Families in the Expansion of Europe,1500-1800 (An Expanding World: The European Impact on World History, 1450 to 1800)

This volume presents legal, religious and demographic aspects of the transfer of European family organisations to new environments in the overseas colonies, and illustrates the impacts of contact with other ethnic groups. In Africa the focus is on the Cape, the principal area of European settlement in the 17th-18th centuries; in the Americas the analysis includes indigenous and black families. Inheritance, dowry, marriage, divorce, illegitimacy are topics covered, but the emphasis is above all on women's roles and voices.