Journal.family.history

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New Technologies Applied

to Family History: A ParticularCase of Southern Europe inthe Eighteenth Century

Manuel Perez GarciaAQ11

Abstract

In this article, the authors explain how the support of new technologies has helped historians to develop

their research over the last few decades. The authors, therefore, summarize the application of both

database and genealogical programs for the southern Europe family studies as a methodological tool.First, the authors will establish the importance of the creation of databases using the File Maker

program, after which they will explain the value of using genealogical programs such as Genopro and

Heredis. The main aim of this article is to give detail about the use of these new technologies as

applied to a particular study of southern Europe, specifically the Crown of Castile, during the Late

Modern period. The use of these computer programs has helped to develop the field of Social

Sciences and Family History, in particular Social History, during the last decade.

Keywords

family, social network, new technologies, life-cycle, nuclear family, extended family

Introduction

The application of the new technologies to the Social Sciences has been developed with extreme

vigor during recent decades, especially in the nineties. The link established between the humanist

and the computer has helped the former to analyze more clearly the problems and the questions

posed around a specific topic. Thus, the computer and the coded software must be defined as the

basic tools which facilitate the researcher to resolve his difficulties and queries.Some historians such as Roger Middleton and Peter Wardley1 have claimed that the way of using

and applying different programs has not changed significantly inasmuch as they tend to produce the

same outcome as regards compiling information and data.

However, in recent years the improvement and the fast diffusion of new software and the increase

of the internal capacity of the personal computer (PC) have created a problem for the social historian

and researcherthe paradox of the PC as a means or as a goalthe fascination of the machine.2

So far, the chief challenge has been whether to treat the help that the new technology offers as the

1

Murcia, SpainAQ2

Corresponding Author:

Manuel Perez Garcia, Pilar, 9, 4b, 30004, Murcia, Spain

Email: [email protected]

Journal of Family History

000(00) 1-15

2011 The Author(s)

Reprints and permission:

sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav

DOI: 10.1177/0363199011406996http://jfh.sagepub.com


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key goal in itself rather than taking it as a tool or a means to shed light on the topic that the historian

needs to clarify. How to deal with a huge bunch of records and to manage them properly has been the

main dilemma among historians, consequently whether or not the representativeness of the sample is

good enough to resolve the working hypothesis is the chief focus of historical researches.

The contribution of this article is basically to offer a perspective of the role of the social historian

regarding the studies which have influenced their analysis in applying computer programs to the

social sciences.

In other words, the main innovation of this study is to emphasize the importance and efficacy of

using software and databases to conduct accurately historical researches, especially when we are

dealing with interdisciplinary issues such as the analysis of the history of family which touches dif-

ferent fields, for instance, demography, economics, anthropology or social history. Thus, the

researcher needs a proper means to collect data when he applies his study to the fields mentioned

above. Otherwise, the final conclusions can be vague and partial.

Therefore, there are two ways that can help historians to manage the interpretation of enormous

quantity of data. First, the interconnection among departments or research groups of different uni-versities can facilitate the communication of results of certain studies. In other words, the interdis-

ciplinary needs to be brought more to the fore as well as the application of new technologies being

the aim to contextualize all factors which can make an influence in family studies. Secondly, when

the researcher conducts his study on his own, clearly it is more important the use of software and

databases to manage the data in order to interpret them properly. A vast group of data cannot be dealt

by single researcher without clustering them properly; the design of databases is the key tool in order

to collect such data and consequently make suitable queries to answer the working hypothesis.

By contrasting the aims in using this technology and the way in which these aims may be

achieved, we can identify the main deficiencies and how to resolve them. The goal is to put forward

an example of the problem of showing an empirical perspective by applying certain software such asgenealogical programs (Heredis and Genopro) and databases (File Maker or Access) in order to

compile records and conduct the research which help to exploit and benefit from the information

obtained. The way in which a personal database is constructed and the method, with which the final

report is created, are the key points for leading the research.

The history of family is the main subject that deals with the so-called interdisciplinary in social

sciences touching relevant issues such as individual life course, social trajectories, the measurement

of the size of the household or the approach of the network analysis. In this way, Jan Kok3 has claimed

that to deal with life course studies such as the demographic behavior of social groups during the tran-

sition to a new demographic regime it is important to use proper computer tools such as statistics or

regression models and analytical categories used by econometric and cliometric historians.

Therefore, in this article, we give details about the use of these new technologies as applied to a

particular family study of southern Europe. The study case which we present is for the instance of the

Crown of Castile, during the Late Modern period. The analysis of the role of certain individuals

within the strategies of the family group, social trajectories, parenthood, residence and neighbor-

hood, are the main issues related with the life sequence of social actors that we analyze within the

software package mentioned above. This methodological tool has permitted me the analysis of

demographic behavior and strategies of social actors who were building up of a social network in

order to achieve a social promotion.

