Papers by Wouter Ryckbosch
The debate on meat's role in health and disease is a rowdy and dissonant one. This study uses the... more The debate on meat's role in health and disease is a rowdy and dissonant one. This study uses the health section of the online version of The Daily Mail as a case study to carry out a quantitative and qualitative reflection on the related discourses in mass media during the first fifteen years of the 21st century. This period ranged from the fallout of the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) crisis and its associated food safety anxieties, over the Atkins diet-craze in 2003 and the avian flu episode in 2007, to the highly influential publication of the report on colon cancer by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in 2015. A variety of conflicting news items was discernible, whereby moments of crisis, depicting the potential hazards of meat eating, seemed to generate reassuring counter-reactions stressing the benefits of meat as a rich source of nutrients. In contrast, when the popularity of meat-rich diets was on the rise due to diets stressing the role of protein in weight control, several warnings were issued. Meat's long-standing and semiotic connotations of vitality, strength, and fertility were either confirmed, rejected or inverted. Often this was achieved through scientification or medicalisation, with references to nutritional studies. The holistic role of meat within human diets and health was thus mostly reduced to a focus on specific food components and isolated biological mechanisms. The narratives were often his-trionic and displayed serious contradictions. Since several interests were at play, involving a variety of input from dieticians, (health) authorities, the food industry, vegan or vegetarian movements, and celebrities , the overall discourse was highly heterogeneous.
This article studies a collection of data on economic inequality in fifteen towns in the Southern... more This article studies a collection of data on economic inequality in fifteen towns in the Southern and Northern Low Countries from the late Middle Ages until the end of the nineteenth century. By using a single and consistent source type and adopting a uniform methodology, it is possible to study levels of urban economic inequality across time and place comparatively. The results indicate a clear growth in economic inequality in the two centuries prior to the industrial revolution and the onset of sustained economic growth per capita. The results presented lend support to the " classical " explanation of inequality as the consequence of a changing functional distribution of income favoring capital over labor over the course of the early modern period. These findings provide an alternative resolution of the conundrum presented by " optimist " and " pessimists " interpretations of early modern economic development. . Inequality in history The growth of income inequality in many countries of the Western world over the last thirty years has significantly bolstered the centrality of inequality to debates in economics, social sciences, and policy making. Nevertheless, inequality's somewhat unexpected return to public consciousness and research agendas has confronted social scientists and policymakers alike with the finding that most knowledge of its fundamental causes and effects is still limited and often highly contested. As a result, many economists have turned to the past for more insight into the underlying logic of inequality movements through time. In particular, the long-term relationship between inequality and economic development has been central to much historical investigation. This strand of economic history has sought answers to the question whether inequality is good for economic development and has tried to do so by looking at the experience of the past two centuries. The current paper addresses the same issue of the relationship between inequality and economic development, but goes further back in time, and focuses on the long formative period of Western, capitalist economies. It aims to determine the extent to which pre-industrial levels of inequality were affected by economic development, and by the long-term emergence of a capitalist economy, and to consider how inequality might have influenced development itself. Several theories on the relationship between inequality and development exist for the modern era, but given the scarcity of sources that allow for the reconstruction of income and wealth inequality before the twentieth century, their applicability to the pre-and early industrial period is largely unclear. As is well known, the most influential modeling of the relationship between economic growth and inequality was presented first by Simon Kuznets in his 1954 presidential address to the American Economic Association (Kuznets 1955). Based on cross-sectional data on the level
The question of how economic inequality changed during the centuries leading up to the industrial... more The question of how economic inequality changed during the centuries leading up to the industrial revolution has been attracting a growing amount of research effort. Nevertheless, a complete picture of the tendencies in economic inequality throughout pre-industrial Europe has remained out of our grasp. This paper begins to resolve this problem by comparing long-term changes in inequality between Central and Northern Italy on the one hand and the Southern and Northern Low Countries on the other hand. Based on new archival material, we reconstruct regional estimates of economic inequality between 1500 and 1800 and analyze them in the light of the Little Divergence debate, assessing the role of economic growth, urbanization, proletarianization, and political institutions. We argue that different explanations should be invoked to understand the early modern growth of inequality throughout Europe, since several factors conspired to make for a society in which it was much easier for inequality to rise than to fall. We also argue that although there was apparently a ‘Little Convergence’ in inequality, at least some parts of southern and northern Europe diverged in terms of inequality extraction ratios.
