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Grain Prices and Subsistence Crises in England and France, 1590–1740

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2010

Andrew B. Appleby
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Extract

In early modern Europe the major concern of many people was getting enough food to stay alive. The “problem of subsistence” varied considerably, however, between one country—or one region—and another. England, for instance, was free of major subsistence crises during the later seventeenth century, when France was hard hit by repeated and deadly famines. In this essay I shall point out some of the differences between these two countries that might explain the success of one and the failure of the other to feed its people.

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The Journal of Economic History , Volume 39 , Issue 4 , December 1979 , pp. 865 - 887
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Copyright © The Economic History Association 1979

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References

1 The literature is now vast. Among the basic works are: Meuvret, Jean, “Les crises de subsistances et la démographie de la France d'Ancien Régime,” Population (1946), 643–50Google Scholar; Goubert, Pierre, Beauvais et le Beauvaisis de 1600 à 1730 (Paris, 1960), pp. 45–58, 75–80, 300–03, and passimGoogle Scholar; Lebrun, François, Les hommes et la mort en Anjou aux 17e et 18e siècles (Paris, 1971), pp. 131–38, 329–46, and passimCrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lachiver, Marcel, La population de Meulan du XVIIe au XIXe siècle (Paris, 1969), pp. 76, 80–81, 218Google Scholar. A convenient short overview can be found in Guillaume, P. and Poussou, J.-P., Démographie historique (Paris, 1970), pp. 135–58Google Scholar.

2 Dupâquier, Jacques, “Sur la population française au XVIIe et au XVIIIe siecle,” Revue historique, 239 (1968), 66Google Scholar; Higounet, Charles, ed.; Histoire de l'Aquitaine (Toulouse, 1971), p. 338Google Scholar.

3 Dupâquier, “Sur la population française,” p. 66; Cobb, Richard, Terreur et subsistances (Paris, 1965), pp. 307–42Google Scholar; Post, John D., The Last Great Subsistence Crisis in the Western World (Baltimore, 1977), pp. 53–67, 114–15, 117Google Scholar.

4 Goubert, Pierre, “Le ‘tragique’ XVIIe siècle,” in Labrousse, Ernest et al. , Histoire économique et sociale de la France, vol. 2 (Paris, 1970), pp. 361–62Google Scholar, and idem, “Le régime démographique français au temps de Louis XIV,” ibid., p. 41. On the Mediterranean, 1709 was catastrophic; see Goy, Joseph and Head-König, Anne-Lise, “Une experience: Les revenues décimaux en France Méditerranéenne XVIe–XVIIIe siècles,” in Ladurie, Emmanuel Le Roy and Goy, Joseph, eds., Les fluctuations du produit de la dîme (Paris, 1972), p. 269Google Scholar.

5 Goubert, “Le ‘tragique’ XVIIe siècle,” pp. 333, 337.

6 Hoskins, W. G., “Harvest Fluctuations and English Economic History, 1480–1619,” Agricultural History Review, 12 (1964), 31–35Google Scholar; Finlay, Roger A. P., “The Population of London, 1580–1650” (Ph.D. diss., Cambridge University; 1977), p. 151Google Scholar; Baines, E., History of the County Palatine and Duchy of Lancaster, 3 vols. (London, 1836), vol. 1, pp. 549, 563Google Scholar; Appleby, Andrew B., Famine in Tudor and Stuart England (Stanford, 1978), pp. 95–121Google Scholar.

7 Ibid., pp. 135–37. I am indebted to the SSRC Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure for kindly providing me with these figures. The Group's monumental study of the history of English population is currently in press.

8 Rogers, Colin D., The Lancashire Population Crisis of 1623 (Manchester, 1975)Google Scholar; Appleby, Famine, pp. 145–56; Thirsk, Joan and Cooper, J. P., eds., Seventeenth Century Economic Documents (Oxford, 1972), pp. 51–52Google Scholar.

9 Skipp, Victor, Crisis and Development: An Ecological Case Study of the Forest of Arden, 1570–1674 (Cambridge, 1978), pp. 13–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 At least until the 1720s and quite possibly for good. Of course, further research may turn up pockets of famine, but large-scale regional famines such as that of 1623 are not likely to be found.

