Buying more with less income? Household production and changing consumer preferences in the smallholding economy of inland Flanders during the 18th century in the light of the Industrious Revolution debate. 01/04/2017 - 31/03/2018

Abstract

In social and economic history, scholars, who investigated the evolution of living conditions of early modern country dwellers, faced major difficulties to combine consumption-oriented and production-oriented approaches. The optimistic strand of research stressed the increasing ability of rural households in the course of the 18th century to acquire of new consumer goods by working harder and more (i.e. a Consumer Revolution made possible by an Industrious Revolution), whereas the pessimistic one focussed on high levels of surplus extraction with which rural households were increasingly confronted so that they had to intensify their arable and proto-industrial production in order to maintain their survival algorithms or profit margins (according to the family's income level). This project aims to combine both viewpoints by comparing consumption patterns with the production strategies of a broad variety of rural households (from smallholders to large farmers) within the intensive Flemish Husbandry region during the 18th century. Our hypotheses are that (1) prices of new consumer goods declined so that they gradually became affordable for lower income groups and that (2) the dissemination of these goods was top-down from village worthies and well-to-do farmers onto the smallholding majority of the rural community. As such, this project aims to reveal whether or not the premodern trajectories of commercialisation and the related economic growth contributed to better living conditions of the majority of the population in the countryside.

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  • Research Project

The Resilience of Urban Agriculture in Industrialising Societies: a social-agrosystemic approach applied on 19th-century Belgium. 01/10/2016 - 28/02/2018

Abstract

Urban agriculture in periods of rapid urban growth is confronted with the encroachment of urban open space, but also with more mouths to be fed. Previous studies could not explain why urban agriculture disappeared in some areas and survived in others, because they either focused on one aspect of it (like market gardening) or studied only one city and ignored household economics. My hypothesis is that a fuller understanding of urban agriculture can only be obtained by accounting for the social organisation of urban food production. Therefore, I propose the analytic tool of 'Social Urban-Agricultural Systems' (SUAS), in which income strategies of different categories of urban food producers in correspondence to several macro-conditions, determined the resilience of urban agriculture in a particular urban context. 19th-century Belgium as the first industrialising country on the Continent is an ideal case to study urban food production strategies in different types of cities. The SUAS-concept will be tested by scrutinising the impact of macro-conditions (access to land, size and shape of a city, a city's economic orientation, type of nearby agro-system, transport improvements and market access) at country-level (based on census data), and further clarified by a micro-investigation at household level (by probate inventories in sample years and cities) to explain how different configurations of urban food production answered the challenges and opportunities of urban growth. -

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  • Research Project

'Wo mistus, da Christus'. A micro-perspective on the allocation and recycling of urban waste in the rural economy of early modern Flanders. 01/10/2014 - 30/09/2016

Abstract

This project aims to investigate to what extent the contribution of urban waste and manure could overcome the challenge of fundamental nutrient deficiencies in regions of dense urbanisation and intensive agriculture. In order to reach that goal, the social relations that are at the core of this project, will be confronted with three other strategic factors affecting the manure allocation: transport improvements, institutional change and economic growth

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  • Research Project

'Wo mistus, da Christus'. A micro-perspective on the allocation and recycling of urban waste in the rural economy of early modern Flanders. 01/10/2012 - 30/09/2014

Abstract

This project aims to investigate to what extent the contribution of urban waste and manure could overcome the challenge of fundamental nutrient deficiencies in regions of dense urbanisation and intensive agriculture. In order to reach that goal, the social relations that are at the core of this project, will be confronted with three other strategic factors affecting the manure allocation: transport improvements, institutional change and economic growth

Researcher(s)

Research team(s)

Project type(s)

  • Research Project