Family Labor Strategies in Early Modern Swabia

Abstract

The article presents evidence from the period 1480–1618 in Augsburg suggesting that there were economic constraints on the decisionmaking of the peasant family: (1) Inheritance patterns and village rights offered options to the peasant. These supply side factors helped to promote an integrated labor market in Swabia. (2) Market forces influenced the supply of labor by acting on subsidiary enterprises of the peasant family. The rise of the grain prices and of land forced peasants into auxiliary enterprises to earn cash. (3) Peasant households on small land holdings were vulnerable to harvest failure and consequently did not benefit from the rise in agricultural prices that accrued to holders of larger plots. (4) On the demand side, the structure of production and long-distance trade caused real wages to decline. Within these constraints, the rural community in Swabia became integrated with the urban trading sector in a type of protoindustrialization in which the individual decision makers began to respond to increasingly complex market forces.