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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 ;

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From Wine to Beer:

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  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)

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