and Raffaella Sarti, who emphasize the many regional differences in rural servanthood in Sweden c. 1700, Norway 1650–1800, and Italy during the past five centuries. They conclude that concentration on the EMP and life-cycle servanthood simplifies reality. Christine Fertig, however, largely confirms Laslett’s concept of life-cycle servanthood for northwest Germany around 1750, and Richard Paping shows how this practice ceased to exist in the Netherlands during the nineteenth century. The bookʼs main strength lies in the rich source material, covering six centuries and nine countries, skilfully collected and analyzed by the authors. Few readers will remain unconvinced about the heterogeneity of rural servanthood through space and time by the evidence that the contributors present from farm accounts, court documents, death certificates, and census-enumerator books. Many might even begin to wonder whether we can speak about “servanthood” in the first place, simply because it apparently has multiple meanings. It was much more than part of the EMP, the sanctity of which the book does not entirely support either. But in its strength also lies the book’s weakness. Most authors let their sources determine the structure of their argument. Consequently, most of the contributions remain largely descriptive, in some cases, failing to move beyond a mere summary of the sources’ contents. The largely descriptive character of the articles makes the absence of a conclusion all the more disappointing; the rich empirical material stands in need of a synthesis to connect the three strands of demography, labor markets, and legal practices expounded in the introduction. That approach would make this book more than a collection of individual articles. A truly interdisciplinary, comparative monograph about the history of rural servanthood in Europe has yet to be written. Whoever writes it— Whittle or someone else—will find Servants in Rural Europe to be a firm basis upon which to build.

中文翻译：

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灵狮国家：英格兰的共同进化史，1200–1900年

Raffaella Sarti，他们强调了瑞典农村奴役的许多地区差异。在过去的五个世纪中，分别是1700年，挪威1650–1800年和意大利。他们得出的结论是，专注于EMP和生命周期服务将简化现实。然而，克里斯汀·菲蒂格（Christine Fertig）在很大程度上证实了拉斯莱特（Laslett）在1750年左右为德国西北部提供生命周期服务的概念，理查德·帕平（Richard Paping）说明了这种做法在19世纪的荷兰已不复存在。该书的主要优势在于内容丰富，涵盖六个世纪和九个国家，由作者巧妙地收集和分析。很少有读者会通过农民帐户，法院文件，死亡证明，和人口普查员用书。许多人甚至可能开始怀疑我们是否可以首先谈论“仆役制”，仅仅是因为它显然具有多种含义。它不仅仅是EMP的一部分，本书的神圣性也不能完全支持EMP的一部分。但是，这本书的缺点还在于它的优点。大多数作者让他们的资料来确定其论点的结构。因此，在某些情况下，大多数贡献仍在很大程度上是描述性的，无法超出仅对来源内容的概述。文章的主要描述性特征使得缺乏结论更加令人失望；丰富的经验材料需要综合以将人口统计，劳动力市场和引言中阐述的法律实践这三个方面联系起来。这种方法将使本书不仅仅是单个文章的集合。关于欧洲农村奴役历史的真正的跨学科，比较性专着尚待撰写。无论是谁写的，无论是Whittle还是其他人，都会发现欧洲农村地区的仆人是他们赖以发展的坚实基础。