but what about the english?

i said over here that the fact that the greeks are as corrupt and nepotistic as they are prolly has something to do with their endogamous mating practices — i.e. it seems that for quite some time, rural greeks have been marrying individuals locally — from their own villages, often preferentially their third-cousins.

now, i know what you’re gonna say: “but hbd chick — traditionally, MOST people everywhere prolly married people locally!”

eh — not really. not northwestern europeans — and especially not the english. first of all, north europeans quit marrying their cousins quite early on in the medieval period. and on top of that, because of the structure of feudal society (so this doesn’t apply to areas of europe that weren’t feudal), many north europeans didn’t stay down on the farm. instead, they went off and became servants elsewhere. and they often married other servants that they met … who were from elsewhere.

here from mitterauer’s “Why Europe?: The Medieval Origins of Its Special Path” on the situation in northern europe during the middle ages (when he says europe, he means northern europe, esp. the lands of the carolingian empire) [pgs. 93-95]:

“The loosening of lineage ties created some leeway for striking up new social relationships beyond the family circle. Ties to people other than one’s kin played an important part in European social history and made a major contribution to Europe’s social dynamics. The weakening of lineage ties also meant a diminution in the way kin and family related socially. We can characterize the two aspects of this process as a trend toward individualization and toward singularization.

“This trend had a particularly strong effect upon a certain phase of the life cycle: young adulthood. The European marriage pattern [i.e. late marriage a la the hajnal line] extended the phase of one’s youth for a relatively long time, if we view it from a cross-cultural perspective. The pattern itself was determined by looser lineage ties: marrying late could only exist where there was no pressure to continue the patriline. Many people left home when they were young, primarily to work as a servant in another household. That, too, presupposed a relaxing of lineage ties. Working as a life-cycle servant in one of the many paths possible — as a hand or a maid on a farm, as an apprentice or journeyman in a trade, as a nobleman’s page — seems to have been a defining experience for European youth. To work as a servant implied mobility, especially true in regional terms, but also in part in the sense of a change of social milieu. All this transformed the world young people lived in. Not only males were affected; girls too changed their surroundings by serving in another household. As a rule, the movement of servants from place to place wouldn’t end with a return to the parents’ home. The great mobility of young people — qualified by the institution of the life-cycle servant — was therefore an important precondition for European migration and colonization…. Finally, working as a servant implied a particularly radical form of separation from the home. The biological parents were often not the definitive socializing authority for the child from a very early age. The model of separating from one’s parents acquired more significance in the history of European youth for young people leaving their family home to become life-cycle servants; it also became a common goal, especially for young males. The extended young adult phase of life in the time covered by the European marriage pattern, along with the increase in extrafamilial contacts during this time, seem to have been preconditions for making this phase of life in Europe a crucial phase of individualization.

“The comparatively high age at marriage for men but mainly for women finds a counterpart in ways of looking for a spouse. There is little self-determination in this regard in cultures where marriage follows close upon sexual maturation. In Europe, the search for a spouse is a critical component of youth culture, which seems to be especially well developed there — probably because it is a characteristic of horizontal societies [i.e. as opposed to vertical societies where the lineage is important and maybe even, for example, ancestor worship occurs]. Although the choice of a marriage partner was surely substantially codetermined by family interests and concerns in older European societies, we must not overlook the fact that, given the relatively large age gap between generations, the bride’s or bridegroom’s parents would no longer be alive in a high percentage of marriages. In addition, being employed as a servant took many young people far away from home. We can generally assume that a particularly high degree of self-determination in choosing a partner was to be found in the lower levels of society, where the age at marriage was especially high. The principle of marriage by consent, endorsed by the Christian Church, enhanced the trend to increased self-determination that was linked to marriage later in life. The Western Church’s concept in the High Middle Ages of marriage as a sacrament was based on the view that each partner offers the sacrament to the other. The idea of consent is an essential, fundamental principle of the conjugal family, where the relationship between the couple is central, not ties of descent. What rested on the principle of consent — seen in the long term — was the ideal of marrying for love, but the obverse did as well: the particular vulnerability of a type of relationship based on personal inclination and the freedom to decide for onself.”

this is quite different from greece in the 1970s where marriages were still arranged!

meanwhile, in england specifically [from alan macfarlane]:

“There is little evidence that this central feature of Hajnal’s European marriage pattern [i.e. late marriage] was absent in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and some evidence that it was present. It is certainly the case that women did not marry in their early or mid-teens as in many tribal and peasant societies. Likewise, it is clear that from at least the fourteenth century there was a selective marriage pattern, with large numbers of women, particularly servants, never marrying. Nor is there any evidence of a dramatic shift in the rules, positive or negative, about whom one should or should not marry. No substantial evidence has yet been produced to show that there was ever a set of strong positive rules, based on kinship, as to whom one must or should marry. The negative rules were reduced at the Reformation, and have stayed unaltered since then except for the late nineteenth century allowing of marriage to deceased wife’s sister. The only strong rule throughout the period was that the young couple should be independent from both sets of parents after marriage, setting up a separate, neolocal, residence. This led to those simple, nuclear, househoulds which have been a feature of northwestern Europe and particularly England from at least the fifteenth century….

“Throughout the period, for the vast majority of the population (the top few hundred families are often an exception) marriage was ultimately a private contract between individuals. The parents had some say, but ultimately a marriage could occur without their consent or even knowledge. On the other hand, marriage could not occur without the consent of the partners. These were very old rules, from before 1300, and lasting through to the present. They emphasised that the central feature of marriage was the conjugal relationship, the depth of feeling and shared interests of the couple. Marriage was not a bridge artifically constructed as a form of alliance with another group, in which the partners and children became the planks upon which political relations were built. It was a partnership between two independent adults who formed a new and separate unit, cemented by friendship, sex and a carefully defined sharing of resouces.”

this is really, really different from the mating patterns in greece — and italy, too, for that matter. the greeks don’t marry too close — the orthodox church mostly bars them from marrying first- and second-cousins — but, at least up until very recently, they married primarily within their village, often preferentially third-cousins. marrying within the village is still endogamous marriage in greece since most people in rural greece didn’t move around a lot and, so, villages were (are) just really extended families. and in italy — southern italy, especially — there have been very high numbers of close marriages (first-cousin marriages) during the last couple of centuries.

in contrast to this, mating patterns in northern europe have been very exogamous for a loooooong time. no cousin-marriage since the early medieval period (at some points as far out as sixth cousins) AND now we see also since the medieval period — since before 1300 in england — large numbers of people not even marrying locally.

is it any wonder that northern europeans, in particular the english, are strongly individualistic and have wacko ideals like universalism and everyone is created equal? northern europeans have very weak genetic ties to their families compared to many other peoples in the world — we are in actuality individuals (from a genetic p.o.v.) more than other peoples — and it shows in our attitudes and social structures and norms.

previously: more on inbreeding in germanic tribes and ελλάδα and il risorgimento and italian inbreeding? and “hard-won democracy”

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