Economic change and demographic continuity: The demography of Borne and Wierden (the Netherlands) in the period of proto- and factory industry, 1800–1900

"The article tests some central hypotheses from theories of proto-industrialization. The work of Mendels and Medick suggests that prolonged intensification of cottage industry on a regional level will have significant consequences for nuptiality and fertility. Two family reconstitution studies in the Dutch region of Twente, an area with proto-industrial activities (linen weaving) since the second half of the seventeenth century, showed that with respect to nuptiality, there are no indications of the existence of a proto-industrial or industrial marriage pattern. It is argued that its absence, in spite of intensive cottage and factory industry in the region, can be attributed to the existence, on the level of the family, of a dual economy in which agriculture and textiles production supplemented each other well into the twentieth century."