karl kaser - the balkan joint family - redefining a problem

Karl Kaser

The Balkan

Joint Family

Redefining a Problem

European Household Patterns:

Revisiting a Classic Problem

Research on the Balkan joint family, often incorrectly generalized as zadruga,' shows three striking characteristics. First, although there is an abundance of

scholarly literature on this issue, most of it is not linked to general questions about family and household structure in western Europe or even eastern

Europe. This is unfortunate because findings are not seen in a broader context and are interpreted in isolation. Second, the most important research of the postwar decades is that of three American scholars: the anthropologist

Social Science History 18:2 (Summer 1994). Copyright ? 1994 by the Social Science History Asso- ciation. CCC 0145-5532/94/$1.50.

244 Social Science History

Joel M. Halpern, the historical demographer and anthropologist Eugene A.

Hammel, and the historian Philip E. Mosely. Balkan historians usually have not investigated the structure and function of kin relationships within the

joint family household but have studied the household from the perspective of political development. Dragutin Pavlicevic's recent book on the zadruga in Croatia during the nineteenth century is a good example of this (Pavli- cevic 1989). He shows how the zadruga became a political issue in Croatia. Conservative populists considered the zadruga as the essence of Croatian

popular culture and wanted to have it legally protected. In the thinking of

liberals, on the other hand, the zadruga was an obstacle to rapid economic

development and therefore not worth conserving. Third, the origin of the Balkan joint family household is not yet understood. Hammel's attitude still reflects the present state of research. He suggests that the existence of the

joint family is not so unusual but rather predicable under certain circumstances. From his anthropological perspective, to discuss "whether it is an institution peculiar to this or that people or not is a waste of time" (Hammel 1976: 114-15). But from the point of view of the history of ethnicity and national ideologies it is pertinent indeed. Maria Todorova has argued that historical documentation is not sufficient to prove the existence of the joint family or zadruga before the nineteenth century. She finds the theory that the zadruga is a phenomenon of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries more reasonable than the assumption of its long-term existence (Todorova 1990:

63-64). For both Hammel and Todorova, the search for earlier origins is difficult to justify.

As a historian approaching this problem of the origins of the Balkan

joint family, I differ with both Hammel and Todorova. My aim is to refor- mulate the question of the emergence of the Balkan joint family. It is my suggestion that the Balkan joint family came into being independently from other eastern European joint family household organizations. Its social his-

tory is unusual. In what follows, I address two aspects of this history. First, I explore the joint family household in eastern Europe and regional patterns in household structure. Second, I present my findings about the joint family households of the so-called Austrian military border in Croatia at the

beginning of the eighteenth century and the role of ethnicity in household structure.

The Balkan Joint Family 245

The Joint Family Household in

Eastern Europe and in the Balkans

The paucity of broad investigations of family history in eastern Europe con- trasts with the abundant research dealing with family structures in western and central Europe. Two valuable articles by John Hajnal are exceptional (Hajnal 1965, 1983). Until recently the whole eastern part of Europe was subsumed under the eastern European marriage and household pattern, and there was a presumption that the reasons for its emergence were everywhere more or less the same.

The thesis that an eastern European marriage pattern contrasted with a western European one since the sixteenth century has not been disproved. The western European marriage pattern is characterized by a high age at

marriage and a high percentage of people still single at age 50 (i.e., between 10 and 15% of the female population). By contrast, the eastern European pattern is characterized by a low age at marriage and a low percentage (less than 5) of people never marrying (Hajnal 1965). The postulation of a divid-

ing line between the two patterns-stretching from Trieste in the south to St. Petersburg in the north-was supported by Hungarian marriage data. In western Hungary the age at marriage was found to be lower than in western

Europe and a little bit higher than in eastern Hungary (Andorka and Balacz- Kovacs 1987: 173-74). The marriage pattern in Greece was also assumed to fall between the western and the eastern patterns (Hajnal 1965: 103).

Household formation is closely related to marriage behavior. In western and central Europe, household members have often included related as well as unrelated persons. In eastern Europe, on the contrary, the household has consisted predominantly of kin (Hajnal 1983: 97-99; Mitterauer 1980: 59-60). Hajnal makes his typology concrete by specifying two different household systems. The simple household system in preindustrial times was concentrated in northwestern Europe (Scandinavia, the British Isles, the Netherlands, the German-speaking areas, and northern Italy). The joint household system, consisting of two or more related nuclear families, was the structure common in eastern Europe. The rules of formation of the simple (nuclear) household systems revolved around the postponement of marriage for both genders (men until about 26 years, women until about 23 years) and the circulation of both sexes before marriage as servants. The rules of


formation of the joint family household centered on early marriage (under the age of 26 for men and 21 for women). Moreover, when the young couple started a household, they were responsible for an older couple. Households

including two or more couples later divided into two or more households.

Hajnal also argued that the size of an average household in the joint household region was not significantly higher than in the simple household area

(Hajnal 1983: 65-83). Peter Laslett agreed with Hajnal's model, but by including criteria of

work-group membership, he divided Europe into not two but four parts. The western simple household pattern covered northern and western Europe, while the eastern joint family model applied in eastern and southern Europe. Domestic group organization, according to this scheme, shows four distinctive tendencies within the same two major structures: the simple household

system region has a western and a "Western/Central or Middle European"

tendency, while the joint household system region has an eastern and a Medi- terranean type. The division is not oriented along present borders: France is divided between western and western/central tendencies; Germany, Hun-

gary, and Portugal are mixed. According to this system the Balkan area

belongs to the Mediterranean category (Laslett 1983: 513-30), a statement not without its problems.