Computer and Databases in the Social Sciences: Approaches in

Historiography and the Application of Databases to Case Studies

From the first moment when historians started to apply new technologies to their researches until the

present day nothing has changed about the debate generated as a consequence of this application.

2 Journal of Family History 000(00)


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If we take into account the application of databases, software or the Internet on a wide scalethe

World Wide Web (WWW) in particularcertainly important improvements have taken place.

For instance, the use of electronic networks for improved access to bibliographical records,

the employment of digital images of historical material such as the creation of electronic archives:

the History Data Service (HDS) located in the UK Data Archive at the University of Essex, 4 the

catalogues of the British Library or the National Archives whose records, manuscripts, microfilms,

treatises or documents are well registered in the digital index. Researchers have access to the above

indexes by Internetlinking to the Web site in which these documents are located.

Thus, the electronic resources such as indexes have been well received by the group of traditional

historians, who use the new technology for searching and locating documents and records in

electronic catalogues.

However, they are reluctant to use electronic programs and databases as a method of compilation

of sources and analysis of data when producing their reports. The major reason is because the tra-

ditional historians have paid more attention to the individual trajectories of the social actors or the

characteristics of certain events rather than taking into account all the variables and factors that exerta strong influence around the phenomenon which is being analyzed. These historians are extremely

keen that their assessments and theories should be acceptable to all different groups of historians,

currently and in the future. Before the arrival of new technologies and computer programs this group

of historians developed methods to compile data from sources using traditional index cards. Within

this group, diverse fields of history such as politics, religion, social and economic history or the

history of law can be identified.

The process of compiling data and building up samples through statistical charts has been

neglected by the traditional scholars. Analytical databases have likewise been ignored by the same

researchers. However, the traditional historiographical tendency admits that the historical processes

and their features and factors are different according to the area or territory being dealt with. Thus,these scholars fall into a trap. They would like to understand the whole historical process taking into

account the different characteristics; however, they neglect the statistical procedure for compiling

data which is more precise in order to produce satisfying results.

The practice of constructing databases from a range of sources is defined itself as a method of

studying differences among territories and making comparative analyses between diverse regions

and areas with a global perspective.5 Historians can carry on this practice and method through the

application of computer programs and databases which let them estimate data within the samples,

analyze correlations and regressions with reference to the size of the total information. In this way,

the approach of historical researches can be made on different scales and we can observe the com-

plexity of the whole historical process.

March Bloch was the historian pioneer in analyzing the historical process throughout the com-

parative method making a comparison between the English and French society during the Middle

Ages.6 Within this method, he studies medieval societies to understand the transformation in both

geographic areas regarding the property of the land and the socio-economic and cultural transfers

in both English and French societies. The goal was to compare two societies in order to investigate

their similarities and differences. That is why Bloch was the first historian in dealing with general

events and broad questions which entangled different issues appearing important concepts in this

method such as asymmetry and symmetry.

In this way, it appeared the confrontation between macro and micro-history, in other words, the

micro-level approach broke down with the concept of total history, which could be not understand-

able if we do not pose proper questions to the sources taking into account diverse factors. How thehistorian should read the documents and how should we make queries and store the information? In

the history of family, how the researcher should cluster important information such as baptism, mar-

riage, or burial recordssociodemographic informationand put these sources in contact with

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other ones such as wills, sworn declarations, and censuseseconomic informationin order to

investigate the individual trajectories and how those trajectories are framed in a wider group

strategysocial network approach?

Bloch launched a brand new studies dealing with big events, which could not be understood with-

out taking into account that most of them are entangled. The goal of the method, which historian uses

to answer his questions, must be a disentanglement of the sources. Obviously, the application of

new technologies to social sciences has helped to resolve the problem of feasibility of dealing with a

vast pile of different records. Since the first application of technology to historical studies, an impor-

tant group of scholars have been more aware of the usefulness of such application.

But the historian should not forget that this method is a tool of research which has been defined by

Peter Laslett7 as an instrument of intellectual exploration. Nowadays, the debate generated in Social

History about the application of computer programs has not changed, but obviously the procedure of

inserting data and statistical elements into the historical analyses has been facilitated by the increase

of capacity and memory of the new hardware and software. The pioneer works in this field are the

researches of the Baltimore School led by Robert Fogel and Engerman8 and the Cambridge Groupheaded by Peter Laslett9,10 studying the history of population and social structure using a statistical

method which started the following researches linked with family and the size of household.

