Basque women and urban migration in the 19th century

Abstract

A study of reconstituted families reveals that in the 19th century, Basque women from propertied families appear to have migration patterns different from their brothers and from sharecroppers' daughters. When these women could not inherit the family property or marry an heir in the village, they frequently chose the urban option rather than emigration to America, often remained single, mainly took unskilled jobs, and returned to the villages of their birth upon retirement. Those who married in the cities did so to maintain or improve their social status through endogamous or exogamous marriages. Examples of differing Basque inheritance practices among the moderately wealthy – the traditional firstborn versus one of the younger siblings of either sex – are offered. The case study of S–M family illustrates women's rural and urban migration trends over three generations.

Acknowledgments

This article was made possible with the support of Tamara Hareven and Antoinette Fauve-Chamoux. I would like to take this opportunity to express my great respect for the late Tamara Hareven, whom I met in 1998. She never failed to encourage my research projects and provide constructive suggestions so that I could present them with confidence. I will miss her, as everyone who knew her in the social science research community undoubtedly will.

Notes

1 Detailed analyses of Basque women's migration and destiny in cities do not exist mainly because the sources mostly concern men. In addition, as researchers have ignored the fact that women could have migration patterns of their own, they have avoided such studies.

2 The six villages are located in the three French Basque provinces. Sare, a mountain village, is located in Labourd, the province closest to the Atlantic coast. Its regional capital is Bayonne. Aldudes and Mendive (two mountain villages), and Isturits and Amendeuix (two lowland villages) are located in Basse Navarre, the largest province. Its regional city is Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port. Alçay, a mountain village, is located in the small province of Soule, and its regional city is Tardets.

3 Between 1804 and 1920, the 120 couples had 591 children, 468 of whom reached adulthood (second generation). Among these children, 208 married between 1830 and 1850 and had 1039 children (third generation). Among the 804 third-generation surviving children, at least 330 married and had 1277 children of whom 1077 survived infancy (fourth generation).

4 The civil records of all the Basque villages up to 1990 were examined because some third-generation children of the 120 original couples were born in the 1890s or 1900s. We searched through the death records until the 1990s to find their death certificates and complete the family reconstitution.

5 For each of the sample villages, the civil records of 20 to 30 nearby villages were systematically searched (altogether the records of 120 to 180 rural villages), of 20 local towns and cantonal seats in the Basque Country between 1800 and 1990, and the cities of Bayonne and Pau between 1800 and 1950. The cadastre consulted, entitled Matrice des propriétés foncières and Matrice des propriétés bâties, was for each of the six communities of the sample from 1830–1840 to 1914. Inheritance registers were mainly those of Mutations par décès for each of the six cantons (Espelette for Sare, Saint-Etienne-de-Baïgorry for Les Aldudes, Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port for Mendive, Tardets for Alçay, Saint-Palais for Amendeuix, and Hasparren and Labastide-Clairence for Isturits, as well as Saint-Jean-de-Luz) between 1810 and 1896. Marriage contracts, donations, and testaments in the notary records for these cantons showed how land was redistributed within families and identified the descendants’ places of residence and occupations.

6 We should not assume that the women whom we did not locate in the Basque Country, in the regional cities, or in other records, emigrated to America with their male relatives. Some of them probably settled in the large cities of France, such as Bordeaux, Toulouse, and Paris, whose civil records were not consulted systematically.

7 It is important to emphasize that 13.9% of the women of the second generation and 17.2% of the third generation were not located in Basque Country. They might have settled in regional cities, such as Bordeaux and Paris, or emigrated to America. We cannot assume, however, that these women emigrated to America simply because sources did not allow us to trace them. Many probably settled in French cities and were not traceable for the same reasons as those who settled in America. From this perspective, we acknowledge some shortcomings in our methodology.

8 Similarly, in a paper at the Second European Social Science History Conference, Leneman (1998) has argued that women (especially widows) in late 18th and early 19th century Scotland preferred to live alone, getting along on small earnings rather than marrying and losing their independence—even though remarriage would have guaranteed them a higher standard of living and perhaps a more stable life.

