Wanton children, of toiling the land capable, their parents desert, so as to accomodate themselves and serve at someone else’s household, thus acting to the detriment both of their parents and themselves as well
???????, ?? ???????? (Hiring yourself, you are selling yourself).
1This article employs a variety of quantitative methodologies to analyse peasant domestic service in the vast territories of the late eighteenth-century Poland, as well as on some adjacent areas. It attempts to reveal and understand interrelations between the institution of service on the one hand, and on the other, household structures, household formation rules, and patterns of family labour organization prevailing among rural populations in the historical Polish-Lithuanian state. This analysis is also motivated by the search for explanations of the long-term regional disparities in the spatial distribution of servants on Polish lands. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was one of the largest and most populous countries on the continent well until the end of the xviiith century. At some points in history, it covered what now constitutes Poland, Lithuania, the entire territories of Belarus and Latvia, and also large parts of Ukraine and Estonia. A particularly large variety of linguistic, confessional and cultural niches of this vast country—as well as the common wisdom that holds it was socially and culturally “in-between” the West and the East throughout the Early Modern period—all make the Commonwealth an interesting laboratory for research into historical social and family structures.
2I organize this article in the following parts. It begins with a historiography of the problem, proceeding with a brief description of our data, and the socioeconomic characteristics of regions under investigation. [2] This is followed by the assessment of the numerical importance of the servant population and its systematic variability across our set of communities. By showing in more detail the characteristics of the prevailing family systems, this section also seeks to understand the kind of demographic reality in which the institution of service was embedded. The final part of this section also witnesses a shift to more detailed characteristics of the servant population. In the next step I investigate the consequences of regional differences in the incidence of servants for family labour organization and household strategies in different regions. Finally, existing literature will be used to historicise the eighteenth-century appearance of domestic service in the Polish territories.
Historiography
3Since its appearance in scholarly texts, the notion of “life-cycle servants” (Laslett, 1977a, 104) has make an impressive career. Originally meant to denote some specifically localized English phenomena (Laslett and Harrison, 1963), as time passed it embraced a much wider meaning, gaining also in significance, as it often referred to a crucial feature of the English family pattern. Already in 1965, Laslett envisaged that “it seems probable that traditional English society was exceptional in the numbers of its servants”. Although he believed they could have been plentiful in France, he also argued that the institution of service was “far less common in Eastern and Southern Europe or in Japan” (Laslett, 1965, 262-263). Soon after, Laslett envisaged the salience of servants in the West as marking not only a peculiarity in the individual life cycle, but also an outstanding characteristic of Western domestic groups (Laslett, 1977b, 13). He was able to do so because of the scarcity of regional and local studies on family and household behaviour available during the 1970s. Ever since, Western and Eastern Europe were persistently juxtaposed with regards to how widespread the institution of service was supposed to be there, in spite of signs of a considerable variability in both parts of the continent (Laslett, 1977b, 29-34). [3] However, it was Hajnal, who, building on Laslett’s initial insights (Laslett, 1977b, 13), first made plain the link between the large scale departure of children from parental home to serve and live in other households, and the prevailing demographic variables such as late age of marriage, a marked prevalence of neolocality, and simple-family households (Hajnal, 1982, 1983; Laslett, 1988a, 55-56). Thanks to this approach, life-cycle service became a constitutive centerpiece of the eccentric northwestern European marriage and household formation pattern (Hajnal, 1983, 69, 98-99) ensuring late marriage and the formation of a new production and consumption unit at marriage. However, the importance of service extended far beyond the domain of demography. The circulation of youths helped to equalize the supply and demand for labour across households differentiated by wealth and stages of family life cycle (Dribe, 2000; van Poppel and Oris, 2004). Domestic service facilitated the accumulation of savings for the establishment of new households, and was also believed to promote economic growth in Western Europe, where it was supposed to strengthen “acquisitory impulses” along with “individualistic” behaviour (Macfarlane, 1978; Hartman, 2004).
4The question of the incidence of servants in the eastern part of the continent suffered from both neglect and overgeneralization, which were also characteristic of studies into the Eastern European household structure and household formation rules (Szo?tysek, 2007a; Szo?tysek, 2008a; Sovi?, 2008). First and foremost, in the older debates, the place of East-Central Europe was rather ambiguous: it was consistantly portrayed as being somewhere between the extremes of the western and eastern types (Laslett, 1983, 530; Plakans and Wetherell, 2001). Although Laslett suggested the resemblance of Polish and English family patterns and hypothesized the existence of a large “intermediary area” between contrasted family systems in Europe which would have included Poland, his assertions were based on unreliable and unrepresentative data (Laslett, 1977b, 16, 22-23; Laslett, 1978, 90-93; Laslett, 1983, 530). Laslett’s uncertainty about how to categorize the eastern part of the continent was also vivid in his later attempts at regionalizing family forms in Europe (Laslett, 1983, 528-529). However, these continent-wide typologies were neither over-concerned with describing precisely where the “west” ended and the “east” began, nor with providing comprehensive numerical evidence for the importance of servanthood in the east-central part of Europe (see Burguière & Lebrun, 1986). Whereas the basic quantitative facts regarding the institution of service in preindustrial and industrialising northwestern and part of central Europe became well known [4], the existing accounts of the corresponding reality in more eastern parts of the continent were usually confined to rather vague notions such as “rare” or “irrelevant” (Laslett, 1983, 526-527; Polla, 2006, 29). Laslett himself believed that profound cultural divides in Europe existed in the way the family organized its basic social functions, and suggested that the Eastern (and Southern) European family system—based on a large number of co-resident kin—made the circulation of life-cycle servants unnecessary. This feature was based on the argument that a large number of kin living in complex households formed unique working units which had sufficient labor force to be autonomous, and which were capable of incorporating newly-married couples without waiting for their economic independence (Laslett, 1983). Even if the presence of servants was acknow-ledged in Eastern Europe, usually it would entail treatment of the appea-rance of servants as an altogether diffe-rent phenomenon than the “western” life-cycle form of institution (Dennison, 2003; comp. also Viazzo, Aime and Allovio, 2005).
5Although economic historians studying the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth have recognized the importance of service, they have usually not devoted too much attention to revealing its demographic character. A recent, ingenious analysis of a hired labour market in the southern provinces of Poland in the sixteenth- and early seventeenth-centuries has been provided by Kamler (Kamler, 2005). [5] The most revealing among her many substantive insights is certainly that peasant households were widely characterized by the presence of servants. Also, she postulates that domestic service was based on contractual agreements and entered into by free will. Service provided income opportunities (in cash and/or kind) for the whole social spectrum of rural population, not solely for the youths of poorer family backgrounds. Often, those coming from wealthier households preferred service to staying on the family farm while waiting for its succession or for an inheritance portion (Kamler, 2005, 44-47, 61, 90). It was celibacy and consequently childlesness that were the real prerequisites to enter into ser-vice relations, and to stay within their ranks (Kamler, 2005, 62). Over the course of service, which could last 10 years or more, some youths stayed with one peasant family for the entire time, most, however, changed their whereabouts yearly or so (Kamler, 2005, 48-49, 61). Servants were undoubtedly treated as junior family members in peasant households. Although they commonly ate, slept, and worked alongside other family members, in their surrogate homes they also usually advanced through a hierarchy based on skill and strength, roughly in step with their ages (Kamler, 2005, 59, 62, 89-90, 97). Life-cycle service, even in a predominantly serf society like that in Poland at that time, could provide a conduit for social reinforcement and advance, facilitating accumulation of savings (dowry in the case of females), or—occasionally—in-marriage into a family of a previous peasant employer (Kamler, 2005, 61, 95-97). Upon marriage, servants left the household to which they had been attached so far by a contractual relationship.
Servants were also given considerable attention in Rutkowski’s seminal studies of the conditions of rural populations in the eighteenth-century Poland. Apart from his detailed reconstruction of their material conditions of life (Rutkowski, 1956[1938]), the doyen of Polish eco-nomic history set forth a theoretical framework for the incidence and number of servants in a peasant household (Rutkowski, 1956[1914], 212-215). Unfortunately, ?abko-Potopowicz’s groundbreaking work on hired labour in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania still remains the only monograph focused exclusively on that phenomenon, provi-ding rich information on various types of servants as they were captured in numerical historical sources of the late xviiith century (?abko-Potopowicz, 1929). Nonetheless, the picture revealed by these and other studies (Obraniak, 1968; Górny, 1991; Górny, 1994) is fragmentary as they concern single localities or micro-regions quite remotely located in space. As a matter of fact, almost a century ago Rutkowski suggested a geography of servants’ distribution across socioeconomic regions of early modern Poland, but in his works he referred to servants working on demesne farms, rather than among peasant householders. He set the contrast between densely populated regions of northern Poland involved in grain production for export, and the more remote, less populated regions with fewer opportunities to participate in the Baltic grain trade (middle eastern parts of Poland, such as Red Ruthenia), where hired labor was scarce (Rutkowski, 1956 [1928], 123-124; Rutkowski, 1918, 288). ?abko-Potopowicz reite-rated Rutkowski’s argument when he stated that “towards east, and particularly south-east [of the Kingdom of Poland] the importance of hired labour was diminishing” (?abko-Potopowicz, 1929, 61-62, 111, 181). Equally infor-mative were his findings on the scale of service in peasant households in the eastern part of the country, as his late eighteenth-century data constituted a strong proof of a clear decrease in the proclivity for hiring servants in all but the north-eastern parts of Lithuania (?abko-Potopowicz, 1929, 162-174). Apart from these accounts, however, spatial distribution of the incidence of servants in the Polish Republic still awaited a comprehensive approach.
