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Family Structure and Economic Change in Nineteenth-Century Europe*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

H. J. Habakkuk
H. J. Habakkuk
Affiliation:
All Souls College, Oxford
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Extract

The scholars of continental Europe have devoted much attention to the social consequences of rules and customs of inheritance, and there exists a large body of work on this subject by lawyers and agricultural historians. The purpose of this paper is to consider, in the light of this European evidence, the possible significance of such rules and customs for economic development in the nineteenth century.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , March 1955 , pp. 1 - 12
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1955

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References

1 There is a useful comparative account of inheritance systems in Roguin, Ernest, Traité de droit civil comparé, vols. III-VII: Les Successions (Paris, 1904-1912)Google Scholar. Hedemann, J. W., Die Fortschritte det Zivilrechts im XIX Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1910-1935), vol. II aGoogle Scholar, also contains relevant material on the law of the subject. The fullest source on the history of inheritance practices in Germany is the officially commissioned work, Die Vererbung des Iändlichen Grundbesitzes in Königreich Preutssen, ed. Max Sering. Of the volumes in this series I have obtained most help from vol. VII, Erbrecht und Agrarverfassung in Schleswig-Holttein (Berlin, 1908)Google Scholar, written by Sering himself; this also contains an account of inheritance in Norway. See also vol. I, Oberlandsgerichtsbezirk, Koln, by W. Wygodzinski. There is considerable historical material in the more recent work by Sering, Max and Dietze, C. von, Die Vererbung det landlichen Grundbcritsses in der Nachkriegszeit (Munich, 1930)Google Scholar. For a discussion of the effects of inheritance customs in a restricted area in the present century see Bittorf, Hans, Die Vertr-bungsgewohnheiten des bäuerlichen Grundbesitzet in Landkreis Hildburghausen (thesis, Jena, 1930). Pp. 43–72Google Scholar.

2 See the discussion in , Rougin, Traité, IV, p. 389Google Scholar.

3 Sering, Max, Deuliche Agrarpolitik (Leipzig, 1934), pp. 46–49.Google Scholar

4 See, for example, the mixture of systems in middle Germany, described by , Sering and Dietze, von, Die Vererbung, I, 219 ff. There is a good account of variations of custom within a single area inGoogle ScholarElsas, Fritz, “Zur Frage des Anerbenrechts in Wiirttemberg,” Schmollers Jahrbuch, 1913, pp. 264–67Google Scholar.

5 , Sering and Dietze, von, Die Vererbung, I, 328.Google Scholar

6 There is an interesting discussion in). , Bertillon, La depopulation en France (Paris, 1911)Google Scholar . Three reasons suggest that the low French birth rate should not be ascribed to the provisions of the Civil Code relating to succession, (a) The desire to avoid partition by limiting births could have operated with great force only among the more substantial peasantry. Were these numerous enough to have had a significant effect on the birth rate for the country as a whole? (b) Belgium and Baden, both areas of division, showed substantial population increases, (c) The French law of 1909, which allowed the creation of inalienable rural property and so obviated any necessity for a limitation of births to achieve this end, was rarely used.

7 List, Friedrich, Schriften, Reden, Briefe, ed. Beckerath, Erwin vonet al. (Berlin, 1927-1935) 1 vol. IV. Die Ackervertassung, die Zwergwirtschaft and die Ausiwanderung.Google Scholar

8 Steinert, Valentin, Zur Frage der Naturalteilung (Lucka, 1906), pp. 53–61Google Scholar . Fick, Ludwig, Die BSuerliche Erbfolge in rechtsrheinitchen Bayern (Stuttgart, 1895), pp. 34, 376Google Scholar.

9 For the view that Anerbentitte favored migration see Buchenberger, Adoph, Agrarwesen und Agrarpolitik, vol. I, pp. 442–45Google Scholar ; Fick, Die bauerliche Erbfolge; and Goltz, von der, Die agrariichen Aufgaben der Gegenwart (Jena, 1894)Google Scholar . The contrary view was taken by String and Wygodzinski in the works already cited, but the method by which they arrived at their conclusions was statistically faulty; see Kuezynski, R., Der Zug nach der Stadt (Stuttgart, 1897). Pp. 235–50Google Scholar.

10 Boker, H. and Bulow, F. W. Von, The Rural Exodus in Czechoslovakia, I. L. O. Studies and Reports, Series K (Agriculture), no. 13. (Geneva, 1935).Google Scholar

11 Homans, G. C., English Villagers of the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1941)CrossRefGoogle Scholar contains a discussion of inheritance customs in medieval England.

12 In Austria between 1868 and 1892, 958,876 cases of inheritance resulted in 543,747 new mortgages, incurred to compensate heirs, which averaged 25 per cent of the value of the land.- Kaden, E. H., “The Peasant Inheritance Law in Germany,” Iowa Law Review, XX (1934-1935), pp. 350–88Google Scholar.

13 That question of the effect of inheritance customs on productivity is difficult to resolve because the fertility of an area may have helped to determine its inheritance system. In Bavaria, according to the study of Fick, the harvest yield was greatest in areas where division was the ruling custom, but this may well have been due to the fact that it was the more fertile land that was the most suitable for division. In any case, in Bavaria the differences do not appear to have been significant.