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The World We Have Lost
The World We Have Lost is a seminal work in the study of family and class, kinship and community in England after the Middle Ages and before the changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution. The book explores the size and structure of families in pre-industrial England, the number and position of servants, the elite minority of gentry, rates of migration, the ability to read and write, the size and constituency of villages, cities and classes, conditions of work and social mobility.
376 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1965
About the author
Peter Laslett
40 books6 followersThomas Peter Ruffell Laslett was an English historian.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
August 29, 2011
"We Hear InFormed that you got shear in mee sheens [shearing machines] and if you Dont Pull them Down in a Forght Nights Time Wee will you Damd infernold dog." —Luddite threat found on paper, 1803 (245)
Wherever we may sit, wherever we may stand, or wherever we may lay, chances are that we are surrounded by plastics. With few exceptions, we no longer hold knowledge of basic farming or hunting without the aid of machines. We consume food containing synthetic substances made to resemble the food that our ancestors once ate, blithely packaged with images of lush farms that do not exist, masking the reality of the mud and filth of factory farming. For the first time in recorded history, obesity is at epidemic levels. The year is 2011, we live in the West during the Third Industrial Age, and our days are filled with few elements that are not a result of the Industrial Revolution. Yet what led to this point in human history? What elements came together to open the gates to our towering factories, to our assembly lines, to our fast food, and to our newly found ability to destroy the Earth? What was the world like before these things? Peter Laslett's "The World We Have Lost" examines what led to these developments.
Specifically, "The World We Have Lost" is a general overview of the era just before the coming of the first Industrial Revolution (beginning around 1750), at times contrasted with post-industrialized England, but sometimes also reaching back to the beginning of the early modern period in the 16th century. This pre-industrial world, and the values, ways, and lives of the people that lived in it, are what Laslett refers to as The World We Have Lost.
The book is divided into twelve chapters. The first chapter of the book examines what is known of the patriarchal household that existed just before the Industrial Revolution, chapter 2 presents an overview of the somewhat murky world of social divisions that existed in England at the time, and chapter 3 lends an eye to the structure of life within English village communities. Chapter 4 takes a glass to various misconceptions Laslett has encountered surrounding the practices and beliefs of the English during the pre-industrial period, chapter 5 examines birth and death statistics in the same period, and chapter six handles death rates (or lack thereof) due to starvation among the English peasants from the early modern period into the Industrial Revolution, concluding that starvation appears to have been very rare in England prior to industrialization.
Chapter 7 provides perhaps the clearest window into English society at the time. Laslett examines the constant of bastardy among the English, and sexual conduct among the English peasantry before and during the English Industrial Revolution, and how the English Church handled English society's "sexual nonconformism". This lively chapter is followed by chapter 8, consisting of an examination by Laslett of the potentiality of an "English Revolution" occurring at the onset of the English industrial period (of which Laslett is skeptical), which is followed by chapter 9, where a social and political obedience are looked at, and the reasons for a lack of violent peasant uprising are examined. Chapter 10 follows, which examines the importance of literacy and the workings of social mobility.
Chapters 11 examines life after the full-scale onset of industrialization in England, and how class divisions seemed to be ever more apparent and poverty levels appear to have risen under industrialization. The brief final chapter of the book, chapter 12, consists of reflections on understanding the material presented earlier in the book from a contemporary perspective and the perils thereof.
"The World We Have Lost" was originally published in 1965, later seeing a revised and updated edition in 1984 (with the addition of Further Explored to the aforementioned title), and finally seeing another updated edition in the year 2000 (with the same title as the 1984 edition). The latter two issues contain new content and added introductions, and it is the 1984 edition that this book review focuses on.