The major element missing from these accounts remained the recognition of the importance of service as a crucial event in the life course of an individual, with direct implications for patterns of leaving home and family or household formation (van Poppel and Oris, 2004), along with a wider issue of individual identity formation (Fauve-Chamoux, 2004; Fauve-Chamoux & Wall, 2005). No attempt was made in Polish literature to understand the phenomenon of children leaving home to live and work in other families as domestic servants in the context of household structures and household formation rules prevailing among rural populations in a given region or locality. [6] Consequently, the spatial distribution of servants on the Polish lands was never tested against differences in patterns of family and household possibly existing in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, al-though such differences were tentatively presumed (see review in Szo?tysek, 2008a). This article aims to fill some of these gaps by returning to the discussion set forth originally by Hajnal (1982) and Laslett (1983), placing it, however, within the usually under-studied context of the family life of Eastern European serfs.
Data and contexts
6The present study makes use of data for 18,440 peasant households (total population of 103,780 individuals) from 159 parishes with 693 settlements scattered over the Polish-Lithuanian state and some adjacent areas. This information derives from three main types of micro-censuses listing individuals by residential units, the so-called “lists of souls” (either Roman Catholic Libri Status Animarum, or their Protestant Seelenregister equivalents, yielding 15 percent of all household listings); censuses of the Civil-Military Order Commissions 1790-1792 (60 percent); and the Russian 5th “soul revision” of 1795 (22 percent). [7] These censuses are particularly rich in detail, generally characterized by high internal logic and consistency in describing relations between individuals. However, like many other types of sources from the pre-statistical period, they are not without drawbacks (Szo?tysek, 2008a, 5-7). [8] Consequently, not all 159 listings finally selected were suitable for the same degree or type of statistical analysis, and specific rules of exclusion had to be designed for particular statistical operations (relevant information is given for every table and figure).
7A great majority of listings comes from the period of 1766-1799. All precede the nineteenth-century abolition of serfdom in east-central European regions that once constituted the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. [9] If reference is made to historic Polish boundaries just before 1772 (see Map), then the parishes form a long belt spreading from the western fringes of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (regions 1 to 4), Prussian Silesia (region 8) and the province of Lesser Poland (region 7), eastward towards the historic area of Red Ruthenia (regions 6_2 and 6_3), reaching its limits within south-central parts of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania around Mi?sk (present day Belarus; regions 6_1 and 6_4). [10] The parishes are grouped into “regions”, either on the basis of administrative entity to which they belonged or geographical proximity. In the second stage, the analysis of variance and clustering procedures helped to distinguish three broader classes of regions among those already existing. This is why, in subsequent paragraphs, the population under study is broken down into three separate groups referred to, respectively, as the “west”, “middle east” and “east” grou-pings. [11]
Geographical Distribution of the Data Grouped in Three Regions, Within Polish-Lithuanian Territories in the Late 18th Century
Geographical Distribution of the Data Grouped in Three Regions, Within Polish-Lithuanian Territories in the Late 18th Century
Reference is made to historic boundaries of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth before 1772 and its administrative divisions into voivodships. Most of region 6_4 covers Mi?skie, Nowogródzkie and Brzesko-Litewskie Voivod-ships of the Commonwealth, which after 1793 belonged to the Russian province of Miñsk.8Generally speaking, all these regions were part of the socioeconomic and institutional landscape usually referred to as the “second serfdom” (see Melton, 1998; Cerman, 1999; Ogilvie, 2001). In principle, the agrarian development of the “western” and “middle eastern” clusters followed the basic institutions of medieval western Europe in their mostly German form, known as Hufenverfassungssystem, with a three-field system in which the farmland was divided into Hufen (hides). [12] In the part of Belarus considered here, however, such a regime was introduced only later to replace an open-field agriculture, becoming widespread by the second half of the xviith century. Still, the demesne-labour service economy in the eastern regions remained generally at a much lower level of development than in proper Poland, mostly because of lower population density and a low level of agricultural technology. After the seventeenth-century wars, a further expansion of manor farms (folwarki) and the increase in rents (czynsz) and labour dues (pa?szczyzna) imposed on the peasantry took place in most of the “western” cluster, and also in region 6_3. In the less populated Belarus, instead, the landlords’ policies often relied upon commuting peasant labor services to cash quitrents. [13] All the same, an overwhelming majority of the population discussed here lived in personal and hereditary subjection, had property rights limited to an indeterminate leasehold, and delivered labor services to a landlord (region 5, and some parts of regions 3 and 4 were generally the only exception). However, one of the paradoxes of the “western” region was the coexistence of formal serfdom structures with quite an extensive land market and a considerable land mobility (Cerman, 2008). In all the clusters, the social and economic centre of gravity rested predominantly on the middle-sized farmers and smallholders. [14] Cottagers, however, became quite widespread in the “western” and “middle eastern” regions, whereas in Belarus somewhat larger holdings than in the “west” were typical. The Polish speaking Catholic communities, sometimes intermixed with Protestant German-speaking settlers, were predominant in the “wes-tern” cluster. The population of regions 6_3 and 6_2 was dominated by Uniates (Greco-Catholics) and comprised mostly of the so-called Ruthenians (Ukrainians). Region 6_4 consisted almost exclusively of Greco-Catholics of Belarussian origin with some minor Polish and Lithuanian influences. Only rural populations strictly defined were included in the present analysis. Manor houses, households of nobility, Jews, and millkeepers were excluded (Table 1).
Summary Characteristics of Household Composition: Polish “Western” “Middle Eastern” and “Eastern” Clusters in the Late 18th Century
Summary Characteristics of Household Composition: Polish “Western” “Middle Eastern” and “Eastern” Clusters in the Late 18th Century
Family Systems and Characteristics of Domestic Service
9Table 1 sums up the major characteristics of family systems typical of the Polish-Lithuanian territories at the end of the xviiith century. In the “western” region, nuclear and neolocal (or stem) family and household formation rules prevailed, domestic groups were of a moderate size (Mean Household Size/MHS=5.3), and they never contained large numbers of co-residing kin. Living in complex households was not a pivotal formational experience, neither for individuals, nor the couples in the “west”. Marriage was rather late for males, but even for the small majority of females, wedding did not occur before the age of 24.
10The “middle eastern” parishes had a comparatively larger number of complex households. The nuclear type still predominated, but with a traceable life-cycle pattern. The share of conjugal units and of the population living in multiple family environments was visibly greater than in the “west”. Living as relatives was usually the second most important alternative to marriage, after staying in the parental home. Also, marriage occured earlier in the “middle eastern” region than in the “western” cluster, and often it did not lead to the establishment of a separate household.
11The Belarussian households (“eastern” zone) more strongly exemplify the patterns already visible in the “middle eastern” region. In Belarus, it was much more common for kinfolk to be present in a household, and on average non-related persons appeared very rarely as members of domestic groups. These groups showed a relatively strong tendency towards both lineal and lateral extensions, and the coresidence of several married brothers was not uncommon. As a consequence, almost all indexes of household complexity had their highest levels within the Belarussian heartland. Although the tempo of family formation was visibly more rapid there, the movement of young people out of their parental homes seemed to be much more restricted.
The most important point for us here is the distribution of the servant population across the clusters. The significance of service varied enormously between the macro-regions to which we have ascribed different family characteristics. Only in the “west” did domestic groups contain truly substantial numbers of living-in servants. On average, more than 39 percent of 8,996 households had a servant, and the servants’ share in the cluster’s total population exceeded 13 percent. These simple statistics indicate that the phenomenon we are dealing with in the “western” case by no means fits the findings and predictions of what is commonly referred to as Hajnal-Laslett model. The percentage of servants in the “western” population and the share of households employing them in the “west” were either identical (in the former case), or even higher (in the latter) than in the English standard sample of 100 communities (Laslett, 1969, 219; Laslett, 1972, 152). Laslett’s insistence on the uniqueness of the English experience of service can be questioned also on other grounds (Szo?tysek, 2007b). On several occasions he stressed a slight character of the systematic variability in traditional English household structure. Although he was somewhat less keen to pinpoint the same feature with regards to servant variables, he nevertheless insisted that life-cycle service was “practically a universal characteristic of pre-industrial English society” (Laslett, 1977b, 44). However, the comparison of variation within the English “master sample” and Polish parishes from the “west” suggests that Laslett’s comparative ventures should not be taken at face value (Table 2). Although the Polish data does not differ that much from the “English standard” in terms of the share of servant population (although the Polish data has slightly smaller dispersion), it reveals significantly less variabi-lity when it comes to the share of households with servants.
