Social and demographic origins of the European proletariat

Abstract

The Problem Saxony is the only large European territory where we can make reliable estimates of the absolute increase of the different social classes and strata (Blaschke 1967). Here, from the midst of the 16 until the midst of the 19 century the overall population tripled. However, the absolute number of peasants (Vollbauern) remained nearly the same, the number of full citizens in towns doubled, and in villages the cottars (Hausler) and laborers (Handarbeiter) were in 1850 ten times as numerous as in 1550 and their relative proportion rose from about one tenth to more than one half of the total population. For anybody who is confronted with these figures and who remembers the number of siblings of his great-grandfather, it seems to be obvious that there was a disproportionate increase of the rural proletariat as a consequence of its higher natural increase. Accordingly, Charles Tilly (1984; p. 39) proposed the following hypothesis: “On the average, proletarians responded to economic expansion with greater decline in mortality and greater increases in fertility than nonproletarians did, and responded to economic contraction with greater increases in mortality but no greater declines in fertility than nonproletarians did. The consequence was disproportionate natural increase of proletarians in good times, not completely compensated by the natural decrease of bad times.“ Tilly, whose point of view, we must admit, was nothing more than “informed” speculation and not supported by reliable empirical data, goes even further.