Second generations in the past: the fate of French migrants’ children in the Barcelona area at the 17th century

Anna Cabré, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Joana-Maria Pujadas-Mora, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

The population of Catalonia increased from 200.000 in 1553 to 475.000 in 1623. This demographic revival is explained by historians by an extraordinary flow of French migrants during the 16th and early 17th centuries. Among the near 40.000 marriages celebrated from 1581 to 1641 in the Barcelona area, over 9000 involved a French husband. The object of our contribution is analyzing the fate of the Frenchmen’s children, the second generations of the past, in the sense of their social and occupational promotion using the data of the Barcelona Historical Marriage Database. The BHMD is being built with the information in the books of marriage licenses conserved at the Barcelona Cathedral, detailing the occupation of the husband and his social status measured by the amount of the fee paid for the license. For a period of 70 years ending in 1641, the register offers as well the occupation of the respective fathers of groom and bride. As migrants’ children cannot be recognized as such in their marriage license, we will undertake the first attempt to link individuals of different generations made with the data of the BHMD. We will identify the children of the couples married in 1581-1583, French or other, by the search of matches in the marriage licenses from 1597 to 1623, to be extended later until 1643. In our presentation at EPC we expect to confirm our first findings from a experimental sample. The main result is that the status of the sons depended highly on the status of the fathers at the moment of the son’s marriage rather than at the moment of the father’s marriage. That means that the changes in status of the father through life, positive or negative, would be inherited by the son. This effect is higher in migrants than in natives.