Variation of Servant Variables: English and Polish Datasets Compared
Variation of Servant Variables: English and Polish Datasets Compared
12Figures from Table 1 may also be read as testifying to a more general validity of the models proposed by Hajnal and Laslett, especially of the set of functional relationships they both postulated between late marriage, neolocality, and life-cycle service. Indeed, if all clusters are taken into account, there seems to exist a clearly adverse relationship between household residential complexity and the significance of service at macro-regional level. However, what casts some doubt on this supposedly straightforward relationship is that, although in noticeably smaller numbers than in the “western” region, servants were undoubtedly present in the “middle eastern” cluster, despite the non-negligible numbers of complex domestic units it contained.
Nonetheless, further validation of the model is possible by looking at interrelationships between household structure and life-cycle service at the local level in the “west”. One may hypothesize that even in a society with predominantly nuclear households, as was the case with the “west”, local differences in the intensity of kin coresidence may have likely had an effect on the circulation and hiring of servants. The problem is here approached through a standard correlation matrix, in which the correlations between all pairs of relevant variables at a parish or estate level (percent nuclear and complex households, percent households with servants, and the proportion of servants in the population) are computed (Table 3).
Correlation Matrix for Household and Servant Variables: the Polish “Western” Cluster in the Late Eighteenth Century
Correlation Matrix for Household and Servant Variables: the Polish “Western” Cluster in the Late Eighteenth Century
13There is no doubt that the direction of the relationship between household and servant variables matches well the predictions of the model. The percentage of nuclear households in selected populations positively correlates with the share of domestic units with at least one coresiding servant, and also with an overall proportion of servants in the given population. There is an inverse relationship between family complexity and the presence of servants: the larger the share of extended or multiple households in a given community, the lower the significance of domestic service. However, whether one considers the magnitude of these associations as a strong or weak, an important or unimportant correlation, remains a question of interpretation. Since our coefficients are all concentrated around a value of .6, they can be considered as marking either “moderate” or “good” correlation. But when we square that value to find the coefficient of determination, we quickly realize that the proportion of the relationship is .36, or 36 percent, which is only about one-third overlap. It means that approximately 64 percent of variations in servant variables result from factors other than household structures.
Also, it must be stressed that the figures presented in Table 2 are only crude mea-sures of a relative uniformity of the Polish “western” cluster in terms of the incidence of servants, [15] and therefore, they do not necessarily implicate that important historical differences could not have existed in this cluster at a micro-regional level. Mitterauer argued for a complementary method of assessing the characteristics of a given family system that goes beyond the traditional focus on the households’ kin composition, by treating coresident servants (and labor organization, more generally) as equally important in determining not only the structure of the family, but also family and other patterns of personal relationships among people living together (Mitterauer, 1992). Following this suggestion, in Figures 1 and 2, the distribution of two servant variables was plotted at a micro-regional level. The results indicate that regions with quite uniform family system as measured with Hammel-Laslett typology [16] may still display differences in the distribution of servants which perhaps should not be overlooked, even if the statistics seem to tell a different story. These are important historical puzzles and we shall not attempt to approach them here in more than a cursory way. Although further studies linking localized household data with detailed information on local ecotypes [17] would be needed to fully understand the revealed patterns, it does not seem to be a coincidence that the institution of domestic service was most widespread in regions with more commercialized forms of agriculture and somewhat more advantageous property rules (Szo?tysek, 2008a). [18]
Frequency Distribution of the Proportion of Households with Servants: Polish “Western” and “Middle Eastern” Clusters in the Late Eighteenth Century
Frequency Distribution of the Proportion of Households with Servants: Polish “Western” and “Middle Eastern” Clusters in the Late Eighteenth Century
Frequency Distribution of the Percentage of Servants in Total Population: Polish ‘“Western” and “Middle Eastern” Clusters in the Late Eighteenth Century
Frequency Distribution of the Percentage of Servants in Total Population: Polish ‘“Western” and “Middle Eastern” Clusters in the Late Eighteenth Century
14The significance of domestic service in different family systems can be further visualized by tabulating an individual position in the household measured by the relationship with the household head according to the individual’s age and sex (Szo?tysek 2008a, 21). This is shown in Figures 3 to 8. In the “western” cluster (figures 3-4), the numerical importance of children in households diminished considerably after the age of 10, although this change came generally earlier and more quickly for female offspring. It can be inferred from the data that most children in the “western” region usually had left parental households by 30 years of age. This rather abrupt home-leaving process was accompanied by the appearance of significant numbers of servants in the households. As expected, service appeared to be a very important life-course experience for a substantial number of males and females, who on their way to independence spent their most decisive years as domestic servants on the local labour market. On the basis of cross-sectional data we can only speculate on further life-course trajectories of those who were in service at some point in time. Certainly, as Figures 3 and 4 indicate, service was generally not a life-long condition, and diminishing ranks of servants after the age of 20 to 25 suggest three major alternatives for change in their statuses.
Female Population by Age and Position in the Rural Household: “Western” Cluster, Late Eighteenth Century
Female Population by Age and Position in the Rural Household: “Western” Cluster, Late Eighteenth Century
Male Population by Age and Position in the Rural Household: “Western” Cluster, Late Eighteenth Century
Male Population by Age and Position in the Rural Household: “Western” Cluster, Late Eighteenth Century
15Most servants married sooner or later, establishing their own households. Landlords’ interests in the multiplication of the number of familial units cultivating separate plots of land must be first mentioned in this regard, at least in relation to male population (Szo?tysek, 2008a, 11; Szo?tysek and Rzemieniecki, 2005, 135-136). [19] These interests could facilitate both the inmarriage of a disinherited son (currently in domestic service) into the household of a widow, and also the taking on of an available “niche” somewhere in a village. [20] Still, for part of the servant population, the only choice must have been to establish livelihood as inmate groups attached to non-related households (komornicy). [21] Finally, but only rarely, some males, including men coming from families with landed property, might have come back to their parental homes after some period spent in service, in order to take over the family farm.
16Although females started to leave home at roughly the same age as men, the pace at which this process was taking place became much faster after passing the age of 15. Only for a short time (before the age of 20), however, male and female participation in the labour market was relatively equal. Past that age, female participation in the labour market was much less pronounced. Whereas 47.4 percent of males in the 20 to 24 age group were in service, only 27.1 percent of females were still doing so, while much larger numbers of them were either already married to a household head, or were heading alone their households (37.9 percent). In subsequent age groups, gender differences become even more striking (31.9 percent of males aged 25 to 29 were servants, comparing to only 8.8 percent of women). All this leads to the idea that female opportunities for accumulation of capital during service must have been more shortlived than those of men. [22] This finding also invites the indication that this particular feature of the female service in the “west” was a part of a more general pattern, inasmuch as service was in general a predominantly male affair in the “western” region. For every hundred females in service, there were more than 151 male servants (Szo?tysek 2008a, 19).
17This in turn offers further clues as to how the pathways of transition between a condition of service and subsequent status might have looked among women in the “west”. With only a slim chance to return home once having left for service, at some point a female domestic servant had no other option but to comply with the landlord’s policy, meaning either marriage and the creation of an independent household unit, or becoming a lodger. Indeed, the pressure to marry at some point, for the most part before the age of 24 or so, seemed to have been a main driving force removing most women from the labour market. [23] Not all, however, succeeded in establishing their own households after time spent in service. The share of female population recorded as lodgers/inmates rose proportionally as the number of female servants declined across the age groups. Apparently, the position of the inmate was the most feminized of all household positions in the “west”, independent of an individual’s age profile (Szo?tysek, 2008a, 19). In the 25 to 49 age group there were only 63 males for every hundred women. Accordingly, the number of female servants in later stages of life was quite negligible (93 cases out of 5,964 women aged 35 and over).
The situation in the two remaining clusters departs significantly from that described above. In the “middle eastern” cluster (Figures 5 and 6) the pattern of servants’ distribution was basically the same as in the “west”, but with a considerable variation in intensity. The relative importance of service manifested itself only during a short period between the ages of 15 and 24 among males (a maximum of 10.8 percent of men were in service then), and in the still narrower age range of 15 to 19 among women (6.32 percent of the female population in that age group were servants). For the latter also, the character of life transitions from a servant status would be different than in the “west”. In the “middle east”, because of a higher frequency of joint family households, domestic service did not necessarily anticipate the formation of an independent household, but could be followed instead by co-residence with kin. Whether this feature accounted for a qualitative dissimilarity of domestic service in this cluster cannot be said with certainty. But if the above suggestion holds true, then the important link between the accumulation of savings and the establishment of new households would be broken.
