Economic history

This book unravels how the agricultural sector and the rural world in Europe became more and more organised within capitalism in the years 1870-1940 and this with the aim of tackling the important challenges of the time. The focus is not so much on the myriad of individual farmers’ actions but on the collective efforts undertaken through the interplay between the state and the agricultural civil society.

A wide variety of actors from landowners associations farmers’ unions cooperatives scientific institutions and researchers to farmers themselves (or civil society) played a critical role in the process of drafting a policy agenda developing agricultural policies and were instrumental in implementing them in close relationship with the state. The result was a metamorphosis from mobilisation and representation of agrarian interests to a form of self-government or co-government of the agricultural sector at the national level which would only reach its highest point after the Second World War.

These issues are explored by established rural historians covering a period of seven decades (1870-1940). The papers provide a wide geographical perspective from the north of Europe to the Mediterranean.

To fully understand the changes in European animal husbandry during the long twentieth century it is necessary to examine all aspects of the food chain devoted to supplying proteins and fats to a growing population. Indeed the twentieth century saw great changes in animal husbandry - towards a market-oriented intensified and specialized production. This influenced and was influenced by policies trade aspects of animal and public health food supply issues aims in animal breeding development of production systems principles in feeding and impact of producer cooperatives.

Because it is not possible to apprehend all these global changes from a rural point of view this book aims to bring together many different expert perspectives in fields such as: agronomy veterinary medicine microbiology history of sciences economic and cultural history and sociology. Taking into account both national idiosyncrasies and changes from an international perspective the book gathers scientists from Italy Spain France England The Netherlands and Sweden.

The first part of the book will be devoted to the evolution of animal husbandry and commercialization from the end of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twenty-first century. The second part of the book is devoted to the increasing medicalization of this sector with a special focus on the role of veterinarians and the on the increasing uses of antibiotics.

This book presents ten case-studies by eminent scholars dealing with food supply storage and markets from c. 1600 to c. 2000. Together they present a long-term history of the tools to regulate the rhythms and seasonal patterns of the food production and distribution process. How were the vast flows of staple food needed for metropolitan areas organised? What practical difficulties had to be overcome to preserve this food safely? Did people respond to price patterns in search for profit? Were governments successful in imposing regulation? In dealing with these issues the contributing authors adopt different approaches and investigate cases from England Belgium Germany Austria Italy France and Mexico. The focus on the stocks and flows of grains and other foodstuffs raises new questions combining economic social political and environmental issues in the study of agricultural markets and food policies.

This book is a collection of essays on social networks social capital and kinship in historical and contemporary rural societies. They span a wide range of European countries and historical situations from early modern Flanders and Italy to present-day Austria and Armenia. All the essays describe in detail how people on the countryside connected with one another in formal or informal relations. In doing so the authors use and critically discuss methods of historical interpretation social network analysis and econometrics. The book analyses these topics in three steps. First the authors address whether social relations can be of economic use. Secondly they examine the institutional conditions for such a conversion of social into economic capital reconstructing the often unexpected ways in which the economic and social spheres were connected both in ‘pre-modern’ and in ‘modern’ settings. Thirdly they show how political institutions were constructed out of social networks.

Georg Fertig is professor of economic and social history at Halle University in Germany. He has worked extensively on 18th and 19th-century historical demography and agrarian history.

The agrarian policies of fascism have never before been studied from a comparative perspective. This volume offers an up-to-date overview as well as new insights drawn from eight case-studies on Italy Portugal Hungary Germany Austria Spain Japan and Vichy France. The consensus that emerges from them is that the  agricultural and rural policies of fascist regimes tended towards modernization and that many of them resembled initiatives pursued in the post-war decades and the Green Revolution When viewed in this perspective  the fascist era appears less as an aberration and more as an integral part in  the global process of agrarian “modernization” a process whose merits are now being called into question.

