Making a living, making a difference gender and work in early modern european society

Focusing on how people used their time to make a living, the authors un-of this book base their results on meticulously collected and analyzed verb phrases from the period 1550 to 1799—

Making a Living, Making a Difference

Making a Living, Making a Difference

Gender and Work in Early Modern European Society

E D I T E D BY M A R I A   ÅG R E N

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Title: Making a living, making a difference : gender and work in early modern

European society / edited by Maria Ågren.

Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016021507 (print) | LCCN 2016033627 (ebook) | ISBN 9780190240615 (hardcover : alk paper) | ISBN 9780190240622 (pbk : alk.paper) |

ISBN 9780190240639 (Updf) | ISBN 9780190240646 (Epub) Subjects: LCSH: Labor—Europe—History | Sexual division of labor—Europe—History | Women—Employment—Europe—History | Europe—History—1492– | Europe—Social conditions.

Classification: LCC HD4851 M343 2017 (print) | LCC HD4851 (ebook) |

DDC 331.5/60940903—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016021507

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Paperback printed by WebCom, Inc., Canada Hardback printed by Bridgeport National Bindery, Inc., United States of America

1 The Diversity of Work 24

Jona s L indström, Rose marie Fiebr anz , and Gör an Rydén

4 Less Than Ideal? Making a Living before and outside Marriage 103

H anna Östhol m and Cristina Pry t z

5 Constitutive Tasks: Performances of Hierarchy and Identity 127

Karin H a s s an Jans s on, Rose marie Fiebr anz , and Ann- Catrin Östman

6 The Dark Side of the Ubiquity of Work: Vulnerability

and Destitution among the Elderly 159

Erik L indberg, Benny Jacobs s on, and S ofi a L in g

vi C o n t e n t s

7 Gender, Work, and the Fiscal- Military State 178

Marie L enner s and, Jan Mispel aere , Christopher Pihl , and Mari a Ågren

A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

This book is the result of a large research project in the humanities: Gender and Work in Early Modern Sweden The project grappled with one of the eternal questions in history— what ordinary people did and thought in the past— and, thanks to modern technology and “big data,” this book offers new answers The book makes a contribution to the early modern history of work, but equally important, it proposes new methodology and models what we can do with a large, complex dataset The project has been very generously funded by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, and the Swedish Research Council has pro-vided additional funding to make the Gender and Work database a reality As the leader of the project, I wish to express my sincere thanks not only to these providers of funding but also to project members, colleagues, and friends in Uppsala, Sweden, and around the world

Deeply felt thanks go to Sheilagh Ogilvie, Margaret Hunt, and Martin Naylor, who have all given the project group invaluable support, inspiration, and well- earned criticism We would never have dared to embark upon this project had it not been for the model that Sheilagh’s work set for us, and her enthusiastic but always candid feedback helped us sharpen our arguments We would never have completed the book had it not been for Margaret, who started out as an external adviser and ended up as our colleague Margaret, thanks for your meticulous reading and sound advice And, Martin, this book would have been so much less readable if you had not been at our side, never sparing your own time to help us improve our English

Equally warm thanks go to the people at the Demographic Database, Umeå University, who tailor- made the GaW database for us Maria Larsson, Jimmy Ljungberg, Pär Vikström, Lars- Göran Carlsson, Bo Persson and Sören Edvinsson were always eager to help us; we have shared both sorrow and (more often) joy since we first started to work together If all human collaboration were as smooth

as ours, the world would be a better place The database has had an advisory

viii A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s

group of its own: thanks go to John Rogers, Per- Anders Edin, Bo Danielsson, Thorleif Pettersson, Sören Edvinsson, Linda Oja, Joakim Nivre, Anki Mattisson, Bengt Dahlqvist, and last but not least Ingrid Almqvist, who coined the term

“verb- oriented method.” With Eva Pettersson, Joakim Nivre, and Beáta Megyesi

we have run an exciting side project with the purpose of finding a way of matically identifying relevant verb phrases in early modern texts

auto-Over the years, the GaW project has benefited from the advice of Christina Florin, Jan Lindegren, Leif Runefelt, Karin Sennefelt, Johan Söderberg, Rolf Torstendahl, Kirsi Vainio- Korhonen, and Eva Österberg Thank you for many good ideas and a very good time together In 2013, the advisory group was ex-tended to include Amy L.  Erickson, Alexandra Shepard, Judith Bennett, and Margaret Hunt Thanks for helping us at a critical moment of our work We also wish to extend our thanks to the scholars who have visited us as guest research-ers over the years: Amy Erickson, Kirsi Vainio- Korhonen, Sheilagh Ogilvie, and Julie Hardwick Thank you for enriching our academic milieu

The home of the project has been the History Department at Uppsala University We thank former vice chancellor Anders Hallberg, former vice rector Margaretha Fahlgren, and former dean Jan Lindegren for proposing the project

to the Wallenberg Foundation We also thank former head of department Lars

M. Andersson for his unstinting support and Elisabeth Brandberg for managing the money Elisabeth, you are a pearl! Linda Oja and Elisabeth Gräslund Berg were members of the project at an early stage, and even if they do not stand

as authors of this book, their contributions are integral parts of the message that we want the book to convey Jessica Karlsson assisted with transcription of documents The maps were made by Matilda Svahn, Josefine Andersson, Fanny Reuterskiöld, Jaqueline Österberg, Jesper Runfors, and Ellen Andersson, stu-dents at Uppsala University

We are lucky to have Susan Ferber as our editor Thank you, Susan, for ing in this book: not every editor would enthuse at the idea of a multiauthored monograph about a small country in northern Europe, based on new method-ology Thank you also for being such a warm and generous person We are also lucky to have Maya Bringe and Susan Ecklund at our side; Maya coordinated the production process in a calm and good- humored way and Susan copyedited the manuscript beautifully Thank you!

believ-Maria Ågren

GaW database.

Benny Jacobsson holds a PhD in the history of science and ideas from Stockholm University He is the author of Den sjunde världsdelen: Västgötar och Västergötland 1646– 1771: En identitetshistoria His many interests include

the history of education He is a research assistant within the Gender and Work projects

Karin Hassan Jansson is senior lecturer and docent in history at Uppsala University Her work focuses on gender, sexuality, service, and political debate

in early modern society She is the author of Kvinnofrid: Synen på våldtäkt och konstruktionen av kön i Sverige 1600– 1800 (2002) She is the lead author of

Dag Lindström is professor of history at Uppsala University, previously at Linköping University His work focuses on crime, urban history, state formation, households, and the history of single men He is the author of Skrå, stad och stat: Stockholm, Malmö och Bergen ca 1350– 1622 (1991) and, with Eva Österberg, Crime and Social Control in Medieval and Early Modern Swedish Towns (1988)

He is the lead author of chapter 2 in this book

Jonas Lindström holds a PhD in history from Uppsala University and is rently a postgraduate researcher and teacher of history at the same university His work focuses on rural history, work, and inequalities He is the author of

cur-Distribution and Differences:  Stratification and the System of Reproduction in a Swedish Peasant Community 1620– 1820 (2008) He is deputy coordinator of the

GaW database and lead author of chapter 1 in this book

Sofia Ling holds a PhD in history from Uppsala University Her work focuses

on women’s work in medicine and commerce from 1650 to 1870 She is the author of Kärringmedicin och vetenskap:  Läkare och kvacksalverianklagade i Sverige omkring 1770– 1870 (2004) and Konsten att försörja sig: Kvinnors arbete

i Stockholm 1650– 1750 (2016) She is the lead author of chapter 3 in this book.

