Proto-industrialisation and occupational mobility in Catalonia, c.1680-1829 Dr Julie Marfany, University of Cambridge

(jem23@cam.ac.uk) XIV IEHA conference, Helsinki, 21st-25th August, 2006

Session 39: Intergenerational transmission of occupation and social class

Introduction

This paper investigates occupational mobility in a Catalan proto-industrial community

over the period 1680-1829. Despite a large and still-growing literature on proto-

industrialisation, historians have paid relatively little attention to the question of

occupational mobility in proto-industrial societies. This is somewhat surprising, given

that occupational mobility is implicit in many accounts of proto-industrialisation.

Proto-industrial activities often began as by-employments in rural areas where the

opportunity costs of working outside of agriculture for part of the time were low.1 In

some regions, large sectors of the population might then end up working in proto-

industry full-time, while in others, some ties to land remained.2 Either way, mobility

between the two sectors existed. This mobility tends, however, to be taken for granted

in the literature, and to be neither quantified nor thoroughly assessed.

The extent to which proto-industrialisation may have implied occupational

mobility is important as regards the question of openness in choice of occupations.

Much of the literature on work in early modern societies has been concerned with the

extent to which guilds restricted participation in craft activities, usually by levying

higher charges for entry on outsiders compared with the sons and sons-in-law of guild

1 P. Kriedte, H. Medick and J. Schlumbohm, Industrialisation before industrialisation, trans. B. Schempp (Cambridge, 1981), Ch. 1; J. Thirsk, “Industries in the countryside” in F.J. Fisher (ed.), Essays in the economic and social history of Tudor and Stuart England (Cambridge, 1961), pp. 70-88; R. Braun, Industrialisation and everyday life, trans. S. Hanbury Tennison (Cambridge, 1990; 1st German ed., 1960); J. Schlumbohm, “From peasant society to class society: some aspects of family and class in a northwest German protoindustrial parish, 17th – 19th centuries”, Journal of Family History, 17,2 (1992), pp. 183-99; G. Gullickson, Spinners and weavers of Auffay. Rural industry and the sexual division of labour in a French village, 1750-1850 (Cambridge, 1986). 2 For an example of the former situation, see D. Levine, Family formation in an age of nascent capitalism (New York, 1977). For an example of the latter, see F. Hendrickxs, “In order not to fall into poverty.” Production and reproduction in the transition from proto-industry to factory industry in Borne and Wierden (the Netherlands), 1800-1900 (Amsterdam, 1997).

members.3 Proto-industry was initially viewed as having evaded guild controls,

primarily through its rural locations, and therefore to have permitted greater freedom

of choice. Again, this hypothesis has been the subject of much debate, but little

empirical testing. The degree to which proto-industry opened up new opportunities to

earn a living has tended to be studied indirectly, through the medium of demographic

change. Thus, in areas where proto-industrialisation was accompanied by a fall in the

age at marriage or rising nuptiality overall, these changes are often attributed to the

greater ability of proto-industrial producers to earn a living than had formerly been

the case.4 It is not often specified, however, whether these new opportunities involved

a new choice of occupation or a greater availability of traditional work.

Finally, a third somewhat vexed question concerns the relationship between

proto-industry and subsequent factory-based industrialisation. Among the many

criticisms of the original argument that proto-industry facilitated further industrial

development has been the view that proto-industry did not, as was originally claimed,

build up a store of human capital in the form of skilled workers who could then

transfer from a rural setting to the factory. Instead, the claim has been made that rural

artisans were the least likely to submit to the discipline of the factory, and that

therefore there was no continuity between the proto-industrial workforce and that of

the factory.5

In the Catalan context, the third question is particularly important, since the

transition from proto-industry to the factory was not only a successful transition, but

also one based in part on a shift from woollen to cotton production. A detailed study

3 The restrictive nature of guilds has recently been reasserted by Sheilagh Ogilvie, “Guilds, efficiency and social capital: evidence from German proto-industry”, Economic History Review, LVII, 2 (2004), pp. 286-333, partly in reply to Larry Epstein’s claim that guilds were highly efficient in creating a pool of skilled labour and facilitating technological innovation, in contrast to the “sluggishness” of proto-industry: S.R. Epstein, “Craft guilds, apprenticeship and technological change in preindustrial Europe”, Journal of Economic History, 58,3 (1998), pp. 684-713. 4 Schlumbohm, “Peasant society to class society”; U. Pfister, “Proto-industrialization and demographic change: the canton of Zürich revisited”, Journal of European Economic History, 18,3 (1989), pp. 269-62. 5 P. Hudson, The genesis of industrial capital. A study of the West Riding wool textile industry c.1750-1850 (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 81-4; T. Liu, The weaver’s knot. The contradictions of class struggle and family solidarity in western France, 1750-1914 (Ithaca, New York, 1994), pp. 123-7.

of occupational mobility into and within the textile sector would contribute greatly to

understanding how and why Catalonia industrialised. The question of openness is also

of interest in the Catalan context, since Catalan inheritance customs, by placing great

emphasis on impartibility and male primogeniture, are also likely to have conditioned

the occupational choices of men. It is of interest in this regard to see whether or not

younger sons, who did not inherit, were more likely to pursue a different occupation

from that of their fathers.

