The German voluntary association (hereafter in German the Verein, or Vereine in the plural) played an important role in the evolution of German society in the later nineteenth century and in the first third of the twentieth. This sort of association (or male bourgeois club) was a cornerstone of European Enlighenment society at the end of the eighteenth century, of the liberal society of the Vormärz, and of the German political parties in the years 1848–1849. Furthermore, the Verein was one of the main characteristics in the rise and hegemony of German bourgeoisie in the second half of the nineteenth century, and one of the cornerstones of local society as it developed in Germany towards the end of the 1890s.

Research into the German Vereine is very advanced. To this day, historical research continues to benefit from Thomas Nipperdeys' breakthrough article concerning the importance of the Vereine in the rise of bourgeois-liberal society prior to 1848. Otto Dann, Wolfgang Hardtwig, and Dieter Düding have expanded our knowledge concerning the importance of the Vereine for the rise of bourgeois nationalism and liberalism before 1848. Regional studies have also emphasized these aspects during the Vormärz period and after.

Folklorist-anthropological research is indebted to Hermann Bausinger's article on the importance of the connection between the Vereine and the development of German folklore. Similarly, Max Weber paved the way for the sociological research on the Vereine that has flourished since the 1860s, led by sociologists such as Hans Jürgen Siewert and Gerhard Wurzbacher. These are the two dominant streams in current research of the Vereine, although it is beyond the scope of this article to explore them here.

Although the Catholic Church claimed to control marriage, in late-eighteenth-century Malta the faithful still considered matrimony to be a personal affair. The study is based upon episcopal court records and parish registers, which reveal substantial numbers of clandestine marriages, contravening the Council of Trent's directives concerning entry into marriage. Couples separated from each other at will, without the Church's consent. A few took other partners, despite the inquisitors' nets. Couples viewed sexual relations as matters for themselves to regulate, and sex outside marriage as not something into which the Church was to intrude. Especially noteworthy in this respect were relations between betrothed, since a man would not marry a woman who could not bear children.

This article is devoted to an analysis of Algerian court cases. It focuses on family law in practice, in order to shed light on the disputed character of this realm of law and the ambiguity involved in its reform. The aim of the article is to question the assumption of an intrinsic opposition between the (traditional/Muslim) family on the one hand, and (modern) state law on the other. It will be argued that the legal regulation of the family, far from being simply imposed by the state, represents a dynamic process in which different actors with different interests and orientations partake. The material used consists mainly of decisions taken by the Algerian Supreme Court covering the period from 1963 (the year of the its creation) to 1990.

Contrary to what is sometimes assumed, the elderly in the distant past could not always rely on voluntary care. Therefore, some of them had to develop strategies to secure assistance during old age. We focus on towns in the Low Countries, where family ties were weak, and ageing individuals likely had to plan for old age. We show how members of the middling layers of society could use wills and retirement contracts to ensure care provided by both kin and non-kin, and also to secure living standards during their final years. By recording such contracts, the elderly remained in control of their lives, despite their advancing years.

In nineteenth-century Canada, a Census was conducted every ten years, beginning in 1851. Historians have tried to use the information in the local, provincial, and national Censuses to determine the rate of mortality and causes of death. The mortality statistics are thought to be reliable after 1921, but practical as well as conceptual problems interfere with attempts to establish retrospective mortality patterns using the nineteenth-century Census. In this paper, I will review the problems with this source on mortality. I will then compare the Census data with that derived from a study of a physician's daybooks, focusing on four specific areas of discrepancy and the possible reasons for the differences. Finally, I will suggest that the combined use of both types of sources may challenge some durable assumptions and could help to establish more reliable estimates of mortality patterns.

This article evaluates the extent of child farm labour in Spain in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. The first part of the article examines child labour in rural areas. Because under-registration of farm child labour was common in both national and local censuses, the writer examines other evidence, including surveys of child labour on farms and school-enrolment registers listing seasonal and as well as full-time labour. The second part of the article considers the relationship between employment and school absenteeism by age and gender. School attendance is compared by season and by geographic area, and its relation to farming is apparent. All the evidence in the registers demonstrates extensive employment of children over the age of ten in rural Spain.

The settlement of structural commercial conflicts of interest cannot be exclusively subsumed under the heading of dispute resolution. Even when a particular conflict opposing specific individuals or groups of interests could be settled, the broader underlying conflicts of interest would subsist and re-emerge. Both commercial and institutional or political actors would therefore rely on various techniques of conflict management, a process imposing restraint on the opposing parties while allowing sufficient leeway for business to be continued. Both conflict resolution and conflict management were devices of public and corporate governance, and therefore, following the late medieval tradition, instruments more or less based on established patterns of legal or quasi-legal models legitimised by accepted or conventional parameters of ‘justice’.

This article focuses on the role played by local mobility in processes of confession and community building, taking the Catholic population in seventeenth-century Palestine as a case study. Works on the Reformation in Europe have acknowledged a connection between the strengthening of confessional identities and geographical mobility. Through the analysis of the parish records of Bethlehem, the article reveals some characteristics of seventeenth-century Catholic mobility in Palestine and shows how this mobility was bound up with the consolidation of a tiny Catholic minority and the establishment of a sacramental network. From a larger perspective, this research suggests that mobility plays an important role in the development and consolidation of small communities in a context of competing religion. From a methodological point of view, it also shows the importance of microanalysis in understanding the geographical mobility associated with religious practices and allegiances.

Historians of medieval society tend to emphasise the roles of either individual peasants or the village community. They also debate the importance of the market in the peasant economy. Here the focus is on partnership, defined as two or more people pursuing common objectives in a mutual co-operative relationship. Peasants sometimes held land jointly, and new land might be cleared by two or more people. Pairs of peasants regularly took on paid work. It is argued that a likely explanation for occasional flurries of litigation was a breakdown of partnerships. The multiple legal disputes suggest the range of collaborative activities undertaken by peasants, from domestic bread making to the management of pastures. Partnerships may have contributed to the resilience of peasant holdings, especially in the period 1370–1420. Local courts and communities responded with peace-making measures if former partners lapsed into extreme hostility.

This article charts the long-term development of seigneurial governance within the principality of Guelders in the Low Countries. Proceeding from four quantitative cross-sections (c. 1325, 1475, 1540, 1570) of seigneurial lordships, the conclusion is that seigneurial governance remained stable in late medieval Guelders. The central argument is that this persistence of seigneurial governance was an effect of active collaboration between princely administrations, lords, and local communities. Together, the princely government and seigneuries of Guelders formed an integrated, yet polycentric, state. The article thereby challenges the narrative of progressive state centralisation that predominates in the historiography of pre-modern state formation.