Profesiones - History Lab

Percentage of households with servants in Galicia (1752)

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:32:18 +0000

The evolution of family economies during the Modern Age was closely linked to the existence of servants. Local elites relied on this type of labour force, either for domestic help or for agricultural or livestock work. The most disadvantaged and dispossessed in the social stratification of the Ancien Régime tended to be the servants; thus, there were relations of master-servant dependency based on labour power and trust. The resource shows the territorial distribution of households with servants in Galicia in the mid-18th century. The author identifies the two areas with a notable presence of servants: inland Galicia, where 22.5% of households had at least one servant, and northern Galicia, with 17%. In inland Galicia, urban centres had more households with servants: near Monforte de Lesmos, the parishes of Santa María Sabadelle, Santa María de Baamorto and Santa María de Tuiriz had 29%, 30% and 31% respectively. The labour needs of the pazos hidalgos, of the clergy lands and of the rectories explain the differences in the demand in the labour market for servants, although there were equally important factors, such as ecological, economic and land ownership.

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The money changer and his wife

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

In the new bourgeois societies, women were a fundamental support for their husbands in the task of collecting and accumulating money. They took part in the accounting of their husbands’ businesses and, in many cases, were in demand as accountants by merchant houses, accustomed as they were to the control of account books. Bourgeois women, without forgetting their role as mothers and wives, developed an economic-administrative activity acting on behalf of their husbands, but also when they were widowed or took over the inheritance of a prematurely deceased father. They handled rents and lent money in a historical phase in which money was an instrument for the accumulation of wealth.

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The spinners

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

Velázquez’s work depicts a craft workshop made up of women. In the foreground are the spinners, women of the village who occupy the most important place in the representation, where three generations are shown participating in the work of spinning and reeling the wool. Their bodies convey activity and liveliness as they cooperate in a manual task. In the background are three upper-class women, one of whom focuses her gaze on the mechanical workers. In the 17th century, spinning wheels and spinning were poorly paid jobs that supplied the needs of the weavers’ guilds. Although Velázquez depicts the interior of a possible tapestry factory, the spinning work did not take place inside the factory, but in the house-workshops. At that time, the ordinances of 1561 prohibited women from joining the guild (historiographically increasingly disputed), although their presence in the workshops continued. The master’s wife took over the spinning and was assisted by other women from the age of 12, as they were considered servants since they were denied the status of apprentices.

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Average value of arms in Burgos households, 18th century

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

The possession of weapons in the city of Burgos during the 18th century reveals that, although they were in the minority, they were stored in those households with the greatest social preeminence. The author provides us with a resource based on the average value of firearms and bladed weapons. There is no surprise when it comes to establishing the relationship between the socio-professional categories of households and the price of the artefacts they owned: from the spinners of Burgos to the nobility, passing through farmers, artisans, merchants, public services, bureaucrats and clerics, the price is shown to be ascending in the social stratification. Special mention should be made of the military who, because of their profession, had expensive equipment far removed from ordinary weapons. If we follow this ascending process as a whole, we observe divergences in terms of the basic armament category: the highest price of court weapons predominates in the artisan, merchant and militia groups, while firearms predominate in the nobility, clerics, bureaucrats, public services and farmers, although the latter account for a very insignificant percentage of the sample. The price of the weaponry reveals its quality: poor, functional but frugal shotguns for the humblest strata compared to the luxurious weapons of the wealthy classes, either in terms of their material quality or their ornamentation. In short, the post-mortem inventories reveal shotguns, pistols, blunderbusses, swords, rapiers and sabres well differentiated in quantity, quality and effectiveness, distributed in a hierarchical manner.

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Socio-professional distribution by heads of household according to age groups. Lorca, 1797

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:29:41 +0000

With this resource, the authors highlight the social mobility of the peasantry at the end of the Ancien Régime in the municipality of Lorca (Murcia). The relationship between day labourers, tenant farmers and tenant farmers shows a decrease in the number of day labourers over the course of their life cycle, while the group of farm labourers remains stable. The change of occupation among day labourers, who account for more than 50% of the heads of household aged between 20 and 25, becomes more pronounced from the age of 50 onwards.

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Average ages of servant boys and girls in the advertisements of the Diario de Barcelona (1795-1849)

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

The graph shows the evolution of the age of access to the labour market for child servants between the end of the Ancien Régime and the beginning of the industrial economy. The spatial scope situates us in Barcelona, and the periods covered have “gaps” of information based on episodes that altered the sources, such as the War of Independence. The author points out that during the period between 1795 and 1850, the variation in age was a response to the work to be carried out by the children: while girls between 9 and 10 years of age began to work as nannies, boys who began to work at that age were employed as footmen. However, the age of majority was between 13 and 14 for girls and 14 and 15 for boys. The physical development of adolescence allowed them to carry out harder and heavier work in the service they performed. After the end of the Ancien Régime, the ages of access to work were not affected, showing this resource as an example of continuity in socio-economic practices.

The post Average ages of servant boys and girls in the advertisements of the Diario de Barcelona (1795-1849) 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.

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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.

Adaptation strategies of the nobility: the Fernández de Córdoba family (15th-19th centuries)

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:28:46 +0000

The aristocratic elites sought to perpetuate themselves in power from the Middle Ages to the contemporary period. The lineage of the Fernández de Córdoba, with almost 50 families, is an example of the strategies they articulated in order to maintain or increase their status. The resource shows the main positions in the high administration held by this lineage over 5 centuries. From the 15th to the 18th century, they predominated in the Councils (in a range of 72.2% at the beginning of modernity and 42.2% in the following century). In the 18th century, as the author points out, in absolute terms, the weight of this lineage in the administration declined as a result of the arrival of the Bourbons to the Spanish throne. The Bourbons displaced the traditional elites and placed the like-minded in an exercise of political control. The Fernández de Córdoba family arrived in the 19th century weakened but, with the new winds of change, they were able to adapt to the period of transition between the Old Regime and the New Liberal State; 51.4% of the lineage’s political posts were concentrated in the positions of senators and deputies. Not only were they oriented towards high administration, this lineage also proliferated in the local elite and in the clergy; forms of social reproduction based on marriages with strong families and on avoiding the atomisation of property during its hereditary transmission.

The post Adaptation strategies of the nobility: the Fernández de Córdoba family (15th-19th centuries) 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.