Servants in Rural Europe, 1400–1900 Unavailable

This book is a welcome contribution to the existing literature on the history of servanthood. As Whittle rightly points out, most studies concern urban domestic service, although historically, the largest share of servants has worked in the countryside. In an excellent introduction, Whittle outlines the theoretical background of the book, in which the work of Hajnal and Laslett play a central role.¹ Hajnal outlined a specific Western European demographical system in which people married late and started new households after marriage. Working as a servant between youth and marriage was, according to Laslett, an integral part of this system because it provided young men and women with the opportunity to accumulate financial and human capital before marriage. The situation was supposedly different in Eastern Europe where the age at marriage was lower and extended families were more common. These concepts of the European Marriage Pattern (emp) and...