Reaping the Returns of a Runaway Economy

Seamen’s Wages in the Ostend Merchant Marine, 1775-1785

Author(s)

  • Stan Pannier VLIZ/KU Leuven

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.52024/51hjrx86

Keywords:

maritime history, economic history, wages, merchant marine, austrian netherlands, southern netherlands

Abstract

Over the past few decades, economic and maritime historians have shown growing interest in the wages earned by regular seamen in merchant shipping. Due to a lack of sources, however, the composition and size of these earnings remain an elusive topic, as are the economic, demographic, and political processes that shaped them. In this article, I conduct a micro-history of seamen’s earnings in Ostend’s merchant marine during the early 1780s, a period of commercial uptick in the principal port town of the Austrian Netherlands. I show how a confluence of wartime circumstances and domestic economic policies led to extraordinary wage levels. From a micro point of view, I show how individual seamen reaped the returns of this runaway port economy by successfully wrangling over wages and harnessing the mobility of their profession, both between and within ports. As such, this article provides a perspective on wage-formation from a neutral and small maritime power, as well as a novel history from below of Ostend’s boom years.

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Author Biography

  • Stan Pannier, VLIZ/KU Leuven

    Stan Pannier (1994) studied history and economics at Ghent University. Since 2019, he has been affiliated with the KU Leuven and the Flanders Marine Institute (vliz) in Ostend, where he conducts research on the maritime history of the Southern Netherlands during the early modern period, with special attention for the eighteenth century. In 2020, he obtained PhD funding from the Research Foundation Flanders (fwo) to examine the trade with West and Central Africa from the Austrian Netherlands in the late 1770s and early 1780s. His most recent work, “From Crisis Management towards a Mediterranean Model? Maritime Quarantine in the Austrian Netherlands, 1715-95”, has been published in Low Countries Historical Review. “Habsburg in Havana. Foreign participation in the Spanish empire. The slaving licence of Romberg & Consors of Ghent, 1780-1790” and “Marital cooperation and economic agency of maritime women. Evidence from the eighteenth-century Southern Netherlands” are forthcoming.

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Published

2024-12-16

Issue

Section

Research Article

How to Cite

Pannier, S. (2024). Reaping the Returns of a Runaway Economy: Seamen’s Wages in the Ostend Merchant Marine, 1775-1785. TSEG - The Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History, 21(3), 41-70. https://doi.org/10.52024/51hjrx86