Finally, the study of occupational mobility in the past is important for reasons

that transcend the specific cases of proto-industrialisation and of Catalonia. An

analysis of occupational mobility over the life-cycle, as well as intergenerationally,

can help to ascertain the reliability of occupational labels in the past. It has been

suggested that, prior to the modern industrial era, the frequency which with dual

occupations or by-employments were found was such as to make the definition of

occupations and occupational mobility highly problematic.6 In particular, if many

early modern households had land or were engaged in agricultural activities alongside

crafts, who can meaningfully be described as a farmer or peasant? Similarly, it can be

difficult, as will be discussed below, to separate out issues of occupational mobility

from divisions of labour. At certain times and in communities of a certain size, a

distinction between, say, a carpenter, a turner, a cooper and a wheelwright may be

meaningful, but at other times and in other places, it may not. To some extent, these

are methodological questions: the issue of by-employments is perhaps more acute

when considering the household as a unit of production than when the investigation is

concerned with male occupations.

The context and the case study

The study of occupations is of particular importance in Catalonia, given the region’s

precocious industrialisation compared to the rest of Spain and southern Europe. While

other areas on the so-called “periphery” of Europe failed to industrialise over the 6 See, for example, M. Berg, The age of manufactures 1700-1820 (2nd ed., London, 1994), pp. 23-6.

eighteenth and early nineteenth century, Catalonia stands comparison with the “core”

regions of northern Europe in experiencing a process of rapid industrialisation during

this period, primarily textile-based.7 The transformation of the Catalan economy was

essentially a process of regional specialisation.8 New foreign demand for wine and

spirits stimulated the expansion of commercial viticulture in the southern and coastal

regions, where soils were too poor for cereal crops. Western Catalonia, by contrast,

was increasingly given over to cereal production, while rural industry became

increasingly concentrated in the central mountainous region, where the climate was

less favourable to growing vines, and the soil too poor for cereal yields to be

intensified. Rural industry in central Catalonia increasingly developed along proto-

industrial lines, producing for distant markets, with corresponding changes in

organisation of production. Initially, this proto-industry was mainly a woollen

industry, reflecting both traditional skills and the capture of particular markets.

Changes in tariff policies in 1778, however, made it cheaper to import raw cotton

rather than cotton already spun.9 Until then, the cotton industry had been restricted to

Barcelona, where it was mainly organised in workshops producing printed calicoes.

The ability to import raw cotton therefore broadened out the cotton industry to include

spinning and weaving. The putting-out networks established by the wool industry

were an obvious source of cheap labour for the cotton industry, which duly took them

over. At the same time, many clothiers and woollen manufacturers switched over to

cotton. Throughout the early stages, cotton manufacturing remained small-scale and

domestic, as the woollen industry had been. The introduction of the spinning jenny

did little to alter this pattern. It was not until water or steam power became necessary

in the 1830s and 1840s that the shift to the factory began to occur.

7 For the core-periphery comparison, see S. Pollard, Peaceful conquest. The industrialization of Europe 1760-1960 (Oxford, 1981), pp. 206-7. 8 P. Vilar, La Catalogne dans l’Espagne moderne. Recherches sur les fondements économiques des structures nationales, 3 vols., (Paris, 1962); J. Torras, “Especialización agrícola e industria rural a Cataluña en el siglo XVIII”, Revista de Historia Económica, 2, 3 (1984), pp. 113-27. 9 J.K.J. Thomson, “An explanation of the ‘take-off’ of the Catalan cotton industry”, Economic History Review, LVIII, 4 (2005), pp. 701-35.

Recent work has stressed the rural and proto-industrial roots of Catalan

industry, in contrast to an older historiographical tradition that dated the Catalan

industrial revolution as beginning in 1832, with the founding of the first successful

steam-powered mill in Barcelona.10 My current work is very much in keeping with

these recent arguments. In studying continuities between wool and cotton and

between proto-industry and the factory, the appearance of new occupations and the

extent of occupational mobility into textiles from other sectors or within textiles, be it

mobility over an individual lifetime or intergenerational mobility are important

variables to identify and analyse.

The case study is the town of Igualada, over the period 1680-1829. Igualada is

situated some 60 km west of Barcelona, along the former royal road to Madrid. Over

the eighteenth century, the town shared in the transformation of the Catalan economy.