This west-east division of marriage patterns and household systems seems to be well established, but the pertinent boundaries are not well de- marcated. There is an additional aspect to these arguments. A divergent collective historical fate links these regional differences in household structure to different political and socioeconomic developments. Hajnal argues that the eastern marriage pattern and household system were common across

Europe in earlier times (Hajnal 1965, 1983). Although he states one cannot

specify the time and reasons for the emergence of the western European pattern, he posits a decisive transitional stage between 1400 and 1650 (Hajnal 1965: 122-24). The reason for the delay in marriage was the necessity for the married couple to found a self-sustaining household. This principle made late marriage unavoidable since couples had to wait until parents died or re- tired or until they had collected the resources necessary to buy a farmstead

(Alter 1991: 1). Wally Seccombe has recently argued that there are links between late

marriage and emerging industrial capitalism in western Europe. He suggests,


in fact, that late marriage was one of the main reasons for the emergence of

industrial capitalism in the west and that early marriage was an obstacle to a

similar development in the east. Late marriage made for improved life secu-

rity and the increased productivity of the female labor force. It supported capital formation, making it possible to utilize a cheap and mobile labor force

(Seccombe 1990: 63-65). His account of the origin of delayed marriage rests on the differing outcomes of the feudal crises of the fourteenth century in the east and west. Until then, late marriage was not unknown in the west but was not the rule. In western Europe the feudal crises ended with a reorganiza- tion of feudal relations through the promotion of commodities and monetary profits, which made early marriage no longer necessary. In eastern Europe just the opposite was the case. There was the maintenance and strengthening of profits from labor in the context of the maintenance of traditional mar-

riage and household patterns (Seccombe 1990: 53-63). As a result of these different developments, in western Europe, with some exceptions, nuclear and stem family forms emerged as the absolutely predominant pattern, and in eastern Europe there developed the tendency toward conservation of the

joint family household. Recent investigations, however, show us that the situation is not as

simple as it once appeared. Andrejs Plakans points out that, on one hand, the microlevel research on the structure of eastern European families clearly demonstrates that the proportion of multiple families in a given population in the region is only about 20%.2 If the extended family is included, the

proportion rises to 40% or more. Complexity of the household structure in eastern Europe appears not to follow any general rule. Let us turn to the results of some recent microstudies, starting with Michael Mitterauer and Alexander Kagan's investigation of the Russian province of Jaroslavl', 250 kilometers northeast of Moscow, in the mid-eighteenth century. The serfs of the landlords were basically divided into two groups. There were the krestjane, who paid taxes and made deliveries to the lords. The second

group was the dvorovye Ijudi, who worked directly for their lords as household servants. The average family size was relatively low at 5.2 members. The proportion of complexity was also relatively low. There were 58.5%

single households, 11.7% extended, and only 29.8% complex. These numbers are only slightly higher than the equivalent in the western or central

European areas at that period. It is not surprising that under these circum-


stances the average marriage age was relatively high: only 25.8% of women 15-19 years old and 65.2% of men 20-24 were already married (Mitterauer and Kagan 1982).

A very different picture emerges from Mishino, 170 kilometers southeast of Moscow. Czap's research results reveal an intensified eastern European pattern. Here, too, the social strata of krestjane and dvorovye Ijudi dominated. It seems as if the landlords deliberately kept the household size large. Thus the households could provide more labor than they would have without any intervention. This was an obvious benefit for the feudal lord. During the

years 1814-58 the maximal household size ranged between 18 and 25 members. The average household consisted of between 8.0 and 9.7 members and was thus more than 50% higher than the 5.2 for Jaroslavl'. The complexity of the households was also striking: in 1814 the proportion was 79%; in 1858, 73% (Czap 1983).

The Hungarian situation was completely different, however. There are

good statistical data for the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. The household size in the southern Transdanubia re-

gion was slightly higher than in western Europe, but around the capital Buda and in the Great Plains it was similar to western Europe. Generally, household size was smaller than in Russia. Complex household structures existed

only in present-day Slovakia, in some areas of Transdanubia and Transylva- nia, and in certain Hungarian villages of Slavonia (Croatia), which belonged until 1918 to Hungary (Andorka and Farago 1983; Andorka and Balacz- Kovacs 1987; Gunda 1982). The origins of the complex household systems, according to Hungarian historians, cannot be traced back further than the seventeenth century. Certain aspects of the existing landlord-dominated

agricultural system supported the emergence of complex households. The

demographic pressure resulted in a growing tendency for households to

split. These changes diminished the material basis holding the household

together, which was a disadvantage for the feudal lords. The landlords were thus interested in keeping the families large (Gunda 1982: 49-51). It seems that in most parts of eastern Europe complex family households were the result of landlords' domination of agriculture. The landlords forbade households to break up because this was to their disadvantage. This appears to have been the situation in Russia and the Baltic regions, but this was only partly the case in the Balkans, where complex family households existed to a large degree outside noble estates.


If eastern European household structures show an interesting variability, it is also true that complex household structures were not restricted to eastern Europe. A significant western European example is the joint family household, called in French the communaute, in the central French province Nivernais. There is documentation of the existence and development of this household type beginning in the sixteenth century. Its emergence was caused

by the bordelage system, a mitigated form of serfdom. The system required that to succeed to bordelage property, the heir be living in a communaute with the leaseholder at the time of his death. It was forbidden to divide perma- nently property held under bordelage. Failure to adhere to these provisions meant that the property again reverted to the landlord (Shaffer 1982).

