Ordinary Prussians: Brandenburg Junkers and Villagers, 1500-1840

ISBN-13: 9780521815581 / Angielski / Twarda / 2002 / 712 str.

William W. Hagen; Peter Baldwin; Christopher Clark

Opis

This book is about ordinary villagers and landlords (Junkers) in the Prussian-German countryside, from the late middle ages to the nineteenth century. It is distinguished by its concentration on first-person testimony, and focus on the lives and fortunes of ordinary people during the era of the rise of capitalism and the modern state. The book is a major contribution to fundamental debates in German history on the origins of modern political authoritarianism.

Recenzje

'… this is an excellent, thought-provoking book … Each chapter brims with compelling stories about local experience, while making a larger point about the transition to 'modernity'. all n all, this is a model study and fruitful ground for future comparative work.' Sixteenth Century Journal

Spis treści

List of illustrations; Acknowledgements; Currencies, weights and measures employed in the text; Introduction: grand narratives, ordinary Prussians; 1. After the deluge: a noble lordship's sixteenth-century ascent and seventeenth-century crisis; 2. The Prussianization of the countryside? Noble lordship under early absolutism, 1648–1728; 3. Village identities in social practice and law; 4. Daily bread: village farm incomes, living standards and lifespans; 5. The Kleists' good fortune: family strategies and estate management in an eighteenth-century noble lineage; 6. Noble lordship's servitors and clients: estate managers, artisans, clergymen, domestic servants; 7. Farm servants, young and old: landless labourers in the villages and at the manor; 8. Policing crime and the moral order, 1700–1760: seigneurial court, village mayors, church, state and army; 9. Policing seigneurial rent: the Kleists' battle with their subjects' insubordination and the villagers' appeals to royal justice, 1727–1806; 10. Seigneurial bond severed: from subject farmers to freeholders, from compulsory estate labourers to free, 1806–1840; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.