Buying more with less income? Household production and changing consumer preferences in the smallholding economy of inland Flanders during the 18th century in the light of the Industrious Revolution debate.

In social and economic history, scholars, who investigated the evolution of living conditions of early modern country dwellers, faced major difficulties to combine consumption-oriented and production-oriented approaches. The optimistic strand of research stressed the increasing ability of rural households in the course of the 18th century to acquire of new consumer goods by working harder and more (i.e. a Consumer Revolution made possible by an Industrious Revolution), whereas the pessimistic one focussed on high levels of surplus extraction with which rural households were increasingly confronted so that they had to intensify their arable and proto-industrial production in order to maintain their survival algorithms or profit margins (according to the family's income level). This project aims to combine both viewpoints by comparing consumption patterns with the production strategies of a broad variety of rural households (from smallholders to large farmers) within the intensive Flemish Husbandry region during the 18th century. Our hypotheses are that (1) prices of new consumer goods declined so that they gradually became affordable for lower income groups and that (2) the dissemination of these goods was top-down from village worthies and well-to-do farmers onto the smallholding majority of the rural community. As such, this project aims to reveal whether or not the premodern trajectories of commercialisation and the related economic growth contributed to better living conditions of the majority of the population in the countryside.

Keywords:RURAL LIVELIHOOD, HOUSEHOLD ECONOMICS, CONSUMPTION HISTORY

Disciplines:Economic history, History