The majority of Laslett's sources consist of records contemporary to the time periods he examines. Easily the most readable and fascinating elements of the book, these sources consist of the distillation of thousands upon thousands of local tax records, surveys, deeds, marriage records, law codes, correspondence among the upper class, contemporary works such as William Harrison's 16th century Description of England, and even a strip of cloth (bearing the message appearing at the beginning of this essay). These historical records range from bare-boned, just-the-facts items, to far meatier material, such as gossip among the townsfolk and commentary by record keepers about youths getting married at too young an age. These records are, however, quite incomplete, and Laslett makes it clear that people commonly slip in and out of history. Modern academic sources are also cited throughout the work, though less extensively, and responses to these works are generally kept to a minimum, resulting in little more than demographic graphs and charts appearing throughout and brief commentary in footnotes.
The first edition of "The World We Have Lost" has been received as a landmark work and the various editions thereafter have remained influential. Laslett himself seems aware of this when he comments that "it has occurred to no other historian before the 1960s to try to see if the registers could tell us whether our ancestors did in fact sometimes die of starvation" (283). Laslett has been cited as recently as 2001 as "one of the main pioneers in the creation of a field of family history and historical demography", where "The World We Have Lost" is listed first in examples of Laslett's groundbreaking work in this field (Wall, et al. 2001:387). Scholar Adrian Wilson lists "The World We Have Lost" as second on his list of "the most influential [...] calls for a new social history" (Wilson 1995:74). A Google Books search for "The World We Have Lost Laslett" seems to confirm this conclusion; Laslett's works appear to be frequently commented on in certain scholarly circles, "The World We Have Lost" in particular.
Partially due to this glowing praise, it was with baited breath that I took hold of this book. However, after the first few chapters, that interest began to fade. This is due the unfortunate observation that, while the wealth of material that Laslett presents is impressive, the volume is greatly hindered by its presentation; "The World We Have Lost - Further Explored" is riddled with long-winded sentences, banal Latinates, and vague organization. Sentences sometimes wander into borderline nonsense. For example, page 81 bears a sentence reading ". . . it divides up the population of the country in such a way as to show that more than half the people when alive were to some degree dependent . . ." (italics added for emphasis). These troublesome constructs are further peppered with inkhorn terms of the worst sort, such as "imprecation" (78), "ineluctable" (102), and "vicissitude" (124). Further organization would also be of much use for the reader; chapter four, for example, handles several well-defined concepts hidden in a murk of information and could well use further subdividing. The result of these issues is a book that is less a thought-provoking walk down a fact-filled path, but more a poorly-prepared, if nutritious, meal that provides little pleasure to chew.
A notable omission in this work is any mention of pollution, perhaps the single most important result of industrialization. Pollution is now a very serious problem on this planet, and even the most remote organism bears the mark of it, and yet here Laslett makes absolutely no mention of this most damning element of industrialization anywhere in his overview. After all, what more lost a world than one than can bear no life?
Interestingly, elements of Laslett's own world bleed into the book throughout; few pages seem to go by without Laslett mentioning communism, a subject that would undoubtedly receive less mention were the then-world not becoming more and more red by the day. In fact, there is little doubt that this topic was something of a minefield for writers at the time; much ink has been spilled on the issue of class and capitalism by Marxist writers. The result of these references is that, while Laslett's book may be a document studying a world long lost, Laslett's own world has since disappeared, and thus, on some level, Laslett's work here is itself something of a time capsule. Laslett's attitude towards Marxism here is, however, difficult to make out.
Regardless of how the reader may feel about the industrialized society of modern times, the cogs continue to turn, and so get smaller and smaller and more "advanced" as our world moves on to be replaced by other, newer worlds. Barring some unforeseen Ragnarök, there seems to be no going back. While evidently a crucial study of a crucial point in history, and evidently of continued use to historians handling this particular point in history, Laslett's book falls flat in presentation, and is completely unapproachable for the general reader. It is the author's humble opinion that many lessons can be learned from The World We Have Lost, but Laslett's work is not the place to begin a search for them.