In the case of Peter Laslett and the Cambridge Group, the main concern of their studies has been

the demographic evolution of the European society during the transition of the Ancien Regime to the

Modern Era within the framework of the Industrial Revolution. To analyze the transition to more

stable economic regimes in Europe, Lasletts group has investigated important features of the history

of family such as the birth and mortality cohorts, the age to access to marriage, the description of

migration and the fertility and household structure. To understand and deal with such relevant and

entangled issues, the creation of databases is the chief tool to cluster and analyze properly those data.

That is why the Cambridge group was one of the first in European studies in applying new technol-ogies to the study of the family in Europe.11 Robert Fogel made a similar application of technolo-

gies, being one of the first historians in dealing with cliometric studies in American history. He

studied the influence of building up railroads in American industrialization and their influence in

the economic development of different cities by transporting wheat and helping in migration

movements.

In later studies, socio-economic historians started to create databases for developing their new

research projects. In this respect, nothing has changed in the procedure of creating new databases.

As we have already said the database is made for answering the questions that historians need to

answer in their research and for building up their working hypotheses.

This idea can be corroborated if we come across papers and articles by social historians such as

Peter Laslett and Wall,9 Hans Christian Johansen,12 or Holle Humphries.13 The latter establishes an

important assessment in her recent work, to guide computers in exploring ontological concepts and

questions asked about the nature of art and computer art. . . Students need to understand the nature

of their art tool and medium of choice. Peter Laslett identifies the importance of this tool as a means

to conduct socio-economic studies effectively. However, the main fear of historians has been the

difficulty of building up a database with enough capacity to compile a huge quantity of records with

which they can make statistical reports and arrive more clearly at conclusions.

Further applications of databases can be found in the case study of the city of Odense in Denmark

in the eighteenth century by Hans Christian Johansen.12 This work is really worthwhile because it

illustrates the way in which a database for socio-economic approaches has to take into account the

difficulties that certain sources embed. Basically these difficulties are the omission of informationwithin the source itself, which make it more difficult to produce estimates and results in reports and

enquiries established with the database. In fact such a problem was frequent in the first generation of

historians, who, using only the parish records, dealt with the analyses of families. They did not take



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into account the migratory issue in their researches. Thus, the group of families that they analyzed

could not be representative of the whole population, because it is extremely difficult to follow the

migratory population employing only a single source.

However, this gap can be filled by crossing and combining different sources. For instance, as

Hans Christian Johansen links parish records with the nominative list of the census of 1787 for the

Danish case study. His work is based on a method in which the household is the central unit, rather

than the family itself themselves, when different ranges of data are used. In this respect, the demo-

graphic information was combined by this author with socio-economic registers of the social actors,

such as catalogues of landlords with the information about the size and extent of their landholding.

Furthermore, in the mid-eighties, he decided to expand this kind of study when researching urban

areas. These records compiled on a nominal level to further his research, whether demographic,

social, cultural or economic, made it possible for him to create a useful wider database.

The resulting database was constructed for the Danish community of Odense in the eighteenth

century.14 At first when Johansen designed his database he asked himself about the feasibility of

exploiting the inputs of his database: Would it prove possible to handle the large number of recordsneeding computerisation?.12

Johansen opened a new path in socio-economic studies integrating different variables with the

computerization model, which has been followed and improved by an important group of scholars

during late eighties, nineties and early twenty-first century. In this group, we can include the Prin-

ceton European Fertility Project15 which deals with adaptation of new demographic models in

economic-changing times16. New projects, such as the ones conducted by Brown and Guinnanne,17

appear regarding the analysis of fertility rates and the increase of population. All this projects refresh

research topics reincorporating new issues in their analysis and renewing their computer packages

taking into account problems that sources pose on the interpretation of data.

This is the key point and also it is not unlike Pandoras box, because there is no homogeneousrule or limitation for creating a database. Each individual database should be created taking into

account the factors and the specific problems which arise from the sources that are being dealt with.

The problem can be solved first by being aware of the difficulties inherent in the sources and second

by bearing in mind the limits of the database. This is how Johansen confronted the challenge iden-

tified by Peter Laslett one decade earlier, a dilemma which other historians still face. A good strategy

for socioeconomic historians is to use specific fields and categories in the design of a database,

which include all the possible factors of the particular sources.

