Yhtiömiesjärjestelmä ja maatilojen halkominen Vanhassa Suomessa 1740-1810-luvuilla

Abstract

Itäisessä Suomessa 1600-1800-luvuilla yleisen yhtiömieslaitoksen merkitys maatilojen kehityksessä on herättänyt aiemmassa tutkimuksessa toisistaan poikkeavia tulkintoja. Yhtäältä yhtiömiesjärjestelmän tehtäväksi on nähty tilojen aputyövoiman turvaaminen, ja toisaalta sitä on pidetty keinona hallita omatoimisesti maatiloja. Aikaisempien tulkintojen suhteuttaminen lähdeaineistojen mikrohistorialliseen analyysiin tarjoaa uusia näkökulmia tutkimusteemaan.

The study of the partnership system in Eastern Finland in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has been marked by a difference in interpretation as to whether the system was aimed at improving the orkforce situation on the farms or at farm division per se. The division of farms into parts smaller than a quarter of a mantal was forbidden in the Vyborg governorate in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, i.e. in Old Finland. However, the number of farms in the Russian-controlled area increased even faster than the rapidly growing population, as prevailing norms were circumvented by dividing the farms through a partnership system. The partnership households that arose in Old Finland were passed down from one generation to the next. Continuity is also indicated by the fact that those acting as heads of the farms were sometimes the widows of the partners. After the reunification of Old Finland, the former partnership households were recorded in the population registers at the end of the 1810s almost without exception as part of land-register farm holdings. The article shows that partnerships were, above alla, to be found on the area's desely populated farms. The conclusion supports the observation that the growth of the population of the Vyborg governorate correlates strongly with the growth of partnership household.