I've been reading about peasant life in 18th and 19th Century Europe. From my understanding peasant life differed greatly between the east and west. My main source is an AP European history textbook "The Western Heritage Since 1300" by Kagan. I've also read selections of "Economic and Social Conditions in France During the Eighteenth Century" by Henri Sée.
From what I've read:
Families: Families in Western Europe tended to be nuclear. Due to marriage later in life, Grandparents were often dead by the time the grandkids were born or old enough to remember them. Where as families in Eastern Europe tended to be generational, and could number in the 20s for one household.
Manorial Oversight:
In eastern Europe it seems that the nobility had very strict control over the peasants lives. From what I've read their situation seems akin to slavery. Forced marriages, legally bound to the land, and their overall condition seems pretty destitute. In Western Europe, however, peasants didn't have such strict controls, and some could move to a new area if the nobility offered better pay/living conditions. Their life seemed pretty tough, but better than their counterparts in the east.
Is this information correct?
Am I generalizing too much with a huge population?
If what I've said is correct, why did these differences develop? I'm especially interested in the different family dynamic.
I have to tell you, this is a terrific question that sent me back to the books. The answer has everything to do with the French Revolution. But first, a clarification:
You should state whether you mean peasants, who in many cases were relatively well-off farmers and village people, or serfs, who were virtual slaves tied to their land. It's an important, and in many cases legal, distinction. Additionally, Czar Alexander II 'emancipated' Russian serfs in 1861. What you're describing sounds like serfdom, so I'm going to discuss serfs.
If you really want to talk about serf life between western and eastern Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, you can't avoid a) England, b) the French revolution, and c) Industrialization.
To start off, England is right out. English peasants have been abnormally free for almost 1000 years. Since the 13th century, peasants in perfidious Albion have had rights that were unheard of - just breathtakingly radical - compared to their counterparts in France, Acquitaine, and Spain. Not all at once mind you, but precedent by precedent under a system called 'common law' where precedents and traditions over the years become the law of the land (this is a gross simplification but the best I can do right now). By 1689, Englishmen had - by right of law! - the right to petition the King for Justice, the right to free elections for parliament, and the right to be released from jail if no evidence (habeus corpus!) could be produced in a timely manner. To other European monarchs, the British were absolute nutters.
When it comes to freeing the serfs, the French Revolution was the primary driver of the changes you're reading about. The events in France electrified other monarchies and enhanced their willingness to grant more rights to serfs. Anywhere the French Empire held land, it emancipated serfs and never looked back. Even after Napoleon's defeat, there was no returning to the old ways for many European nations.
Except for Russia, where Napoleon was ultimately defeated and never held land very long.
Finally, industrialization in the 1840s and 1850s proved to be the final nail in the serf's coffin. The growth of railroads made it cheap to leave the farm, and factories with better pay in cities with schools made social mobility a real opportunity.
It would take Lenin and a communist revolution to bring western-scale industrialization to Russia.