Rural Domestic Servants in Eighteenth-Century Burgundy: Demography, Economy, and Mobility

While much is known about urban domestic service, a good deal less has been written about servants living and working in the countryside. This article analyzes rural domestic service in northern Burgundy during the eighteenth century. Based primarily on nominal lists from 1796 and on witness depositions in local courts, it reconstructs the profiles of both servants and masters. While several historians have chosen to see domestic service as a common life-cycle experience with an important role to play in a demographic system based on late marriage, it is important not to underestimate the economic foundation of the institution. Parents generally kept their adolescent children at home if they could afford to do so, and in northern Burgundy only a minority of young people ever worked as servants. And relatively few households had servants, even among landowning farmers. Those who worked as servants were all from poor families, as literacy rates demonstrate. The article also analyzes their mobility patterns. While servants were more mobile than any other group in society, they tended to move over short distances and remained relatively close to their place of birth even as they changed masters repeatedly throughout their short career. Female servants became increasingly mobile over the course of the century while male servants did not, which reflects changes in demand for young men and women in cities and villages.