Male Population by Age and Position in the Rural Household: “Middle eastern” Cluster, Late Eighteenth Century
Male Population by Age and Position in the Rural Household: “Middle eastern” Cluster, Late Eighteenth Century
Female Population by Age and Position in the Rural Household: “Middle eastern” Cluster, Late Eighteenth Century
Female Population by Age and Position in the Rural Household: “Middle eastern” Cluster, Late Eighteenth Century
18The experience of young people of both sexes from the “eastern” zone proves particularly intriguing (Figures 7 and 8). Lack of service opportunities in the region meant that the vast majority of young men and women had no contacts with the service system. Such a situation poses the following question: by what means was a life-course stage that was so vivid in the “western” region, but only hardly recognizable in the “middle eastern” part, entirely replaced among the communities of the “east”? It is by no means surprising that for young men and women from the “eastern” populations, living with relatives other than their parents was the only alternative to staying in the parental home after marriage. Figures from Belarus bear witness to the peculiarities of that pattern: among 300 Belarussian males from 20 to 29 years of age, 21 percent were married and had already headed a household, 46.7 percent were present at the parental home, and 32.3 percent had the status of co-residing relatives. [24]
Male Population by Age and Position in the Rural Household: “Eastern” Cluster, Late Eighteenth Century
Male Population by Age and Position in the Rural Household: “Eastern” Cluster, Late Eighteenth Century
Female Population by Age and Position in the Rural Household: “Eastern” Cluster, Late Eighteenth Century
Female Population by Age and Position in the Rural Household: “Eastern” Cluster, Late Eighteenth Century
19An even more thorough interrogation of interdependency between service, marriage, and household formation, can be conducted by analyzing Figures 9 and 10, in which male and female age-specific participation in service was plotted against their household and family formation experience. What we do find, is again, the unmistakable appearance of the relationship between service and subsequent entry into marriage among males in the “west”. Although it could not be argued (under usual synthetic cohort assumptions) [25] that life-cycle ser-vice was an experience of those who subsequently decided to marry in the region, such a sequence of events could be part of transition movements for significant numbers of the “western” male population. It appears, for example, that some 36 percent of those ever married [26] by the age of 35 could be theoretically considered (under strong synthetic cohort assumptions, this time) as those who had already passed through service. [27] These figures, although they must be approached realistically, offer an indication that on the western Polish territories, the life-cycle service, although statistically important, may not have been a strict prerequisite for marriage and household formation among males. This becomes more meaningful if the curves for the “middle eastern” cluster are scrutinized, since in the “middle east” the entry into marriage (and thus household formation) was clearly taking place independently of the previous attendance of service. [28]
Male Age-Specific Participation in Service and Entry into Marriage and into Headship: Polish “Western” and “Middle Eastern” Clusters in the Late Eighteenth Century
Male Age-Specific Participation in Service and Entry into Marriage and into Headship: Polish “Western” and “Middle Eastern” Clusters in the Late Eighteenth Century
20Patterns for women (Figure 10) are generally similar, although they reveal some peculiarities as well. Comparing first two “cohorts” of the “western” cluster we can see that exit rates out of servant group were visibly lower than entry rates into marriage. This may suggest that many of those females who established their families at younger ages (before 20 year of age) did so without first going through service. The situation changes in subsequent age groups in the “west”. For example, a 25 percent increase in the proportion of ever married females between the age groups of 20 to 24 and 25 to 29 (269 individuals) could easily have been compensated for by a 75 percent decline in the numbers of servants between these two “cohorts” (by 491 individuals), still leaving some surplus of previous female servants on the local marriage market. This does not necessarily mean that all females getting married between 25 to 29 years of age were those who had just left the ranks of the hired labor force. But there is at least a potential for a close interrelationship of these two processes that gives us some clues about the significance of service in the female life cycle in the “west”. As one might expect, such a pattern is not replicated among women of the “middle eastern” cluster. In this region, entry into marriage was usually not linked with previous experience of service, and to a large extent did not coincide with establishing independent households. [29]
Female Age-Specific Participation in Service and Entry into Marriage and into Headship: Polish “Western” and “Middle Eastern”Clusters in the Late Eighteenth Century
Female Age-Specific Participation in Service and Entry into Marriage and into Headship: Polish “Western” and “Middle Eastern”Clusters in the Late Eighteenth Century
21Another important consideration has to do with two further characteristics of the servant population, namely marital status and age structure (Tables 4 and 5). Servants, as has already been mentioned, were almost exclusively single persons. Considering the overall servant population (both males and females), only 3.4 percent of servants were ever married both in the “western” cluster and in the “middle east”. However, this aggregate statistic obscures some important differences between the sexes, between the different age groups within them, and also between macro-regions. While in the “west”, female servants were less likely on average to be married than their male counterparts, a slightly reversed pattern is revealed for the “middle east”. In general, however, in both clusters two distinct categories of domestic service can be distinguished. Roughly up until the age of 30, married servants among males and females were almost non existent—the feature, which, again, resembles very much a typical “northwest European” pattern. Older servants were more likely to be married, although normally such experience was only rarely shared by more than 30 percent of their population in a given age group. [30] It would be interesting to determine whether these two categories of servants had a different etiology. The second group might have encompassed the “loosers”—those for whom a failure to accumulate enough “wealth” worked to extend their previous life-cycle condition into a life-long state, one in which marriage became one of the best available means to evade the danger of poverty. Alternatively, these could be individuals who, due to demographic misfortune (e.g. the death of a spouse in the case of widowed servants), unsuccessful inheritance process, or because of their unre-liable economic governance were deprived of headship by the landlords’. Hence, they had no other choice but to fill the ranks of the laboring poor (Kula, 1976; Szo?tysek and Rzemieniecki, 2005).
Servants by Sex, Age and Marital Status: Polish “Western” Cluster in the Late Eighteenth Century
Servants by Sex, Age and Marital Status: Polish “Western” Cluster in the Late Eighteenth Century
Servants by Sex, Age and Marital Status: Polish “Middle Eastern” Cluster in the Late Eighteenth Century
Servants by Sex, Age and Marital Status: Polish “Middle Eastern” Cluster in the Late Eighteenth Century
22The subsequent sets of data prompt us to make the following summarizing statements. In both clusters, despite obvious differences in the intensity with which domestic service occurred, servants were by and large concentrated either in marriageable ages or among older teenagers (Figure 11). When male and female age patterns are compared, slight but interesting differences can be discerned. Whereas the share of the 10 to 24 age groups in the percent distribution of male servants was 67.7 in the “west” and 70.6 in the “middle east” corresponding figures for females are consistently higher (80.4 and 73.6 per cent respectively). Since women generally married younger than men and had a tendency to leave home earlier than males (Szo?tysek, 2008a, 19), it is not surprising that female servants were on average some 3 years younger than their male counterparts (Table 6). This pattern was consistent across both “western” and “middle eastern” regions. What is surprising, however, is the lack of differences between the clusters in terms of the mean age of servants, since this runs counter to usual expectations based on the known differences in the marriage patterns of these two regions (Szo?tysek, 2008a, 24; Puczy?ski, 1972, 23-25; Kopczy?ski, 1998, 141; Rzemieniecki, 2006). This concordance disappears in the 20 to 24 age group, in which a considerable drop in the percent distribution of female servants in the “middle east” bears no resemblance in the “western” women’s population. Secondly, the positioning of service within the context of family formation once more lends itself to examination, by calculating the proportions of servants who were below an average age at first marriage in a given region (Table 6). [31] Although somewhat artificial, this approach offers a reasonable basis for concluding that female service in both clusters had generally more to do with the woman’s life-cycle stage in anticipation of marriage than for her male counterpart, but differences between clusters existed in this regard as well.
Age Distribution of Servant Population: Polish “Western” and “Middle Eastern” Clusters in the Late Eighteenth Century
Age Distribution of Servant Population: Polish “Western” and “Middle Eastern” Clusters in the Late Eighteenth Century
Summary Age Characteristics of Servant Population: Polish “Western” and “Middle Eastern” Clusters in the Late Eighteenth Century
Summary Age Characteristics of Servant Population: Polish “Western” and “Middle Eastern” Clusters in the Late Eighteenth Century
Domestics servants and family labour organization
23Hypotheses about the historical functions of the household in various parts of Europe may be developed through an examination of the macro-regional family and marriage patterns posited by Hajnal and Laslett in correspondance with contrasting systems of labor organization, welfare provision, and family well-being (Hajnal, 1983; Laslett, 1983; Laslett, 1988b; Schofield, 1989; Oris and Ochiai, 2002; see also discussion in Cavallo, 1998; Horden, 1998; Viazzo, 1994). In England and possibly also in other north-western European areas where neo-local family formation practices prevailed, the contribution of co-resident non-conjugal kin to familial work force was negligible, collective provisions were often called upon to shield needy individuals, and life-cycle service provided “a quasi-familial remedy” for labor shortages caused by unfavourable stages of nuclear household family life cycles (Laslett, 1988b). Such a pattern of relationships provides a contrast to what has come to be known as “extended well-being” (Horden, 1998, 50). The implication is that complex families (believed to dominate in the Eastern and Mediterranean part of Europe) had functioned as “private institutions” to redistribute the poverty of nuclear families with the aid of the benefits of the kinship system, and also as a locus for risk-sharing. According to this widely held view (for criticism, see Cavallo, 1998; Horden, 1998; Bengtsson, Campbell and Lee 2004), joint family systems were generally better prepared to escape life cycle induced poverty, because in such systems peasant families held to a multiple family structure for the most part of their developmental cycle (Czap, 1982, 18; Czap, 1983, 143-144; Nosevich, 2002). Extended households, due to relatively larger labor forces, often had the potential for superior economic performance as indicated by their productive capacity (Reyna, 1976). This was further supported by a far greater sense of obligation toward members of the kinship group, and also by much stronger family solidarity (Cavallo, 1998, 91-92). In this light, revealing the role played by domestic service in three different regions of historical Poland appears to be particularly interesting (see Szo?tysek, 2008b).
