Rotberg, Robert I., ed. Population History and the Family: a Journal of Interdisciplinary History Reader

International Social Science Review, Summer-Spring, 2003 by Harold M. Green

Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001. 390 pages. Paper, $25.00.

Population History and the Family follows the publication of three previous Journal of Interdisciplinary History (JIH) readers: Health and Disease in Human History (2000), Social Mobility and Modernization (2000), and Politics and Political Change (2001). It also follows the publication of two earlier JIH readers dealing specifically with the historical dimension of population and family sociology: The Family in History: Interdisciplinary Essays (1973) and Marriage and Fertility: Studies in Interdisciplinary History (1980).

Like its companion volumes, Population History and the Family arranges both chronologically and geographically some of the more memorable JIH articles with a dazzling comparative sweep. Contributions include papers on childrearing in Late Medieval England; family, economy, and society in England from 1500 to 1850; household composition of Early Modern Russia; sixteenth century Mexican population; black and white seasonality in Early Chesapeake; and fertility transition in Nantucket. A common thread running through many of these studies is a rigorous questioning of prior assumptions. One finds "a restless, prying, conscientious criticism," to use the felicitous phrase of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Within this context, several representative and more spectacular contributions and the points at issue in them are examined below.

Barbara Hanawalt's "Childrearing Among the Lower Classes of Late Medieval England," sets the revisionist tone of the papers in this reader. Her point of departure is Phillippe Aries' classic study, Centuries of Childhood (1962). According to Hanawalt, Aries' thesis that the sentimental concepts of childhood and the family did not exist in Medieval times but was a product of Early Modern Europe has been subjected to criticism by medievalists who point out "the instances in artistic representations, chronicles, saints' lives, and ecclesiastical pronouncements where children were treated as children" (p. 24).

Stressing the inconclusive nature of this thesis, Hanawalt further takes Aries to task for confining his research to upper-class artistic and literary artifacts, for his assumption that the Medieval household was a large one, and for neglecting the study of childrearing before the age of 7. Using coroners' rolls, Hanawalt shifts the focus of her investigation from the upper to the lower and middle classes, to the everyday peasant and villager, and is thus able to recapture fascinating glimpses of fourteenth and fifteenth century Medieval life in Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire, London, and Oxford.

Hanawalt's data suggest three important characteristics of Late Medieval English life: (1) the apparent indifference to the welfare of children under 4, as indicated by the fact that accidents among this age group during this period were eight times higher than in modern times; (2) the remarkable civility among family members, as evident by the rarity of interfamilial murders; and, (3) a cavalier attitude toward the nuclear family as one notes the existence of bigamy, concubinage, and a high degree of illegitimacy.

The problem of illegitimacy is addressed from a more sociological perspective by W. R. Lee in his paper, "Bastardy and the Socioeconomic Structure of South Germany," which, since its initial appearance in the JIH (Winter 1977:403-25), has provoked much spirited debate. Lee's basic argument is that the dramatic increase in illegitimacy between 1750 and 1850 in Bavaria cannot be attributed to a "sexual revolution" but rather "... it constituted a social norm, not a threat to the existing family structure" (p. 251).

The narrow scope of Lee's contention, both in the context of European history and the social structure of southern Germany, has been addressed by Shorter (JIH, Winter, 1978:459-69). Shorter believes that there was indeed a "sexual revolution" between 1750 and 1850 not only in Bavaria but throughout Europe. He further criticizes Lee for not distinguishing between "traditional" illegitimacy among landed peasants and illegitimacy among the truly destitute, what he terms "modern" illegitimacy which he regards as the main contributor to this unprecedented increase in the illegitimacy rates in southern Germany.

Yet another source of controversy, this time with monumental historical implications, is Francis J. Brooks' article, "Revising the Conquest of Mexico: Smallpox, Sources and Population," originally published in the JIH (Spring 1993:1-29). Brooks minimizes the severity of the 1520 smallpox epidemic, stating categorically: "Almost every element of this received account is false, epidemiologically impossible, historiographically suspect or logically dubious" (p. 108). Reviewing five major sources of documentation, Brooks dismisses out of hand the standard accounts that there were many deaths from smallpox in Mexico as a "Franciscan myth." Toto coelo opposed to Brooks' thesis is the opinion of Robert McCaa expressed in Health and Disease in Human History. On the basis of previously unavailable material in both Spanish and Nahuatl, McCaa painstakingly reexamined the evidence adduced by Brooks and concludes that the Mexican smallpox epidemic was indeed of catastrophic proportions. McCaa avers, "Unlike Brooks, I am confident that the impact of smallpox in New Spain was several times greater than in Western Europe" (p. 168).