Alternative Food Supplies, Alternative Currencies? Food deliveries by tenant farmers in the late medieval Low Countries

From Firenze University Press Book: Alternative currencies. Commodities and services as exchange currencies in the monetarized economies of the 13th to 18th centuries

Tim Soens, Universiteit Antwerpen, Belgium

Cécile Bruyet, Universiteit Antwerpen, Belgium

Alternative food supplies in late medieval cities

In 1493 Meester Jan de Herdde leased his farm in Aartselaar to Peter de Schoesitter and his wife Katlinen vanden Loeke for a duration of twelve years. The farm, located about 10km from Antwerp, and named de Hoeve te Hyselaer, was comprised of 6.9 hectares (ha.) of land, field, pasture, and orchard. The annual rent was 9 pounds (lb.), one half to pay at the fair of St John in June, the other half at Christmas. But the tenant also had to pay 6 sister of rye (roughly 1743 litres), a fat lamb for Easter, and half of a fat castrated ram for the feast of the Assumption, a central holiday in the town of Antwerp. Last but not least, Jan also asked «on top of the rent, 2 corven of the best apples grown on the farm, irrespective whether some have grown on the farm or not.» The same year, Marie sMaechs, the widow of Reyners van Ursele (member of the political elite of Antwerp), with Meester Peter vander Voort, lawyer and member of the Council of Brabant, as warden, leased her farm named tGoet der Houstraten and her pasture named den Rijbelaerts beemdt, both in Herselt (about 40km from Antwerp) to Peteren Gheerts. For 6 years, Marie asked in exchange for the tenure of the farm 3 lb., 13 sister and 2 muddeken of rye (c. 4645 litres) to be delivered in mid-March. Additionally, the tenant had to bring 300 faggots of fire wood. Finally, again in 1493, Willem son of Aert, a fish seller, leased a farm named de Hoeve ter Borchstraten to Baven van Vorspoel and his wife Alijten Jan. This farm possessed 2.6 ha. and was located in Mortsel, 5km outside the city walls, and was leased for a duration of 9 years. The rent included 6 lb. and 20 sister of rye, that is 5810 litres of grain, to be delivered at Christmas. In the contract was specified that the owner kept the house with the orchard on the grounds for his own use. The arrangements of these fifteenth-century Antwerp leasehold contracts are striking for their combination of rents in cash and in kind. But how should we understand these deliveries of rye, wood or even apples? Are they some form of alternative currency, and if so all of them? Or should we rather interpret some deliveries as part of a symbolic exchange between landlord or tenant, which complemented the economic exchange of rent? Alternatively, we could hypothesize that the deliveries of food were part of more complex household provisioning systems, where food became in a way isolated from its purely monetary value. Finally, each contract displayed its own specificity. While Marie asked for a wood delivery, Jan seemed rather to look forward to eating apples from his lands beside receiving parts of his rent in kind throughout the year, and Willem was focused on receiving a large quantity of rye. Can we detect a form of agency on behalf of either the urban landlord or the rural tenant in stipulating the arrangements of the lease? This contribution questions the importance of food deliveries by tenant farmers to urban landlords in the fifteenth-century Low Countries. We aim to understand when, where and for whom food was preferred as alternative currency, and whether this preference for food declined as cities grew and became more integrated in interregional food trades. The transition from demesne farming to leasehold is often seen as a powerful driver of monetarization and commercialisation of the rural economy (and hence food production). If the lease was expressed in cash, tenants were forced to market their surplus in order to pay the lease, except if stipulated otherwise. Moreover, the competitive character of short-term leasehold farming, also induced farmers to enhance their productivity, which could be achieved by scale-enlargement and specialisation. In the neo-marxist tradition of Robert Brenner, the emphasis is laid on the forced character of this process: in order to survive in the ‘rat race’ for leases, farmers were forced to innovate and specialize. In contrast, one could also stress that tenant farmers enjoyed a large degree of freedom in the exploitation of their farms, and hence could respond to market incentives. But the result was the same: leasehold farming is often associated with increased monetarization and commercialization (Soens, Thoen 2008). At the same time however, the transition from demesne farming to leasehold did not stop direct supplies to the households of landlords in the later Middle Ages. Tenant farmers supplied their landlords with a variable range of foodstuffs and other products and services, ranging from an occasional fattened pig in autumn to substantial deliveries of cereals throughout the year. Sometimes this was stipulated in the leasehold contracts, but sometimes monetary leases were also (partly) paid for through in-kind deliveries. Such exchanges are best known for large farmers, and large landlords, and often framed in the elaboration of reciprocal ties between ‘dynasties’ of farmers in the countryside and increasingly urban-based landlords (Vervaet 2012). Rather than stimulating a permanent competition for leases, ecclesiastical institutions and elite families had an evident interest in promoting a sustainable, longterm, relationship with their large tenants, which also acted as their ‘agents’ in the countryside.

DOI: 10.36253/979–12–215–0347–0.28

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