Call for Papers: The consuming countryside
RHN 96/2023 | Call
https://www.ruralhistory.eu/newsletter/2023/rhn-2023-096
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Organisers: Bruno Blondé, Henning Bovenkerk and Marcus Falk
15-16 December 2023, Antwerp University, Belgium
Deadline for submissions: 15 September 2023
Call for Papers
International workshop
The consuming countryside. Rural material living standards, consumption patterns, and economic growth, 17th-19th centuries
We are excited to announce the “The consuming countryside” -workshop, which will take place at 15-16 December 2023 at the University of Antwerp. We will discuss one of the most striking paradoxes of the late early modern period: how did rural households of almost all social strata improve their material living standards and increase their consumption, while real wages and agricultural productivity during the same period declined, and the real cost of primary agricultural goods increased?
One of the probably most influential attempts to bridge this paradox is the industrious revolution theory, presented by Jan de Vries (2008). Inspired by probate inventory evidence from the Frisian countryside, the theory appears to hold for the relatively highly urban northwest-European economic core regions of southern England and the Low Countries (van Nederveen Meerkerk 2008; Malanima & Pinchera 2012); regions with early developed urban economies and easy access to new, imported consumer goods (McCants 2008). It has however not been accepted without critique, especially when applied on the more rural European peripheries (Ogilvie 2010, Hutchison 2014, Allen & Weisdorf 2011; Horrel, Humphries, & Weisdorf 2021; Malanima & Pinchera 2012; Gary & Olsson 2020). Nor does a consensus exist about the significance of the triangle industriousness-living standards-consumer patterns, as regional evolutions could be profoundly different. Whereas several studies have provided evidence for an increase of number of days worked per year using a variety of methods (e. g., Dribe and van der Putte 2012, Humphries and Weisdorf 2019, Jensen et al. 2019), some authors suggest that an increase in industriousness mere compensated for a decline in wages and did not enable households to benefit from an increased variety in the supply of consumer goods. Moreover regional variations in material living standards do not simply mirror differences in the degree of commercialization of the rural economy, as suggested by De Vries (Blondé, Lambrecht, Ryckbosch & Vermoesen 2019; Poukens 2012). Finally, social variations in the acceptance of ‘new’ consumer patterns have been discovered: in some cases changes were clearly introduced at the top (or in the city) before trickling down to the less privileged, but in other cases the relationship between wealth and material culture was more complex, with for instance rural middling groups taking the lead in diversifying their material goods. Such complexities and conundrums invite us to critically re-assess the role of material culture and (auto-)consumption as (in)dependent variables on the eighteenth-century countryside. In a similar vein, the non-monetary components of living standards call for greater attention and cross-country-comparisons that eventually can lead to a re-assessment of living standards as well (Muldrew 2011).
To this end, an international workshop is organized at the University of Antwerp. We will welcome research papers that offer new empirical evidence, prove methodologically innovative, and/or offer fresh interpretations. Our focus is on the development of the less researched European periphery, next to new research on the core regions of southern England and the Low Countries, as well as any areas outside of Europe. We especially extend an invitation to researchers and PhD candidates interested in early modern rural living standards and economic development.
Keynote lecture: Craig Muldrew (University of Cambridge)
Scientific committee: Christine Fertig (Universität Munster), Janine Maegraith (Universität Vien), Ulrich Pfister (Universität Münster), Johan Poukens (State Archives Belgium & University of Antwerp), Tim Soens (University of Antwerp).
If you are interested in participating, we invite you to send a 300 to 500-word abstract with your affiliation, a short CV and contact details to Kim.Overlaet@uantwerpen.be. The deadline for submission is September 15th 2023. For more information on the workshop, please contact Henning.Bovenkerk@uantwerpen.be
Literature
Allen, R.C. & J. L. Weisdorf. 2011. ”Was there an ‘industrious revolution’ before the industrial revolution? An empirical exercise for England c. 1300-1830.” The Economic History Review, 64, 3 (2011), pp. 715-729
Blondé, Bruno, Lambrecht, Thijs, Ryckbosch, Wouter and Vermoesen, Reinoud. 2019. “Consumérime, revolution, Agricole et proto-industrialisation dans la Flandre et le Brabant du XVIIIe siècle : malédiction ou bénédiction ? Une synthèse préliminaire. » in Ferrand, Guilhem and Petrowiste, Judicaël (eds.). Le nécssaire et le superflu. Le paysan consommateur.
