If a man of war in the Dark Ages wished to get support for himself and his followers in the form of heavy work-services on demesne land, how much more easy to exploit the big open-field village whose members were already accustomed to large-scale cooperation in communal agriculture, than the small, independent, loosely organized plowlands of East Anglia, Kent, and Friesland.[350]
A critical point, however, that arises from this is that despite living outside the zone of manorialization, the East Anglians, ancestors of the Puritans of Salem, became exemplars of the northwest European family system. Indeed, Puritan Salem is seen as paradigmatic of the individualist Western family by Hartman. This is a further objection to the theory that the manorial system gave rise to the individualist family.
Still, at least by the time of the Norman Conquest of England and likely dating from the original fifth-century migrations,[351] there is evidence for a greater role of extended kinship in Kent (settled by the Jutes, a Germanic people, likely from Jutland) and East Anglia (settled mainly by Angles from Friesland) than in the manorialized areas of central England—a pattern that resembled patterns on “the southern shore of the Channel, notably between the Old Saxon area of Germany and the Frankish-Frisian area.”[352] Homans finds that Friesland had a joint family structure with partible inheritance, with property left undivided among the heirs (brothers) and worked jointly, or it was divided among the heirs. Land was held by a patrilineal kinship group and inheritance (termed ‘gavelkind’) was partible, divided among heirs (often brothers); if one of the brothers died without issue, then his land returned to the group. This ultimately led to holdings too small to be viable.[353]
Thus, despite giving rise to the Puritans whose family system was definitely within the Western European individualist tradition, East Anglia and Friesland appear to originally have had a system that resembled in some ways the family system of southern France: “It looks as if we had to do with joint-family communities like [French sociologist Frédéric] Le Play described as still existing in the Auvergne [in France south of the St. Malo-Geneva line] in the nineteenth century: groups of men claiming descent from a common patrilineal ancestor, living in one house or a small group of houses and managing in common a compact body of land, under the leadership of the oldest or ablest male of each successive senior generation.”[354] Marriage in East Anglia was earlier than in the manorialized areas of England, and this area had a higher rate of natural increase,[355] putting pressure on land as plots were subdivided because of partible inheritance. In this system there were very few villeins owing labor services to a lord. Indeed, the free peasants of East Anglia (Norfolk and Suffolk counties) had approximately half the total of freemen in all of England as assessed in the Domesday Book (1086).[356]
This suggests a developmental sequence among these groups, originating with a more collectivist family structure than found in the manorial areas, but then developing into an individualist structure, without manorialism ever being part of the picture. This in turn would imply the following:
Manorialism is not critical to the development of individualist families in northern Europe, given that the Frisians and their offshoots (e.g., East Anglians) eventually developed individualist families in the absence of manorialism, as well as the evidence for individualist family patterns long pre-dating early medieval manorialization among the Germanic peoples and in the Western Roman Empire. As a result of not being part of the manorial system, East Anglians did not owe services to a lord and had relatively greater individual freedom—a central issue in Chapter 6 on the Puritans. On the other hand, despite the similarity in the importance of extended family in both East Anglia and Montaillou, an important difference is that in Montaillou the lord imposed a variety of taxes and rents on the ostals,[357] whereas this did not occur in East Anglia. East Anglians therefore did not have a tradition of submission to a lord.
However, it is likely manorialism sped up the rise of the individualist family, given that non-manorialized areas such as East Anglia, and Kent lagged behind manorialized areas in moving away from familial collectivism. Even so, people from these areas became exemplars of individualist families, pace Hartman’s work on the New England Puritans.
The most likely reason for the differences between northern and southern Europe, which have persisted from time immemorial to the present, is an ethnic cline, the same cline which has been documented for height.[358] The non-manorialized areas of southern Europe retained elements of the collectivist family pattern long after its disappearance in manorialized and non-manorialized areas of northern Europe—indeed, into the contemporary era. Again, the suggestion is that northern Europeans have more of an ethnically based tendency toward individualism than southern Europeans.
Finally, as discussed in the following section, the most extreme forms of individualism are found in Scandinavia which never had a manorial system.
State-Supported Extreme Individualism in
Scandinavia
As noted above, the Scandinavians have the most individualist family patterns in all of Europe.[359] This may seem paradoxical in view of Sweden’s socialist economic policies and powerful tendencies toward egalitarianism, conformism, and law-abidingness, but the logic is quite clear:
What is unique about Swedish social policy is neither the extent to which the state has intervened in society nor the generous insurance schemes, but the underlying moral logic. Though the path in no way has been straight, one can discern over the course of the twentieth century an overarching ambition to liberate the individual citizen from all forms of subordination and dependency in civil society: the poor from charity, the workers from their employers, wives from their husbands, children from parents (and vice versa when the parents have become elderly).
