2 - The Institution of Service in Rural Flanders in the Sixteenth Century: A Regional Perspective

Summary

Ann Kussmaul's book on farm servants and farm service in early modern England is a rare example of historical research which resonates far beyond national, chronological and disciplinary boundaries. Following its publication in 1981, there was a wave of research on the history of farm service and its relationship with social, economic, agrarian and demographic structures and transformations. Kussmaul's book inspired Belgian historians working on the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in particular. The survival of numerous and detailed population censuses and farm accounts from the eighteenth century have made this the preferred research period. Research on earlier periods, however, is almost non-existent. With the exception of the recent research by Lies Vervaet, little is known about farm servants before 1700. This also holds true for other regions: with the exception of England and Italy, relatively little is known about servants in rural Europe before the seventeenth century. In the case of the Low Countries, more research into the early history of servants and rural is warranted for a number of reasons. Recent research on the social and economy history of the Low Countries has revealed the early emergence and rapid development of wage labour in the countryside. It has been estimated that, in some regions, wage labour in agriculture accounted for more than half of all rural labour performed by the sixteenth century. Historians have assumed that a large part of this wage labour was provided by unmarried adolescents living and working in rural households as servants, but to date, empirical evidence is lacking. The role and place of service in the transition to wage labour in the countryside is still unclear. Recent research shows that labour markets operated differently during the sixteenth century, with possible repercussions and effects on the employment and recruitment of servants. Finally, the sixteenth century witnessed the crystallization of social, economic and agrarian transitions that started during the late medieval period. These transitions resulted in regionally differentiated rural economic landscapes. This chapter presents new empirical evidence on servants and the institution of service from the sixteenth century in light of these regional differences in rural economic structures. In particular, attention is paid to regional differences in employment patterns, wages and labour legislation.