Jan Mispelaere holds a PhD in history from Uppsala University His work focuses on the history of childhood, child labor, and transport He is the author

of, for example, Guldmynt eller äpple: Straffrättsligt ansvar för barn och ungdomar

i Sverige och Nederländerna 1590– 1800 (2009).

Hanna Östholm holds a PhD in the history of science and ideas from Uppsala University Her work focuses on the history of education and universities She is the author of, for example, Litteraturens uppodling: Läsesällskap och litteraturkri- tik som politisk strategi vid sekelskiftet 1800 (2000).

Ann- Catrin Östman holds a PhD in history from Åbo Akademi, Finland Her work focuses on the historiography of gender history and on women’s work in the nineteenth century She is now developing an interest in women’s early mod-ern trade She is the author of, for example, Mjölk och jord: Om kvinnlighet, man- lighet och arbete i ett österbottniskt jordbrukssamhälle ca 1870– 1940 (2000).

C o n t r i b u t o r s xiChristopher Pihl holds a PhD in history from Uppsala University His work focuses on gender and work at the sixteenth- century royal demesnes in Sweden, but he also has an interest in the history of credit institutions He is the author of

Arbete: Skillnadsskapande och försörjning i 1500- talets Sverige (2012).

Cristina Prytz holds a PhD in history from Uppsala University Her work focuses on women and property and on country house culture She is currently

a Marie Curie visiting scholar at Manchester Metropolitan University She is the author of Familjen i kronans tjänst: Donationspraxis, förhandling och statsformering under svenskt 1600- tal (2013).

Göran Rydén is professor of economic history at Uppsala University His work focuses on the iron trade, as microhistory and from a global perspec-tive He is the author, with Chris Evans, of Baltic Iron in the Atlantic World in the Eighteenth Century (2007) and the editor of Sweden in the Eighteenth- Century World: Provincial Cosmopolitans (2013).

Making a Living, Making a Difference

A  female servant also testified that the same day she had observed Ingeborg lying in great pain, but that she knew nothing of what happened after she left the house to do some work in the woods along with the male servants In the court proceedings, it also transpired that Ingeborg’s aunt had taken her presumably bloodied clothes to a neighbor’s house to wash them Upon their return home, Ingeborg’s parents had been at pains to persuade the neighbors not to mention

to anyone what they had seen.1

While the primary reason for taking this case to court was the suspicion that Ingeborg had killed her newborn infant, subsequent investigation also disclosed

a good deal about the nature of early modern women’s and men’s work Almost

in passing, the documents tell us that women in this area carried heavy objects and worked alongside men in the woods They also say something about the hierarchies of work: the barn owner had not dismantled the old building himself but had had someone else do it for him Finally, the documents say something about the role of kin and neighbors in early modern society: it was the aunt who discovered that Ingeborg was pregnant and who washed the dirty clothes, and she did this at a neighbor’s house for reasons that remain obscure

Historians know that in the early modern period virtually everyone worked, including almost all women and most children over the age of six.2 But for many reasons it has been difficult and time- consuming to trace the exact nature of this

it was the discovery of a clandestinely buried child that made the story known Work was ubiquitous, as the case makes clear, but it is nevertheless elusive to historians, making it hard to assess its wider significance for either the economy

or society, or to show its intersections with larger historical developments.This case came to light because it was one of a large number of sources forming part of a pioneering project designed to provide much more in- depth information on women’s and men’s work than we have hitherto possessed With the help of a huge dataset comprising more than 16,000 references to early modern work activities, the authors of this book can discern the general implications of Ingeborg’s case We know, for instance, that Ingeborg was not the only woman to carry heavy burdens and that the female servant was not the only woman to work alongside men in the woods Carrying burdens was

a common task for many women, and working alongside men was not common The combination of fragmentary details, extracted from individual cases, and a very large dataset reveals the importance of phenomena that have previously gone unnoticed and whose impact may therefore have been over-looked Focusing on how people used their time to make a living, the authors

un-of this book base their results on meticulously collected and analyzed verb phrases from the period 1550 to 1799— an approach we refer to as the “verb- oriented method.”

But why do we need to know what women’s and men’s work consisted of in the relatively distant past? What does it matter to people living in the twenty- first century? Are we not already aware that European women entered the labor market in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and that that devel-opment was closely connected to modernization, industrialization, and democ-ratization? Do we need to know more?

Knowing more about women’s and men’s work in the relatively distant past reveals the historical fallacies contained in this “common- sense” view of wom-en’s work in the past For instance, this book argues that many early modern societies were based on a “two- supporter model,” a term coined to signal that both spouses contributed in various ways, though not necessarily financially,

to the household economy.3 When married women’s participation in the labor force declined sharply in Europe in the nineteenth century, only to rise again in the twentieth, this was from an unprecedentedly high level in the late eighteenth

Introduction 3century.4 A sharper view of the pre- 1800 situation thus illuminates similarities between today and the distant past, turning the long nineteenth century and the male- breadwinner model into something of a parenthesis While the two- breadwinner model is often portrayed by politicians as closely linked to democ-racy and the modern welfare state, this book shows that that is not the whole story There are intriguing continuities between the early modern period and the present.

These crucial nuances cannot be seen without a more precise picture of the early modern situation We need to know more about men’s and women’s work practices before the nadir in the U- shaped curve How did people before 1800 actually secure a living for themselves and those close to them? We also need

to know more about what work meant in the early modern period What notations were attached to various forms of work, and what did work mean in terms of quality of life? Finally, we need to know more about how gender and work changed over time and varied across space What roles, for instance, did state formation, commercialization, proletarianization, and the growth of public debate play?

con-These are the general questions addressed in this book The authors use the verb- oriented method applied to Scandinavian evidence to discuss them They show that working people were ubiquitous in early modern society, that both women and men were actively involved in all forms of work, and that they often worked together This was the general pattern, consonant with but not neces-sarily a product of Protestant religion and its emphasis on work as the common lot of humankind.5

Of course, the ubiquity of work does not imply that work meant the same thing to everybody It was a “common” lot only in a very superficial sense The fine- grained analysis underlying this book shows that on the level of concrete work activities, there were both subtle and stark hierarchies For instance, both men and women played an active part in the transport sector, but they did not

do exactly the same things While many women carried burdens on their backs,

in their arms, or in their hands, many men used vehicles instead But differences did not always follow gender lines; they also reflected age, household position, and social position Married women did not do the same things as their female servants did

Establishing the Nature

of Women’s and Men’s Work

Everywhere, work and its various remunerations and consequences are tral to human life and to gender relations In spite of this, the history of how

cen-4 M a k i n g a L i v i n g , M a k i n g a D i f f e r e n c e

women and men supported themselves and their children before 1800 remains insufficiently explored for most countries As Sheilagh Ogilvie wrote in 2003, these “are big and important questions People have been asking them for centuries … [Yet] progress has been slow.”6

