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.
University of Antwerp, Belgium - ORCID: 0000-0002-8082-7715
University of Antwerp, Belgium - ORCID: 0000-0001-9758-3182
Titolo del capitolo
Feeding inequalities: the role of economic inequalities and the urban market in late medieval food security. The case of fourteenth-century Ghent
Autori
Stef Espeel, Sam Geens
Lingua
English
DOI
10.36253/978-88-5518-053-5.25
Opera sottoposta a peer review
Anno di pubblicazione
2020
Copyright
© 2020 Author(s)
Licenza d'uso
Licenza dei metadati
Titolo del libro
Disuguaglianza economica nelle società preindustriali: cause ed effetti / Economic inequality in pre-industrial societies: causes and effect
Curatori
Giampiero Nigro
Opera sottoposta a peer review
Numero di pagine
488
Anno di pubblicazione
2020
Copyright
© 2020 Author(s)
Licenza d'uso
Licenza dei metadati
Editore
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
Collana
Datini Studies in Economic History
ISSN della collana
2975-1241
e-ISSN della collana
2975-1195