INNER aND OUTER

The 2020 revision of the “Angoulême in 1764” site for the first time incorporates entries from the outer parishes of Angoulême. Newly added to the full dataset are an additional 1678 unique individuals and 2204 connections both within and beyond Angoulême. The most populous parish in our dataset is now an outer parish, St. Jacques de l’Houmeau. It is also the home parish of the most well-connected individual in Angoulême in 1764, Magdelaine Faure, who married Jean Roy, also of St. Jacques, on October 29, 1764.

Were there differences in social life between the inner and outer parishes? Our data provides a mixed answer. On the one hand, there is little evidence of a rigid social divide between the social worlds of the inner and outer parishes. Social and familial connections often traversed town walls, as in the marriage between Jeanne Sardin of the outer parish of St. Martin and Michel Vigneaud of St. André, an inner parish. There were only slight differences in the density of connections within the inner parishes (average: 2.55) as opposed to the outer parishes (average: 2.49). On the other hand, networks within the inner parishes do tend to occupy more significant and central positions within the network, as illustrated through indices like eigenvector centrality, network diameter, and average path length.