The problem can be first approached by shedding light on how labour requirements were met within the family systems under discussion. In order to do so, size distribution of “male work groups” (males aged 14 to 60 in the household, with lodgers/inmates excluded because they usually did not contribute to household production) was first calculated (Table 7). Surprisingly, there appear to be hardly any considerable differences in this regard. On average, approximately three quarters of all households in all regions had such work groups consisting of two adults at most, with the “western” region only slightly lagging behind the two more eastern clusters. Regional mean values of the male workforce in households also bear witness to these general similarities (approximately 1.7 persons per household on average). Real differences between the regions do not manifest themselves, unless we approach the distribution of the “male work groups” by household membership (Figure 12). Seemingly similar outcomes in terms of the average number of co-resident males of working ages were achieved through decidedly different methods in different clusters. Only in the “west” was it standard practice to add unrelated persons as servants to the working strength of a domestic group. The unrelated persons constituted more than 50 percent of adult male working force among the “western” communities. In contrast, households from the two eastern clusters represented almost exclusively family or kin-based production and consumption units, with only a negligible share of unrelated cohabitants. Such an accumulation of family and kin-labour force—consisting largely of sons (in the “middle east”) as well as other male relatives (in the “east”), substituted in numerical terms the role that domestic service played in the “western” cluster, creating the image of the household as almost coterminous with the effective kin group: self-sufficient and in need of little or no external welfare support. This evidence points to two distinct household-labor recruitment strategies, strictly related to the above-discussed rules of household formation and individual life cycle patterns. The peculiarity of the former rested on allowing children to leave the parental nest and rely instead on the labor contribution of non-related outsiders (“west”), while the latter, in extending the male labor force through an accumulation of kin in the household, by persuading sons to stay in their natal homes for extended periods or even to bring their brides into it, and also by adding to the main conjugal units the families of siblings or other collateral relatives (eastern clusters). Both strategies call for context-specific explanations, and could be economically rational under given ecological and socioeconomic conditions.
Size Distribution of “Male Work Groups” by Regions: the Polish “Western”, “Middle Eastern” and “Eastern” Clusters in the Late Eighteenth Century
Size Distribution of “Male Work Groups” by Regions: the Polish “Western”, “Middle Eastern” and “Eastern” Clusters in the Late Eighteenth Century
Distribution of the “Male Work Groups” by Household Membership: the Polish “Western”, “Middle Eastern” and “Eastern” Clusters in the Late Eighteenth Century
Distribution of the “Male Work Groups” by Household Membership: the Polish “Western”, “Middle Eastern” and “Eastern” Clusters in the Late Eighteenth Century
Notes: “Core household members” = head and all male offspring (married and unmarried) + sons-in-law“Other relatives”= all male kin coresiding under the patronage of the household head, other than “core household members”, even those registered as “servants”
“Non-relatives”= non-related, coresiding servants
Lodgers/inmates were not taken into account in these estimations since they most usually formed independent sub-household units within core households.
24Another way to accentuate the role that service played is to calculate dependency ratios by age of household heads separately for the three regions (comp. Dribe, 2000). [32] Here, our exercise is to compare the levels of potential economic burden in two types of rural society: one in which the household’s productive capa-city was provided almost exclusively through family membership (“east” and “middle east”); and the other in which the existence of a market for hired labor offered the potential for uplifting the economic performance of conjugal family units without calling upon available kin. Roughly similar curves for changes in the dependency ratios over the family life cycle appear in all regions (Figure 13). The rise in a dependency ratio first occurred among household heads in their late 30s and early 40s, then it dropped, but only to increase to unprecedented levels among those aged 55 and over. Inter-regional differences are also well manifested in this regard. Households from both eastern regions proved their relative superiority in keeping the dependency ratios of family collectives at more moderate levels when compared to the family labor forces of households in the “west” (i.e., with domestic service not included in calculations). However, a highly important role of non-family workforce in the “west” again clearly reveals itself. If we take account of this contribution, the comparative situation among the clusters undergoes quite a dramatic transformation. In the “west” through the use of the hired domestic servants, peasants were able, to a large degree, to compensate for unfavourable dependency situations caused by life cycle occurrences. Such an “offsetting effect” had its most profound positive impact during the two highly unfavourable points in the family life cycle (in the household head’s age groups of 30 to 44, and 55 and more). In the first instance, it allowed to reduce the proportion of dependants to workers by some 20 percent, in the second by even 30 percent. [33] Although in the “east” the fission of multigenerational households might have been used by heads in their 40s to achieve a more balanced dependency situation, the overall claims for superior economic performance of the more complex family systems cannot be fully sustained. Even though patterns of household extension among the heads in their 30s and early 40s smoothed some of the sharp changes in dependency situations over the domestic cycle in the “east” (Szo?tysek, 2008a), this effect vanished in the later stages of households’ life cycles. Only the “middle eastern” cluster, with its moderate household extension, could effectively compete with the “western” pattern of mixed family and extra-family labor force, but only in the later stages of the family life cycle. [34]
Family and Household Dependency Ratios (FDR and HDR) by Age of Household Head: the Polish “Western”, “Middle Eastern” and “Eastern” Clusters in the Late Eighteenth Century
Family and Household Dependency Ratios (FDR and HDR) by Age of Household Head: the Polish “Western”, “Middle Eastern” and “Eastern” Clusters in the Late Eighteenth Century
Notes: HDR (household dependency ratio): the number of population aged 0-12 and 55 and over, per one person in the economically active age range (13-54), at the household level (head’s conjugal family + coresiding kin + servants; lodgers excluded). FDR (family dependency ratio): the number of population aged 0-12 and 55 and over, per one person in the economically active age range (13-54), at the family level (head’s conjugal family + coresiding kin; servants and lodgers excluded). In the “east” there was no difference in value of FDR against HDR.25Finally, to evaluate the impact of domestic service, average indexes of household dependency for all nuclear and complex (both extended and multiple) domestic groups were calculated separately for the three regions. These non-tabulated estimations clearly indicate that in all clusters, living in nuclear households always resulted in higher average dependency ratios, in comparison to households with any form of extension. The discrepancy between these juxtaposed forms of household structure, however, was much greater in the “eastern” clusters (respective figures are: 0.86/0.76 for the “west”; 0.82/0.59 for the “middle east”, and 0.92/0.74 for the “east”). [35] It was in the more complex family systems of the Polish east that living in nuclear households presumably implied the heaviest burden for the household head’s family, making the “kin extending strategy” the last resort for achieving a more favourable labour force balance in the absence of service. It was only in the “west” that opportunities for a considerable reduction in the dependency burden were available not only for simple, but also for extended-multiple domestic groups (by adding the hired labour force into the calculations of dependency in the “west” we reach figures 0.73 for nuclear, and 0.67 for complex households).
Life-cycle service “West” and “East”: a Longue durée structure?
26Since the data analyzed in above sections is invariably cross-sectional and refers to a relatively condensed period of time (1766-1799), the preceding analysis leaves us in anticipation of a “pre-history” of the patterns documented so far. Did life-cycle service in the late eighteenth-century “west” represent long-term historical continuities, or was it simply an ephemeron characteristic of the period in the wane of the serfdom system? Had Belarussian families functioned in that way for a considerable period of time, or had the non-existence of service in the eighteenth-century resulted from this institution’s demise during the preceding centuries? It is altogether not that easy to answer questions posed along these lines. Comprehensive, cross-regional numerical studies of domestic service in the pre-1750s Commonwealth are non-existent, and the scarcity of available archival materials casts serious doubts on the feasibility of such a study. Nevertheless, the literature of some local case studies may help us take a step further in historicising the eighteenth-century appearance of domestic service in the Polish territories.
27There are good reasons to believe that the institution of domestic service based on a contractual relationship between a servant and a peasant householder (Rafacz, 1922, 135-142) may have had a long history on the western and central Polish-Lithuanian territories, traceable even as far back as the xvith century. The available evidence suggests that in some parts of historical Poland on the eve of early modern times, leaving the parental home to become a servant in other household before marriage or before receiving an inheritance portion was a widespread social phenomenon, if not a behavioural norm, for a significant fraction of the rural population. [36] In one group of villages located in the southern part of Poland, 51.5 percent of peasant households in 1590 hosted living-in servants whose total number encompassed 13 to 27 percent of the population (Senkowski, 1970; Kamler, 2005). [37] The process by which the younger generation left the parental home (at least partly in order to enter domestic service elsewhere) also appeared to be one of the underlying causes for the decline in the number of offspring observed along the life cycle of the wealthier peasant households in central Poland in the mid-xvith century (?ytkowicz, 1962, 80-85; Wycza?ski, 1977, 175-177). Experts in the material and economic living conditions of subject farmers in sixteenth-century Poland commonly supported this view and assumed that the institution of service must have played an important role in the functioning of wealthier peasant households (Rutkowski, 1918, 284, 329; also Jawor, 2004; Wycza?ski 1977, 242 ff; Wycza?ski, 1969, 136; M?czak, 1962, 22-43). Such an assumption was not without substance. Peasants’ labour obligations to the demesne, along with the consumption needs of a full-peasant holding, could not be met without additional hired, if only seasonal, labour force (Wycza?ski, 1978, 637; Izydorczyk-Kamler, 1990, 3, 10; ?ytkowicz, 1962, 84). Also some scarce xvith century village court rolls seem to confirm the presence of servants in the Polish countryside (Baranowski, 1955, 57; Izydorczyk, 1987; Kamler, 2005, 94, 97; Ulanowski, 1921, entry 2818). The deficiency of reliable numerical evidence has made it even more risky, if not altogether impossible, to trace further back the significance of service. However, some xvth century anecdotic evidence should by no means be ignored in this regard, even if it does not comply with the standards of quantitative analysis. Using church records from the voivodeship of Lublin (in the eastern Kingdom of Poland, slightly to the west of region 6_3 in the “middle eastern” cluster), Jawor testifies to the presence of hired servants in peasant households as early as the 1450s (Jawor, 2004). [38] Although their age profile did not conform absolutely to the period between “maturation and marriage” (Laslett, 1988a, 57-58), young unmarried males and females seemed to have predominated in that group. Of more substantial importance was Jawor’s suggestion that being in service (which does not embrace only the experience of those from middling or poor families) helped individuals accumulate capital to form a family or household in the future (Jawor, 2004, 498).
