Ascenso social - History Lab

Wedding dowries and down payment

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:30:26 +0000

The dowry and the arras were two legal institutions that represented the contributions made by the husband and wife to the marriage. The dowry was the estate that the woman took with her when she married, which she received from her parents and which, although it was the wife’s property, would be administered by the husband for the duration of the marriage. It was common, especially in the upper classes, for families to go into debt in order to dowry their daughters in order to provide for their social advancement or to strengthen their social networks. The dowry could be made up of a variety of movable or immovable goods, or even public jobs. This would depend on the social origin of the women, with movable goods being more common in the case of maids, for example, and real estate in the case of women from wealthy families. In all cases, there would have been a trousseau, consisting of furniture, bed and table linen and household goods. The arras, on the other hand, was a donation made by the husband to the wife, which is interpreted as a contribution made for having access to the female body and the rights over the offspring. The work in the image, entitled “The Bride’s Dowry”, by José Gallegos y Arnosa, represents the formalisation of these contributions.

The post Wedding dowries and down payment first appeared on History Lab.

Activities of French immigrants in Saragossa (17th-18th centuries)

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:28:33 +0000

Immigration to Spain is not a current phenomenon. During the Ancien Régime, numerous people of other nationalities emigrated to Spain in search of new opportunities and social advancement. The specific case of this resource refers to the trades that the French settled in Saragossa in the 17th and 18th centuries. According to the marriage records, 104 French settlers were counted in Saragossa. Of these, 84 worked as “employees”; 16 as “self-employed”; and 4 in an unknown employment situation. Of the 84 contracted, 21 were bakers, a much higher number than any other trade, followed by 8 labourers, 6 weavers and 5 servants. But the high disposition in the baker’s trade was not accompanied by a promotion in this sector, as only 1 was a master baker. Finally, there may have been cases in which immigrants sought shortcuts to social advancement outside the law, as in the case of Juan Sarto, a Frenchman who forged documents from the University of Zaragoza and parish books to pass himself off as Aragonese.

The post Activities of French immigrants in Saragossa (17th-18th centuries) first appeared on History Lab.

Potosí. Example of a colonial space

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:28:11 +0000

Chapter of the series “Horizontes Ciencias Sociales”, part of the Encuentro channel, broadcast by the Ministry of Education (Argentina), which explains the process of mining the immense silver deposits by the Spanish colonists. This exploitation had a lot to do with the growth of the city of Potosí, a city that reached similar dimensions to European cities such as London. It also tells what life was like for the mine workers, in this case the Ayaconas Indians, and how their work equipment was made. Of course, the great human toll of the hard work in the mines is not overlooked. Gradually, guilds began to form around the exploitation. In this context, inequalities increased as a result of the wealth and the increase in capital of a few bourgeois merchants whose social ascent had repercussions in Europe, especially in Spain.

The post Potosí. Example of a colonial space first appeared on History Lab.