Another striking example is the complex household structure in the

sharecrop belt of northern Italy (stretching from Umbria through Tuscany to

Emilia-Romana). A high frequency of complex household structures is evident here since the fifteenth century. The relationship between complexity and the institution of sharecropping is also apparent. Every year contracts were concluded between landlords and tenants obliging all family members to work on the leased soil and not to do other work. The reason is obvious. The products of the plot were divided into equal parts between landlord and tenant (Kertzer 1989: 4). The parallels between the household system of the Russian serfs and the Italian tenants are striking. In both cases are found joint family organization, patrilateral extension, and an elevated age at which men took over the leadership of the household (45 or higher) (Kertzer 1989:10).

What conclusions can we draw? First, all of these examples show a

relationship between the interests of noble landowners and the emergence of complex family households. Second, these interests were related to a series of agrarian developments beginning in the sixteenth century; in eastern Europe feudal structures typically remained stronger than in western

Europe. Thus, despite the exceptions of joint family households in western

Europe and widespread simple household systems in eastern Europe, the model of a characteristically bifurcated eastern and western European pattern has validity but does not cover each specific region. Third, the related thesis that states that joint family households are associated with early mar-

riage for women no longer holds. The Italian example shows an opposite picture, as the Russian Baltics, where the proportion of joint family households is high but the average marriage age is the same as in western Europe


(Kertzer 1989: 11). Finally, it is now clear that an assumed sharp contrast in the geographical distribution of a simple western family household and an eastern multiple or joint family household is not appropriate. The diver-

sity of household forms within a society demonstrates, according to Kertzer, that household processes are interactions of various economic, demographic, political, and cultural conditions. The ascribing of patterns to geographical units is generally correct but can vary on the regional level. The key to the

study of households is "the recognition of patterns of interareal variation"

(Kertzer 1989: 11-12). Plakans, arguing from the microlevel, pleads for the extension of the research from the micro to the regional level (e.g., comparative studies of the Balkans and the Baltics) to develop long-term variants within eastern Europe (Plakans 1987:137-38).

These revisions provide a framework in which to return to the problem of the emergence of the joint family in the Balkans. The question is, was it

part of a general eastern European demographic development, as Todorova and Hammel suggest, or the result of an independent development on a

regional level?

The Balkan Joint Family

Evidence about the recent distribution of the Balkan joint family provides a good starting point. Mosely's field research in the late 1930s presents a clear picture of the regions where joint family households could be found in the early twentieth century. He defines three belts: the main belt stretches across the adjacent territories of the Montenegrin and northern and central Albanian tribal societies. Here joint family households were a strong element of the tribal system. The second belt extends south, east, and north from the tribal areas across the mountainous regions of Bosnia-Hercegovina, western Croatia, northern and central Macedonia, and central Albania. Some additional isolated areas were parts of this second belt (in the western Bul-

garian, northern Greek, and southwestern Albanian mountains). The third belt stretches north, east, and south from the second belt irregularly over the plains and rocky valleys of Croatia, Slavonia, pre-1912 Serbia, western and central Bulgaria, southern Macedonia, and southern Albania (Mosely 1976a: 60-61).

Half a century later the American anthropologist Traian Stoianovich


came to similar conclusions. He argued, based on archival data, that from about 1500 up to the twentieth century the joint family household was wide-

spread in the western Balkans, with the larger households found in the

mountainous regions and an average household size in the valleys and plains that was considerably lower. The lowest rate was on the coastal sites of the Adriatic. Up to the nineteenth century a special biosocial regime prevailed in the western Balkans which was characterized by a high and stable death

rate, a correspondingly elevated birthrate, a stable age distribution, and a

very low age at marriage (Stoianovich 1980: 189-97). Todorova agrees with Stoianovich and limits the eastern distribution of the joint family to the mountainous parts of western Bulgaria (Todorova 1990:18-19; 1983).

If scholars agree on the distribution of the joint family, questions about

origins, emergence, and history are still under discussion. Older theories, now obsolete, saw the joint family either as a particular Old Slavic institution or as a result of the Byzantine tax collection system (Gavazzi 1982: 100-102).3

First of all, the joint family was not ethnically determined. The idea of an Old Slavic heritage has been discredited (Mitterauer 1980: 62-66). Hammel suggests considering the Balkan joint family as result of the impact of legal and fiscal institutions, ecological variables, and preexisting social

patterns (Hammel 1980: 244).4 Mitterauer stresses the ecological factors. He notes that the distribu-

tion of joint family households is more or less confined to mountainous, remote regions, where a cash economy and wage work played a lesser role. A pastoral economy in particular might have promoted the emergence of

complex family structures. Pastoralism interacts with another interesting Balkan peculiarity-ancestor worship. Knowledge about the founder of the

patrilineal line and the genealogical chain and the striking celebration of the ancestor is a cultural phenomenon of the Balkans that has no equivalent elsewhere in Europe. Mitterauer suggests that consciousness of patrilineal ancestors was strong in regions where environmental and ecological conditions were especially trying, such as among mountainous pastoral societies. He adds, however, that the mode of production cannot explain this cultural

phenomenon sufficiently (Mitterauer 1980: 67, 75-77). But the connection is worth consideration.

