La societe strabourgeoisie du milieu du XVIe siecle a la fin de la Guerre de Trente Ans 1560-1650. Essai d'histoire demographique, economique et sociale. by Jean-Pierre KintzReview by: Thomas A. Brady, Jr.The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 16, No. 1 (Spring, 1985), p. 146Published by: The Sixteenth Century JournalStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2540943 .

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146 The Sixteenth Century Journal

La societe strabourgeoisie du milieu du XVIe siecle a la fin de la Guerre de Trente Ans 1560-1650. Essai d'histoire demogra- phique, economique et sociale. Jean-Pierre Kintz. Paris: Editions Ophyrs, 1984. 549 pp. n.p.

This landmark volume, the fruit of fifteen years' labor, offers the first study of an early modern German population through the methods of chronological and surname sampling and family reconstitution from parish registers. It rests on three approaches: first, an enumeration of all recorded baptisms and marriages at Strasbourg for these ninety years; secondly, a sampling of families by decades (1560s, 1600s, and 1640s) and by initial letter of surname ("L" and "M") to yield about ten percent of the total popula- tion; and thirdly, the exploitation of an enormous mass of other manuscript sources, plus an unsurpassed mastery of the secondary literature.

Kintz begins by explaining his methods, including a highly interesting discussion of "the great instability of surnames" [28]. It is understandable that the French name "Jacquemin" should become "Schdgmin," but only familiarity with the Alemannic tongue would alert the investigator to the equivalence of "HAberlin" and "Erlein," of "Juckenmus" and "Geckenmus." After a fine review of the literature, local and general, on all the chief topoi of social history for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Kintz then presents his findings in three parts. Part One covers demographical aspects, in- cluding social topography, mobility, demographic crises, health and sanitation, the family, and the problem of population balance. Part Two treats economic matters, such as nutrition, prices, and the production and consumption of bread, wine, and meat. The third part turns to social topics, including commerce, finance, industry, landownership, control of property, classes and class conflict, wages, welfare, and poverty. Under each heading the local data are presented in the constant light of comparison.

In conclusion, Kintz sets his portrait of Strasbourg's people in the grand context of early modern European history. He correlates the gross demographic swings with larger crises, especially wars, and concludes that "Mortality was thus the dominant fac- tor in Strasbourg's demography" [523]. The church, whose influence Kintz calls "pri- modial," encouraged natality, while the mean number of children per household was falling from 3.9 to about 3.2. The coming of the Reformation altered slightly the annual rhythm of marriages but not that of conceptions, which followed the patterns known from Auneuil and Crulai. Kintz complains about the difficulty of determination figures on remarriages and widowhood, and nothing in the study suggests that the Reforma- tion brought major changes in the patterns of family life.

The demographic stagnation of seventeenth-century Strasbourg "reflected the pro- found economic crisis" [525], which gradually reduced Strasbourg's importance as a center of international trade, despite the entrepreneurial vigor of occasional Huguenot immigrants. This crisis is the setting for the continuation of the late medieval trend toward political conservatism, safe investments, and social control, which the early Reformation movement had only briefly interrupted.

This splendid book represents social history at its best, the triumph of intelligently employed methods over the recalcitrance of the sources, plus the use of quantitative data to control the interpretation of scantier but more revealing sources. Kintz has pur- sued the backbreaking drudgery of quantitative history, which alone can establish for us the hard parameters of everyday life in the past, but he also sees the common folk as people with minds and hearts, power and impotence, sorrows and joys, whose lives, though constricted by the structures, natural and social, of everyday life, reveal the struggle to give political voice and cultural expression to their deep human aspirations.

Thomas A. Brady, Jr. University of Oregon

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