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Famine, exchange networks and the village community. A comparative analysis of the subsistence crises of the 1740s and the 1840s in Flanders

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 August 2011

ERIC VANHAUTE  and
THIJS LAMBRECHT
ERIC VANHAUTE
Affiliation:
History Department, Ghent University.
THIJS LAMBRECHT
Affiliation:
History Department, Ghent University.
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Abstract

This article focuses on local agency in two near-famines in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Flanders. Our comparative analysis of the food crises of 1740 and 1845–1847 in Flanders exposes the local mechanisms of coping and protection, both in an informal and a formal way. The main thesis is that the impact of hunger crises in peasant societies is directly related to the level of stress absorption within the local village community. Our findings contradict the traditional vision of a more-or-less straightforward shift in famine crisis management from rural, local and informal to urban, supra-local and formal. The success of surmounting a food crisis has always had local roots.

Famine, réseaux d'échange, et communauté villageoise. une analyse comparative des crises de subsistances des années 1740 et 1840 en flandre

Cet article s'attache à l'action locale face à deux quasi-famines qui ont frappé la Flandre aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles. Notre analyse comparative des pénuries alimentaires de 1740 et 1845–1847 en Flandre présente les mécanismes locaux de réaction et de prévention, aussi bien au niveau informel que formel. La thèse principale est que l'impact des crises de subsistances dans les sociétés paysannes est directement lié à la capacité locale d'absorption du stress au sein de la communauté villageoise. Nos résultats contredisent la vision traditionnelle que serait intervenu un changement plus ou moins radical dans la gestion des pénuries alimentaires, passant du niveau rural, local et informel à un niveau de gestion urbain, supra local et formel. Pour surmonter une crise de subsistance, le succès a toujours reposé sur des racines locales.

Hungersnöte, austauschnetzwerke und dorfgemeinschaft. eine vergleichende analyse der subsistenzkrisen der 1740er und 1840er jahre in flandern

Im Zentrum dieses Beitrags stehen die Handlungsmöglichkeiten vor Ort in zwei Hungersnöten in Flandern im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert. Unsere vergleichende Analyse der Ernährungskrisen der 1740er und 1840er Jahre in Flandern beleuchtet die örtlichen Bewältigungs- und Schutzmechanismen, die sowohl auf der informellen wie auf der formellen Ebene bestanden. Die Hauptthese besagt, dass die Auswirkungen von Hungerkrisen in bäuerlichen Gesellschaften direkt mit dem Stressabsorptionsvermögen innerhalb der Dorfgemeinschaft zusammenhängen. Unsere Ergebnisse widersprechen der traditionellen Vorstellung, im Krisenmanagement von Hungersnöten habe es einen mehr oder weniger eindeutigen Umschwung von ländlichen, örtlichen und informellen zu städtischen, überörtlichen und formalen Formen gegeben. Die erfolgreiche Bewältigung von Nahrungsmittelkrisen hatte vielmehr stets örtliche Wurzeln.

Type
Research Article
Information
Continuity and Change , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , August 2011 , pp. 155 - 186
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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References

ENDNOTES

1 The pre-industrial period is a general reference to the period before 1800.

2 Vanhaute, E., ‘From famine to food crisis. What history can teach us about local and global food crises’, Journal of Peasant Studies 38, 1 (2011), 47–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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5 Stephen Devereux, ‘Sen's entitlement approach. Critiques and counter-critiques’, in Stephen Devereux ed., The new famines. Why famines persist in an era of globalization (London and New York, 2007), 66–89 [citation p. 84].

6 Ibid., 83.

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8 B. Murton, ‘Famine’, in K. F. Kiple and K. C. Ornelas eds., The Cambridge world history of food (Cambridge, 2000), 1414.

9 Howe, P. and Devereux, S., ‘Famine intensity and magnitude scales: a proposal for an instrumental definition of famine’, Disasters 28, 4 (2004), 353–72CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, here 356–8.

