MOBILITY, SOCIAL

MOBILITY, SOCIAL. Early modern European societies were by definition nonegalitarian. Social position or status was determined by an individual's place within the institutions of family and social hierarchy. Removed from these hierarchies, the isolated individual appeared marginal at best. The hereditary nature of position and status was supported by systems of family lineage, patronclient relations, and loyalty. Marriages usually joined one "house," lineage, or family to another of equivalent social status. Thus, for the early modern period, social mobility, when it occurred, generally involved family and kinship groups and bore little resemblance to its modern counterpart. Nevertheless, there were opportunities for "upward mobility," as in sixteenth-century France, when réussite sociale (social success) enabled so many of the bourgeoisie to become gentlemen, and their families with them.

Nearly everything in the structure and function of European societies was opposed to social mobility of any great consequence. These were ordered societies with nobility at the top of the hierarchy. Because it was hereditary, the nobility was difficult to join. Thus, short of massive ennoblement, ascension to the social elite was inherently a minor, even marginal phenomenon. Heredity was also important in the artisan classes throughout Europe, as the sons of master craftsmen had privileged access to their fathers' skills. Indeed, social division was sometimes stricter among commoners than among the nobility. Finally, in a world where learning and literacy were not available to all of society, the fact of belonging to a noble or bourgeois elite, or even an artisan elite, conferred advantages that were as decisive as family wealth and constituted another obstacle to social ascension.

The fear of social backsliding—slipping down the social ladder—was a veritable obsession. When nobility was particularly institutionalized, as it was in France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, loss of status and its accompanying privileges became a permanent worry. Even among commoner families, there was a constant fear of social backsliding. However, this should not be considered solely a question of wealth: in the Maine region of France, the fact of belonging to an old, wellestablished, and honorable family was sufficient to dispel many of the social differences linked purely to wealth. There were three main avenues leading to loss of status:

• • Marrying beneath one's station. However, marriage was also a means of "enriching the stock," that is, bailing out the sons of impoverished noble families by marrying them to rich heiresses from the bourgeoisie, especially the daughters of financiers. Such exogamous marriages resulted in pulling women upward in social status.
• • Shame, linked to loss of honor or due to misbehavior. This was a consequence much feared by good families. It gave rise to many lettres de cachet.
• • Ruination, as a result of bad investments or careless spending.

Social backsliding could also be the result of bad luck, such as the premature death of the head of the family or of the only male heir. Also, a considerable number of families simply disappeared, either because a family produced no children at all or no male heir. Research based on patronyms can be misleading by exaggerating both geographic and social mobility of certain family names, because it was the women who ensured the continuity of the family. It is clear, however, that the lack of male offspring was a serious concern for strongly patriarchal families, especially among the social elites. It was the social destiny of the males that was essential, not that of the females.

In many countries—and primarily for the nobility—there were legal mechanisms to protect male heirs while simultaneously ensuring the survival and integrity of estates. Obstacles to social mobility were also imposed in the name of religion. In Ireland during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, when Britain's Penal Laws prohibited the practice of Roman Catholicism, Catholics saw their lands confiscated and were prohibited from constituting or reconstituting their estates, forced instead to live as tenant farmers. The central and western Pyrenees also had laws preventing the unification of estates. For the smooth running of this society, in which only the eldest inherited the ancestral patrimony, it was considered essential not only to preserve farms but also to maintain their number. Thus, the eldest child in a family, regardless of its sex, was supposed to marry a younger child from another family, or vice versa, but marriage between an "heir" and an "heiress" was forbidden because it would cause one "house" to disappear and reduce the number of farms. The corollary of this extremely constraining system was that younger sons and daughters could either marry with uncertain prospects, or choose to emigrate because they could not look forward to inheriting the estate.

MIGRATION

A minority of migrants managed to improve their condition during the first generation, but many failed, and mortality was high among migrants, particularly when the migration was to a country with a tropical climate, which suited very few Europeans. Still, migration could enable some people to climb the social ladder. Stonemasons migrating from the Limousin region to Paris or Bordeaux were able to devote their earnings to enlarging the family holding. Migrants settling in Spain were able to use their earnings to become large rural landowners. And there can be no doubt that there were remarkable successes in the East and West Indies.

The agrarian colonization of North America, especially among the English, often resulted in a firmly rooted peasantry. Generally speaking, this was also the case for the soldier-colonists, including those that the French installed on the banks of the Saint Lawrence River, particularly after 1668, with the officers and troops of the Carignan-Salières regiment that came to fight the Iroquois.

