Total and Relative Endogamy by Social Origin: A First International Comparison of Changes in Marriage Choices during the Nineteenth Century

The introductory chapter to this volume presented a number of theories and hypotheses on the determinants of endogamy; the following chapters described endogamy in different historical settings and tested some of those hypotheses. The tests looked especially at the effects of individual characteristics of spouses, and sometimes of their parents. Results relating to changes in macro characteristics over time and their effect on the likelihood of endogamy were presented. Because all these chapters refer to only one country or region, regional comparisons are seldom made (there are some exceptions: Bras and Kok on differences between parts of the province of Zeeland; Pélissier et al. on differences between rural and urban areas, and Van de Putte et al. on differences between several Belgian cities and villages). The aim of the present chapter is to shed some light on differences in endogamy between countries, regions, and periods.1 We start by describing the steps that were taken to increase the comparability of the results. The first was the decision to opt for marriage registers as a source of data on endogamy. The second was the decision to classify occupations using HISCO. Thirdly, based on HISCO, HISCLASS was used as a taxonomy of class. We will refrain from describing the datasets, but refer instead to the preceding chapters in this volume for this information. We then proceed by describing total and relative endogamy in the regions and countries covered in this volume. We ask how large the differences in endogamy were between countries and regions, between rural and urban areas within countries, and to what extent endogamy changed over time within regions.