1. Abel, Wilhelm, Geschichte der Deutschen Landwirtschaft, 3rd ed. (Stuttgart, 1978);Google ScholarFranz, Günther, Geschichte des Deutschen Bauernstandes, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart, 1976)Google Scholar, and Lütge, Friedrich, Geschichte der Deutschen Agrarverfassung, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart, 1966).Google Scholar

2. The paradigmatic French study is Ladurie, Emmanuel Le Roy, Les Paysans de Languedoc, 2 vols. (Paris, 1966)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, but the “Annales school” has produced many other works of comparable scale if not of comparable influence.

3. Among the most important contributions within the tradition of Deutsche Agrargeschichte and the journal Zeitschrift für Agrargeschichte und Agrarsoziologie are Achilles, Walter, Vermögensverhältnisse braunschweigischer Bauernhöfe im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 1965);Google ScholarHenning, Friedrich Wilhelm, Herrschaft und Bauernuntertänigkeit: Beiträge zur Geschichte der Herrschaftsverhältnisse in den ländlichen Bereichen Ostpreussens und des Fürstentums Paderborn vor 1800 (Würzburg, 1964);Google Scholar and Saalfeld, Dietrich, Bauernwirtschaft und Gutsbetrieb in der vorindustriellen Zeit (Stuttgart, 1960)Google Scholar. Both Achilles and Henning have produced numerous subsequent studies. While all of these are important, the contrast with the greater ambition and accomplishments of a Ladurie or Jacquart is obvious.

4. A first wave of these monographs in the early 1980s, which focused primarily on peasant rebellion, was reviewed by Barnett-Robisheaux, Thomas, “Peasant Revolts in Germany and Central Europe after the Peasants' War: Comments on the Literature,” Central European History 17 (1984): 383–403.CrossRefGoogle Scholar I should note here that almost none of the monographs yet achieve the scale that characterizes the French thèse d'état. Werner Trossbach's research on peasant revolts in Hesse is expansive enough to fill two different volumes. In addition to the broader thematic issues covered in the book Soziale Bewegung und politische Erfahrung, he also produced a book that described a series of individual revolts: Trossbach, Werner, Bauernbewegungen im Wetterau-Vogelsberg-Gebiet 1648–1806: Fallstudien zum bäuerlichen Widerstand im alten Reich (Darmstadt, 1985).Google Scholar Also, Roeck's, Bernd recent urban history of Augsburg, Eine Stadt in Krieg und Frieden: Studien zur Geschichte der Reichsstadt Augsburg zwischen Kalenderstreit und Parität, 2 vols. (Göttingen, 1989)Google Scholar, may be the harbinger of a trend in the direction of massive habilitations on the order of a thèse d'état.

5. Research by French and Italian historians into the rural world of early modern Germany is very limited but follows some of the same track.

6. For the German tradition of social history see Brunner, Otto, Neue Wege der Verfassungs-und Sozialgeschichte (Göttingen, 1968)Google Scholar, and Oestreich, Gerhard, Geist und Gestalt des frühmodernen Staates. Ausgewählte Aufsätze (Berlin, 1969).Google Scholar On Oestreich's notion of social discipline, see in particular Schulze, Winfried, “Gerhard Oestreichs Begriff‘Sozialdisziplinierung in der frühen Neuzeit,’” Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 14 (1987): 265–302.Google Scholar

7. For their contributions to the study of the Peasants' War see Blickle, Peter, The Revolution of 1525, trans. Brady, Thomas A. Jr., and Midelfort, H. C. Erik (Baltimore, 1981);Google ScholarSchulze, Winfried, “Die veränderte Bedeutung sozialer Konflikte im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert,” in Wehler, Hans-Ulrich, ed., Der deutsche Bauernkrieg 1524–1526 (Göttingen, 1975), 277–302Google Scholar, and Heide Wunder, “Zur Mentalität aufständischer Bauern,” in ibid., 9–37. The extension of their theme into the post-Peasants' War era can be seen in Blickle, Peter, Deutsche Untertanen—Ein Widerspruch (Munich, 1981)Google Scholar, and idem, Gemeindereformation: Die Menschen des 16. Jahrhunderts auf dem Weg zum Heil (Munich, 1985);Google ScholarSchulze, Winfried, ed., Aufstände, Revolte und Prozesse (Stuttgart, 1983);Google ScholarWunder, Heide, Die bäuerliche Gemeinde in Deutschland (Göttingen, 1986).Google Scholar

8. Imhof, Arthur, Die Verlorenen Welten: Alltagsbewältigung durch unsere Vorfahren und weshalb wir uns heute so schwer damit tun (Munich, 1984)Google Scholar, and Mitterauer, Michael, Grundtypen alteuropäischer Sozialformen: Haus und Gemeinde in vorindustriellen Gesellschaften (Stuttgart Bad Canstatt, 1979).Google Scholar

