Eric Vanhaute

Agricultural outsourcing or land grabbing: a meta-analysis

ContextThe phenomenon of known as ‘land grabbing’ is not a new process. Especially, since the 1990s, some capital-rich countries have started to buy or lease foreign lands to be able to produce food and biofuels.ObjectivesThis article aimed at investigating the (un)sustainability of ‘transnational land deals’ (TLDs) for investors, host governments and local communities. Given the three dimensions of sustainability, the “social acceptability”, “economic viability” and “environmental conservation” of the TLDs have been studied.MethodsTo understand whether and to what extent the TLD is sustainable in each dimension a meta-analysis was conducted on 73 journal articles.ResultsResults showed that tenure arrangements and livelihoods were the main drivers for the matter’s social acceptability. Accordingly, local communities are affected by losing and receiving little or no compensation for their land, and making them have to face the increasing vulnerability of their livelihoods. This results in a win–win–loss situation for investors, host governments and local communities, respectively. Economic (un)sustainability mainly depends on capital flow, infrastructure and employment. This aspect is evidenced as a win for investors and host governments and implies the aforementioned win–win–loss situation. The main aspects of environmental (un)sustainability are considered as biodiversity, ecosystem services, and climate change.ConclusionsAccording to the results, both host governments and local communities experience loss. This results in a win–loss–loss status of the TLDs. The major challenge remains in establishing good land governance, which can guarantee the benefits to local people and their access to land.

Famine, exchange networks and the village community. A comparative analysis of the subsistence crises of the 1740s and the 1840s in Flanders

This article focuses on local agency in two near-famines in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Flanders. Our comparative analysis of the food crises of 1740 and 1845-1847 in Flanders exposes the local mechanisms of coping and protection, both in an informal and a formal way. The main thesis is that the impact of hunger crises in peasant societies is directly related to the level of stress absorption within the local village community. Our findings contradict the traditional vision of a more-or- less straightforward shift in famine crisis management from rural, local and informal to urban, supra-local and formal. The success of surmounting a food crisis has always had local roots.

Rich agriculture and poor farmers: land, landlords and farmers in Flanders in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

This article focuses on the property relations in Belgian and Flemish agriculture in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The main question is: what was the relationship between land use, land ownership and land rents? By analysing the position of the (small) farmers and of the (small) landlords we could confirm that the dominance of small-scale farming coincided with a specific pattern of property distribution and surplus extraction. The high and increasing returns of the land were almost entirely pruned away by private landowners. The extreme fragmentation of the land, the large proportion of leaseholds and the high rents grew to a maximum in the second half of the nineteenth century due to competition both on the property market and on the leasehold market. This put the Flemish farmer in the worst possible situation, with a sad contrast between brilliant harvests and the miserable existence of those who generated them.

Between patterns and processes: Measuring labor markets and family strategies in Flanders, 1750–1990

Although the relationship between “internal” household strategies and “external” constraints has received much attention in recent family history, the debate about the conceptualization of “historical time” and the measurement of the micro-macro-linkages is still in its infancy. The aim of this article is two-fold: (a) to emphasize the importance of recurrence in historical time, by tracing three periods of acceleration in the societal changes of the two last centuries, and (b) to test the possibilities of comparative statistics that link micro-patterns and macro-processes. The exercise is applied to two rural regions and one urban area in Flanders.

Structure and strategy: two rural communities in the Kempen region of Belgium, 1850-1910

This article starts with a methodological question: By carrying out a structural analysis of a local community, is it possible to gain insight into the labor strategies of the families within that community? This structural analysis is based on the reconstruction and integration of population, labor, and income data of individual households within two villages in 19th century Belgium. Basically, this exercise is to understand two sets of correlations: (a) between social differentiation and the family cycle and (b) between shifts in the social relationship between families and generations and the survival strategies of those families. This article shows that a structural approach to labor and income strategies can reveal how and why former strategies can lose their relevance and new choices are made relating to new networks of solidarity.

Special forum : commodity frontiers and the global history of capitalism : a discussion about Sven Beckert’s empire of cotton : editor's introduction

Empire of Cotton is grafted upon a grand ambition: It is as much a study of cotton as a study of the emergence of global capitalism. Sven Beckert uses a specific commodity, cotton, as a lens on the development of the modern world itself. At the World History Association Conference in Ghent, Belgium (sponsored by the World History Association and Ghent University), Beckert presented a keynote address on “Cotton and the Global Origins of Capitalism,” and in a subsequent roundtable talk, Peer Vries (University of Vienna), Ulbe Bosma (International Institute of Social History Amsterdam), Eric Vanhaute (Ghent University), and Beckert himself (Harvard University) debated his book. This Journal of World History Special Forum brings together Sven Beckert’s adapted keynote speech and the interventions of other participants.