Access to all the listed publications can be checked on the repository of the University of Antwerp.
Monograph
S. Espeel, Prices and crises. The grain economy in fourteenth-century Flanders - Forthcoming with the Éditions of the Académie Royale de Belgique
This monograph will be an entirely reworked version of the PhD dissertation. The envisioned publication date is during the calendar year 2025.
Articles
S. Espeel, “Plague and hunger. Epidemic-induced pressures on household purchasing power in fourteenth-century Flanders”, The History of the Family (guest-edited volume by prof. Dan R. Curtis (Erasmus University Rotterdam)) (forthcoming).
S. Espeel, “The seasonal movement of grain prices and volumes in the county of Flanders during the fourteenth century”, in P. Benito i Monclus & A. Furio (eds.), Grain Markets in Medieval Europe: Formation, Regulation and Integration (Publicacions de la Universitat de València, forthcoming).
S. Espeel, “Driven by crises. Price integration on the grain market in late medieval Flanders”, The Economic History Review 77/3 (2024), pp. 849-872.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13301
Abstract: At the centre of the debate on pre-industrial economic growth is the study of market integration, a topic that has increasingly been the focus of intense scientific interest in recent decades. However, this has remained limited to the early modern and modern periods, mainly due to the availability of relevant data. New grain price series have been constructed for several Flemish cities dating back to the early fourteenth century. As one of the most populated regions in the late Middle Ages, the case of Flanders shows that the extraordinary sequence of price shocks in the mid-fourteenth century had a positive impact on the degree of price integration in the grain market. The Flemish grain market functioned better in times of crisis, but caused prices to rise steadily across the entire integrated system during the prolonged crisis period. Whereas many studies have labelled the late Middle Ages – particularly the fifteenth century – as an age of economic contraction with more isolated trade networks, this study shows that Flanders remained a highly economically integrated region.
S. Espeel, “Demesne or Leasehold? Estate Management in Southern Flanders during the Price Shocks of the Fourteenth Century”, Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire - Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Filologie en Geschiedenis 100 (2022), pp. 275-304.
Abstract: Recent research has again underlined the importance of the 14th century as a period of shocks and systemic transition embedded in a broader context of environmental instability and societal vulnerability. Disease, warfare and harvest failure frequently caused price shocks in the grain market against which players on the grain market had to adapt and react. Based on several series of late medieval accounts I have studied the adaptations in the income and expense strategies of grain by large ecclesiastical landlords, who acted as large producers, distributors and consumers of grain. Rather than being passive bystanders in the grain market, these landlords actively reacted to the changing socioeconomic realities. With their eye on a durable and long-term food income strategy based on their demographic evolution, they adapted their balance between leasehold and direct management of their arable land, in preference to a profit-maximizing approach.
S. Espeel & S. Geens, “Feeding inequalities: the role of economic inequalities and the urban market in late medieval food security. The case of fourteenth-century Ghent”, in G. Nigro (ed)., Disuguaglianza economica nelle società preindustriali: cause ed effetti – Economic inequality in pre-industrial societies: causes and effects, Datini Studies in Economic History, 1 (Firenze: Firenze University Press, 2020), p. 389-428.
Abstract: 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. Both skilled and unskilled workers probably earned enough income to feed their households in most years. In the short-term, several episodes of hardship are identified on a monthly basis and explained through the interaction between warfare and the market. Especially the trade embargoes during the Hundred Years’ Wars (1340s) and the devastation of the countryside during the Ghent War (1379-85) negatively impacted access to food. Socially, economic inequality played a major role in determining one’s food security. Wealth provided an important buffer in times of need. During the second half of the century, the middle class was the clear winner, much at the cost of the lower classes and the elite. The declining textile industry probably pushed many of the unskilled workers into poverty. Aside from the total value of assets, the composition of wealth was equally important. Food producing assets, such as mills or bakeries, were concentrated in the hands of the rich. After the Ghent War, middle classes invested their increased wealth in farmland, providing them direct access to food.
S. Espeel, “The grain market and preferential trade of large landowners in Flemish cities during the Age of Shocks (1330-1370)”, Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome – Moyen Âge 131-1 (2019), p. 29-44.
Abstract: Recent research once again framed the 14th century as the century of environmental shocks and systemic transitions. This article will focus on the grain market during the rapid succession of urban ‘food shocks’ before, during and after the 1348 Black Death. The major Flemish Cities provide a unique context to investigate the origins, impact and consequences of these shocks. Based on new and exciting price series for the cities of Bruges, Ghent, Lille, Douai and Cambrai it will be possible to reconstruct divergences in the impact of the food shocks during this period, but also question the role of large urban ecclesiastical landowners in the management and ‘production’ of these food crises. In order to do so, this article focuses on adaptations by these landowners on the grain market by altering the frequency, timing and size of their grain transactions. In addition, it will be tested if there was a presence of preferential trade upheld by these landlords. Such enquiry will contribute to a better understanding of both the causal mechanisms behind these food crises and the way major urban landlords handled and sometimes co-produced these crises.