Power and inheritance

Inheritance, urbanization, and political change in Europe

“…In continental Europe, the origins of UI practices are similarly ancient. Kaser (2002) argues that rules of equal inheritance among males, and dowries for women, can be traced back to the inheritance laws of the Roman Empire. While in the west of the Empire, Germanic conquest altered some of these practices, in the Eastern part they survived over the millennia (Laiou-Tomadakis 1977 cited in Kaser, 2002).…”

“…Kaser (2002) argues that rules of equal inheritance among males, and dowries for women, can be traced back to the inheritance laws of the Roman Empire. While in the west of the Empire, Germanic conquest altered some of these practices, in the Eastern part they survived over the millennia (Laiou-Tomadakis 1977 cited in Kaser, 2002). After becoming prevalent in Germany, UI customs were spread between the 11th and 14th centuries through colonization by Germanic landlords, and reached as far as Prussia, Bohemia, and Silesia.…”

“…Le Roy Ladourie (1978) also argues that the inheritance traditions of the various parts of France can be traced to the Middle Ages. EI traditions in parts of Slavic Eastern Europe are connected by Kaser (2002) to the tribal origins of village communities in these regions, taken together with the predominance of slash-and-burn agriculture in the medieval period, which led to all men having equal access to cleared land. While the details of the historical origins of inheritance systems are beyond the scope of this analysis, what is important is the agreement in the literature on their ancient origins, which will strengthen empirical arguments in which the exogeneity of this variable is important.…”

“…For peasant younger sons, paid employment, either agricultural or non-agricultural, was the default choice. In Germany and the German-dominated regions of Eastern Europe, younger sons often became household servants (Kaser, 2002). Habakkuk (1955) similarly argues that in Bohemia and Silesia younger peasant sons became paid agricultural workers and when the opportunity arose, became industrial and service-sector workers in the cities.…”

Family traditionalism and age-specific nuptiality patterns: what does the example of Karachay-Cherkessia point to?

“…Finally, as another "measure" of generational asymmetries, we use the parameter of living jointly with or separately from older relatives. The predominance of an "extended" family, including several generations of adults, with young families living together with their husbands' relatives is considered a key feature of "patriarchy", a concept actively used in one of the schools of modern research on family transformation (Kaser 2002;Gruber, Szołtysek 2012;Lerch 2013). The difference between the concept of "patriarchy" in these works and the concept of a traditional family described above consists mainly in the fact that "patriarchy" is determined not so much by the system of relations in the family as by the composition of households.…”