... Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: Record Details. Record ID, 698225. R... more ... Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: Record Details. Record ID, 698225. Record Type, conference. Author, Erik Thoen [801000354816] - Ghent University Erik.Thoen@UGent. be; Tim Soens. Title, Mais où sont les tourbières d'antan? ...
The historical link between wealth, food and health is a highly complex one. In this respect one ... more The historical link between wealth, food and health is a highly complex one. In this respect one of the most influential historical narratives has been developed for the late medieval period. In the 14th century, demographic decline would have resulted in “Das Goldene Zeitalter des Handwerks”: labour had become scarce, and nominal wages rose while prices remained stable or decreased. As a consequence, diet and nutrition intake would have improved for large parts of the population, peasants as well as urban wage-earners. Instead of the monotonous grain-based diet of the 12th and 13th centuries, food became more varied. Especially meat and fish, sources of proteins and iron, became affordable for larger parts of the population - Europe was more than ever turning into “l’Europe carnivore” eating up to 100 kilograms of meat per capita a year in the 15th century according to Wilhelm Abel . In recent years both the regional variation of this diet improvement and its presumed positive impact on health and mortality have been questioned in the historiography. The link between diet improvement, disease and mortality in the wake of the Black Death turns out to be an uncertain one, with important regional variations, and biased by epidemiologic, environmental and social conditions . As to the supposed increase in meat consumption, Massimo Montanari advocated a more nuanced approach, indicating important regional and chronological divergences within late medieval Europe, as well as the lack of evidence for increased overall meat consumption on the late medieval countryside: in many rural regions beef-eating remained uncommon and both the extension of animal husbandry and the booming international oxen trade were more than ever oriented towards the urban markets . In this paper we will take up Montanari’s remarks for one of the core regions of “L’Europe carnivore”: the county of Flanders. For the towns of the densely populated and urbanized Southern Low Countries, a significant increase in meat consumption from the late medieval period on has already been noticed by Herman Van Der Wee in 1966 . However the main problems remain unsolved: did late medieval diet indeed improve for large numbers of the both the urban and rural populations? We can further question whether such ‘improvement’ consisted solely of an increase in the quantities of meat consumed or conversely, whether more qualitative changes were also visible. Finally, it remains an open question whether the improved nutrition intake was sufficient to change health conditions and mortality on a more than individual base. In what follows we will concentrate on meat consumption, although the presumed nutritional changes of the late medieval period also concerned other foodstuffs like fish, cheese and butter. We will try to argue that an ‘overall’ increase in meat consumption in late medieval Flanders is highly problematic. Regional and social variations in food consumption were often more significant than ‘general’ chronological evolutions. As we will see, this wide variety of diets can only be explained by linking food consumption to regional economic and environmental conditions . In our Flemish test-case this will be illustrated by comparing the inland part of the region, where a more traditional small-size family survival economy had developed and where animal husbandry was focused on manure and dairy production, and not on private meat consumption, with the coastal area, where extensive and commercial cattle-breeding developed from the late medieval period on.
... Title: Doel en Antwerpen: de relatie tussen polderdorp en metropool gezien vanuit de landscha... more ... Title: Doel en Antwerpen: de relatie tussen polderdorp en metropool gezien vanuit de landschapsgeschiedenis. Author: Soens, Tim. Date: 2009. Citation: Het Land van Beveren, 52:3(2009), p. 130-155. Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10067/816200151162165141. Files in this ...
... Record Type, conference. Author, Iason Jongepier [002004015451] - Ghent University Iason.Jong... more ... Record Type, conference. Author, Iason Jongepier [002004015451] - Ghent University Iason.Jongepier@UGent.be; Veerle Van Eetvelde [801001063926] - Ghent University Veerle.VanEetvelde@UGent.be; Tim Soens [801001340677] - Ghent University biblio@ugent. ...
... Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: Record Details. Record ID, 698225. R... more ... Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: Record Details. Record ID, 698225. Record Type, conference. Author, Erik Thoen [801000354816] - Ghent University Erik.Thoen@UGent. be; Tim Soens. Title, Mais où sont les tourbières d'antan? ...
The historical link between wealth, food and health is a highly complex one. In this respect one ... more The historical link between wealth, food and health is a highly complex one. In this respect one of the most influential historical narratives has been developed for the late medieval period. In the 14th century, demographic decline would have resulted in “Das Goldene Zeitalter des Handwerks”: labour had become scarce, and nominal wages rose while prices remained stable or decreased. As a consequence, diet and nutrition intake would have improved for large parts of the population, peasants as well as urban wage-earners. Instead of the monotonous grain-based diet of the 12th and 13th centuries, food became more varied. Especially meat and fish, sources of proteins and iron, became affordable for larger parts of the population - Europe was more than ever turning into “l’Europe carnivore” eating up to 100 kilograms of meat per capita a year in the 15th century according to Wilhelm Abel . In recent years both the regional variation of this diet improvement and its presumed positive impact on health and mortality have been questioned in the historiography. The link between diet improvement, disease and mortality in the wake of the Black Death turns out to be an uncertain one, with important regional variations, and biased by epidemiologic, environmental and social conditions . As to the supposed increase in meat consumption, Massimo Montanari advocated a more nuanced approach, indicating important regional and chronological divergences within late medieval Europe, as well as the lack of evidence for increased overall meat consumption on the late medieval countryside: in many rural regions beef-eating remained uncommon and both the extension of animal husbandry and the booming international oxen trade were more than ever oriented towards the urban markets . In this paper we will take up Montanari’s remarks for one of the core regions of “L’Europe carnivore”: the county of Flanders. For the towns of the densely populated and urbanized Southern Low Countries, a significant increase in meat consumption from the late medieval period on has already been noticed by Herman Van Der Wee in 1966 . However the main problems remain unsolved: did late medieval diet indeed improve for large numbers of the both the urban and rural populations? We can further question whether such ‘improvement’ consisted solely of an increase in the quantities of meat consumed or conversely, whether more qualitative changes were also visible. Finally, it remains an open question whether the improved nutrition intake was sufficient to change health conditions and mortality on a more than individual base. In what follows we will concentrate on meat consumption, although the presumed nutritional changes of the late medieval period also concerned other foodstuffs like fish, cheese and butter. We will try to argue that an ‘overall’ increase in meat consumption in late medieval Flanders is highly problematic. Regional and social variations in food consumption were often more significant than ‘general’ chronological evolutions. As we will see, this wide variety of diets can only be explained by linking food consumption to regional economic and environmental conditions . In our Flemish test-case this will be illustrated by comparing the inland part of the region, where a more traditional small-size family survival economy had developed and where animal husbandry was focused on manure and dairy production, and not on private meat consumption, with the coastal area, where extensive and commercial cattle-breeding developed from the late medieval period on.
... Title: Doel en Antwerpen: de relatie tussen polderdorp en metropool gezien vanuit de landscha... more ... Title: Doel en Antwerpen: de relatie tussen polderdorp en metropool gezien vanuit de landschapsgeschiedenis. Author: Soens, Tim. Date: 2009. Citation: Het Land van Beveren, 52:3(2009), p. 130-155. Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10067/816200151162165141. Files in this ...
... Record Type, conference. Author, Iason Jongepier [002004015451] - Ghent University Iason.Jong... more ... Record Type, conference. Author, Iason Jongepier [002004015451] - Ghent University Iason.Jongepier@UGent.be; Veerle Van Eetvelde [801001063926] - Ghent University Veerle.VanEetvelde@UGent.be; Tim Soens [801001340677] - Ghent University biblio@ugent. ...
