A geography of marriage: recruitment distance and household structure in Dutch and French shipping, 1793–1802

How did institutional differences shape the relationship between family structure and labour mobility in early modern maritime markets? Using biographical data on more than 3,300 Dutch and French sailors captured during the Revolutionary Wars (1793-1802), this research note examines how household composition varied with recruitment distance. On Dutch vessels, marriage rates declined steeply from 81.0% among locally recruited men (≤50 km) to 47.7% at long distance (>200 km), a 33-percentage-point drop reflecting the international recruitment of unmarried workers from Denmark and northern Germany. French ships showed a flatter 14-point gradient, from 63.5% to 50.0%, consistent with nationally structured recruitment and a more regionally bounded labour market. Age patterns suggest that this Dutch gradient was driven above all by the recruitment of younger single men at greater distances, rather than by a uniform age decline. Fathers with co-resident children were virtually absent across all distance bands in both fleets, while co-residence with parents increased modestly with distance. Literacy patterns indicated positive skill sorting rather than deteriorating human capital. These findings show that institutional structures, particularly Dutch market openness versus French regulatory boundaries in practice, mediated household strategies and created distinct geographies of family life in the late eighteenth-century maritime labour market.