Its population grew rapidly from a minimum of 1,700 inhabitants in 1717 to 4,900 in

1787 and around 7,000 by 1830.11 Much of this population growth was driven by the

expansion of the textile sector, first wool and then cotton. By the 1760s, Igualada was

the main centre producing woollen cloths in Catalonia. Cotton was introduced in the

1780s, as elsewhere in Catalonia, and rapidly displaced wool so that, by 1820,

Igualada was the second centre for spinning cotton after Barcelona and the fourth for

wool.12

Occupational mobility is analysed first over the life-cycle, in order to test the

consistency of occupational adscription, and then between generations. The sources

used are the parish registers of the town, which record male occupations both

thoroughly and consistently, not only at marriage, but also at burial, and at the

baptisms and burials of children. A family reconstitution has already been carried out

for this community, resulting in some 8,700 families. Occupations can thus be traced 10 A. Garcia Balañà, La fabricació de la fàbrica. Treball i política a la Catalunya cotonera (1784-1874) (Barcelona, 2004); L. Ferrer Alòs, “Bergadanas, continuas y mules. Tres geografías de la hilatura del algodón en Cataluña (1790-1830)”, Revista de Historia Económica, 22 (2004), pp. 337-86. 11 This population growth is the subject of my PhD: J.E. Marfany, “Proto-industrialisation and demographic change in Catalonia, 1680-1829” (University of Cambridge, 2003). 12 J.K.J. Thomson, A distinctive industrialization. Cotton in Barcelona 1728-1832 (Cambridge, 1992), pp.302-3.

over the life-cycle, from first recording at marriage, to subsequent recording at the

baptisms and burials of children, through to the burials of husband and wife. Female

occupations are not recorded in these sources, so the analysis has to be restricted to

male occupations only. Moreover, the restriction to married men imposed by the use

of the family reconstitution means that certain occupations, such as servant, that do

not seem to have been practised by married men, do not appear.

Changes in occupations over the life-cycle were analysed and quantified using

an algorithm devised by Peter Kitson.13 The algorithm uses as its base the equivalent

of the family reconstitution form (FRF), that is, it compares a man’s occupation at

marriage with the occupations recorded on subsequent events, such as the baptisms

and burials of his children, and his own burial or that of his wife.14 It is of great value

in that it not only reports the sequences and combinations of occupations, but also

compares the amount of actual change with the amount of potential change, given the

number of occupational descriptors present.

Changes in intergenerational mobility were easier to measure, since the

marriage register records not only a man’s occupation at the time of his marriage, but

also that of his father and the father of the bride. The analysis of intergenerational

mobility thus compares the occupations of fathers and sons as recorded on the

marriage register. The register also records place of birth and residence for both the

groom and his father, thus allowing for occupational mobility to be correlated with

immigration for a further test of openness.

13 P.M. Kitson, “Family formation, male occupation and the nature of parochial registration in England, c.1538-1837” (PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 2004). The algorithm is described in Appendices 5 and 6. 14 Each marriage is assigned a unique identity number in the database, which then appears on all other events associated with that marriage, such as the baptisms and burials of children born to the marriage, and the burials of the partners to the marriage. Second marriages were excluded to avoid double-counting except where the first marriage was not in observation, that is, where the first marriage had taken place either prior to 1680 or outside the parish. Not all marriages end with the burial of the husband or wife: marriages which continued beyond the cut-off date of 1829 or where the couple presumably emigrated are also included, though obviously all calculations of occupational mobility require two or more observations. For convenience’ sake, the label FRF will be used for the marriage identity number.

Life-cycle mobility

The algorithm was run twice through the available data. This allowed for the

identification of errors and, more importantly, for the identification of spurious

occupational mobility, that is, occupational descriptors that were clearly synonyms.

Common errors were transcribing carder (wool or cotton carder) for corder (rope-

maker) or forner (baker) for torner (turner). Common synonyms were doctor en

medicina/metge (medical doctor) or arriero/traginer (muleteer). In the latter case, we

have an example of Spanish and Catalan terms appearing simultaneously in the

dataset. Another issue was lack of specificity. For example, many men were

frequently described simply as “weaver” on one occasion, but as “woollen weaver” or

“cotton weaver” on another. In fact, “weaver/woollen weaver” was the second most

frequent combination. These terms were then standardised before the exercise was

repeated.

A more difficult issue was deciding which cases of occupational combinations

really reflected occupational mobility, as opposed to a lack of division of labour or

lack of precision in the way terms were used. For example, several occupational titles

related to gunmaking appear in the data: armer, canoner, encepador and pedrenyaler.