11 The Cambridge Group aggregate data show that overall mortality was very elevated in the 1680s and low in the 1690s. It seems that some type of epidemic disease, unrelated to food shortage, was taking a toll in the 1680s.

12 According to my reading of the Cambridge Group data. Ashton, T. S., Economic Fluctuations in England 1700–1800 (Oxford, 1959), p. 17Google Scholar, found that mortality was higher than normal in London in the harvest years 1709. and 1710, but it is doubtful if the slight increase in burials during those years can be attributed to the effects of food shortage. Most of the higher than normal mortality—and mortality in London fluctuated fairly strongly—can be traced to an epidemic of smallpox. See Marshall, John, Mortality of the Metropolis (London, 1832)Google Scholar, no consistent pagination.

13 Here again, the literature is extensive; for discussion of the “crisis,” with extensive bibliographic citations, see Rabb, Theodore K., The Struggle for Stability in Early Modern Europe (New York, 1975), esp. pp. 3–34Google Scholar.

14 Goubert, “Le ‘tragique’ XVIIe siècle,” p. 333.

15 Goubert, Pierre, “Sociétés rurales françaises du XVIIIe siècle,” in Braudel, Fernand et al. , Conjoncture économique, structures sociales: Hommage à Ernest Labrousse (Paris, 1974), pp. 375–77Google Scholar; idem, “Le ‘tragique’ XVIIe siècle,” p. 362; Poitrineau, Abel, La vie rurale en Basse-Auvergne au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1965), p. 108Google Scholar.

16 Appleby, Famine, pp. 133–54.

17 William Langer, “American Foods and Europe's Population Growth, 1750–1850,” Journal of Social History (Winter 1975), 51–66.

18 Morineau, Michel, “La pomme de terre au XVIIIe siècle,” Annales E.S.C., 25 (1970), 1767–84Google Scholar; Drummond, J. C. and Wilbraham, Anne, The Englishmen's Food: A History of Five Centuries of English Diet (London, 1958), pp. 180–81Google Scholar.

19 For brief descriptions of the process of crises, see Goubert, “Le ‘tragique’ XVIIe siècle,” p. 360, or idem, “Le régime démographique français,” pp. 41–42. For a classic presentation of the effect of bad harvests on the economy, see Labrousse, C. E., La crise de l'économie française à la fin de l'ancien régime et au début de la Revolution (Paris, 1944), pp. 172–80Google Scholar; see also Landes, David, “The Statistical Study of French Crises,” this Journal, 10 (1950), 195–211Google Scholar, for a discussion and critique of aspects of the Labrousse model.

20 Little is known about the relative cost of foodstuffs in caloric terms in early modern Europe, but see Philippe, R., “Une opération pilote: l'étude du ravitaillement de Paris au temps de Lavoisier,” in Hémardinquer, J.-J., ed., Pour une histoire de l'alimentation (Paris, 1970), p. 65Google Scholar. On the importance of cereals, see Neveux, Hugues, “L'alimentation du XIVe au XVIIIe siècle: Essai de mise au point,” Revue d'histoire économique et sociale, 51 (1973), 336–79Google Scholar.

21 This is the so-called Giffen paradox.

22 Jacquart, Jean, La crise rurale en Ile-de-France 1550–1670 (Paris, 1974), p. 696Google Scholar.

23 In times of crisis, smallholders might be forced to eat their seedcorn. And the weather that damaged one harvest might extend into the preparation for the next; for example, a very late harvest could delay the planting of the next crop. In 1816, some wheat had not been harvested in England when the winter snows began, long after the new crop should have been in the ground. See Laws, J. B. and Gilbert, J. H., “Our Climate and Our Wheat-Crops,” Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, 2nd ser., 16 (1880), 187Google Scholar. On the general clustering of bad harvests, see Hoskins, “Harvest Fluctuations, 1480–1619,” and idem, “Harvest Fluctuations and English Economic History, 1620–1759,” Agricultural History Review, 16 (1968), 15–31Google Scholar.