Richard Goldthwaite's pioneering work on the material culture of the Italian Renaissance offered ... more Richard Goldthwaite's pioneering work on the material culture of the Italian Renaissance offered many clues for better understanding long-term changes and continuities in European patterns of consumption during the early modern period. Yet the large historiographical body on the subject of the ‘material renaissance’ has largely ignored or rejected these, and has more often than not studied the field in a sort of ‘splendid isolation’. This article presents a review of some of the most important contributions to this field, and attempts to link them to the ongoing debates on early modern consumer change in the social and economic history outside of Italy.
Stimulated by wide-ranging theories on its cultural and economic significance, the history of ear... more Stimulated by wide-ranging theories on its cultural and economic significance, the history of early modern consumption in the Low Countries has received a remarkable amount of attention in historiography during the last three decades. During this period the growing body of empirical evidence, as well as shifting theoretical frameworks, have gradually altered our understanding of early modern patterns of consumption, their causes and consequences. The current article presents a review of the main tendencies in the field of early modern consumption history, and the challenges to this historiographical field these have presented. Based on these challenges, the article suggests new avenues for future research.
In 'Uw Toren is Niet Af', Mechelen, 2014.
Urban History, 2010
Rodestraat 14, 2000 Antwerpen, Belgium abstract: Though the phrase 'public services' is a... more Rodestraat 14, 2000 Antwerpen, Belgium abstract: Though the phrase 'public services' is a nineteenth-century invention, which was supported by a developed rhetoric of political economy, this article shows that the concept, practice and supply of such services could ...
This paper studies a collection of data on economic inequality in fifteen towns in the Southern a... more This paper studies a collection of data on economic inequality in fifteen towns in the Southern and Northern Low Countries from the late Middle Ages until the end of the nineteenth century. By using a single and consistent source type and adopting a uniform methodology, it is possible to study levels of urban economic inequality across time and place comparatively. The results indicate a clear growth in economic inequality in the two centuries prior to the industrial revolution and the onset of sustained economic growth per capita. The general occurrence of this rise throughout regions with dissimilar economic trajectories contradicts the existence of a straightforward trade-off between growth and inequality as conjectured by Simon Kuznets (1955). Instead, the results presented lend support to the ‘classical’ economists’ explanation of inequality as the consequence of a changing functional distribution of income favouring capital over labour in the long run.
The capacity of European demand for ‘exotic’ colonial beverages, such as coffee, tea, and chocola... more The capacity of European demand for ‘exotic’ colonial beverages, such as coffee, tea, and chocolate, to radically transform established patterns of consumption as well as production, has become a central tenet of early modern economy history (McCants 2008; De Vries 2008; Berg 2004). In explaining Europe’s infatuation with foreign consumables, the historiography of the last decades has tended to emphasise a cultural-functionalist approach, focusing upon the ways in which imported goods became desirable as signifiers within the culture of the recipient society: as symbols of a sophisticated (exotic) taste, as markers of social status, or as the embodiment of aristocratic or bourgeois values and identities (Schivelbusch 1993; Smith 2002). In this sense, widespread changes in consumption patterns throughout seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe is often seen as a reflection or representation of underlying social changes, such as the rise of the middle class, or the transition from a status to a class-based society. On the other hand, some historians have argued for the agency of these new consumer goods in bringing about these transformations themselves. Did perhaps, as Carole Shammas argued, the materiality and specific chemical properties of these new and often exotic consumer goods – such as cotton, porcelain, tea and coffee – change European and American consumers’ attitudes towards the commodification of the material world?
The current paper wishes to sidestep this dichotomy by offering a more cautious reading of the ways in which the relation between the construction of consumer value and social status could be negotiated during the early modern period. It explores this issue by focusing on one specific commodity that played an important role in these consumer changes, transforming rapidly from a luxury good to a staple product in less than a century. In looking at the ways in which tea was perceived and valued by contemporary observers, I intend to look beyond the mere opposition between the essentialist and cultural-functionalist perspectives. Instead I will focus attention upon how the conventions of valuation surrounding tea changed through time, thus diverting attention away from changes in either the material or the social world, and towards the sphere of epistemology.
The paper focuses on the Low Countries, a region undergoing profound and widespread changes in consumption patterns throughout the 17th and 18th century, including both the heartland of the Dutch East India Company (responsible for a significant share the import of tea in Europe), but also including the Southern Netherlands, a region much less involved in international trade relations and much more economically stagnant than its northern neighbour.
