Research Hilde Greefs

Abstract

The history of the 18th century Atlantic revolutions has often been written as either one of far-reaching change, or one of continuity. But very few historians have studied how individual households experienced and negotiated this change and continuity in their everyday lives, especially for the lower classes. The present project will answer to this hiatus via an in-depth analysis of a unique collection of ca 500 letters written by men and women from the Dutch city of Delft to their municipality between1795 and 1798. The authors are mostly (the wives and widows of) artisans and shopkeepers, who had suffered losses during the revolutionary period, and ask the new revolutionary principality for a municipal job. The often very extensive letters look back on a tumultuous revolutionary period spanning from 1787 to 1795, thereby giving insight in the central research objective, which is to reconstruct the way in which lower middle class households experienced revolutionary change in their everyday lives, the ways in which they coped with these changes, and how they rebuilt their lives after the revolution. I will reconstruct this story of change for three areas of life: work, family and the social network. The resulting analysis will give us a fresh look on revolutionary change, one which highlights the agency of households from a little-studied social group in negotiating these changes in their everyday lives.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Greefs Hilde
• Co-promoter: Gelderblom Oscar
• Fellow: Tanis Nelleke

Research team(s)

• Centre for Urban History

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Life expectancy in Western countries has increased enormously during the past two centuries. This rise was accompanied by a change in the cause-of-death pattern in which so-called degenerative diseases (cardiovascular diseases, cancers) gradually replaced infectious diseases (cholera, TB, etc.). The timing of this epidemiologic transition is well-known for Belgium and many other countries, but it is still unclear how this transition varied by social groups and residence. We don't know how the transition occurred and who benefited first and most. Which groups were and remained the most vulnerable, and for which causes of death was that the case? Using the unique cause-of-death register for the city of Antwerp collected via a large crowdsourcing project (www.sosantwerpen.be), we examine social inequalities and spatial variations in cause-specific mortality during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Based on a mixed-method approach and GIStorical Antwerp, we investigate how cause-specific mortality varied within the city of Antwerp according to age, sex, occupation, origin and residence, and which factors can explain this. As the largest Belgian city at the time with high population turnover and vast socioeconomic changes, Antwerp is a unique laboratory to examine how mortality inequalities arise and develop. Port cities in the past acted as 'gateways of disease'. The current corona crisis reflects the urgency of an in-depth study on inequalities at death in the past.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Greefs Hilde

Research team(s)

• Centre for Urban History

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

During the nineteenth century, port cities in Europe and the United States changed significantly as a result of increasing migration levels, rapid urban expansion and increasing transport connections, which created diverse neighbourhoods near the port or so-called 'sailortowns'. This project will study how increasing global interconnectedness impacted on these harbour districts. By applying a mixed method approach that combines prosopographical research with life course and critical discourse analysis, this research will explore the identities of transients and residents, and their interactions with each other and different layers and dimensions of the evolving urban and global landscape. Comparative research on Antwerp and Boston aims to reveal that issues, such as migration and urbanization, fostered community life, rather than destroying it. An in-depth social analysis of sailortowns as dynamic neighbourhoods is highly relevant, because these districts are all too often branded as distinct and dangerous areas by contemporaries, which contributes to the more negative representation of sailortowns in the exiting literature. This research will also transcend the maritime sector as it will provide much needed insights into the impact of migration, urbanization and increasing mobility on present-day diverse neighbourhoods that are negatively stereotyped because of their international character.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Greefs Hilde
• Fellow: Loockx Kristof

Research team(s)

• Centre for Urban History

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The Scientific Research Network Historical Demography (hereafte r HiDo ) brings scholars from various disciplinary backgrounds together. HiDo will consist of 14 research groups from Flanders (UGent, KU Leuven UAntwerp ), Canada, Denmark, Norway, UK, Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands and Wallonia. The idea is that by joint efforts and systematic comparisons, important scientific progress can be made . HiDo will promote historical demography at the international level by broadening and deepening scientific knowledge and increasing capacity building in col- laborative partnerships. HiDo will be organised around five Working Groups (WG), each focusing on a particular theme. Two WGs focus on topics in which Flemish historical demography is currently at the forefront (WG I: international compari- sons of causes of death, and WG I I: long term trends in partner choice, love and marriage), and two WGs work on topics in which research in Flanders is currently underdeveloped (WG III: historical demography of colonial socie- ties and WG IV: citizen science in historical demography). A fifth workgroup aims to foster new collaborations with biologists and geneticists. The overall aim of the network is to consolidate and strengthen the international posi- tion of the Flemish research units on the research themes covered by WG I and II , while catching up and getting a stronghold on the themes covered by WG III and IV through strategic partnerships with international research units that have built u p extensive experience and know how in those particular domains. At the same time the research in WG III and IV is expected to cause important spill over effects for WG I and II, as colonial population history will improve our insights of the population history of the metropolis, while citizen science projects can lead to new and forceful data efforts in all WGs. Workgroup V specifically aims to create long term ties with biolo- gists and geneticists who can both contribute to and profit from historical demographic data and analysis. In this way, HiDo aims to create and sustain open, productive and sustainable partnerships between Flemish and re- search groups abroad working in the broader field of historical demography and beyond.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Van Damme Ilja
• Co-promoter: Greefs Hilde
• Co-promoter: Soens Tim