This book discusses the relationship between ecology and rural society in fragile environments of the past. Rural land use in these areas entailed an inherent vulnerability for instance because of their poor soils aridity or their location in mountain areas near the sea or in severe climatic conditions. The various chapters analyse how societies coped with this vulnerability by way of the organization of property rights to land. These rights formed the framework which shaped the use of the land and were a main constituent of the relationship between mankind and ecology in these fragile areas. To a large extent therefore they determined - and still determine - the success or failure of rural societies to cope with the challenges posed by their environment. In their turn however these property rights were shaped within a wider social and political context in which political and ideological considerations and special interests also played their part. As a result the organization of these rights was not always geared towards sustainability as demonstrated in these chapters which discuss and analyse long-term developments in several parts of Northwestern Central and Southern Europe.

Bas van Bavel is professor of economic and social history of the Middle Ages head of the section of Economic and Social History and coordinator of the knowledge centre Institutions of the Open Society at Utrecht University (the Netherlands).

Erik Thoen is ordinary professor at Ghent University (Belgium) specialised in rural and environmental history. He is co-ordinator of the CORN history network (Comparative Rural History of the North Sea Area).

This book is a collection of articles studying various aspects of the relationship between town and countryside during the period from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century. The focus is on how towns were supplied with basic foodstuffs and especial attention is paid to England and the Low Countries.

Among the articles several deal with the food-provisioning strategies of some of the major cities within that area - Antwerp Ghent and London - and show among other things that large cities were unable to meet their requirements from local supplies and had consequently to access markets further afield. Important matters given substantial elucidation are transport costs and market integration.

In historiography a great deal of attention has been paid to the influence of towns on the countryside and agriculture and particularly to the relationship between the rise of urban markets and the emergence of commercial agriculture but there is still no clarity about how town-countryside relationships influenced economic growth. One of the merits of this book is that it opens up new avenues to an understanding of the complex relationship between urban markets and commercial agriculture. The approach differs from article to article some scholars homing in on the individual strategies of farms others working more in the macroeconomic tradition. In sum the book is a valuable contribution to both rural and urban historiography and can provide a fresh stimulus to the study of economic relationships between town and countryside.

Piet van Cruyningen is senior researcher at the Wageningen University.

Erik Thoen is professor at the University of Ghent.

Until the late 19th century the food industry was restricted to a few activities usually based on small scale industries. The links between agriculture and food processing were very tight. Due to increased purchasing power population growth and urbanisation the demand for food grew substantially. This was not only the case for basis products as corn and potatoes but also and especially for more expensive quality products as meat fish and dairy produce. These developments generated together with the essential technological innovations the creation and development of modern food processing in specialized shops and factories. In only a few decades these industries transformed from an important complement to the primary agricultural production on the farms to a much comprising industrial business. At the end of the 20th century food processing has evolved into a modern high-tech industry dominated by a few large enterprises offering a wide range of products. This volume aims to turn the spotlight on this often neglected but important link in the food chain.

A continuing ‘cry for the new’ it is said drives present-day consumerism. People are producing and buying new goods in ever-larger quantities. However in the past consumer choices for new products were paralleled and even overlapped by structurally embedded practices such as re-use recycling and resale. Unfortunately far too little is known about these important practices. The ‘birth of a consumer society’ was grounded not only in the appearance of new products and new industries; a similar drive manifested itself in the handling buying and selling of ‘second-hand’.

In this book then the editors confront and integrate historical research on the world of the new and the old. Papers focus on the relationship between material culture and novelty fashion and innovation on the one hand; and/or patina second-hand and re-cycling on the other. Differences existed in the use of old and new products according to time place social and gender groups. By paying close attention to this historical diversity this book explores the changing meanings and motivations of consumption. The geographical coverage will be an urban one. The studied time frame will be ‘the long eighteenth-century’ (from circa 1650 until 1900). It was only then that rapid fashion changes new imports and spreading industrialization changed the existing material culture dramatically. However comparisons crossing time and place do place sweeping ‘modern’ assumptions in perspective. After all: who can decipher how the concepts old and new are changing today with the current popularity of more responsible (social and ecological) forms of consumption and recycling and with vintage-clothing and antique furniture back en vogue?

