Religion and Social Mobility in Nineteenth-Century The Hague

Abstract

In the Dutch Republic, Catholics and Jews held a social and economic minority position vis-a-vis a Protestant majority. At the end of the eighteenth century, official discrimination of Jews and Catholics came to an end. By studying intergenerational social mobility patterns of Protestants, Jews and Catholics in nineteenth-century The Hague, we tried to find out to what extent Catholics, Jews and Protestants occupied different social class positions and to what extent Jews and Catholics were able to make up for their initial inferior social position. Both descriptive measures and formal loglinear modeling are used to study these issues. A close connection between religion and social position in society was clearly confirmed by our data. The higher strata were more accessible to Protestants and Jews than to Catholics. The patterns of social mobility were very similar for all three religious denominations. This implies the absence of occupational and social class discrimination in nineteenth-century The Hague. Differences in social structure reflect a class structure that was hardly changed since the last days of the Dutch Republic