24 Although there may have been a warming period after 1700, very cold and/or wet years occasionally brought harvest failures after that date. For data on the climate see Lamb, H. H., Climate: Present, Past and Future, 2 vols. (London, 1972 and 1977)Google Scholar; Post, The Last Great Subsistence Crisis, pp. 1–26; Pfister, Christian, Agrarkonjunktur und Witterungsverlauf im westlichen Schweizer Mitteland 1755–1797 (Bern, 1975)Google Scholar; and Ladurie, Emmanuel LeRoy, Times of Feast, Times of Famine: A History of Climate Since the Year 1000 (Garden City, 1971)Google Scholar.

25 The Pontoise prices appear in Jacques Dupâquier, Marcel Lachiver, and Meuvret, Jean, Mercuriales du pays de France et du Vexin français 1640–1792 (Paris, 1968)Google Scholar.

26 On the crises, see the works cited in note 1. On the 1740–41 crisis, see also Michel Bricourt, Marcel Lachiver, and Julian Queruel, “La crise de subsistance des années 1740 dans le ressort du Parlement de Paris,” Annales de démographie historique (1974), 281–333, and Poitrineau, La vie rurale en Basse-Auvergne, p. 93.

27 Goubert, Pierre, Louis XIV et vingt millions de Français (Paris, 1966), pp. 166–70Google Scholar; idem, “Le ‘tragique’ XVIIe siècle,” p. 361.

28 Ibid., p. 362.

29 Braudel, Fernand and Spooner, Frank, “Prices in Europe from 1450 to 1750,” in Rich, E. E. and Wilson, C.H., The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, vol. 4 (Cambridge, 1967), pp. 392–407Google Scholar.

30 Morineau, “La pomme de terre,” pp. 1767–84; Leon, Pierre et al. , Histoire économique et sociale de la France, vol. 3 (Paris, 1976), p. 79Google Scholar.

31 Mestayer, Monique, “Les prix du blé et de l'avoine à Douai de 1329 à 1793,” Revue du Nord, 45 (1963), 167–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hauser, Henri, ed., Recherches el documents sur l'histoire desprix en France de 1500 à 1800 (Paris, 1936) for CoutancesGoogle Scholar; Georges, and Frêche, Geneviève, Les prix des grains, des vins, et des légumes à Toulouse (1486–1868) (Paris, 1967), pp. 88–89Google Scholar; Baulant, Micheline and Meuvret, Jean, Prix des céréales extraits de la mercuriale de Paris (1520–1698), 2 vols. (Paris, 1962), pp. 135–38Google Scholar.

32 Lebrun, François, Histoire d'Angers (Toulouse, 1975), p. 92Google Scholar; Bondois, P.-M., “La disette de 1662,” Revue d'histoire économique et sociale, 12 (1924), 74, 77–79Google Scholar.

33 Ice was reported in the harbors of Marseilles and Genoa; see Lamb, Climate: Present, Past and Future, vol. 2, p. 466n. For the effects of the cold on grain crops, see note 4 above.

34 Reinhard, M. R., Armengaud, André, and Dupâquier, Jacques, Histoire général de la population mondiale (Paris, 1968), p. 184Google Scholar; Goubert, “Le régime démographique français,” p. 41.

35 Goubert, “Sociétés rurales françaises,” pp. 376–77; idem, “Le ‘tragique’ XVIIe siècle,” p. 362; Frêche, Les prix à Toulouse, pp. 21–22; Michel Morineau, “Révolution agricole, révolution alimentaire, révolution démographique,” Annales de démographie historique (1974), 349–50; van Bath, B. H. Slicher, The Agrarian History of Western Europe A. D. 500–1850 (London, 1963), pp. 264–65Google Scholar. Potatoes are not vulnerable to hail which breaks the stalks of grain; I am indebted to Christian Pfister for this information.

36 Frêiche, Les prix à Toulouse, p. 22; Frêche, Georges, “La population de la region Toulousaine sous l'ancien régime,” in [no editor] Sur la population française au XVIIIe et au XIXe siècles: Hommage à Marcel Reinhard (Paris, 1973), p. 252Google Scholar.

37 Higounet, Histoire de l'Aquitaine, p. 338.

38 Goubert, “Sociétés rurales françaises,” pp. 376–78.

39 Manry, André-Georges, ed., Histoire de l'Auvergne (Toulouse, 1974), pp. 303–04Google Scholar; Ppitrineau, La vie rurale en Basse-Auvergne, pp. 92–93.

