Family and inheritance: Rural society in Western Europe 1200–1800: Jack Goody, Joan Thirsk and E. P. Thompson (Eds) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press for the Past and Present Society, 1976. Pp. vi + 421. £8·80)

Abstract

The article examines the history and development of family systems in England and Ireland, with special attention to the role of moral constructions in establishing differential advantage among family members and to the consequences for society of such differentiation. It is argued that the English system of primogeniture contributed to the proliferation of bureaucracy and entrepreneurship, the growth of a middle class, and the creation of a landless and mobile laboring class. The Irish system of preferential inheritance with some partibility, on the other hand, deterred the rise of such class differentiation and concentration of wealth. Both societies developed a “bifocal morality” with respect to heirs and nonheirs or lesser heirs, a morality situated in economics and politics in England and nurtured within the family in Ireland.