9 On inheritance practices in Europe since the Middle Ages, see Fauve-Chamoux and Ochiai (1998, 2003). For a discussion of the historiography of inheritance practices in Basque Country and other areas of the Pyrenees, see Arrizabalaga (1997, pp. 50–59; Footnotes 1–13, and the bibliography for research by Augustins (1988), Béaur, Dessureault, & Goy (2004), Bonnain, Bouchard & Goy (1992), Chiva & Goy (1981 & 1986), Derouet (1997), Dessureault, Dickinson & Goy (2003), Lorenzetti, Head-König, & Goy (2005). Also see recent research by Lacanette-Pommel (2003) and Bacque-Cochard (1996) on property transmission and single inheritance in Bearn and the Basque Country in the nineteenth century. On Basque customs (Fors) of the three French Basque provinces of Labourd, Basse Navarre, and Soule, see the following documents: Lacornée (1760), Goyhenetche (1985), and Grosclaude, 1993.

10 Basque men emigrated to America in greater numbers than women in the quest for greater economic opportunities. They were eager to amass a small fortune and return home one day to purchase a farm. Employment opportunities were greater for them than for women. In addition, it was culturally and socially more acceptable for them to emigrate to America. Yet one may argue, like Weil (1996), that many Basque men emigrated to avoid their military obligations.

11 None of the sharecroppers' descendants from the four mountain villages resided in cities, even in local towns, and hardly any of them remained single. Sharecroppers' descendants originating from lowland villages did move to local towns, but these towns were within ten miles of the village of their birth and were part of the local environment. Such migration patterns can hardly be considered urban since these local towns, or bourgs, were also agricultural and familiar to the men and women of the sample; on a weekly basis, they went there to visit civil offices and to market.

12 In the Basque Country, as well as in other regions of the Pyrenees, cultural practices were based on the importance of the family house, which was transmitted to one child only (the firstborn male or female heir), and its name, which each child inherited along with the family name. Although some left the village and never married, they maintained their rights over family property and house name. This secured their status throughout life either as unmarried siblings or until marriage for the rest. Until they received their share of the inheritance, they traditionally maintained their ties with their family and the family house.

13 Although these women held unskilled jobs, they were not always poor. Some managed to save considerable amounts of money, which they bequeathed to relatives. In their testaments, some declared savings, deposited in bank accounts, amounting to several hundred or several thousand francs, which they sometimes left to the heir or heiress of the family house, especially when he or she had cared for the single women before her death.

14 The two unmarried sisters Jeanne-Marie and Magdeleine never received their shares of the inheritance of family property, but retired to the family house, which, by then, had been inherited by their nephew (Catherine's son), who resided there with his family. Before dying, each of the sisters left their share of the inheritance to their nephew, thus avoiding dismantlement of the family property. These women had strong traditional family values and ties. They relinquished their shares of the inheritance to save the family from bankruptcy and keep the family house and land intact.

15 This seventhborn son was never mentioned in his parents' testament (notary records in Hasparren) nor declared as one of the heirs to the family property in his parents' inheritance declarations [Table des mutations après décès in the Enregistrement].

16 Before his marriage, a contract was signed, in which Pierre inherited the Etchart property of 28 hectares. His spouse brought a dowry of 6200 francs into the marriage.

17 Both Pierre and Jean-Baptiste signed marriage contracts. Their dowries were so large that in the subsequent years after their marriages, they bought shares of the inheritance for their spouses and became co-owners of their wives' properties.

18 When children received no dowry at the time of marriage (because their parents' disapproved of their marital choices, for instance), they had to wait until both parents died before they could get their share of the inheritance. To protect the property and give time to the selected single heir to save money to purchase his or her siblings' shares of the inheritance, parents gave each other half of their belongings (in usufruct or in property), thus avoiding partitioning before the remaining spouse's death.