Employing a rigorous methodological approach and analysing a vast body of sources from towns and regions in Italy, France and England over 300 years, this book hints at the extent of "routine" infanticide of newborns by married parents in early modern Europe, a practice ignored by contemporary tribunals.
Death Control in the West 1500–1800 examines baptismal registers and ecclesiastical censuses across a score of communities in Catholic and Protestant Europe. Married women had little reason to hide their condition from priests, midwives, neighbours and friends; however, the practice of post-partum abortion was common everywhere, especially during times of hardship. By no means was it confined to the lower classes or to girls alone. Proposing a series of reflections on population control, this volume explores how families adopted a system of selective infanticide to manage resources and to safeguard social status, just like populations elsewhere around the globe.
This study is an excellent tool for students and researchers interested in the demographic mechanisms of the age and social and familial relationships in early modern Europe.
Author(s): Gregory Hanlon
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 328
City: London
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
Figures
Graphs
Maps
Tables
Preface and Acknowledgements
Introduction: Grim Reckonings From European Archives
Family Size Limitation: a Human Behavioural Universal
European Contours Before 1900
Sex-ratio Studies From Baptismal Registers
Notes
Part I Italy
1 Introduction to Italian Demography After the Council of Trent
Notes
2 Montefollonico: Infanticide By Married Couples in Early Modern Tuscany
Notes
3 Torrita Di Siena, 1580–1770, Or the High Cost of Cheap Food
Notes
4 Pavia in Lombardy 1576–1700: The Importance of Neighbourhood
Notes
5 Parma 1500–1800: Girls Before Boys
Notes
6 Mountain Demography During the Little Ice Age
Notes
7 Three Piacentino Towns, Cortemaggiore, Fiorenzuola, Castel San Giovanni: A Terrible Synchrony
Sex-ratio Variations
Twins and Bastards
Status Animarum Evidence
Conclusion
Notes
Part II Southwestern France
8 Introduction to Aquitaine DURING the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
Notes
9 Agen, Aquitaine’s Complicated Second City, 1600–1715
Notes
10 Sex-Selective Infanticide in Villeneuve-Sur-Lot, 1610–1711
Early Modern Villeneuve-Sur-Lot
Baptisms of Villeneuve
The Social Elites
Conclusion
Notes
11 Infanticide By Married Couples in Marmande, 1605–1711
A Garonne River Town
Sources and Methods
Absolute Numbers
The Lower Classes
Notable Baptisms
Twins
Bastards
Conclusion
Notes
12 The Massacre of the Innocents: Routine Infanticide in Mézin, 1649–1743
Introduction and Sources
First Principles
Statistical Framework
Mézin
Infanticidal Behaviour
Effect of Grain Prices On Behaviour
Conclusion
Notes
13 Layrac, 1628–1711: A Typical Confessionally Mixed Community
Note
14 Nérac: A Huguenot Stronghold in Gascony
Notes
15 Bergerac in Périgord, Calvinist Bastion in Aquitaine
Catholic Sex Ratios
Protestant Sex Ratios
Bergerac Catholics
Twins
Note
Part III England
16 Infanticide and Sex Ratios in England, 1550–1750
Notes
17 Leeds: A Sprawling Workshop of Western Yorkshire
Notes
18 Sex Ratios in an Idyllic Country Town: Dorchester
Notes
Conclusion: Endless Possibilities
Notes
Bibliography
Index