Since then, the situation has improved There is a much clearer picture

of women’s work in the early modern Dutch Republic, for instance.7 Jane Humphries and Carmen Sarasúa have synthesized the nature of paid work of married women in a number of European countries in the past They show that the trough of the U- shaped curve was much less deep than once believed They also stress that, contrary to modern assumptions, female labor market partici-pation was employer- driven rather than worker- driven In other words, the idea that women preferred not to work for pay, if they had other options, is not ten-able To the extent that paid work was available, such work was probably also attractive.8 Consequently, the point of departure for research cannot be whether women worked but, rather, what they did for a living.9

It remains a fact, however, that we know too little about both men’s and en’s work in the distant past The reasons for this state of affairs are manifold Humphries and Sarasúa rightly point to the problem of inappropriate sources and serious undercounting when it comes to assessing the volume of married women’s paid work.10 Payrolls give fragmentary images, and occupational titles tend to convey the false impression that people had only one “job.”11 But a still more intractable problem is the fact that the work of both men and women was often unpaid or paid in belated and (to the modern observer) unorthodox ways Such work has not left the same paper trail in the archives, thus posing a serious problem for the historian or economist researcher Up until now there have been few convincing ways to study the whole gamut of men’s and women’s work.Other circumstances exacerbate the problem Within certain social strata there may have been a preference for women not to be seen working, since work

wom-in public could be construed as a sign of low respectability As a result, less of whether these women actually performed work, the probability of such work being mentioned in the sources is reduced.12 In a similar way, both men and women may have tried to conceal their work activities and the fruits of their labor in order to evade taxes or the control of guilds and corporations.13 And, while well- documented in nineteenth- century ethnographic descriptions, the gendered division of work seems to have been in flux in this period, making it perilous to extrapolate backward in time.14 The risk is that the nineteenth cen-tury will eclipse the distant past

regard-Finding systematic information on work in the pre- 1800 period is, sequently, difficult Historians have tried to handle this problem in various ways One solution is to make deductions based on indirect evidence; that is, the scholar draws conclusions about what people must reasonably be assumed

Introduction 5

to have done, and then uses that to connect and account for data trends This applies, for instance, to Jan de Vries’s theory of an early modern industrious revolution, where the discrepancy between declining wage levels and increas-ing levels of consumer goods within households is said to indicate more intense work activity on the part of women.15

Another solution has been to make assumptions based on what codes of law said about women’s legal authority to act This has also proved a risky route to take While the formal limitations, for instance, on the legal capacity of mar-ried women imply that they were strictly controlled by their husbands, evidence

of early modern practice throughout Europe suggests a more flexible reality Married women had access to property, were responsible for debts, and appear

to have been particularly active in petty commercial activities.16 These tions all seem to be at odds with the letter of the law and create the impression that there was a gap between law and practice

observa-It has to be borne in mind, however, that many early modern states were composite states, and thus several legal traditions could coexist within the same polity Many of these traditions were in themselves flexible and malleable, allow-ing for decisions based on notions of equity, discretion, and custom Moreover, even in countries that had relatively homogeneous codifications (like those of Scandinavia), these codes were seldom exhaustive and were in many respects open to interpretation Early modern law should therefore be conceptualized not as unified but as multivocal The pragmatic attitude that Swedish historian Eva Österberg has identified as typical of early modern legal culture was a neces-sary requirement for forging these different strands into a whole.17

In this legal culture, rights and privileges had to be cultivated, continuously claimed, and socially accepted in order to remain in force Repeated and ac-cepted practice not only prevented rights from falling into disuse but could even create new ones Tacitly accepted practice created notions of rights that could be asserted Consequently, if the source of law lay not just in written texts but also, and perhaps more significantly, in social practice accepted in local communities and harbored in memory, codes of law cannot be regarded as the norm, nor can practice be looked upon as an aberration from, or confirmation of, that norm This makes it very risky to draw conclusions about women’s agency from nor-mative statements.18

Historians’ discovery of court records makes the discrepancy between ten rules and everyday practices particularly clear, suggesting that, often, it is better to take what people actually did as the point of departure.19 Court records have also helped historians of the early modern period interpret women’s strate-gies of survival.20 Testimonies in court have been particularly useful, since they often provide information en passant, that is, information the courts did not ask for and therefore, perhaps, information that is less biased.21 Ingeborg’s case

Given this state of research, more empirical evidence about practice is needed Such an approach does not preclude the use of other types of evidence, as this book also acknowledges The basis for the analysis, however, should be data on practices, simply because they are underexplored and have great potential to cre-ate new knowledge By looking at “singular” examples, as French scholar Michel

de Certeau put it, the researcher will spot the innumerable unnoticed things people were doing, and what these everyday acts meant Such a microhistorical approach often discloses human creativity, inventiveness, and agency occurring

in what would at first appear to be the “margins” of the grand narratives In these margins, however, small- scale practices could generate large- scale change And, even when small- scale practice did not translate into change, it may nevertheless provide valuable clues as to how societies in the past worked.23

Conceptualizing the Framework

of Early Modern Work

Lists of what men and women did in the past, though valuable, will not often advance understandings of how work was organized and what it meant to people and to society Most historians would probably argue that early modern people must be understood and contextualized as members of house-holds It is a well- established truth that the household was an important or-ganizational structure in early modern society A vast body of demographic and socioeconomic research has pointed to its role as a unit of co- residence and collaboration Cultural historians have also shown that the household was a crucial part of early modern social imagery Regardless of how house-holds functioned in everyday life, the well- ordered household was upheld as a role model not just for families but for society as a whole The actions of early modern people cannot be understood if they are seen as atoms decoupled from the context of the household

The recurring descriptions of households as well- defined, well- ordered, and self- sufficient units did, however, serve political interests in the early modern world and must not be taken at face value, as English historian Susan Amussen

Introduction 7has demonstrated Amussen has also stressed that, in real life, only well- to- do households could be self- sufficient in the ordinary sense of the word Many households were far from self- contained and therefore depended on relations

of support and exchange with other households.24 It can be a problem if torians think of social activities (such as work) as always happening within the

his-physical and organizational framework of the early modern household, or if we conceptualize the boundaries of households as clear- cut and in no need of prob-lematizing The house should not be conceptualized as a “container,” Swiss his-torian Joachim Eibach cautions, but rather as an open, permeable structure.25

Ingeborg’s case supports this idea: the young woman and her family interacted closely with their neighbors and were dependent on their help and loyalty People’s multifaceted needs forced them to interact all the time across house-hold boundaries

Early modern sources can trick the historian into thinking of households as more stable units than they actually were The fiscal importance of the house-hold from the mid- sixteenth century onward heavily influenced the way house-holds were presented in sources from the period So, for example, in Sweden, many, if not all, taxes were levied on the basis of the cadastral unit, which in real life corresponded to the messier reality of several peasant holdings and families Consequently, the sources generated by the tax system emphasize the house-hold unit and the head of the household, rather than the many diverse activities going on outside and between households

This rigid image of the household also had religious support Martin Luther’s Small Catechism, for instance, taught the importance of household order, thereby enforcing a view of the household as a well- ordered and well- defined microcosm Moreover, an earlier generation of historians was deeply invested

in the notion of the closed household Even now, some historians talk about the gradual disruption of the household as a unit of production, consumption, and reproduction, following enclosure and proletarianization “Disruption” of course entails the implicit idea that, at some previous point in time, households were intact, and also that production took place within them.26 Finally, nineteenth- century ideas about the private and impenetrable character of the home have coalesced with these factors to support the notion of early modern households

as closed, well- ordered, and self- sufficient In this way, similarity across time has been overemphasized and has prevented historians from seeing what went on in daily life outside and between early modern households

