Landless Households in Rural Europe, 1600-1900

A comparative study of landless households in post-medieval Europe reveals their significant role in history and society, exploring their experiences, relationships, and adaptations to changing rural conditions.

Format: Hardback
Length: 350 pages
Publication date: 19 July 2022
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd

The first comparative study of landless households reveals their significant role in European history and society. The numbers of landless individuals, those lacking formal rights to land or possessing only tiny smallholdings, surged rapidly across post-medieval Europe as rural population and economic growth divided landowners and farmers from (increasingly) landless rural workers. However, these landless individuals have been relatively neglected, creating a gap that this volume aims to fill. Covering Scandinavia, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, Britain, France, and Spain from the sixteenth to the early twentieth centuries, it employs a diverse range of unexplored sources to explore the many different experiences of the numerous rural landless. Instead of focusing solely on the well-documented cases of landholding peasants, it delves into the diverse ways in which landless households were formed, often in the face of economic difficulties and official hostility. It sheds light on how all members of a family contributed to their survival, how the landless related to other social groups and negotiated access to vital resources, and how they adapted to the changing rural society driven by war, politics, agrarian and industrial development, government policies, and welfare systems.

Contributors to this volume include Arnau Barquer i Cerdà, John Broad, Dieter Bruneel, Christine Fertig, Henry French, Margareth Lanzinger, Jonas Lindström, Riikka Miettinen, Richard Paping, Wouter Ronsijn, Merja Uotila, and Nadine Vivier. Their insights and research contribute to a deeper understanding of the landless and their experiences in European history.

Dimension: 234 x 156 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781783277223