10 ‘The history of hunger is for the most part unwritten. The hungry rarely write history, and historians are rarely hungry.’ See Sara Millman and Robert W. Kates, ‘Toward understanding hunger’, in Lucile F. Newman ed., Hunger in history. Food shortage, poverty, and deprivation (Oxford, 1990), 22. According to David Arnold: ‘Interestingly enough, it is more often demographers and economists, geographers, anthropologists and political scientists, rather than historians, who have made the running in the recent discussions of famine and who have advanced many of the most challenging theories’; see D. Arnold, Famine. Social crisis and historical change (Oxford, 1988), 1. John Walter and Roger Schofield, when referring to famine studies, state: ‘As their contributions amply demonstrate, there is still plenty of life in the historical study of death’; see J. Walter and R. Schofield eds., ‘Famine, disease, and crisis mortality in early modern society’, in J. Walter and R. Schofield eds., Famine, disease and the social order in early modern society (Cambridge, 1989), 4.

11 Ravallion, ‘Famines and economics’, 1223–4.

12 Ravallion, ‘Famines and economics’, 1208. See, for example, the contributions on the non-Irish cases in C. Ó Gráda, R. Paping and E. Vanhaute eds., When the potato failed: causes and effects of the last European subsistence crisis, 1845–1850 (Turnhout, 2007). In fact, devastating famines lasting more than one year, so-called back-to-back famines, are rare in world-historical perspective. See C. Ó Gráda, Famine: a short history (Princeton and Oxford, 2009), 8.

13 Tommy Bengtsson, ‘Living standards and economic stress’, in T. Bengtsson, C. Campbell, J. Z. Lee et al. eds., Life under pressure. Mortality and living standards in Europe and Asia, 1700–1900 (Cambridge, 2004), 37–8.

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17 On agriculture in Flanders during this period, see E. Thoen and E. Vanhaute, ‘The Flemish husbandry at the edge: the farming system on small holdings in the middle of the nineteenth century’, in B. J. P. van Bavel and E. Thoen eds., Land productivity and agro-systems in the North Sea area (Middle Ages–20th century) (Turnhout, 1999), 271–96; E. Vanhaute and L. van Molle, ‘Het einde van de overlevingslandbouw, 1750–1880’, in Y. Segers and L. van Molle eds., Leven van het land. Boeren in België 1750–2000 (Leuven, 2004), 13–47; and E. Vanhaute, ‘So worthy an example to Ireland. The subsistence and industrial crisis of 1845–1850 in Flanders’, in Ó Gráda, When the potato failed, 123–5.

18 On Flemish agriculture from a long-term perspective, see E. Thoen, ‘A commercial survival economy in evolution. The Flemish countryside and the transition to capitalism (Middle Ages–nineteenth century)’, in P. Hoppenbrouwers and J. L. Van Zanden eds., Peasants into farmers? The transformation of rural economy and society in the Low Countries (Middle Ages–nineteenth century) in light of the Brenner debate (Turnhout, 2001), 102–57.

19 C. Vandenbroeke, Agriculture et alimentation dans les Pays-Bas autrichiens (Ghent, 1975), 621–6.

20 Vanhaute, ‘So worthy’, 125–30.

21 G. Dejongh, ‘Tussen immobiliteit en revolutie. De economische ontwikkeling van de Belgische landbouw in een eeuw van transitie, 1750–1850’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Leuven, 1999), 256.

22 For foreign views on Flemish agriculture, see the list in J. David, Boeken betreffende de Belgische landbouw verschenen voor 1850 (Leuven, 1975), 81–7.

23 Vanhaute, See E., ‘Rich agriculture and poor farmers: land, landlords and farmers in Flanders in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries’, Rural History 12, 1 (2001), 19–40CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

24 Vandenbroeke, Agriculture, 76–236; Vandenbroeke, C., ‘De graanpolitiek in de Oostenrijkse Nederlanden’, Revue Belge de Philologie et d'histoire 45, 2 (1967), 369–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Research into the relationship between high prices and mortality has shown that throughout the seventeenth century English mortality rates were less determined by changes in price levels than France. The link between increased mortality and food prices was particularly strong in France. Also, the frequency of these crises was higher in France compared with England. See Weir, D. R., ‘Life under pressure: France and England, 1670–1870’, Journal of Economic History 44, 1 (1984), 27–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Appleby, A. B., ‘Grain prices and subsistence crises in England and France, 1590–1740’, Journal of Economic History 39, 4 (1979), 865–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 John D. Post, Food shortage, climatic variability, and epidemic disease in preindustrial Europe (Ithaca and London, 1985), 30–50.

