In this paper, we will study family and inheritance strategy in the northern French rural region, choosing as our research field a community named Chéroy(Yonne).
Many researchers have analyzed the French family in the pre-industrial period. They have mainly been interested in the southern and western French society where the traditional family and kinship could be easily found out. But, to understand the French rural family totally, it’s necessary to examine northern society.
We will focus the inheritance strategy because the problem of succession is an important issue for family members. In northern France, land was equally divided between children, but to perpetuate the family exploitation, it was desirable to avoid this kind of partition. So, some strategies were requested.
Essentially, the family is the field of a member’s power, we suppose. In some cases, it is possible that succession problems resulted in family break-down. The inheritance problem could be resolved, not automatically, but, only with ingenious strategies, for example, allocation of different properties to children, payment of compensation, etc.
We will clarify the characteristics of the northern French family, by selecting 46 families as samples and categorizing their inheritance strategies.
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