A Cultural History of Work in the Early Modern Age by Bert De Munck Thomas Max Safley

Author:Bert De Munck, Thomas Max Safley [Bert De Munck, Thomas Max Safley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, History, Renaissance
ISBN: 9781350078253
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2020-09-17T04:00:00+00:00

FIGURE 6.1 Pieter Bruegel the Younger, The Harvester’s meal, 1565. Private Collection. Image courtesy of Getty Images.

Labor was gendered in early modern Europe, and in rural areas it affected the ways in which men and women experienced labor mobility. Where seasonal migration was common, women often stayed behind to manage the village household in the absence of their men. Gender also determined the sort of work young farmhands performed. While men and women made up almost equal proportions of migrant farm workers, the sorts of work they did differed. Women worked as milkmaids, cared for barnyard livestock, and helped prepare meals. Men drove draught animals, herded sheep, and handled plowing. Only at harvest time, when everyone’s labor was needed, did men and women work together to bring in the crops (Figure 6.1).14

URBAN MIGRATION AND LABOR

The rural and urban labor markets were closely tied in premodern Europe, fostering labor mobility as workers from the countryside sought opportunity in nearby cities and city dwellers ventured into the countryside to help work the harvest.15 Rapid urbanization was a major feature of early modern European society, and cities provided a steady pull on migrants looking for work. In early modern Europe, cities relied on constant in-migration from the countryside to maintain their populations. Demographics sinks, cities had mortality rates that could not be offset by reproduction, especially given repeated waves of famine and disease. Given these high levels of mortality, caused by poor sanitation and frequent outbreaks of epidemic disease, surviving records probably underestimate the pace of urban migration, since many migrants likely died before appearing on tax rolls or employment records.16 The pace of urban migration was impressive. The best recent estimate suggests that 1,067,000 people migrated to European cities between 1500 and 1550. Between 1551 and 1600 the figure climbed to 1,662,000 before returning to 1,052,000 in the period 1601–50.17

Most migrants to early modern cities came from their immediate hinterlands, areas with the most extensive trading relations between the urban core and rural periphery.18 In northern Europe, delayed marriage prompted many young men and women to migrate to cities for a time in order to earn the money necessary to marry. Young women from the countryside usually found work as domestic servants, while men often provided casual labor. After a time in the city, many of these rural migrants returned to their home villages to establish a household, only to be replaced by another wave of newcomers from the countryside seeking opportunity. Given the intense labor requirements of early modern workshops, cities relied upon large numbers of these migrant laborers. A single bakery in seventeenth-century London, for example, might call upon the labor of thirteen people.19

Not every migrant came from the countryside, however, and levels of migration between urban communities also remained high throughout the period. These interurban migrants often travelled farther than rural migrants to reestablish themselves in another city, with practitioners of more skilled trades and more educated professions usually migrating the longest distances. Clerics, scholars, lawyers, and officials were particularly likely to move frequently in the course of their careers.

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