The social identities of marriage partners [...] are among the most sensitive and acute indicators of community or class feelings. Who marries whom, without courting alienation or rejection from a social set, is an acid test of the horizons and boundaries of what each particular social set regards as tolerable and acceptable, and a sure indication of where that set draws the line of membership.

This article examines the evolving significance of formal marriage and of partner selection in nineteenth-century Santiago do Iguape Brazil. Across social divides, racial and class endogamy were the norm for marriage partners, but consensual unions were far more likely to unite couples of different races. The information about enslaved couples was more sporadic, but I found that most slaves married partners who shared their country of origin, and that there was a higher slave-marriage rate on larger plantations. My research suggests that free and enslaved people constantly violated the borders separating them within a stratified plantation society, but that formal marriage retained a special significance and was reserved for unions between social equals.

This article presents the findings of a long-term study of social homogamy in the rural community of Rendalen, Norway, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Prior to 1870, the occupation of parents was not normally recorded in the Norwegian parish registers. It is therefore difficult to carry out historical studies of social homogamy in Norway over any length of time. The Rendalen database, however, provides this information from several other sources. Structural changes over time, which led to an increase in the number of farm workers, reduced the degree of homogamy among farmers as well as creating a larger marriage market for the farm workers, thereby increasing homogamy among these farm workers. Controlling for these structural changes, it is clear that social boundaries between farmers and farm workers prevailed at least until the end of the nineteenth century. Using a multivariate analysis, we are able to identify different family characteristics that led young men and woman to marry homogamously. The farmers, especially, exerted influence on their eldest sons to marry farmers' daughters, but the role of the father in the mating process also secured more economically viable partners for the other children too.

The aim of this study is to examine, by analysing marital origin-related homogamy and mobility, the fluidity of a system of social stratification marked by a heterogeneous working class and likely to lead to increasing social-group solidarity during the phase of a more active labour movement in the early twentieth century. Data from Winterthur, a Swiss town characterized by the expansion of an important engineering industry, reveal that occupational homogamy was most pronounced at the top, among higher managers and professionals, and at the bottom of the social hierarchy, among unskilled factory workers. There is no empirical evidence of increased homogamous behaviour after the nationwide general strike of 1918, which is said to have had a long-term impact on workers' class-consciousness. Our analyses show, however, that the association between the social background of spouses depended on their geographical origin. This result may point to a regionally determined class-consciousness.

Marriage strategies in the rural Basque country of the nineteenth century differed according to social background and gender. Propertied families had more diversified strategies than landless families as a result of persistent single inheritance practices, population growth, urbanization, and industrialization which generated massive emigration. Propertied families helped some of their children to settle in local rural villages and others to emigrate to cities (women) or to America (men). Landless families, by contrast, continued to settle most of their children in local rural villages, others emigrating to America only later in the century, avoiding the cities at all cost. Men, no matter their social background, benefited the most from new economic opportunities because most of them married into families of equal or higher status. Women, by contrast, did not have equal opportunities because few married upward and outside their professional group. When women did not marry within their socio-professional group or remain single, they married into families of lower status (more often than men).

In the German-speaking areas of Habsburg Tyrol, investigated here, the aim of regional politicians and communal representatives was to perpetuate the status quo of ownership and social structure. The most important instruments for realizing that aim were policies on marriage and settlement. In addition, inheritance was based on male primogeniture, which supported a tendency for the sizes of property to remain stable. Throughout the region there was an attitude generally hostile to industry, so when, in the nineteenth century, branches of the crafts producing wares for translocal markets became unprofitable, industrialization offered no alternative. In those circumstances, marriage can be regarded as practically a privilege. Does that relativize or augment the consideration of homogamy? It seems both cases are possible: slight tendencies to socially downward marriage support the first assumption; the second appears to be supported by the various shifts in marriage habits – reactions to changed social positions – among the most important groups over the course of the nineteenth century.

In pre-industrial society, choosing a marriage partner was a crucial process, and especially so for landowners. This study focuses on social aspects of mate selection in five rural parishes in southern Sweden between 1829 and 1894, using an individual-level database containing information on a large number of marriages and the social origins of the marrying couple regardless of whether they were born in the relevant parish or not. The information makes it possible to study homogamy without introducing the possible selection biases implicit in looking only at non-migrating population, a consideration which is of great importance in a society characterized by very high levels of geographical mobility. The results show a community marked by quite strong homogamy but with pronounced differences among social groups. Landholding peasants were the most homogamous. The pattern of homogamy also remained fairly constant despite fundamental economic and social change.

This article examines social heterogamy as an indicator of “societal openness”, by which is meant the extent to which social origin, as defined by the social position of one's parents, is used as the main criterion for selection of a marriage partner. We focus on two topics. The role first of migration and then of occupational identity in this selection of a partner according to social origin. And in order to evaluate the true social and economic context in which spouses lived, we do not use a nationwide sample but rather choose to examine marriage certificates from eleven cities and villages in Belgium, both Flemish and Walloon, during the nineteenth century. By observing different patterns of homogamy according to social origin we show in this article that partner selection was affected by the relationship between migration, occupational identity and class structure. It seems difficult to interpret all these divergent patterns in terms of modernization. In our opinion the historical context creates a complicated set of conditions reflected in differences in the type and strength of migration and in the sectoral composition and evolution of the local economy. The whole exerts an influence over partner selection.

Does intra-national migration matter for partner choice? A number of conflicting hypotheses on the effects of migration on the likelihood of endogamy according to social class of origin are formulated and tested on the French historical record over the past two centuries. We conclude that migrants were less likely to marry endogamously, especially if they migrated from rural villages to cities; this is explained mainly by the fact that they thereby escaped the social pressure of their parents and peers and met more people from different social backgrounds. Contrary to what we expected, the relationships between migration characteristics and endogamy changed hardly at all over the two centuries. We also investigated whether temporal differences in endogamy could be explained partly by changes in migration patterns. We found that they could. The increase in the number of men and women living in or moving to cities was one particularly important cause of the decreasing likelihood of endogamy. Finally, we were interested in the possible bias in regional studies on endogamy. Our results show that this bias is especially large if these regions include only rural areas or cities. This is because the likelihood of endogamy differs between rural areas and cities, and is also especially low for people who move between these two types of region.

This article investigates developments in and antecedents of socially mixed marriage in the rural Dutch province of Zeeland during the long nineteenth century, taking individual and family histories, community contexts, and temporal influences into account. A government report of the 1850s said of Zeeland that farmers and workers lived “in indifference together”. However, our analysis of about 163,000 marriage certificates reveals that 30 to 40 per cent of these rural inhabitants continued to marry outside their original social class. Multivariate logistic regressions show that heterogamous marriages can be explained first and foremost by the life-course experiences of grooms and brides prior to marriage. Previous transitions in their occupational careers (especially to non-rural occupations for grooms, and to service for brides), in their migration trajectories (particularly moves to urban areas), and changes in the sphere of personal relationships (entering widowhood, ageing) are crucial in understanding marriage mobility.

The introductory chapter to this volume presented a number of theories and hypotheses on the determinants of endogamy; the following chapters described endogamy in different historical settings and tested some of those hypotheses. The tests looked especially at the effects of individual characteristics of spouses, and sometimes of their parents. Results relating to changes in macro characteristics over time and their effect on the likelihood of endogamy were presented. Because all these chapters refer to only one country or region, regional comparisons are seldom made (there are some exceptions: Bras and Kok on differences between parts of the province of Zeeland; Pélissier et al. on differences between rural and urban areas, and Van de Putte et al. on differences between several Belgian cities and villages).