40 Grim descriptions of the poverty appear in François Lebrun, “Les épidemies en Haute-Bretagne à la fin de l'Ancien Régime (1770–1789),” Annales de démographie historique (1977), 187–89.

41 For only one example of the extreme fragmentation of French peasant holdings, see Jacquart, La crise rurale en Ile-de-France, pp. 119–23, 248: in the Hurepoix, by 1600, 83 percent of all peasant holdings were less than one hectare, or 2.471 acres. See also idem, “La production agricole dans la France du XVIIe siècle,” XVIIe siècle, nos. 70–71 (1966), 22–23.

42 Everitt, Alan, “Farm Labourers,” in Thirsk, Joan, ed., The Agrarian History of England and Wales, IV, 1500–1640 (Cambridge, 1967), pp. 396–401, 450Google Scholar; Hoskins, W. G., The Midland Peasant (London, 1965), pp. 196–202Google Scholar.

43 Hoskins, “Harvest Fluctuations, 1480–1619,” p. 39, and idem, “Harvest Fluctuations, 1620–1759,” p. 16.

44 Meuvret, Jean, “Les oscillations des prix des céréales aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles en Angleterre et dans les pays du bassin Parisien,” Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine, 16 (1969), 540–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 The contrast between the government's actions in the 1590s and the 1690s is discussed in R. B. Outhwaite, “Food Crises in Early Modern England: Patterns of Public Response,” a paper delivered to the International Economic History Conference, Edinburgh, 1978. I am indebted to Dr. Outhwaite for a copy of his paper.

46 Some few wheat prices appear in Beveridge, William, Prices and Wages in England from the Twelfth to the Nineteenth Century, vol. 1 (London, 1939)Google Scholar; unfortunately the projected volume with the rest of Beveridge's wheat prices has not been published. For Hoskins, see notes 6 and 22 above.

47 They are expected in volume 5 of The Agrarian History of England and Wales. The Beveridge price materials in the library of the London School of Economics contain little useful material on either oats or barley.

48 Everitt, “Farm Labourers,” pp. 450–52, and Sir Frederick Morton Eden, The State of the Poor, 3 vols. (London, 1797), vol. I, pp. 561–62. See also Collins, E.J.T., “Dietary Change and Cereal Consumption in Britain in the Nineteenth Century,” Agricultural History Review; 23 (1975), 97–115Google Scholar.

49 Houghton's prices have been published in volume 6 of Rogers, J. E. Thorold, A History of Agriculture and Prices in England, 7 vols. (Oxford, 1866–1900)Google Scholar.

50 The coefficients of correlation between the price of wheat and price of the lesser grains are:

The Fisher Z test shows that these are significant differences between the coefficients of correlation for the two English cases and those of France.

51 Harrison, William, The Description of England, ed. Edelen, Georges (Ithaca, N. Y., 1968), p. 133Google Scholar.

52 Peter Bowden, “Statistical Appendix,” in Thirsk, ed., The Agrarian History of England and Wales, pp. 818–20.

53 Beveridge, Prices and Wages in England, pp. 81–83.

54 The coefficients of correlation between the price of wheat and the price of the lesser grains in Winchester are:

55 The coefficient of variation in the Winchester prices is:

Fluctuation in the price of malt and oats was less in the latter period, whereas wheat prices perhaps fluctuated slightly more.

56 Cambridge Group data.

57 See note 8 above.

58 Gooder, A., “The Population Crisis of 1727–30 in Warwickshire,” Midland History, 1, no. 4 (1974), 1–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Levine, David, Family Formation in an Age of Nascent Capitalism (New York, 1977), pp. 100–02Google Scholar.

59 There was very general sickness, probably from more than one disease. See Beveridge, W. I. B., Influenza: The Last Great Plague (London, 1977), p. 27Google Scholar; Short, Thomas, A Comparative History of the Increase and Decrease of Mankind (London, 1767), pp. 91–92Google Scholar; Creighton, Charles, History of Epidemics in Britain, 2 vols. (London, 1965), vol. II, p. 683Google Scholar. Although epidemic mortality was widespread, only England suffered from crop failures and high prices in those years.

60 Skipp, Crisis and Development, pp. 42–45; Yelling, J. A., Common Field and Enclosure in England, 1450–1850 (London, 1977), pp. 146–209CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Yelling's evidence reveals considerable local variation, but overall enclosure seems to have increased the yield of spring grains.

