1 / 59

From Wine to Beer:

From Wine to Beer: . Changing Patterns of Alcoholic Consumption and Living Standards in Late-Medieval Flanders, 1300 – 1550 by John Munro (University of Toronto) revised 14 July 2010. From Wine to Beer in Late-Medieval Flanders: Introduction. 1) Northern Europe: land of beer & butter ;

christina
Télécharger la présentation

From Wine to Beer:

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript


  1. From Wine to Beer: Changing Patterns of Alcoholic Consumption and Living Standards in Late-Medieval Flanders, 1300 – 1550 by John Munro (University of Toronto) revised 14 July 2010

  2. From Wine to Beer in Late-Medieval Flanders: Introduction • 1) Northern Europe: land of beer & butter; • vs. southern Europe as land of wine and olive oil: • not always so: not in medieval Europe • 2) Meagre evidence on this shift in the North:declining per capita wine consumption and rising per capita beer consumption: • from studies by: Margery James, Michael Postan, Hans Van Werveke, Jan Craeybeckx, Herman Van der Wee, Richard Unger: who all believe that there was such a shift • but who neither substantiate fully that belief nor fully explain how it happened (see below: the ‘hop thesis’).

  3. Van Werveke & Craeybeckx on Ghent wine consumption

  4. Do Relative Price Changes Explain this Shift? (1) • 1) Premises: • a) that wine was always more expensive than beer: • b) that, by Engels’ Law, rising real incomes should have led to some shift from beer to wine – not the reverse as is posited here. • 2) Wine Prices: • see chart on wine prices and mason’s wages: compare with ‘penny ales’ (per gelte or gallon) • but did wine become relatively more expensive? • 3) Evidence on real wages of Flemish bldg craftsmen: rising overall from 1350 to 1470s (but we will focus later on mid-15th century) • - but regressing wine consumption on real wages for this entire period produces a negative result: • Multiple R = -0.59192; adjusted R-sq = 0.31319; • standard error = 10.86127; T-Statistic = -3.64858

  5. Rhine Wine Prices & Mason’s Daily Wages at Antwerp: 1420-1470

  6. Climatic Changes and Wine Production in the North? • 2) Adverse climatic changes in later medieval Europe: • Was there any impact on northern wine growing? • - 14th & 15th centuries: descent in mean temperatures from the ‘Medieval Warming’ period (when wine had been cultivated in England): • - but relative stabilization in 15th century • - data from Craig Loehle and J. Huston McCulloch, ‘Correction to: A 2000-Year Global Temperature Reconstruction Based on Non-Tree Ring Proxies’, Energy and Environment, 19:1 (2008), 93-100 • 2) no evidence of adverse effects on northern European wine cultivation; • certainly not in southern Europe

  7. Do Relative Price Changes Explain this Shift? (2) • 1) Problems with wine and beer prices: • a) Wine prices, in consecutive series, available only from 1420s: those for Rhine wines at the Antwerp market • b) No beer prices: since beer prices per gelte or gallon were fixed (‘penny ale’): but beer quantities varied • 2) Best proxy for beer prices: • a) those for barley: consecutive annual series • b) but beer also brewed from wheat and oats • c) missing: prices of other ingredients (hops, gruit) and labour • 3) Evidence of prices: from 1420s: indeterminate, though they do not favour beer over wine: indeed, the reverse!

  8. The Wine Trade at Antwerp • 1) The wine import trade remained healthy at the Antwerp market in the 16th century • 2) Guicciardini: Italian merchant who published data on Antwerp’s trade in 1560s, on imports • 3) Extensive data on wine imports – from France, Rhineland, and Mediterranean (Italy, Spain, Portugal): 12.80% of total imports, and 28.19% of total non-textile imports • 4) No statistics on beer imports: from Germany and Holland: perhaps of no interest to this Italian! • 5) Evidence for beer consumption: town accounts

  9. The Postan Thesis: Technological Innovations: Hops • 1) The Postan Thesis (CEH: 1952): technological change: • - the crucial factor was the introduction of hops: in North German (Hamburg) and Dutch towns, from the 1320s • 2) Postan thesis basically endorsed by:Craeybeckx, Van der Wee, Unger (& many others): how valid is the thesis? • 3) The importance of hops: replacing gruit in brewing • a) Long Distance Trade: hops improved both the stability and durability of brewed beers (as well as taste): stored for longer times, transported over longer distances • b) Safety in ‘drinkability’: hops improved the sterilization process • not all bacteria killed by boiling: note that beer is about 90% water

  10. Beer & Wine: as Necessities • 1) Wine and Beer: in pre-modern societies, were not ‘sinful luxuries’ but vital necessities: because water and milk were generally unsafe to drink, especially in urban areas (pollution) • – though clearly many continued to drink unsafe water and milk • 2) Koch (1876), Pasteur (1878): discovery of bacterial transmission of diseases  sewage & water purification systems in NW Europe, North America  rapid fall in mortalities (reflecting prior bad water consumption) • 3) Cartoon: Hagar the Horrible (A Viking): which quite unintentionally makes this very point: on the ‘safety’ value of beer

  11. Importance of Beer in Later Medieval Household Budgets • 1) Robert Allen’s consumer price index: • - Beer: 20.6% share: in his basket of consumer expenditures (same for wine in southern Europe) • 2) other price indexes: Phelps Brown & Hopkins (England): 22.5% share; Rappaport (London): 20.0%; Munro (Flanders): 20.43%; Van der Wee (Brabant): 17.08% : all have beer; none has wine in the basket • 3) Nutritional Values:Allen’s caloric quantification: for annual household budgets: in late-medieval, early-modern Europe • a) northern budget: 182 litres of beer = 77,532 C. • b) Mediterranean budget: 68.5 litres wine = 58,035 C.

