Early modern English kinship in the long run: reflections on continuity and change

The article highlights the significance of alliances of blood and marriage in England from the early modern period to the present, including both positive and negative relations among kin. Examining different historiographical approaches, it emphasises the role of kinship in explanations of continuity and change. Rather than focusing on the isolated nuclear family, or, conversely, on an alleged decline of kinship, it highlights the importance of enmeshed patterns of kinship and connectedness. Such patterns were not only important in themselves, it is suggested, (whether culturally, socially, economically, or politically), but they also invite new comparisons with other early modern societies, and in the long run. Even patterns typical of present-day new families and families of choice and aspects of the present-day English language of kinship, the article proposes, may bring to mind some similarities with notions of kinship and related household ties characteristic of the early modern period.