• dr. Edda Frankot

• Michael Braddick (University of Sheffield)
• Mabel Winter (University of Sheffield)

Pre-modern Europe was as familiar with food crises as the developing world is today. However, some societies were better at preventing such crises from growing into catastrophic famines than others. The aim of this project is to discover why. Nowadays, famines are seen as distribution problems, rather than the result of aggregate shortages. Therefore, the project focuses on the impact of two sets of institutions: on the one hand market regulations that determined exchange entitlements, such as bread price regulation, export prohibitions or attempts to control speculation, and on the other non-market mechanisms governing the distribution of scarce food supplies, such as charity organizations and informal networks of patronage. The contribution of these two institutional arrangements is contrasted with the impact of international market integration as an important non-institutional factor.

Institutional arrangements are the result of historical processes, shaped by social and political forces in society. That is why the project’s methodology concentrates on long-term processes and a comparative perspective. The project studies developments in three regions in the period 1300-1800: Holland, eastern England and north-western France. For each of these regions the project includes a reconstruction of the occurrence of famines, an assessment of the development of international grain market integration, and an analysis of the evolution of mechanisms for market regulation and non-market distribution based on case studies in an urban and a rural context. The main hypothesis to be tested is that success in warding off famine was not achieved until both institutional and non-institutional conditions had been fulfilled: the opportunity to select, from this range, the best strategies increased flexibility and thus the ability to cope with food crises.

The pre-industrial era was characterized by sharp differences in economic growth, both spatially and chronologically. This research project aims to clarify some of the underlying causes of such differences by focusing on the institutional organization of the exchange of land, labour, capital and goods, since this critically influences the allocation of scarce resources and thus the potential for economic growth. In order to better understand why these institutions acquired their specific and often highly distinct nature, their development will be studied in the context of the socio-political organization of the area. It is hypothesized that the emergence of a favourable institutional organization requires a power balance between social organizations and actors, creating dynamism and flexibility. If, however, this balance becomes disrupted, with one social group becoming dominant, the existing institutional organization of exchange, which apparently serves the interests of this dominant group, becomes locked-in, leading to the stagnation of the area. This hypothesis will be tested for the most notable pre-industrial cases of economic growth in western Eurasia, which are also exemplary of different types of socio-political systems, namely: Iraq in the early Middle Ages, Italy in the high Middle Ages and the Low Countries in the late Middle Ages/early modern period. The project will investigate how in these three areas such social organizations as the state, foundations, guilds and households shaped and applied the rules of exchange, and how the often diverging arrangements and their functioning were influenced by the relative power of the actors and interest groups involved. The rise and relative decline of these areas, which successively operated at the cutting-edge of economic growth, form excellent cases with which to test the hypothesis by means of a comparative analysis, enabling us to make an innovative contribution to the debate about the causes of geographical differences in wealth and poverty.

• prof. dr. Bas van Bavel

The research has reconstructed, analyzed and to a large extent explained the organization and development of markets in Holland. The development of markets was a slow and intermittent process, over many centuries, taking its shape under the interaction of various social groups and organizations, often clashing in pursuit of their own interests. This analysis for the land and capital markets also revealed the strong links that existed between the two. One of the most crucial results of this analysis is the insight gained in the role of authorities in the development of this institutional framework, and in economic development in general. This role can be negative, as often argued for France and many other parts of Europe, but in Holland it turns out to have been mostly positive. This applies particularly to the role of authorities on the local level of the village and the city, the latter often dominated by merchants, but also on a regional or central level.

            The explanation for this exceptional situation appears to lie in the balance between different parties involved in political decision-making, both political bodies and organizations, and social groups, precluding dominance by way of power and necessitating these parties to co-operate or at least to arrive at a rational compromise. In its turn, this situation appears to be rooted in the period of occupation of Holland, i.e. the high Middle Ages, as Holland was colonized by free peasants under a territorial lord, creating a situation of exceptional freedom and a near-absence of non-economic force, with the nobility gaining only a weak position, in contrast to most other parts of Western Europe.

            This situation evolved at a regional level, and the regional analysis forms one of the innovative aspects of the research. It highlights the regional aspect in social and institutional organization, and thus also in its effects on economic growth, and it analyses the formation of this regional constellation, thus offering a counterweight to the emphasis usually put on national entitities. Innovative is also the interdisciplinary approach, linking insights from fields usually separated by sharp academic boundaries, such as the history of law and religion, antropology, and political, social and economic history.

            There is also innovation in the methodology employed, in particular in the empirical tests designed to analyze the link between institutional change, the rise of markets and economic growth in the later Middle Ages, to be further elaborated in the remaining part of the research period. The analysis undertaken up to now show that already in the late Middle Ages Holland possessed a favourable institutional organization of markets, even compared to advanced regions sich as Flanders and England, allowing for a strong rise of markets, low interest rates and a high mobility of land, all stimulating economic growth. Lastly, by linking this organization to the constellation emerging during the occupation of Holland in the high Middle Ages, the research offers an empirical analysis of path-dependency, and a contribution to the theory in this field.

• prof. dr. Bas van Bavel

• dr Erika Kuijpers