The first appear to be generic terms for gunsmith. Encepador, however, refers

specifically to the task of fitting wooden handles or butts to the metal barrel of the

gun, while pedrenyalers made flint-fired pistols or small arms.15 It seems, however,

that such terms are used interchangeably in the Igualada data. Another group of terms

related to commerce, so different terms for merchant and shopkeeper, such as

botiguer, comerciant, negociant and marxant were all standardised to a single

occupational descriptor. While in theory there might be differences in the precise

meanings of such terms (botiguer referring to a shopkeeper, while comerciant and

negociant might be best translated as “merchant”), it seems that, in practice, there was

none that could be identified. A final group worth mentioning was the transport

15 This is based on the definitions in the best Catalan dictionary of historical terms: A.M. Alcover and F.B. Moll (eds.), Diccionari català-valencià-balear, 10 vols. (2nd ed., Mallorca, 1950-68).

sector, where it was decided to standardise such terms as arriero or traginer

(muleteer), carreter (carter) and llogater de mules (someone who hired out mules), as

they occurred in combination with a degree of frequency that seemed to justify such

standardisation. The advantage to the approach taken here is that standardisation can

occur from the “bottom up”, that is, according to the realities revealed by the data

rather than to any theoretical maxim as to which occupations should be regarded as

similar. At this level, standardisation rarely involves combining activities with

different Hiscodes.16

Prior to standardisation, there were 14,810 changes out of a possible

maximum (given the number of recorded occupations) of 40,589. In other words,

change occurred in 36.5% of all instances that it might theoretically have done so.

After standardisation, this figure fell to 31.6%. The difference is not great, but in fact,

much of the remaining occupational mobility could also be standardised away if one

wished to be more ruthless. For example, abaixador (cropper) and paraire (clothier)

appeared together in 45 cases, making it the sixth most frequent combination. This is

hardly surprising, since many clothiers had equipment for carding, cropping and

dyeing cloths recorded in their inventories. Much of the occupational mobility was

within the textile sector, as will be discussed in a moment. Moreover, although there

were 577 different combinations of occupations, 399 (69%) occurred only once,

leaving the possibility that some of these may have been simply recording errors.

On the whole, occupational status was fairly stable over the life-cycle. Table 1

shows the frequencies with which more than one occupation was recorded on an FRF,

according to the number of instances in which an occupation was recorded. Clearly,

the greater the number of observations for a given family, the greater the likelihood

that a change in occupation might be captured. To some extent, this was indeed the

case, as is evident in the second column of the table, where the percentage of FRFs

recording only one occupational title declines as the number of instances on which

16 For a discussion of coding Catalan occupations into HISCO, see J. Marfany, “Coding into HISCO in Catalonia: issues and perspectives”, paper presented at the ESSHA conference, Berlin, March 2006.

occupations were recorded increases. Nonetheless, around two-thirds of most FRFs

still recorded only one occupation regardless of the number of observations, and in

total, over 80% did so. Most men in Igualada thus kept the same occupation from

marriage right through the length of time that they were in observation.

Table 1: Number of different occupations per reconstituted family according to the number of observations

Sum of different occupations (%) Observations 1 2 3 4 5 6 N 1 100 2886 2 83.3 16.7 899 3 80.3 17.5 2.2 641 4 75.9 18.9 5.2 0.0 502 5 74.9 19.5 4.1 1.3 0.3 395 6 66.0 25.7 7.5 0.5 0.3 0.0 373 7 66.6 25.7 5.9 1.3 0.5 0.0 374 8 63.6 29.6 6.2 0.6 0.0 0.0 321 9 65.4 26.0 6.8 1.8 0.0 0.0 338 10 66.4 22.9 7.4 2.6 0.7 0.0 271 11 69.3 23.0 6.3 1.5 0.0 0.0 270 12 69.5 22.1 5.7 2.3 0.4 0.0 262 13 65.4 25.6 6.9 2.0 0.0 0.0 246 14 66.7 20.3 8.7 3.9 0.5 0.0 207 15 68.6 23.0 5.8 2.1 0.5 0.0 191 16 63.2 25.2 8.4 2.6 0.6 0.0 155 17 57.1 31.9 8.4 0.8 0.8 0.8 119 18 71.8 16.5 7.1 1.2 2.4 1.2 85 19 65.2 27.3 6.1 1.5 0.0 0.0 66 20 50.0 31.6 15.8 2.6 0.0 0.0 38 21 55.3 26.3 13.2 2.6 2.6 0.0 38 22 60.0 30.0 6.7 0.0 3.3 0.0 30 23 64.3 28.6 0.0 0.0 7.1 0.0 14 24 63.6 36.4 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 11 25 60.0 40.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 5 26 33.3 0.0 66.7 0.0 0.0 0.0 3 27 50.0 0.0 50.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 2 28 50.0 50.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 2 29 100.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 1 30 66.7 0.0 0.0 33.3 0.0 0.0 3 Total 80.9 14.8 3.4 0.7 0.2 0.0 8724

Furthermore, very few people (4.3%) changed occupation more than once.

This suggests that the scenario may be one of people practising by-employments part

of the time, or moving backwards and forwards between two, perhaps related,

occupations. Table 2 sets out the most commonly observed combinations of

occupations, all those occurring 10 times or more.