Research team(s)

• Centre for Urban History

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Recent literature in urban studies tends to identify and define the city as an ever more complex and hybrid reality, referring to the urban as something 'splintered', 'assembled' and 'imagined' while seeking refuge in new concepts and catchphrases like 'post'-city, 'non'-city, or 'ex'-urban. Our collective research initiative will transcend this not by churning out even more new theories and concepts, but by analysing the very activity of defining the city as a historical process and practice. To that end, we will concentrate on four concrete, complementary domains, in which the definition of cities is at stake by nature. By focusing on (1) 'suburbanisation', (2) 'territoriality', and (3) 'urban citizenship' we examine the existence and meaningfulness of physical, social and imagined boundaries in defining the urban and urbanity. The theme of 'knowledge' (4) adds a reflexive layer by analysing the long term interconnections between the urban reality and knowledge formation – including knowledge on the city itself.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: De Munck Bert
• Co-promoter: De Block Greet
• Co-promoter: Greefs Hilde
• Co-promoter: Oosterlynck Stijn
• Co-promoter: Van Damme Ilja

Research team(s)

• Centre for Urban History

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The overarching goal of the EPIBEL-project team is to map and explain inequalities in the impact of epidemic outbreaks. COVID-19 demonstrated that some people are more likely to suffer in their health and their material well being than others. However, as the pandemic is still unfolding, our understanding of these inequalities is still limited. What is more, we ignore how this social bias in impact will eventually affect societal resilience – the way societies are able to absorb the shock and adapt to prevent similar shocks in the future. However, COVID-19 is not the first epidemic outbreak which hit the world. Hence, EPIBEL systematically compares COVID-19 with five previous epidemic outbreaks: the 1918/19 'Spanish' Flu, the 1866 cholera epidemic, dysentery in 1692/93 and plague in 1438/39 and 1556/59. All of these were perceived by contemporaries as major outbreaks. As a result they are well documented and resulted in the formulation of epidemic policies with lasting impact. The central objective of the EPIBEL-project is to analyse the role of socio-demographic and economic inequalities during and after previous epidemic outbreaks in the past. The researcher on this project will investigate the capacity of social care and welfare systems to mitigate the effects of past epidemic outbreaks on the poor and least privileged groups in society. Combining statistical data on poverty with archival research on local providers of social care, EPIBEL will assess A) the organisation of welfare provisioning; B) the volume and nature of support; C) the number and societal profile of the recipients and D) the public debate on welfare policies related to epidemic outbreaks.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Greefs Hilde

Research team(s)

• Centre for Urban History

Project website

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Both in contemporary literature as in historical research, the arrival of travellers and migrants in a city has been described as a critical moment. A lack of knowledge about the urban context they arrived in as well as a lack of trustworthy information made them vulnerable for abuse. This project will focus on the arrival in the city as a crucial moment for newcomers to orientate into the urban fabric and on spaces of accommodation as crucial locations of encounter for different actors intending to channel mobile people. This project will study spaces of accommodation as key hub in the infrastructural complexes of arrival within the urban environment, offering space where people got connected and could decide to settle, find a job, or to prepare for onward travel, or conversely, where people were deceived and hindered in aspired mobility trajectories. It will reveal how these places functioned as funnel places between the global flows and the local urban environment, where the practices of and conflicts over the movement of people were constructed and contested, impacting both upon the mobility trajectories of people and the socio-spatial development of the city. The objectives are to explore 1) the changing roles and functions of these spaces of accommodation within the complex arrival infrastructure and the urban environment in the period 1850-1930, characterised by a strong increase and democratisation of migration and mobility, but also by growing concerns and moral panics about mobile people; 2) and to identify causes of these evolutions by emphasizing changing interactions but also tensions and conflicts between different actors and organisations trying to influence mobility patterns. Its results will not only enhance our understanding in the ways these spaces of accommodation were used to enhance or obstruct mobility. It will also bring a fluid population into the picture which has remained concealed by the dominant view on migrants who settled and were registered, as well as bridge the gap between migration, mobility, and urban studies.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Greefs Hilde
• Co-promoter: De Block Greet
• Fellow: Segerink Jasper

Research team(s)

• Centre for Urban History

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Free trade developed in the nineteenth century as an ideology and controversial political issue. My research highlights the rise of free trade as such in midcentury in several countries, including Great Britain, France, and Belgium. In all these countries free trade associations formed during the 1840s and agitated on behalf of the liberalization of international trade, developed and maintained connections with one another, and pursued an internationalist vision of strong ties binding European nations to one another in economic cooperation. My research at the University of Antwerp will focus on Belgium's position in these debates, its internal debates about trade policy, and the activities of its free traders, giving special attention to the international Congress of Economists organized by the Association belge pour la liberté commerciale and held in Brussels in 1847. This research fits into my larger dissertation project, which seeks to identify the key tenets of free trade ideology in the mid-nineteenth century, examine the processes by which free trade associations formed and the demographics of their membership, follow the debates in the press and in parliaments regarding free trade, and finally appreciate the ways that the discourse surrounding free trade changed throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth (and implicitly how this discourse compares to that of the twenty-first century).

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Greefs Hilde

Research team(s)

• Centre for Urban History

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This project has the ambition of developing a bottom-up social and spatial approach to the privatization of urban drinking water in 18th- and 19th-century cities. Such approach would not be possible without a micro-level GIS, enabling us to follow private, public or common access to drinking water, its use and users on the level of the household. For 18th- and 19th-century Antwerp the GIStorical Antwerp project (UA-Hercules) offers such infrastructure. At this stage in its development, GIStorical Antwerp offers spatial information on each plot for 1830- 1880 based on cadastral data, with extension into the 18th century and up to 1900 scheduled for next year. Data gathered in this dissertation can hence be framed and analysed using year to year digital maps of the city, and integrated with available data on house ownership, commerce and industry. Thus, micro-level spatial analysis will form the core methodology, an approach that can - quite literally - open doors, analysing changes in, and blurring boundaries between, private, public and common space.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Soens Tim
• Co-promoter: Greefs Hilde
• Fellow: Janssens Ric

Research team(s)

• Centre for Urban History

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

In a time of rapid urbanization solid long-term perspectives on the many environmental, social, economic or political challenges of urbanity are urgently needed. Uniting urban history, sociology, environmental studies and digital humanities, GIStorical Antwerp II turns the historical city into a digital lab which provides an answer to this need. For 8 snapshots between 1584 and 1984 it offers dynamic social maps including every household in the entire city of Antwerp. Construction combines innovative ways of crowd-sourcing and time-efficient spatial and text-mining methodologies (Linear Referencing, Named Entity Recognition). The result is a GIS-environment which not only allows a micro-level view of 500 years of urban development, but more importantly allows an immediate spatial and social contextualization of a sheer unlimited number of other datasets, both those realized through 30 years of research on Antwerp and the mass of structured and unstructured digital 'big data'. For both the applicants and the international research community a completely new type of longitudinal research on urban inequalities – from income over housing quality to pollution – becomes feasible.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Soens Tim
• Co-promoter: Blondé Bruno
• Co-promoter: De Block Greet
• Co-promoter: Greefs Hilde
• Co-promoter: Kestemont Mike
• Co-promoter: Loots Ilse
• Co-promoter: Oosterlynck Stijn
• Co-promoter: Stabel Peter
• Co-promoter: Van Damme Ilja

Research team(s)

• Centre for Urban History

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Wars and crises have profound destabilizing effects on societies. Nevertheless, most communities continue to function. How, and to what extent they are able to do so, depends upon the resilience of local institutions and networks above all. This project investigates the ability of the merchant communities to survive the Napoleonic wars through a comparative study of the flexibility of their networks in the Northern and Southern Netherlands. Our central hypothesis is that networks were more rigid in the north than in the south, whereas the impact was also larger because of the dominance of Amsterdam's maritime networks throughout. In-depth studies for Rotterdam, Antwerp, Twente and Ostend will reveal how local institutions interacted with central regulations and how divergent mechanisms arose among the merchant communities.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Greefs Hilde

Research team(s)

• Centre for Urban History

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This research project explores the history and role of salon music within Antwerp's bourgeois culture during the period 1848-1914. This once popular, but now largely neglected repertoire reveals a lot about the material, organisational, sociological and economic aspects of the music industry around that time. This music-historical and artistic research is carried out through the life and works of two Antwerp composers: Louis Gobbaerts and Maria Matthijssens.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Greefs Hilde

Research team(s)

• Centre for Urban History

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This project aims to investigate the role of female domestic servants in the democratisation of long distance migration by means of a comparative study of the trajectories and networks of male and female foreign newcomers to Antwerp and Brussels in 1850-1900. In this period, the image of long distance urban migrants as predominantly skilled and resourceful men engaged in patterns of career migration, became substituted for a bleaker picture of low-skilled men and women driven from their home country by impoverishment and persecution. This shift in the profile of long-distance migrants is often connected to the large-scale incorporation of agricultural workers into industrial and urban economies, and an overall growing international mobility thanks to expanding transportation and communication facilities, but the actual dynamics and agents of change at the meso (interpersonal connections) and micro level (individual characteristics) remain obscure. This project aims to shed light on these issues by combining a unique dataset on the individual characteristics and social networks of foreign newcomers in two distinct urban settings, with a novel hypothesis that focuses on the role of female domestic servants as mediators of migratory change. Its results will not only enhance our understanding of the epochal process of democratisation of long-distance migration at the turn of the nineteenth century, but also challenge dominant gender stereotypes in migration history.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Greefs Hilde

Research team(s)

• Centre for Urban History

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

In this project, the focus will be on foreign migrants who were working in one of the most internationalised labour market segments during the nineteenth century, the maritime labour market. The marked growth of maritime trade during the 19th century in the wake of commercial and industrial expansion went hand in hand with important technological and organizational innovations in shipping and the institutionalization and professionalization of maritime employment and education. Although there was a marked growth of maritime shipping in the wake of Belgium's commercial and industrial expansion in the 19th century, we know very little on the growing and often seasonal labour market for sailors on Belgian ships, where foreigners played an important part. Studying the migration patterns and trajectories, but also the recruitment patterns, profiles, career developments of foreign sailors offers a very specific way to study interactions between a particularly mobile group of migrants and one of the most internationalized labour market segments of the 19th century. Tracing the individual trajectories of foreign sailors will in turn provide insights into social networks and encounters of this diverse and transnational community both at sea and ashore, where their presence is considered a typical hallmark of the cosmopolitan aura of port cities. This project is part of a broader research project "Outcast or Embraced? Clusters of Foreign Immigrants in Belgium, c. 1840-1890", which aims to investigate the scale and nature of socio-cultural encounters and confrontations that emanated from foreign migration to Belgium between c. 1840 and 1890 by cross- and interdisciplinary analysis and valorization of a series of exceptionally rich but underexploited series of the federal historical heritage. The project aims (1) to map the scale, chronology and profiles of foreign migration to 19th-century Belgium, and (2) to investigate the political, economic, social and cultural dimensions of interactions of foreigners with different layers of Belgian society. Its underlying assumption is that increasing international mobility and circulation – rather than one-off migration – had a profound influence on the economic, political, cultural and social history of 19th-century Europe in general, and Belgium in particular

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Greefs Hilde

Research team(s)

• Centre for Urban History

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This project has the ambition of developing a bottom-up social and spatial approach to the privatization of urban drinking water in 18th- and 19th-century cities. Such approach would not be possible without a micro-level GIS, enabling us to follow private, public or common access to drinking water, its use and users on the level of the household. For 18th- and 19th-century Antwerp the GIStorical Antwerp project (UA-Hercules) offers such infrastructure. At this stage in its development, GIStorical Antwerp offers spatial information on each plot for 1830- 1880 based on cadastral data, with extension into the 18th century and up to 1900 scheduled for next year. Data gathered in this dissertation can hence be framed and analysed using year to year digital maps of the city, and integrated with available data on house ownership, commerce and industry. Thus, micro-level spatial analysis will form the core methodology, an approach that can - quite literally - open doors, analysing changes in, and blurring boundaries between, private, public and common space.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Soens Tim
• Co-promoter: Greefs Hilde
• Fellow: Janssens Ric

Research team(s)

• Centre for Urban History

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This project focuses on the internatiional trade networks in Antwerp during the first half of the nineteenth century. It highlights the role of merchants and businessmen in the maritime trade business in Antwerp and the ways in which they reconnected Antwerp to the world after the reopening of the river Scheldt in 1795. This project emphasizes the ways in which merchants and businessmen from abroad and from Antwerp used,, expanded and maintained their international relations and networks by a close study of business correspondance in different port cities.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Greefs Hilde

Research team(s)

• Centre for Urban History

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This project represents a formal research agreement between UA and on the other hand the Flemish Public Service. UA provides the Flemish Public Service research results mentioned in the title of the project under the conditions as stipulated in this contract.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Blondé Bruno
• Co-promoter: De Munck Bert
• Co-promoter: Greefs Hilde
• Co-promoter: Soens Tim
• Co-promoter: Stabel Peter

Research team(s)

• Centre for Urban History

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This project aims to investigate the role of local authorities in the development of national migration policies during the period 1750-1914 by uncovering continuities and changes in the treatment of non-national migrants in the city of Antwerp in a long-term perspective. Research on national migration policies has so far been characterized by a top-down approach that privileges the legal, philosophical and political dimensions of national legislation. This project proposes a bottom-up approach by focusing on how these regulations were implemented in Antwerp where they interacted with a legacy of ancien régime practices and local interests to produce particular treatments of non-national migrants. More precisely, it focuses on interactions between local and national authorities in realising the shift from non-local to non-national newcomers as the main target of migration regulation in the course of the long nineteenth century. The general purpose is twofold: (1) to bridge the historiographical divide between social and early modern studies focusing on local forms of migration regulation and political and contemporary historians adopting a national perspective, and (2) to correct the idea of a sharp discontinuity between migration policy practices in ancien régime and 'modern' Europe.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Greefs Hilde

Research team(s)

• Centre for Urban History

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Recent literature in urban studies tends to identify and define the city as an ever more complex and hybrid reality, referring to the urban as something 'splintered', 'assembled' and 'imagined' while seeking refuge in new concepts and catchphrases like 'post'-city, 'non'-city, or 'ex'-urban. Our collective research initiative will transcend this not by churning out even more new theories and concepts, but by analysing the very activity of defining the city as a historical process and practice. To that end, we will concentrate on four concrete, complementary domains, in which the definition of cities is at stake by nature. By focusing on (1) 'suburbanisation', (2) 'territoriality', and (3) 'urban citizenship' we examine the existence and meaningfulness of physical, social and imagined boundaries in defining the urban and urbanity. The theme of 'knowledge' (4) adds a reflexive layer by analysing the long term interconnections between the urban reality and knowledge formation – including knowledge on the city itself.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: De Munck Bert
• Co-promoter: De Block Greet
• Co-promoter: Greefs Hilde
• Co-promoter: Oosterlynck Stijn
• Co-promoter: Van Damme Ilja

Research team(s)

• Centre for Urban History

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This project aims to investigate the role of local authorities in the development of national migration policies during the period 1750-1914 by uncovering continuities and changes as well as similarities and differences in the treatment of non-national migrants in two distinct Belgian urban contexts - Antwerp and Brussels - in a comparative and long-term perspective.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Greefs Hilde

Research team(s)

• Centre for Urban History

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This project studies municipal public architecture in Flanders in the period 1950-1980. In literature this period is known for its fading interest in public architecture and the lack of any qualitative public policy. In this project this statement is questioned and investigated by broadening the traditional biographical (architect-designers) and typological methodological approach and explicitly includes the study of the interaction between the various actors in the public building process.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: de Smaele Henk
• Co-promoter: Greefs Hilde
• Fellow: Bertels Inge

Research team(s)

• Power in History - Centre for Political History

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

In this project there will be examined how international webs of business relations were built, how they functioned and which role they played in international economic transactions during an important momentum for international trade. By analysing the international webs of the business elite in the port town of Antwerp during the nineteenth century we hope to develop a more adequate typology of networks and to reinforce our knowledge of the cosmopolitan merchant community in Europe.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Greefs Hilde

Research team(s)

• Centre for Urban History

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The aim of this project is to conduct a comprehensive study of opportunities for immigration and integration of artisans in cities during the early modern period. We have opted to combine regional and local perspectives, addressing both interactions between cities and specific changes within cities, branches of industry, and occupations. The chief focus will be a review of several varieties of artisans who migrated to the main cities of the Duchy of Brabant between ca. 1450 and ca. 1800, with elaborate case studies of Antwerp and Brussels. This extended chronological perspective serves to transcend business cycles and gain insight into structural transitions of an economic, political-institutional and/or cultural nature.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: De Munck Bert
• Co-promoter: Greefs Hilde

Research team(s)

• Centre for Urban History

Project type(s)

• Research Project