28Only with the coming of the xviith century do we step onto a more solid ground in terms of direct statistical evidence, as now the existence of rural servants can be tracked down in some regional tax records, as well as in several micro-censuses. [39] Sending children into service was undoubtedly practiced in the second half of the xviith century by pea-sant families in Podlachie voivodeship, a border region between eastern Poland and western parts of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (northwest from region 6_3 on the map). Between 1662 and 1676, some 24.5 percent of peasant households in this region hosted at least one resident servant (some county-level means, however, may approach 32 percent), whereas the total number of servants made up 11.2 percent of the total peasant population (Laszuk, 1999, 124-125, 181, 186). Co-residing servants were also common in peasant households in the Pomeranian voivodeship of northern Poland in 1662 (west of region 5) where they constituted 17 to 19 percent of the total rural population, distributed among 41 percent of all households (Kopczy?ski, 1998, 58-61). Two early Libri Status Animarum discovered for other Polish territories substantiate these findings. Among the Catholic population of ?urawica (the lands of historical Red Ruthenia on the south-eastern fringes of the Kingdom of Poland, in the “middle eastern” cluster), in 1662, 42 out of 82 peasant households (51.2 percent) employed servants of various kinds (author’s calculations based on Budzy?ski, 1987). Even more telling was the situation in one of the parishes of Greater Poland, a large historical region of the west-central Polish Kingdom (region 3). In this small rural community of some 600 souls, servants hired by peasant householders constituted almost 36 percent of the entire population, and were distributed among 71.5 percent of the households (author’s calculations based on Górny, 1991). [40]
29The genesis of and the explanation for this seemingly persistent pattern of domestic service in the “western” and part of the “middle eastern” region are too complex to be fully captured here, [41] so just a few reflections must suffice at this point. On the “west” and “middle east” labour estates, the bulk of demesne work obligations was met by unfree peasants who delivered services in return for holdings allotted to them by landlords. Since the landlords wished to maximize returns from the demesne economy, they were interested in multiplying the number of labour-capable household units (with a certain amount of land) and capturing as much as possible of a peasant household’s work-force capacity. From the point of view of the landlords’ economic interests, in the “west” (and, presumably, partly in the “middle east”) large numbers of small or middle-sized holdings with nuclearized households delivering labour offered more benefits than the less numerous but more complex (joint) domestic groups (Rutkowski, 1956 [1914], 195–198; ?abko-Potopowicz, 1929, 111–112). [42] What may resemble a pattern of economic circumstances as incentive to keep the productive-aged offspring at home by peasant householders was actually countervailed by the prevailing impartibility of the holdings and a one-heir rule. Under such circumstances, leaving home and entering the local labour market could be considered more attractive than staying on the family farm, particularly when constraints were imposed on the co-residence of several generations (Berkner & Mendels, 1978). [43] Such tendencies were also strengthened by the considerable mobility of the land, at least in some parts of the “west”, which provided further incentive for individuals to enter hired labour (outmigration, another reasonable solution in such a situation, played only a minor role due to mobility restrictions imposed on peasant subjects by their landlords). [44] Since already by the end of the xviith century the amount of peasant labor obligations in the “west” had reached its peak, an additional hired labour force became indispensable for larger peasant cultivators to meet their consumption needs (Wycza?ski, 1978, 637; Izydorczyk-Kamler, 1990, 3, 10; ?ytkowicz, 1962, 84). Inasmuch as labour dues were proportional to the amount of land under cultivation, peasant householders with smaller plots often sent their children to serve in households with greater demand for labor. In this way, the institution of domestic service served to maintain a balance between the size of the holding, family consumer needs, and available manpower (Rutkowski, 1956 [1914], 212-215; also Kochanowicz, 1983), which in turn helped equalize the supply and demand of labour across households differentiated by wealth and family-life cycle stage. Last but not least, some parts of the “western” cluster had already by the late eighteenth-century wit-nessed signs of overpopulation and an accompanying increase in the percentage of landless classes. Strong demand for land soon came to the fore when those areas became part of the newly modernizing Prussian eastern provinces (Harnisch, 1974; 1977; Borowski, 1963). Seen through this lens, late eighteenth-century domestic service could be considered as a response to these early signs of imbalance between population and available resources. [45]
So far, we have been discussing the occurrence of servants mainly in the “western” cluster. What then, about the scarcity of service in the two eastern regions? How can this phenomenon be explained? First, it has been pointed out that the late eighteenth-century Belarussian family system may not have been the same as it was in the sixteenth century (Nosevich, 2007; Višniauskait?, 1964). Indeed, there exists substantial, if much disputed, evidence suggesting that nuclear households definitely prevailed in Belarus at the beginning of early modern times (see review in Szo?tysek, 2007c). If such a contrast between the centuries was actually the case, why could we not also believe that patterns of domestic service in the xvith century “east” were very much the same as those in the “west” three hundred years later? Unfortunately, the sixteenth-century estate inventories often testified to a discontinuity in the development of Belarussian family patterns registered no information on domestic servants. What they did register, however, were the unmistakable traces of a different kind of service. Those life-long servants (czelad? najemna), mostly unfree in the literal sense of the word, could be quite numerous on some noble estates of central and western Belarus, where they worked for the manors (?abko-Potopowicz, 1929, 53-56). Additionally, the picture we have painted of exclusively kin-centred Belarussian domestic groups, tightly shut out from outsiders, may not hold fully for earlier times. The institution of dvorishche (also known as zdolnictwo or siabrostwo), a system of joint land cultivation believed to have existed in Belarus and Red Ruthenia before the mid-xvith century, encompassed not only persons linked by family unity, but also outsiders. Such collective farms had a single head, cultivated the land jointly, and paid dues as a unit. Although they did not necessarily co-reside in a strict sense, such a system certainly involved relations of both superiority and subjugation between certain individuals or family units (those from outside the leading family occupying an inferior position). Such relations might even have taken form as a basic sort of contract (Jefimenko, 1892; Downar-Zapolski, 1897, 88-91). Why these two “ancient” institutions never developed into domestic service of the “western” type remains a historical puzzle. However, by investigationg how and why they disappeared over the course of history, we can get a sense of the major forces that worked against the development of life-cycle servants in those territories. It has been suggested that both institutions discussed here ceased to exist as a result of the agrarian reforms of the mid- xvith century, already mentioned in the third section above. A major rationale behind this “upheaval of a considerable scale”, as these reforms were labelled by some scholars (French, 1970, 118), was the landlords’ persistent interest in the multiplication of human numbers and tax-payable labor units. These practices are well documented. Landlords generally prevented the co-residence of too many potential dues-paying units and often responded to farmers’ attempts to accumulate family labour manpower by ordering bailiffs to “split large and supporting individual families” (Morzy, 1965, 151). In their militant attempts to reduce the number of empty or deserted holdings, some landlords ordered members of their landless classes (bobyli; komorniki) to become household heads, or otherwise to be expelled from the village. It seems that in regions where labour was scarce, land abundant, and agricultural advancement low, population was the greatest form of wealth, thus leaving no room for the development of non-cultivating labour classes. This proposition seems to be supported by the findings of agricultural economists which suggest direct links between low population density, simplicity of technology and land abundance on the one hand, and the non-existence of landless labour classes and hiring and labour exchanges, on the other (Boserup, 1965; Binswanger and McIntire, 1987).
Such objective economic circumstances influenced individual behaviours of peasants as well, creating further disincentives for the development of life-cycle service. Whereas in the “west” considerable land mobility offered alternatives to staying on the family farm and provided incentives for entering hired labour, in Belarus and Red Ruthenia the more complex domestic groups accorded various insurance substitutes to younger household mem-bers, thus discouraging them from leaving home. [46] Whether socioeconomic conditions in the “eastern” clusters facilitated the development of cultural attitudes toward the depreciation of hired labor, or whether such depreciation was already pre-sent in the familistic life environment of Belarussian peasants (Obr?bski, 2007 [1944], 139), is difficult to judge. If one has a fondness for ethnographic anecdotes (see the opening quotations), it may be inescapable to conclude that a cultural element was important in shaping the different patterns of labour organization in the Polish “western” and “eastern” regions.