Table 2: Most frequent combinations of occupations over the life-cycle Occupations Frequency Smallholder/muleteer 136 Calico manufacturer/weaver 81 Smallholder/clothier 61 Clothier/weaver 59 Smallholder/weaver 50 Cropper/clothier 43 Smallholder/merchant 36 Cotton manufacturer/weaver 32 Cotton manufacturer/calico manufacturer/weaver 31 Smallholder/tanner 27 Cloth manufacturer/clothier 26 Stocking-knitter/tailor 19 Smallholder/miller 17 Maker of silk trimmings/weaver 15 Smallholder/hatter 14 Tanner/clothier 13 Carder/master builder 13 Calico manufacturer/calico printer 13 Smallholder/merchant/muleteer 11 Smallholder/blacksmith 11 Clothier/hatter 11 Weaver/silk weaver 11 Smallholder/cobbler 10

The table reveals two main patterns. Unsurprisingly, ten of these combinations, just

under half, were individuals combining smallholdings with another activity.

Smallholder is the translation of pagès, usually a generic term for anyone working the

land, but in this context referring to smallholders, and to the less frequent terms

llaurador (literally a ploughman, but again with a more generic meaning) and hortolà

(someone who cultivates a vegetable plot). By far and away the most frequent

combination was smallholding with some form of transport activity, “muleteer” here

being the standardised form for muleteers, carters and those who hired out mules, as

explained above. In an area where most ploughing and most transport of goods or

people were done by mules, it makes sense that those who owned mules should put

them to both uses. Smallholdings were also combined with most artisanal and

commercial activities. There is nothing unusual for an early modern society to show

such patterns. In the case of Igualada, however, the small size of most holdings made

participation in other activities essential, since most households owned insufficient

land either to meet reproduction costs or to occupy available labour.17

The second type of combination captured in Table 2 is textile occupations.

Here, the idea of occupational mobility is trickier. The newness of the cotton industry

during this period raises questions as to how precisely contemporaries distinguished

between activities and the terms used to describe them. For example, it is unclear how

far a calico manufacturer (fabricant d’indianes) was distinct from a cotton

manufacturer (fabricant de cotó). Here, further standardisation might well be justified.

Moreover, “manufacturer” in this context is misleading: to modern minds, the term

implies a distance from the production process that does not correspond to reality.

While there was an element of self-aggrandisement, as noted by Jaume Torras, in the

decision by many clothiers (paraires) to begin styling themselves as cloth

manufacturers (fabricants de panyos), the significance of this should not be

exaggerated.18 Most of these self-styled manufacturers, both in wool and cotton, had

small workshops employing mainly family labour, and are likely to slipped between

co-ordinating the work of others and weaving and printing themselves at different

stages, depending on fluctuations in profits and availability of labour. It is unrealistic

to assume that a rigid distinction existed between weaver and manufacturer at this

stage. Rather, the textile sector should be viewed as extremely fluid, both in terms of

the type of work carried out by individuals and the extent to which they were

independent or not at different times. The use of other, less precise terms such as

cotoner and indianaire, here subsumed into manufacturers, adds support to this view.

17 On the size of landholdings in Igualada, see J. Marfany, “Proto-industrialisation, property rights and the land market in Catalonia”, paper presented at the IEHA conference, Helsinki, August 2006. 18 J. Torras, “Estructura de la indústria pre-capitalista. La draperia”, Recerques, 11 (1981), pp. 7-28.

A further aspect of fluidity within the textile sector is the shift from wool to

cotton. Prior to standardisation of occupations, which removed most of these shifts,

there were 78 combinations of wool and cotton activities, such as clothier with cotton

manufacturer, or wool weaver with cotton weaver. This illustrates nicely the extent to

which the new cotton industry built upon the existing skills of the proto-industrial

labour force and, indeed, eventually ousted wool from the established putting-out

networks. As I have argued elsewhere, this continuity is an important feature of

Catalan industrialisation.19

More surprising, if we return to Table 2, are the cases where two artisanal

activities were combined where one was not in textiles. There are five of these:

stocking-knitter and tailor, maker of silk trimmings (perxer) and weaver, tanner and

clothier, carder and master builder and clothier and hatter. The first two are less

surprising, since they were related activities in terms of skills. The other three,

however, involved very different skills and membership of different guilds, not to

mention in terms of the equipment required. The most plausible, though unprovable,

explanation here is that it is the textile activity that was the “open” one in the case of

tanners and hatters. Being a clothier could simply mean being a putting-out merchant:

it might not involve any investment in equipment, merely the time required to co-

ordinate the putting-out aspects of production. This explanation is less clear in the

case of carders and master builders, where equipment was a requirement, but here

seasonality of work might be a factor.

Intergenerational mobility

On the whole, the relative stability of occupations in Igualada is reassuring as regards

the study of intergenerational mobility. It seems as if most people throughout their

lives kept to the trade to which they had been apprenticed, though without these trades

necessarily being particularly specialised. If they moved into a different sector of the

19 J. Marfany, “Is it still helpful to talk about proto-industrialisation? Some suggestions from a Catalan case study”, Economic History Review (forthcoming).

economy, it was far more likely to be into agriculture than into another craft. Such

stability therefore justifies the comparison of occupations over a generation.