9. See the valuable recent literature review by van Dülmen, Richard, “Historische Anthropologie in der deutschen Sozialgeschichtsschreibung,” Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 42 (1991): 692–709.Google Scholar Compare also Kuczynski, Jürgen, Geschichte des Alltags des Deutschen Volkes, 5 vols. (Cologne, 1980).Google Scholar

10. See van Dülmen, Richard and Schindler, Norbert, eds., Volkskultur: Zur Wiederentdeckung des vergessenen Alltags (Frankfurt a. M., 1984);Google Scholarvan Dülmen, Richard, ed., Die Kultur der einfachen Leute (Munich, 1983);Google Scholaridem., ed., Armut, Liebe, Ehre. Studien zur historischen Kulturforschung (Frankfurt a. M., 1988);Google Scholaridem., ed., Arbeit, Frömmigkeit und Eigensinn (Frankfurt a. M., 1990).Google Scholar

11. See for example Lüdtke, Alf, “Organizational Order or Eigensinn? Workers' Privacy and Workers' Politics in Imperial Germany,” in Wilentz, Sean, ed., Rites of Power: Symbolism, Ritual, and Politics since the Middle Ages (Philadelphia, 1985), 303–33.Google Scholar

12. Koselleck, Reinhart, Preussen zwischen Reform und Revolution: Allgemeines Landrecht, Verwaltung und soziale Bewegung von 1791–1848 (Stuttgart, 1967).Google Scholar

13. Kriedte, Peter, Medick, Hans, and Schlumbohm, Jürgen, Industrialization before Industrialization: Rural Industry in the Genesis of Capitalism trans. Schempp, Beate (Cambridge, 1982)Google Scholar. Historians of protoindustrialization have also been among the leading proponents of anthropological approaches to German society, thereby contributing to the expansion of methodology as well.

14. Wehler, Hans-Ulrich, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, 2 vols. (Munich, 1987).Google Scholar

15. Wunder, Heide and Vanja, Christina, eds., Wandel der Geschlechterbeziehungen zu Beginn der Neuzeit (Frankfurt a. M., 1991), 7Google Scholar, comment on the absence of gender as a category of analysis in Wehier's work as well.

16. Beck has, however, explored the social relations of Unterfinning in much greater depth in articles. See, for example, Beck, Rainer, “Illegitimität und voreheliche Sexualität auf dem Land. Unterfinning 1671–1770,” in van Dülmen, ed., Die Kultur, 112–50.Google Scholar

17. Bog, Ingomar, Die bäuerliche Wirtschaft im Zeitalter des Dreissigjährigen Krieges (Coburg, 1952).Google Scholar

18. Imhof, Die verlorenen Welten.

19. For example, these works provide a wealth of information for addressing issues such as the “Brenner debate,” which relied on a very narrow base of historical research when it began in the late 1970s. See Aston, T. H. and Philpin, C. H. E., eds., The Brenner Debate: Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Preindustrial Europe (Cambridge, 1985).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20. Rebel, Hermann, Peasant Classes: The Bureaucratization of Property and Family Relations under Early Habsburg Absolutism, 1511–1636 (Princeton, 1983).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21. Macfarlane, Alan, The Origins of English Individualism (Oxford, 1977).Google Scholar

22. Indeed, Rebel's notion of “bureaucratization” of family relationships has much the same danger.

23. Sabean, David, Landbesitz und Gesellschaft am Vorabend des Bauernkrieges (Stuttgart, 1972).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24. Melton, James, Absolutism and the Eighteenth Century Origins of Compulsory Schooling in Prussia and Austria (New York, 1988).Google Scholar

25. Sabean, David, Power in the Blood: Popular Culture and Village Discourse in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge, 1984).Google Scholar

26. Not that it would be easy to construct significance tests for his samples. His land sales table was constructed on the basis of twenty randomly chosen transactions in each cohort, that were then expanded to include all the transactions of the participants in the original twenty. Thus, the complete “sample” created was not purely random, and fluctuated in size from cohort to cohort, from a low of eighty-three total transactions to a high of 234.

27. Sabean, David, Property, Production and Family in Neckarhausen, 1700–1870 (Cambridge, 1990), 379–82Google Scholar. This case also illustrates how wide the circle of relationships that Sabean charts is. One of Dalm's exchanges is with his brother's wife's previous husband's previous wife's father's brother's son's wife's previous husband (BWHWFBSWH). An element missing from all of Sabean's linkages is time. It is unclear how long each affinal tie lasted and how fresh the ties were at the time of transaction.

28. Ibid., 12.

29. See for example, Roeck, Bernd, Eine Stadt in Krieg und Frieden (Göttingen, 1989), 448–49.Google Scholar Sabean mentions übel hausen more than once as a variation on hausen. See p. 104.

30. Vann, James A., The Making, of a Modern State, Württemberg, 1594–1789 (Ithaca, 1984).Google Scholar