Concluding remarks
30The intention of this article is to demonstrate the interrelations that the institution of life-cycle service may have had with the different patterns of household formation and family labour organization which prevailed in the vast territories of the historical Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. By proposing to discuss the problem along the lines set forth long ago by Hajnal and Laslett, the under-researched context of the Eastern European serf family life can now be included in the existing multifarious research on the larger European experience of domestic service (Fauve-Chamoux, 2004; Fauve-Chamoux & Wall, 2005). After presenting arguments both for and against the influential Hajnal-Laslett model, we now briefly weigh them against each other.
31We have sufficiently documented that life-cycle service constituted a pivotal formational experience for significant numbers of individuals in the large areas of east-central Europe. These regions have generally been believed to represent not only household formation patterns that differed from those in Western Europe, but also dissimilar forms of individual life cycles and family labor organization. A major argument stemming from these results adds another dimension to the suggestions I have already made elsewhere (Szo?tysek, 2008a), namely, that neither Hajnal’s polarized model of different household systems in Europe nor Laslett’s fourfold division of the set of familial categories in historic Europe could capture the true multifariousness of service patterns in the eastern part of the continent. Even though we have ascertained that traditional English society was not exceptional in the numbers of its servants, this fact does not necessarily imply that Hajnal’s and Laslett’s intuitive insights have to be entirely rejected. It seems more reasonable to argue that despite the many layers of its common historic heritage, historical East-Central Europe should not be conceptualized as a region with common demographic characteristics. The clear progression in the numerical importance of servants within the larger regions we have dealt with here offers strong argument in favour of such a particularistic proposition (also Plakans & Wetherell, 2001). That, in turn, would suggest that the line suggested by Hajnal dividing the demographic regions must be redrawn, or even better, replaced by a more elaborated concept of a “transition zone” between Western and Eastern European family and household formation patterns (Kaser, 1997; 2002).
32However attempts at redrawing such a line while still retaining the general great divide in Eastern Europe to which Hajnal was attached could be risky, if not entirely impossible. For example, it is possible that the non-existence of a wider East-Central European pattern of domestic service at the end of the xvith century hinted at in this paper could be accepted only with reservations. ?abko-Potopowicz, in his study of hired labour in late eighteenth-century Lithuania, found some evidence of the occurrence of servants in peasant households at a scale not very different from the rates revealed for the “western” cluster (?abko-Potopowicz, 1929, 164-174). [47] His data, however, never covered the regions from which come the Belarussian data presented here, but referred instead to more northern and western parts of Lithuania (Duchy of Samogitia; voivodships Wilenskie, Brzeskie, Trockie—all areas located north west of the region 6_1). In addition, the cultural, economic, and also demographic dissimilarities between these areas and the Belarussian heartland surrounding Minsk has been raised several times in the literature (?owmia?ski, 1998; Conze, 1940).
There are also further limitations to the present study, including first of all, its cross-sectional and time-invariant character. Although by combining a variety of evidence we arrived at viable testimonies to the relative continuity of general domestic service patterns over the xvith to xviiith century in the “west”, the need for a truly longitudinal study to deal with this problem quickly becomes more pronounced. Only with such a study could the significance of life-cycle service from the point of view of individual life-course transitions be properly assessed. Last but not least, we would be interested in discovering exactly how the institution of service evolved in the xixth century, at a time when modern agrarian reforms and the processes of peasantry emancipation led to a dramatic transformation of earlier household strategies, as well as of modes of labour organization and labour recruitment.
NOTES
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[*]
I wish to thank Antoinette Fauve-Chamoux, Vincent Gourdon, and also two anonymous referees for their valuable comments on the earlier version of this article. I am also grateful to D. Biskup for his excellent database management. I also thank my sister Julia Szo?tysek and Marie Bolton for language editing.
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[1]
The rural district of Puck is situated near Gda?sk in the Pomeranian part of what in this paper I refer to as “western” cluster.
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[2]
The character of the data used in this research and its historical-socioeconomic context were described at length elsewhere (see Szo?tysek, 2008a).
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[3]
Unclear spatial taxonomies added to the confusion surrounding the notions of family systems in the eastern part of the continent. For Hajnal (1982, 449), “the German speaking area” meant the part of the territories belonging to the “Northwest European pattern” of household formation. Although he made no assertion about historical Poland and no commitment as to the kind of household system that characterized Eastern Europe in the past, he was nevertheless likely to relegate the Hungarian territories to the eastern family type (Hajnal, 1982, 469). In Laslett’s terminology, historical Polish territories were split between “West/central or middle” and “Eastern” zones of supposed European family patterns, with western Poland possibly included in the former, and the Lithuanian, Belarussian and Ukrainian lands all lumped together with what was considered to be the European “East”. In this article I use a more inclusive geo-historical category of “East-Central Europe” to denote a vast area between Germany and Russia, a large part of which was covered by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. On the validity and application of the concept in historical research, see Halecki, 1952; Janowski, 1999; ?aszkiewicz, 2004.
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[4]
Some 13-14 percent of the population in Laslett’s 100 English communities from 1574 to 1821, were believed to be in service (these figures rose to 60 percent for the age group 15-24), while 28.5 percent of all households in the sample had servants (Laslett, 1969, 219; Laslett, 1972, 152). Other studies revealed proportions of servants in population ranging from 24.8 percent in Coventry and 25.5 percent in Ealing, to 13.8 percent in Canterbury (all figures for the xvith century), and 13.6 percent in seventeenth-century Cambridge (reviewed in Mayhew, 1991, 210). Hajnal posited that in northwestern Europe “servants were numerous, apparently always constituting at least 6 percent, and usually over 10 percent, of the total population” (Hajnal, 1983, 96-97). Generally high proportions of servants have also been reported for various regions of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Austria, and some other parts of the Habsburg Empire (Mitterauer, 1992, 144-147; see also Ehmer and Mitterauer, 1986).
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[5]
Kamler believes her findings could also be applied to other parts of the Polish Kingdom.
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[6]
Some recent exceptions are (Szo?tysek, 2007a, 2008a) and (Kopczy?ski, 1998). Laszuk (1999, 124-125) noticed a decrease in the number of households with resident servants in those regions of Podlachia where kin coresidence was more widespread, but she did not elaborate on that issue. Bujak was clearly aware of the life-course consequences of the one-heir system prevailing in the village of ?mi?ca which he stu-died, but made no attempt to investigate on the problem in periods prior to the late xixth century (Bujak, 1903, 68-74). Kuklo included the analysis of the phenomenon of service in his study of the late xviiith century female urban population (Kuklo, 1998).
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[7]
The remaining data comes from other types of household lists, including “communion books”, some local administrative surveys, as well as Crown estate inventories. Apart from the published editions of the archival materials, the major part of the household lists comes from the following archives or libraries: Central Archives of Historical Records in Warsaw (AGAD), The State Archive in Lublin (AP Lublin), The State Archive in Kraków (AP Kraków), The State Archive in Wroc?aw (AP Wroc?aw), National Historical Archives of Belarus in Minsk (regar-ding the latter, microfilms in the possession of Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, were used).
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[8]
The character of the Belarussian 1795 censuses cannot simply be equated with other Russian “soul revisions” discussed so far in the literature. Contrary to revisions taken on other Russian territories, the listings discussed here occasionally registered living-in servants, as well as lodgers/inmates, so there is no reason to believe these categories were omitted from the sources by definition.
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[9]
The rules governing a definitive abolition of serfdom, implemented between 1781 and 1786 in the Habsburg Empire, were then transferred to the Austrian (Galizian) share of Polish partitions. These territories, however, are not represented in the database used in this article.
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[10]
Parishes from the region 6_4 and part of those belonging to regions 6_1 and 6_2 were already at the time of census-taking annexed by Imperial Russia and included into its new admi-nistrative units.
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[11]
Further details are given in Szo?tysek and Biskup, 2008a, 2008b.
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[12]
The Hufenverfassungssystem is discussed in Kaser, 2002 and Mitterauer, 1999.
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[13]
Peasants were also encouraged to increase their holdings by renting additional pieces of land for cash payments. This happened in other areas of historical Poland on a much smaller scale than in Belarus.
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[14]
In the “west”, large peasant farms were only truly numerous in region 5, in some parts of regions 3 and 8, where they often belonged to hereditary or emphyteutic freeholders.
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[15]
Such uniformity was generally confirmed by results of variance analysis; see Szo?tysek and Biskup 2008a, 2008b.
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[16]
Again, it is confirmed by other ANOVA estimations; see Szo?tysek and Biskup 2008a, 2008b.
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[17]
The concept of ecotype was developed by Scandinavian cultural anthropologists. O. Löfgren defined it as “a pattern of resource exploitation within a given macroeconomic framework” (Löfgren, 1976, 100).
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[18]
Region 5 (“west”) was omitted in the figures, since it consisted of only two parishes. In those parishes, however, servants were present, respectively, in 43.1 and 17.5 percent of households, where they made up 18.1 and 10.4 percent of the total population.
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[19]
Corvée (pa?szczyzna), unpaid labor that pea-sants owed their lords in exchange for the personal use of small farms, was predominant in the “west”. Wishing to have as many peasant families ready to perform such duties for the demesne as possible, the feudal lords’ chief goal was to prevent the co-residence of too many potential dues-paying units. Large family households were intended to split up, and the subsequent individual families would receive the landowner’s support.
