Premium
The Great Famine in the county of Flanders (1315–17): the complex interaction between weather, warfare, and property rights
Author(s) -
Geens Sam
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
the economic history review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.014
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1468-0289
pISSN - 0013-0117
DOI - 10.1111/ehr.12605
Subject(s) - famine , entitlement (fair division) , subsistence agriculture , property rights , property (philosophy) , vulnerability (computing) , power (physics) , perspective (graphical) , political science , political economy , history , development economics , economy , sociology , economics , law , agriculture , archaeology , philosophy , computer security , mathematical economics , epistemology , computer science , physics , quantum mechanics , artificial intelligence
Abstract The exceptional weather conditions and associated harvest failures of 1315–17 marked the beginning of the worst subsistence crisis in European history. Until now, historians have mainly viewed the Great Famine, and medieval famines in general, through theoretical models of the larger fourteenth‐century crisis. However, this article suggests that this approach is flawed and instead applies recent theories on contemporary famines to the crisis of 1315–17 in the county of Flanders. This new perspective not only leads to a re‐examination of existing explanations, such as the role of warfare, but also reveals the importance of property rights in entitlement to food: the power of elites, the relative number of large‐scale landowners, and the structure of household income all influenced peasants’ degree of vulnerability.