Nupcialidad - History Lab

Mortality, birth rate and nuptiality in Hoyos (1795-1820)

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:29:56 +0000

In the Extremaduran village of Hoyos, the Spanish War of Independence in 1808 brought about a structural change in marriages, birth rates and mortality, as a result of the demographic and economic crises that fully affected the previously observed patterns. When the conflict broke out, the population was still in the process of recovery from the subsistence crises of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The premature presence of the French army from 1807 and the long stays of French, British and Spanish armies meant a drain on food and money that these territories were barely able to cope with.
As is usual in other territories, the marriage rate adapted to the different stimuli experienced by each municipality over the years. Mortality, on the other hand, is more structural and shows the consequences of certain diseases such as smallpox or cholera, droughts or plagues that devastated the livelihoods of the inhabitants. A key factor at the end of the 18th century was the crisis caused by the price of wheat between 1797 and 1798, which had an impact on a staple product and led to terrible economic and social prospects that were reflected in the birth and marriage curves. In terms of mortality, the peak occurred between 1804 and 1805, due to the previous agrarian crisis and the appearance of new outbreaks of typhus and malaria.

The post Mortality, birth rate and nuptiality in Hoyos (1795-1820) first appeared on History Lab.

The age of marriage of women in 18th century Spain. A regional overview

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:29:36 +0000

In 18th century Spain, women married on average at the age of 23 and men at the age of 25, as corroborated by the Floridablanca Census of 1787. These ages are lower than in Europe, where it was common for women to marry between 25 and 28 and men between 27 and 30. Even so, however, there was a tendency for first marriages to be later than in previous centuries. This trend, however, was not uniform, but seems to have followed a south/north-northwest upward direction, which confirms the existence of an unequal regional reality that we cannot fail to point out. According to Pérez Moreda (1988), in 1787 the first marriages of women in Extremadura were at 21.9 years of age, those in Andalusia at 22.3; those in Valencia at 22.7; those in Castilla La Nueva at 23.4; Castilla la Vieja, 23.7; León, 24.2; Galicia 25.3 and the Basque Country 26.1. Uneven behaviour for which it is not easy to find unicausal explanations. Rather, it is necessary to take into account a variety of factors that to a greater or lesser extent influence marital behaviour: living conditions, work possibilities, economic opportunities, the existence of complementary activities and levels of pluriactivity, the weight of migratory movements, the form of access to resources -and especially to the exploitation of land-, inheritance law, custom, inheritance practices, cultural aspects linked to the medieval past, the logic of family systems, social differences, marital strategies and other mechanisms of social reproduction.

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The post The age of marriage of women in 18th century Spain. A regional overview first appeared on History Lab.

Servants and the average age of women at marriage in the Crown of Castile in 1787

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:29:36 +0000

The graph shows that among men there was no direct connection between access to marriage and the abandonment of servant work. The three provinces with the highest number of servants (Madrid without the capital, Toledo and Albacete) show how the age of access to marriage is among the lowest in Castile, only surpassed by Ciudad Real, Extremadura, Andalusia and Murcia. The latter had the lowest percentage of servants; a fact that put it in line with the central and northern regions of the peninsula. Of all of them, Galicia, Asturias, León and Burgos stood out for having few servants and a high rate of marriage access (over 24 years of age). The demography, socio-economic structure and life cycles are reflected and differentiated geographically in this graph.

The post Servants and the average age of women at marriage in the Crown of Castile in 1787 first appeared on History Lab.

Professions of the husbands and fathers of the brides of Lower Extremadura (17th century)

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:29:07 +0000

The wife brought to the marriage, either by herself or other persons on her behalf, a series of assets from the paternal surplus, which constituted the anticipation of a legitimate inheritance received at the time of the constitution of a new family. It was the husband who received the assets and, on the other hand, became the administrator of them with the obligation to return them to the heirs or the wife herself in the event of divorce or death of the husband. These goods delivered could appear with the estimate of the prices -estimated price- or without it, indicating only the description of the goods. As for the male professions, labourers are owners of land and livestock in large quantities, while cangueros are small taxpayers with little land and a few animals. Day labourers did not own agricultural real estate and worked for wages. The artisans, on the other hand, have all the distributions made during the 17th century as small taxpayers satisfying local needs. On the other hand, the graduates are those people in the service sector who needed certain studies in order to exercise their profession. 72% of marriages took place between families with the same qualifications, and this was more pronounced among farmers (84%). Along with wealth, there were two hierarchies of power: the possession of council posts and cleanliness of blood. Honour, power and wealth go hand in hand, as all the mayors and councillors who appear in the letters of dowry fall into the category of peasants, as do those who declare their nobility.

The post Professions of the husbands and fathers of the brides of Lower Extremadura (17th century) first appeared on History Lab.

