The Stem Family in the French Basque Country: Sare in the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

Land-owners in Sare continued to practice impartible inheritance in the nineteenth century in order to protect the family house and the eco-demographic equilibrium of the community. But these practices, which in the Ancien Régime prescribed the selection of the first-born male or female child (aînesse intégrale), evolved in the nineteenth century as a great number of household heads opted for the selection of any male or female child to inherit the family house and property.These new practices perpetuated a stem-family system in which two conjugal units, with or without unmarried siblings, coresided in the earlier and later stages of the life cycle of their households, and sometimes changed into conjugal units halfway through the cycle. Stem-family households thus continued to evolve in three phases, from stem to conjugal to stem—the stem-family phases being longer among the wealthier households that could afford to support one or several unmarried siblings, and shorter among the poorer households whose farmstead was too small to feed more than two conjugal units.

A comparative study of family transmission systems in the central Pyrenees and northeastern Japan

“…In southern Europe-if Mediterranean areas are excluded and other regions like northern Spain, southwestern France, Pays Basque, and the central Pyrenees are considered-the stem-family bore specific forms of bilaterality that actually favored women. In those districts, female heiresses were common; integral primogeniture was a way of transmitting rural estate (Arrizabalaga, 1997). The presence of such female lines is also found in northeastern Japan where ane-katoku-succession by the head's eldest child regardless of sex-is practiced (Yamamoto, 2003).…”

Basque women and urban migration in the 19th century

“…Property owners' sons and daughters could settle in their villages of birth or in nearby villages as heirs, heiresses, or the spouses of heirs, but they all could not inherit or marry an heir (Arrizabalaga, 1994(Arrizabalaga, , 1997. Most non-inheriting siblings, therefore, strove to leave the village (on European property transmission strategies, see Bouchard, Goy, & Head-Kö nig, 1998;Dessureault, Dickson, & Goy, 2003;Head-Kö nig, Lorenzetti, & Veyrassat, 2001).…”

Gestionar la transmisión del patrimonio: las familias y sus estrategias de reproducción social en la Francia rural, (siglos XVI-XIX)

“…La oposición entre las dos Francias en materia sucesoria fue exagerada en su origen, tal y como muy bien ha demostrado la existencia y el empleo de fórmulas consuetudinarias en las regiones del sur (Zink, 1993). Con todo, en realidad, esa existencia y uso poco importa, ya que aunque el ámbito meridional francés fuese «desigualmente desigualitario» en el terreno hereditario, estuvo lejos de contravenir la norma general de transferir la propiedad de la tierra a un solo heredero, en principio a un varón primogénito, si bien, en el País Vasco, ese heredero podía ser una mujer, generalmente la mayor (Arrizabalaga, 2005(Arrizabalaga, , 1997. Dicho de otro modo, aquí el Derecho romano y las fór-mulas consuetudinarias se reforzaban mutuamente entre sí, al punto de desembocar en la instauración de un sistema de reparto no igualitario conocido como sistema de transmisión integra.…”