This article looks at the impact of economic and demographic structures on variations in rural poor relief in early modern Flanders by analysing empirical data at parish level. By combining data on poor relief income and expenses as well as on relief recipients from a survey from 1700 with data on population and land taxes, we demonstrate a close connection between agrarian relations of production and poor relief practices. Together they show how local poor relief practices translated spatially into regional patterns, which in turn were tied into both different agricultural modes of production and distinct social and cultural repertoires of elite representation and distribution.

This study uses data on income and distribution of relief paymentsfrom local poor relief tables for 512 rural parishes in Flanders(present-day Belgium) in 1807 to examine spatial variation in poorrelief practices in a region characterised by well-established localpoor relief institutions and marked socio-economic differences. Bycombining data on poor relief with local data on population,landholding and occupational structure, we map out the relativeimportance of regional economies and local variation in producingdistinct poor relief regimes. The results show that although localvariation was considerable, the nature and extent of this variationinteracted with structural socio-economic characteristics to produceregional patterns, signalling that local variation did not so muchcontradict as constitute regional patterns in poor relief regimes.The importance of socio-economic characteristics in determining bothregional patterns and local variation supports our more generalcontention that local and regional levels of analysis represent amore fruitful avenue for understanding variations in poor reliefpractices than national differences in legislation, and thereforehas implications for the comparative study of poor relief practicesin a wider international context.

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.

This article examines the labour market for day labourers in the Southern Low Countries during the eighteenth century from the perspective of reciprocal exchange. In particular I will look at wage payment structures and their economic and social foundations. In contrast with other agricultural regions, wage payments in proto-industrialized inland Flanders were highly diversified. Large farmers and day labourers engaged in a system of reciprocal exchange of labour, goods and services in which monetary payments played only a secondary role. I find that both employers and employees had strong reasons for maintaining this exchange relationship and that they both, in their own ways, benefited from this mutual dependency.