Bibliography:
* Wall, Richard (Editor). Hareveen, Tamara K. (Editor) Ehmer, Joseph (Editor). Cerman, Markus (Editor). "Family History Revisted: Comparative Perspectives (Family in Interdisciplinary Perspective)" (University of Delaware Press, 2001).
* Wilson, Adrian. "Rethinking Social History: English Society 1570-1920 and Its Interpretation" (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995).
Wherever we may sit, wherever we may stand, or wherever we may lay, chances are that we are surrounded by plastics. With few exceptions, we no longer hold knowledge of basic farming or hunting without the aid of machines. We consume food containing synthetic substances made to resemble the food that our ancestors once ate, blithely packaged with images of lush farms that do not exist, masking the reality of the mud and filth of factory farming. For the first time in recorded history, obesity is at epidemic levels. The year is 2011, we live in the West during the Third Industrial Age, and our days are filled with few elements that are not a result of the Industrial Revolution. Yet what led to this point in human history? What elements came together to open the gates to our towering factories, to our assembly lines, to our fast food, and to our newly found ability to destroy the Earth? What was the world like before these things? Peter Laslett's "The World We Have Lost" examines what led to these developments.
Specifically, "The World We Have Lost" is a general overview of the era just before the coming of the first Industrial Revolution (beginning around 1750), at times contrasted with post-industrialized England, but sometimes also reaching back to the beginning of the early modern period in the 16th century. This pre-industrial world, and the values, ways, and lives of the people that lived in it, are what Laslett refers to as The World We Have Lost.
The book is divided into twelve chapters. The first chapter of the book examines what is known of the patriarchal household that existed just before the Industrial Revolution, chapter 2 presents an overview of the somewhat murky world of social divisions that existed in England at the time, and chapter 3 lends an eye to the structure of life within English village communities. Chapter 4 takes a glass to various misconceptions Laslett has encountered surrounding the practices and beliefs of the English during the pre-industrial period, chapter 5 examines birth and death statistics in the same period, and chapter six handles death rates (or lack thereof) due to starvation among the English peasants from the early modern period into the Industrial Revolution, concluding that starvation appears to have been very rare in England prior to industrialization.
Chapter 7 provides perhaps the clearest window into English society at the time. Laslett examines the constant of bastardy among the English, and sexual conduct among the English peasantry before and during the English Industrial Revolution, and how the English Church handled English society's "sexual nonconformism". This lively chapter is followed by chapter 8, consisting of an examination by Laslett of the potentiality of an "English Revolution" occurring at the onset of the English industrial period (of which Laslett is skeptical), which is followed by chapter 9, where a social and political obedience are looked at, and the reasons for a lack of violent peasant uprising are examined. Chapter 10 follows, which examines the importance of literacy and the workings of social mobility.
Chapters 11 examines life after the full-scale onset of industrialization in England, and how class divisions seemed to be ever more apparent and poverty levels appear to have risen under industrialization. The brief final chapter of the book, chapter 12, consists of reflections on understanding the material presented earlier in the book from a contemporary perspective and the perils thereof.
"The World We Have Lost" was originally published in 1965, later seeing a revised and updated edition in 1984 (with the addition of Further Explored to the aforementioned title), and finally seeing another updated edition in the year 2000 (with the same title as the 1984 edition). The latter two issues contain new content and added introductions, and it is the 1984 edition that this book review focuses on.
The majority of Laslett's sources consist of records contemporary to the time periods he examines. Easily the most readable and fascinating elements of the book, these sources consist of the distillation of thousands upon thousands of local tax records, surveys, deeds, marriage records, law codes, correspondence among the upper class, contemporary works such as William Harrison's 16th century Description of England, and even a strip of cloth (bearing the message appearing at the beginning of this essay). These historical records range from bare-boned, just-the-facts items, to far meatier material, such as gossip among the townsfolk and commentary by record keepers about youths getting married at too young an age. These records are, however, quite incomplete, and Laslett makes it clear that people commonly slip in and out of history. Modern academic sources are also cited throughout the work, though less extensively, and responses to these works are generally kept to a minimum, resulting in little more than demographic graphs and charts appearing throughout and brief commentary in footnotes.
