Book Chapter

Feeding inequalities: the role of economic inequalities and the urban market in late medieval food security. The case of fourteenth-century Ghent

  • Stef Espeel
  • Sam Geens

Although the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) revised their theoretical model of food security for over two decades ago, historians have been slow in adopting these new insights to study pre-modern societies. Showcasing the potential of the holistic approach proposed by the FAO, this paper analyses the evolution of food security in the calamitous fourteenth century in Ghent, one the most populated cities at that time. In the long-term, access to food seem to have bettered during the second half of the century thanks to increased wages, wealth and investments into farmland. While these gains can partly be linked to demographic evolutions, we found no evidence of an often-hypothesized Malthusian ceiling before the Black Death.

  • Keywords:
  • economic inequality,
  • economic history,
  • low countries,
  • ghent,
  • pre-industrial age,
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Stef Espeel

University of Antwerp, Belgium - ORCID: 0000-0002-8082-7715

Sam Geens

University of Antwerp, Belgium - ORCID: 0000-0001-9758-3182

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Chapter Information

Chapter Title

Feeding inequalities: the role of economic inequalities and the urban market in late medieval food security. The case of fourteenth-century Ghent

Authors

Stef Espeel, Sam Geens

Language

English

DOI

10.36253/978-88-5518-053-5.25

Peer Reviewed

Publication Year

2020

Copyright Information

© 2020 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Bibliographic Information

Book Title

Disuguaglianza economica nelle società preindustriali: cause ed effetti / Economic inequality in pre-industrial societies: causes and effect

Editors

Giampiero Nigro

Peer Reviewed

Number of Pages

488

Publication Year

2020

Copyright Information

© 2020 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Publisher Name

Firenze University Press

DOI

10.36253/978-88-5518-053-5

ISBN Print

978-88-5518-052-8

eISBN (pdf)

978-88-5518-053-5

eISBN (xml)

978-88-5518-054-2

Series Title

Datini Studies in Economic History

Series ISSN

2975-1241

Series E-ISSN

2975-1195

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