Coping with Scarcity: a Comparison of Dearth Policies in Three Regions in Northwestern Europe in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries.

Jessica Dijkman

doi:10.18352/TSEG2017.3.DIJK

Coping with Scarcity: a Comparison of Dearth Policies in Three Regions in Northwestern Europe in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries.

Authors

Jessica Dijkman Utrecht University, History Department

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18352/TSEG2017.3.DIJK

Keywords:

Food crises, dearth policy, grain trade, public grain stocks, late middle ages, northwestern Europe

Abstract

This article compares dearth policies developing in three regions in northwestern Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries: East Anglia, coastal Picardy and Upper Normandy, and Holland. Based on a survey of existing research, it examines the reactions of authorities to food crises and the factors shaping these reactions. Two elements of dearth policy are investigated: restrictions on the grain trade on the one hand, and public grain stocks on the other. The article shows how social, political and economic characteristics of each region affected the way in which the authorities attempted to manage food crises, but also demonstrates that the exigencies of dearth were strong enough to partly overcome differences.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

Jessica Dijkman, Utrecht University, History Department

Jessica Dijkman (1960) is an assistant professor in economic history at Utrecht University. Her research focuses on the medieval and early modern era. Currently she studies the way societies in late medieval and early modern Europe coped with food crises and famines. In earlier research projects she investigated commodity market institutions in medieval Holland and compared the organization of labour, particularly craftsmanship, in the Middle Ages in Europe and the Islamic world.

Downloads

Published

2018-01-23

How to Cite

Dijkman, J. (2018). Coping with Scarcity: a Comparison of Dearth Policies in Three Regions in Northwestern Europe in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries. TSEG - The Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History, 14(3), 5–30. https://doi.org/10.18352/TSEG2017.3.DIJK

Download Citation

Issue

Vol. 14 No. 3 (2017)

Section

Research Article

License

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

a) Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.

b) Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.

c) Authors are permitted to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process.

Authors are explicitly encouraged to deposit their published article in their institutional repository.