Translation de Domicile: Rethinking Sedentarity and Mobility in the Early Modern French Countryside

摘要

Was the countryside of early modern France marked fundamentally by mobility or sedentarity? Tax rolls suggest the former, high endogamy rates the latter. For the period 1660–1720, a rarely used source, the registers of translation de domicile (change of tax domicile), provide a more comprehensive answer than civil or tax records. They suggest that, first, 60,000–70,000 better-off families moved each year; second, poor migrants, such as day labourers, rarely made declarations; third, those who owned land, moved far less often; fourth, laboureurs typically moved between 10 and 40 kilometres to take on farms of greater importance; fifth, cottagers and day labourers moved to a nearby village, rarely more than 5 kilometres away and finally, men and their families moved for economic gain, whereas women moved because of economic loss, after the death of their husband. Because the laboureurs dominated the villages—for example, paying most of the taxes—their movement shook the village in fundamental ways. The translation de domicile registers indicate villages open to the outside, full of in-migrants, whose economic status often bore a close correlation to the distance of their move (high-long, low-short).