Imagining the household as an open and permeable unit where the tinction between private and public becomes largely irrelevant— which is what Eibach suggests— clarifies the ways in which early modern house-holds differed from nineteenth- century bourgeois visions of the home Early modern households were not the same type of phenomenon, and they were

dis-8 M a k i n g a L i v i n g , M a k i n g a D i f f e r e n c e

embedded in a different institutional setting Thinking in terms of “open houses” or networks highlights movement, mobility, migration, and work opportunities that offered themselves to men, women, and children outside,

or in the interstices between, households.27 It is a reminder that relations of mutual help linked people to each other across institutional and organiza-tional boundaries It also brings out the fact that the household was not the only organizational unit for early modern work; there were many other types that sometimes cut across and superseded it A focus on people’s activities, and how they were linked through these activities, makes for a more nuanced view of the early modern organization of work

Conceptualizing Unequal Institutions

Throughout Europe, early modern society was based on inequality, tion, and hierarchies— between social estates, between generations, between genders, and so on Many of these hierarchies were institutionalized, that is, they were expressed and upheld by systems of law and by governments Corporatist institutions such as guilds have been intensely debated, not least in terms of what their monopolistic policies meant to people outside them.28 With its assumed hierarchical order and ideological importance, the household is often taken

subordina-to be an unequal institution, and early modern work has subordina-to be underssubordina-tood in relation to it

The institution that has attracted the most interest in gender history is riage, which, among other things, gave husbands a greater say in the administra-tion of property There were important nuances within Europe, however While

mar-in England a married woman was under coverture and barred, at least ically, from active ownership of money, goods and real property, in many other countries she had more property rights and was under marital guardianship only This probably afforded greater leeway in everyday life.29

theoret-For instance, Hilde Sandvik has shown that in early modern Norway legal capacity was understood as something one could have more or less of, rather than as something one had or did not have.30 Similarly, Inger Dübeck and Grethe Jacobsen have shown that the Danish judiciary was highly flexible from the Middle Ages until around 1800, accepting a wide gamut of trading practices for women.31 For France, Julie Hardwick has argued that “local courts did not up-hold the limitations on married women’s ability to engage obligations without their husbands’ permission.”32 It has also been pointed out how unlikely it is that early modern economies could have grown if a large part of the adult popula-tion was effectively barred from administering property and being economically active.33

Introduction 9Against this backdrop, many early modernists have begun to stress that, in several respects, being married may actually have been the most attractive posi-tion for an early modern woman Married women often worked within a wider range of occupations than other women, they worked for pecuniary income, and they sometimes won social respect and recognition because of their work.34 This was true even in England, where there seems to have been some reluctance to admit in public that married women did contribute to the marital economy.35

Analyses of legal records have also shown that, while disadvantaged in terms of inheritance, many early modern women nevertheless had access to property, and this helped them to support themselves.36

These findings strongly suggest that the “teleology of emancipation” must not

be allowed to distort the picture of women’s agency in the distant past and side the Western world.37 Agency can exist even in unexpected places, though

out-it should not blind us to structural inequalout-ities, relations of power, or instances

of abuse Conceptualizing premodern marriage as the result of “patriarchal gaining” has been shown to be a context- sensitive way of understanding female agency.38 For example, while a married woman’s formal legal agency was more limited than that of a widow, many widows nevertheless remarried The right to act on their own obviously meant less to some widows than being attached to husbands and having access to their social and economic resources By submit-ting to male guardianship once again, widows made compromises with the pa-triarchal structure, but paradoxically, this could increase their opportunities for exercising economic agency.39

bar-Rather than being attractive to women because it offered maintenance, early modern marriage could be attractive to both women and men because it usu-ally offered them the best opportunities to support themselves and those who depended on them The economic problems encountered by single people sup-port this conclusion Unmarried women had fewer economic opportunities than married women in many European countries, excluding England,40 and were overrepresented among the poor.41 Having an independent household of one’s own was something men and women had good reason to value in early modern society.42

This conclusion does not rule out that early modern marriages could be highly problematic, just as modern marriages may be Marriage did not necessar-ily enhance agency, and violence could be a tangible reality of family life Being married should not be conceived of as the best option in all respects But from

an economic point of view as well as from the viewpoint of social standing and reputation, married people had other and often better options than unmarried people, and married women had other and often better options than unmarried women The findings presented in this book further support these conclusions; women who were or had been married generally performed different types of

10 M a k i n g a L i v i n g , M a k i n g a D i f f e r e n c e

work than the never- married and had better access to power and other resources The same was true for men Marriage was a factor that significantly affected both women’s and men’s everyday practices

Understanding How Notions of Difference

Were Constructed

The role of social difference varied more in early modern societies than in ern, democratic ones In many countries, membership within a social estate was arguably one of the most important grounds for constructing difference between humans The differences between the estates were fiercely insisted upon in many forms of social interaction One example is the way the sociopo-litical estates were addressed in the Swedish Diet Each had its own honorary epithet: the highly praiseworthy noble estate, the highly erudite clerical estate, the esteemed burgher estate, and the honest peasant estate.43 Titles, dress codes, and forms of rhetorical address all worked together to uphold ideas of differ-ence, hierarchy, and distinction Outward appearance was of paramount impor-tance because it signaled to others who someone was and how he expected to

mod-be treated.44

In this culture of outward signs, what people were seen doing acquired a cial meaning People who were seen carrying heavy things in the streets were understood and classified as fundamentally different from those who could order others to carry for them Performing a work task such as carrying was, literally, a performance of identity It affected how someone was classified and treated by others, and it probably affected self- identity

spe-As practices are repeated, they turn into routines that are taken for granted They not only are taken for granted but also acquire a sense of naturalness Practices that do not conform to expectations appear strange, incomprehen-sible, and hard to classify A well- dressed gentleman carrying a heavy sack would have challenged many accepted notions in eighteenth- century society.45

All forms of human difference can acquire specific meanings through peated practice; conversely, meanings can change and be lost as practices are discontinued Not just gender, but age, social position, marital status, and health can be ascribed meaning and lose it in this way There were many grounds for constructing social difference in early modern society, and gender did not al-ways emerge as the most obvious one As this book shows, position within the household was often more striking

re-If practice can construct notions of difference, it is hard to refute the tention that it might also, sometimes, construct notions of sameness Logically,

Introduction 11notions of difference or of sameness must be two possible outcomes of practice

If, for instance, the routine of having men and women sit on different sides in church enforced ideas about gender difference, then ceasing this routine must reasonably be assumed to have signaled and enforced ideas of gender sameness Similarly, having different schools for boys and girls creates notions of differ-ence, and changing this practice undermines such notions The female servant working together with the men in the woods, in the case from 1662, therefore attracts particular interest, especially if it was a widespread practice Did such work create notions of sameness?

