The emergence of a 'modern' labour market? Tracing rural labourers in an early modern commercial farming system: the Waasland polder area (1650-1850)

Present-day rural history is still dominated by the debates on the transition from a feudal agrarian system, into a peasant society and finally into a capitalist economy. In this process, farmers of polder regions are considered to be pioneers, paving the way to commercial orientated monoculture. A key element in this transformation process is the emergence of wage labour on the countryside, revealing the rise of full grown markets.This project enables us to reveal the functioning of the early modern labour market of the polder area of the Waasland. Is this region 'pioneering' in the development of 'modern' labour market? If not, did farmers still apply the traditional ways of labour exchange, characterized by informal relations and reciprocal exchange, much the same as in the neighbouring region of Inland Flanders? These questions point to the range and origin of the labour force active in the large commercial polder farms. Therefore, a detailed analyses of the profile of the rural labourers must be undertaken.By employing three students, an enormous quantity of archival material will be scrutinized, in search of scattered information on labour relations. Because of the hard to find information (in memory books and ledgers or in probate inventories) and the large scale of this research proposal, project financing is the only efficient way to build an open database that could be used for publications and that could be consulted by fellow historians of the department.

Keywords:RURAL COMMUNITIES, RURAL HISTORY

Disciplines:Economic history, History, Study of regions