‘Geld, koopkracht en levensstandaard’, Tijd-schrift. Heemkunde en lokaal-erfgoedpraktijk in Vlaanderen, 3:1 (2013), pp. 76-85.
W. Ryckbosch & E. Decraene, ‘Household credit, social relations, and devotion in the early modern economy’, Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History, 11:1 (2014).
This article explores the contingency between the membership and daily functioning of religious c... more This article explores the contingency between the membership and daily functioning of religious confraternities, and the access to and extension of informal credit by urban households. It thus seeks to answer the question whether seventeenth- and eighteenth-century religious confraternities mattered in generating the requirements for market expansion based on interpersonal credit in the local economy of a small early modern town in transition. The analysis suggests that, in so far as confraternal socialization did produce new opportunities for household credit and access to the market, these were shaped by the hierarchical, patriarchal and disciplinary structures and moral categories of post-Tridentine associations.
Tijdschrift voor Sociale en Economische Geschiedenis, 2007
B. Blondé & W. Ryckbosch, ‘Arriving to a set table. The integration of hot drinks in the urban consumer culture of the 18th-century Southern Low Countries’, in: H. Hodacs, F. Gottmann, C. Nierstrasz (eds.), Goods from the East: Trading Eurasia 1600-1800, Palgrave Press, forthcoming.
This chapter aims to explore some of the ways in which the rapidly expanding consumption of sugar... more This chapter aims to explore some of the ways in which the rapidly expanding consumption of sugar and hot drinks during the eighteenth century impacted upon the material culture of urban households in the Southern Low Countries. The swift and widespread adoption of the domestic consumption of hot drinks, along with a variety of accompanying utensils and consuming practices during this period, has by now become a well-established historical finding. Relative prices and trade patterns have been substantively documented, and so are the manners in which tea and sugar altered European ways of life, for instance by influencing patterns of domesticity and sociability during the early modern period. In many towns of the Southern Netherlands, the introduction of colonial goods transformed the structure and timing of meals, and profoundly influenced existing patterns of sociability.
Nevertheless, we argue that the impact of hot drinks consumption upon transforming European material cultures was more of a quantitative rather than a qualitative nature. Without denying the fundamental importance of the new cluster of consumer behaviour which formed around the consumption of exotic hot drinks, a closer examination of the materiality, location and use of these consumer goods as recorded in the probate inventories, nevertheless leads us to suggest that the mental categories which accompanied them were already deeply rooted in the pre-existing social, cultural and behavioural codes of European urban society.
Tijdschrift voor Sociale en Economische Geschiedenis, 2010
Early modern economic development and social repercussions in the Southern Low Countries: Nivelle... more Early modern economic development and social repercussions in the Southern Low Countries: Nivelles in the eighteenth century As a result of the development towards a more demand-side orientated approach in the economic history of the pre-industrial period, interest in the intertwined evolution of economic growth and social structures has re-emerged. In this case-study of a small urban society in the last century before the onset of the industrial revolution, social structures and economic change are studied side by side. It is argued that the urbanization from below that characterized the town of Nivelles during the second half of the eighteenth century, did not reduce the widespread poverty and inequality that had previously prevailed. Not the urban middling groups but the town's rentiers were able to secure the greatest profit from rising demand in the surrounding countryside. It is furthermore argued that Malthusian forces offset any redistributive effects of eighteenth-century economic growth.
Books by Wouter Ryckbosch
A detailed study of the urban finances of the town of Ghent, during the second half of the 15th c... more A detailed study of the urban finances of the town of Ghent, during the second half of the 15th century. The focus lies particularly on the different financial policies enacted by subsequent political regimes during the turbulent final quarter of the century.
Kwantitatieve methoden zijn fundamenteel voor het historisch denken en dus een onmisbaar onderdee... more Kwantitatieve methoden zijn fundamenteel voor het historisch denken en dus een onmisbaar onderdeel van het metier van de historicus. Ze helpen om samenhang te ontdekken tussen variabelen (ook al is die niet meteen zichtbaar) en maken intuïtief kwantitatief denken expliciet. Een goede kennis van historische statistiek stelt (toekomstige) historici in staat beweringen te toetsen, eventueel te weerleggen of om op basis van een selectie van bronnen toch uitspraken te doen over een groter geheel.