The first edition of "The World We Have Lost" has been received as a landmark work and the various editions thereafter have remained influential. Laslett himself seems aware of this when he comments that "it has occurred to no other historian before the 1960s to try to see if the registers could tell us whether our ancestors did in fact sometimes die of starvation" (283). Laslett has been cited as recently as 2001 as "one of the main pioneers in the creation of a field of family history and historical demography", where "The World We Have Lost" is listed first in examples of Laslett's groundbreaking work in this field (Wall, et al. 2001:387). Scholar Adrian Wilson lists "The World We Have Lost" as second on his list of "the most influential [...] calls for a new social history" (Wilson 1995:74). A Google Books search for "The World We Have Lost Laslett" seems to confirm this conclusion; Laslett's works appear to be frequently commented on in certain scholarly circles, "The World We Have Lost" in particular.
Partially due to this glowing praise, it was with baited breath that I took hold of this book. However, after the first few chapters, that interest began to fade. This is due the unfortunate observation that, while the wealth of material that Laslett presents is impressive, the volume is greatly hindered by its presentation; "The World We Have Lost - Further Explored" is riddled with long-winded sentences, banal Latinates, and vague organization. Sentences sometimes wander into borderline nonsense. For example, page 81 bears a sentence reading ". . . it divides up the population of the country in such a way as to show that more than half the people when alive were to some degree dependent . . ." (italics added for emphasis). These troublesome constructs are further peppered with inkhorn terms of the worst sort, such as "imprecation" (78), "ineluctable" (102), and "vicissitude" (124). Further organization would also be of much use for the reader; chapter four, for example, handles several well-defined concepts hidden in a murk of information and could well use further subdividing. The result of these issues is a book that is less a thought-provoking walk down a fact-filled path, but more a poorly-prepared, if nutritious, meal that provides little pleasure to chew.
A notable omission in this work is any mention of pollution, perhaps the single most important result of industrialization. Pollution is now a very serious problem on this planet, and even the most remote organism bears the mark of it, and yet here Laslett makes absolutely no mention of this most damning element of industrialization anywhere in his overview. After all, what more lost a world than one than can bear no life?
Interestingly, elements of Laslett's own world bleed into the book throughout; few pages seem to go by without Laslett mentioning communism, a subject that would undoubtedly receive less mention were the then-world not becoming more and more red by the day. In fact, there is little doubt that this topic was something of a minefield for writers at the time; much ink has been spilled on the issue of class and capitalism by Marxist writers. The result of these references is that, while Laslett's book may be a document studying a world long lost, Laslett's own world has since disappeared, and thus, on some level, Laslett's work here is itself something of a time capsule. Laslett's attitude towards Marxism here is, however, difficult to make out.
Regardless of how the reader may feel about the industrialized society of modern times, the cogs continue to turn, and so get smaller and smaller and more "advanced" as our world moves on to be replaced by other, newer worlds. Barring some unforeseen Ragnarök, there seems to be no going back. While evidently a crucial study of a crucial point in history, and evidently of continued use to historians handling this particular point in history, Laslett's book falls flat in presentation, and is completely unapproachable for the general reader. It is the author's humble opinion that many lessons can be learned from The World We Have Lost, but Laslett's work is not the place to begin a search for them.
Bibliography:
* Wall, Richard (Editor). Hareveen, Tamara K. (Editor) Ehmer, Joseph (Editor). Cerman, Markus (Editor). "Family History Revisted: Comparative Perspectives (Family in Interdisciplinary Perspective)" (University of Delaware Press, 2001).
* Wilson, Adrian. "Rethinking Social History: English Society 1570-1920 and Its Interpretation" (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995).
