Working a retiree´s economy: rural contractual retirement in Lower Austria, c. 1650-1800

Property transfer and inheritance in early modern European societies are a major focus of current social and rural history research. New results challenge traditional views of population and agricultural history which assumed rigid inheritance systems, strong institutional controls and a connection with a population homeostasis. Recent research has concentrated particularly on the dynamics of property transfer and the agency of individuals and their families. Drawing from the theoretical and methodological advances of micro-history and historical anthropology, this project will analyze, in a comparative European perspective, the structure of contractual retirement arrangements and, as leading focus, their implications for the material welfare and the social status of the former tenants/retired in the context of property transfer patterns and their changes over time in selected regions of early modern Lower Austria. The study will challenge interpretations which perceived contractual retirement arrangements merely as an institution of transfers from the new to the former owner on full tenant farms. By contrast the analysis rests on the hypothesis that the elderly in contractual retirement did not end their working life with the property transfer. Resources (cattle, land, garden etc.) for a retirees economy provided by retirement contracts could help to secure a subsistence. The aim will be to show that contractual retirement could form a continuation of an independent livelihood in old age albeit on a smaller scale. The research results will form the basis for a new assessment of the economic situation of the elderly and their status in early modern rural societies and will include a particular focus on elderly females and widows. The comparison will build upon a uniform analysis of two regions, one of traditional mixed agriculture with proto-industrial by-employment and the other of more commercialized arable agriculture and viticulture, and will consider similar studies in a comparative European perspective. Primary sources consist of land transfer registers and post-mortem household/probate inventories as well as a body of documents originating from the seigniorial and village administration such as marriage contracts, wills or court protocols. Methodologically, the study will concentrate on a quantitative analysis of the structure of contractual retirement provisions as well as their change over time with consideration of the existing land transfer patterns. A full qualitative analysis will be based on the detailed information of the transfer and retirement contracts as well as of probate inventories. The combined quantitative and qualitative approach will concentrate on an analysis on household and family level and will make possible an agency-centred analytical approach. The results will improve our understanding of the situation of the elderly within the dynamics of property transfer and inheritance in early modern European rural societies.