Another important observation, stressed by the Halperns and Hammel, is that we have to consider the joint family as an ongoing process of emer-


gence, fission, and reconstitution. Joint families have their origins in nuclear families and can again divide into nuclear families (Hammel 1972: 370). This raises the question of the household cycle. A short cycle (when, for ex-

ample, all the sons and daughters except the successor leave the household

early) produces smaller households; a longer cycle (when, for example, the sons stay in the household and marry) enlarges households. Households go

through cycles as their members mature, and in larger villages one can expect to find households in various stages of formation. Halpern, by combining nineteenth- and twentieth-century data, shows not only cyclical transforma- tion but historic change over two centuries. He demonstrates a constantly decreasing household size and a change from a pattern of sons marrying and

staying at home (i.e., a multiple family structure) to stem family (with only one married son remaining) as a historic evolution, part of the process of modernization. His data also support Mitterauer's notions about the role of

the pastoral economy since in Halpern's microstudy the decline in household size is linked to a decreasing emphasis on pastoralism in the economy; the

pasturing of swine in oak forests diminished in the mid- and late-nineteenth

century as forest was cut down to expand arable land (Halpern 1974: 403-5;

Halpern and Halpern-Kerewsky 1972). Hammel reminds us further that we should not expect that most house-

holds would be joint family households even where this is the ideal. It is

possible for people to form a joint family household only at certain points in their lives. Even where statistics show only a small number of joint house-

holds, each person may have lived within a joint family at some point of his or her life. This is why the average household size is not a good indicator of structure (Hammel 1980: 246-53). Household size data, as Halpern points out, capture only one point in time. Household size is constantly changing through birth and death and economic circumstances (Halpern 1974: 405).

The decline of the Balkan joint family is well documented (Pavlicevic 1989; Mosely 1976b; Halpern 1958; Vucinich 1976; Backer 1979; Erlich 1976; Filipovic 1976). But its origins remain obscure. Gavazzi avers that it may have emerged as far back as the eleventh century. Dalmatian documents give no direct evidence, however, rather only indirect and vague indications of

existing joint families (Gavazzi 1982: 90). The earliest documentary proofs of the existence of joint families are

Serbian household listings for the fourteenth century. Hammel and Filipovic


have studied the complexity of Serbian households using this data. For those

expecting a high proportion of joint family households, Hammel's findings are disappointing. The first of the two Chrysobulls of the monastery Decani

(dated 1330 and 1336) shows that roughly half of the families were joint households (Hammel 1976: 111). The household listings for the monastery of Sveti Stefan (1313-18) show the existence of few joint families (Hammel 1980: 262). A later listing of six villages in Macedonia belonging to the Ser- bian Athos monastery of Chilandar is even less encouraging. No household consisted of more than two conjugal couples, and only 9% of the families were lineally and another 9% laterally extended (Hammel 1980: 259-62). It is worth mentioning that the listings of Decani and Sveti Stefan include Albanian and Vlachian pastoral families, but the Chilander listing includes

only Greek and Slavic families. An Ottoman census (consisting of Belgrade Vlach families in 1528) shows still a different result: 41% of the households were nuclear; the rest were complex families (Hammel 1980: 262). Thus, the

picture is inconsistent. Villages vary regionally with respect to the proportion of complex households; regions and villages with a low proportion were not unusual.

A problem with Hammel's analysis is that he excluded, a priori, the pos- sibility that certain social and ethnic groups or peoples could have tended to form joint families more readily than others. Filipovic followed a different

path. The high concentration of joint families among the Belgrade Vlachs in 1528 was so striking that he picked out these Vlachian families from the

Decani, Sveti Stefan, and Arhandjeli household listings. His results are very impressive. Only 23.9% of the 1,178 Vlachian families were nuclear families, 44.7% were definitively joint families, and in 31.9% of the cases it appears that joint families were possible (Filipovic 1963: 65-75).5

To sum up, we know a lot about the distribution of the Balkan joint family in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We have evidence docu-

menting its existence in the fourteenth century. We know further that we have to recognize that the joint family evolves through an ongoing process of

emergence, fission, and reconstruction. Finally, we have specific information about the decades of decline. The rest is speculation - for example, that there is a relationship with the pastoral economy and that there are legal, ecological, and preexisting social patterns that furnish the context for emergence of a joint family structure. The most crucial remaining question is whether the


emergence of this family type was caused primarily by demographic factors that pertained throughout eastern Europe or was a result of an independent Balkan development that has less to do with general demographic development than with a preexisting culture. Although current research supports the first interpretation, I would like to present some evidence that may recast the problem.

New Evidence: The Census of 1712 in the Lika Military Border Region and the Return of Ethnicity

Household listings stored in the archives in Graz, Austria (Kaser 1986), suggest a way to redefine the problem of the origin of the Balkan joint family. Before I describe the census of the year 1712, some historical background is essential.

In the middle of the fourteenth century, troops of the emerging Otto- man Empire in Asia Minor began to conquer the southeastern parts of

Europe. They first entered Byzantium, then the medieval Balkan states

(Serbia, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Vlachia, and Moldavia). Between the fourteenth and the sixteenth centuries, the Ottomans extended their empire across almost the whole of southeastern Europe. Finally, around the middle of the sixteenth century, a stable border emerged, running through Croatia and Hungary and separating the Habsburg from the Ottoman territories. The Habsburg Empire began then to fortify this border, founding strongly fortified castles with full-time military forces. The main problem was that because of the devastation inflicted by the fighting, almost the whole population had fled. Feudal relations collapsed because the estates of the lords were worthless without serfs. To encourage settlers the Habsburg rulers promised special privileges (free land, or no feudal obligations except military service). The territory of the privileged military border population was administered

separately from feudal hinterland to avoid tensions. A separate region, called

Militdrgrenze (military border), came into being. After the second siege of Vienna (1683), Habsburg troops were successful in pushing back the Otto- man army; the military border lost its meaning as a defensive institution, but it continued to exist administratively until its dissolution between 1871 and 1881 (Kaser 1986).


