Urban Agriculture and Urban Food Provisioning in Pre-1850 Europe: Towards a Research Agenda

“Feeding the city” has been a prominent topic in historical literature for many decades. Most of this literature, however, remained based on the assumption that cities above a certain population level are essentially fed through the market, with rural agricultural surpluses being exchanged for the products of urban industry and trade. Stimulated by recent articulations of alternative ways of urban food provision- ing, this article reconsiders the importance of urban agriculture in European towns before 1850 from the perspective of “urban food alternatives”. The scattered evidence suggests that in many European towns a significant part of the urban population was directly involved in food production, but also that important differences persisted both between towns and between households in a town. While traditional interpre- tations – for instance, those linking urban agriculture with small towns, poverty, or the rise of commercial horticulture – fail to explain this spatial, social, and temporal variation, a better understanding of the success and decline of urban agriculture in dif- ferent market configurations and in different social contexts might offer an important historical contribution to present-day debates on the viability and social dynamics of such urban food alternatives.“Feeding the city” has been a prominent topic in historical literature for many decades. Most of this literature, however, remained based on the assumption that cities above a certain population level are essentially fed through the market, with rural agricultural surpluses being exchanged for the products of urban industry and trade. Stimulated by recent articulations of alternative ways of urban food provision- ing, this article reconsiders the importance of urban agriculture in European towns before 1850 from the perspective of “urban food alternatives”. The scattered evidence suggests that in many European towns a significant part of the urban population was directly involved in food production, but also that important differences persisted both between towns and between households in a town. While traditional interpre- tations – for instance, those linking urban agriculture with small towns, poverty, or the rise of commercial horticulture – fail to explain this spatial, social, and temporal variation, a better understanding of the success and decline of urban agriculture in dif- ferent market configurations and in different social contexts might offer an important historical contribution to present-day debates on the viability and social dynamics of such urban food alternatives

Historische Atlas van Nederland: Hoe ons land in 2000 jaar is ingericht

Review of a book written by Reinout Rutte with the cooperation of Everhard Korthals Altes, Yvonne van Mil and Pieter van der Weele      Bespreking van een boek van Reinout Rutte met medewerking van Everhard Korthals Altes, Yvonne van Mil en Pieter van der Weel

De spade in de dijk. Waterbeheer en rurale samenleving in de Vlaamse kustvlakte (1280-1580)

The Spade in de Dijk is the first synthesis on the organisation of water management in Coastal Flanders during the later Middle Ages. Based on the unique archival evidence produced by local water boards (wateringen), large landowners and local and regional authorities, Tim Soens argues for the occurrence of profound changes in coastal water management in the later Middle Ages. Water management gradually became less inclusive, investments lowered, and flood risk increased. This evolution was triggered by the social transition from a peasant society of land-owning smallholders to a society of absentee landlords and large tenant farmers

History and the Social Sciences

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, not only 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