September 19, 2019
Having set out to improve my knowledge of English history, I'd come across references to this book as a seminal study of the English families and life before the Industrial Revolution. Professor Laslett provided a finely researched, nuanced, and rather well-written portrait of its subject. It is highly recommended.
In all of these areas, Laslett demonstrated how common assumptions about the lives of the average English family had been incorrect, and opens a door into studying the lives of the average and poor of England, rather than only the lives of the wealth, priviledged, landed, and literate upper crust.
By way of a brief background, Laslett captures significant early research from the Cambridge Group on Population and Social Structure. First published in 1965, The World We Have Lost inspired the growth of research on family history, demography, and other topics. The book was path-breaking, at a time when English historians rejected the very practice of quantitative social history. Always cautious and emphasizing the preliminary nature of his conclusions, the book remains a foundational text.
I will mention a few of his conclusions. First, the nuclear family was the dominant form of household (by number) in England before 1700. Second, most couples not only married in the later 20s, but they also actually had only a few children on average than most people today assume. Third, in wealthier families, people were able to marry earlier (due to economic means), lived longer lives, and had more children, though infant and childhood mortality still took an awful toll.
Next, for the large majority of Englishmen, their lack of physical mobility and lack of literacy limited the scope of the view of the world. They probably never traveled very far from the village where they were born, perhaps five to ten miles. In this sense, England as a political entity, was really the province of and under the control of that quite small elite. Thus, a sizable majority lacked the frame of reference to seek to challenge as unjust their political and economic situation, while the small, landed, educated, and wealthy elite often gained access to a broader perspective through a combination of education, travel, ongoing reading, and interaction with people with similar access.
Fifth, many children of lower order families were employed as servants in husbandry (farm laborers) at an early age in a more wealthy households headed by land owners. In such situations they often remained until finally able to marry in their mid to late 20s.
We should also note that farming, either on one's own land, as a tenant, or as a farm laborer was by far the most common mode of livelihood, and that the popular memory of the commonness of skilled trades was actually not accurate.
Seventh, despite this delayed pattern of marriage, there were really comparatively few out-of-wedlock births. This fact may well testify to the strength of social norms based on both religious beliefs and the fact that it was readily possible to have outstripped the supply of food which could be grown.
However, the fact of a substantial percentage of births coming less than 9 months after the formal wedding, but after the formal betrothal (engagement) (along with other evidence) suggests that it was socially accepted that a couple might well become intimate in this short interlude between the betrothal and wedding ceremony.
I could explore several more topics, but will leave that for your enjoyment. I enjoyed the book quite well and find myself much more informed about The World That We Have Lost.
.
In all of these areas, Laslett demonstrated how common assumptions about the lives of the average English family had been incorrect, and opens a door into studying the lives of the average and poor of England, rather than only the lives of the wealth, priviledged, landed, and literate upper crust.
By way of a brief background, Laslett captures significant early research from the Cambridge Group on Population and Social Structure. First published in 1965, The World We Have Lost inspired the growth of research on family history, demography, and other topics. The book was path-breaking, at a time when English historians rejected the very practice of quantitative social history. Always cautious and emphasizing the preliminary nature of his conclusions, the book remains a foundational text.
I will mention a few of his conclusions. First, the nuclear family was the dominant form of household (by number) in England before 1700. Second, most couples not only married in the later 20s, but they also actually had only a few children on average than most people today assume. Third, in wealthier families, people were able to marry earlier (due to economic means), lived longer lives, and had more children, though infant and childhood mortality still took an awful toll.
Next, for the large majority of Englishmen, their lack of physical mobility and lack of literacy limited the scope of the view of the world. They probably never traveled very far from the village where they were born, perhaps five to ten miles. In this sense, England as a political entity, was really the province of and under the control of that quite small elite. Thus, a sizable majority lacked the frame of reference to seek to challenge as unjust their political and economic situation, while the small, landed, educated, and wealthy elite often gained access to a broader perspective through a combination of education, travel, ongoing reading, and interaction with people with similar access.
