'Gedwongen huwelijk' in Nederland 1870-1940

This thesis examined the phenomenon shotgun wedding. It concentrated on those that took place in the Netherlands between 1870 and 1940. The primary data came from the Historical Sample of the Netherlands (HSN). With this data I tried to form a statistical basis for three kinds of explanations regarding this phenomenon. The first explanation was that the political and economical situation had a direct influence on the number of shotgun-weddings. In theory a crisis (war, occupation or economic downturn) causes an increase in the number of shotgun-weddings. This thesis proved that there is no connection between the economic development in the Netherlands and the number of shotgun-weddings. However, the thesis proved that there is a connection between the season in which the marriages took place and the chance that it is a shotgun wedding and also between the social class of the marriage and the chance that it is a shotgun wedding. The economic situation is important to explain the existence of shotgun-weddings on a personal, not on a national level. The second explanation was that the increase of social control during the study period is important to explain the development of the number of shotgun-weddings. A higher level of social control should lower the amount of premarital sexual contact and also fewer shotgun weddings. This thesis tested this by examining the influence of endogenous marriages in the sense of social class and religion and by examining the influence of the distance of domiciles of the two loved ones. The results showed that endogenous marriage in the sense of social class had a negative influence on the number of shotgun-weddings, just like distance, but that endogenous marriages in the sense of religion had a slight positive effect on the phenomenon. This means that it was more important to marry within your own religious group than comply with the norm of having the first child after marriage. This is due to the development of pillarization (verzuiling) of the Dutch society in this period. The last explanation was that regional differences in the phenomenon are caused by cultural and economical differences between areas. By examining the cities and villages in which the marriages were concluded, this thesis showed that in the Netherlands the character of the location of the marriage conclusion (city or countryside) had no influence on the number of shotgun-weddings. More important was the dominant religion in the wedding site. Communities where Protestantism was dominant had more shotgun-weddings than communities where Roman Catholicism was dominant. In the last chapter, I investigated the influences of interaction variables on shotgun weddings to find more differences between the groups. In the second part of this chapter I presented two models based on the relevant variables to predict the chance a person had on a shotgun-wedding. Since even the best model only fits within the data for 18.1 percent, the phenomenon is difficult to predict. Based on the importance of the different variables in the model I concluded that historical (economical and political crisis) developments and social control have no influence on shotgun-weddings and that the difference between Dutch communities is only explained by the dominant religion of the wedding site. Furthermore I conclude that the most important variable is the age of the wedding partners. The chance on a shotgun wedding is bigger when a person is young than when a person is old.