Blondé, Bruno, & Ilja Van Damme. ”From consumer revolution to mass market” in Stobart, Jon, & Vicki Howard [eds.]. 2019. The Routledge companion to the history of retailing. Taylor & Francis Books.
Bovenkerk, Henning und Christine Fertig: "Consumer revolution in north-western Germany: Material culture, global goods, and proto-industry in rural households in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries", The Economic History Review 76,2 (2023): 551-574. https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13192 Congost, Rosa, Rosa Ros und Enric Saguer: "More industrious and less austere than expected: evidence from inventories of agricultural workers in north-eastern Catalonia (1725–1807)", Rural History (2023): 1
Dribe, Martin and Bart van de Putte: “Marriage seasonality and the industrious revolution: southern Sweden, 1690–1895”, Economic History Review 65, 3 (2012), 1123–1146.
Gary, Kathryn E. & Mats Olsson. 2020. Men at work. Wages and industriousness in southern Sweden 1500-1850. Scandinavian Economic History Review 2020, Vol. 68, no. 2, 112-128
Horrell Sara, Jane Humphries, & Jacob Weisdorf. 2021. “Family Standard of Living over the Long Run, England 1280-1850,” Past and Present, no. 250
Humphries, Jane and Jacob Weisdorf: “Unreal wages? Real income and economic growth in England, 1260–1850”, Economic Journal 120, 623 (2019), 2867–2887 .
Hutchison, Ragnhild. 2014. “An Industrious Revolution in Norway? A Norwegian road to the modern market economy?” in Scandinavian Journal of History, 2014 Vol. 39, No. 1, 4–26
Jensen, Peter Sandholt, Cristina Victoria Radu and Paul Richard Sharp: “Days worked and seasonality patterns of work in eighteenth century Denmark”, EHES Working Paper 162 (July 2019).
Malanima, Paolo & Valeria Pinchera. 2012. “A Puzzling Relationship, Consumption and Incomes in Early Modern Europe”. Historie & mesure, 2012, XXVII-2, p. 197-222
Mas Ferrer, Josep. 2020. “Pautes de consum I condicions de vida dels treballadors de la terra a partir dels inventaris post mortem a Catalunya: el cas de la Selva (1750-1805).” Estudios d’Història Agrària, no. 32, pp. 69-96
McCants, Anne. 2008. “Poor consumers as global consumers”. Economic History Review, 61
van Nederveen Meerkerk, Elise. 2008. “Couples cooperating? Dutch textile workers, family labour and the ‘industrious revolution’, c. 1600–1800” in Continuity and Change 23 (2), 2008, 237–266.
Muldrew, Craig. 2011. Food, Energy and the Creation of Industriousness. Work and Material Culture in Agrarian England, 1550-1780.
Ogilvie, Sheilagh. 2010. “Consumption, Social Capital, and the ‘Industrious Revolution’ in Early Modern Germany.” The Journal of Economic History, Vol 70, No. 2 (June 2010), pp. 287-325
Poukens, Johan. 2012. « Tout à la fois cultivateurs et commerçans : smallholders and the industrious revolution in Brabant » Agricultural History Review 60 :2, pp. 152-173.
de Vries, Jan. 1994. ”The Industrial and Industrious Revolutions.” The Journal of Economic History. Jun., 1994, Vol. 54, No. 2, pp. 249-270
de Vries, Jan. 2008. The Industrious Revolution: Consumer Behaviour and the Household Economy, 1650 to the Present. Cambridge University Press.