To adequately respond to crises, adaptive governance is crucial, but sometimes institutional adaptation is constrained, even when a society is faced with acute hazards. We hypothesize that economic... Show moreTo adequately respond to crises, adaptive governance is crucial, but sometimes institutional adaptation is constrained, even when a society is faced with acute hazards. We hypothesize that economic inequality, defined as unequal ownership of wealth and access to resources, crucially interacts with the way institutions function and are adapted or not. Because the time span for societal responses may be lengthy, we use the historical record as a laboratory to test our hypothesis. In doing so, we focus on floods and water management infrastructure. The test area is one where flood hazards were very evident—the Low Countries (present-day Netherlands and Belgium) in the premodern period (1300–1800)—and we employ comparative analysis of three regions within this geographical area. We draw two conclusions: first, both equitable and inequitable societies can demonstrate resilience in the face of floods, but only if the institutions employed to deal with the hazard are suited to the distributive context. Institutions must change parallel to any changes in inequality. Second, we show that institutional adaptation was not inevitable, but also sometimes failed to occur. Institutional adaptation was never inevitably triggered by stimulus of a hazard, but dependent on socio-political context. Even when vital for the community under threat, adaptation only tended to occur when the vested interests of those with wealth, resources, and power were directly hit. Show less
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... Show moreA 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. Show less
Researchers have published several articles using historical data sets on plague epidemics using impressive digital databases that contain thousands of recorded outbreaks across Europe over the... Show moreResearchers have published several articles using historical data sets on plague epidemics using impressive digital databases that contain thousands of recorded outbreaks across Europe over the past several centuries. Through the digitization of preexisting data sets, scholars have unprecedented access to the historical record of plague occurrences. However, although these databases offer new research opportunities, noncritical use and reproduction of preexisting data sets can also limit our understanding of how infectious diseases evolved. Many scholars have performed investigations using Jean-Noël Biraben’s data, which contains information on mentions of plague from various kinds of sources, many of which were not cited. When scholars fail to apply source criticism or do not reflect on the content of the data they use, the reliability of their results becomes highly questionable. Researchers using these databases going forward need to verify and restrict content spatially and temporally, and historians should be encouraged to compile the work. Show less
Although recent work has begun to establish that early modern plagues had selective mortality effects, it was generally accepted that the initial outbreak of Black Death in 1347-52 was a ... Show moreAlthough recent work has begun to establish that early modern plagues had selective mortality effects, it was generally accepted that the initial outbreak of Black Death in 1347-52 was a ‘universal killer’. Recent bioarchaeological work, however, has argued that the Black Death was also selective with regard to age and pre-plague health status. The issue of the Black Death’s potential sex selectivity is less clear. Bioarchaeological research hypothesizes that sex-selection in mortality was possible during the initial Black Death outbreak, and we present evidence from historical sources to test this notion. Show less
It has frequently been shown that, after severe floods in the pre-industrial period, property within the afflicted rural society often became redistributed more inequitably. This is often seen to... Show moreIt has frequently been shown that, after severe floods in the pre-industrial period, property within the afflicted rural society often became redistributed more inequitably. This is often seen to be because small farmers did not have the resources to buffer exceptional losses. This article looks at an episode of crisis that occurred in the region of Northeast Groningen (the Netherlands) close to the Dollard Sea - the breakthrough of a key dike in 1509 and the subsequent desertion of settlements through flooding. Local farmers lost their lands, and moved away onto higher and safer sandy ridges. After this event, the sixteenth century represented a 'fight-back' against the water, where some attempts were made to reclaim and drain the newly sodden and marshy land. The questions addressed in this paper are then twofold. Firstly, for those that lost their farms during this episode, were they able to regain their property? Into whose hands did the newly reclaimed land fall? Secondly, what impact did this have on future property distribution and levels of equality in the region? Is it necessarily true that smallholders were not able to buffer these kinds of terrible events and lost their lands to more powerful elite groups? This paper shows that, while consolidation of land into 'elite' or 'absentee' social groups often did occur as a consequence of strong exogenous environmental shocks such as flooding, this did not inevitably lead to inequality at the user-level - that is, at the local level at which the land was being farmed. In fact, it is even suggested that consolidation of land into the hands of elite groups such as urban burghers and institutions sometimes could put a direct block on the emergence of large farms and the development of 'agrarian capitalism'. Show less
Since the turn of the Millennium, major changes in economic history practice such as the dominance of econometrics and the championing of ‘big data’, as well as changes in how research is funded,... Show moreSince the turn of the Millennium, major changes in economic history practice such as the dominance of econometrics and the championing of ‘big data’, as well as changes in how research is funded, have created new pressures for medieval economic historians to confront. In this article, it is suggested that one way of strengthening the field further is to more explicitly link up with hypotheses posed in other social sciences. The historical record is one ‘laboratory’ in which hypotheses developed by sociologists, economists, and even natural scientists can be explicitly tested, especially using dual forms of geographical and chronological comparison. As one example to demonstrate this, a case is made for the stimulating effect of ‘Disaster Studies’. Historians have failed to interact with ideas from disaster studies, because of the general drift away from the social sciences by the historical discipline, but also because of a twin conception that medieval disaster study bears no relation to the modern, and that medieval coping strategies were hindered by providence, superstition, fear, and panic. We use the medieval disasters context to demonstrate that medieval economic history can contribute to big narratives of our time, including climate change and inequality. This contribution can be in (a) investigating the root causes of vulnerability and resilience, and recovery of societies over the long term (moving disaster studies away from instant impact focus) and (b) providing the social context needed to interpret the massive amount of ‘big data’ produced by historical climatologists, bioarchaeologists, economists, and so on.Since the turn of the Millennium, major changes in economic history practice such as the dominance of econometrics and the championing of ‘big data’, as