Recently considerable interest has developed about the degree to which anthropological approaches to kinship can be used for the study of the long-term development of European history. From the late middle ages to the dawn of the twentieth century, kinship - rather than declining, as is often assumed - was twice reconfigured in dramatic ways and became increasingly significant as a force in historical change, with remarkable similarities across European society. Applying interdisciplinary approaches from social and cultural history and literature and focusing on sibling relationships, this volume takes up the challenge of examining the systemic and structural development of kinship over the long term by looking at the close inner-familial dynamics of ruling families (the Hohenzollerns), cultural leaders (the Mendelssohns), business and professional classes, and political figures (the Gladstones)in France, Italy, Germany, and England. It offers insight into the current issues in kinship studies and draws from a wide range of personal documents: letters, autobiographies, testaments, memoirs, as well as genealogies and works of art.

Christopher H. Johnson is Professor Emeritus of History and member of the Academy of Scholars at Wayne State University. He has held fellowships from the Leverhulme and the Guggenheim Foundations as well as the Social Science Research Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities. His publications include Utopian Communism in France: Cabet and the Icarians, 1839-1851 (Cornell, 1974) (nominated for a National Book Award in 1975); Maurice Sugar: Law, Labor, and the Left in Detroit, 1912-1950 (Wayne State, 1989), and The Life and Death of Industrial Languedoc, 1700-1920: The Politics of De-Industrialization (Oxford, 1995).

List of Figures and Illustrations

Preface

Chapter 1. From Siblingship to Siblinghood: Kinship and the Shaping of European Society (1300-1900)
Christopher H. Johnson and David Warren Sabean

PART I: PROPERTY, POLITICS, AND SIBLING STRATEGIES (LATE MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN)

Chapter 2. Dowry: Sharing Inheritance or Exclusion? Timing, Destination, and Contents of Transmission in Late Medieval and Early Modern France
Bernard Derouet

Chapter 3. Maintenance Regulations and Sibling Relations in the High Nobility of Late Medieval Germany
Karl-Heinz Spiess

Chapter 4. Do Sisters have Brothers?Or the Search for the "rechte Schwester":Brothers and Sisters in Aristocratic Society at the Turn of the Sixteenth Century
Michaela Hohkamp

Chapter 5. Subordinates, Patrons, and Most Beloved: Sibling Relationships in Seventeenth-Century German Court Society
Sophie Ruppel

Chapter 6. The Crown Prince's Brothers and Sisters: Succession and Inheritance Problems and Solutions among the Hohenzollerns, from the Great Elector to Frederick the Great
Benjamin Marschke

Chapter 7. The Evolution within Sibling Groups from one Kinship System to Another (Sixteenth to Nineteenth Centuries)
Gérard Delille

PART II: SIBLING RELATIONS, CLOSE MARRIAGE, AND HORIZONTAL KINSHIP, 1750-1900

Chapter 8. Brother Trouble: Murder and Incest in Scottish Ballads
Ruth Perry

Chapter 9. Siblinghood and the Emotional Dimensions of the New Kinship System, 1800-1850: A French Example
Christopher H. Johnson

Chapter 10. Kinship and Issues of the Self in Europe around 1800
David Warren Sabean

Chapter 11. Sisters, Wives, and the Sublimation of Desire in a Jewish-Protestant Friendship: The Letters of the Historian Johann Gustav Droysen and the Composer Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy
Regina Schulte

Chapter 12. Husband, Wife, and Sister: Making and Remaking the Early Victorian Family
Mary Jean Corbett

Chapter 13. Gender and Age in Nineteenth-Century Britain: The Case of Anne, William, and Helen Gladstone
Leonore Davidoff

Bibliography