The particular area under study, Lika-Krbava (later simply Lika),6 nowa-

days the very southeastern part of Croatia proper, was part of the Ottoman

Empire until it was reconquered by Habsburg troops in 1689. From then on it was administrated by the Inner Austrian Court Chamber, located in Graz. The population of this region wished to become incorporated into the

neighboring military border administration. As part of the military border, they would be free people, owing only military service. Their efforts were

finally successful, and in 1712 the court chamber handed the Lika district over to the military border administration. Before they did so, however, they sent a census commission to the province charged with describing and enu-

merating the population by family groups and by ethnicity; they were also to list family possessions. The commission worked from 17 September to 30 October 1712. The result is the oldest complete household listing of the

military border that has survived.7 When Lika was reconquered by Habsburg troops in 1689, it had been

almost completely evacuated by the previous Muslim population, mostly of Slavic origin. During the following decades the area was intensively re-

populated. The number of families settled there grew from 553 in 1696 to

1,630 in 1701 and to 2,110 in 1712 (Kaser 1986: 212). In 1712 the population consisted of four distinctive groups. The smallest group (46 families) was called Neochristiani (former Muslims, most of them of Slavic origin, con- verted to Catholicism). The so called Bunjevci or Catholic Vlachs 8 included 204 families; 299 families were Catholic Croats. The largest group was 1,561 Orthodox Vlachian families. These families lived in 36 villages. Eleven were of mixed Croatian-Vlach composition; some 8 villages were purely Cro-

atian, and 17 were purely Vlach. The rapid resettlement of the province after the Habsburg-Ottoman war was almost complete by 1712. The population increased from 27,898 in 1712 to 36,133 in 1746 (Kaser 1986: 213-19).

It is obvious that the settlement process was not officially organized. In

most cases there were no regulations about the size of the lands to be occu-

pied by families. Only a couple of villages show a systematic land division.

Usually the households took as much land as they could work. Households that received their land from the court chamber in an organized and legal way were given a letter of confirmation. But not more than 50 households were in possession of such a letter in 1712 (Kaser 1986: 230). There is no further sign of official intervention in the existing family structure. Until the


census of 1712 the administration did not even have a clear picture about the existing land distribution. The size of the holdings varied considerably between villages and families.

The census information enables us to reconstruct the family structures

existing in the fall of 1712 and to assess the distribution of joint family households. The database is 2,249 landowning families consisting of 25,291 household members. Despite Hammel's warning not to rely on average household

size, and Halpern's reservations, I nevertheless investigated it because the numbers can show whether or not all subgroups of the population had the same tendency to construct a particular size of household. The figures say nothing by themselves about family structure, but they reveal general and

comparative tendencies. The differences between groups are not random. It is very striking that the average family size in the Croatian villages was

comparatively low, ranging from 6.0 (Kaludjerovac) to 8.8 (Bilaj). Most are

grouped around 7.5. By contrast the Vlach and Bunjevci villages show a

relatively high average family size. Their range is between 8.9 (Mutilic) and 17.3 (Vrebac). The low average of Mutilic is misleading. This village was in- habited by 170 Croats and 327 Vlachs. The small Croatian families were the cause of the relatively small average size. (The Croatian average is 6.8 and the Vlach 10.5 for this village.) In most of the Vlach and Bunjevci villages the average household size ranged from 12 to 13 members. It is worth men-

tioning that the Vlach and Bunjevci averages are more or less identical with other Vlachian villages in the military border (e.g., Plaski or Gomirje). In the year 1697 the average household size of the village of Plaski was 11.2 and of Gomirje 11.6. The Croatian average also corresponds to other Croatian

villages of the military border (e.g., Otok [6.6], Ostarije [6.7], and Modrus

[6.9]) (Kaser 1986:187, 241-43). The next step is to explore the range of households sizes in these vil-

lages. Croatian households consisting of more than 15 members are rare

exceptions (9 households for all villages). With the exception of the villages of Budak and Musaluk, more than 80% of the households in the Croatian

villages consisted of 10 or fewer members. In the Vlach and Bunjevci villages the percentage of households consisting of fewer than 10 members is only around 50. Moreover, among the Vlachs and Bunjevci, households consisting of more than 20 members were not rare; 18 households had between 31 and 35 members, and three households had more than 40. The biggest house-


rerage household size of Lika villages in 1712

Number of landowning households Average size (persons)

45 97 53

156 43 29

119 40

112 59 65 56 34 13 49 43 41 93 70 59 33 58 43 95

14.6 14.2 11.1 10.6 13.7 12.0 14.2 12.4 10.4 10.7 11.0 8.9

12.0 10.9 12.3 12.3 12.3 13.0 11.1 11.3 13.1 10.5 17.3 13.6

121 95

120

11.7 11.0 9.6

12 19 33 27 18 62 52

8.8 6.8 7.8 6.0 7.6 7.4 7.9

Table 1 A)

Village

Vlachs Bruvno Bunic Divoselo Gracac Josane Komic Korenica Mazin Medak

Mekinjar Mogoric Mutilic Ostrovica Pecane Pisa Ploca

Pocitelj Popina Radu Siroka Kula

Srednja Gora VisuC Vrebac

Zvonigrad

Bunjevci Lovinac Pazariste

Smiljan

Croats

Bilaj Brusane Budak

Kaludjerovac Musaluk Novi

Podlapac


Table 1 (Continued)

Village Number of landowning households Average size (persons)

Ribnik 30 6.7 Udbina 70 7.5

Neochristiani Perusic 85 11.3

Total 2,249 11.2

hold, consisting of 54 members, was that of the Bunjevac Anton Balenovich in the village of Pazariste (Kaser 1986: 243).