In practice, the primacy of individual autonomy has been institutionalized through a plethora of laws and practices … . Interdependency within the family has been minimized through individual taxation of spouses, family law reforms have revoked obligations to support elderly parents, more or less universal day care makes it possible for women to work, student loans which are blind in relation to the income of parents or spouse give young adults a large degree of autonomy in relation to their families, and children are given a more independent status through the abolition of corporal punishment and a strong emphasis on children’s rights. All in all, this legislation has made Sweden into the least family-dependent and the most individualized society on the face of the earth.[360]
In this regime, families become “voluntary associations”—despite continuing to exhibit high-investment parenting as indicated by high levels of time spent with children. Nordic families are relatively prone to “independence (of children), individualism, and (gender) equality.”[361] The “Swedish theory of love” is that partners should not be dependent on each other—that true love means not entering a relationship as dependent on any way (e.g., financially) on the other person.[362] Surveys of values confirm that Nordic societies cluster together in scoring high on “emancipatory self-expression.”[363] Nordic societies also cluster at the top of social trust, despite also being high on secular/rational values and despite trust typically being associated with religiosity.[364] Finally, the high standing on “generalized trust” provides economic advantages because it lowers “transaction costs”—less need for written contracts and legal protections, law suits, etc.[365]
These trends toward individual freedom and lack of dependency on superiors go back at least to the medieval period. Michael Roberts noted that the peasant in medieval Sweden “retained his social and political freedom to a greater degree, played a greater part in the politics of the country, and was altogether a more considerable person, than in any other western European country.”[366] Similarly, Lars Trägårdh:
The respect for law and a positive view of the state are historically linked to the relative freedom of the Swedish peasantry. The weakness, not to say absence of feudal institutions, corresponds with a history of self-rel
iance, self-rule, land ownership, representation as an estate in parliament, and the consequent willingness and ability to participate in the political affairs of the country. There is, of course, a strong mythological aspect to this oft-claimed lack of feudal traditions in Sweden. …
[Nevertheless,] the consequence of the relative inclusion and empowerment was that their status as subjects was balanced by their position as citizens. As an estate in parliament, they had a part in passing laws which in this way gained popular legitimacy. Furthermore, since the peasants and the King (at times joined by the Clergy) often were joined in a common struggle against their common adversary, the Nobility, many peasants came to view the State, in the figure of the King as in some sense being “on their side.” To be sure, in actuality political alliances shifted, some Kings were more powerful than others and the Nobility was at times close to achieving the kind of subjugation of the peasantry that was the norm in much of the rest of Europe. But all things told, the peasant struggle to retain their legal, political and property rights was remarkably successful, and by the time that democratic and liberal ideas made their way to Sweden from the Continent in the nineteenth century, they were effectively fused with these politically strong yeoman traditions.[367]
This passage is fits well with the writing of nineteenth-century historian Erik Gustaf Geijer (1783–1847). Geijer noted that feudalism (consisting of hereditary rights of the nobility and serfdom for peasants) developed in most Germanic societies beginning with the conquests of the Franks; however, “in Scandinavia itself, … the fiefs [i.e., land parcels granted to the nobility] never became hereditary, even less was serfdom introduced among the people.”[368] Moreover, traditional Swedish kingship was not oppressive: Geijer “was a firm believer in constitutional monarchy with a strong personal influence of a potent king—emphasizing the unique bond between the monarch and his people that Geijer regarded as an historical fact in Sweden.”[369]
The king did not act as the highest conciliator nor judge the free man in the absence of his equals, for all the judgments were given with the people or, what is the same thing, with an elected jury. In war the king was the commander, though the people did not follow him unconditionally in anything except what it had itself taken part in deciding or which the presence of the enemy in the land made necessary. All other warfare was not a national war but merely a feud, in which the king could also freely engage with his men, that is those who owed him particular allegiance (fideles) [i.e., the king’s “permanent war-band”[370] or “comitatus,”[371] i.e., a Männerbünd] or allied themselves temporarily with him. For no free man, even if subject to a king, was the king’s man, but his own. To be called the former required a specific relationship.[372]
The warrior nobility was a nobility of service and of the court and for a long time did not, and only with the expansion of royal power, gain any preferential rights with regard to the people. Nor were any of the advantages that accompanied it hereditary or even permanent in respect of a given person.[373]
Geijer claims that “in Scandinavia we know the original government to have been ruled by priests,” and he contrasts this priestly regime with “the first ‘Odinic’ rulers.”[374] As noted in Chapter 2, Odin was the “god of battle rage” and strongly associated with the Indo-European warrior culture.[375]
The rule of law rather than despotism by kings was the norm: “Rule of law was essential to the social contract that underpinned the emerging Swedish state, and adherence to the law by the king and his administration was essential to the legitimacy of the state.”[376] The values embedded in the law became internalized social norms.