27 Giselle Van Houtte, Leuven in 1740, een krisisjaar. Ekonomische, sociale en demografische aspekten (Brussels, 1962), 18.

28 Calculations based on price series in J. Craeybeckx, S. Scholliers and C. Verlinden, Dokumenten voor de geschiedenis van prijzen en lonen in Vlaanderen en Brabant (Bruges, 1959), vol. 1, 62–6, 88–90 and 224–9.

29 Vandenbroeke, Agriculture, 154–5.

30 M. Savels, ‘Een bijdrage tot de studie van de crisis van 1740: Brugge en het Brugse Vrije’ (unpublished M.A. dissertation, Ghent University, 2003), 5; C. Cooman, ‘Een bijdrage tot de studie van de crisis van 1740: de kasselrij Oudenaarde’ (unpublished M.A. dissertation, Ghent University, 2004), 15–16.

31 See E. Thoen, ‘Social agrosystems as an economic concept to explain regional differences’, in B. J. P. van Bavel and P. Hoppenbrouwers eds., Landholding and land transfer in the North Sea area (late Middle Ages–nineteenth century) (Turnhout, 2004), 47–66.

32 Vandenbroeke, C., ‘Cultivation and consumption of the potato in the seventeenth and eighteenth century’, Acta Historiae Neerlandica 5 (1971), 15–39Google Scholar; C. Vandenbroeke, ‘La culture de la pomme de terre en Belgique (XVIIe–XIXe siècles), in Plantes et cultures nouvelles en Europe Occidentale au Moyen Age et à l’époque moderne. Journées internationales d‘histoire Centre culturel de l‘abbaye de Flaran (Conference proceedings, Toulouse, 1992), 192–202.

33 The method we used was calculating the deviation of the seven-year moving average for burials between 1735 and 1744. A deviation of+20 per cent or index number higher than 120 points to elevated mortality. We owe this method to Professor Dr Isabelle Devos (Ghent University).

34 These parishes were randomly selected from an unpublished database containing data on vital events (births, marriages and burials) and poor relief expenditure in 35 parishes in Flanders between 1735 and 1745. More information on these parishes can be obtained at request.

35 Post, Food shortage, 247–8.

36 Post, John D., ‘Climatic variability and the European mortality wave of the early 1740s’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 15, 1 (1984), 1–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 This section is based on Vanhaute, ‘So worthy’, 130–6.

38 In the literature, this is always called the crisis of 1845–1847 because it started in September 1845. The crisis only becomes visible in the graph in 1846.

39 Vandenbroeke, Agriculture, 153–4; City Archives Ghent, Series 107, nr. 1: Resolutie dd. 9 May 1739.

40 One last equalled approximately 3,000 litres. For data on the import of grain from the Dutch Republic during these years, see State Archives Brussels, Conseil des Finances, nr. 5847.

41 Vandenbroeke, Agriculture, 153–6.

42 ‘Kasselrijen’ (Dutch) or ‘chatellenies’ (French) were institutions founded during the middle ages. These institutions were primarily engaged in collecting taxes for the central government. During the early modern period, however, kasselrijen intervened more actively in the economic, social and fiscal policies of local communities and parishes. On these institutions, see the various entries in W. Prevenier and B. Augustyn eds., De gewestelijke en lokale overheidsinstellingen in Vlaanderen tot 1795 (Brussels, 1997), 363–531.

43 For local reactions to the management of the food crisis, see Van Houtte, Leuven in 1740; Savels, ‘Een bijdrage’; Cooman, ‘Een bijdrage’; and K. Van Honacker, Lokaal verzet en oproer in de 17de en 18de eeuw. Collectieve acties tegen het centraal gezag in Brussel, Antwerpen en Leuven (Courtrai, 1994), 414–17, 429–30 and 432.

