Page 65 - Upland Families, Elites and Communities

The Family Economy in the Bohemian Rural Milieu in the Long-Term Perspective

Table 2.1 The Number of Homesteads in the Villages of the Zmišovice Judicial District
Based on Land Registers
Village – – – – – – – –
       
Pobistrýce        
Popelištná        
Svépravice        
Těchoraz        
Zmišovice        
In total        
Index*        
Notes *1590–1619 = 100. Based on data from na, apa i, inv. no. 1754, and 2609; na, apa,
vs , inv.no. 52,53,and 60.

erected in the area of the villages. By the beginning of the nineteenth cen-
tury, a total of 82 homesteads were entered into the land registers, which
means 47 new residential and economic units were gradually added to 35
old homesteads. However, their legal and physical existence remained rela-
tivelyfragile,asevidencedbytheausterityandgapsintherelevantrecords,
which persisted throughout the eighteenth century. After 1800, the build-
ing boom subsided for several years, undoubtedly also due to the long-term
financial crisis brought about by the Napoleonic Wars and completed by
the state bankruptcy of 1811.⁶ Only five new houses appeared in land reg-
isters in the 1810s and 1820s (na, apa, vs , inv. no. 60, 52, and 53).
However, in 1842, 878 inhabitants were living in 119 houses in the area un-
der analysis (Sommer 1842, 132–9).
The waves of founding new homesteads occurred at more or less genera-
tional intervals. The tenure of the original farms stabilized after the crises
of the seventeenth century, although the farmers usually did not person-
ally use the full economic capacity of their farms and allowed their kin and
lodgers to form tiny households of their own. However, with the arrival
of the next generations, the mere expansion of the original households
was no longer sufficient, which led to the founding of new, independent
‘small houses’ or ‘cottages’ in the inner area of the villages. Development
of new homesteads was supported also by state fiscal policy, as is evident

⁶ After two entries in 1800, another new cottage was not entered in the land register until
1812. Homesteads established after 1829 were not included in the research, among other
things due to unsystematic entries in the land registers.

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