Peasant Mobility and Migration Strategies in Early Modern South Bohemia

Abstract

This article focuses on migration strategies as exemplified by the Bohemian estate of České Budějovice in the second half of the eighteenth century. Formally, until 1781, the peasant population in Bohemia was bound by serfdom, which has until recently been believed to have considerably curtailed its mobility. The research in this article is based mainly on letters releasing people from serfdom and on registers of births, marriages and deaths. The article seeks to explain the migration strategies of the inhabitants of villages located near a major urban centre. It examines the migrants’ motivations and how they sought to migrate while complying with legal constraints. It devotes particular attention to work and marriage migration, and discusses migration strategies against the background of how Early Modern Bohemian society functioned.