Page 55 - Upland Families, Elites and Communities

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The Family Economy in the Bohemian Rural

Milieu in the Long-Term Perspective: Social
Changes in the Domain of Červená Řečice

as a Case Study (Sixteenth–Nineteenth

Century)

Markéta Skořepová
University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice, Czech Republic

© 2025 Markéta Skořepová
https://doi.org/10.26493/978-961-293-486-6.53-80

Introduction
Agrarian historiography and the related research on social and economic
changes in the modern-day rural space has a long tradition in the Czech
Republic. It saw a major upswing in the interwar period when the former
aristocratic property underwent a fundamental transformation and the
documents relating to subject homesteads were transferred to the newly
emerging public archives after the creation of the independent Czechoslo-
vak Republic (Pekař 1923; Krofta 1949, 230–46). Another wave of interest
arose in the 1960s, when the history of working rural people was an ac-
ceptable topic from the point of view of the official Marxist ideology, but
which at the same time allowed relatively unrestricted research. Historians
have mainly focused on the legal status of rural people, their relationship
to the manorial authorities regarding personal and property rights, and
the economic strategies of landlords and subjects (Míka 1960; Procházka
1963; Petráň 1964). At the end of the 1960s, a reflection of certain foreign
methodological innovations also occurred, such as the beginning of his-
torical demography. The 1990s brought the desired international cooper-
ation and the development of quantitative research, which was primari-
ly targeted at researching the tenure and transfer of village homesteads
and the family life cycle. Czech historians of that time were inspired es-
pecially by German-speaking colleagues. Under the international project

Panjek,A.,ed.2025. Upland Families, Elites and Communities: Long-Run Micro
Perspectives on Persistence and Change. University of Primorska Press.