Kinship in Europe

Since the publication of Philippe Ariès’s book, Centuries of Childhood, in the early 1960s, there has been great interest among historians in the history of the family and the household. A central aspect of the debate relates the story of the family to implicit notions of modernization, with the rise of the nuclear family in the West as part of its economic and political success. During the past decade, however, that synthesis has begun to break down. Historians have begun to examine kinship - the way individual families are connected to each other through marriage and descent - finding that during the most dynamic period in European industrial development, class formation, and state reorganization, Europe became a “kinship hot” society. The essays in this volume explore two major transitions in kinship patterns - at the end of the Middle Ages and at the end of the eighteenth century - in an effort to reset the agenda in family history.

Since the publication of Philippe Ariès’s book, Centuries of Childhood, in the early 1960s, there has been great interest among historians in the history of the family and the household. A central aspect of the debate relates the story of the family to implicit notions of modernization, with the rise of the nuclear family in the West as part of its economic and political success. During the past decade, however, that synthesis has begun to break down. Historians have begun to examine kinship - the way individual families are connected to each other through marriage and descent - finding that during the most dynamic period in European industrial development, class formation, and state reorganization, Europe became a “kinship hot” society. The essays in this volume explore two major transitions in kinship patterns - at the end of the Middle Ages and at the end of the eighteenth century - in an effort to reset the agenda in family history.

Glossary
Preface

Chapter 1. Kinship in Europe: A New Approach to Long-Term Development
David Warren Sabean and Simon Teuscher

Chapter 2. Bringing it All Back Home: Kinship Theory in Anthropology
Sylvia J. Yanagisako

TRANSITION 1: FROM MEDIEVAL TO EARLY MODERN KINSHIP PATTERNS

Outline and Summaries

Chapter 3. Lordship, Kinship, and Inheritance among the German High Nobility in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period
Karl-Heinz Spiess

Chapter 4. Politics of Kinship in the City of Bern at the End of the Middle Ages
Simon Teuscher

Chapter 5. Sisters,Aunts, and Cousins: Familial Architectures and the Political Field in Early Modern Europe
Michaela Hohkamp

Chapter 6. Political Power, Inheritance, and Kinship Relations: The Unique Features of Southern France (Sixteenth–Eighteenth Centuries)
Bernard Derouet

Chapter 7. The Making of Stability: Kinship, Church, and Power among the Rhenish Imperial Knighthood, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
Christophe Duhamelle

Chapter 8. Rights and Ties that Bind: Mothers, Children, and the State in Tuscany during the Early Modern Period
Giulia Calvi

Chapter 9. Kinship, Marriage, and Politics
Gérard Delille

TRANSITION 2: FROM EARLY MODERN TO NINETEENTH-CENTURY KINSHIP PATTERNS

Outline and Summaries

Chapter 10. Kinship and Mobility: Migrant Networks in Europe
Laurence Fontaine

Chapter 11. Kin Marriages: Trends and Interpretations from the Swiss Example
Jon Mathieu

Chapter 12. Kinship and Gender: Property, Enterprise, and Politics
Elisabeth Joris

Chapter 13. Kinship, Civil Society, and Power in Nineteenth-Century Vannes
Christopher H. Johnson

Chapter 14. Middle-Class Kinship in Nineteenth-Century Hungary
Gábor Gyáni

Chapter 15. Kinship and Class Dynamics in Nineteenth-Century Europe
David Warren Sabean

Notes on Contributors
Index