The acceptance of strong state controls supporting egalitarianism is thus seen by the Swedes as necessary precisely for achieving individual autonomy:
From the perspective of what might be termed the Swedish ideology, active interventionism on the part of the state to promote egalitarian conditions is not a threat to individual autonomy but rather the obverse: a necessary prerequisite to free the citizens from demeaning and humbling dependence on one another. As a culture and a political system, Sweden cannot simply be described as communitarian, that is, as a society in which the citizens prize their voluntary association with one another above their empowerment as individuals. In fact, the official rhetoric about solidarity and social democracy notwithstanding, Sweden is not first and foremost a warm Gemeinschaft composed of altruists who are exceptionally caring or loving, but a rather hyper-modern Gesellschaft of self-realizing individuals who believe that a strong state and stable social norms will keep their neighbor out of both their lives and their backyards.[377]
At the level of the family, Berggren and Trägårdh agree with Patrick Heady[378] (see above) that Sweden “stands out” from the Western European family system. As noted above, a key aspect of the Swedish system is that young people had to assume individual responsibility for their marriages and for getting on in the world: “Young people were controlled by internalized systems of self-control, not least the tradition of ‘night bundling’ which, though in no way unique to Sweden, was very widespread and prominent.”[379]
Sweden is thus on the extreme end of individualism. “Sweden—and to a somewhat lesser extent the rest of Scandinavia—[became] the least family-oriented and most individualized society on the face of the earth, scoring at the extreme end of emancipatory self-expression values and secular-rational values.[380] The downside includes high levels of divorce, lack of filial piety, “alarming rates of stress and psychological ill-health,” and an individualist youth culture that in the contemporary world is able to be exploited by commercial interests and much given to sexual promiscuity and drugs.[381]
Conclusion
The central argument here is that the origins of the unique northwest European family structure lie in biological influences stemming from a combination of Indo-European peoples originating on the steppes of Southeast Europe and hunter-gather peoples whose evolutionary past lies in Northwest Europe itself.
The widespread practice of placing servants in households of non-relatives cannot be explained in purely economic terms as a response to medieval manorialism. However, it is compatible with elaborate systems of non-kinship-based reciprocity that have been noted in hunter-gatherer culture living in harsh environments (Chapter 3) as well as a characteristic of Proto-Indo-European cultures and their descendants (Chapter 2) dating back thousands of years.
Also compatible with primordialist explanations, historians are unable to firmly date the origins of the individualist family. In combination with Tacitus’s observations regarding Germanic slavery (which, as noted, was essentially manorialism), the fact that customs of monogamy, late marriage and individualist inheritance patterns long preceded the early Middle Ages suggests that the individualist family pattern is rooted in the evolutionary history of the Germanic peoples.
The individualist family is a poor fit with the manorial system because of its lesser ability, compared to collectivist families, to protect females from unwanted sexual advances and to ensure an adequate retirement for parents. Late marriage for females also results in lower fertility and makes the production of heirs less likely.
The very different family forms in northwest versus much of southern Europe persisted in near proximity despite the same religion (until the Reformation, which mainly occurred in the Germanic areas of northwest Europe) and despite manorialism in both areas as a result of the Frankish conquests. Similarly, the collectivism of Middle Eastern families persisted despite prolonged occupation by individualist Western cultures.
A contextual explanation in terms of depopulation motivating landlords to grant concessions to families fails because similar conditions in other parts of Eurasia failed to result in individualist families.
There is a cline within northwest Europe such that the most individualist family patterns occur in Scandinavia, particularly Sweden which never underwent manorialism.
The emphasis here is the northwest-southeast
difference in family patterns. This perspective allows for a more fine-grained analysis than suggested by the Hajnal Line, which lumps northwestern and southwestern Europe west of a line from Trieste to St. Petersburg into the same category, with the exception of Ireland, southern Iberia, and southern Italy. That division, e.g., includes southern and northern France in the same category despite the very large differences noted here.
The deviation of Ireland from the northwest European pattern and the conformity of the German-speaking areas of early medieval northern Italy to the northwest European pattern were discussed above. This material suggests that the moderate individualist northwest European family pattern is fundamentally an ethnic creation of the Germanic peoples, who have less of the Middle Eastern farmer genetic ancestry that is highest in southern Europe, and more Indo-European and hunter-gatherer ancestry—both more common in northern than southern Europe.
In conclusion, an ethnically based northwest-southeast gradient is the main dimension explaining variation in family structure within Western Europe. Of course, viewed in a broader context—in comparison, say, to the Middle East—all of Europe, including Eastern Europe, is relatively individualistic.
5
The Church in European
History
_____________________________
The Catholic Church is a unique institution, not only in Western history, but in world history. When Marco Polo visited the Chinese in the thirteenth century and when Cortez arrived among the Aztecs in 1519, they found a great many similarities with their own society, including a hereditary nobility, priests, warriors, craftsmen, and peasants all living off an agricultural economy. There was thus an overwhelming convergence among the societies. But they did not find a religious establishment that claimed to be superior to the secular establishment and was successfully regulating the reproductive behavior of the secular elite. Nor did they find a king like Louis IX (St. Louis) who ruled France while living like a monk with his one wife and went on a Crusade to free the Holy Land from the Muslims.
Individualism and the Western Liberal Tradition Page 14