In this respect, the outcome of this computer tool can be applied on both macro and micro scales,

which can offers a good perspective when historians are dealing with socio-economic and demo-

graphic factors as future researchers may be involved in case studies on either a local or a general

level. Thus, historians can compare the socioeconomic and demographic behavior of social groups,

taking into account the life-cycle of individuals, 18,19 migratory patterns which can be analyzed to

establish cohorts of population, and also we can get a picture of the urban distribution among the

different social ranks. Such a comparative analysis has been made by Steve King.20 This author has

studied the size and type of the different households by reconstructing the life-cycle of the social

actors. The size of the families can be measured by using the nominative method. For this purpose

Steve King has built up a database which includes in its different fields a group of categories derived

from baptism, marriage, and burial records. Thus, in the database there are links which show the

relationship between the diverse fields with the target of building up the life-cycle, measuring the

size of the household, classifying the kind of sources and making a graphic reconstruction.

Historians can thus deal with an important quantity of records and information with the help ofcomputer databases and this tool can also be used to shed light on the socioeconomic patterns of

European communities for the Early Modern period. This tool has a lot of applications depending

on the target case-study and analysis.

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However, the main critics, by traditional scholars in applying statistics and databases, have been

that the application of regression methods, the study of correlation of different variables such as the

influence of ageing to work with the marital status, is a very rigid and descriptive tool that cannot

explain the concrete case of social actors involved in a more complicate strategy of the family group.

Our view of those debates, which still remain in both traditional and modern historiography, is

that both traditions are not fostering a co-integration of different disciplines. Demographers are quite

eager in keep the study of population in their hands without opening avenues to integrate socio-

cultural events which might help to contextualize better issues that explain the development of cities

and rural areas. Anthropologists do not integrate in their research proper historical concepts such as

the different denomination of political institutions, which are basic to understand the historical pro-

cess and exert an influence in the social hierarchy. Economists eagerly deal with abstract and

descriptive quantitative models without frame facts and the so-called economic crisis with socio-

cultural forces that impulse a particular society to acquire certain attitudes and behavior in a concrete

phase in the coordinate space-time.

In other words, the interdisciplinary among fields will continue an utopia whether departments ofdifferent universities does not start to integrate different fields in their curricula. Consequently,

researchers will continue in their particular island without understanding accurately the whole

historical process whether or not the approach to apply was micro or macro level. To foster the

so-called interdisciplinary among historians and to enhance the study of family history, one of the

main collaborations that must occur is between European, Latin American and North American

Scholars. This is the main cause which explains why this debate has not been resolved so far.

Using and Applying a Database and Genealogical Programs to Analyze

Southern European Families: The Case Study of Castile

In the following lines we explain the way in which we have used a database with the File Maker

program and the genealogical programs such as Genopro and Heredis with the aim of developing

my research. First of all, we have to point out that our research belongs to socio-economic studies

that deal with the behavior of the different social ranks and families of the Ancien Regime in Castile

in the eighteenth century. The study includes the analysis of a specific group of families belonging to

the aristocracy of south-eastern Castile, in particular those residents in the Kingdom of Murcia. 21

The main scientific interest of this project is that it aims to provide an empirical explanation of the

many issues underlying the historiographical paradigm of the crisis of society during the Ancien

R egime in its transition from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century. The study of the nobility in

their transition from the Ancien R egime to the new bourgeois era is paramount in an understanding

of the social, economic, and cultural transformation and preservation processes that take place in this

period. In this context, the study of families proves essential. Indeed, defining the type, size and

composition of noble families, their strategies and histories and their friendship patterns, their vici-

nity, fictitious kinships and clientelism relations allow us to gain an insight into the behavior and

social patterns of the group which belongs to the social elites. We explore P. Lasletts traditional

view of kinship from a domestic and co-residence9 group moving to a more dynamic concept that

includes blood ties, alliance and reciprocity systems involving common strategies for the transmis-

sion of property, especially according to the Castilian system of inheritance ( the entailed estate)

which benefits the eldest son of the family, during the time of change from Ancien R egime to bour-

geois society.

This main aim of the investigation can be broken down into two more specific objectives:

1. Identification of the social actors that actually make up the group of nobility. The heterogeneous

nature of groupsa characteristic deriving from the Ancien Regimes strong hierarchization



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makes it difficult to fit the different social actors within the Ancien Regimes social pyramid.

However, we have been able to do it by using Heredis software which has enabled me to build

up the social network of outstanding figures of Castilian oligarchy (see Table 1). We can observe

both Antonio Riquelmes family and non-family relationships with important members of the

sociopolitical power enabling him to keep the supremacy of his family in the public sphere.