Bruno Blondé is Research Professor at the Center for Urban History (University of Antwerp). His research interest includes urban networks transport history and the history of consumption.

Natacha Coquery is appointed Professor at the University of Nantes. She has written extensively on the shopping and consumer habits of the French elites.

Jon Stobart is appointed professor at the University of Northampton. He has worked on urban networks and consumption in spatial perspective.

Ilja Van Damme is Postdoctoral Fellow of the Fund for Scientific Research. He has written a PhD on the interrelationships between consumer changes and retail evolutions.

The decade that gave rise to the term ‘the Hungry Forties’ in Europe is often regarded and rightly so as one of deprivation unrest and revolution. Two events the Great Irish Famine and the various political events of ‘1848’ stand out. This book is the first to discuss the subsistence crisis of the 1840s in a truly comparative way. This subsistence crisis may be divided into two rather distinct elements. On the one hand the failure of the potato caused by the new unfamiliar fungus phytophthera infestans which first struck Europe in mid-1845 resulted in a catastrophe in Ireland that killed about one million people and radically transformed its landscape and economy. Poor potato crops in 1845 and in the following years also resulted in significant excess mortality elsewhere in Europe. On the other hand this period and 1846 in particular was also one of poor wheat and rye harvests throughout much of Europe. Failure of the grain harvest alone rarely resulted in a subsistence crisis but the combination of poor potato and grain harvests in a single place was a lethal one. Connections between the local and the global between the economic and the political and between the rural and the industrial make the crisis of the late 1840s a multi-layered one.

This book offers a comparative perspective on the causes and the effects of what is sometimes considered as the ‘last’ European subsistence crisis. It begins with an extensive introduction that treats the topic in comparative perspective. The subsistence crisis had its most catastrophic impact in Ireland and three chapters in the current volume are concerned mainly with that country. A fourth chapter uses price data to shed comparative perspective on the crisis while the remaining nine chapters are case studies covering countries ranging from Sweden to Spain and from Scotland to Prussia. Throughout the contributors focus on a range of common themes such as the extent of harvest deficits the functioning of food markets fertility and mortality and public action at local and national levels.

Cormac Ó Gráda is professor of economics at University College Dublin. He has worked extensively on the history of famines in Ireland and worldwide.

Richard Paping teaches economic and social history and economics at University of Groningen. He has done extensive research on developments in standard-of-living economy and demography in the Netherlands.

Eric Vanhaute is professor social and economic history and world history at Ghent University. He has mainly published on the history of the rural society and of labour markets in Flanders and outside.

Table of contents:

Eric Vanhaute Richard Paping and Cormac Ó Gráda The European Subsistence Crisis of 1845-1850: a Comparative Perspective

PART I - The Irish Famine in an International Perspective

Cormac Ó Gráda Ireland’s Great Famine. An overview - Mary E. Daly Something Old and Something New. Recent Research on the Great Irish Famine - Peter M. Solar The Crisis of the Late 1840s. What Can Be Learned From Prices? - Peter Gray The European Food Crisis and the Relief of Irish Famine 1845-1850

PART II - A Potato Famine Outside Ireland?

Tom M. Devine Why the Highlands Did Not Starve. Ireland and Highland Scotland During the Potato Famine - Eric Vanhaute “So Worthy an Example to Ireland”. The Subsistence and Industrial Crisis of 1845-1850 in Flanders - Richard Paping and Vincent Tassenaar The Consequences of the Potato Disease in the Netherlands 1845-1860: a Regional Approach - Hans H. Bass The Crisis in Prussia - Gunter Mahlerwein The Consequences of the Potato Blight in South Germany - Nadine Vivier The Crisis in France. A Memorable Crisis But Not a Potato Crisis - Jean Michel Chevet and Cormac Ó Gráda Crisis: What Crisis? Prices and Mortality in Mid-Nineteenth Century France - Pedro Díaz Marín Subsistence Crisis and Popular Protest in Spain. The Motines of 1847- Ingrid Henriksen A Disaster Seen From the Periphery. The Case of Denmark - Carl-Johan Gadd On the Edge of a Crisis: Sweden in the 1840s