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Vulnerabilities avoided and resilience built. Collective action, poor relief and diversification as weapons of the weak (The Campine, Belgium, 1350–1845)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 July 2022

Maïka De Keyzer  and
Eline Van Onacker
Maïka De Keyzer*
Affiliation:
KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
Eline Van Onacker
Affiliation:
University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

In this article we analyse the root causes of the high level of resilience of one particular peasant society: the Campine area. While peasant societies have often been deemed one of the most vulnerable societies in the face of crises and disasters, because of their lack of capital, technology and power, we show that peasant communities possessed some important weapons of the weak. Thanks to strong property rights, collective action, a diverse economic portfolio and inclusive poor relief institutions the Campine peasants were able to weather both the late medieval crises, harvest failures as well as the threat of sand drifts between the fourteenth and nineteenth century.

French abstract

French Abstract

Notre article explore les causes profondes du haut niveau de résilience d'une société paysanne bien particulière : la Campine. Alors que les sociétés paysannes ont souvent été considérées comme faisant partie des plus vulnérables face aux crises et catastrophes, en raison de leur manque de capital, de technologie et de pouvoir, nous montrons que les communautés paysannes possédaient certaines armes spécifiques d'importance aux faibles. Grâce à de forts droits de propriété, une solide action collective, un portefeuille économique diversifié et des institutions inclusives de secours aux pauvres, les paysans campinois ont pu résister à la fois à la crise médiévale tardive, aux mauvaises récoltes et aux menaces d'ensablement éolien, entre le XIVe et le XIXe siècle.

German abstract

German Abstract

In diesem Beitrag analysieren wir die tieferen Gründe für die hochgradige Widerstandskraft einer bestimmten Bauerngesellschaft: derjenigen in der Region De Kempen. Während Bauerngesellschaften angesichts von Krisen und Katastrophen und wegen ihres Mangels an Kapital, Technologie und Energie häufig als besonders verletzliche Gesellschaften angesehen worden sind, zeigen wir, dass Bauerngesellschaften durchaus einige wichtige Waffen der Schwachen besaßen. Dank starker Eigentumsrechte, kollektiver Aktionsmöglichkeiten, einer vielseitigen ökonomischen Ausrichtung und inklusiver Armenunterstützungseinrichtungen waren die Bauern in De Kempen in der Lage, sowohl die spätmittelalterliche Krise und Ernteausfälle zu überstehen als auch der Gefahr von Sandverwehungen zu trotzen, die zwischen dem 14. und dem 19. Jahrhundert auftraten.

Keywords

VulnerabilitycrisisLow Countries
Type
Research Article
Information
Continuity and Change , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , May 2022 , pp. 13 - 42
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

Notes

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13 Soens, ‘Threatened by the Sea’.

14 Daniel R. Curtis, Coping with crisis: the resilience and vulnerability of pre-industrial settlements (Farnham, 2014), 122–3.

15 James Scott, Weapons of the weak: everyday forms of peasant resistance (New Haven, 1985), XV–XVII.

16 Bas J. P. Van Bavel et al., Disasters and history (Cambridge, 2020), ch. II, 22–42.

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20 Eline Van Onacker, Leaders of the pack? Village elites and social structures in the fifteenth and sixteenth-century Campine Area (Unpublished PhD thesis: University of Antwerp, 2014), 78–96.

21 Abbey Archive Tongerlo, Section II, 292–293 Farm descriptions 16th century.

22 Erik Vanhaute, Heiboeren: bevolking, arbeid en inkomen in de 19de-eeuwse Kempen (Brussels, 1992); Maïka De Keyzer, ‘Access versus influence. Peasants in court in the Late Medieval Low Countries’, in Miriam Müller ed., The Routledge Handbook of Medieval Rural Life (London, 2021), ch. 8, 113–37.

23 Wouter Ryckbosch, ‘Economic inequality and growth before the industrial revolution: The case of the low countries (fourteenth to nineteenth centuries)’, European Review of Economic History 20, 1 (2015), 1–22; Kristof Dombrecht and Wouter Ryckbosch, ‘wealth inequality in a time of transition: coastal flanders in the sixteenth century’, TSEG – The Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History 14, 2 (2017), 63–84.

24 RAA, OGA Loenhout, 3825 land tax register of 1680.

25 Bas van Bavel, Manors and markets: economy and society in the low countries, 500–1600 (Oxford, 2010), 75; Karel A. H. W. Leenders, Van Turnhoutervoorde Tot Strienemonde. Ontginnings- En Nederzettingsgeschiedenis van Het Noordwesten van Het Maas-Schelde-Demergebied (400–1350) (Zutphen, 1996).