Met dit boek wordt voor het eerst een afzonderlijke studie gewijd aan de vroege geschiedenis van ... more Met dit boek wordt voor het eerst een afzonderlijke studie gewijd aan de vroege geschiedenis van de Vlaamse waterschappen. Anders dan Nederland wordt Vlaanderen doorgaans niet geassocieerd met een rijk verleden van dijkenbouw en waterbeheersing. Toch stond net de Vlaamse kustvlakte aan de wieg van heel wat belangrijke organisatorische, technologische en financiële innovaties op het vlak van waterstaat, met een duidelijk versnellingsmoment tussen de late dertiende en de zestiende eeuw. In die periode werd de Vlaamse kustvlakte – net als vandaag – geconfronteerd met toenemende wateroverlast en stijgende overstromingsrisico’s, met de ondergang van tientallen dorpen en duizenden hectaren polder- en veenland tot gevolg. Rijkelijk puttend uit het unieke bronnenmateriaal nagelaten door de waterschappen, toont Tim Soens aan dat de grote ecologische en waterstaatkundige problemen in de laatmiddeleeuwse kustgebieden onlosmakelijk verbonden zijn met structurele veranderingen in bestuur en samenleving. In deze cruciale eeuwen werd in de Vlaamse kustvlakte immers de basis gelegd voor een grootschalige en uiterst marktgerichte landbouw. Anderzijds was ook de toenemende bestuurlijke machtsconcentratie zowel binnen als buiten de waterschappen vaak nefast voor het in stand houden van een duurzaam evenwicht tussen mens en natuur in het Vlaamse kustgebied.
Since the turn of the Millennium, major changes in economic history practice such as the dominanc... more 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.
Global concerns over climate change and associated impacts of the so-called Anthropocene, convinc... more Global concerns over climate change and associated impacts of the so-called Anthropocene, convinced an increasing number of historians to reconsider the role of natural variability and ‘natural’ hazards and disasters in the past. Whether discussing the production of hazards or the societal responses they provoked, historians increasingly adopt the language of environmental and disaster studies, with their clear focus on systems, how systems get disturbed, are able to absorb change or instead reach a tipping point or threshold followed by qualitative change. But is systemic vulnerability or resilience really the problem when discussing natural hazards and disasters in the past? Exploring the history of coastal flood disasters in the North Sea Area before 1800 AD, I argue that past societies might have been quite resembling in their overall systemic resilience to natural hazards and disasters. Mostly through absorption, and sometimes through flexible adaptation, societies were perfectly able to overcome even the worst flood disasters. Notwithstanding this overall resilience however, societies varied greatly in the way individual people or groups of people were put at risk of suffering from a natural hazard, seeing their persons, their material assets, or their livelihoods threatened. While the system was resilient, people sometimes (though not always) proved tremendously vulnerable. Concluding this paper, a plea is launched for a renewed focus on the sociology of disaster victims in the past (rather than on the overall resilience of societies).
Cambridge University Press (available now in hard copy and open access), 2020
This monograph provides an overview of research into disasters from a historical perspective, mak... more This monograph provides an overview of research into disasters from a historical perspective, making two new contributions. First, it introduces the field of 'disaster studies' to history, showing how we can use history to better understand how societies deal with shocks and hazards and their potentially disastrous outcomes. Despite growing recognition of the importance of historical depth by scholars investigating disasters, the temporal dimensions of disasters have been underexploited up to now. Moreover, the historical record sometimes enables us to make a long-term reconstruction of the social, economic and cultural effects of hazards and shocks simply not possible in contemporary disaster studies material. We can therefore use 'the past' as a laboratory to test hypotheses of relevance to the present in a careful way. History lends itself towards this end because of the opportunity it offers to identify distinct and divergent social and environmental patterns and trajectories. We can compare the drivers and constraints of societal responses to shocks spatially and chronologically, and therefore enrich our understanding of responses to stress today.
To adequately respond to crises, adaptive governance is crucial, but sometimes institutional adap... more 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 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.
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