The third step is decisive, since it entails the number of related nuclear families joined in a household. Evidence of at least two coresident related nuclear families is necessary for a household to be considered joint. But in this respect there is a methodological problem in analyzing the census data, because it does not indicate the marital status of the coresiding men. It is easier to be precise about households consisting of only one nuclear family. For example, take the following excerpt from the census:

Miho Hronich let 40, mali 1, zenske 3 (Miho Hronich age 40, male

youngsters 1, female 3).

A detailed description of the land owned by the household follows. The

language is a Croatian or Serbian dialect. It seems clear the interpretation would be that the head of the household is Miho Hronich, age 40; there is another male present less than 16 years old (the age of males over 16 is

specified) and 3 female persons of indeterminate age. It is logical to presume that the young male (probably Miho's son) is unmarried, and it is probable that one of the females is Miho Hronich's wife, thus making this a typical nuclear family, though of course we cannot be certain. Now let us look at a more complicated example:

Anton Balenovich od let 40, Bratia: Frane Stary brat 50, Pave 38, Marko

36, Miho 34, Nicola 32, Ivan 30, Illia 28, Sinovacz Stoian 20, Franin sin

Jure 16, Markov sin Simun 16, mala 20, Zenskoga 23 (Anton Balenovich of age 40, Brothers: Frane, older brother 50, Pave 38, Marko 36, Miho

34, Nicola 32, Ivan 30, Illia 28, Nephew Stoian 20, Frane's son Jure 16, Marko's son Simun 16, male youngsters 20, female 23).


Table 2 Distribution of household size of Lika villages (percentage)

Number of household members

Village N 1-5 6-10 11-15 16-20 21-25 26-30 31-35 36-40 41+

Vlachs Bruvno 45 8.9 31.1 20.0 15.6 8.9 8.9 2.2 4.4 0 Bunic 150 13.3 28.0 24.0 12.0 11.3 8.7 2.0 0.7 0 Divoselo 53 9.4 47.2 26.4 13.2 1.9 0 1.9 0 0 Gracac 158 15.8 44.3 26.6 7.0 3.1 1.3 1.3 0.6 0 Komic 29 6.9 34.5 37.9 13.8 6.9 0 0 0 0 Korenica 109 9.2 29.3 20.2 20.2 13.8 6.4 0.9 0 0 Mazin 40 12.5 32.5 30.0 12.5 7.5 5.0 0 0 0

Mekinjar 59 11.9 50.8 23.7 5.1 5.1 0 3.4 0 0

Mogoric 65 7.7 47.7 24.6 13.8 4.6 1.6 0 0 0 Mutilic 56 19.6 55.4 14.3 10.7 0 0 0 0 0 Ostrovica 35 11.4 40.1 25.7 11.4 5.7 5.7 0 0 0 Pecane 13 7.7 46.1 23.1 7.7 15.4 0 0 0 0 Ploca 43 4.7 55.8 20.9 6.9 4.7 4.7 2.3 0 0

Pocitelj 41 7.3 34.1 36.6 9.8 9.8 2.4 0 0 0

Popina 89 21.3 29.2 19.1 7.9 10.1 6.7 3.3 1.2 1.2 Radu 70 7.1 47.2 25.7 11.4 4.3 2.9 1.4 0 0 Siroka Kula 59 18.6 30.5 27.1 17.0 3.4 3.4 0 0 0

Srednja Gora 33 9.1 21.2 36.4 27.3 3.0 0 3.0 0 0 Visuc 58 10.3 51.7 24.1 6.9 5.2 1.7 0 0 0

Bunjevci Lovinac 123 11.4 38.2 26.8 16.3 4.1 2.4 0 0.8 0 Pazariste 102 4.9 54.9 24.5 9.8 3.9 0 0 0 2.0

Croats

Bilaj 24 37.5 45.8 8.3 4.2 0 0 4.2 0 0 Budak 33 27.3 51.5 12.1 9.1 0 0 0 0 0

Kaludjerovac 27 29.6 63.0 7.4 0 0 0 0 0 0 Musaluk 18 27.8 38.9 27.8 0 5.5 0 0 0 0 Novi 62 21.0 66.1 12.9 0 0 0 0 0 0 Ribnik 30 40.0 46.7 10.0 3.3 0 0 0 0 0 Udbina 69 26.1 56.5 14.5 2.9 0 0 0 0 0

Neochristiani Perusic 80 12.5 38.8 30.0 11.3 5.0 1.2 1.2 0 0

Total 1,842 14.2 42.4 23.3 10.4 5.5 2.7 1.0 0.3 0.2

Note: Medak, Pisa, Josane, Zvonigrad, Vrebac, Podlapac, Smiljan, and Brusane are not included in Table 2

because the census does not include a breakdown by village.


Again, a detailed description of the land possessions of the household follows. My interpretation is that the head of the household, Anton Balenovich, is 40 years old. His brothers are Frane, the older brother, age 50; Pave, 38; Marko, 36; Miho, 34; Nicola, 32; Ivan, 30; and Illia, 28. Anton's nephew (brother's son) Stoian is 20 years old. The reason that his father is not mentioned might be that he was already deceased at that time. Frane's son Jure and Marko's son Simun are both 16. There are further 20 males under 16 and 23 female persons, for a total of 54.