In comparing the occupations of fathers and sons, it was impossible to be as

precise as in the life-cycle analysis. For many occupations, the numbers involved

were too small to allow for any test of statistical significance. Nonetheless, some

broad comparisons could still be made. For part of the analysis, occupations were

grouped together, so mobility could be compared across sectors at least. Occupations

were grouped according to a scheme already used elsewhere. Agriculture was one

sector, textiles was another. Among other artisans, the leather industry was treated

separately as being the other significant industry in Igualada at the time, but also a

useful comparison with textiles in that it appears to have been much more “closed”

than other occupations. Remaining artisans were grouped as goods and services (food,

innkeeping, transport, clothing and footwear), and other artisans (building trades,

woodwork, metalwork, apothecaries, barber surgeons and other crafts). The remaining

categories were professionals and commerce (doctors, lawyers, government officials,

wholesale and retail trade) and “others”, a miscellaneous category for occupations

such as soldier that did not fit into the other categories.

The occupations of fathers and sons were as recorded in the marriage register

at the time of the son’s marriage. The first point to make is that there was a high

incidence of sons following the same occupation as their fathers. Even before

occupations were standardised in the manner described above for life-cycle mobility,

in 2870 (56%) out of 5167 marriages where occupations were known for both father

and son, these were identical. In 1129 (39%) of these 2870, the occupation was that of

smallholder. Tanner accounted for 308 (11%), clothier for 250 (9%) and woollen

weaver for 120 (4%). Standardisation actually made little difference to this pattern.

Overall, the figure rose to 2975 (58%), with smallholder remaining top with 1136.

Standardisation did, however, cause an important shift in the ranking. By subsuming

“woollen weaver”, “cotton weaver” and so on into “weaver”, the latter occupation

jumped to second place with 332 (11%). Taking the process one stage further by

comparing the broader groups described above, the overall figure for fathers and sons

in the same occupational sector rose to 3231 marriages (63%). In most cases,

however, fathers and sons were in the same occupation. The additional cases were

mostly in textiles, demonstrating once again the fluidity of this sector. Fathers and

sons might well both be weavers, but not necessarily in the same branch of the

industry. Similarly, clothier fathers might often have weaver sons.

Table 3: Observed and expected values for combinations of fathers’ and sons’ occupations.

I. Agriculture V. Others II. Goods and services VI. Professionals and commercial III. Leather VII. Textile IV. Other artisans

Father’s occupation Groom’s occupation I II III IV V VI VII Total Observed I 1145 19 17 28 1 4 31 1245II 249 532 29 51 5 27 121 1014III 80 36 333 21 0 5 42 517IV 130 28 6 304 1 7 37 513V 10 4 2 4 7 10 5 42VI 31 15 1 5 4 117 12 185VII 367 213 72 98 4 27 870 1651Total 2012 847 460 511 22 197 1118 5167Expected I 485 204 111 123 5 47 269 1245II 395 166 90 100 4 39 219 1014III 201 85 46 51 2 20 112 517IV 200 84 46 51 2 20 111 513V 16 7 4 4 0.2 2 9 42VI 72 30 16 18 1 7 40 185VII 643 271 147 163 7 63 357 1651Total 2012 847 460 511 22 197 1118 5167

A second point is that this high incidence of sons following the same

occupation as their fathers was not just driven by the large size of certain sectors.

Table 3 sets out the observed values for sons’ occupations crossed with those of their

fathers, compared with the values that would be expected if the relative size of the

occupational sector were the only determining factor. What stands out from this table

is that in all sectors the incidence of sons in the same occupational sector as their

fathers was higher than expected. A chi-squared test showed that the results were

statistically significant. The greatest difference was in the “others” category, where

the observed result was 39.1 times higher than the expected. This category was an odd

one, however, and the numbers very small. Following that, it was the professionals

and commercial group who showed least mobility, with 16.6 times more sons

following fathers than expected. Given the higher status attached to many of the

occupations in this category, as well as the higher investment required in terms of

both education and capital for start-up, the closed nature of this group is only to be

expected. Other sectors were more open, but to varying degrees. Men in the leather

industry were 7.2 times more likely to have fathers also in leather than expected, other

artisans 6 times more likely and goods and services 3.2 times. Most open were

agriculture and textiles, with the incidence in both cases being 2.4 times higher than

expected.

These results are unsurprising, given the guild restrictions operating against

outsiders. As elsewhere in Catalonia and Europe, Igualada’s guilds charged lower

entry fees to sons and sons-in-law of masters than to those without fathers in the trade,

who in turn paid less than those from outside the town.20 To give one example, in the

guild of blacksmiths and carpenters, eldest sons of masters paid 1 lliura in 1754,

younger sons paid 4 lliures, sons-in-law born in Igualada paid 6 lliures, sons-in-law

from outside paid 8 lliures, other Igualada-born men also paid 8 lliures and those

from outside paid 12 lliures. By 1815, not only had the entry costs gone up across the

board, but the gap between masters’ eldest sons and the highest cost paid by outsiders

had widened to a difference of 15 lliures. Even without guild incentives, it makes

sense that sons would be brought up to follow their fathers’ trades: there would be

familiarity from an early age, and discipline might be less of a concern if one had

one’s own son or journeyman as apprentice.