This book argues that work and strategies of survival can produce notions of both sameness and difference On the one hand, both men and women took part

in almost all forms of work in early modern Scandinavian society, and this may have nurtured ideas about sameness, particularly when buttressed by biblical ideas about equality before God Similarly, when both working men and work-ing women in England claimed that they were honest and industrious and could support themselves, the difference between the genders was not pronounced.46

On the other hand, the conditions under which men and women performed the same work often differed Most women were paid less than men, for instance, and the practice of differential payment signaled not only difference but also hierarchy The verb phrases used to describe men’s and women’s work often dif-fered, even if the actual work was the same What people did mattered, but the meanings attached to their actions could vary

Understanding How Processes of Change Affected People’s Working Lives

For many people in Europe, the early modern period was a time of strained ing conditions.47 Corporatist structures like guilds restricted people’s options and, at least in some parts of Europe, offered both men and women, in Sheilagh Ogilvie’s words, “a bitter living.”48 In Eastern Europe the level of coercion increased as rural people were prohibited from moving about freely and making their own decisions about marriage and the use of their time In other parts of Europe, people had more liberty to move, but their economic vulnerability was pronounced, and many were caught up in networks of debt and dependence For the extremely poor, making a living and being seen as trustworthy could

liv-be a very difficult challenge, requiring both tenacity and inventiveness.49 Some people complained vociferously, like the eighteenth- century Swedish customs official who grumbled about his poor wage and appalling working conditions.50

Others chose to be silent, and their stories are hard to find To many, making a

of state formation, many questions about who benefited from these cial and financial developments remain to be answered.52 This book shows how people could carve out a living at the intersection of state formation and small- scale commercialization.

commer-While increasing commercialization did open up some new opportunities,53

it closed off others The enclosure movements curtailed many customary rights and restricted the spaces in which people could make a living Over time, rural populations were polarized and the lower sections of them lost access to land and were proletarianized As laborers and customers, people were exposed to the opportunities and vicissitudes of the market Many perceived a wider set of options, but there were also risks, particularly for old people with few material resources and weak social networks

Capturing these old and new inequities historically is a challenge Economist Amartya Sen suggests that people’s situation and well- being in a given society are to be gauged by their resilience or, in other words, by the extent to which they are able to “bounce back” when hit by hard times What a person is able to

do and how that is viewed in society says a lot about power relations, regardless

of the source of those power relations Thus, Sen’s approach means looking at practices and then working from there to issues of power.54 Using the example

of old people, this book shows that many elderly were unable to choose the ways

in which they supported themselves To them, the social expectation for body to work was not empowering

every-While almost everybody worked, work did not bring the same tion and social recognition Sometimes, work greatly improved people’s material well- being and social entitlements; sometimes it was little better than begging for poor relief These stark realities put their imprint on the early modern period

Introduction 13

Solutions

To resolve these problems of understanding society necessitates better data, and

“big data,” on people’s everyday practices of work in the early modern period It

is, however, difficult and time- consuming to collect large amounts of such data, particularly since most of the relevant sources are unprinted Moreover, inter-preting such data requires sensitivity and source- critical awareness Modeling what can and cannot be done with a huge, complex dataset, this book illus-trates how microhistorical data can be married to large volume and long- term perspectives.55

The analysis in the following chapters is based on the “verb- oriented method.” The term highlights the obvious fact that historians use texts to draw conclusions about the past Texts contain various types of semantic data, of which verbs are one major type The job of verbs is to describe what people

do Not all verb phrases are relevant to questions about how people make

a living, of course, but very many are Time allocation studies distinguish household production and market production from leisure; the data used in this study cover the first two categories and exclude only leisure When we sleep, or play, or dance, we may not be making a living in any reasonable sense

of the word, and such use of time has not been included, but other than that, most time use is somehow related to the ways in which we support ourselves and those close to us This is even more true for early modern societies, many

of which were low- technology, with poorly developed infrastructures and limited productivity and exchange In such societies, almost everybody had

to do hard manual work In principle, all practices that served to secure a ing for one or several people have been included in the study, whether or not they were paid for.56

liv-The verb- oriented method can be used for time allocation studies, but the analyses presented in this book are not time allocation studies in the proper sense of the word The dataset does not contain information on what people did

in the course of an entire day, much less during a week or a year Consequently,

no time budgets can be established.57 The data in this book offer brief glimpses, rather than exhaustive descriptions of full days Each such glimpse would be dif-ficult to use in a meaningful way; what makes the glimpses valuable is the fact that there are several thousands of them and that they have been collected in a systematic and coordinated way Furthermore, each observed activity is linked

to one or several persons with some of his or her characteristics (name, gender, etc.), allowing for the investigation of the intersections of work, gender, and other categories This illuminates the multifaceted and diverse practices of spe-cific people who once lived, not their occupational titles (if they had any), nor

on payment, and the organizational framework within which the activity was performed (for instance, a household).58 From this database, a dataset of 16,182 contextualized verb phrases was identified as a suitable basis for this book, with

an average of 65 such phrases per year between 1550 and 1799 The sources can be grouped into four main categories:  (1)  court or court- like records, (2) accounts, (3) petitions, and (4) diaries The sample is varied both chrono-logically (Figure 0.1) and geographically (Figure 0.2).59

The dataset has three main selection biases It likely underreports women’s work activities and agrarian work in general It certainly underreports men’s marital status These biases can be handled but need to be kept in mind

The extent to which the sources yielded information on women’s work fered markedly Court records turned out to yield the least: only 20 percent of the activities found there were carried out by women, compared with 34 percent

dif-in the case of accounts, 35 percent for petitions, and 59 percent for women’s

0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500

Figure 0.1 Distribution of verb activities over time in the GaW dataset, as of 1 April

2014 Figure created by GaW project.

Introduction 15

diaries By contrast, only 3 percent of the activities referred to in men’s diaries were undertaken by women Clearly, who the writer was had a strong impact on what types of information were included in diaries Overall, some 22 percent of the roughly 16,000 activities were performed by women If activities performed

Stockholm

Göteborg

Number of observed activities 0

1–100 101–1000 1001–2000 2001–5000

400 Kilometers 200

N E S W

100 0

Figure 0.2 Areas in present- day Sweden from which information in the form of verb phrases has been collected GaW dataset, as of 1 April 2014 Map created by GaW project.

16 M a k i n g a L i v i n g , M a k i n g a D i f f e r e n c e

by persons with unknown gender are excluded, the share of activities taken by women rises to 25 percent This proportion remained relatively intact for most of the period under discussion, but after 1750 it became distorted because of the great abundance of diary material in the dataset

under-Does this mean that women performed 25  percent of all work in early modern society? To answer this question, we need to look closer at the records and, since they yielded three- quarters of all observed activities, the court records in particular

Most aspects of human life seem to be covered in the Swedish court records

We know that the primary (i.e., local, first- instance) courts of Sweden enjoyed great popularity in the Middle Ages and the early modern period, and that sub-jects took most types of cases (both criminal and civil) before them This did not preclude out- of- court settlements being reached, but the main conclusion

in Swedish and Scandinavian research is that the primary courts were legitimate

in the eyes of the population and that they were the main arena for all forms

of law enforcement and dispute resolution Thus, violence, defamation, sexual misdemeanors, theft, disobedience, and economic disputes and crimes were all handled by these courts In addition, land transactions and, in time, mortgages and probate documents were also registered by them, and not by ecclesiastical courts or notaries Finally, all social groups had reason to turn to the primary courts, including the nobility.60

