Twenty years have passed since Hans Eyvind Næss published what remains the only complete study of Norwegian witchcraft trials. This article considers the work done since that time, and surveys the state of research on witchcraft trials in Norway. Drawing on a recent registration of all known extant witchcraft trial records in Norway as well as recent research, I show how there was a much higher degree of regional differences within Norway than Næss allowed for, as well as a much greater degree of diabolism (the charge that witches took Satan as their lord) in Norwegian trials.

The infants left at the London Foundling Hospital in the first twenty years of its operation have generally been classed as illegitimate. This study examines some of the characteristics of the children who entered the hospital between 1741 and 1760, and points to a far larger component of legitimate infants than has previously been suspected, up to a third being born in wedlock. The backgrounds of the children varied considerably, as did the reasons for their abandonment, with a stress on personal and economic misfortune for both married and single parents. The higher level of legitimacy among the foundlings than has been thought has implications for the illegitimacy ratio of London, pointing to relatively low levels, in common with those found for the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries.

This article examines the labour market for day labourers in the Southern Low Countries during the eighteenth century from the perspective of reciprocal exchange. In particular I will look at wage payment structures and their economic and social foundations. In contrast with other agricultural regions, wage payments in proto-industrialized inland Flanders were highly diversified. Large farmers and day labourers engaged in a system of reciprocal exchange of labour, goods and services in which monetary payments played only a secondary role. I find that both employers and employees had strong reasons for maintaining this exchange relationship and that they both, in their own ways, benefited from this mutual dependency.

German immigrants who came to the Netherlands in the nineteenth century did not concentrate in ‘Little Germanys’ within Dutch towns, as they did in some other countries. Some concentrations amongst German immigrants can, however, be pointed out. Contrary to what perhaps might be expected, it was not a common religion or a shared regional background that explains these concentrations. A shared profession does explain some, but only if the nature of a particular profession allowed or encouraged concentration.

This article is a case study addressing the issues of concubines, legitimacy and inheritance in early modern Japan. Although there was some discussion about the legal status of concubines/mistresses in the late nineteenth century in Meiji Japan, the topic has attracted surprisingly little recent research. The Meiji debate was concerned with how to treat concubines under a system that both outlawed bigamy and recognized common law marriages. The later academic debate refers back to the earlier interpretations of the legal and social status of concubines, with one side claiming they were nearly equal to wives and the other claiming they were little more than servants. In this study I review the above debates and then address the issue with a study of an inheritance case that began in 1819 when Fukui Sakuzaemon adopted an heir from outside the family. Sakuzaemon's concubine Iwa played an important role in the inheritance agreement and in further developments in the suit, including later efforts to disinherit the new head and gain support for her daughters by Sakuzaemon. I use the documents from this complicated case to analyse the social and legal statuses of Iwa and the relationship of her daughters to the Fukui family and its assets.