20 P. Molas Ribalta, “Els gremis d’Igualada a la fi de l’Antic Règim”, Miscellanea Aqualatensia, 2 (1974), pp. 139-49.

With regard to the differences noted above between occupational sectors, it is

therefore unsurprising that agriculture and textiles should be the most open.

Agriculture was by its nature unguilded: here, the issue was one of access to land,

which could always be leased or purchased. Moreover, this was a period when new

forms of sharecropping contracts were making small plots of land accessible on easier

terms than previously. In the textile sector, guild controls broke down very rapidly,

driven by the desire of clothiers to secure a labour force on terms more suited to

themselves. The breakdown of these controls has been documented in detail by Jaume

Torras, and may well be a factor in explaining how proto-industry in Igualada

managed to be more dynamic and successful than elsewhere.21 Moreover, the start-up

costs in textiles were relatively low, especially within the putting-out system, where

looms could be hired and increasing numbers of producers worked for others instead

of having independent workshops. Inventories show that most manufacturing was

done within the home. Leather, by contrast, required access to running water and

tanneries with vats, often separate from the house.

The scale of guild entry costs also points to another significant factor in the

Catalan context, that is, the potential differences in terms of occupational mobility

between eldest and younger sons. As mentioned in the introduction, Catalan

inheritance customs meant that eldest sons inherited 75-80% of family property. Most

studies of Catalan inheritance have been concerned with the implications of this for

the transmission of land. For artisans, however, a workshop, tools and equipment,

credit and reputation would constitute an equally importance inheritance. If younger

sons, however, were excluded from this by default, one might expect that they would

be more inclined than their eldest brothers to follow a different path. Work presented

elsewhere has shown that age rank certainly affected men’s ages at marriage.22 21 J. Torras, “From craft to class: the changing organization of cloth manufacturing in a Catalan town” in T.M. Safley and L.N. Rosenband (eds.), The workplace before the factory. Artisans and proletarians, 1500-1800 (Ithaca, NY, 1993). pp. 165-79. Ogilvie cites Igualada as an example of proto-industrialisation being more dynamic when it could escape guild control: “Guilds, efficiency and social capital”, pp. 312-14. 22 J. Marfany, “Choices and constraints: marriage and inheritance in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Catalonia”, Continuity and Change, 21,1 (2006), pp. 73-106.

To some extent, the results bear this out. Where possible, the occupations of

men at marriage were divided according to whether or not they were the eldest

surviving son in observation.23 It was possible to identify 1680 grooms as eldest sons

at the time of marriage, of whom 1040 (62%) were in exactly the same occupation as

their fathers and 1153 (69%) were in the same occupational group, with only 527

(31%) in a different occupational group. For the 754 younger sons, only 331 (44%)

were in the same occupation, while 412 (55%) were in the same group, and 342

(45%) were in a different group. Again, a chi-squared test showed the results were

significant. The differences, however, were not as marked as those in Table 3.

Younger sons were 1.27 times more likely to be in a different occupational group

from their fathers than expected, but only 0.85 times less likely to be in the same

occupational group. Age rank clearly had some effect, but younger sons were still

highly likely to follow their fathers’ occupations or a similar trade. Again, given entry

costs and familiarity, this was not surprising.

A final question to be considered is migration in relation to occupational

mobility. It might also be assumed that younger sons would be more likely to migrate

away from their place of origin, if they had no property to inherit. Similarly, more

“open” sectors might also be expected to have higher proportions of immigrants.

Since the marriage registers give place of birth and residence for grooms and their

fathers, the latter hypothesis can be tested. Again, issues of sample sizes restrict the

analysis to a simple comparison of natives and immigrants across the different

sectors. Age rank obviously cannot be tested for, given that outsiders by definition

have no baptism records.

Table 4: Occupations of grooms in Igualada by birthplace, 1680-1829 I. Agriculture V. Others II. Goods and services VI. Professionals and commercial III. Leather VII. Textile

23 “In observation” refers to the inability to control for sons emigrating, or for immigrant families having had sons baptised outside the parish. To be included here, men had to have a baptism recorded in the parish from which their age rank among their male siblings could be determined.