26 Leenders, Van Turnhoutervoorde; Van Onacker, ‘Leaders of the Pack?’, 45–7.

27 Van Onacker, ‘Leaders of the Pack?’, 91–4.

28 Ibid., 50.

29 For the village of Loenhout leaseholding can be reconstructed. But leasehold is not dominated by feudal lords or absentee landlords. Peasants leased their land predominantly from other peasants or farmers in the village. RAA, OGA Loenhout, 3825.

30 RAA, OGA Zandhoven, 148, ‘heideboek’, 1559–1581. This account registered the active users of the common heathlands in Zandhoven.

31 Ibid.

32 Maïka De Keyzer, Inclusive commons and the sustainability of peasant communities in the medieval low countries (London, 2018).

33 Th De Molder, ‘Keuren van Oostmalle’, Oudheid en Kunst 26, 1 (1935), 3–15; J. Ernalsteen, ‘Brecht: de keuren van 1601’, Oudheid en Kunst 16, 2 (1925), 25–32; J. Ernalsteen, ‘Keuren van Gheel’, Oudheid en Kunst 26, 2 (1935), 19–66; A. Gielens, ‘Keuren van Ekeren’, Oudheid en Kunst 30, 1 (1939), 167–83; I. Helsen, ‘Het dorpskeurboek van Retie’, Bijdragen tot de geschiedenis 1, 1 (1949), 85–107; Milo Koyen, ‘Keuren van Ravels’, Oudheid en Kunst 41, 2 (1958), 3–19; J. Lauwerys, ‘Keuren van Westerloo’, Oudheid en Kunst 28, 4 (1937), 95–120; Gerard Meeusen, ‘Keuren van Esschen, Calmpthout en Huybergen’, Oudheid en Kunst 23 (1932), 112–24; J. Michielsen, ‘Keuren van Brecht’, Oudheid en Kunst, 1907, 71–81; K. C. Peeters, ‘De Wuustwezelsche dorpskeuren (XVe – XVIIe eeuw)’, Verslagen en mededelingen van de koninklijke Vlaamsche academie voor taal en letterkunde (Gent, 1932), 595–709; K. C. Peeters, ‘De Wuustwezelsche Dorpskeuren (XVe–XVIIe eeuw)’, Wesalia, Tijdschrift voor plaatselijke Geschiedenis en Folklore 8, 1–2 (1933), 2–48; Raymond Peeters, ‘De keuren van Turnhout’, Taxandria 29, 1–4 (1957), 61–122; Floris Prims, ‘Keuren der vreyheyt van Arendonk’, in H. Draye ed., Feestbundel H. J. Van De Wijer, den jubilaris aangeboden ter gelegenheid van zijn vijfentwintigjarig hoogleeraarschap aan de R. K. universiteit te Leuven 1919–1943 (Leuven, 1944), i; J. Van Gorp, ‘Het keurboek van Casterlee’, Bijdragen tot de geschiedenis 18 (1927), 182–96; Frans Verbist, Costuymen van de Hoofdrechtbank van Zandhoven, Uitgave 1664. Keuren En Breuken, Uitgave 1665 (Zandhoven, 2007); J. R. Verellen, ‘De keuren van Herentals (1410–1567)’, Taxandria XVI, 1 (1950), 20–107; P. J. Verhoeven, ‘Keuren van Calmpthout’, Oudheid en Kunst Brecht, 1907), 45–6. Rijksarchief Antwerpen (RAA), Oud Gemeente-Archief (OGA) Tielen, 28; RAA, OGA Gierle, 44, Byelaw; RAA, OGA Herenthout, 3, Byelaw; RAA, OGA Hoogstraten 638, Byelaw; RAA, OGA Rijkevorsel, 8, Byelaw; AAT, Bundel Tongerlo I: Rules for the village of Tongerlo, Copy; AAT, Bundel Bylaws, Veerle and Oevel, Copy.

34 Guy Dejongh, ‘De ontginningspolitiek van de overheid in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden, 1750–1830. Een maat voor niets?’, Tijdschrift van het Gemeentekrediet 210 (1999), 31–44.