Fifth, many children of lower order families were employed as servants in husbandry (farm laborers) at an early age in a more wealthy households headed by land owners. In such situations they often remained until finally able to marry in their mid to late 20s.
We should also note that farming, either on one's own land, as a tenant, or as a farm laborer was by far the most common mode of livelihood, and that the popular memory of the commonness of skilled trades was actually not accurate.
Seventh, despite this delayed pattern of marriage, there were really comparatively few out-of-wedlock births. This fact may well testify to the strength of social norms based on both religious beliefs and the fact that it was readily possible to have outstripped the supply of food which could be grown.
However, the fact of a substantial percentage of births coming less than 9 months after the formal wedding, but after the formal betrothal (engagement) (along with other evidence) suggests that it was socially accepted that a couple might well become intimate in this short interlude between the betrothal and wedding ceremony.
I could explore several more topics, but will leave that for your enjoyment. I enjoyed the book quite well and find myself much more informed about The World That We Have Lost.
.
April 19, 2015
A long time ago in a sixth form far far away I read quite a bit of English social history; Cole and Postgate’s The Common People, EP Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class were typical examples. This book is very much in that tradition, written in the 1960s when historians’ interest in how people lived, the details of their births, marriages and deaths, what they ate and how communities worked started to become mainstream. It is a fairly forensic exmaniation of the condition of Engligh society in the seventeenth century, before the Industrial Revolution got going. I had never heard of it and came across it quite by chance in a charity bookstall in Longridge. But a little bit of background research tells me that Laslett’s work is still considered to be essential preparatory reading for any student of early modern or modern social history.
I found this an absolutely fascinating read; some of the content was fairly familiar to me (for example the debunking of the notion that teenage marriage was the norm in early modern English society) and a lot was brand-new (again as an example, I hadn’t really appreciated the extent to which the nuclear family has been the bedrock of English society for the hundreds of years and that even then the old tended to live and die alone).
But the most interesting feature reading this book was the sense of reading a book about 17th-century written in 1965 but with 40 to 50 years of hindsight on top. The final chapter of the book “Understanding Ourselves in Time” is essentially an essay on the process of developing historical knowledge and insight and how we understand ourselves in contrast with our ancestors. Laslett was writing 20 years after the creation of the Welfare State and with the perspective of the enormous benefits it had brought to British society. Reading this in 2015 things seem so much more complex, but nonetheless I can heartily recommend this book to anyone interested in history and in fact to anyone who has never picked up a history book in their lives but is interested in how our society was made.
I found this an absolutely fascinating read; some of the content was fairly familiar to me (for example the debunking of the notion that teenage marriage was the norm in early modern English society) and a lot was brand-new (again as an example, I hadn’t really appreciated the extent to which the nuclear family has been the bedrock of English society for the hundreds of years and that even then the old tended to live and die alone).
But the most interesting feature reading this book was the sense of reading a book about 17th-century written in 1965 but with 40 to 50 years of hindsight on top. The final chapter of the book “Understanding Ourselves in Time” is essentially an essay on the process of developing historical knowledge and insight and how we understand ourselves in contrast with our ancestors. Laslett was writing 20 years after the creation of the Welfare State and with the perspective of the enormous benefits it had brought to British society. Reading this in 2015 things seem so much more complex, but nonetheless I can heartily recommend this book to anyone interested in history and in fact to anyone who has never picked up a history book in their lives but is interested in how our society was made.
April 19, 2019
Very interesting book about English society in the early modern period, and the ways in which it changed after industrialisation. Or perhaps not so much. The author discovered for instance, by studying records of marriage in the 16th and 17th centuries, that very early marriage was not, as is sometimes thought, a usual custom. The typical age of marriage for most people was the 20s, with 22 being the commonest age for women to marry, and 24 for.men. The nuclear family, often claimed to be a modern invention, he found to be the normal form a household took, with it being very rare to.find more than two generations living under the same roof. Lots of similarly fascinating information throughout the book makes it an absorbing read.