The nonspecialized character of early modern Swedish courts does, then, gest that all sorts of people might turn up in this material, and that information given in passing may reveal all sorts of work The more interesting question is, however, whether there is any reason to suspect that certain types of work were under- recorded because they took place in precisely the places and situations where crimes and disputes rarely occurred If that were the case, harvesting the information that comes up accidentally in legal proceedings might skew the pic-ture of, for instance, women’s work

sug-In the Middle Ages and the sixteenth century, Swedish courts handled large numbers of assault cases (nonlethal violence) Often, the parties involved would

be men But the conflicts took place both outdoors and indoors, and aggressive intrusions into other people’s homes were criminalized and conceptualized as a breach of the peace Consequently, even if women did spend more time indoors than outdoors— and this is not proved— it is unlikely that their domestic chores would never surface in court records As the GaW dataset shows, women’s indoor work was in fact frequently mentioned Likewise, from the Middle Ages onward, rape was criminalized and conceptualized as a breach of the peace Since this was a type of crime where the man would often take advantage of

a situation where a woman was working on her own, it is, once again, unlikely that women’s work behind closed doors will never surface in the court records

Introduction 17Thus, the legal system’s focus on curbing violence wherever it erupted probably worked to increase the visibility of women’s work in the records.61 To increase the likelihood of domestic and “solitary” work turning up in the sources, a spe-cial collection of rape cases was deliberately included in the dataset.62

In the seventeenth century, the Scandinavian courts began taking an est in sexual crimes in the broad sense of the word These cases would involve

inter-at least one female party, and the witnesses were also often women This cumstance enhances the probability of women’s doings being recounted in court In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, finally, primary courts were increasingly occupied with settling disputes over real estate and economic trans-actions Real estate cases do not as a rule make any work particularly visible, because here people relied more on written documents than on oral evidence Consequently, we have included fewer property cases in the dataset than are to

cir-be found in an average eighteenth- century rural court record docket Economic transactions, by contrast, tell us about both men’s and women’s work, even if the men’s work more often occurred within the guilds or in state service, while that

of the women was more frequently connected with various forms of legal and illegal trade.63

It is clear that the GaW dataset includes less information on rural work than there was reason to expect, given the small- scale and highly agrarian economy

of Sweden This bias in the dataset reflects how rural work is underreported in court records This, in turn, is partly an effect of the great geographical distances between many rural settlements and “their” courts, which usually convened only one to three times a year Crimes and conflicts that occurred in the fields and the woods may be underreported in court documents because, when the time came

to go to court with one’s grievances, several months would have elapsed and an amicable settlement could have been reached, or the matter forgotten.64 Another reason for the underreporting of agricultural work may be that agriculture was not subject to as much legislation as, for instance, trade and manufacture.65 We must be very careful, therefore, when comparing observations from urban areas (where the court was close at hand and sat much more often, sometimes several times per week) with observations from rural districts

In sum, the observations gleaned from the court records probably timate the quantitative importance of both women’s work and rural work In fact, bearing in mind that historiography emphasizes women’s rural work in early modern society, the underreporting of rural work may explain the under-reporting of women’s work Consequently, we cannot draw the conclusion that women performed only some 25 percent of all work in society However, there

underes-is no reason to believe that important types of rural work are entirely absent from the dataset, which includes around 2,500 observed activities of agricul-ture, forestry, hunting, and fishing Likewise, it is unlikely that important types

18 M a k i n g a L i v i n g , M a k i n g a D i f f e r e n c e

of women’s work have remained unobserved; the dataset does after all include more than 3,500 work activities by women, including work that took place behind closed doors

The sampling procedure does not fulfill the demands for testing for statistical significance, since the observations do not constitute a random sample of people drawn from the same population The different materials used in this study have survived in ways that are far from random Further, it is impossible to give in ad-vance every person ending up in the dataset the same chance of being drawn into the sample As a result, estimated differences of proportions cannot be general-ized to any larger population based on statistical significance We may, however, assess how reasonable the results are in relation to what else is known about work, household structures, and gender relations, among other things, for the time period in question, just as historians usually do when the information is incomplete and has unknown biases

Thus, the following chapters show what women’s (and men’s) repertoires

of practices typically looked like They show that some tasks were seldom ported as having been carried out by a woman whereas others were seldom reported as having been carried out by a man They also show that many tasks could be carried out by both women and men There was considerable overlap between men’s and women’s repertoires of practices These results are robust The chapters also discuss how the repertoires of practices correlated with mar-ital status Here, the results for women are relatively robust, since the sources often provide information on their marital status By contrast, the results for men are more tentative, since information on their marital status was much patchier The way this selection bias was handled was to go back to each case

re-to see whether there were any systematic differences between cases where the man’s marital status was reported and (the more frequent) cases where the man’s marital status was lacking

The GaW dataset allows a number of different cross- tabulations and other uses Without in any way exhausting the possibilities, we analyze the data on sev-eral levels and from various angles in this book We discuss concrete cases, mak-ing the most of the contextual information We link practices to discourse: what people did and what they and others said about their doings We group all ac-tivities according to gender and marital status We look closely at a couple of selected sectors of work and the verb phrases most commonly used within them

We group all verb phrases by area of work, using sixteen categories

The categories were deliberately constructed to be heterogeneous For stance, the category “administration and justice” includes many phrases describ-ing activities by professional administrators, such as civil servants However, it also includes phrases describing activities by ordinary people who went to court

in-to accuse each other, assert their rights, hand in documents, pay fees, and so

Introduction 19forth The former case refers to proto- professional and semiprofessional admin-istration, while the latter comprises a sort of “everyday administration” that was crucial to people’s access to resources and, indirectly, to their survival While this category may seem to lump together unlike entities, there is good reason

to do so Combining highlights the similarity between what early modern civil servants and heads of household actually did The difference between proto- professional and everyday administration lies not so much in what people did but in the meanings attached to those practices The category “care” is another example of heterogeneity; it includes phrases like both “heal wound” and “pay for someone else’s care.” This combination illuminates that caring for others can take many forms, some of which have been more prestigious— like paying for care— than others.66

In this book, and particularly in chapter 5, the authors take the categories apart and subject their contents, the verb phrases, to scrutiny The authors show, for instance, that the category “managerial work” was both heterogeneous and gendered Some verb phrases were typically used to describe the managerial work of men, while others were used to describe that of women, even when the activity was more or less the same Combining the strategies of lumping together and taking apart, we are able to observe how constructions of similarity and dif-ference operated at the same time

The book begins with a discussion of what women and men actually did to support themselves and those dependent on them While providing a general backdrop for understanding early modern Sweden, chapter  1 mainly focuses

on the problem of “seeing” and assessing forms of work that are often poorly represented in the historical sources and therefore elusive to posterity Stressing the low level of occupational specialization in early modern society, the authors argue for the usefulness of the concept “multiple employments” to capture people’s repertoires of work practice They also present a first breakdown of all 16,182 activities according to gender and category of work, showing that both women and men were actively involved in most forms of work, and that think-ing in terms of “separate spheres” does not make sense In chapter 2, the authors argue that much work in the past is hidden by the ways in which the household is represented in historical sources and taken for granted in the historiography The authors show that, in fact, much work was probably not organized by the house-hold but by other types of organization, not least teams They also make the case for understanding early modern households as open and networking rather than closed and self- contained units

The book goes on to present the two- supporter model and its assumptions about spousal cooperation Contrasting married women with both unmarried women and women who were sole providers, the authors of chapter 3 argue

