Some research projects just don’t pan out. I’m going to tell you about one of mine.
Several years ago, for a course on the High Middle Ages, I decided to study primogeniture—the custom of handing property and titles down to the elder son (if there is a son). Primogeniture expanded across Europe in the Middle Ages. In many cases it replaced partible inheritance, in which property was divided among offspring, with daughters sometimes included.
My hypothesis was that primogeniture contributed to Europe’s distinctive development and thus to the Industrial Revolution. By keeping property intact within the family, it allowed the buildup over time of powerful families who could stand up against a king or emperor.
Such freedom, missing in much of the world, encouraged competition (including war, of course), trade, freedom of ideas, and innovation.
While not necessarily taking that position, many historians have considered primogeniture an important shift in inheritance customs. Their views were partly shaped by Georges Duby, a French social historian. In 1953 he published what became a classic study of the French county of Mâcon during the 1000s and 1100s. Duby found that impartible (indivisible) inheritance, especially primogeniture, contributed to a “narrowing and a tightening of the family around the male line, from which emerged a dynastic spirit .”[1]
Others have echoed this view. Writing in 1977, R. I. Moore saw the adoption of primogeniture as an antidote to the the destruction that took place when Charlemagne’s empire was divided among his three grandsons. “The resolution of the struggle for control of secular land demanded nothing less than the reconstitution of the aristocratic family,” he wrote. The “simplest way” to do this was “through the principle of male primogeniture—the presumption that a man’s entire property would pass at his death to his eldest son.”[2]
Vivek Swaroop Sharma, a political scientist, wrote in 2015 that primogeniture also reduced future wars by shifting dynastic relations from conquest to marriage. He even said that primogeniture “has been such an artifact of the ancien régime that its true novelty is difficult for moderns to appreciate.” [3]
So far, so good. My paper was a historiographical essay; that is, it was based on what historians have written about primogeniture, not on primary research.
But then things started to turn sour.
For one , even though partible inheritance divided property into smaller holdings, it may not have been the threat that some claimed. As far back as the 1960s, Joan Thirsk pointed out that divided holdings could be reshaped by” buying, leasing, or exchanging land,” especially during a period in which wasteland was being converted to cultivation. “There were plenty of occasions for re-shaping a lop-sided holding.”[4]
Equally important, I began to detect claims that Duby’s famous paradigm may not have been as airtight as he thought. I’ll cite two historians.
In 1997, Amy Livingstone studied the charters for gifts to the Catholic Church from two prominent families in Blois-Champagne during the period that Duby studied in Burgundy. When an individual or family donated property to the Church, all heirs had to sign a document to show that they would not later claim ownership. Because many people signed these charters, not just older sons, Livingstone concluded, “Noble family organization was a complex social phenomenon, and appreciating its complexities requires an examination of family structure on a local, often individual, basis.”[5] She didn’t directly challenge Duby’s findings but politely stated that his findings did not appear to apply to all parts of France.
She was not alone, and the nail in the coffin was driven by Thomas Evergates, who challenged Duby directly, even using Duby’s own findings. ”The county of Mâcon, for example, which passed to twelve heirs between 1026 and 1236, went to an eldest son only six times.”[5] That suggests that, however much a family wanted to practice primogeniture, circumstances (such as the absence of sons) often made it impossible.
So, how important could primogeniture be?
I haven’t changed my mind that Europe’s freedom and competition spurred innovation (see the second half of a recent post). But primogeniture has faded from the scene as a major push in that direction—at least for now. Perhaps it will arise again. Historians are always taking a second look.
[1] Georges Duby, The Chivalrous Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), 75.
[2] R. I. Moore, The First European Revolution, c. 970-1215 (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2000), 67.
[3] Vivek Swaroop Sharma, “ Kinship,Property, and Authority: European Territorial Consolidation Reconsidered,” Politics & Society 43, no. 2, 151-180 (February 27, 2015), 165.
[4] Joan Thirsk, “The Common Fields,” Past and Present 29 (December 1964), 3-25, at 22.
[5] AmyLivingstone, “Kith and Kin: Kinship and Family Structure of the Nobility of Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Blois-Chartres,” French Historical Studies 20, no. 3 (1997): 419-58, at 420.
[6] Theodore Evergates, “The Feudal Imaginary of Georges Duby.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 27, no. 3 (Fall 1997), 641-660, at 549.
Image by Herbert Aust on Pixabay.
Wouldn’t one important metric be a determination of how many families had sons and how many of those sons survived the father? (I assume historical research would have to include this data.)
Another question (alas only questions here since I have no answers), how often did the inheriting son employ or partner with other family members? And how often did he sell part or all?
Another question: how often did the inheritor’s lack of talent depreciate the property and even force sales?
I do have one observation that might be relevant to determine how these patterns work out. Most monarchies practiced primogeniture, including ancient Egypt. In many cases this led to intrigues and even murder to eliminate the rightful heir. It also led to guardians or vizirs having more power than a young heir.
Wallace: These are great questions. One source says that typically 20 percent of European families did not have sons. You are exactly right—one of the things that foils easy answers is that sons could often work things out with one another (and with daughters, too).
In a sense, what defeated my argument was that people are not chess pieces, as Adam Smith pointed out. “In the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own.” People can change and even triumph over the positions they are placed in.