44 See P. Bonenfant, Le problème du paupérisme en Belgique à la fin de l'Ancien Régime (Brussels, 1934), 172–5 for a general view on how these ‘armendissen’ operated. See E. Vanhaute, ‘De armenzorg op het Antwerpse platteland: onderzoek naar een instelling tijdens de scharniereeuw’, in Les structures du pouvoir dans les communautés rurales en Belgique et dans les pays limitrophes (XIIe–XIXe siècle) (Conference proceedings, Brussels, 1988), 625–77 for a more detailed examination of these local welfare institutions.

45 As can be inferred from the accounts of these institutions. See L. van Buyten, , ‘De ellendelingen in de moderne bronnen der Zuidelijke Nederlanden’, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 88 (1975), 539–50Google Scholar.

46 C. Lis and H. Soly, ‘Armoede in de nieuwe tijden tot omstreeks 1850’, in L. De Mecheleer ed., De armoede in onze gewesten van de middeleeuwen tot nu (Brussels, 1991), 47.

47 State Archives Ghent, Parochial Archives of Lochristi, nr. 356–370. In some parishes there were no financial margins for additional relief in 1740. See, for example, the accounts of the poor board of Kaprijke in State Archives Ghent, Old Archives Kaprijke, nrs. 128–139.

48 See Vanhaute, ‘De armenzorg’, 625–77.

49 This section is based on Vanhaute, ‘So worthy’, 137–9.

50 This section is based on Lambrecht, T., ‘Reciprocal exchange, credit and cash: agricultural labour markets and local economies in the southern Low Countries during the eighteenth century’, Continuity and Change 18, 2 (2003), 237–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar and T. Lambrecht, Een grote hoeve in een klein dorp. Relaties van arbeid en pacht op het Vlaamse platteland tijdens de 18de eeuw (Ghent, 2002), 75–184. For similar exchange systems, operating in the neighbouring French regions, see D. Rosselle, ‘La vente des biens nationaux et le changement des structures de l'exploitation agricole: l'exemple artésien’, in G. Gayot and J.-P. Hirsch eds., La Révolution française et le développement du capitalisme (Lille, 1989), 311–19.

51 E. Thoen, ‘A commercial survival economy’, 102–47.

52 This is also apparent from debts listed in probate inventories. Vermoesen, See R., ‘Paardenboeren in Vlaanderen. Middelaars en commercialisering van de vroegmoderne rurale econonomie in de regio Aalst’, Tijdschrift voor Sociale en Economische Geschiedenis, 7 (2010), 3–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and De Bie, A. and Vermoesen, R., ‘Boeren en hun relaties op het Vlaamse platteland (1750–1800), Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 121, 1 (2008), 430–45Google Scholar.

53 Cf. C. Muldrew and S. King, ‘Cash, wages and the economy of makeshifts in England, 1650–1800’, in P. Scholliers and L. Schwarz eds., Experiencing wages. Social and cultural aspects of wage forms in Europe since 1500 (New York and Oxford, 2003), 161.

54 T. Lambrecht, ‘Peasant labour strategies and the logic of family labour in the Southern Low Countries during the eighteenth century’, in S. Cavaciocchi, ed., La famiglia nell'economia Europea secc. XIII-XVIII. The economic role of the family in the European economy from the 13th to the eighteenth centuries (Florence, 2009), 645–6.

55 Vanhaute, ‘So worthy’, 139.

56 Savels, ‘Een bijdrage’, 45–8.

57 This section is based on Vanhaute, ‘So worthy’, 136–7.

58 Murton, ‘Famine’, 1425.

59 Arnold, Famine. Social crisis and historical change, 6–7.

60 Ravallion, ‘Famines and economics’, 1210.

61 Vanhaute, ‘So worthy’, 141–6.

62 On the benefits of this system for the smallholders, see Lambrecht, ‘Peasant labour strategies’, 634–51.

63 Ravallion, ‘Famines and economics’, 1236.

64 See Walter and Schofield, ‘Famine, disease, and crisis mortality’, 26. ‘The social order mattered: as a critical determinant of demographic change, and as the basis of political as well as economic institutions, it fashioned the conditions of death, no less than those of life.’ (Ibid., 73).

65 Ibid., 46–8, quote from p. 46.