During the early modern era service played a vital role in rural Europe's economy and society. It allowed young people to leave home and build up both skills and savings, thereby delaying matrimony and setting up their own households (what John Hajnal has identified as the ‘European Marriage Pattern’). The institution of live-in service became particularly important during times when labour was scarce because it allowed employers to guarantee the availability of their workforce as the latter resided in their household and were, in many cases, under their legal authority. Although servants were common and important in urban areas, this collection of 12 chapters, edited and introduced by Jane Whittle, focuses on rural service. Servants in rural Europe examines service across eight different countries (Belgium, England, Sweden, Norway, Germany, France, the Netherlands and Italy) over five centuries. The focus of the case studies varies from national and regional perspectives all the way down to the individual farms, such as in Lies Vervaet's article, which uses records from a large estate near Bruges to analyse servant employment in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Flanders. Central themes that emerge throughout the collection are changing wage levels (including in-kind payments), gender differences between servants, servant migration, the legal status of servants and the laws that regulated them, which types of people entered service, and the work that servants did. Finally, the decline of live-in service and the rise of hired labourers is a central consideration. This is analysed in detail in Richard Paping's chapter, which uses qualitative sources to show changing levels of demand for servants in the Netherlands during the long nineteenth century.
The greatest strength of this book is its geographical and temporal breadth. This allows the reader to draw parallels between rural servants in different times and places, and will provide important comparative perspectives for future research on the history of service and rural life. This diversity extends to the range of sources that are used to study the different facets of rural service. These include household and farm account books (Whittle draws on a sample of nine sets of English accounts dating from c. 1500 to 1660), local population listings pre-dating national censuses (used by Christine Fertig to uncover the roles servants played in the household in eighteenth-century Münsterland in north-western Germany), parochial registers with extraordinary levels of detail (employed by Cristina Prytz to examine differences in service between pastoral and arable areas of Sweden from 1670 to 1730), and court depositions (utilised by Charmian Mansell to analyse patterns of service in south-western England from 1550 to 1650). However, this concentration on rural Europe does mean there is often an entirely understandable focus on the agricultural work of servants (a companion volume of similar studies of service in urban Europe during this period would be most welcome). Although it is occasionally discussed, some greater analysis of the other duties of servants (and how they varied) would give a wider perspective on their overall role in the economy, and how they may have contributed to the process of industrialisation, in particular.
This collection clearly reveals the significant variations that existed in rural service. These often occurred within the same region. Thijs Lambrecht's chapter, which focuses on Flanders in the sixteenth century, shows that the market for servants was highly differentiated; payments were determined not just by skill level and gender, but varied according to farm size. Likewise, Jeremy Hayhoe, using two nominal censuses from 1796 and 1872 for the Côte-d'Or region of eastern France, shows that there was significant variation in servant-keeping by village, with servants tending not to appear in forested areas or artisanal households and more common in pastoral than arable areas. Finally, Raffaella Sarti draws together a range of different sources to detail the percentage of servants in various regions of Italy from the fifteenth to twentieth centuries.
This book also contains analysis of servants’ wages. As Whittle points out in the introduction, given that service was so common and important, their remuneration should really be given deeper study and considered alongside other occupations to analyse how wage rates changed over time. It is established that male servants were generally paid more than female ones, but there were other important differences. As Sarah Holland shows for mid-nineteenth-century West Yorkshire, older and more experienced servants could often negotiate higher wages for themselves. There were clear variations between different servants and over time. It is also clear that cash payments were just a small aspect of compensation. Carolina Uppenberg uses Swedish court material from 1730 to 1860 to show that employers often allowed their servants to have their own side business and even land, despite the fact that this was technically not permitted (such arrangements thus allowed regulations about maximum wages to be bypassed). Likewise, in neighbouring Norway, as Hanne Østhus's chapter shows, due to shortages of small currency servants were also paid in clothing or by being allowed to farm their own land, hold cows, or fish.
This collection is based on a close empirical examination of a multiplicity of sources (even though occasionally sample sizes and representativeness can be a concern). Important qualitative evidence is set out for a range of variables concerning servants, including their geographical locations, wages and personal circumstances. Given this, and the ubiquity of service across early modern Europe, Servants in rural Europe represents an important contribution to comparative social and economic history.