20 M a k i n g a L i v i n g , M a k i n g a D i f f e r e n c e

that marriage was seen as the basis of early modern society Together, chapters 3 and 4 show that practices of work and marital status were correlated in com-plex yet surprisingly clear ways The reason for these patterns was that marriage offered economic opportunities and authority to both men and women, while unmarried persons of both genders were less well endowed with these resources The authors of chapter  5 continue this discussion by analyzing the extent to which practices of work created notions of difference— gender difference, but also other forms of difference— and to what extent such practices contributed instead to notions of sameness On the basis of this analysis, the chapter demon-strates how work created difference and sameness, but also how difference and sameness shaped work in early modern society

The book also dwells upon the impact of processes of change Chapter  6 discusses how growing commercialization and social differentiation affected old people’s ability to support themselves and manage their own resources Chapter  7 explores how early modern state formation offered new income- earning opportunities to many men, while at the same time forcing or enticing their wives to engage in unacknowledged and poorly paid work activities, often

in the commercial sector Together, these two chapters suggest that the economy

of makeshift formed an important part of the history of work in early modern society and, more provocatively, that such practices actively shaped processes

This story about what happened when a peasant decided to take down an old barn “inadvertently” yielded valuable information about people’s work in early modern society In the same way, thousands of other early modern texts have contributed to the large dataset on which this book is based But each story is also useful in its own right This one about two young people, and how their

Introduction 21involvement with each other and the law came to a relatively happy end, shows how courts and local communities were often guided by a pragmatic attitude rather than a wish to set an example It is important to point out the reasons for this pragmatism Very likely, the court considered it more important to uphold the work unit created through Anders and Ingeborg’s marriage than to punish her for something that had happened some time ago Attaching great weight to stable work units that could both produce offspring and pay taxes to the early modern state, it turned a blind eye to some of the practices that these people had engaged in In so doing, the court confirmed and strengthened norms of marital partnership and hard work within the household.67

By studying the configurations of gender and work across time and space, this book reveals the interplay of structure and contingency, agency and con-straint in societies that were like and yet very unlike our own In the past as today, men and women worked in order to support themselves and their fami-lies In the past as today, people traveled frequently and far to make a living, making the meaning of “household” unclear In the past as today, work set its stamp on almost every aspect of life, coloring identities and speaking to broader social and political issues of value and empowerment Analyzing these similari-ties, as well as the many differences, this book bridges the divide between the present and the distant past

Notes

1 GaW dataset, case 541 Original source: Criminalia E V aa: 38, Göta Court of Appeal (Göta hovrätt), main archive, Regional State Archives in Vadstena Thanks to Jan Mispelaere, who found this case.

2 Important syntheses can be found, e.g., in Bennett, “History That Stands Still”; Sharpe,

Women’s Work; Simonton, History of European Women’s Work; Wiesner, Women and Gender;

Werkstetter, Frauen im Augsburger Zunfthandwerk.

3 See also Erickson, “Marital Economy in Comparative Perspective.”

4 See, for instance, Hunt, Women in Eighteenth- Century Europe, 168– 69 See also Boxer and

Quataert, “Introduction,” 9, for a criticism of too short a time perspective in discussions of women’s work.

5 Markkola, “History of the Welfare State.”

6 Ogilvie, A Bitter Living, 2.

7 Heuvel, Women and Entrepreneurship; Heuvel and van Nederveen Meerkerk, “Introduction:

Partners in Business?”; Schmidt and van Nederveen Meerkerk, “Reconsidering.”

8 Humphries and Sarasúa, “Off the Record.”

9 Ogilvie, A Bitter Living; Robeyns, “Sen’s Capability Approach,” 85; Hunt, Women in Eighteenth- Century Europe, 168– 69; Ogilvie, “Married Women, Work and the Law,” 238– 39.

10 Humphries and Sarasúa, “Off the Record.”

11 Woodward, “Wage Rates”; Meldrum, Domestic Service, 132.

12 Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, 307; K. H Jansson, “Föreställningar.” See Bennett, Ale, Beer, and Brewsters, and Östman, “Working Together?,” who also demonstrate the effect of

cultural ideals on the gender division of work.

13 Ogilvie, A Bitter Living; Scott, Art of Not Being Governed.

22 M a k i n g a L i v i n g , M a k i n g a D i f f e r e n c e

14 See Löfgren, Arbetsfördelning och könsroller, for a critical discussion.

15 De Vries, “Industrial Revolution.” A  similar method is used in Lindegren, Utskrivning och utsugning, where the discrepancy between a shrinking workforce and continued high taxa-

tion of households indicates more intense work activity Vainio- Korhonen has also used an indirect method to capture the work of women from lower social strata; in this case, it is the discrepancy between the need for clothes and shoes and the size of the officially recognized production and importation of such items that leads to the conclusion that more work must have taken place than can be spotted in the sources (Vainio- Korhonen, “Handicrafts”).

16 Erickson, Women and Property; Sandvik, “Umyndige” kvinner; Hardwick, Family Business;

Heuvel and Ogilvie, “Retail Development.”

17 Österberg, Folk förr, 167– 69; see also Thunander, Hovrätt i funktion, especially 264– 67.

18 On the role of discretion, see Braddick, State Formation, 82, 142; on legal pluralism, see

Hunt, Women in Eighteenth- Century Europe, 38– 43 On custom, see, e.g., Thompson, Customs

in Common, and Neeson, Commoners On married women’s legal capacity, see Dübeck, Købekoner og konkurrence, 218 (“consent was assumed to have been given because the hus-

band had been passive, that is, silently acquiescent”; MÅ’s translation), and Österberg, Folk förr, 199– 226; Hardwick, Family Business, 158: “gendered privileges (his right to deference,

for example) were contingent upon performance.”

19 Erickson, Women and Property, is a good example, showing that while the common law laid

down stringent rules with respect to women’s property rights, those rules were frequently circumvented in practice Harris, English Aristocratic Women, makes the same point for the

Middle Ages: “The legal system was, in short, far more flexible and multidimensional in its treatment of women than the unmodified doctrines of the common law would suggest” (243).

20 Andersson, Tingets kvinnor och män; Abreu- Ferreira, “Work and Identity”; Fagerlund, Handel och vandel; Hardwick, Family Business.

21 Winberg, “Några anteckningar.”

22 Jacobsen, Kvinder, køn og købstadslovgivning, 145– 76, 202, 306– 23.

23 Certeau, Practice of Everyday Life; Fur, Nation of Women, 1– 13.

24 Amussen, Ordered Society, 61, 66– 67, 111.

25 Eibach, “Das offene Haus,” 640.

26 The idea of household disruption is a commonplace that can be found in the works of Marx, Weber, and, for instance, Alice Clark For the Swedish discussion on household ideology, see Pleijel, Katekesen; Lindmark, Uppfostran; Harnesk, “Den föränderliga patriarkalismen.”

27 Ågren, “Married Women’s Work.”

28 Epstein, “Craft Guilds”; Epstein, “Discussion”; Ogilvie, “Can We Rehabilitate the Guilds?”; Ogilvie, “Rehabilitating the Guilds: A Reply”; Zanden, Long Road to the Industrial Revolution.

29 Dübeck, Købekoner og konkurrence; Sogner and Sandvik, “Ulik i lov og lære”; Erickson, Women and Property; Finn, “Women, Consumption and Coverture”; Andersson, Tingets kvinnor och män; Ågren and Erickson, Marital Economy; Ågren, Domestic Secrets; Shepard,

“Worth of Married Women”; Ogilvie, “Married Women, Work and the Law.”