In the world of trade, some of the younger and less fortunate sons and cousins sent abroad to serve as commissioners or representatives for trading houses proved to be spectacularly successful. The success could be entirely individual, as in the case of Jacques Necker (1732–1804), the son of a poor Geneva family, who enjoyed unrivaled success as a banker and served as director general of finance for France in 1777. Success in the colonies could be accompanied by a reputation for knavery or could result in shocking nouveau-riche behavior, as in the case of the "nabobs"—the most famous being Robert Clive (1725–1774), who went to the East Indies poor and returned in 1767, having conquered a large part thereof and possessed of a considerable income of £40,000 sterling—or the West Indian planters, known in France as the "Américains, " many of whom enjoyed a high profile in eighteenth-century London. It is clear that upward social mobility was often the result of successful migration accompanied by chance and talent. This was true even in sixteenth-century Russia, where a small but important merchant bourgeoisie developed, consisting of men of varied status, based on their extremely heterogeneous origins.

UPWARD MOBILITY

In Russia, as in western Europe, social mobility most often affected the nobility. However, Russian nobility was unique in that, until Peter I the Great (ruled 1682–1725), the hereditary elite was based on service to the state, or "chin." There were some very intense class struggles, but access to employment, therefore a higher "chin" level, depended on skills and personal success. Peter the Great restructured all that, particularly in 1721 and 1722. He created new titles, such as count or baron, which he borrowed from other realms. The nobility was divided into fourteen ranks, and while it was still possible to rise in the "chin" system, only the tsar could authorize such a rise. This resulted in a nobiliary social elite, as elsewhere, except that it was linked very directly to state functions and needs for service, which ensured real flexibility for the ruler, until Catherine II the Great (ruled 1762–1796) agreed in 1785 to emphasize the hereditary divisions among the nobility. Until then, social ascension both into and within the Russian social elite was perfectly possible.

The opportunity for social ascension was much more widespread than is generally believed. A great many painters, sculptors, and artists of all kinds came from very common and even humble origins. Moreover, it was often the case that neither their family background nor their place of birth predisposed them in any way toward their future status. For example, the painter Hans Memling (c. 1430 or 1435–1494), who was so important in Bruges during the fifteenth century, was born into a peasant family in a village situated some twenty kilometers from Frankfurt am Main. The flowering of his talent and his enormous success will always remain a profound mystery. Similarly, nothing in Sir Richard Arkwright's (1732–1792) origins offers any inkling of his future success. He may not have been scrupulously honest, but his invention, the water-powered spinning frame, was astonishing and led to his accession to the gentry.

The church also provides many examples of "self-made" men, with one significant difference: the benefits of a successful career in the church could not be passed on to one's descendants (however, there was no shortage of nephews and nieces to favor). The career of Cardinal Jules Mazarin (1602–1661) provides a remarkable example. Born into a Roman family of very modest extraction, he entered the service of Cardinal Richelieu (Armand-Jean du Plessis; 1585–1642), chief minister to Louis XIII (ruled 1610–1643) of France, and later succeeded him as prime minister (1642–1661). Mazarin amassed a considerable fortune, from which his nieces benefited greatly. Although distinctly less impressive, the success of Robert Gaguin (c. 1433–1501) is no less exemplary: born near the boundary between Flanders and Artois, his family may have been common laborers. But this did not stop him from quickly becoming the leader of the Trinitarian Order, a major figure in the University of Paris, a central character for the history of humanism and the Renaissance in France, a great author, a diplomatic adviser, and a representative of the kings of France. These very well-known examples provide us with the key to upward social mobility: the power to make personal talents bear fruit through networks of allied families and kinship groups.

Although family lines and kinship groups preserve social structures, and slow, limit, or prevent social backsliding, they also foster social ascension. J. M. Moriceau's study of powerful peasant families in the Île-de-France region provides a good illustration of these different aspects. Beginning in the fifteenth century, the group studied constituted a veritable village aristocracy that practiced endogamy and maintained very effective networks; it even tended to develop into a caste. Only major crises, like the one that followed the Fronde (1648–1652), could shake it, by multiplying failures and social mobility. However, this did not ruin the families. The rest of the family line, collaterals if necessary, recovered the positions. In this very closed milieu—more closed than the nobility—families had considerable power. During the second half of the eighteenth century, this resulted in their becoming veritable gentlemen farmers and, later on, rural notables.

