RHN 158/2024 | Call
Organisers: AHRC-funded project “The Politics of the English Grain Trade, 1315–1815”
9–10 June 2025, All Souls College, Oxford University, United Kingdom
Deadline for paper proposals: 31 January 2025
Call for Papers
The Comparative History of the Grain Trade, c.1500–1800
Project Conference
The Politics of the English Grain Trade Project are hosting a two-day conference, 9-10 June 2025 at All Souls College, Oxford, on the comparative history of the grain trade.
The trade in grain and bread in early modern Europe has been studied from various perspectives. The international grain trade is one of them. From the late Middle Ages onward, grain was one of the ‘frontier foods’ (Hoffmann 2001): urbanized regions in Western Europe increasingly drew on grain supplies from the less densely populated peripheries of the continent. The Baltic grain trade in particular has been a subject of much research (e.g. Van Tielhof 2002, Hinton 1959). Other studies have a national, local or regional scope and focus on a specific aspect, including the provisioning of an individual city (e.g. Kaplan 1984), famines (Sharp 2016, Alfani 2010), food riots (Bohstedt 2010, Schmidt 1991, Walter 2006), and bread, baking and milling (De Vries 2019, Petersen 1995, Braddick and Winter ongoing research). This conference hopes to add to the insights provided by both strands of literature by adopting a comparative approach that positions differences and similarities in (aspects of) the grain trade in a wider context of political and social relations, economic development and cultural characteristics. Until now only a few studies have attempted to do this, mostly focusing on famines and food crises (e.g. Appleby 1979, Alfani and Ó Gráda 2017).
This conference takes a comparative approach, covering a wide geographical range and incorporating a variety of approaches to studying the grain trade to provide a better understanding of the process of commodification of bread and grain in this period. While elements of this process can be discerned in many parts of Europe, the extent and timing varied considerably. In England, commodification took place in a context of early commercialization, large-scale market-oriented agriculture dominated by a politically influential landowning elite, and, at the end of the period under examination, rapid urbanization, industrialization and the emergence of free trade ideology (Ormrod 1995). Some of these features were also present in other European countries, such as high urban ratios in northern Italy and the Low Countries, or large-scale export-oriented agriculture in Prussia. Here, however commodification did not proceed at the same pace and to the same degree. Preliminary explorations have demonstrated differences in the extent and nature of government interventions to ensure food security, and in the public and intellectual discourse on the roles of governments versus markets (Collet 2010, Dijkman and Berlandi ongoing research). Differences can also be expected in the diverging cultural connotations attached to bread and grain.
On the other hand, there were also similarities between England and other European countries, even if political, economic and social structures varied considerably. During episodes of severe dearth, for example, the imposition of grain export restrictions was common, even in England, as was the distribution of relief to the poor at the local level (Persson 1999, 72-84). Likewise millers, bakers and grain merchants were subject to government regulations and frequently suspected of profiteering at the expense of consumers. A comparative perspective identifying such similarities will help us to better understand the underlying and everyday mechanisms of food provision. In some cases, ‘good practices’ may have been copied from elsewhere, as seems to have happened with the advanced system of bread price regulation developed in the Dutch Republic around 1600 (De Vries 2019, 375-83). In others, similar challenges may have triggered similar, obvious responses from communities or governments independently from each other: the exigencies of grain and bread provisioning could not easily be ignored.
We invite proposals for 20-minute papers related to the comparative history of the grain trade across the period 1500-1800, broadly relating to the following themes:
- The structure of the international grain trade
- Mills and the milling industry
- The cultural meanings of bread and grain
- Political economy and market regulation
- Conflict, litigation, and popular politics of grain
- Production and environmental change
Proposals, consisting of a title and abstract (c.200 words), should be sent to:
politicsofgrain@gmail.com
The deadline for sending proposals is Friday 31 January 2025