Famines in the Low Countries, fourteenth to nineteenth centuries (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Seventeenth Century, 2018
A long historiography has concluded that the Northern Netherlands was famine free by the seventeenth century. However, this view has been established on limited grain price data and an unclear chronology, lacking a broader comparative perspective, and relying heavily on the explanation that Amsterdam was the centre point of the international grain trade. Using newly compiled burials data for the Northern and Southern Netherlands and Northern France, and integrating these with rye prices, we confirm empirically that price spikes had reduced mortality effects in the Northern Netherlands compared to the Southern Netherlands and Northern France, though the escape was greater in the cities than the countryside. The only time in the period 1551–1699 that a strong and generalized association between price spikes and mortality occurred across wide areas of the Northern Netherlands was in the famine of 1556/7. However, the international grain trade cannot explain everything. Markets in the Northern Netherlands were no more effective at smoothing out food crises than in the Southern Netherlands or Northern France. We offer alternative explanations: the reduced role of famine-related diseases spread by warfare, and the interaction (especially in the cities) between wages and poor relief.
A Micro-Level Analysis of Household Grain Shortage in Sixteenth-Century Flanders'
Work in progress -do not cite without permission! In the winter of 1556 a Ghent chronicler noted that a multitude of people fled the surrounding countryside and arrived at the city gates, desperately looking for food. However, not all were able to reach the gates, as many 'sijn op den wech flau gheworden ende ghestorven'. 1 The summer of '56 was extremely hot and dry, causing failing grain and hay harvests around the Low Countries. 2 Grain prices doubled and later on even tripled. The link between climate, weather and disaster has recently, but not for the first time, gained momentum as an explanatory factor for the occurrence of crises; a FAD (= food availability decline) is caused by climatic circumstances and in turn causes scarcity, rising prices, hardship and even mortality. The importance of climatic factors in grain crises has recently been stressed by Campbell, as he puts nature forward as a historical protagonist in its own right. 3 However, Sen's entitlement approach 4 is still hugely influential when it comes to historiography on grain crises and famines. According to him, hunger is not necessarily caused by a decline in the availability of food, but by a decline in food entitlement (FED). He defines entitlements as 'the set of alternative commodity bundles that a person can command in a society using the totality of rights and opportunities that he or she faces', and this refers to the labour and raw materials one can use to produce food or access it via trade or barter. 5 A recent example of the influence of Sen's theory is Slavin's article on the Great Famine of 1315-17 in which he clearly shows that the disintegration of markets -making it impossible for large segments of society to get access to grain -was more pivotal than a simple decline in the availability of food. 6 Nature therefore does not hold a monologue, but clearly acts together with the social, economic and political context. Historians however still strongly disagree on which of these factors takes prime position.
Frosts, floods and famines : climate in relation to hunger in north-east Europe A.D. 1100-1550
Itä-Suomen yliopisto, 2011
This Master's thesis examines the relation between climatic conditions and hunger in NorthEast Europe in A.D. 1100-1550. The focus of the research is on the interpretation of the climatic fluctuations of the Middle Ages and on their impacts on food systems. The climatic information was collected from historical sources and paleoclimatological reconstructions. As medieval sources from the studied time and area, such as chronicles and administrative records, had not previously been used as a source of climatic information, this paper had a special emphasis on the evaluation of the medieval documents' climatological value. This paper introduced a method to combine and compare climatic information from historical documents with paleoclimatological reconstructions. It was found that historical documents may provide new information of temporal, regional and low-frequency climatic fluctuations. Hunger records for this study were collected from the same sources as the historical climate data. It was found that long-term climatic trends did not have a significant effect on the frequency of hunger or famine. Rapid and unexpected climatic phenomena were more likely to cause hunger. Medieval hunger did not exist only because of unfavourable climatic conditions, and the pivotal reason for hunger was usually found in socially produced vulnerability. The level of vulnerability was in relation to the transformation processes of the medieval NorthEast European societies. When administrative power grew stronger and/or agricultural economy became permanent and more specialized, vulnerability most likely increased. The results of the research show that it is inadequate to study climatic changes in relation to hunger without taking into consideration the social processes that happen simultaneously. In future research, special attention should be given to the variations of vulnerability and its impacts on food systems, especially from a historical perspective.
TSEG: Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History, 2024
This article reviews what we know about plague and other epidemic diseases in the northern Low Countries before 1450 – the evidence, its limitations, and its implications. I make three observations. First, sources suggest that the Black Death was severe in central inland areas, although we lack conclusive evidence for its impact in the county of Holland. Second, the recurring epidemics occurring in the northern Low Countries were often severe – in certain localities reaching death rates of 20-25 percent. In this respect, Holland was as afflicted as other areas in the Low Countries. Third, while the outbreak of 1439 was a notable exception, most epidemics in the northern Low Countries rarely occurred during or just after grain price spikes, suggesting that food crises were not major drivers of epidemic disease in the period 1349-1450. I support further attempts to obtain empirical evidence for the mortality effects of epidemics in the medieval Low Countries. Ultimately, this information can be the foundation behind insights into other important long-term narratives in social, demographic, and economic history in the region.
This paper addresses the three most disastrous famine episodes in the Czech Lands before AD 1500—the 1280s, 1310s and 1430s—and analyses them in both meteorological and socio-political terms. Adverse weather anomalies with harmful hydro-meteorological extremes and difficult socio-economic conditions were prerequisites for famine episodes, just as in the rest of Europe. Although times of famine occurrence and the states of the societies vary from country to country, a cascade of key phenomena are generally common to all: (a) complicated sociopolitical situations (including wars); (b) accumulation of adverse weather patterns influencing agricultural production; (c) severe-to-catastrophic failures of key agricultural crops (particularly grain) for at least two successive years; (d) direct consequences (dramatic increases in the prices of key foodstuffs; famine; consumption of poor-quality substitute diets and thus increases in vulnerability to illness; spread of disease; sharp rises in human mortality; villages abandoned; severe increases in crime). Keywords: Famine – Climate – Hydrometeorological extreme – Society – Socio-economic impact – Late Middle Ages – Central Europe – Czech Lands
Famines in the Nordic countries, AD 536 - 1875
2015
The first part of this paper aims at identifying the timing of famines in the Nordic countries since the middle ages. This is done by using qualitative famine reports from the literature since quantitative data on famines are scarce or non-existent, at least before the early modern period. We supplement the reports with climate data and price data. Our survey indicates that widespread famine was always a rare occurrence in the Nordic countries, despite frequent crop failures. The second part studies the regional famine pattern and its demographic characteristics in Sweden 1750–1910. This part is based on demographic data on parish level from the official statistics and price data. We identify two periods of excess mortality: the last major famine in Sweden in the early 1770s and the excess mortality in 1809 due to epidemic outbreaks. Examining the age-specific mortality and seasonality pattern in these two years of mortality crises in Sweden we show a highly similar pattern explaine...
Starvation Under Carolingian Rule. The Famine of 779 and the Annales Regni Francorum
How vulnerable was the Frankish society to famines in the Early Middle Ages? Modern concepts of vulnerability and resilience are mainly used to describe susceptibility of present day social and ecological systems to climate change. Since vulnerability and resilience have also become key concepts in famine studies, this paper approaches these concepts as a method to analyze natural impacts and cultural reactions on a historical level. Examining historiographical and administrative documents from the eighth and ninth century as well as dendrochronological data, the paper discusses potential natural impacts, preventive and coping strategies in case of a famine dated to 779. Following this approach, insights into Carolingian exposure to famines are provided, shedding light on early medieval interrelations of nature and culture.