the third possibility, the impulse among Baltic native historians, nationalist and Marxist alike; to examine the peasant only as victim has been overwhelmingly strong from the very beginning of Baltic historiography, and has not disappeared even now. Compare, for instance, the first book-length examination of the Latvian peasant by the Jānis, MarxistRoziņš, Latviešu zemnieks (Riga, 1906)Google Scholar and one of the last works of the late dean of Latvian historiography Švabe, Arvēds, Latvijas vēsture 1800–1914 (Uppsala, 1958).Google Scholar

50 Cf. Table 1.11 in Household and Family, 81,Google Scholar where the highest percentage of households with resident kin for a European area is given as 27.0 (Belgrade 1733–4) and the highest percentage of kin as part of the total population is given as 12.3 (also Belgrade).

51 Table 8 is based on Table 1.11 in Household and Family, 81.Google Scholar For an alternative way of handling similar data see Halpern, , A Serbian Village (New York, 1956; paperback edition), 148–9.Google Scholar

52 The kinship terminology used in this article is based on Murdock, George, Social Structure (New York, 1949).Google Scholar

53 The iegātnis practice produced resident group structures in which the head's relatives were almost all clustered on the wife's side.

54 The concept of the developmental cycle is discussed by Fortes, Meyer in Goody, Jack, ed. The Developmental Cycle in Domestic Groups, Cambridge Papers in Social Anthropology No. 1 (Cambridge, 1958).Google Scholar For its application to the study of European peasant households see Berkner, Lutz K., ‘The Stem Family and the Developmental Cycle’; Halpern and Halpern, A Serbian Village in Historical Perspective, 34–9;Google ScholarHammel, E. A., ‘Household Structure in Fourteenth Century Macedonia’ (draft); and Household and Family, 32–4.Google Scholar

55 This calculation should not be confused with that for Mean Household Size discussed in Household and Family, 34.Google Scholar

56 Berkner, , ‘The Stem Family’, 401.Google Scholar

57 The extent to which a peasant-holder enjoyed a say in the fate of his holding as he approached retirement, and, indeed, the whole question of peasant inheritance rights over land and movable property, have been the subject of much heated controversy among historians of the Baltic littoral. Clearly, the Baltic landowners insisted in principle that the serf himself, the land he occupied, any improvements he made on it, and all his movable goods belonged to the Erbherr; and, conversely, the central government in the eighteenth century had no desire to practice Bauernschutz of any kind. What this absolutist stance on the part of the landowners meant in terms of the necessity to compromise with local custom and the desire for social tranquility at the local level is not known, since no local studies have been carried out. In light of the growing problem of landlessness during the second half of the eighteenth century, and the known rise in Bauernlegen, it is not likely that even a married potential heir in the household was an absolute guarantee against dispossession.

58 The method is explained in Wrigley, E. A., ed. An Introduction To English Historical Demography (New York, 1966), 96–159,Google Scholar and Fleury, M. and Henry, L., Nouveau manuel de dépouillement et d'exploitation de l'état civil ancien (Paris, 1965).Google Scholar For the reconstitution of families from oral evidence and written record for the purposes of studying the history of a particular zadruga see Halpern, and Halpern, , A Serbian Village in Historical Perspective, 35–42.Google Scholar

59 Cf. Table 1.14 in Household and Family, 84.Google Scholar

60 Table 9 is to be compared with Table 1.15 (Householdand Family, 85) and Table 15.14 (p. 394).Google Scholar The latter two tables analyze household structure whereas Table 9 analyzes the structure of the constituent groupings of the farmstead. The categories of the tables are explained in Household and Family, 28–32.Google Scholar The proportion of complex family households in Daudzewas exceed any mentioned in Table 1.15.

61 Although the farmsteads in Figures 1 and 3 bear the same names, they are different farmsteads. The ideographic notations used in this article are based on the system suggested in Household and Family, 41–4,Google Scholar and explained further in Hammel, E. A. and Laslett, Peter, ‘Comparing Household Structure Over Time and Between Cultures’, Comparative Studies In Society and History 16 (1974), 73–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

62 Although the farmsteads in Figures 5 and 8 bear the same name, they are differei farmsteads.

63 For a detailed account of zadrugal division see Moseley, Philip, ‘Adaptation for Survival: The Varžić Zadruga’, Slavonic and East European Review, 21 (1943) 147–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

64 Other difficulties are mentioned in Household and Family, 32–34.Google Scholar