Inheritance Practices, Marriage Strategies and Household Formation in European Rural Societies (Rural History in Europe)

Conventional wisdom holds that, over a long period of history, many women and men in the countryside were prevented from marrying because they lacked access to land. This volume offers an up-to-date discussion of the interaction between inheritance practices, marriage and household formation both for those who inherited and those who did not. It asks why and to what extent inheritance patterns and household structures differed between countries and regions in Europe right up to the present day. Dealing with bothimpartible and partible inheritance, it examines how retirement practices and choices between ante-mortem or post-mortem property transfers gave rise to a wide range ofspecific strategies. The chapters cover rural Europe from the seventeenth to the twentieth century, ranging from semi-subsistence and seignorial societies to highly market-oriented economies. They offer case studies drawn from the Iberian Peninsula to Scandinavia and from the British Isles to Russia. Inheritance Regulations And Inheritance Practices, Marriage And Household In Rural Societies : Comparative Perspectives In A Changing Europe / Anne-lise Head-könig -- The Formation Of New Households And Social Change In A Single Heir System : The Catalan Case, Eighteenth Century / Rosa Congost, Llorenç Ferrer Alós And Julie Marfany -- Inheritance, Marital Strategies, And The Formation Of Households In Rural North-western Spain In The Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries : An Overview / Ofelia Rey Castelao -- Marriage And Property Transfer In Rural Western Bohemia 1700-1850 / Alice Velková -- Too Poor To Marry? 'inheritance', The Poor And Marriage/household Formation On Rural England 1800-1840s / Steven King -- Household Formation, Inheritance And Class-formation In Nineteenth Century Ireland : Evidence From County Fermanagh / Jane Gray -- Marriage, Household Division And Headship Attainment In Nineteenth Century Central Russia, Bun'kovskaia Volost', Moscow Province, 1834-1869 / Herdis Kolle -- Inheritance, Marriage And Household Formation In Nineteenth Century Rural Serbian Life Courses / Siegfried Gruber -- Family Strategies Or Individual Choice? : Marriage And Inheritance In A Rural Swedish Community, 1810-1930 / Sofia Holmlund -- Marriage, Inheritance And Household Formation On A Greek Island, Mykonos (mid-nineteenth To Mid-twentieth Century) / Violetta Hionidou -- Farm Transfer, Marriage, Household And Parental Power In Rural Switzerland, 1860-1960 / Anne-lise Head-könig -- The Transfer Of Farms In North Gronigen (the Netherlands), 1591-1991 : From Sale Towards Family Succession? / Richard Paping. Edited By Anne-lise Head-könig ; In Collaboration With Péter Pozsgai. International Conference Proceedings. Includes Bibliographical References. For a long period of history, lack of access to the land has been seen as one of the most decisive factors in preventing the marriage of large parts of the rural population. This volume offers an up-to-date discussion of the interaction between inheritance practices, marriage and the household formation of those who inherited as well as of those who were excluded from inheriting the family farm or part of it. It considers to what extent and for which reasons significant differences in inheritance patterns and in the structure of rural households can be observed in Europe right up to the present. This volume focuses on impartible as well as partible inheritance and examines how the timing of property transfer, modes of transfer (ante-mortem or post-mortem) and also retirement practices gave rise to many different strategies which differed widely not only in semi-subsistence, seignorial economies, but also in highly market-oriented economies