Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface to the first impression
- Preface to the second impression
- 1 Introduction: The history of the family
- 2 Some demographic determinants of average household size: An analytic approach
- 3 The evolution of the family
- ENGLAND
- WESTERN EUROPE
- 8 A southern French village: the inhabitants of Montplaisant in 1644
- 9 Size and structure of households in a northern French village between 1836 and 1861
- 10 Household and family in Tuscany in 1427
- 11 Structure of household and family in Corsica, 1769–71
- 12 Variations in the size and structure of the household in the United Provinces of the Netherlands in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
- 13 Size of households before the industrial revolution: the case of Liège in 1801
- SERBIA
- JAPAN
- NORTH AMERICA
- Bibliography
- Index
12 - Variations in the size and structure of the household in the United Provinces of the Netherlands in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 November 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface to the first impression
- Preface to the second impression
- 1 Introduction: The history of the family
- 2 Some demographic determinants of average household size: An analytic approach
- 3 The evolution of the family
- ENGLAND
- WESTERN EUROPE
- 8 A southern French village: the inhabitants of Montplaisant in 1644
- 9 Size and structure of households in a northern French village between 1836 and 1861
- 10 Household and family in Tuscany in 1427
- 11 Structure of household and family in Corsica, 1769–71
- 12 Variations in the size and structure of the household in the United Provinces of the Netherlands in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
- 13 Size of households before the industrial revolution: the case of Liège in 1801
- SERBIA
- JAPAN
- NORTH AMERICA
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
My research concerns a district called the Noorderkwartier in the northern area of the province of Holland in the western part of the country, and I have collected data relating to more than 4,000 households between the years 1622 and 1795. Fortunately the eighteenth-century Dutch demographer Nicolas Struyck collected evidence on the size of household in about forty villages in the same part of Holland about the year 1740. His original materials have been lost, but summary totals of inhabitants and households in every village are to be found in his books. What is more, Struyck gives the number of servants (and in some cases lodgers) for most of his villages and even goes so far as to give the sex ratio and the number of children below a certain age. From Struyck's work I have extracted information relating to 8,500 households to add to that for the 4,000 mentioned above.
However, I should like first to discuss the theories developed by Dutch social scientists in the field of the sociology of the family. Historical work gains significance in the light of these sociological theories, and it is appropriate that they be considered before the results of the research referred to above are set out. After the Second World War, interest in the family grew at a much faster rate amongst the Dutch sociologists than amongst the historians. The particular object of attention has been the position of the family in the rapidly changing society of the Netherlands.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Household and Family in Past Times , pp. 299 - 318Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1972
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