  12. Per capita beer consumption: the Low Countries and Germany, 1370 -1650

  13. Per capita beer consumption: Low Countries and Germany, 1370 -1650

  14. Per capita beer consumption: the Low Countries and Germany, 1370 -1650

  15. Per capita beer consumption: the Low Countries and Germany, 1370 -1650

  16. Per capita beer consumption: the Low Countries and Germany, 1370 -1650

  17. Problems with the Hop Thesis: the Flemish Urban Evidence • 1) Basic problem with the ‘hop thesis’: major shift from wine to beer came too late: not till 1420s - 30s • 2) The Evidence the Treasurers’ accounts for Bruges and Aalst: annual sales of excise-tax farms on wine, beer, grains, meat, fish, textiles: • but chiefly alcoholic beverages (beer + wine) • 3) excise tax-farms (on urban household consumption only): urban revenues chiefly used to finance public debt payments: on rentes (annuities) • rentes:sold primarily to finance warfare (European-wide, except in England and Italy).

  18. Flemish Urban Accounts: Wine & Beer Excise Tax Farms • 4) Wine and Beer excise taxes: in Flemish urban accounts • chief taxes:on consumption of necessities that were also very addictive highly inelastic demand • - very highly regressive taxes on lower income strata of urban societies: • - note: data come from tax farm sales  understate actual tax burden, since tax farmers expected to collect far more in taxes • - no public exemptions (except for religious orders): unlike property taxes (see final table: for Brabant) • - only urban consumers paid these excise taxes: not imposed in rural areas (whose inhabitants paid property & other direct taxes)

  19. The Bruges Financial Accounts • 1) Especially valuable: in two respects for Flanders: • a) the only urban accounts extant from early 14th century: from 1308, with few annual lacunae (unlike Ghent accounts; or Ypres – none extant until 1406): data in graphs and tables in this study  to 1500 • b) evidence on consumption of foreignas well as domestic beers. • 2) Foreign beer imports: from Germany and Holland • a) Hamburg beers: from 1333 (possibly hop beers) • b) ‘Hop & Delft’ beers: from 1380: Dutch beers: initially much more important than Hamburg beers, but sharply diminishing from 1411: • - 1430: Delft beers amalgamated with German beers • c) from 1430s: foreign beers decline in both absolute (‘real’) & relative importance  predominance of Bruges beer • d) Why? Warfare with Hanseatic League and England – to 1470s.

  20. Aalst vs. Bruges Financial Accounts • 1) Importance of the Aalst annual financial accounts: • - a) begin in 1395: but then virtually continuous (to 1550) • - b) provide wage data to 1550: Bruges: none after 1485 • 2) Comparisons with the Bruges accounts on beer: • a) Aalst: primacy of beer established from the beginning: 63% of total alcoholic excise farms in 1390s, but still only 67% ca. 1420 • b) Bruges:beer: 34% of that total in 1308-10; only 33% in 1381-85; 37% in 1416-20 • - note: Bruges wealthier, more mercantile, cosmopolitan town  greater retained preference for imported wines. • c) In both sets: more decisive shift to beer from late 1420s • - i) Bruges: from 52% in 1431-35 to 70% in 1490s • - ii) Aalst: from 73% in 1431-35 to 83% in 1466-70 (80% in 1496-1500)

  21. Estimating the Burdens of Urban Excise Taxes (1) • 1) Problem: the nominal money-of-account values of the excise-tax farms sales are otherwise useless in estimating tax burdens • 2) Reason: the impact of coinage debasements (finance warfare)  consequent inflations • - grams silver in Flemish penny (groot): fell from 2.067 g in 1350 to 0.463 g in 1482 (0.479 in 1500) • - Flemish CPI (1451-75=100): rose from 60.5 in 1351-56 to 184.5 in 1486-90: 3-fold inflationary rise • 3) Note: periodic coinage debasements  sharply reduced real incomes of wage-earners & those on fixed incomes (salaries, rents, pensions, etc.): RWI = NWI/CPI • - BUT so did the rises in highly regressive excise taxes

  22. Estimating the Burdens of Urban Excise Taxes (2) • 4) Two statistical methods of estimating the ‘real’ burden of urban excise tax farms: • a) Calculate the number of Flemish ‘commodity baskets’ (in the CPI) whose value = total revenues of the excise tax farms: especially on beer and wine • b) Calculate the number of years’ of a master mason’s money-wage income whose value = total revenues of the excise tax farms (for Bruges: total of alcohol-based excise tax farms)

  23. Real Tax Burdens during the Golden Age of the Artisans • 1) mid 15th-century ‘Golden Age of the Artisans’ (and labourers): concept based on evidence for real-wages of craftsmen in Flanders (and Brabant, and England): • 2) Rise in real wage index (RWI = NWI/CPI) from ca. 1440 to ca. 1470: basically determined by deflation: when coinage debasements had ceased and other forces for monetary contraction  fall in price level

  24. Importance of the Aalst wage and excise-tax data • 1) The real wage data for Aalst during the Golden Age: also show marked rise c. 1440 – c. 1470 (RWI = NWI/CPI) • 2) BUT the real value or burden of the excise tax farms, as measured in annual incomes of master mason: also rise in the very same period, offsetting some of the rise in crude real wages • 3) Rising urban excise tax burden: rising taxes to finance steep rise in public debts incurred to finance previous and current warfare • - note: in England there were no such excise taxes until the 1640s (Civil War era)

More Related