Matrimonial Strategies and Family Reproduction in the Context of Industrialization (France 18-19th Centuries)

Fabrice Boudjaaba, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris

This paper analyses the relationship between marriages and land ownership in the context of industrialization. It will be a question, in the context of a village near Paris that was transformed into an industrial suburb in the 19th century, of analysing how, thanks to endogamous marriage strategies, peasant families could resist the land pressure of new activities (industries, urbanization). To this end, we study the matrimonial behaviour of the older families of a commune, Ivry sur Seine, in the Paris suburbs between the second half of the 18th century and the 1860s. At the beginning of the period Ivry is a village of winegrowers with a thousand inhabitants and at the end of the period an industrial town with more than 15000 inhabitants. How do these inhabitants, who have strong family and genealogical roots in the commune, react to the radical transformation of their environment? How do matrimonial strategies preserve a traditional way of life and forms of social reproduction despite these economic transformations?

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 6. Love and Marriage? Material Considerations and Couple Formation in the Past