This is the first book to survey the experience of servants in rural
Europe from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century.
This is the first book to survey the experience of servants in rural
Europe from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century. Live-in servants
were a distinctive element of early modern society. They were typically
young adults aged between 16 and 24 who lived and worked in other
people's households before marriage. Servants tended to be employed for
long periods, several months to years at a time, and were paid with food
and lodging as well as cash wages. Both women and men worked as servants
in large numbers. Unlike domestic servants in towns and wealthy
households, rural servants typically worked on farms and were an
important element of the agricultural workforce. Historians have viewed
service as a distinct life-cycle stage between childhood and marriage.
It brought both freedom and servility for young people. It allowed them
to leave home and earn a living before marriage, whilst learning a range
of agricultural and craft skills which reduced their dependence on their
parents and increased their choice in marriage partners. Still, servants
had limited rights: they were under the authority of their employer,
with a similar legal status to children. In many countries the
employment of servants was tightly controlled by law. Servants could
demand their wages, and leave when the contract ended, but had to work
long hours and had little say in their work tasksduring employment.
While some servants effectively became family members, trusted and cared
for, others were abused physically and sexually by their employers. This
collection features a range of methodologies, reflecting the variety of
source materials and approaches available to historians of this topic in
a range of European countries and time periods. Nonetheless, it
demonstrates the strong common themes that emerge from studying servants
and will be of particular interest to historians of work, gender, the
family, agriculture, economic development, youth and social structure.
JANE WHITTLE is Professor of Rural History at the University of Exeter.
Contributors: CHRISTINE FERTIG, JEREMY HAYHOE, SARAH HOLLAND, THIJS
LAMBRECHT, CHARMIAN MANSELL, HANNE ØSTHUS, RICHARD PAPING, CRISTINA
PRYTZ, RAFFAELLA SARTI, CAROLINA UPPENBERG, LIES VERVAET, JANE WHITTLE