Trend en toeval biedt een fundamentele basis voor al wie te maken heeft met historische statistiek. De auteurs brengen een helder overzicht van de methoden om historische gegevens te ordenen, weer te geven en te beschrijven. Daarnaast bevat dit handboek ook een inleiding tot de tijdreeksanalyse en een eerste kennismaking met hypothesevorming en -toetsing. Met concrete historische voorbeelden illustreren de auteurs niet alleen de samenhang tussen de historische statistiek en de historische kritiek, maar ook de beperkingen die de bronnen vaak aan de gekozen kwantitatieve methoden opleggen.
Book Reviews by Wouter Ryckbosch
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Papers by Wouter Ryckbosch
The current paper wishes to sidestep this dichotomy by offering a more cautious reading of the ways in which the relation between the construction of consumer value and social status could be negotiated during the early modern period. It explores this issue by focusing on one specific commodity that played an important role in these consumer changes, transforming rapidly from a luxury good to a staple product in less than a century. In looking at the ways in which tea was perceived and valued by contemporary observers, I intend to look beyond the mere opposition between the essentialist and cultural-functionalist perspectives. Instead I will focus attention upon how the conventions of valuation surrounding tea changed through time, thus diverting attention away from changes in either the material or the social world, and towards the sphere of epistemology.
The paper focuses on the Low Countries, a region undergoing profound and widespread changes in consumption patterns throughout the 17th and 18th century, including both the heartland of the Dutch East India Company (responsible for a significant share the import of tea in Europe), but also including the Southern Netherlands, a region much less involved in international trade relations and much more economically stagnant than its northern neighbour.
Nevertheless, we argue that the impact of hot drinks consumption upon transforming European material cultures was more of a quantitative rather than a qualitative nature. Without denying the fundamental importance of the new cluster of consumer behaviour which formed around the consumption of exotic hot drinks, a closer examination of the materiality, location and use of these consumer goods as recorded in the probate inventories, nevertheless leads us to suggest that the mental categories which accompanied them were already deeply rooted in the pre-existing social, cultural and behavioural codes of European urban society.
Books by Wouter Ryckbosch
Trend en toeval biedt een fundamentele basis voor al wie te maken heeft met historische statistiek. De auteurs brengen een helder overzicht van de methoden om historische gegevens te ordenen, weer te geven en te beschrijven. Daarnaast bevat dit handboek ook een inleiding tot de tijdreeksanalyse en een eerste kennismaking met hypothesevorming en -toetsing. Met concrete historische voorbeelden illustreren de auteurs niet alleen de samenhang tussen de historische statistiek en de historische kritiek, maar ook de beperkingen die de bronnen vaak aan de gekozen kwantitatieve methoden opleggen.
Book Reviews by Wouter Ryckbosch
The current paper wishes to sidestep this dichotomy by offering a more cautious reading of the ways in which the relation between the construction of consumer value and social status could be negotiated during the early modern period. It explores this issue by focusing on one specific commodity that played an important role in these consumer changes, transforming rapidly from a luxury good to a staple product in less than a century. In looking at the ways in which tea was perceived and valued by contemporary observers, I intend to look beyond the mere opposition between the essentialist and cultural-functionalist perspectives. Instead I will focus attention upon how the conventions of valuation surrounding tea changed through time, thus diverting attention away from changes in either the material or the social world, and towards the sphere of epistemology.
The paper focuses on the Low Countries, a region undergoing profound and widespread changes in consumption patterns throughout the 17th and 18th century, including both the heartland of the Dutch East India Company (responsible for a significant share the import of tea in Europe), but also including the Southern Netherlands, a region much less involved in international trade relations and much more economically stagnant than its northern neighbour.
Nevertheless, we argue that the impact of hot drinks consumption upon transforming European material cultures was more of a quantitative rather than a qualitative nature. Without denying the fundamental importance of the new cluster of consumer behaviour which formed around the consumption of exotic hot drinks, a closer examination of the materiality, location and use of these consumer goods as recorded in the probate inventories, nevertheless leads us to suggest that the mental categories which accompanied them were already deeply rooted in the pre-existing social, cultural and behavioural codes of European urban society.
Trend en toeval biedt een fundamentele basis voor al wie te maken heeft met historische statistiek. De auteurs brengen een helder overzicht van de methoden om historische gegevens te ordenen, weer te geven en te beschrijven. Daarnaast bevat dit handboek ook een inleiding tot de tijdreeksanalyse en een eerste kennismaking met hypothesevorming en -toetsing. Met concrete historische voorbeelden illustreren de auteurs niet alleen de samenhang tussen de historische statistiek en de historische kritiek, maar ook de beperkingen die de bronnen vaak aan de gekozen kwantitatieve methoden opleggen.