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[20]
A longitudinal study of the parish of Bujakow (part of the region 8 in this dataset) suggests that life-cycle service was positively correlated with the probability of later achieving residential autonomy. Most servants recorded in one census were in a different position in a subsequent one. Basically, there were three alternatives. Some servants eventually came to own a holding, either through inheritance or through in-marriage. A considerable number of servants could found a family of their own, although they had no access to landed property; these became lodgers. Others disappeared from parochial registration after a few years, meaning they probably emigrated. Many servants worked in several households during this phase, some returned to the same household later, but rarely did they come back to their parental home (Szo?tysek, 2004; Szo?tysek and Rzemieniecki, 2005, 155).
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[21]
The term “lodgers/inmates” (Polish komornicy) refers to serfs (unless referring to communities of freeholders) who usually had no access to landholding, generally had no house of their own and therefore rented parts of the peasant premises (usually a room) from the landowner in exchange for rent or some labour duties (see more in Szo?tysek, 2007a, 29).
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[22]
Other scholars (Izydorczyk-Kamler and Wycza?ski, 1990, 278-281) revealed the very competitive nature of a hired labour market, in which female servants were usually less successful than male in satisfying their financial needs through received wages (based on data from southwestern Poland, 1530-1636).
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[23]
In the Polish territories, serfs’ early and universal marriage was often considered to be the landowners’ greatest wealth. The demesne officials were constantly reminded to encourage frequent weddings either through small money rewards, or a free provision of alcohol for those organizing them. Servants in particular were encouraged to marry after a certain age. See Pawlik, 1915, 90, 257, 277.
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[24]
From the cross-section it is hard to separate the mortality and outmigration effects on the slight depletion for the 20 to 29 age group among both sexes in all the clusters. In principle, under the serfdom system the rural population’s freedom of movement was restricted, although landlord policies and practices may have sometimes differed in this regard. However, research focused on towns of the late eighteenth-century Poland has revealed the population influx from the rural countryside, mostly however on territories covered by our “western” cluster (Kuklo, 1998; Karpi?ski, 1992). Towns were much less developed in Belarus. On the other hand, fugiti-vity among the rural subjects was widespread on some Belarussian demesne estates.
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[25]
The major difficulty with the “synthetic cohort approach” is the assumption that life course household position of different age groups in the cross-section is likely to represent an ave-rage experience of a real cohort passing through time, providing that such a group of individuals could be followed longitudinally. However, the usual hypercriticism in this regard can be somewhat softened when referring to Ancien Régime populations. Although demographic patterns under the Ancien Régime might have presented short-term fluctuations, they also exhibited a real long-term stability. This means that, as soon as a data sample is large enough, the hypothesis of stability which is behind the cohort approach is verified (I thank one of the anonymous referees for alerting me to this perspective).
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[26]
“Ever married” persons encompass both those married at the time of census taking, as well as those widowed.
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[27]
These results were arrived at through by dividing the number of male servants who between the age of 25 and 29 could have potentially left service to get married (521), by overall increase in the number of married men between the age of 25 and 29 years (1,458). These figures were calculated in the following way: from the peak number of the male servants in the 20 to 24 age group, the number of men still remaining in service in the 30 to 34 age group was deducted. A rough estimation of the fraction of male servants who between the age of 25 and 29 could have potentially left service in order to get married was calculated in this manner (659 persons). This figure, however, was further decreased by subtracting potential celibates among males who departed service (138) under the assumption that the percentage of never married men among servants would be the same as it was in the whole male age group 30-34, that is 21 percent. Still, of course, some of those who were left might have actually moved away from their localities after the end of a contract, or died, rather than stayed on the local marriage market). Consequently, in order to estimate an overall increase in the number of married men between the age of 25 and 29 years, the number of ever married males in the age group 20 to 24 was subtracted from the corresponding figure for those aged 30 to 34 (1,458 persons). In all calculations, married servants (who occurred in marginal numbers in the age groups scrutinized here) were excluded.
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[28]
Regrettably, as information on marital status of older persons was often not recorded in our data, it was impossible to meet the requirements necessary to estimate the proportions of persons in permanent celibacy for all age groups. Nevertheless, it was estimated that almost 50 percent of males and 29 percent of females within the age group 25 to 29 were not married in the “west”. The corresponding figures for the two other clusters were 17 and 14 percent for the “middle east”, and 28 and 33 percent for the “east” (Szo?tysek, 2008a, 24-25).
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[29]
Of all ever married females aged 20 to 24, 25 to 29, 30 to 34, women not heading independent households accounted respectively for: 34.7 percent, 22.1 percent and 20.7 percent. However, there may have been a link between providing unpaid labor in the household of relatives, and the subsequent marriage experience.
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[30]
Some striking peculiarities surface in regard to elder female servants from the “middle east”, but the small numbers upon which these estimates are based do not lead to definite conclusions.
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[31]
Age at first marriage was estimated on the basis of local studies pertaining to the regions discussed here. Relevant information is provided under Table 6.
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[32]
Dependency ratio is a well-established device for measuring labor force size. The usual definition of dependency ratio is the number of dependent aged and children per one person (or one hundred persons) in the economically active age range. A high dependency ratio value indicates a large number of dependents for every worker on average, and smaller labor forces; a low value indicates the reverse (Reyna, 1976).
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[33]
On the other hand, there was only a marginal effect of service on the dependency situation in households of the “middle east”.
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[34]
The general pattern looks very much the same, if the problem is approached by using the Chayanovian consumer/producer ratios (for recent application and methodology, see Hammel, 2005). If assessed without taking account of the servants’ labour contribution, the “western” households would have the highest consumer/producer ratios (1.44 in the heads’ age group 40 to 49, and 1.50 among those over 60 years old), but the shape of the curve would resemble that seen in other regions. In the “west”, adding servants’ contributions allowed for a decrease in household dependency below the levels typical of the two “eastern” clusters.
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[35]
Since in this case we discuss the dependency situation of households varied by structure as understood in terms of their kin component (following the Laslett/Hammel scheme), the effects of the non-family labour force were removed from the “western” and “middle-eastern”cluster estimations.
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[36]
Traditionally, Polish economic history recognizes three separate categories of servants: domestic servants in towns, servants employed by landlords to work on manors, and finally, servants hired by peasant householders. The latter phenomenon, however, is usually the least revealed in the existing historical sources, and hence it has been the least examined so far.
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[37]
Similar figures were also reported for the western part of the country in the same year (Nowak, 1975, 139).
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[38]
For other scholars supporting this view, see Izydorczyk, 1983, 21.
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[39]
These are also accompanied by an increasing number of entries mentioning servants in the local village court rolls (most often in the context of landlords’ attempts to discipline their sexual behaviour).
-
[40]
The widespread occurrence of servants is also confirmed for lands neighbouring the Polish Crown, e.g., a part of Western Pomerania in 1649 (Wachowiak, 1971, 38). In this area, such a category made up 19.9 percent of the total number of rural households and 25.4 percent of the entire county’s rural population. In some late xvith century towns, servants constituted up to 26 percent of the total population (Karpi?ski, 1992, 41-42).
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[41]
At least two broad perspectives can be suggested to model factors responsible for the pre-sence of servants in peasant households. In the first, the incidence of domestic servants could primarily be explained by causal factors produced within a given family system, namely, by the internal demographic dynamics of family or household (very much in the spirit of Chayanov’s unpursued insights; see Chayanov, 1966). A decision to hire servants would then be understood as dictated primarily by the experienced level of household well-being (governed by the number of its produ-cers and consumers, age composition, the presence of kin, etc.), as such a household would progress through a domestic cycle. Living-in servants would be most likely recruited during the phases of household labour shortage (first, in the beginning of the household head’s reproductive career, and then again in the “empty nest” phase), and would disappear again once a more favourable dependency situation had been achieved. In contrast, in the second framework, the occurrence and number of servants in a peasant household is the product of a complex interplay of a variety of external factors, with the size of arable land in the usufruct of a family and the amount and nature of labor obligations imposed on the household by a landlord both playing a crucial role (Rutkowski, 1956[1914], 212-215). The interplay of both sets of factors is most likely necessary to understand the occurrence of servants.
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[42]
Every single peasant family on a plot of land was then responsible for delivering labour ser-vices of various kinds.
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[43]
However, peasants with larger plots of land (and consequently, greater labor dues) might have managed to keep their offspring on the farms longer (Kochanowicz, 1983, 158-159).
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[44]
For example, the son of a peasant householder from Lesser Poland (region 7) refused to stay on the parental farm and confessed that he preferred to go into service because the family farm was in debt (P?aza, 1969, 75).
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[45]
However, this does not necessary explain the occurrence of service in preceding centuries.
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[46]
An absence of attractive, flourishing urban centers may have also asserted that kind of in-fluence in Belarus and Red Ruthenia. Young pea-sants were often reluctant to take up cultivation of available holding somewhere in the village. As far as we can tell, their concerns were primarily driven by several hindrances and constraints imposed on a new householder, affecting him negatively with respect to the prospects of his household’s prosperity (e.g., a great welfare burden to carry for a new household due to the insufficiency of family labour manpower at the beginning of its developmental cycle); see Szo?tysek & Rzemieniecki, 2005, 136.
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[47]
His data for 28 demesne estates speaks for 2.5-62.5 percent of households containing living-in servants, while the aggregated mean value for all locations would equal 24.1 percent.
