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Migration as a Strategy of Accumulation: Social and Economic Change in Eighteenth‐Century Savoy
Author(s) -
Siddle D.J.
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
the economic history review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.014
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1468-0289
pISSN - 0013-0117
DOI - 10.1111/1468-0289.00042
Subject(s) - poverty , kinship , product (mathematics) , dowry , circulation (fluid dynamics) , economics , investment (military) , capital (architecture) , development economics , geography , economy , economic geography , business , economic growth , political science , physics , geometry , mathematics , archaeology , politics , law , thermodynamics
Migration from the mountain areas of pre‐industrial Europe has been seen as the product of poverty. While hardship controlled the strategies of the more marginalized households, better placed families used their migration experience to establish themselves in commerce. Over generations they used contacts and kinship systems to develop important informal trading networks. It is difficult to establish the effects of this hidden activity on local mountain economies, but dowry payments and post mortem inventories are used to expose the impact of inflowing capital and its circulation.