That this household is joint is evident. At least three nuclear families exist: Anton is head, and Frane's and Marko's sons are mentioned. Because of the age of the other brothers, one would expect that all of them are married. The fact that there are 20 young males and 23 females supports this assumption. Thus this joint family household might have consisted of eight nuclear families. It is possible to decide whether or not a joint family existed with

relatively high accuracy, even if the specific makeup is not always certain. In the Croatian villages the percentage of joint family households is

relatively small, varying from 4 to 23. Moreover, in only 8 Croatian joint family households was the number of apparently coresiding nuclear families

greater than 2. The difference between the Croatian and the Vlach/Bunjevci house-

holds is striking. Between 35 and 51% of the Bunjevci households and from 42 to 78% of the Vlach households were joint, whereas only 4% of the Cro- atian households of Mutilic were joint but 42% of its Vlach households were

joint. In some of the Vlach villages the joint family was not predominant: in

Mekinjar 45.8% of the households were joint; in Visuc, 43.1%; in Gracac, 41.8%; and in Siroka Kula, 47.5%. In most Vlach and Bunjevci villages, however, the joint family household was predominant. The highest figures are for the villages Bruvno with 77.8% joint, Komic with 72.4%, Mazin with 67.5% (Kaser 1986: 243-48).

Despite necessary cautions, one can state that the tendency to construct

joint family households was very weak among the Croatian families and

considerably stronger among the Vlachs and Bunjevci. The figures show in

addition, without exception, that the average household size of a village must be around 11 where there is a rough balance between nuclear and joint family households. In Mutilic and Visuc, both with an average of 10.5 members, the distribution of joint families was only 41.9% and 35.3%, respectively.


Table 3 Measures of Lika household composition

% joint family Mean household

Village households size (persons) N

Vlachs Bruvno 77.8 14.8 45 Buni a 59.7 13.9 149 Divoselo 54.7 11.0 43 Gracac 41.8 10.5 158 Komic 72.4 12.0 29 Korenica 66.1 14.4 109 Mazin 67.5 12.4 40

Mekinjar 45.8 10.6 59

Mogoric 53.9 10.9 65 Mutilic/Vlachs 41.9 10.5 31 Ostrovica 57.1 12.1 35 Pecane 53.9 10.9 13 Plocaa 64.3 11.9 42

Pocitelj 51.1 12.3 41

Popinaa 53.4 13.2 88 Radu' 46.5 11.2 69 Siroka Kula 47.5 11.3 59

Srednja Gora 69.7 13.1 33 Visuc 43.1 10.5 58

Bunjevci Lovinac 51.2 11.7 123 Pazariste 35.3 11.3 102

Croats

Bilaj 20.8 7.5 24 Budak 18.2 7.6 33

Kaludjerovac 11.1 6.5 27 Musaluk 22.2 8.3 18

Mutilic/Croats 4.0 6.8 25 Novib 23.2 7.4 56 Ribnik 10.0 6.7 30 Udbina 20.3 7.5 69

Neochristiani Perusic 48.8 11.2 80

Note: There are no detailed listings for Medak, Vrebac, Podlapac, Smiljan, and Brusane. a The data for one family are missing. b The data for six families are missing.


On the other hand, in Divoselo, with an average household size of 11.0, the

joint family dominated with 54.7% and in Mogoric with 53.9% (household average 10.9).

The critical average coefficient seems to be 11 and is applicable not only to these villages but to the whole region as well. The average household size of the landowning population is 10.7. At that figure the number of nuclear families at 52.6% is a little higher than the number of joint family households. Our investigation shows further that a village average of roughly 7.5 household members is associated with a pattern of about 25% joint family households: the average of 14 to 15 members suggests a far higher distribu-

tion, about 66 to 75% joint family households (Kaser 1986: 248). The final question to be considered is what the structures of the families

of the different groups were when they arrived in the Lika region during the two decades before 1712. Were they already joint or nuclear families? Con-

cerning this question, our census provides some answers, in particular from a sample census of 342 families who had arrived a few months before but had not yet received land. Most of these families were very small and simply structured. This was true for both the Croatian as well as the Vlachian/ Bunjevci families. The household average was only 6.2 members. Only 53 of the 342 households were joint families. Of these 53, only 11 households consisted of more than 2 nuclear families, and 42 households consisted of 2 nuclear families. We cannot expect that it was a peculiarity of these 342 new families to arrive predominantly as nuclear families. It is logical to infer that most of the joint households had originally arrived in Lika as nuclear families.

Two explanations are possible. Either they came as nuclear families because they had lived previously as nuclear families, or else they had lived in

joint families before and left them for the purpose of seeking better living conditions. The likely answer seems clear. The Vlachian/Bunjevci families, arriving as refugees from different parts of the neighboring Ottoman Empire, had previously formed joint family households. They left them and arrived as nuclear families in Lika. After settling they again started to rebuild joint families according to their traditions and usual social behavior.9 The Croatian families left the estates of Croatian landlords from the Habsburgian/Cro- atian hinterland. They obviously had been accustomed to forming nuclear

families, not joint households, and so arrived as nuclear families. They did


not show a strong tendency to create joint families because this was opposed to their traditions and contrary to their usual behavior (Kaser 1986: 249f).

It seems to be clear that the tendency to build joint family households

among the Croats was very weak but among the Vlachs and Bunjevci very strong. We have to consider that our census shows the situation only in the fall of 1712. We have further to recall that the history of the joint family was a process, and the constellation of economic and political factors could

change it by the spring. But the basic tradition would not have altered. The state administration had not yet tried to alter the household formation and

landholding patterns of the population. This would change, however, half a

century later when the military administration decided in 1754 to construct

joint families in an administrative way by forbidding the free fission of the households. The background for this decision was the border's loss of its

original function with the decline of the military strength of the Ottoman state. Military service of the border population had to be adapted to new

purposes. Instead of service in the former irregular border protection units, soldiers now became part of the regular Habsburg army. To recruit a reasonable number of soldiers it was necessary to keep the households together (Kaser 1986: 457-60). The result was that the Croats of the military border, and even the Germans who had migrated there from central Europe, built extended joint families similar to those of the Serbs or Vlachs.