well as changes in how research is funded, have created new pressures for medieval economic historians to confront. In this article, it is suggested that one way of strengthening the field further is to more explicitly link up with hypotheses posed in other social sciences. The historical record is one ‘laboratory’ in which hypotheses developed by sociologists, economists, and even natural scientists can be explicitly tested, especially using dual forms of geographical and chronological comparison. As one example to demonstrate this, a case is made for the stimulating effect of ‘Disaster Studies’. Historians have failed to interact with ideas from disaster studies, because of the general drift away from the social sciences by the historical discipline, but also because of a twin conception that medieval disaster study bears no relation to the modern, and that medieval coping strategies were hindered by providence, superstition, fear, and panic. We use the medieval disasters context to demonstrate that medieval economic history can contribute to big narratives of our time, including climate change and inequality. This contribution can be in (a) investigating the root causes of vulnerability and resilience, and recovery of societies over the long term (moving disaster studies away from instant impact focus) and (b) providing the social context needed to interpret the massive amount of ‘big data’ produced by historical climatologists, bioarchaeologists, economists, and so on. Show less
The view of the commons as archaic, ‘backward’ and ‘irrational’ institutions for the management of resources has now been revised in favour of a more positive one, for both past and present... Show moreThe view of the commons as archaic, ‘backward’ and ‘irrational’ institutions for the management of resources has now been revised in favour of a more positive one, for both past and present societies. Indeed, it is clear that the commons had multifarious ecological and economic benefits for both medieval and early modern rural societies in Western Europe. That being the case, many scholars have seen the increasing expropriation of the commons in the transition to the early modern period as a sign of increasing inequality characterizing pre-industrial Europe, and many have lamented the loss of communal grazing privileges connected to processes such as land enclosure – pushing poor peasants into the ‘abyss’ with the removal of their final form of welfare. However, in this paper it is argued that the social distribution of the benefits to the commons were rarely, if ever, entirely equitable. In fact, in many historical contexts the benefits of the commons could also be highly restricted – crystallizing and entrenching stratifications themselves, and even serving as the ‘vehicle’ of further inequality. The expropriation of the commons did not necessarily make Western European rural societies any more unequal. Show less
Over the past 25 years, there has been an orthodox view established that 18th-century Southern Italy had a distinctive micro-demographic model based around a number of facets, 3 key ones being a... Show moreOver the past 25 years, there has been an orthodox view established that 18th-century Southern Italy had a distinctive micro-demographic model based around a number of facets, 3 key ones being a proliferation of neo-local small nuclear households, an exceptionally low average age of first marriage for women (with low levels of life-time singles), and a low incidence of household service. This view, however, has been forged on the back of geographical biases in data selection—particularly in favor of Apulia, a region with a high incidence of large latifundist estates and agro-towns. What this article shows using a less geographically biased database compiled from the Catasto Onciario and State of Souls register is that while nuclear households and low ages of women's marriage may have been characteristic of the agro-town areas of the Kingdom, this did not apply for everywhere in the South. In fact, some regions displayed complex household levels comparable to parts of Eastern Europe and some regions had average ages of marriage for women that would not look out of place in parts of Northwest Europe. An explanation for such regional divergences has been sought in the tenurial complexity and diversity seen in the South. The view that the South had a low incidence of service, however, does indeed still hold, with only minor variations across regions. Show less
Rural social and economic history of the Low Countries has long been in the shadow of more dominant urban-focused histories. Perhaps this is unsurprising, given the high level of urbanisation... Show moreRural social and economic history of the Low Countries has long been in the shadow of more dominant urban-focused histories. Perhaps this is unsurprising, given the high level of urbanisation seen in parts of the Low Countries from the high Middle Ages onwards. However, it may also be connected with problems in the discipline of rural history itself – arguably a major one being the tendency towards a) localism and b) description rather than analysis. Probably a way of rectifying this situation is by becoming more explicit and systematic with our use of comparative history – both in regions of the Low Countries, but also in creating links with wider historical processes across Western Europe as well. This paper makes a small contribution by bringing together important themes and ideas that have linked research in our various regions of interest over the past five years. Show less
There is now a general scholarly consensus that the concentration of rural people into settlements in Western Europe (as opposed to dispersed or scattered habitations across the countryside)... Show moreThere is now a general scholarly consensus that the concentration of rural people into settlements in Western Europe (as opposed to dispersed or scattered habitations across the countryside) occurred in various stages between the eighth and twelfth centuries, though with regional divergences in precise timing, speed, formation, and intensity. What is clear from the literature is that a “one-size fits all” model for settlement development across Western Europe is not possible. Concentrated settlements appeared in certain parts of Europe for different reasons. This article discusses the strengths and limitations of four of the most influential frameworks for explaining patterns of medieval settlement concentration and their relation to social and economic change. The frameworks under analysis emphasize, respectively, power, coercion and lordship; communalism and territorial formalization; fieldsystems and resource-management; and urbanization and market-integration. Show less
Tine De Moor has developed a bold and robust scholarly framework for explaining the emergence of institutions for 'corporate collective action' in her 'Silent Revolution' article of 2008; the... Show moreTine De Moor has developed a bold and robust scholarly framework for explaining the emergence of institutions for 'corporate collective action' in her 'Silent Revolution' article of 2008; the significance of which may serve to be the foundation of a research agenda on the commons for years to come. However, as revealed in this review piece, there are some fundamental flaws in the framework, which need to be ironed out first. There remains a problem with causality – in particular, no logical connection in the framework between the 'conditions necessary to make collective action possible' and the 'reasons to opt for collective action'. In summary, this review suggests De Moor's framework is an important step forward for those researching the commons, though it needs to be modified to become more receptive to the socio-political configurations that gave each pre-industrial society its character. Show less
