All rooms are equipped with an overhead projector
Rooms C, D, E, F, G and H (H only on Saturday): slide projector (framed slides, carrousel. There are extra carrousels available to set up your presentation in advance)
Rooms C, D, M, N, O, U and Committee Room 2: beamer to connect your laptop. You have to bring you own laptop. (If you want to use your Apple notebook, please contact us, as it may be incompatible.)
Rooms C, T and U: VCR
Programme
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Beyond market and reciprocity: A peasant way to economic growth (Westphalia, 1820-1870)
| During the 19th century, Westphalia underwent a massive growth in agrarian output, particularly in regions close to industrial centres of demand. In the context of this session, 19th century Westphalia is a very particular region to study. This is the period when property rights were disentangled between lords and peasants, and when the Prussian state introduced a modern system of documenting property and hypothecs. Also, common lands were divided in some regions during the 19th century. However, the concept of “agrarian individualism” is of limited use since property in farms remained collective—shared between wives and husbands, or widow(er)s and sibling groups. As to the division of farms in the context of inheritance, it was allowed by the legal system where lords had relinquished their formal property rights. However, subdivision was not widely practiced, and the public construction of “peasants of the good kind” strongly emphasized the virtuous mores of impartible inheritance.
In order to test if growth, property rights, and the land market were interrelated elements of agrarian modernization, I have chosen to study three parishes in Westphalia, situated in contrasting ecotypes. Our research group collected data on the level of individual land transactions and embedded them with prosopographical data from family reconstitutions spanning the entire local population. In much of the current literature an impersonal pricemaking market is contrasted to systems of familial reciprocity. Consequently, a major aim of my study was to identify the both the share of market transactions and the degree to which the circulation of land was influenced by a sense of mutual solidarity among kin. Using classicl trias of market, redistribution, and reciprocity, it turns out that while a market in the sense of formal economic theory did exist, it was not very liquid, and could not perfom any pricemaking function. Wider systems of kinship relations, on the other hand, did not work as a major influence on land transactions, either. What remains is the redistribution of land within the nuclear family. Westphalian peasants managed to participate in modern economic growth by using markets for their output, while remaining passive in terms of markets for input. Thus, Westphalia can serve as an example for a peasant way to growth.
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