35 B. Ballaux, ‘Transport en economische ontwikkeling in het Hertogdom Brabant gedurende de lange zestiende eeuw’ (Unpublished PhD thesis: University of Antwerp, 2006); E. Vanhaute, ‘Wolverwerking op het Turnhoutse platteland (1750–1850). Enkele bedenkingen bij het verstomd proto-industrieel debat’, Tijdschrift Voor Sociale Wetenschappen 17, 1 (1991), 28–49.

36 E. van Onacker, ‘De markt als middel. Peasants en de land – en kredietmarkt in de vijftiende- en zestiende-eeuwse Kempen’, TSEG – The Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History 10, 1 (2013), 40–70.

37 Annie Antoine, Campagnes de l'Ouest. Stratigraphie et Relations Sociales dans l'Histoire (Rennes, 1999); Marco Casari, ‘Emergence of endogenous legal institutions: property rights and community governance in the Italian Alps’, The Journal of Economic History 67, 1 (2007), 191–226; Tobias Haller and Gabriela Landolt, ‘Alpine common property institutions under change: conditions for successful and unsuccessful collective action by Alpine Farmers in the canton of Grisons, Switzerland’, Human Organization 74, 1 (2015), 100–11; Carsten Porskrog Rasmussen, ‘Property rights in the Duchy of Schleswig’, in Tire Iversen and John Ragnar Myking ed., Land, lords and peasants. peasants' right to control land in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period – Norway, Scandinavia and the Alpine region (Trondheim, 2005), 255–70; José Miguel Lana Berasain, ‘From Equilibrium to Equity. The Survival of the Commons in the Ebro Basin: Navarra from the 15th to the 20th Centuries’, International journal of the commons 2, 2 (2008), 162–91; Angus Winchester, ‘Upland commons in Northern England’, in Martina De Moor, Leigh Shaw-Taylor and Paul Warde eds., The management of common land in north west Europe, c. 1500–1850 (Turnhout, 2002), 33–58; Elly Robson, ‘Improvement and Epistemologies of Landscape in Seventeenth-century English Forest Enclosure’, The Historical Journal 60, 3 (2016), 597–632.

38 Eduard Koster, ‘Aeolian environments’, in Eduard Koster ed., The Physical Geography of Western Europe (Oxford, 2007), 139–60.

39 C. Derese, D. Vandenberghe, N. Eggermont, J. Bastiaens, R. Annaert, and P. Van den haute, ‘A Medieval settlement caught in the sand: optical dating of sand-drifting at pulle (N Belgium)’, Quaternary Geochronology, 5 (2010), 336–41; N. Eggermont, R. Annaert, J. Bastiaens, C. Derese, D. Vandenberghe, P. Van den houte, K. Haneca, and M. Van Strydonck, ‘Nederzettingssporen uit de ijzertijd en de vroege middeleeuwen onder een stuifduin langs de Keulsebaan te Pulle’ (Brussels, 2008).

40 Jan M. Van Mourik and W. A. Ligtendag, ‘De overstoven enk van Nabbegat’, Geografisch Tijdschrift, 22, 5 (1988), 412–20.

41 M. De Keyzer and M. D. Bateman, ‘Late holocene landscape instability in the Breckland (England) Drift Sands’, Geomorphology, 323 (2018); H. J. Pierik, R. van Lanen, M. T. I. J. Gouw – Bouman, B. J. Groenewoudt, J. Wallinga, and W. Z. Hoek, ‘Controls on late holocene drift-sand dynamics: the dominant role of human pressure in the Netherlands’, Past human landscape interactions in the Netherlands. Reconstructions from sand belt to Coastal-Delta Plain for the First Millenium AD (Unpublished PhD Thesis, Utrecht University, 2017); I. Castel, ‘Late holocene aeolian drift sands in Drenthe (the Netherlands)’ (Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Utrecht, 1991).

42 M. De Keyzer, ‘All we are is dust in the wind. The social causes of a ‘Subculture of coping’ in the late medieval coversand belt’, Journal for the History of Environment and Society 1, 1 (2016), 1–35; M. De Keyzer, ‘The impact of inequality on social vulnerability in pre-modern Breckland’, Journal for the History of Environment and Society, 4, 1 (2019), 71–101.

43 Martina De Moor, ‘Common land and common rights in Flanders’, in Martina De Moor, Leigh Shaw-Taylor and Paul Warde eds., The management of common land in North West Europe, c. 1500–1850 (Turnhout, 2002).

