![]() The central and western Pyrenees also had laws preventing the unification of estates. In Ireland during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, when Britain's Penal Laws prohibited the practice of Roman Catholicism, Catholics saw their lands confiscated and were prohibited from constituting or reconstituting their estates, forced instead to live as tenant farmers. Obstacles to social mobility were also imposed in the name of religion. In many countries -and primarily for the nobility -there were legal mechanisms to protect male heirs while simultaneously ensuring the survival and integrity of estates. It was the social destiny of the males that was essential, not that of the females. It is clear, however, that the lack of male offspring was a serious concern for strongly patriarchal families, especially among the social elites. Research based on patronyms can be misleading by exaggerating both geographic and social mobility of certain family names, because it was the women who ensured the continuity of the family. Also, a considerable number of families simply disappeared, either because a family produced no children at all or no male heir. Social backsliding could also be the result of bad luck, such as the premature death of the head of the family or of the only male heir. Ruination, as a result of bad investments or careless spending.This was a consequence much feared by good families. Shame, linked to loss of honor or due to misbehavior.Such exogamous marriages resulted in pulling women upward in social status. However, marriage was also a means of "enriching the stock," that is, bailing out the sons of impoverished noble families by marrying them to rich heiresses from the bourgeoisie, especially the daughters of financiers. There were three main avenues leading to loss of status: However, this should not be considered solely a question of wealth: in the Maine region of France, the fact of belonging to an old, wellestablished, and honorable family was sufficient to dispel many of the social differences linked purely to wealth. Even among commoner families, there was a constant fear of social backsliding. When nobility was particularly institutionalized, as it was in France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, loss of status and its accompanying privileges became a permanent worry. The fear of social backsliding -slipping down the social ladder -was a veritable obsession. Finally, in a world where learning and literacy were not available to all of society, the fact of belonging to a noble or bourgeois elite, or even an artisan elite, conferred advantages that were as decisive as family wealth and constituted another obstacle to social ascension. Indeed, social division was sometimes stricter among commoners than among the nobility. Sons of master craftsmen had privileged access to their fathers' skills. Heredity was also important in the artisan classes throughout Europe, as the Thus, short of massive ennoblement, ascension to the social elite was inherently a minor, even marginal phenomenon. Because it was hereditary, the nobility was difficult to join. These were ordered societies with nobility at the top of the hierarchy. Nearly everything in the structure and function of European societies was opposed to social mobility of any great consequence. Nevertheless, there were opportunities for "upward mobility," as in sixteenth-century France, when r éussite sociale (social success) enabled so many of the bourgeoisie to become gentlemen, and their families with them. Thus, for the early modern period, social mobility, when it occurred, generally involved family and kinship groups and bore little resemblance to its modern counterpart. Marriages usually joined one "house," lineage, or family to another of equivalent social status. ![]() The hereditary nature of position and status was supported by systems of family lineage, patronclient relations, and loyalty. Removed from these hierarchies, the isolated individual appeared marginal at best. Social position or status was determined by an individual's place within the institutions of family and social hierarchy. Early modern European societies were by definition nonegalitarian.
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