To sum up, the investigation points out how the diversity and mallea-

bility of household forms within a society demonstrates that household formation processes are interactions of various economic, demographic, political, and cultural conditions. The emergence of the joint family household must be understood as a product of several factors such as the mode of

production, ecological adaptions, cultural patterns, and general political circumstances.

It was further demonstrated that large family households in eastern

Europe were created in three different ways. The first way was by administration. The best example is the family history of the military border since the middle of the eighteenth century. The second was the intervention of landlords. Examples include regulations in several Russian and Baltic regions, as well as in regions of Italy and France. Both patterns were altered by external

regulations. The third way, seemingly that which produced the Balkan joint family pattern, might have developed without direct external intervention.


It seems as if the Vlachs (and Bunjevci) are the key to our problem because it is evident that it was especially they who tended to construct joint households. Is there a consistent pattern in that several household listings of the fourteenth century, the Ottoman census of 1520, and this Austrian census of 1712 show that it was primarily the Vlachs who tended to form joint family households, where the Slav and Greek population of Macedonia (according to the Chilandar Chrysobull) and the Croatian population (according to the census of 1712) showed only a weak tendency? But if we argue that the Vlachs played an important role in the history of the Balkan joint family, what explanations or explanatory models can we propose? Who were the Vlachs? Were they an ethnic or a social group? What caused the emergence of this partitional joint family pattern and when? We need to reconstruct

historically the Vlach past to find explanations. The Vlachs were pastoralists. Was this pattern perhaps based on the pastoral life, an existing patrilineal cultural pattern and the absence of a centralized administration?

I will end with these questions, but also with the suggestion that we redefine the problem of the Balkan joint family. An independent emergence and development of the Balkan joint family household seems evident. The

emergence of the Balkan joint family cannot exclusively or even mainly be considered as the result simply of general demographic developments, as the current state of research suggests. The historical perspective moves the focus of attention to the Vlachs, a mysterious Balkan people. The evaluation of their past could bring light into the mystery of the origin of the Balkan

joint family (see Kaser forthcoming).

Notes

Karl Kaser is professor of Southeast European history at the Southeast European Insti- tute of the University of Graz-Austria. His main research work is on sociohistorical

questions. In 1991 he was a visiting professor at the University of Minnesota. This article is a preliminary result of the Balkan Family Project undertaken in collaboration with

Joel M. Halpern of the anthropology department of the University of Massachusetts at the Southeast European Institute at Karl-Franzens-University at Graz and funded by the Austrian Research Foundation. J. Halpern's comments on this paper have been helpful. 1 This term is a literary, not a folk, term and is often misleadingly used. Todorova

suggests eliminating the term from historical-demographical analyses (Todorova 1990: 64).


2 Taking into consideration an analysis of those kin related to the household head, one can observe proportions ranging between 20 and 25% in the western part of eastern Europe and 67% in the microexample of the Russian Mishino region in the first half of the nineteenth century. This proportion of complexity was a stable condition during all phases of the life cycle. In the case of Mishino, Czap (1982) speaks of a "lasting multiple family household." In the case of the Russian-ruled Baltic regions and Hungary, it was completely normal that the family cycle passed through phases of nuclearity (Plakans 1987: 164-67). These differences appear to be closely related to the nature of external controls in types of landlord-dominated

agricultural systems. 3 See the short reviews by Hammel (1972: 364) and by Todorova (1990: 46). 4 Note, however, that with the exception of the Austrian military border in Croatia,

where since the second half of the eighteenth century efforts of the military administration in keeping the joint families together are evident, there is no clear evidence of such legal and fiscal measures. Until the middle of the eighteenth century the

military administration did not intervene in households. Families could determine their own development; land property was not limited. But then at this time, in order to preserve as many soldiers as possible and to provide for their families, household fission was limited by law and strictly controlled.

5 According to Hammel (1972: 363) 28% of the Vlach and 17% of the other families were "strong families" (consisting of "more than two brothers").

6 The Lika region is part of the so-called Krajina or Republic of Krajina populated mainly by Serbs seeking independence from Croatia. The current war in Cro- atia with the Serbs is a residue of these military border charges imposed by an

imperial state. 7 The listing consists of approximately 2,000 pages. It is accidental that the material

was not destroyed; it was not intended for preservation. I came upon it by accident. An alert civil servant of the Steiermarkisches Landesarchiv in Graz (the Styrian Regional Archives in Graz) called my attention to this forgotten box "full of strange material"- household listings describing the composition and landholdings of more than 2,000 households. The census was named Conscriptio terrenorum et hominum beeder graffschafften Lica and Corbavia (description of the land and the population of both the principalities Lika and Krbava). It is located in the Steiermarkisches Landesarchiv in Graz, Innerosterreichische Hofkammer, call number 1712-X-268. Additional parts of the census (summaries) are located in the Arhiv Hrvatske in

Zagreb (SLK, kutja 4) and in the Wiener Kriegsarchiv (IOHKR/Croatica, 1714-

IV-21). 8 Their origins and the name Bunjevci are still in dispute. The name was first men-

tioned in the sixteenth century. They probably were Vlachs who in contrast to the majority became absorbed by the Catholic Croats. (See, e.g., Pavicic 1962, esp. 254-56.)

9 On the other hand the time frame between 1689 and 1712 was rather short, and this


can work both for and against this argument. For in the sense that the new families

moving in were most probably not huge joint families but nuclear families, and that this would account for the fact that although the families, especially the Vlachs, were larger on the average than others, they clearly did not have time to develop into the very large zadrugas in the course of two decades. On the other hand, it is possible that some of the other ethnic families might have grown larger as well, given a bit more time.

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karl kaser - the balkan joint family - redefining a problem

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