(originally published by H-German on 20 January 1996)
In this essay, Jürgen Schlumbohm offers an unfortunately superficial reflection on the identification between lineage and land in peasant society. He wishes to test whether farmers farmed for their sons, to give an old adage its modern formulation. His intention is laudable: to examine the applicability of a contemporary sociological model, what one might call the familistic-individualistic dichotomy. His conclusions, however, are limited by a lack of sufficient data and a (perhaps judicious) unwillingness therefore to construct an alternative vision.
Schlumbohm begins by offering his readers a brief orientation in the historiography of the discussion. Alan Macfarlane's notion of a sharp divide between English (modern) individualism and European, peasant (traditional) familism provides the point of departure. This extreme position has been much modified. Roger Schofield has insisted on a continuum rather than a disjunction, and a host of empirical studies, such as Sabean's on Neckarshausen, have demonstrated the ephemerality of a land-family bond even in traditional rural communities. Yet, despite the attention addressed to them, the strategies that inspired land transfers remain unclear.
To elucidate them, Schlumbohm offers a study of the exchange of farms in the parish of Belm, located just outside the city of Osnabrück, between 1650 and 1850. What he finds is suggestive. Farms in Belm changed hands almost exclusively within families. They were rarely sold. Such transfers as occurred were not strictly patrilineal. Only 38 percent went from father to son; daughters had a claim to the property, too. Some 36 percent occurred via remarriage; spouses and children of subsequent marriages were by no means excluded from inheritance. Indeed, were children lacking altogether, more distant relatives in either the husband's or wife's family might be chosen to succeed to the farm. In Belm, therefore, farmers (and farmwives) farmed for their sons (and daughters). Their intrinsic interest notwithstanding, these quantitative observations are badly compromised by the size of the statistical base. With only 100 large farms or 160-185 large and medium-sized farms, it is not possible to determine the significance of Schlumbohm's percentages. Given that the population of the parish tripled over the period of study, an answer to the question of a land-family bond requires information regarding rates of exchange and the fragmentation or augmentation of holdings. The bond apparently existed in Belm, albeit within a much more broadly defined family, but the reader is left wondering how it functioned and why.
Schlumbohm attempts to address these issues through the examination of a single disputed inheritance, that involving the Meyerhof zu Belm, the largest farm in the parish in the first decade of the nineteenth century. In fact, he devotes a bit more than half of the article to a close description of this exceedingly complex case. It confirms the statistical analysis and argues against some of the standard assumptions regarding peasant society. First, the Meyerhof case corroborates the identification of lineage and land in the parish of Belm. All claimants were related to the Meyer family in one way or another. Second, litigants and authorities alike defined lineage in flexible terms. It could apply to male or female relations. It could apply to the husband's or wife's family. Neither in law nor in practice did a patrilineal land-family bond have absolute priority. Yet, Schlumbohm leaves the reasons for this flexibility to the reader's imagination. A single case, like a small observed population, can only suggest strategies and structure. It cannot prove them.
I would argue that the shifting definition of family in the case of the Meyerhof zu Belm might indicate an interesting degree of opportunism. The sudden appearance of competing claimants for so large and rich a farm implies that the identification of lineage and land might have been a pretext for other concerns. To pursue this line of reasoning, Schlumbohm needs to offer a bit of context. The rural economy would have been as great a factor as inheritance laws. Commodity and land prices, for example, might cast further light on the interests that motivated individual behavior.
Schlumbohm concludes, quite rightly in my opinion, that peasants were not dominated by the notion of a land-family bond. They used it only insofar as it served their interests. Their behavior was shaped in part by social and cultural institutions and in part by material circumstances. These circumstances are precisely what this essay lacks.