2. The familial and social relations of nobility. My study analyses the familial strategies of the

nobility. By examining the groups relations with family, friends, other people from the same

area and the vertical relationships occurring between them and their clients and the vertical,

patronage and clientelist relations (through duty or dependence) we can find out whether or not

social mobility occurred and its upward or downward nature. This second objective can be

achieved through the following:

1. The study of the demographical behavior of the nobility. Based on the concept of the life-

cycle, I intend to define the kind of family unit making up the body of noblemen of the city

of Murcia. Using both life-cycle and family unit concepts, we aim to demonstrate how indi-

vidual and personal social trajectories are integrated into family strategies, which goal, inthe south-eastern Castile society, is to enlarge the family size to keep all family members in

outstanding socio-political positions. This issue explains why the size of Mediterranean

families is difficult to measure because of the entanglement of their both nuclear and

enlarge nature.22,23

2. In connection with the above goal, it is also essential to consider the matrimonial practices

(analysis of marriage strategies) and hereditary practices (who succeeded to the property

of the entailed estate) within families and thus determine their systems of social

reproduction.

3. The study of the various modes of ownership and property management by reconstructing

the economic wealth of noble families throughout the period.

We have chosen the nominative methodology, studying the category of individual names linked

with the main social actor, to conduct my research due to the complexity inherent to the studies of

long duree, whose goal is to analyze the process of social change throughout the evolution of

social trajectories of family groups. The aim of this methodology is to reveal the true figures of the

main events and how the so-called events exerted an influence in the social position of a concrete

family group. We have built up the social relations of individuals, with and without family links,

by means of the social network analysis, which explains the improvements and failures, in economic

and political terms, of social groups during the Ancien Regime.

Thus, we proceed to the build up of family social network through the nominative cross-sources

such as parish, marriage, and burial records; protocolswills, dowries, and letters to set the

entailed-estate; or letters to show the purity of bloodhidalgo exams. The purpose is to establish

the density of links and bonds of social actors belonging to the elite families that we are dealing with.

Those social networks allow us to analyze the nature of the different socio-economic and political

processes which are permitted to particular families to achieve their socio-economic status or rede-

fine their political strategies to keep the urban power. The genealogical method allows us to measure

the family size and how the household redefine is demographic behavior generation after generation

being the main purpose the perpetuation in the socio-political sphere. The computer package, that we

use to analyze the social trajectory of those families, has allowed me to overcome problems identi-

fied by the recent historiography regarding the study of particular events linked with the main actors

that we are dealing with. Such problems, regarding with the heterogeneity in any population, havebeen very well-identified by Jan Kok.3

The building up of the social network, belonging to any personage or the predominant figure of

the family group, can be done with the database and software that we have used to analyze the

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Table 1. Antonio Riquelme y Fontes social network

Charges

RIQUELME Y FONTES, AntonioManager of the Brotherhood of SantiagoLandlord of GuadalupeChief Manager of the Brotherhood Ntro. Padre Jes us Nazareno (B.N.P.J.N.)

FathersRIQUELME Y FONTES, Jesualdo

Manager of the Brotherhood of SantiagoManager of the B.N.P. J.N.Landlord of GuadalupeFONTES Y RIQUELME, Maria de la Concepcion

Personal eventsParticipation in the administration of the Brotherhood of Santiago de la Espada (B.S.E.)18.6.1794MurciaWitness: DE AVELLANEDA Y FONTES, NicolasWitness: DE PAZ Y VALCARCEL, Joaquin (regidor of

Murcia)Witness: MONINO, Jose (Count of Floridablanca) Witness: LUCAS CELDRAN, Antonio(Marquis of Campillo) Witness: FERNANDEZ de LA REGUERA Y SANCHO, Juan JoseWitness:FONTES RIQUELME, Joaqun (Holy Brotherhood of la Maestranza de Granada, Member of Inquisition,Alguacil Mayor of the Inquisition)- Witness: SANDOVAL Y ORTEGA, Francisco AntonioWitness:MOLINA Y BORJA, Diego (Viscount of Huertas) Witness: SANDOVAL Y TOGORES, Francisco de Paula

MarriageFamily 1

ARCE Y FLORES, JosefaBirth date: 1791ChinchillaMarriage place: Chinchilla

Sons and daughterswith ARCE Y FLORES, Josefa

RIQUELME Y ARCE, Josefa

RIQUELME Y ARCE, Jose JesualdoRIQUELME Y ARCE, Mara Teresaget married with DE BUSTOS Y CASTILLA, RafaelRIQUELME Y ARCE, Antonio

Participation of Antonio Riquelme in his relatives eventsHe has been witness of:

FONTES Y ABAT, Estanislao: B.S.E.: 20.6.1805Murcia (Witness)FONTES FERNANDEZ de LA REGUERA, Joaquin Mara: B.S.E.: 20.6.1805Murcia (Witness)FONTES RIQUELME, Joaqun: B.S.E.: 20.6.1805Murcia (Witness)FONTES Y ABAT, Antonio: B.S.E.: 19.6.1807Murcia (Witness)FONTES FERNANDEZ de LA REGUERA, Joaquin Mara: B.S.E.: 19.6.1807Murcia (Witness)FONTES RIQUELME, Joaqun: B.S.E.: 19.6.1807Murcia (Witness)

