Jean-Pierre Devroey
My research is in the line of a crucial tradition in Belgian historical research: the field of the economic and social history of the Early Middle Ages, reaching back as far as Henri Pirenne (d. 1935), François-Louis Ganshof (d.) and Adriaan Verhulst (d. 2002), with whom I had a very close academic relationship. My first article (1977), subtitled ‘Crisis or growth of the early medieval economy?’ was one of the very first to break with the idea, then widely taken as granted, of an economic decline of Western Europe in the Carolingian era. These first research hypotheses were fulfilled by case studies dedicated to the organization of the transportation and the transfer of staple goods in two Carolingian monasteries, Prüm (1976) and Saint-Germain-des-Prés (1984). With Pierre Toubert’s works on Italy (1983), these works framed the picture of a Carolingian world widely opened to exchanges.
I am the author of the editions and commentaries of two majors economic sources, the ‘Polyptychs’ of the abbey of St-Remi of Rheims and Lobbes, in Belgian Hainaut. These were published from my doctoral thesis (1982) and demonstrate technical scholarship and methodological skill, making them vital sources for the early medieval agrarian economy of Francia available to a learned and postgraduate audience, which opened up an understanding of the social arrangements undertaken to exploit and manage the big estates. These editions played a key role in a wider international collective historiographical enterprise, which in recent decades has transformed our understanding of the Early Middle Ages. Réflexions sur l’économie des premiers temps carolingiens, published in the key Franco-German journal Francia (1985) was a very early rethinking of the Carolingian period understood as a time of major economic growth. This point of view is regarded today, 25 years later, as orthodox, but was certainly not in 1985. It imposes the idea of the economy of Carolingian Northern Francia as flexible, dynamic, but also highly complex and variable. These views were completed and strengthened in articles published in the authoritative Spoleto series: Courants et réseaux d'échange dans l’économie franque (1993), L'espace des échanges économiques (2003), and Città, campagne, sistema curtense (2009). Several of these papers entered the international bibliography, leading to the publication of a much-noticed compendium in the well-known Variorum “Collected Studies” series in 1993.
Since my early papers on medieval demography (1977, 1981), the peasant family has been the core of my interests. These first researches showed the preeminence of familial structures grounded upon the single conjugal family in the Early Middle Ages. Our hypothesis of an overall and unequal demographic growth in the IXth century, having its starting point in the estates located in the oldest inhabited zones, has been picked up by Toubert in his synthesis chapter of the History of Family Life (1987). Mixing these results with that of researchers in other disciplines, this qualitative demography offers new perspectives on the living standards and mobility of peasant populations (2006). My work on the history of gender, exemplified in papers ranging from 1999 and 2000 (On men and women in early medieval serfdom, Past & Present), opened a debate about the place of women in earlier medieval economies and encompasses the moral and cultural along with the economic.
Preliminary papers (1989-1990), together with the co-authored books of 1990 (on spelt) and 1995 (on rye) written in close collaboration between historians and other scientists (agronomists, botanists, climatologists, etc.), have demonstrated that the various cereal crops had to be studied together if the ‘cerealisation of Medieval Europe’ is to be properly understood. In the early medieval centuries, the cultivation of rye and oats enabled hitherto unproductive land to become so. Spelt, because its easy preservation in the husk, was a highly significant crop. As I suggested, a conjunction of political and climatic changes (gradual warming) led in the tenth and early eleventh centuries to a definitive turning to wheat as the major crop, and a concomitant gradual decline of spelt. These ideas have been picked up by M. Mitterauer for their central place in the transformation of the European Economy during the Early Middle Ages, in Why Europe? (English translation, 2010). The solidifying of lordships in Western Europe generally and lords’ capital investment in mill, intensified the trend to cereals that needed milling, with peasants forced to pay for that lordly service. It is eco-history, combined with economic and social history.
In the field of political and social institutions, I have additionally made a contribution to what became a topic of intense and current interest: the history of the typology of the manorial structures and of the forms of the land lordship. On the much-debated topic of taxation (public or "private
Address: Archives & Bibliothèques CP 180
Université libre de Bruxelles
50, avenue F.D. Roosevelt
B-1050 Brussels Belgium
I am the author of the editions and commentaries of two majors economic sources, the ‘Polyptychs’ of the abbey of St-Remi of Rheims and Lobbes, in Belgian Hainaut. These were published from my doctoral thesis (1982) and demonstrate technical scholarship and methodological skill, making them vital sources for the early medieval agrarian economy of Francia available to a learned and postgraduate audience, which opened up an understanding of the social arrangements undertaken to exploit and manage the big estates. These editions played a key role in a wider international collective historiographical enterprise, which in recent decades has transformed our understanding of the Early Middle Ages. Réflexions sur l’économie des premiers temps carolingiens, published in the key Franco-German journal Francia (1985) was a very early rethinking of the Carolingian period understood as a time of major economic growth. This point of view is regarded today, 25 years later, as orthodox, but was certainly not in 1985. It imposes the idea of the economy of Carolingian Northern Francia as flexible, dynamic, but also highly complex and variable. These views were completed and strengthened in articles published in the authoritative Spoleto series: Courants et réseaux d'échange dans l’économie franque (1993), L'espace des échanges économiques (2003), and Città, campagne, sistema curtense (2009). Several of these papers entered the international bibliography, leading to the publication of a much-noticed compendium in the well-known Variorum “Collected Studies” series in 1993.
