Kinship, Property, and Identity

Steensel, Arie van

doi:10.1177/0363199012439516

Cited by 5 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 13 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…All in all, a wide variety of marriage and inheritance strategies existed among the noble families in the Low Countries. 29 Nobles could choose from a repertoire of strategies, depending on the specific circumstances and status of their family. 30 The noble family itself was a multi-layered organisation, and kinship conveyed different legal and social meanings.…”

Section: Noble Kinship and Ancestrymentioning

confidence: 99%

Noble Identity and Culture. Recent Historiography on the Nobility in the Medieval Low Countries III

Steensel

2014

History Compass

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The medieval Low Countries are not usually associated with nobility and knighthood, but historical research in the past decades has proven that they should be. This series of essays gives a historiographical overview of the recent literature on the nobility in the medieval Low Countries and links it with major international debates on the subject. This part, the third of the three sections into which this survey is organised, discusses the fast‐growing and rich multi‐disciplinary literature on noble identity and culture. The study of the material, ideological, behavioural and performative aspects of noble status currently predominantly focuses on the princely court but needs to be extended to the nobility as a whole and further integrated with political and socio‐economic approaches.

show abstract

Section: Noble Kinship and Ancestrymentioning

confidence: 99%

Noble Identity and Culture. Recent Historiography on the Nobility in the Medieval Low Countries III

Steensel

2014

History Compass

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

The primacy of patrimony: kinship strategies of the political elite of Turin in the late Middle Ages (1340–1490)

Gravela

2017

Cont. Change

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Combining family history and the analysis of political elites, this article explores the development of the urban elite of Turin (Piedmont) in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, through an analysis of the transformations in the kinships forming the ruling class, with particular regard to their structures and strategies for social and economic reproduction. The deep changes that affected this group and eventually led to its extinction and replacement by a new elite are addressed. It is argued that, alongside institutional rearrangements determined by the Dukes of Savoy, the inheritance strategies pursued by the kinships in order to preserve their economic and political role played a crucial part in their demise.

show abstract

In the Name of the Father: Inheritance Systems and the Dynamics of State Capacity

Fernández

2019

Macroecon. Dynam.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper examines how the degree of gender-egalitarianism embedded in inheritance rules impacts state capacity at its early stages during medieval times. We present a theoretical model in which building state capacity enables nobles to raise taxes and overcome rivals. The model addresses the use of inheritance to consolidate landholding dynasties, also accommodating interstate marriages between landed heirs. On the one hand, dynastic continuity—of utmost importance to medieval lords—directly encourages state-building. Male-biased inheritance rules historically maximize the likelihood of dynastic continuity. We weigh this effect against the indirect impact of the more frequent land-merging marriages under gender-egalitarian rules. Contrary to the literature, our results suggest that gender-egalitarian norms—offering a low probability of dynastic continuity—promote state capacity in the short run more than gender-biased norms. In the long run, results are reversed, providing a rationale for the pervasive European tradition of preference for men as heirs.

show abstract

Kinship, Property, and Identity

Cited by 5 publications

References 13 publications

Noble Identity and Culture. Recent Historiography on the Nobility in the Medieval Low Countries III

Noble Identity and Culture. Recent Historiography on the Nobility in the Medieval Low Countries III

The primacy of patrimony: kinship strategies of the political elite of Turin in the late Middle Ages (1340–1490)

In the Name of the Father: Inheritance Systems and the Dynamics of State Capacity

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About