FONTES Y ABAT, Antonio: B.N.P.J.N.: 19.6.1807Murcia (Witness)FONTES RIQUELME, Joaqun: B.N.P.J.N.: 28.5.1809Murcia (Witness)FONTES Y ABAT, Antonio: B.S.E.: 21.6.1811Murcia (Witness)RIQUELME Y ARCE, Antonio: B.S.E.:20.3.1840Murcia (Witness)FONTES Y QUEIPO de LLANO, Mariano: B.N.P.J.N.:18.2.1842Murcia (Witness)FONTES RIQUELME, Joaqun: B.N.P.J.N.: 8.3.1805Murcia (Witness)RIQUELME SALAFRANCA Y FONTES, Jose: B.N.P.J.N.: 15.3.1812Murcia (Witness)FONTES RIQUELME, Joaqun: B.N.P.J.N.: 26.2.1814Murcia (Witness)RIQUELME SALAFRANCA Y FONTES, Jose: B.N.P.J.N.: 17.2.1815Murcia (Witness)RIQUELME SALAFRANCA Y FONTES, Jose: B.N.P.J.N.: 16.2.1816Murcia (Witness)

Note. Archivo Historico Provincial de Murcia, Cofrada Santiago de la Espada (17711816), Leg. 3728, Cabildos y Cuentas

(1803). Archivo Cofrada Nuestro Padre Jesus Nazareno, Actas y Cabildos (24-8-1775/21-5-1786).



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individual trajectories and life-course family of those individuals. The identification of personal events

such as the participation in the political life of the city, the belonging of high-class groupsMilitary

Orders or preeminent religious brotherhoodscrossed with parish records and protocols, it can be an

important method to overcome the problems regarding the heterogeneity of the whole of observations

of any personages and any family groups of the population that we are analyzing.

During the Ancien Regime society, the role of kinship and family, in social networks, is defined

by means of consanguinity linking a particular individual with two or more having as a consequence

an enrichment of the social relations of the family group. Thus, the analysis of interpersonal links,

generated by kinship relations, is the chief aim of any research that deals with social issues. The

focus on those issues has permitted us to understand whether or not the so-called family ties let

preeminent social groups to reach reproduction, assimilation and perpetuation processes in the

sociopolitical life keeping public charges and positions by passing them generation after generation.

In our analysis of the southern European oligarchy, we can shed light on the topic of the social pro-

cesses, in particular the case of the Castilian groups, with the micro-level approach with which we

analyze the social behavior of powerful families.The focus on the micro-level ofAncien Regime society is really important in order to understand

socio-economic changes and continuities in social groups in the transition to a new demographic and

economic stage. Such approach is really important when the historian wants to draw conclusion on

the individual life-course and social trajectories; this is the reason why in southern European soci-

eties, during the Ancien Regime, is relevant to investigate the spacespublic or private institu-

tionsin where social actors were involved. Such sociability places are the household unit, the

City Hall, the Ecclesiastic Council, the Inquisition, Military Orders, the Court, Brotherhoods, the

Army, Colleges, and so on. This is the key analytical issue which allows the historian to deal with

two realities: the individual trajectory and the family strategies, which integrate family members in a

better status improving their position in the public life. The conjunction between individual and fam-ily life is the major feature of the behavior of Ancien Regime groups, which wanted to achieve an

upwards social mobility. The way in which their networks and socio-political connections are traced

is the path to those improvements in the status.

In our approach, data are cross-matched from sources such as churchesbaptism, marriage,

and death recordsnotarial officesdowries, wills, probate inventoriesand records of the Coun-

cil of Murcia, and Military Orders, among others; and the legal records filed at Granadas Real

Chancillera [Royal Chancery] or the Consejo de Castilla [Castilian Council]. In this manner,

we can identify the major family groups and rebuild their social and economic roles. We believe the

use of network analysis methods is of help in building up a typology of social relationships within

these families and determining the degree of density, the most prominent individuals and the con-

sequences deriving from these relations. The use of new information technologies has been very use-

ful in this project, applying such tools as Ucinet, Genopro, and Heredis to reconstruct the social

trajectories of noble groups, together with the use of a new multi-relational database that facilitates

collecting almost all social relations explicitly or implicitly appearing in the documents searched.

