The Growth of Markets
Cracks and weaknesses in the feudal system allowed labor markets to gradually expand. These, in turn, reduced both feudal and patriarchal privilege. Landowners lost some of their leverage over peasants, parents lost some of their leverage over sons and daughters, and skilled artisans became more vulnerable to competition.
Many official policies, including punishment of vagrants and denial of any assistance to the poor born outside the parish, aimed to discourage labor mobility. Towns and cities, new epicenters of commerce based on urban labor markets, often grew up in the interstices between feudal domains.27In the wake of plagues, peasants and serfs renegotiated relationships with large land owners, expanding systems of money rent accompanied by guarantees of continued access to land. Monetization of rents proceeded more rapidly and extensively in most areas of Britain than in France. England was an island nation in an age of war, when commerce rode more happily on sea than land.28 Markets in general—labor markets in particular—expanded more rapidly there. When they actually came into prominence is less important than their gradual expansion over time. By the sixteenth century, according to one estimate, over a half of all households received at least a part of their income in wages.29 Also significant were differences in the type of labor markets that emerged in the two countries, related, in turn, to different rules for family bequests.
As both the technological and military potential for expanding the margins of cultivation declined, inheritance of existing land loomed larger in significance. Primogeniture (the practice of leaving the bulk of family property to the eldest son) averted the parceling of family property, and therefore protected the relative economic position of the lineage. The practice also weakened family solidarity by increasing inequality among male children. In England, where primogeniture was widely practiced, younger sons often set off alone in search of wage employment.
In France, on the other hand, many sons inherited plots of land too small to support themselves and their families, but sufficient to provide them with a means of subsistence that could be combined with occasional or part-time wage employment in rural areas.30Early wage employment was modeled on family labor. Young men and women worked as servants in households other than their own, often provided with board and lodging as well as modest pay.31 Guilds of skilled workers stipulated that new entrants to their trade serve many years as underpaid apprentices and journeymen before being allowed to go into business on their own. In 1563, the English Statute of Artificers restricted entry and specified long training periods for most trades, in addition to setting maximum wages.32 The same system provided a convenient means of limiting women's access to most skilled occupations in both England and France.33 Widows who had worked alongside their husbands were sometimes, but not always, allowed dispensations. The Paris guild of pastry bakers forbade women to sell any product of their trade.34
As more individuals fanned out in search of work, many aspects of guild regulation gave way. In 1685 English courts absolved most wage earners of apprenticeship requirements; French guilds lost much of their influence after the Revolution of 1789.35 Yet explicit rules and strong social norms restricting women's access to education and skilled employment remained in force. The spatial organization of markets made it easier for men to circumvent the localized power of feudal lords than for women to circumvent the more decentralized power of male employers, workers and family members.