44 See footnote 34.

45 I. Helsen, ‘Het Dorpskeurboek van Retie’, Bijdragen Tot de Geschiedenis 1, 1 (1949), 85–107; J. Ernalsteen, ‘Keuren van Gheel’, Oudheid En Kunst 26, 2 (1935), 19–66; Milo Koyen, ‘Keuren van Ravels’, Oudheid En Kunst 41, 2 (1958), 3–19; Floris Prims,'Keuren Der Vreyheyt van Arendonk' In Feestbundel, edited by H. Draye (place,1944), 273–83; P. J. Verhoeven, ‘Keuren van Calmpthout’ Oudheid En Kunst (Brecht, 1907), 45–6.

46 J. Buisman, Duizend jaar weer, wind en water in de Lage Landen (Franeker, 1996), 550–62 Tome 3.

47 E. Scholliers, De levensstandaard in de XVe en XVIe eeuw te Antwerpen (Antwerpen, 1960).

48 E. Thoen, Landbouwekonomie en bevolking in Vlaanderen gedurende de Late Middeleeuwen en het begin van de Moderne Tijden, vol. 90 (Ghent, 1988).

49 RAA, OGA Gierle, 350. Aldermen's registers (1538–1559).

50 van Onacker, ‘De markt als middel’.

51 Further reading: Alfani and Ó'Gráda, Famine in European History; Beeckaert and Vanhaute, ‘Whose Famine?’; Jessica Dijkman and Bas van Leeuwen, eds. An Economic History of Famine Resilience; O'Gráda, Famine: A Short History; Eric Vanhaute and Thijs Lambrecht, ‘Famine, exchange networks and the village community. A comparative analysis of the subsistence crises of the 1740s and the 1840s in Flanders’, Continuity and Change 26, 2 (2011), 155–86.

52 Beeckaert and Vanhaute, ‘Whose Famine?’, 122.

53 Ibid., 116.

54 Herman Van Der Wee, The Growth of the Antwerp Market and the European Economy (14th–16th Centuries) (the Hague, 1963), 3–109; Raymond Van Uytven, ‘La draperie brabaçonne et malinoise du XII au XVIIe siècle: Grandeur éphémère et decadence’, in Marco Spallanzani ed., Roduzione commercio e consumo dei panni di lana (Florence, 1976), 85–98.

55 Maïka De Keyzer and Eline van Onacker, ‘Beyond the flock: sheep farming, wool sales and social differentiation in a late medieval peasant society: the campine area in the low countries’, The Agricultural History Review 64, 2 (2016), 157–80.

56 Van Der Wee, The Growth of the Antwerp Market, 3–109.

57 For a discussion on the difference between elites and peasants: Van Onacker, ‘Leaders of the Pack?’; De Keyzer, Inclusive Commons.

58 M. Bailey, A marginal economy? East anglian Breckland in the later middle ages (Cambridge, 1989).

59 E. Thoen and T. Soens, ‘The family or the farm: a Sophies choice? The late medieval crisis in Flanders’, in Drendel J., ed., Crisis in the Later Middle Ages: Beyond the Postan-Uuby Paradigm (Turnhout, 2015), 131.

60 Ibid., 68–75.

61 Van Der Wee, The Growth of the Antwerp Market, 10.

62 G. De Longé, Coutumes d'Herenthals, de Casterlé, de Moll, Balen et Deschel, De Gheel, de Hoogstraten, de Befferen et de Putte, et Feodales Du Pays de Malines (Fr. Gobbaerts, 1878); G. De Longé, ‘Coutumes de Santhoven, de Turnhout et de Rumpet’, in G. De Longé ed., Coutumes du Pays et Duché de Brabant: Quartier d'Anvers (Gobbaerts, 1870).

63 For a comparative perspective on population densities: W. Blockmans, G. Pieters, W. Prevenier, and R. W. M. Van Schaïk, ‘Tussen crisis en welvaart: sociale veranderingen 1300–1500’, in Blok Dirk Peter et al., eds., Algemene Geschiedenis Der Nederlanden, vol. 4 (Haarlem, 1980).

64 N. Van Den Broeck and T. Soens, ‘Kwetsbaarheid in een veerkrachtige samenleving. Een socio-institutionele analyse van de graancrisis van 1480-82’, TSEG – The Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History 14, 1 (2017), 69–104.

65 Soens, ‘Threatened by the sea’; curtis, Coping with Crisis; De Keyzer, ‘The Impact of Inequality on Social Vulnerability in Pre-Modern Breckland’.

66 Van Cruyningen, ‘From disaster’.

67 For a discussion on Campine elites and their economic profiles see: Eline van Onacker, Village Elites and Social Structures in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth-Century Campine Area (Brepols, 2017); De Keyzer, Inclusive Commons.