August 29, 2014
Great research dull prose.
Read
September 23, 2023The writing style made this SO difficult to get through. Tell me your thesis upfront, man!!
Here is my equally messy amalgam of notes collated into sentences:
Book focussing on family and economic life in pre-modern England. Thesis is basically that the English Civil Wars and Glorious Revolution were not as clean breaks with history as some historians conjecture, and that the "rise of the gentry/middle class/capitalism" was a slow gradual process that we didn't really see the full flowering of until the early 20th century. Goes against the theories of Christopher Hill and other Marxist historians in disagreeing that the Civil Wars/Glorious Revolution represented class wars. Rather, the era is characterized as a "one class society" without any clear ideas of class consciousness beyond the aristocracy, as all other identity and relations were in the personal realm rather than identification with a larger group with similar economic interests.
However, he does present early modern England as atypical, setting the stage for capitalism as seen in: the late marriage age, changing fertility patterns, and urbanization. At the end of the day, the patriarchal model of the family as social/economic unit still held sway from the Tudor era onwards. The transformation of family life was perhaps even more extreme to the people living in the era than capitalist modes of production, as family-based modes of production and the family system began to fall away after what we could call factory-like modes of production developed. Capitalism was already a feature of early modern England and it was based in family organization. Rather, it was the rise of the factory system and the end of the life-cycle servant system that brought about the real shift between the old society and the new.
Here is my equally messy amalgam of notes collated into sentences:
Book focussing on family and economic life in pre-modern England. Thesis is basically that the English Civil Wars and Glorious Revolution were not as clean breaks with history as some historians conjecture, and that the "rise of the gentry/middle class/capitalism" was a slow gradual process that we didn't really see the full flowering of until the early 20th century. Goes against the theories of Christopher Hill and other Marxist historians in disagreeing that the Civil Wars/Glorious Revolution represented class wars. Rather, the era is characterized as a "one class society" without any clear ideas of class consciousness beyond the aristocracy, as all other identity and relations were in the personal realm rather than identification with a larger group with similar economic interests.
However, he does present early modern England as atypical, setting the stage for capitalism as seen in: the late marriage age, changing fertility patterns, and urbanization. At the end of the day, the patriarchal model of the family as social/economic unit still held sway from the Tudor era onwards. The transformation of family life was perhaps even more extreme to the people living in the era than capitalist modes of production, as family-based modes of production and the family system began to fall away after what we could call factory-like modes of production developed. Capitalism was already a feature of early modern England and it was based in family organization. Rather, it was the rise of the factory system and the end of the life-cycle servant system that brought about the real shift between the old society and the new.
June 4, 2022
My favorite quote--from a Luddite scrawled on a piece of paper and sent to a clothier in Gloucestershire in 1803: "Wee Hear in Formed that you got Shear in mee sheens [shearing machines] and if you Dont Pull them Down in a Forght Nights Time Wee will pull them Down for you Wee will you Damd infernold dog." Noted by the author that it is not only "...a sign of the terror which the coming of factories and the machines struck into the hearts of ordinary people...[but also] a token of what it meant to live an entirely oral life in a world dominated by reading and writing.... [T]his is the most compelling of all contrasts between our world and the world we have lost."
September 15, 2019
Really interesting and well-written book. Laslett's insights into pre-industrial life in England are surprising, but well documented. I enjoyed his challenge to "common sense" generalizations about the past, used either to laud or bemoan previous generation's in comparison to ourselves.
March 2, 2024
In this detailed study of the common people of pre-industrial England, Laslett treats everything from literacy to marriage practices. He even examines the death registers of various parishes to glean information about the people who lived there. Laslett suggests that pre-industrial England was a relatively classless society, due primarily to class mobility. In the time it would take for a class to take shape, half of its members would have gone up or down the social ladder more than once.
