Research team
Expertise
In my recently defended doctoral thesis, I studied the evolution of grain prices, the outbreak of famines and the position of large ecclesiastical landlords on the grain market in 14th-century Flanders. I reconstructed and explained short- and long-term fluctuations in grain prices and examined the way in which landlords (with a large scale and control over resources) managed the volumes of grain they collected. My research was based on hundreds of accounts (esp. Middle French) from landlords in the cities of Bruges, Ghent, Lille, Douai and Cambrai. The study approaches the price shocks on the grain market along four major axes. The first part investigates the price formation of grain. It mainly tackles the many technical challenges of reconstructing a reliable market price series for contexts where the source material is fragmented. Based on these new price series, the second part looks at the frequency, intensity and duration of price shocks. The long and short-term fluctuations of the grain price as well as the integration between the Flemish cities and in a broader European perspective is addressed. The third part studies the vulnerability of the urban population to price surges and the accompanying food shortages due to the far-reaching market dependency on the one hand. On the other, it questions the link between mortality crises of the many plague episodes of the fourteenth century and the subsistence crises. Finally, the fourth part of this study focuses on the large landlords and their role as large scale producers and exporters of grain. The organization of their activities on the grain market, the differences between the organization of the agriculture of the regions in which these landlords were embedded and the adaptation of the income and expense strategies of grain by the landlords are key in this last part. The main concluding points that emerge throughout the dissertation include the unique character and importance of precisely dated prices. This allowed the frequency, intensity of the price peaks, and their influence on the urban population to be accurately studied. Additionally, the importance of large landowners in the production and distribution of grain, as well as the institutional constraints and the importance of the different social agrosystems needs to be stressed. From October 2021 to October 2022 I studied the 15th-century food crises in the city of Liège, and in particular, how large ecclesiastical landlords adapted their household economy to these food crises, part of the FREE project (Food Crisis Middle Ages, funding by FNRS & State Archives). This opportunity for a year-long study on crises in late medieval Liège allowed me to expand my perspective on the source material regarding large ecclesiastical landlords situated in the broader Low Countries.