68 Sheep grazing is one of the most common explanations for sand drifts: Theo Spek, Het Drentse Esdorpenlandschap. Een Historisch-Geografische Studie (Stichting Matrijs, 2004); Pierik et al., ‘Controls on Late Holocene Drift-Sand Dynamics: The Dominant Role of Human Pressure in the Netherlands’; Koster, ‘Aeolian Environments’.

69 De Keyzer, Inclusive Commons.

70 R. C. Allen, Enclosure and the Yeoman: Agricultural Development of the South Midlands, 1450–1850 (Oxford, 1992); H. Falvey, ‘Crown Policy and Local Economic Context in the Berkhamsted Common Enclosure Dispute, 1618–42’, Rural History 12, 2 (2001), 123–58; D. N. McCloskey, ‘The economics of enclosure: A market analysis’, in Parker W. N., and E. L. Jones, eds., European peasants and their markets. Essays in agrarian history (Princeton, 1975), 123–59; C. Dyer, ‘Conflict in the landscape: the enclosure movement in England, 1220–1349’, Landscape History 28 (2006), 21–33; J. M. Neeson, Commoners: common right, enclosure and social change in England, 1700–1820 (Cambridge, 1993); J. R. Birrell, ‘Common right in the medieval forest: disputes and conflicts in the thirteenth century’, Past and Present 117 (1987), 22–49; N. Vivier, ‘Le conflict autour des biens communeaux ou la crise de la propriété collective (1760–1870)’, in Beck Corinne, ed., Temps et Espaces des Crises de l'environnement (Paris, 2006), 71–82.

71 M. Spufford, Contrasting Communities. English Villagers in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Cambridge, 1974); R. W. Hoyle, ‘Tenure and the land market in early modern England: or a late contribution to the brenner debate’, The Economic History Review 43, 1 (1990), 1–20; Soens, ‘Threatened by the Sea’.

72 De Keyzer, ‘Access versus Influence’, 113–37.

73 E. Vanhaute, ‘De mutatie van de bezitsstructuur in Kalmthout en Meerle, 1834–1910’, Bijdragen tot de geschiedenis 71, 1 (1988), 173–80; E. Tilborghs, ‘De privatisering van de gemeentelijke heide in de Antwerpse Kempen gedurende de negentiende eeuw’, Tijdschrift van de Belgische Vereniging Voor Aarderijkskundige Studies, 2 (1988), 303–18.

74 Thanks to Peter Caluwé who studied this topic for his master thesis: P. Caluwé, ‘Inbreuken op de commons. Lokaal verzet tegen de achttiende-eeuwse ontginningen in de Kempen: Een analyse op basis van juridische thoonen’ (Unpublished thesis, University of Antwerp, 2011).

75 Beeckaert and Vanhaute, ‘Whose Famine?’.

76 Martina De Moor, Leigh Shaw-Taylor and Paul Warde eds., The Management of Common Land in North West Europe, c. 1500–1850 (Turnhout, 2002).

77 F. J. Beltrán Tapia, ‘Commons and the standard of living debate in Spain, 1860–1930’, Cliometrica 9, 1 (2015), 27–48; L. Shaw-Taylor, ‘The management of common land in the lowlands of southern England circa 1500 to circa 1850’, in Martina De Moor, Leigh Shaw-Taylor and Paul Warde eds., The management of common land in North West Europe, c. 1500–1850 (Turnhout, 2002), 59–85; Neeson, Commoners; Daniel R. Curtis, ‘Did the commons make medieval and early modern rural societies more equitable? A survey of evidence from across Western Europe, 1300–1800’, Journal of Agrarian Change 16, 4 (2015), 646–64; M. De Keyzer, ‘The impact of different distributions of power on access rights to the common waste lands: the campine, Brecklands and Geest Compared’, Journal of Institutional Economics 9, 4 (2013), 517–42.

78 De Keyzer, Inclusive Commons.

79 Neeson, Commoners.

80 Beeckaert and Vanhaute, ‘Whose Famine?’, 129.

81 Ibid., 128.

82 Ibid., 130.

83 AAT, II, 688, Lamb tithes in Alphen and environment, 1514.; RAA, OGA Rijkevorsel, 3141-3149, Animal counts, 1608; AAT, II, 806, Lamb tithes in Nispen and Essen, 16th and 17th centuries; RAA, OGA Brecht, 2540A, Animal counts, 1605; SAA, 5, condition, 1593.