In the eighteenth century, widespread interest in science and technology increased the number of direct ascensions to fame and wealth, as in the case of Gaspard Monge (1746–1818), the great mathematician and physicist, born at Beaune (Burgundy) to a knife-grinder father and a mother whose father was a coachman. Literature offers similar examples: the French writers Denis Diderot (1713–1784) and Jean-JacquesRousseau(1712–1778)camefromvery modest backgrounds.

While ability and talent were a means to rapid social ascension in science, literature, and the church, the same cannot really be said for the army because the officer level was only barely open to men rising from the ranks. Of course the army can provide some examples of swift ascension, but only when the position of the officer was not the absolute monopoly of the nobility, as in Russia. It was generally exceptional for a commoner to rise to the rank of officer. For example, the careers of British officers, who came largely from the lower branches of the gentry, were fixed in advance by their level of wealth. Whenever we find social ascension in the army, it relates primarily to members of the petite noblesse.

DEGREES OF CLOSURE

We therefore find multiple social groups—the term class is too precise and should be avoided: master craftsmen, for example, did not constitute a class—seeking to preserve their positions and most of all to ensure their status through their progeny and by jealously maintaining their positions. Craft communities or corporations were very much attached to their privileges and monopolies: these monopolies were "the key to the decent level of living to which the corporation masters considered they had a right, and the basis of their economic independence" (M. Prak). At the high end of society, patriciates, like that of Venice, provide classic examples of the self-protective group. The ranks of the nobility were nowhere more restricted than in Venice, where they remained closed from 1297 onward. Their members were listed in a golden book or in noble genealogies, and members could not form alliances with outsiders. This patriciate held all power and authority in Venice.

In Geneva also, the "Geneva aristocracy" completely dominated social and political life, just as it dominated trade and banking. Unlike other patriciates, however, it was more than willing to open its ranks, even to immigrants, when they were at the head of a great fortune or had acquired a great reputation in religion or the sciences. The Geneva patriciate was therefore remarkable by virtue of its cosmopolitan aspect, which clearly distinguished it from that of Venice.

The tendency for groups to remain closed was nevertheless a much more general phenomenon. In pre-Revolutionary, rural French society, many of the notarial acts to which families had recourse were aimed specifically at excluding girls from the greater part of the inheritance, particularly land inheritance. Girls received a dowry, usually a sum of money and some items of furniture (trousseau, bed, etc.) but the future inheritance went to the male heirs. There was much greater diversity for boys, ranging from egalitarian inheritance to the choice of a single distinctly privileged heir. There was in fact no standard, uniform practice. For example, customs in the region of Paris and Orléans aimed solely at preserving the family bond, paying no particular attention to whether the presumptive heir was male or female, older or younger. In Normandy and Anjou, however, the customary system was egalitarian, and estates in that region were far more difficult to preserve.

Furthermore, the closed nature of nobilities and patriciates was much less extensive than is often thought. It varied from period to period and from country to country. The sixteenth century was undoubtedly a period of great upward mobility in Europe as a whole. The high mortality caused by difficult living conditions combined with the effect of the multiple wars that marked the century to form a social context that was far less rigid than it later became. The passage to nobility was, indeed, more difficult from the eighteenth century onward. However, even when openness and mobility clearly existed, they were accompanied by a strong resistance to change, the Neapolitan nobility being a good example. Victory in the "Spanish affair" certainly ushered in some immediate upheavals in the positions of families, as well as many downfalls. Yet, the composition of the Neapolitan nobility manifested "a remarkable continuity compared to the previous period" (M. A. Visceglia). This resistance was no doubt facilitated by a shared belief in common values and social rules. Having been provost of Parisian merchants from 1622 to 1627 and having also become president of the parlement in 1627, Nicolas de Bailleul decided in 1639 to have his family tree drawn up. He managed to root the preeminence of his family in the distant past in order to erase the obstacles to his rapid ascension and efface all traces of social mobility in a world where prestige, virtue, and success were not linked to meteoric social ascension but to the reality of family and lineage.

See also Aristocracy and Gentry ; Art: The Conception and Status of the Artist ; Artisans ; Family ; Inheritance and Wills ; Military: Armies: Recruitment, Organization, and Social Composition ; Mobility, Geographic ; Officeholding ; Women .

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Jean-Pierre Poussou (Translated from the French by Liam Gavin)