Zeitschriftenartikel

Life cycle service and family systems in the rural countryside: a lesson from historical east-central Europe

Szołtysek, M.
Annales de démographie historique, 117:1, 53–94 (2009)

Abstract

The article analyses historical micro-census data for almost 700 settlements in the late eighteenth-century Poland in an attempt to better understand interrelations between the institution of service, household structures, household formation rules and patterns of family labour organization prevailing among rural populations of east-central Europe. The analysis presented us with several distinct major characteristics of patterns of domestic service typical of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (ethnic Poland, Belarus and Ukraine) at the end of 18th century. The lifecycle service constituted pivotal formational experience for significant numbers of individuals on the large areas of western Poland. On the contrary, households from the eastern regions (present day Belarus and western Ukraine) were almost exclusively a family- or kin-based production and consumption units in which unrelated cohabitants were negligible. This accumulation of family- and kinlabour force substituted in numerical terms for domestic service in the “west”. This considerable variation in the domestic service patterns of different Slavic populations inhabiting the historical Polish-Lithuanian state —Poles, Belarussians, Ukrainians, might have had important implications for further social and demographic developments in this part of Europe during the 19th and early 20th centuries. A major argument stemming from the achieved results suggests that neither Hajnal's polarized model of different household systems in Europe, nor Laslett’s fourfold division of the set of familial categories in historic Europe could capture the true multifariousness of service patterns in the eastern part of the continent. Despite the many layers of its common historic heritage, historical Eastern Europe should not be conceptualized as a region with common sociodemographic characteristics.
Schlagwörter: historical demography
Das Max-Planck-Institut für demografische Forschung (MPIDR) in Rostock ist eines der international führenden Zentren für Bevölkerungswissenschaft. Es gehört zur Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, einer der weltweit renommiertesten Forschungsgemeinschaften.