The database is built up with the File Maker program (see Chart No. 3) and each of its fields is

created with the objective of compiling the notarial and parish records with which we can analyze

the management of the property and the life-cycle of social actors of the aristocracy. The main fields

and categories of our relational database are the following:

RECORD: in this field the individual is registered.

IDENTIFY: the individual is identified automatically by the computer giving him a codenumber.

REFERENCE: in this field the reference of the source is recorded such as the name of the

archive, number of pages of the document and the name of the scribe.

Garcia 9


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ACT: the event and its characteristics are registered in this field in which we stress the role of the

social actors. Thus, in this field there is a category that defines the relationships between the

social actors and in consequence the life-cycle can be reconstructed.

SYMBOL: all the cultural issues are registered in this field such as the membership of socio-

cultural institutions (Brotherhoods or Military Orders).

PROPERTY: this field is one of the most relevant of the database because it permits one to reg-

ister all the records in connection with the management of the properties and it gives a view of

each item of the immovable assets.

ANALYSIS: this field offers an overview of each field and category of the database thus making

it possible to analyze more clearly the social trajectories of the individuals and to make enquiries

in the database to exploit the entire body of information. It offers a summarization of all events

belonging to each social actor. This field makes possible to follow the individual trajectories and

consequently the social strategies of family groups.

In this study, we have combined the usefulness of this database with other programs such as thegenealogical programs (Heredis and Genopro) and Ucinet which allow us to reconstruct the social

networks of the individuals. Both Genopro (see Chart No. 2) and Ucinet (see Chart No. 1) have a

special feature which draws a graphic representation of the families and the social actors. With Gen-

opro, we can obtain a complete overview of the different generations of the family through the draw-

ing of genealogical trees. Furthermore, Ucinet illustrates the representation of the social networks

which focus only on the social actors (egocentric network) or on all the individuals (sociometric

network). Heredis allows us to build up the genealogical trees of the individuals and identify the

named persons who are linked with the individual social networks. The advantage of combining

these separate programs allows us to overcome the problems inherent in the sources and in the limits

of each software program because each of them is designed for a specific purpose. The relationaldatabase is designed to record the more economic aspects and the other software to record the more

social information. In this way, the analysis which combines both social and economic perspectives

can be developed with further details of the different issues combining the micro and macro scales.

Conclusions

The novelty of this computer package is the possibility of storing records properly and making

pertinent queries to all information that we have. It is an outstanding tool which has allowed me

to compile almost all social relationships among the social groups that we deal with. The most

important help has been given by using Heredis. This software has compiled the whole information

respecting a double logic: on the one hand, the internal logic of the documentCity Hall decrees,

Brotherhood rules, hidalgo exams, wills, dowries, letters of entailed-estate foundation and parish

records; on the other hand, there are designed a group of entries which allow us to establish ties and

bonds among the different social actors through parameters which identified the belonging to local

elites.

This kind of software composed one of the most modern technologies that very few historians

have applied to the analysis of family groups in southern Europe. Thus, it has been really important

to cross the results of Heredis, which permit to sketch social networks, with Genopro, which let us to

observe the demographic evolution of those families, generation after generation, measure the size

of the household and marriage strategies with the goal of keeping the social power and improve the

status. Therefore, we are able to deal with both individual life-course and family strategies by build-ing up the social network of the families of the oligarchy of Castile. Both issues, as we have outlined

above, are the most relevant to analyze when historian wants to analyze the demographic and socio-

economic behavior of a given society during Ancien Regime Age. Moreover, those analytical



12/16

categories have permitted me to observe deeply the complexity of the family model of Mediterra-

nean families as we can check in charts below (see Appendix) in which the social actor patterns fol-

low a trend according to family strategies. Those trends explain why oligarchic family size is

enlarging in some generations and in others is narrower according with the so-called family policies.

The use of computer programs has given us the chance to measure accurately the family size and

build up of the family social network. That technology has been a potential mean to answer our

research questions and approach properly to the sources.

Unfortunately there are few Spanish works referring to the application of new technologies such

as databases to develop the analyses of the Ancien Regime. The most important work is the Congress

carried out in Castilla-La Mancha in 2000.24 However, as we have mentioned in previous pages, in

the last decade the European socio-economic historiography has taken into account the facilities that

the application of new technologies can offer for analyzing Early Modern Europe.

Historians usually fall into the trap of looking for the magical computer program that makes

their research easier. In fact, this is the trap of the telecommunication era which has a potentially

dangerous effect on social scientists. We have to bear in mind the splendid utility of the new tech-nologies as a tool, but the historian should never forget that databases and software are designed as a

means of answering the questions that have been posed rather than an end in themselves.