30 Sandvik, “Umyndige” kvinner.

31 Dübeck, Købekoner og konkurrence; Jacobsen, Kvinder, køn og købstadslovgivning.

32 Hardwick, Family Business, 143.

33 Finn, “Women, Consumption and Coverture,” 707; Erickson, “Coverture and Capitalism”;

De Moor and van Zanden, “Girl Power.” See also Dübeck, Købekoner og konkurrence, 615,

who shows that Danish early modern legislators had a strong interest in encouraging labor contracts Consequently, formal rules of legal capacity were often disregarded.

34 Ogilvie, A Bitter Living, 145, 159, 172– 74, 205; Erickson, “Marital Economy in Comparative

Perspective”; Erickson, “Married Women’s Occupations”; Humphries and Sarasúa, “Off the Record,” 55– 56; Hunt, Women in Eighteenth- Century Europe, 168– 69; Heuvel and van

Nederveen Meerkerk, “Introduction:  Partners in Business?”; Ogilvie “Married Women, Work and the Law,” 239.

35 Shepard, “Worth of Married Women,” 206– 7.

36 Erickson, Women and Property; Ågren, Domestic Secrets.

37 Mahmood, “Egyptian Islamic Revival,” 210; Simonton and Montenach, Female Agency, 4.

38 Kandiyoti, “Bargaining with Patriarchy.”

Introduction 23

39 Andersson Raeder, Hellre hustru än änka See also Harris, English Aristocratic Women.

40 Erickson, “Coverture and Capitalism,” 8.

41 Österberg, “Bonde eller bagerska?,” 291; Ogilvie, A Bitter Living, 269– 319.

42 See, e.g., Whittle, “Servants,” on young people saving in order to be able to marry.

43 Alm, Kungsord i elfte timmen, 343; Stadin, Stånd och genus, 27.

44 Sandmo, “ ‘Et virkeligt mandfolk’ ”; Liliequist, “Personlighet, identitet och kön”; Wahrman,

Making of the Modern Self; Sennefelt, “Runaway Colours.”

45 West and Zimmerman, “Doing Gender.” Cf Butler, Undoing Gender.

46 Shepard, “Honesty, Worth and Gender,” 91; cf Hardwick, Family Business, 142– 43,

168– 82.

47 Zanden, Long Road to the Industrial Revolution, 5, 95– 100.

48 Quoted from Ogilvie, A Bitter Living, 1.

49 Shepard, “Language of Social Description,” 95.

50 Ågren, “Swedish Customs Officials.”

51 Certeau, Practice of Everyday Life, xix, xx, 37– 40.

52 Hunt, Middling Sort, 131.

53 See, e.g., Fontaine, History of Pedlars.

54 Sen, Development as Freedom Of related interest is the approach that looks at bargaining

out-comes; see, for instance, Agarwal, Field of One’s Own.

55 Cf Guldi and Armitage, History Manifesto.

56 The verb- oriented method is inspired by the method used in Ogilvie, A Bitter Living.

57 Wrigley, “Urban Growth,” pointed out that the ideal would be to study people’s time use, erably by means of time budgets.

58 For a more detailed description of the data collection, see Fiebranz et al., “Making Verbs Count,” and the appendix.

59 See the appendix for a complete list of the sources.

60 Österberg, Folk förr, 143, 195 (and many other publications); Österberg and Sogner, People Meet the Law, 271– 72.

61 Österberg, “ ‘Den gamla goda tiden’ ”; Österberg, “Våld och våldsmentalitet”; Österberg and Lindström, Crime and Social Control, 43– 54, 79– 83, 99– 101, 153, 156; Österberg, “Kontroll

och kriminalitet”; K. H Jansson, Kvinnofrid.

62 This collection contributed 681 activities to the dataset.

63 Ågren, “Att lösa ekonomiska tvister”; Söderberg, “En fråga om civilisering.”

64 Sundin, För Gud, staten och folket, 459– 62.

65 Kotkas, Royal Police Ordinances, 59, 132.

66 See the appendix.

67 Cf Wunder, “Er ist die Sonn”; Österberg, Folk förr, 199– 226.

1

The Diversity of Work

Jonas Lindström, Rosemarie Fiebranz, and Göran Rydén

As he approached the manor, he walked through a landscape undergoing change East and west of Lake Malmasjön, woods were being burned down, and land was being cleared Around the fields, wooden fences were being erected and ditches dug, and through them roads were being constructed The slopes adjoining the old farmhouses of Malma were being transformed into a terraced garden, surrounded by a stone wall In the middle of it all, a newly erected main building, three stories high and made out of stone, still lacking a roof, towered over the scene.1

We do not know where he came from, how old he was, or anything about his family But we do know why he came Erik Svensson arrived at Öster Malma,

a manor in Södermanland, sixty- five kilometers southwest of Stockholm, and stayed there for almost five months for the purpose of making a living The work

he performed was entered in the accounts of the manor It forms a list of verb phrases that allow us to see how Erik used his time on the building site, day

by day, from 9 May 1668, when he started work, until 30 September, when he received his last payment

In the account book, Erik is referred to as a “helper” (Swedish hantlangare)

On his first day at the manor, he worked on the stone wall surrounding the den, together with a journeyman mason The very same day, another journey-man mason whitewashed the wall, while a soldier prepared more whitewash for use Inside the garden, another soldier assisted the gardener in his work Six men, all soldiers, and one woman, referred to as a lime stirrer (kalkrörerska), shoveled

gar-soil in the garden to create the terraces Four female lime stirrers carried lime back and forth on the construction site A soldier carried stones into the main building, where two journeyman masons, helped by two other soldiers, used them to build a staircase

The stones used to construct the houses and the walls were transported to Öster Malma in winter by peasants, as part of the rent they paid to the manor

The Diversity of Work 25Bricks, another important building material, were made on- site During his final weeks at Öster Malma, Erik Svensson was involved in setting up a new brick kiln together with a carpenter, three journeyman masons, and thirteen soldiers

In August and September, Erik put up scaffolding, first for the carpenter who was working on the roof of the main building, then for the painter Two crofters worked alongside the carpenter on the roof, and two soldiers helped the painter

to paint, while a third soldier prepared the paint For six days, Erik assisted the carpenter who was laying the floor in the manor house

While making a living at Öster Malma, Erik Svensson and his fellow workers made a difference in a very material sense Most of his time at the manor Erik spent shoveling soil in the garden, a highly laborious undertaking In order to reshape the landscape, he shoveled clay for no fewer than sixty days during the summer of 1668 In total that year, twenty- four individuals worked for an av-erage of forty days each doing this Most of them were soldiers, some were brick workers, some crofters Among the diggers there were two female lime stirrers The results of their efforts are shown in the drawings made by Erik Dahlberg, son- in- law of the master of Öster Malma, Wilhelm Drakenhielm

Erik Svensson performed a number of tasks at Öster Malma As a helper on

a construction site, he filled in wherever necessary The work he did was mittent, casual, and subordinate These are traits that earlier research has found

inter-to be typical of women’s work.2 Looking at verb phrases, we find the work of many men can be described in similar terms In the case of Erik Svensson, the subordinate character of his work is suggested by his title: he helped However,

Figure 1.1 The manor of Öster Malma in the late seventeenth century From Eric Dahlberg,

Suecia antiqua et hodierna, Stockholm 1698– 1701.