Land transmission among tenants on noble land – the case of southern Sweden, 1766-1895

"Land transmission affected the possibility for families to plan for generational shifts, marriages and retirements. For tenants on manorial land most of this decision-making potentially was left to the landowner. However, although differences existed within Europe, intergenerational transfers of tenancies seem to have existed in all parts of the continent. In this paper we study land transfers, and their determinants, among tenants on noble land in southern Sweden, where the manorial system appears more akin to the east European system than to the manorial system of other parts of Western Europe. We study all land transmissions in two parishes, Halmstad and Kågeröd, in the period 1766–1859 using data from the poll-tax registers. Family composition at the time of the transfer is registered using family reconstitutions and catechetical examination registers. We hypothesize that it was a rational landowner strategy, at least until the 1820s, to promote intergenerational transfers of tenancies. After that, we expect that a new and more interventionist landlord strategy appeared. Our results clearly indicate that similar strategies of land transmission applied in the manorial system as on free land owned by peasants. As was the case on freehold land, transfers to children were most important when tenancies were transferred in conjunction with retirement but there was also a considerable proportion – about 30 percent – of these transfers that went to non- kin. It is important to note, however, that these kinds of intergenerational transfers only constituted a part of all transfers. In more than 40 percent of all transfers the outgoing tenant was under 50, and in almost 30 percent of the transfers the outgoing tenant moved to become a tenant elsewhere or left the parish altogether. This clearly contradicts a simple picture of the manorial system where tenants were born and died on the same farm, without possibilities of migration or changing living conditions. As the agrarian economy developed in the nineteenth century, the management of estates changed, and the impression given is that the landlords took firmer control over the process of land transmission as land values increased."