Garcia 11


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Appendix

Sociometric Representation of social network of the Riquelme

Lineage (eighteenth century)

Figure 1. Sociometric representation of social network of the Riquelme lineage (eighteenth century)*Representation: blue circle (racionero, clerical post), yellow circle (arcediano, clerical post), green circle (Inquisition),pink circle (hall residence member), blue navy circle (canon post), red triangle (low clergy member), red circle (linageRiqueme memberships or individuals belong to his kinship or social network).



14/16

Genealogical tree of the Riquelme Lineage (eighteenth century)

JUANDAMIAN DE

LA PERALEJA

LUISATOMAS

MARIA DELA

PERALEJA

DIEGO MARTINEZGALTERO

MELGAREJO

GERONIMATOMAS

MARTINDE LA

PERALEJA

ANTONIODE LA

PERALEJA

BEATRIZDE LA

PERALEJA

DIONISIAGALTERO DELA PERALEJA

DIEGOMELGAREJO

DE MORA

FRANCISCO MELGAREJOY GALTERO

Conde del Valle de S. Juan

CATALINAFONTES

CARRILLO

ISABELFRANCISCA

CARRILLO MARIN

BALTASARFONTES Y

AVILES

ANA CEFERINAMELGAREJO

GALTERO

MACIAS FONTESCARRILLO I

Marqus de Torre Pacheco

BALTASAR FONTESMELGAREJO II


NICOLASAMARIA DE PAZ

Y CASTILLA

ANTONIO FONTESPAZ III Marqus de

Torre Pacheco

FRANCISCARIQUELMEY BUENDA

JOAQUIN FONTESRIQUELME III


DIEGOMELGAREJO

JUANAPUXMARIN YVILLANUEVA

JUANAVILLANUEVAY CARCELEN

PEDRO PUXMARNY FAJARDO Seor

de Montealegre

FERNANDOMELGAREJOY PUXMARIN

NICOLASAGALTERO

RAMONDE

PALAZOL

??

JUAN DELA

PERALEJA

HERNANSANCHEZ DELA PERALEJA

CATALINADE LA

PERALEJA

LUISA DELA

PERALEJA

ANTONIOMOLINA

CARRILLO

FERNANDODE LA

PERALEJA

Figure 2. Genealogical tree of the Riquelme lineage (eighteenth-century).

Garcia 13


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Author Note

This article makes up part of the work developed by the research group, Seminario de Familia y elite

de poder en el Reino de Murcia, ss. XV-XIX, of the University of Murcia (Spain) in the National

Project HAR2010-21325-C-05-01, whose main researcher is professor Francisco Chacon Jimenez,funded by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion of the Spanish Government. Grant holder of the

European University Institute of Florence. Grant into the Program IV.B of the A.E.C.I. (Agencia

Espanola de Cooperacion Internacional) belonged to M.A.E.C. (Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores

y de Cooperacion).

Acknowledgements

The author is very grateful to Jan Kok (Senior Researcher of the International Institute of Social His-

tory) who gave him the very pertinent comments and remarks to improve the previous version of this

article during and after the conference of the Social Science History held last October, 2008, in

Miami.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interests with respect to the research, authorship and/

or publication of this article.

Financial Disclosure/Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research and/or authorship of this articleAQ3 .

Notes

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(siglos XVI-XIX), Real Academia Alfonso X el Sabio-Ayuntamiento de Murcia, 2006.

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Bio

Manuel Perez Garcia is a researcher of the Department of History and Civilization at the European University

Institute, where he has obtained his PhD on trans-national and comparative history applied to studies on con-

sumer behavior. He was visiting scholar in the University of California at Berkeley working in both Economicand History Departments. His topic reaches the socio-economic and family history, the Enlightenment move-

ment and the application of new technologiessoftware and databasesto Social Sciences. By covering these

issues he has authored Armas, Limpieza de Sangre y Linaje. Reproducci on Social de Familias Poderosas de

Murcia, siglos XVIXIX(2006) on family and aristocracy in Spain during the Early Modern period. Among his

last publications, the most relevant are: Trans-national exchanges and circulation of new goods in Western

Mediterranean Europe (eighteenth-century), Histoire, Soci et e et Economie, 4 (2010); Social Networks and

Kinship in the Hispanic Monarchy. The Clientelistic System of the Kingdom of Murcia (XVIIthXVIIIth cen-

tury), Historia Unisinos (Journal of the Brazilian University of Vale dos Rios), 14: (2010); and Costruzione

di una identita nazionale attraverso il consumo: spagnolizzazione del consumo durante lIluminismo, in

M. Profetti (ed.), Giudizi e pregiudizi. Percezione dellaltro e stereotipi tra Europa e Mediterraneo , Universita

degli Studi di Firenze, 2009.

Garcia 15

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