Since my early papers on medieval demography (1977, 1981), the peasant family has been the core of my interests. These first researches showed the preeminence of familial structures grounded upon the single conjugal family in the Early Middle Ages. Our hypothesis of an overall and unequal demographic growth in the IXth century, having its starting point in the estates located in the oldest inhabited zones, has been picked up by Toubert in his synthesis chapter of the History of Family Life (1987). Mixing these results with that of researchers in other disciplines, this qualitative demography offers new perspectives on the living standards and mobility of peasant populations (2006). My work on the history of gender, exemplified in papers ranging from 1999 and 2000 (On men and women in early medieval serfdom, Past & Present), opened a debate about the place of women in earlier medieval economies and encompasses the moral and cultural along with the economic.
Preliminary papers (1989-1990), together with the co-authored books of 1990 (on spelt) and 1995 (on rye) written in close collaboration between historians and other scientists (agronomists, botanists, climatologists, etc.), have demonstrated that the various cereal crops had to be studied together if the ‘cerealisation of Medieval Europe’ is to be properly understood. In the early medieval centuries, the cultivation of rye and oats enabled hitherto unproductive land to become so. Spelt, because its easy preservation in the husk, was a highly significant crop. As I suggested, a conjunction of political and climatic changes (gradual warming) led in the tenth and early eleventh centuries to a definitive turning to wheat as the major crop, and a concomitant gradual decline of spelt. These ideas have been picked up by M. Mitterauer for their central place in the transformation of the European Economy during the Early Middle Ages, in Why Europe? (English translation, 2010). The solidifying of lordships in Western Europe generally and lords’ capital investment in mill, intensified the trend to cereals that needed milling, with peasants forced to pay for that lordly service. It is eco-history, combined with economic and social history.
In the field of political and social institutions, I have additionally made a contribution to what became a topic of intense and current interest: the history of the typology of the manorial structures and of the forms of the land lordship. On the much-debated topic of taxation (public or "private
Address: Archives & Bibliothèques CP 180
Université libre de Bruxelles
50, avenue F.D. Roosevelt
B-1050 Brussels Belgium
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Books by Jean-Pierre Devroey
L’œuvre présentée ici méritait une triple révision scientifique. Il convenait en effet (1) de la restituer en tant qu’exercice de résistance quotidienne, mais aussi d’analyse de la diversité des parcours historiques des nations européennes – parcours qui avaient abouti à la guerre ; (2) d’éclairer ses conditions de production scientifique ; et (3) d’en restaurer le texte inachevé et inabouti, qui avait pâti de nombreuses coupes et révisions, ainsi que de l’accumulation, lors de son édition, d’une multitude d’erreurs factuelles concernant tant les événements et les personnages historiques, que les localisations et les datations.
Traduite en anglais, en néerlandais, en allemand, en italien, en japonais et en croate, et régulièrement rééditée, l’Histoire de l’Europe est un classique de l’histoire intellectuelle du xxe siècle. Cette nouvelle édition inclut plus de soixante pages restées inédites, rétablit le texte des carnets de captivité et y ajoute des informations factuelles dont l’auteur ne disposait pas lors de sa rédaction. Elle est complétée par la réédition des Souvenirs de captivité en Allemagne (mars 1916-novembre 1918), publiés par Henri Pirenne en 1920, qui restitue le climat et les conditions d’existence du savant durant sa déportation en Allemagne.
Papers by Jean-Pierre Devroey
L’œuvre présentée ici méritait une triple révision scientifique. Il convenait en effet (1) de la restituer en tant qu’exercice de résistance quotidienne, mais aussi d’analyse de la diversité des parcours historiques des nations européennes – parcours qui avaient abouti à la guerre ; (2) d’éclairer ses conditions de production scientifique ; et (3) d’en restaurer le texte inachevé et inabouti, qui avait pâti de nombreuses coupes et révisions, ainsi que de l’accumulation, lors de son édition, d’une multitude d’erreurs factuelles concernant tant les événements et les personnages historiques, que les localisations et les datations.
Traduite en anglais, en néerlandais, en allemand, en italien, en japonais et en croate, et régulièrement rééditée, l’Histoire de l’Europe est un classique de l’histoire intellectuelle du xxe siècle. Cette nouvelle édition inclut plus de soixante pages restées inédites, rétablit le texte des carnets de captivité et y ajoute des informations factuelles dont l’auteur ne disposait pas lors de sa rédaction. Elle est complétée par la réédition des Souvenirs de captivité en Allemagne (mars 1916-novembre 1918), publiés par Henri Pirenne en 1920, qui restitue le climat et les conditions d’existence du savant durant sa déportation en Allemagne.
Link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQxhUnPPyAk