Peter Stabel full professor

Research Peter Stabel

Research team

A single pattern? Reassessing the medieval origins and development of the European Marriage Pattern in the County of Flanders (1300-1600). 01/10/2024 - 30/09/2027

Abstract

In recent years, the European Marriage Pattern (EMP) has taken centre stage in the big debates on modern economic growth and the Little Divergence. Its demographic characteristics and underlying mechanisms supposedly enhanced the market participation of women, especially unmarried singles, in north-western Europe. According to some historians, EMP and its related opportunities first emerged in the wake of the Black Death. However, empirical evidence for these bold claims is severely lacking. Serial data on nuptiality and fertility is only available from the seventeenth century on, when parish registers became widespread. By that time, the features of EMP were already outspoken. As a result, the fundamental period of transition remains obscured. This research project therefore provides, for the first time, serial data on the period between 1300 and 1600 thanks to an innovative approach to orphan and tax registers. It retraces marriage patterns in the County of Flanders, one of the core regions of EMP. By looking at the variation within this limited area, the project aims to deconstruct the idea of a universal and empowering evolution of EMP in north-western Europe. In the process, it will uncover the social, demographic, and economic conditions that gave rise to this pattern and analyse its development, including the effects on unmarried women. The results hold the potential to reshape the grand narratives at the crossroad of demographic and socio-economic history.

Researcher(s)

Research team(s)

Project type(s)

  • Research Project

The Social History of Finance. 01/11/2021 - 31/10/2025

Abstract

Why was it that in Western economies banks only began to reach deep into society during the 1960s and 1970s? The half century that passed between their creation in the late 19th and early 20th century and the widespread use of their services by households suggests that, for a very long time, many households managed their finances differently. But which services did they use, and when, how and why did the providers of those alternatives make way for banks? What drove this fundamental change in household finance and why did it not come earlier? Current research on financial development has no answers to these questions. THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF FINANCE proposes a new conceptual framework to capture the long-term development of the financial system and the social context in which it took shape. The project analyzes (1) the long-term development of financial services provided by banks and other suppliers, notably governments and the social networks in which households were embedded; (2) continuity and change in the financial demand of households; and (3) the suppliers' adaptation of financial services to changes in both the demand of households and the supply of financial services by other providers.The project develops this new social history of finance through an in-depth investigation of household finance in Belgium and The Netherlands in the 19th and 20th centuries. It will serve as a benchmark for future work on the evolution of financial systems.

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Project type(s)

  • Research Project

Food from Somewhere? Urban Households, Access to Land and Alternative Food Entitlements in the Late Medieval City. 01/01/2020 - 31/12/2023

Abstract

Medieval cities were obsessed by food, food supplies and food shortages. Like in most pre-1900 societies, extreme weather conditions, warfare, trade conflicts easily disrupted the precarious food supplies, resulting in recurrent and virulent price spikes and potentially unleashing social unrest. No wonder then, that urban food supplies or 'Feeding the city' has been a prominent topic in economic history for decades, with a particular emphasis on the later Middle Ages, period of far-reaching crisis, instability and economic transformation in Europe and beyond. All of this literature however, is based upon the assumption that cities, above a certain population level, are basically fed through the market, where rural agricultural surpluses are exchanged against the products of urban industry and trade. Urged by recent articulations of alternative ways of urban food provisioning – notably the rise of Urban Agriculture and all efforts to replace anonymous 'Food from Nowhere' mediated by increasingly globalized food markets by more localized 'Food from Somewhere' – this project aims at revolutionizing our understanding of urban food provisioning in the past, by questioning the self-evidence of the market as hegemonic allocator of food in past urban societies. In this project, the key to achieve such paradigm shift in urban food history, is sought in the access to land. The accumulation of both urban and rural land by urban households has been documented in many contexts, but is mostly explained in terms of capital investment and rent seeking and as a tool of social ascent. The food generating capacity of land is mostly overlooked, or minimized as a sign of economic backwardness, small 'agro-towns' or a mere survival strategy for the urban poor. Either through the direct cultivation of land in the city and its periphery, through deliveries in kind by rural tenants or rural family-members or through access to urban commons, land might have provided a wide range of 'alternative food entitlements' for many different social groups, with or without the capability and incentive to secure a market-independent access to food. Understanding the role of land for feeding the citizens (rather than the city) might be crucial to understand the dynamics of food markets in the later Middle Ages. What if land-based food supplies did not contract but rather expand with the development of food markets? What if dependency of the food markets became connected with lower social status? After all, the social fabric of the late medieval cities was both characterized by an ascent of 'corporate' middle classes, and the disposition of alternative, land-based food supplies, might be one of the instruments through which these middling class tried to emulate the social elites, leaving the food market for the lower strata of urban society. Such observation would significantly change our understanding of 'imperfect' food markets and failing food policies. For Ghent, Norwich and Dijon, three comparatively large cities with a pronounced difference in connection to regional and long-distance food trade, an in-depth analysis of alternative food entitlements at the household level, will allow to reveal the contexts in which alternative food economies flourished; their relative contribution to the supply of urban households; the actors and networks involved in such supplies; the solidarity and dependency they create and finally their integration in or interaction with the urban food market. If successful this project might not only generate important new insights in the history of urban food provisioning in late medieval Europe, but also offer an important historical contribution to present-day debates on the viability and social dynamics of alternative urban food supplies.

Researcher(s)

Research team(s)

Project type(s)

  • Research Project

Women's fortunes. Female agency, property and investment in the urban space of late medieval Brabant. 01/10/2016 - 30/09/2018

Abstract

In the Late Middle Ages the social position of women underwent major transitions. However, until today historians fail to agree on the nature of these changes. On the one hand, scholars argue that possibilities for women waned, while on the other hand, others maintain that the period was a 'golden age' in terms of women's opportunities. Far too often these debates tend to revolve around women's labour, rather than around other economic activities, such as women's property investment, and the motives surrounding their actions. To grasp fully the fundamental changes in women's status, this project proposes a social analysis of gender relations and income strategies. For this purpose, the project studies how women and men invested their property and material belongings in urban society, and, most important, how this changed over the course of the fifteenth century. This will include an examination of both how gender relations influenced these patterns, and how these patterns were affected by the differences among women, in terms of their marital, social and economic status. A comparative analysis of the aldermen's registers of two cities with different characteristics, Leuven and Antwerp, will bring social and economic structures to the fore of the research. By focusing on sample years, the project will study all deeds containing information on the financial strategies of private persons, thereby contributing a new perspective on the changing status of late medieval women.

Researcher(s)

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Project type(s)

  • Research Project

The ways to Success. Strategies and Trajectories of the Commercial elites in the Low Countries in the Long Sixteenth Century. 01/10/2016 - 30/09/2017

Abstract

Historians have long believed that the ultimate goal for well-to-do bourgeois elites in the sixteenth century was to obtain a noble title. According to the theory, they eventually became concerned about preserving their social status and started investing in ways to become noble, like the formation of landed estates or assimilation with the Second Estate. Recently the debate about this 'treason of the bourgeoisie' has been reopened and the theory has received criticism, especially in the Low Countries. Historians have shown that the markers associated with this trajectory can be interpreted in other ways, but it still seems that the whole literature about social ascent is dominated by the 'success' of a few families that did follow the treason-trajectory. Consequently, the circular reasoning of the theory has never been revised: the "success" stories are viewed as the ideal for all the commercial elites. It is just as likely however, that social success in the Low Countries was achieved in other ways by following other strategies. This has never been thoroughly and empirically tested, however. The goal of this project is to identify the ways in which mercantile elites in the Low Countries followed trajectories towards social success or failure, without using the treason theory as an ideal-type. By studying a representative group of commercial elites, this project aims to give a better understanding of these trajectories towards social success or failure.

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  • Research Project

GIStorical Antwerp II. The historical city as empirical lab for urban studies using high-resolution social maps. 01/05/2016 - 30/04/2020

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.

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Project type(s)

  • Research Project

The 'horizontal city' in the middle ages. Suburban settlement in the Southern Low Countries (late 15th-16th century). 01/10/2015 - 30/09/2018

Abstract

This project will study suburban areas in the surroundings of three towns in the Southern Low Countries from ca. 1490 to 1585 (Antwerp, Oudenaarde and Bruges). It will examine the resilience of suburban areas, the economic and social organization of suburban societies and it will reveal whether suburban settlement developed a proper social identity.

Researcher(s)

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Project type(s)

  • Research Project

The economics of court life. The interaction of court and the city in the late medieval and early modern Low Countries. 01/01/2015 - 31/12/2018

Abstract

The process of state formation across the late medieval and early modern period was characterized not only by the growth of state institutions, the immediate environment of the prince also became more important as courts yielded more political influence. The economic impact of court life has, however, received only scarce attention. The so-called "capital city-effect" led to concentrations of wealthy consumers in the capital cities of the European states. Demand and supply were concentrated, stimulating the rise of primate cities in the urban network. This proposal wants, for the first time, 1° to measure the real impact court demand (+the aggregated demand of courtiers) played on capital city-effects, 2° to investigate how in the densely urbanized Low Countries court and elite demand generated patterns of meeting this demand, leading to specific market effects and patterns of luxury production, and 3° look at how changing patterns of elite demand influenced opportunities for merchants and craftsmen. For sample periods, from the 14th to the early 17th century, it wants to assess how court demand interacted with the urban economies which increasingly geared towards the supply of services and commodities that demanded higher levels of skill and specialisation. It wants to investigate how the rise of court demand interacted with the social organisation of cities, with the growing role of middling groups of specialist and (guild organised) urban craftsmen and retailers.

Researcher(s)

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Project type(s)

  • Research Project

Poor relief and community building in the Southern Low Countries, ca. 1300-1600. 01/10/2014 - 30/09/2017

Abstract

This project will study poor relief in an integrated way in three towns in the Southern Low Countries from circa 1300 to 1600 (Ghent, Mechelen and Bergues/Sint-Winoksbergen), in order to examine how, through poor relief schemes, urban communities of solidarity were shaped. I will analyze which communities were implied or shaped when it was regulated and decided who could profit from poor relief, and how this changed in the long run. Who had access to relief systems (and who did not) and what community thereby served as a frame of reference? Which social boundaries were created (and by whom)? Was increasing social fragmentation reflected in a fragmentation of poor relief, or was there a shift from local and particular communities to the whole city in the fifteenth and sixteenth century?

Researcher(s)

Research team(s)

Project type(s)

  • Research Project

Women's fortunes. Female agency, property and investment in the urban space of late medieval Brabant. 01/10/2014 - 30/09/2016

Abstract

In the Late Middle Ages the social position of women underwent major transitions. However, until today historians fail to agree on the nature of these changes. On the one hand, scholars argue that possibilities for women waned, while on the other hand, others maintain that the period was a 'golden age' in terms of women's opportunities. Far too often these debates tend to revolve around women's labour, rather than around other economic activities, such as women's property investment, and the motives surrounding their actions. To grasp fully the fundamental changes in women's status, this project proposes a social analysis of gender relations and income strategies. For this purpose, the project studies how women and men invested their property and material belongings in urban society, and, most important, how this changed over the course of the fifteenth century. This will include an examination of both how gender relations influenced these patterns, and how these patterns were affected by the differences among women, in terms of their marital, social and economic status. A comparative analysis of the aldermen's registers of two cities with different characteristics, Leuven and Antwerp, will bring social and economic structures to the fore of the research. By focusing on sample years, the project will study all deeds containing information on the financial strategies of private persons, thereby contributing a new perspective on the changing status of late medieval women.

Researcher(s)

Research team(s)

Project type(s)

  • Research Project

Eating with your fingers, dining with your eyes. Table manners in the late mediëval and early modern Low Countries. 01/10/2014 - 30/09/2016

Abstract

The challenge we take up in this project is to flesh out if and how table manners were materialized in tableware, and how tableware contributed to changing social intercourse. Therefore, scattered information from archaeology, art history and cooking history awaits to be integrated. This project – at the crossroads of discourse analysis and material culture studies, will consider the dialectics between individuals and materiality, by using complementary sources and methods. 1) A discourse analysis of dining manuals will shed light on shifts and continuities in the meaning of dining manners. 2) Confronting this analysis with the material culture of tableware will reveal the extent to which this prescriptive literature was really appropriated. 3) Probate inventories will prove crucial to clarify the complex downward and upward social dimensions of these manners. In order to do justice to the genuine contribution of middling groups in urban society, the late medieval cities of Antwerp, Oudenaarde and Bruges with their shifting social textures and sociabilities were chosen for analysis.

Researcher(s)

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Project type(s)

  • Research Project

The Lure of Lady Luck: lotteries and economic culture in the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Low Countries. 01/10/2013 - 30/09/2016

Abstract

This project analyzes lotteries to determine the boundaries between investing and gambling in the pre-industrial Low Countries. The project will reveal perceptions of and attitudes towards risk in conditions of economic uncertainty and considers the economic culture of the late middle ages and the early modern period.

Researcher(s)

Research team(s)

Project type(s)

  • Research Project

The 'horizontal city' in the middle ages. Suburban settlement in the Southern Low Countries (late 15th-16th century). 01/10/2013 - 30/09/2015

Abstract

This project will study suburban areas in the surroundings of three towns in the Southern Low Countries from ca. 1490 to 1585 (Antwerp, Oudenaarde and Bruges). It will examine the resilience of suburban areas, the economic and social organization of suburban societies and it will reveal whether suburban settlement developed a proper social identity.

Researcher(s)

Research team(s)

Project type(s)

  • Research Project

The town is the countryside. Textile production and towncountry-relations in the Flemish West Country (15th-16th centuries). 01/01/2013 - 31/12/2016

Abstract

In the past decades urban and rural history have increasingly grown apart. Crucial debates about pre-modern social and economic developments, like those about proto-industry, towncountry-relations and other important issues are taking place with often very different conceptual frameworks and analytical tools. This project want to use the case study of the rural industries in the western parts of late medieval Flanders to confront approaches in both disciplines. Fundamental issues about factor markets for capital, labour and products will be analyzed in order to assess how manufacture of expensive and cheaper textiles is allocated in an urbanized region, which is linked to export markets across Europe.

Researcher(s)

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Project type(s)

  • Research Project

Heirs, Kinship ties and urban associations. City dwellers and their networks in 16th century Mechelen. 01/10/2012 - 30/09/2015

Abstract

This research proposal aims at analyzing the way in which and the reasons why town dwellers in 15th and 16th century Mechelen bequeathed to their extended family, and how this correlated with simultaneously adhering to diverse formal and informal urban associations. This will be traced primarily in wills by means of a systematic and diachronic discourse analysis of specific patterns of identification in will preambles, and the motivations that lay behind the division of the heritage, which will be combined with a quantitative approach. Assembling the legacies to urban groups and kin in grids and tables will enable us to analyse their relative proportion in the long run. To present a more nuanced image of pre-modern urban society than traditional history permits, we will combine this line of research with an in-depth study of the social profiles of the testators. The already advanced state of data collection on associational life in Mechelen makes it feasible to postulate how legacies to the extended family in wills correspond with the testators¿ membership in particular urban groups, as well as with their gender and wealth. Hence, this proposal fits in a broader field of research on civil society and urban associational life, linking this with research on kinship and family life.

Researcher(s)

Research team(s)

Project type(s)

  • Research Project

Poor relief and community building in the Southern Low Countries, ca. 1300-1600. 01/10/2012 - 30/09/2014

Abstract

This project will study poor relief in an integrated way in three towns in the Southern Low Countries from circa 1300 to 1600 (Ghent, Mechelen and Bergues/Sint-Winoksbergen), in order to examine how, through poor relief schemes, urban communities of solidarity were shaped. I will analyze which communities were implied or shaped when it was regulated and decided who could profit from poor relief, and how this changed in the long run. Who had access to relief systems (and who did not) and what community thereby served as a frame of reference? Which social boundaries were created (and by whom)? Was increasing social fragmentation reflected in a fragmentation of poor relief, or was there a shift from local and particular communities to the whole city in the fifteenth and sixteenth century?

Researcher(s)

Research team(s)

Project type(s)

  • Research Project

Eating with your fingers, dining with your eyes. Table manners in the late medieval and early modern Low Countries. 01/10/2012 - 30/09/2014

Abstract

The challenge we take up in this project is to flesh out if and how table manners were materialized in tableware, and how tableware contributed to changing social intercourse. Therefore, scattered information from archaeology, art history and cooking history awaits to be integrated. This project – at the crossroads of discourse analysis and material culture studies, will consider the dialectics between individuals and materiality, by using complementary sources and methods. 1) A discourse analysis of dining manuals will shed light on shifts and continuities in the meaning of dining manners. 2) Confronting this analysis with the material culture of tableware will reveal the extent to which this prescriptive literature was really appropriated. 3) Probate inventories will prove crucial to clarify the complex downward and upward social dimensions of these manners. In order to do justice to the genuine contribution of middling groups in urban society, the late medieval cities of Antwerp, Oudenaarde and Bruges with their shifting social textures and sociabilities were chosen for analysis.

Researcher(s)

Research team(s)

Project type(s)

  • Research Project

At Home in Sixteenth-Century Flanders. Materiality and Domesticity in the City (1450-1650). 01/10/2012 - 30/09/2013

Abstract

The main objective of this project is to look beyond studies that treat citizens as members of the public urban community (e.g. Nicholas 1985; Stabel and Boone 2000) without acknowledging the key role that may have been played by living patterns in their households.

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  • Research Project

Scientific research in the city's history. 01/10/2012 - 30/06/2013

Abstract

The project for this sabbatical consists of two research axes: firstly the completion of a monograph on economic change and guild economies in late medieval Bruges; secondly archival prospection and data gathering in archival depots in Belgium.

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  • Research Project

GIStorical Antwerp: a micro-level data tool for the study of past urban societies, test-case: Antwerp. 02/07/2012 - 31/12/2017

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)

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  • Research Project

Micro-economic analysis of the textile trade around 1500 in Bruges and Antwerp: the double-entry account ledgers of Wouter Ameide (1498-1507). 01/04/2011 - 31/03/2015

Abstract

This project will use methods from economic analysis (micro-economic analysis and accountancy) and social and economic history to assess the management of business in the first half of the 16th century and shed a new light on the introduction of new productivity enhancing techniques (more efficient methods of controlling information) in periods of great economic change (decline of the Bruges and growth of the Antwerp market).

Researcher(s)

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  • Research Project

Relational and institutional trust in the international trade of the Low Countries, 15th-16th centuries. 01/10/2010 - 30/09/2012

Abstract

This research project investigates the role of trust in networks and institutions used by international merchants in Bruges and Antwerp in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Assuming two types of trust, i.e. relational and institutional, this research wants to determine whether trust became (relatively) obsolete when new legal institutions and rules arose that are said to have facilitated commercial transactions between international traders.

Researcher(s)

Research team(s)

Project type(s)

  • Research Project

Heirs, kinship ties and urban associations. City dwellers and their networks in 15th and 16th century Mechelen. 01/10/2010 - 30/09/2012

Abstract

This research proposal aims at analyzing the way in which and the reasons why town dwellers in 15th and 16th century Mechelen bequeathed to their extended family, and how this correlated with simultaneously adhering to diverse formal and informal urban associations. This will be traced primarily in wills by means of a systematic and diachronic discourse analysis of specific patterns of identification in will preambles, and the motivations that lay behind the division of the heritage, which will be combined with a quantitative approach. Assembling the legacies to urban groups and kin in grids and tables will enable us to analyse their relative proportion in the long run. To present a more nuanced image of pre-modern urban society than traditional history permits, we will combine this line of research with an in-depth study of the social profiles of the testators. The already advanced state of data collection on associational life in Mechelen makes it feasible to postulate how legacies to the extended family in wills correspond with the testators¿ membership in particular urban groups, as well as with their gender and wealth. Hence, this proposal fits in a broader field of research on civil society and urban associational life, linking this with research on kinship and family life.

Researcher(s)

Research team(s)

Project type(s)

  • Research Project

Broadening the 'spatial turn': real estate, annuities and the rise of the Antwerp market in the late Middle Ages (ca 1390 ¿ ca 1430). 01/10/2009 - 31/12/2011

Abstract

This is a fundamental research project financed by the Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO). The project was subsidized after selection by the FWO-expert panel.

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  • Research Project

Data infrastructure for the study of guilds and other forms of corporate collective action in pre-industrial times. 01/09/2009 - 11/02/2010

Abstract

The research aims to coordinate, harmonize and broaden the work on systematic data sets of guilds, in order to facilitate international comparative study of the rise and development of these corporate bodies in the centuries before the Industrial Revolution.

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  • Research Project

Multiple identities in a late medieval and early modern city: Mechelen in the 15th and 16th centuries. 01/01/2009 - 31/12/2012

Abstract

This project aims at analysing multiple identities that town dwellers adopt and (re)produce and in doing so it will try to present a more nuanced image of pre-modern urban society than traditional social and cultural history usually permits. For the case-study of Mechelen in the late medieval and early modern period, it wants to identify how identities are constructed (by the participation of different groups in civil society), how they are performed in the public arena and how identities are perceived in collective memory (rituals, historiography, literature).

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  • Research Project

Micro-economic analysis of the textile trade around 1500 in Bruges: the double-entry account ledgers of Wouter Ameide (1498-1507). 01/01/2009 - 31/12/2011

Abstract

This project will use methods from economic analysis (micro-economic analysis and accountancy) and from social and economic history to assess the impact of the introduction of new productivity enhancing techniques (more efficient methods of acquiring and controlling in periods of great economic change (the transition from the Bruges to the Antwerp market around 1500).

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  • Research Project

Social inequality and mobility during the long sixteenth century: Bois-le-Duc and its "Meierij" 01/10/2008 - 30/09/2010

Abstract

Historical interest in the dynamics of social inequalities has been strangely underdeveloped. Especially as to the late medieval and early modern Low Countries, surprisingly little is known on patterns of social and economic mobility on the household level within its numerous cities. Armed with a number of exceptional sources, this project hopes to further our understanding of the inequalities and mobilities of a typical ancien régime town, as well as their processes of (re)production. Intergenerational transfers of resources will occupy a key place in the analysis and theories brought into play.

Researcher(s)

Research team(s)

Project type(s)

  • Research Project

Relational and institutional trust in the international trade of the Low Countries, 15th-16th centuries. 01/10/2008 - 30/09/2010

Abstract

This research project investigates the role of trust in networks and institutions used by international merchants in Bruges and Antwerp in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Assuming two types of trust, i.e. relational and institutional, this research wants to determine whether trust became (relatively) obsolete when new legal institutions and rules arose that are said to have facilitated commercial transactions between international traders.

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Research team(s)

Project type(s)

  • Research Project

The Contemporary Historic Novel about New York City. 01/01/2008 - 31/12/2011

Abstract

The investigation seeks to provide answers to the following four main research questions: (1) The literary-historical question about specific shifts that allow us to situate the phenomenon of the contemporary historic novel on New York City within (American) literary history overall. (2) The genre-typological question about the role of quest and search plots in the corpus. (3) The documentary question about the ways in which writers use historic sources. (4) The political-ideological question about the possibly subversive or critical potential of the fictional worlds developed by writers.

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  • Research Project

Circulation of knowledge in the Low Countries. Flows of technical knowledge in the western core-area of the Low Countries between c. 1400 and 1700. 01/01/2008 - 31/12/2011

Abstract

The aim of this project is to examine how technical knowledge circulated in the Low countries between 1400 and 1700, how the volume and mode of this circulation changed, and what socio-economic, political, cultural and institutional circumstances effected this. The project involves four cities (Haarlem and Rotterdam in the North, and Antwerp and Ghent in the South) and three economic sectors (textile finishing, woodprocessing and silver and goldsmithing.

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  • Research Project

Architecture and construction of urban palaces with courtyard in Antwerp (1450-1650): an interdisciplinary approach. 01/01/2008 - 31/12/2009

Abstract

The project aims at reconstructing an exact inventory of the architecture and urban planning for a specific architectural type, the urban palace with courtyard (and Tuscan arcade). It wants to identify patterns by which the influence of the Italian Renaissance entered the architecture of Antwerp and the Low Countries in the course of the long 16th century. The project wants to assess also the crucial role of the middling groups in urban society in these patterns of dissemination of the Renaissance.

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  • Research Project

Broadening the 'spatial turn': real estate, annuities and the rise of the Antwerp market in de late Middle Ages (ca 1390-ca 1430). 01/10/2007 - 30/09/2009

Abstract

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  • Research Project

Networks and integration of Spanish and Italian merchants in Antwerp during its Golden Age, 1482-1585. 01/10/2007 - 30/09/2008

Abstract

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  • Research Project

The image of the city. Visual representation of cities and urban identity in the late medieval and early modern Low Countries (15th - 16th century). 01/01/2007 - 31/12/2010

Abstract

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  • Research Project

Bridging the gap: problems of coordination, tools of trade and the organization of international commerce in late medieval European cities. 01/01/2007 - 31/12/2008

Abstract

This book project wants to bring a fundamental contribution to our knowledge of late medieval commercial systems. Experts of the subject will be united in a publication in order to make an inventory of the problems of coordination and the solutions for such problems which the traders were able to develop. Their efficiency in this period of fundamental change will be assessed. The geographical focus of the volume will be the important trading cities of Northwest Europe.

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  • Research Project

Social inequality and mobility during the long sixteenth century: Bois-le-Duc and its "Meierij". 01/10/2006 - 30/09/2008

Abstract

Historical interest in the dynamics of social inequalities has been strangely underdeveloped. Especially as to the late medieval and early modern Low Countries, surprisingly little is known on patterns of social and economic mobility on the household level within its numerous cities. Armed with a number of exceptional sources, this project hopes to further our understanding of the inequalities and mobilities of a typical ancien régime town, as well as their processes of (re)production. Intergenerational transfers of resources will occupy a key place in the analysis and theories brought into play.

Researcher(s)

Research team(s)

Project type(s)

  • Research Project

Modernity and economic change: financial, commercial and industrial networks in a declining economy (Bruges at the end of the Middle Ages). 01/10/2006 - 30/09/2007

Abstract

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Project type(s)

  • Research Project

Social and economic inequalities in the Southern Low Countries, 15th-18th centuries. Towards an interdisciplinary analysis of measurement and (re-) assessment of social inequalities in pre-industrial societies. 01/10/2005 - 30/09/2009

Abstract

Social Inequality research of the Southern Low Countries, 15th-18th centuries is marked by the use of a deficient methodology and the absence of both long term and comparative research approaches. The major goal of this research project lies a) in the accommodation and application of social inequality measurements in historical research, b) a reassessment of the existing insights related to preindustrial social inequality.

Researcher(s)

Research team(s)

Project type(s)

  • Research Project

Innovation and communication during the late Middle Ages: a new approach of the social, economic and cultural history of the Middle Ages. 01/10/2003 - 31/12/2005

Abstract

Research will focus on the historical dimension of innovation and communication in economic behavior. In particular the late medieval practices of international trade and industrial production will be analyzed in order to confront them with the fundamental processes at the crossroads of economy, cultural behaviour and social organization.

Researcher(s)

Research team(s)

Project type(s)

  • Research Project