Average prices of estimated dowries in Lower Extremadura (constant reales de vellón (base 1000 = average 1601-1625))

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:29:07 +0000

The wife brought to the marriage, either by herself or others on her behalf, a series of assets from the paternal surplus, which constituted the anticipation of a legitimate share received at the time of the creation of a new family. The husband, on the other hand, became the administrator of assets with the obligation to return them to the heirs or the wife herself in the event of divorce. These assets delivered could appear with the estimated price – estimated dowry – or without it, indicating only the description of the assets. As for the estimated dowries, the fluctuations in prices during the century must be taken into account. Therefore, the largest dowries correspond to the deeds involving farmers and graduates; at an intermediate level, although at a considerable distance, are the dowries of cangueros, and the lowest are those of labourers, artisans and service personnel. The goods that appear in them are valued by people who deserve the confidence of the families who subscribe them, as well as citing circumstances for this task, such as the profession (carpenters to evaluate furniture, labourers for the land…). In this sense, the prices granted were not far from the real values, as it must be taken into account that the estimated dowry had the effect of selling the goods to the husband. The overall value, therefore, depended on current circumstances such as the position of the bride among her brothers, the situation of the family at the time of the dowry or the economic level of the groom’s family.

The post Average prices of estimated dowries in Lower Extremadura (constant reales de vellón (base 1000 = average 1601-1625)) first appeared on History Lab.

Nuptiality in mainland Spain estimated from the 1787 census

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:28:52 +0000

The Christian model of marriage and the development of the family constituted a strong common link in European societies. This model was configured as a strongly hierarchical model where the family was the primary institution where the process of culturalisation and socialisation of the child took place. Its importance was reinforced by the fact that it was, from an economic point of view, a unit of consumption. In addition to its sacred and indissoluble character, marriage was assigned stability and rigidity, where the belief system limited women’s actions to the domestic sphere, as they had to take responsibility for the upbringing of their offspring and the care and maintenance of the unit. However, in the northern peninsular area, extensive and polynuclear family aggregates predominated, with an abundance of solitary domestic groups and no family structure. The trunk family in the north and northwest of the Iberian Peninsula was accompanied by patrilocal or matrilocal post-marital residence patterns. The greater presence of the simple family is confirmed in large areas of the peninsular interior, normally associated with hereditary formulas where egalitarian distribution prevailed. In addition to this, Mediterranean Spain is the most difficult to analyse synthetically, although it is a long way from the complex structures found in other areas of Mediterranean Europe. Thus, the Iberian Peninsula, in addition to the complex family and the patrilocal rule, seems to be associated with late marriage -with the exception of Catalonia-. By making it difficult for sons who wished to marry to stay at home, the trunk family invited a certain percentage of men to leave the farm, which is evident in the higher emigration rates in the North and North-West, which increased in the following century. In much of inland Spain and in the south, women married earlier and this was often associated with a strong nuclear predominance. This led to the existence of a system of high demographic pressure with very high levels of fertility and mortality.

The post Nuptiality in mainland Spain estimated from the 1787 census first appeared on History Lab.

Gross marriage rates in Santo Domingo de la Frontera (Baja California), 1780-1808

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:28:52 +0000

After the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767, the religious missions they had founded in Baja California were placed in the hands of the Franciscans the following year, who faced new circumstances – internal and external. The Dominicans, however, reached the California peninsula in October 1772, but it was not until May 1773 that the transfer of the missions established under the supervision of the Franciscan Fray Francisco Palou and the Dominican Fray Vicente de Mora took place. The high number of marriages in 1778 indicates the first approach of the missionaries to their pastoral flock, consecrating the profane relationships that individuals had before the arrival of the religious and military. After 1807, fourteen marriages were recorded in the mission, although a respective decline began, which reinforces the idea that around 1810 a process of depopulation began, paralleling the decline in the number of baptisms.

The post Gross marriage rates in Santo Domingo de la Frontera (Baja California), 1780-1808 first appeared on History Lab.

Shaping the Demographic Parameters of the Differentiated Household in a North Atlantic Model (1584-1670)

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:28:40 +0000

Rural society in south-western Galicia, in the Bajo Miño region, was part of the North Atlantic demographic system. The study of the parish of San Martín de Caldelas, between 1584 and 1670, shows us the configuration of households according to their economic, material and status level within society: upper, middle and lower families. A first analysis reveals the predominance in number of the lower, more humble families. In these families, the average number of children per family was lower than in the middle and upper families, being 5.79, 7.67 and 6.6 respectively. Another significant difference is the age of entry into marriage, both for women and men, with the poorer families showing a tendency to delay entry due to a late exit from the family, while the upper families had a younger age of marriage for the male than the others. This age difference had an impact on the years of actual fertility, being higher in the more privileged families. The wide variety of information provided by the author helps us to understand the demographic dynamics of families; a structural issue for the analysis and explanation of the society of the Ancien Régime.

The post Shaping the Demographic Parameters of the Differentiated Household in a North Atlantic Model (1584-1670) first appeared on History Lab.