IV. Other artisans Igualada Outside Igualada Total Occupation N % N % I 416 35 760 65 1176II 580 59 407 41 987III 445 86 74 14 519IV 254 51 244 49 498V 14 24 44 76 58VI 73 39 116 61 189VII 1140 69 518 31 1658Total 2922 2163 5027

Table 4 shows the proportions of grooms in each occupational sector born in and

outside Igualada. The results are interesting, in that “openness” according to one

criterion, that of intergenerational occupational mobility, does not always correspond

to “openness” in terms of the presence of outsiders. The sector with the highest

proportion of grooms born outside of Igualada was the “others” category, a feature

explained by the large number of soldiers in this group, resident in the town’s

barracks. After that, the highest proportions were to be found in agriculture, which

was one of the open sectors in terms of sons following their fathers’ occupations, but

also in the professionals and commercial group, which was one of the most closed in

that regard. Leather, also closed in terms of intergenerational mobility, had the lowest

proportion of immigrants, but it was textiles, as open as agriculture when it came to

intergenerational mobility and with increasingly fewer guild controls, that had the

second lowest proportion.

These results are not, however, as contradictory as they might appear. While

the professionals and commercial group had constraints on entry such as education

and capital that would tend to exclude those who did not already have fathers in this

group, the nature of many occupations in this group made geographical mobility

likely. Government officials were placed according to government requirements,

while lawyers and doctors would go where the best opportunities for a successful

practice were. Similarly, merchants might often be in the position of managing a

second shop for the family business somewhere other than their native town. As for

textiles, where new activities might have been expected to draw in outsiders, we have

seen that, despite the breakdown in guild restrictions, there were nonetheless strong

continuities between traditional woollen manufacturing and the new cotton industry.

What seems to be happening in textiles is the ability of the growing sector to retain

labour that might otherwise have migrated out of the town. Manufacturing was able to

absorb younger sons who previously had had to seek their fortunes elsewhere. Their

status may have remained lower than that of their eldest brothers in terms of working

for others and their standard of living, though it is unlikely that it would have been

any higher had they migrated. These suggestions are impossible to test at present, but

textile workers certainly married earlier than other sectors, and increasingly so over

the period, thus lending weight to the view that theirs was one of the most dynamic

occupational sectors in Igualada.24

Conclusion

The findings presented here go some way towards confirming the hypothesis put

forward at the start of this paper, namely, that occupational mobility was integral to

proto-industrialisation. Compared with other sectors of the economy, the proto-

industrial textile sector was one of the most open and dynamic. Much of the

occupational mobility that has been identified over the life-cycle was within the

textile sector. In particular, there was a clear shift from traditional woollen

manufacturing to the new cotton industry. Similarly, in terms of intergenerational

occupational mobility, textiles, along with agriculture, were the sectors where fathers

and sons were least likely to be found together. The differences in this regard between

textiles and other crafts fits with what is already known about guilds in Igualada, and

the breakdown of traditional controls in the textile guilds. The least “open” sectors

were those where guild controls remained strong, but also where start-up costs were

greater, as in leather, or the investment in education or training was longer, as in the

professions. Guild restrictions also operated to keep out immigrants, as in the case of 24 Marfany, “Choices and constraints”, 81-3.

leather, but start-up costs and education did not necessarily do so, as is evident from

the high proportion of immigrants in the professional and commercial group.

Conversely, though textiles was an “open” sector in some ways, it had fewer

immigrants than other sectors and than might have been expected. It seems as if the

increase in the textile sector may have been due to its ability to retain labour that

would otherwise have left, in particular younger sons.

Notwithstanding, neither the degree of openness nor the extent of occupational

mobility should be exaggerated. Even in the “open” sectors, such as agriculture and

textiles, sons were still 2.4 times more likely to follow their fathers’ occupations than

would be expected if there were complete openness. While eldest sons, as the

recipients of almost all the family property in Catalonia, were more likely to follow

their fathers than younger sons, just over half of younger sons (55%) were still to be

found in the same occupational sector as their fathers. The textile sector was still

drawing on a local labour force, an important factor as regards the transition from

wool to cotton, and from traditional to proto-industry and eventually to the factory.

Local skills and local knowledge were crucial in Catalan industrialisation.

Moreover, the validity of describing much of the occupational mobility here as

such could be questioned. As noted, much of the mobility is within the textile sector,

where the proliferation of new occupational titles and the seeming interchangeability

of these may reflect uncertainty among contemporaries as to the precise nature of new

tasks or, more likely, a lack of specialisation within the small family workshops that

remained the dominant unit of production. Even where occupational changes are

between two different sectors, the usual pattern is for one sector to be agriculture.

Here, the pattern is one of dual or by-employments, whereby households combined

the craft or other activity of the household head with smallholdings. This type of

occupational mobility is a product more of the balance of resources and opportunities

available to households at given moments, and is typical of pre-industrial economies.

Unlike the changes in the textile sector, it should not be identified as a factor leading

to or deriving from greater “openness”. In Igualada, signs of “openness” can be

detected in this period, but limited only to those sectors undergoing change: the proto-

industrial textile sector, and the agricultural sector, where a shift towards

commercialised viticulture was facilitating access to land. In other sectors, traditional

constraints of guilds, inheritance and start-up costs continued to operate.