The Village and the Outside World in Golden Age Castile
Mobility and Migration in Everyday Rural Life

This 1996 book is aq revisionary study which establishes that pre-industrial village society was dynamic and migratory.

David E. Vassberg (Author)

9780521527132, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 28 November 2002

272 pages, 12 b/w illus. 12 maps 6 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.3 cm, 0.523 kg

"In this volume, David E. Vassberg presents an important compendium of materials, from both primary and secondary sources, to show that experience of the outside world was an ordinary part of Castilian village life in the Golden Age and migration "a normal structural characteristic of society"(p. 175)." Susan Tax Freeman, American Historical Review

This 1996 book, based upon a vast range of documentary and secondary sources, shatters the disproven but persistent myth of the closed immobile village in the early modern period. It demonstrates that even in traditionalist Castile, pre-industrial village society was highly dynamic, with continuous inter-village, inter-regional, and rural-urban migration. The book is rich in human detail, with many vignettes of everyday life. Professor Vassberg examines such topics as fairs and markets, the transportation infrastructure, rural artisans and craftsmen, relations with the state, and life-cycle service. The approach is interdisciplinary, and pays special attention to how rural families dealt with economic and social problems. The rural Castile that emerges is a complex society that defies easy generalizations, but one which is unquestionably part of the general European reality.

Introduction
1. The village community
2. Market contacts with the outside world
3. Manufacturing and artisanal contacts with the outside world
4. In-migration and out-migration
5. Family relations with the outside world
6. Relations with the state
7. Contacts with travellers and 'aliens'
8. Additional contacts with the outside world
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], European history [HBJD]