August 11, 2020
Turns out the Middle Ages really weren't that bad.
March 2, 2021
Boring is an understatement. Only read if your an Anglophile , which I’m the opposite of.
August 4, 2023
Amazing insight on pre-industrial England. Some parts had me reread, but it was generally alright. (my own weakness)
October 28, 2008
Pioneering work in the area of quantitative sociological history. Laslett seeks to prove that poor preindustrial families were not constantly starving people who married young and had large families. The parish registers and work of Gregory King go a long way to demonstrate this assumption. This book is written in a very straight forward manner and often wanders into speculative history when the numbers are not enough to give voice to the lives of the preindustrial English. Not to fear though, Laslett is cautious about informing the reader when this is happening, and despite what his critics say, he does use the original voice of those whom he writes about when possible. I gave a short talk on this book recently and was it was interesting to note that, thought this book was written in 1965, people are often surprised to learn that families practiced birth limitation in the seventeenth century and married at mean ages of 24 and 28 for women and men respectively. Laslett attributes this to our cultural association between Shakespeare and this time period. He relates that our understanding of preindustrial England is similar to what might happen if future historians used Lolita as representative of our time.
January 25, 2020
Useful for the historically-minded, for at least two reasons. First, it’s a good reminder of just how simple the statistics were not so long ago (and, for related reasons, how uncomplicated they can be and still make a compelling argument). Secondly, what is revealed when one takes the time to look at class dynamics based on the data available, rather than theoretical presumptions.
To that latter point, it’s an instructive piece of realism to point out that when Marx talks about “feudalism” we think knights and villeins. But that’s not really the way it worked, at least not in England from Elizabeth through, say, Austen. Actually, it was more like Austen, and we’re nostalgic for that world for all kinds of weird reasons. But, as Laslett points out so well, just because it doesn’t look like knights and villeins doesn’t mean that the Marxian logic doesn’t apply. You just have to realize that Marx was arguing ahead of the data.
To that latter point, it’s an instructive piece of realism to point out that when Marx talks about “feudalism” we think knights and villeins. But that’s not really the way it worked, at least not in England from Elizabeth through, say, Austen. Actually, it was more like Austen, and we’re nostalgic for that world for all kinds of weird reasons. But, as Laslett points out so well, just because it doesn’t look like knights and villeins doesn’t mean that the Marxian logic doesn’t apply. You just have to realize that Marx was arguing ahead of the data.
September 24, 2014
This was my first venture into quantitative history. Laslett does a good job or walking the reader through his examination of pre-industrial, rural England. Some would (and have) criticized his lack of narrative but my response would be "It's quantitative history? What narrative are you expecting?" The numbers he does use in the text involve little math and thus are easy to follow for any historian. The book is a bit dated (originally published in 1965 and updated various times over the next two decades) and it becomes apparent at different points in his writing. While he does question some of his datasets, I feel more discussion should have taken place on issues with his data. An interesting book and great introduction to an important methodology of history.
March 17, 2013
I read the second edition, dated 1973. The Preface to that edition, while repeating his insistence that it is not a publication of the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure, explains that the difference between the two editions consists of correcting typos & textual errors, as well as bringing the original text up to date.
July 31, 2014
It was first published in 1965 and revised several times since. It still seems dated. I'm sure modern historians would quarrel with some of Laslett's assertions, on class, for instance, and on literacy. But it's an interesting read.
September 15, 2014
Oh Mr. Laslett. Nothing could have made me less interested in pre-industrial England than this book. I understand why it was assigned for a historiography class, but your writing style simply bores me to tears.
January 11, 2013
It's an academic paper rather than a light read, but worth the effort. It explodes more than a few myths, such as the starving peasants, but confirms the mortality rates...mostly.
November 9, 2015
Was hoping for more. This would have been an ok read for an undergraduate course on 17th-18th century England I suppose. The writing was too dense and obtuse...and a bit boring.
January 20, 2016
Social history for the specialist
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