Jessica Dijkman

Shaping medieval markets : the organisation of commodity markets in Holland, c. 1200-c. 1450

In the late Middle Ages the county of Holland experienced a process of uncommonly rapid commercialisation. Comparing Holland to England and Flanders this book examines how the institutions that shaped commodity markets contributed to this remarkable development.

The organisation of markets as a key factor in the rise of Holland from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century: a test case for an institutional approach

Although the importance of New Institutional Economics and the institutional approach for understanding pre-industrial economic development and the early growth of markets are widely accepted, it has proven to be difficult to assess more directly the effects of institutions on the functioning of markets. This paper uses empirical research on the rise of markets in late medieval Holland to illuminate some of the factors behind the development of the specific institutional framework of markets for land, labour, capital and goods, and some effects of these institutions on the actual functioning of the markets. The findings are corroborated by a tentative comparison with the functioning of markets in Flanders and eastern England.

Factor markets in early Islamic Iraq, c. 600-1100 AD

AbstractThis paper reconstructs the organization and development of factor markets in early medieval Iraq. It shows that from the late Sasanian period on, and accelerating in the early Islamic period, there was a relatively unrestricted functioning of markets for goods, labour, and capital. This stimulated market exchange, associated with growing monetization of the economy, especially in the towns, but also in the countryside, even though coercion remained more pronounced there. We hypothesize that these developments brought economic dynamism but simultaneously increased inequality and furthered the rise of new, powerful elite groups, causing the decline of the same markets.

Mills, cranes, and the great divergence: the use of immovable capital goods in western Europe and the Middle East, ninth to sixteenth centuries

This article contributes to the ongoing debate on the causes of the great divergence by comparing the use of expensive labour-saving capital goods—water-mills, windmills, and cranes—in medieval western Europe and the Middle East. Using novel ways of measuring, we find that whereas the use of these goods increased in Europe, in the Middle East their prevalence decreased, or they were not used at all. We investigate several possible explanations and reject most of them, including religion, geography, technological knowledge, and disparities in wages and cost of capital. Our analysis shows that differences in lordship systems and the security of property rights best explain the patterns found.

Bread for the Poor: Poor Relief and the Mitigation of the Food Crises of the 1590s and the 1690s in Berkel, Holland

This contribution discusses a historical example of what in the field of disaster studies is referred to as a community-based system for hazard mitigation: it examines the role of formal poor relief in the village of Berkel (Holland) during the food crises of the years 1595–1598 and 1698–1700. A detailed examination of the activities of the two main relief institutions in the village during these crises shows that the poor relief system in Berkel performed surprisingly well, despite its fragmented character: not only did it not break down, but in both periods under examination it contributed materially to the mitigation of the impact of the crisis. The main factor explaining this success was the solid financial basis of the larger of the two relief institutions, which not only allowed it to respond to raised demand with relative ease, but also to act as ‘relief provider of last resort’.

The escape from famine in the Northern Netherlands: a reconsideration using the 1690s harvest failures and a broader Northwest European perspective

ABSTRACT A long historiography has concluded that the Northern Netherlands was famine free by the seventeenth century. However, this view has been established on limited grain price data and an unclear chronology, lacking a broader comparative perspective, and relying heavily on the explanation that Amsterdam was the centre point of the international grain trade. Using newly compiled burials data for the Northern and Southern Netherlands and Northern France, and integrating these with rye prices, we confirm empirically that price spikes had reduced mortality effects in the Northern Netherlands compared to the Southern Netherlands and Northern France, though the escape was greater in the cities than the countryside. The only time in the period 1551–1699 that a strong and generalized association between price spikes and mortality occurred across wide areas of the Northern Netherlands was in the famine of 1556/7. However, the international grain trade cannot explain everything. Markets in the Northern Netherlands were no more effective at smoothing out food crises than in the Southern Netherlands or Northern France. We offer alternative explanations: the reduced role of famine-related diseases spread by warfare, and the interaction (especially in the cities) between wages and poor relief.