61 Kerridge, Eric, The Agricultural Revolution (London, 1967), p. 198Google Scholar.

62 Jones, Eric L., Seasons and Prices (London, 1964), pp. 56–57, 130, 155, 159–60Google Scholar.

63 Braudel, Fernand, Capitalism and Material Life, 1400–1800 (New York, 1975), p. 77Google Scholar. See also Goubert, Pierre, “Les techniques agricoles dans les pays picard aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles,” Revue d'histoire économique et sbciale, 35 (1957), 28–32Google Scholar; Jacquart, “La production agricole,” pp. 21–46; idem, La crise rurale en Ile-de-France, pp. 291–336, 374; Meuvret, Jean, Le problème des subsistances à l'époque Louis XIV, 2 parts (Paris and The Hague, 1977), part 1, p. 149 and part 2, pp. 144–45Google Scholar.

64 Young, Arthur, Travels in France during the Years 1787, 1788 & 1789, ed. Maxwell, Constantia (Cambridge, 1929), p. 285Google Scholar.

65 Goubert, Beauvais et le Beauvaisis, pp. 435–36, 470.

66 Hugues Neveux, “La production céréalière dans une region frontalière: le Cambresis du XVe au XVIIIe siècle,” in LeRoy Ladurie and Goy, eds., Les fluctuations du produit de la dîme, p. 62.

67 Meuvret, Le problème des subsistances, part 1, pp. 19–21.

68 Appleby, Famine, pp. 38–48.

69 Flinn, Michael, ed., Scottish Population History from the 17th Century to the 1930s (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 164–86Google Scholar; Jutikkala, E., “The Great Finnish Famine in 1696–97,” Scandinavian Economic History Review, 3 (1955), pp. 48–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

70 Malthus, T. R., An Essay on the Principle of Population, 2 vols. (London: Everyman's Library, 1967), vol. 2, pp. 146 and 231Google Scholar. On the importance of balanced agriculture, also see Flinn, M. W., “The Stabilisation of Mortality in Pre-Industrial Western Europe,” Journal of European Economic History, 3 (1974), 310–11Google Scholar. This article is basic for an understanding of mortality trends.

71 Hohenberg, Paul H., “Maize in French Agriculture,” Journal of European Economic History, 6 (1977), 79–80Google Scholar. At the end of the eighteenth century, 96 percent of the wheat and over 99 percent of the rye grown in the Toulousain was exported; see Frêche, Les prix à Toulouse, p. 32; Morineau, “Révolution agricole,” p. 356, makes a strong argument that new crops in France, such as maize and potatoes, actually increased the impoverishment of the poor, although they helped ward off short-term subsistence crises.

72 Bricourt et al., “La crise de subsistances des années 1740,” pp. 297–303, 315–20, 332.

73 Poitrineau, La vie rurale en Basse-Auvergne, pp. 92–96. The French government seems to have learned slowly how to deal with crises; each succeeding crisis was slightly better managed than its predecessor. For a striking example of concerted community action overcoming a threatened famine, in this case in Scotland, see Flinn, ed., Scottish Population History, pp. 11–13.

74 A systematic study of poor expenditures has not been published, but for estimates see Eden, The State of the Poor, vol. 1; p. 408; and Davies, David, The Case of Labourers in Husbandry Stated and Considered (Bath, 1795), p. 44Google Scholar.

75 Hoskins, “Harvest Fluctuations, 1620–1759,” p. 30. The years 1728–29 were the only two years between 1692 and 1757 when grain imports exceeded grain exports from England; see Parliamentary Papers, 1826–27, vol. XVI, p. 487, and John, A. H., “English Agricultural Improvements and Grain Exports, 1660–1765,” in Coleman, D. C. and John, A. H., eds., Trade, Government and Economy in Pre-Industrial England (London, 1976), p. 49Google Scholar. The food shortage of 1727–29 apparently was limited to England, perhaps as a result of geographically limited bad weather. Grain prices at Königsberg, Bremen, Amsterdam, Danzig, and Antwerp were normal in those years; see Parliamentary Papers, 1826–27, vol. XVI, pp. 146, 160, 163, 270–71, 295.

76 By Michael Drake and Victor Skipp.