ABSTRACT
Today, historical child labour seems different from what it appeared to be when historians believed it belonged to the past. The formative centuries of modern child labour and modern childhood were characterised by frequent and destructive warfare. The wars in early modern Europe drew heavily on human and material resources, which contributed to pauperism and, as it seems, to the harsh policy of forcing the poor to work. The division of labour applied in the manufactories was another factor that explains the increasing use of children and women. With the commercialisation of agriculture, nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Europe witnessed very labour-intensive forms of agricultural production. Even though peasant farmers' own children contributed to the work in their parental household, farmers around Europe saved labour costs by using 'outside' children. Children as labour migrants were found in several parts of Europe, from Italy to Scandinavia and Russia.