84 Calculation based on fodder estimates, using A. Dahlström, ‘pastures livestock number and grazing pressure 1620–1850. Ecological aspects of grazing history in South-Central Sweden’ (Unpublished thesis, Swedish University of agricultural sciences, 2006) and recalculating them to the Campine ecosystem. Combined with estimated fodder consumption by sheep based on Jean-Marc Moriceau, Histoire et Géographie de l'élevage Français. Du Moyen Âge à La Révolution (Paris, 2005), 209.

85 RAA, OGA Rijkevorsel, 3141–3149, Animal counts, 1608.

86 De Keyzer and van Onacker, ‘Beyond the Flock’, 157–80.

87 Ibid., 178.

88 Helsen, ‘Het Dorpskeurboek van Retie’; Ernalsteen, ‘Keuren van Gheel’; Koyen, ‘Keuren van Ravels’; Prims, ‘Keuren’.

89 Helsen, ‘Het Dorpskeurboek van Retie’; Ernalsteen, ‘Keuren van Gheel’; Koyen, ‘Keuren van Ravels’; Prims, ‘Keuren’.

90 E. Thoen, ‘Social Agrosystems’ as an economic concept to explain regional differences. An essay taking the former county of flanders as an example (Middle Ages-19th century)’, in Van Bavel Bas, and Peter Hoppenbrouwers, eds., Landholding and land transfer in the North Sea Area (late midle ages- 19th century), vol. 5, (Turnhout, 2004).

91 AAT, Section II, 292–293 Farm descriptions.

92 RAA, OGA Rijkevorsel, 3141-3149, Animal counts, 1608; RAA, OGA Brecht, 2540A, Animal counts, 1605; SAA, 5, condition, 1593.

93 SAA, 5, condition, 1593; AAT, II, 206, Lease accounts of the abbey of Tongerlo, 1504–1513.

94 M. Bailey, ‘The rabbit and the medieval east anglian economy’, The Agricultural History Review 36, 1 (1988), 1–20; M. Bailey, ‘Sand into gold. The evolution of the fold-course system in West Suffolk, 1200–1600’, Agricultural History Review 38 (1990), 40–57; T. Williamson, environment, society and landscape in early medieval England: time and topography (Woodbridge, 2013); K. J. Allison, ‘The sheep-corn husbandry of norfolk in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’, The Agricultural History Review 5, 1 (1957), 12–30.

95 RAA, OGA, Loenhout, 465-501 probate inventories.

96 M. Overton, J. Whittle, D. Dean, and A. Han, Production and consumption in English Households, 1600-1750 (London, 2004); A. J. Schuurman and L. S. Walsh, eds., Material culture: consumption, life-style, standard of living, 1500–1900 (Milano, 1994); C. Muldrew, Food, Energy and the industrious revolution: work and material culture in agrarian England, 1550–1780 (Cambridge, 2011); I. Gazeley and S. Horrell, ‘Nutrition in the english agricultural labourer's household over the course of the long nineteenth century’, The Economic History Review 66, 3 (2013), 757–84.

97 Ballaux, ‘Transport En Economische Ontwikkeling’.

98 RAA, OGA, Loenhout, 465–501 probate inventories.

99 Beeckaert and Vanhaute, ‘Whose Famine?’.

100 H. Neveux, Les grains du Cambresis (Fin du XIVe, début du XVII siècles) Vie et declin d'une structure économique (Lille, 1974).

101 The institution at the core of this article is the rural poor table, also called a Holy Ghost table (Heilige-Geesttafel), a poor relief institution present in every parish – urban and rural – and governed by laymen, the so-called poor masters. Poor tables were a parochial requirement from 1531 onwards due to an edict from emperor Charles V. Further reading: E. van Onacker and H. Masure, ‘Unity in diversity. Rural poor relief in the sixteenth-century Southern Low Countries’, TSEG – The Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History 12, 4 (2015), 59–88.

102 RAA, OGA Rijkevorsel, 4058–4098. Accounts of the holy ghost table, 1490–1599; RAA, KA Sint-Michielskerk Brecht, 274 – 286, Accounts of the Holy Ghost table, 1576–1598.

103 Beeckaert and Vanhaute, ‘Whose Famine?’, 133.

104 C. Heerman, ‘Het abdijdomein van de abdij van Tongerlo in de 15de–16de eeuw’ (Unpublished thesis, University of Ghent, 2003), 60.