A Macro (Regional) Comparison of the Influences of Socio-Economic Changes on Family and Demographic Systems

In 1873—4 the massive arrival of cheap American cereals started a long agricultural depression in northwest European markets. The price of 100 kg of rye fell from 24.55 francs in 1874 to 13.25 in 1889 (Oris 1998). The rural population suffered almost everywhere from a drastic decline in their incomes. Within about twenty years, the crisis forced the transition from subsistence to commercial agriculture serving the urban markets. The East Ardennes endured this transition, and by 1890—1900 the slopes of the Hautes-Fagnes had fully adopted the Hervian model of livestock breeding. A community like Sart also relied upon the sale of products from its extensive forests, which became more valuable in the nineteenth century because the coal-mines required timber. The Land of Herve is one of the rare places that did not suffer so much from the depression of 1873-1890; it had become ‘modern' a century earlier. Continued high prices of butter, milk, and cheese supported its rural economy (Neven 2000: 81-7).

However, cattle breeding and agro-forestry required a smaller workforce than traditional agriculture or the proto­industry-agriculture combination, and the arrival of mechanization in the countryside in the late nineteenth century reinforced this tendency. Pressure from marital fertility remained high and neo-Malthusianism had still not replaced the traditional Malthusian check of late marriage and high proportions never-married. This form of control was particularly impressive in the Land of Herve where I stayed around 0.33/0.34 between 1846 and 1890 before it fell to 0.30 between 1890 and 1900; 0.05 to 0.09 lower than in Sart. The demographic health of the ‘stayers', a mixture of modern mortality and traditional fertility and nuptiality, was paid for by the many ‘leavers' who went to the towns. The Industrial Revolution and the consequent urbanization offered an escape for excess population and prevented the countryside from becoming rural slums. In spite of their differences, the experiences of both the Land of Herve and East Ardennes appear very similar to that of Ireland after the Great Famine.

This demographic regime was both determined by the family system and determinant of it. Low values of the proportions married (I) reflect difficulties in getting married. The average age at first marriage was around 30 for men, 28 for the Hervian women, and 26-27 for women in Sart. The difference between women in

Herve and Sart are related to the sex composition of the marriage market. Among unmarried people aged 18—44 the number of males per hundred females was below 100 from 1852 to 1891 in the Land of Herve and above 130 in East Ardennes after the 1840s (Alter and Oris 1999a: 139; Neven 2000: 457). Selective migration by gender is the explanation. Factories in Verviers recruited married men from the proto-industrial workers in the Land of Herve. Moreover, dairying was traditionally a female task. Economic change in Sart left less and less opportunity for employment of women, especially after the disappearance of spinning. Instead, they found positions in Verviers, not in the textile factories as often assumed, but in domestic and commercial services (Desama 1985; Alter 1988).

It was very difficult to establish a household in a nuclear family system where neolocalism was the rule. The old Walloon adage is ‘marriage requires a household'. Moreover, as in some French regions studied by Martine Segalen (1987) and unlike the English or Swedish experiences, lifecycle servant-hood was marginal among the rural populations of East Belgium (see Table 15.1, Section 3). Children stayed at home and often did not leave before age 29 or 30. These are among the highest ages at leaving home ever observed in historical populations, not only because marriage was late but also because an important group never left (Capron and Oris 2000; Neven 2000: 428—35).³ George Alter (1996) has stressed the importance of the European pattern of late marriage and high proportions of never married as a source of support for the elderly.

These results modify the nuclear-hardship hypothesis. Fallinginto isolation was not the normal destiny of old people in the nuclear family system of nineteenth-century East Belgium. The massive migratory flows affected the number of kin available to help, but distance did not break family ties, although gender selection existed (see Alter 1999). The situation was a bit different in the East Ardennes because peasant ownership held families on the land. In Sart one- third of the old men or women lived with a married child.

Although their starting points were different and the roads that they followed during the nineteenth century diverged, the Ardennes and the Land of Herve both demonstrate continuity in family systems and demographic regimes. Economic modernization was not followed by clear changes in marriage and fertility. Until the end of the century, people from the Ardennes and Herve continued to marry and leave home late (or never). Out-migration to the booming industrial towns did increase dramatically, but migration helped to relax tensions in the countryside.

These were clearly societies under pressure and on the defensive, but their high and rising life expectancies indicate success on that important demographic dimension.

4.

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