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Wed 30 March
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Wednesday 30 March 2016 14.00 - 16.00
D-3 MAT03 Living Standards and Material Culture in Pre-industrial Europe: a Perspective from Building Craftsmen
Aula 1, Nivel 0
Networks: Material and Consumer Culture , Social Inequality Chair: Leigh Shaw-Taylor
Organizer: Wouter Ryckbosch Discussant: Leigh Shaw-Taylor
Heidi Deneweth, Anne McCants : Building Wealth? The Material Culture of Building Craftsmen in Early Modern Amsterdam and Antwerp (16th-18th Centuries)
It is amazing how much and how little we know about building craftsmen. Their nominal wages are well documented in institutional accounts and have been used for decades as the point of reference for workers’ incomes and living standards. Two fundamental questions, however, need to be addressed in order to ... (Show more)
It is amazing how much and how little we know about building craftsmen. Their nominal wages are well documented in institutional accounts and have been used for decades as the point of reference for workers’ incomes and living standards. Two fundamental questions, however, need to be addressed in order to fully understand the real evolution of living standards. 1) How representative are institutional accounts for the reconstruction of building craftsmen’s wages? 2) How did building craftsmen spend their wages or adapt their consumption patterns to changing circumstances in their lives?

This session wants to explore the real evolution of living standards by a systematic, comparative and longitudinal analysis of household inventories of building craftsmen. Although the evolving social and demographic bias of post-mortem inventories is well known, we are convinced that the exploration of a wide range of inventories can help, at least in part, to overcome this bias, thereby revealing a more realistic image of living standards. In our paper, we will compare post-mortem inventories preserved in the archives of the Burgerweeshuis (the Burgher’s Orphanage) in Amsterdam, the Orphan Chamber and notarial archives in Amsterdam and Antwerp with inventories of insolvencies and bankruptcies in both cities, thus capturing households in different stages of their careers and fortunes. By including labour contracts preserved in the notarial archives we will offer a more realistic image of income variations depending on the kind of works executed, levels of experience of the craftsmen and differences in labour organisation.

Theoretically, the expansion of the material culture and consumption of building craftsmen should offer a good indicator of their evolving living standards. Amsterdam and Antwerp are particularly interesting cases since these commercial and industrial centres were at the vanguard of consumption changes in their respective regions. Additionally they were characterised by a divergent economic evolution during the period under consideration.

The paper will test for the validity of changing consumption patterns as an indicator of changing living standards by comparing 1) inventories (and more specifically the material culture) of carpenters and masons, 2) their evolving opportunities on the labour market; 3) their evolving wealth position within the urban population. It will pay particular attention to heuristic and methodological issues related to using inventories in a comparative research over time and space: Amsterdam and Antwerp (16th-18th centuries). (Show less)

Andreia Durães : Experiencing Prosperity and Adversity (Lisbon, 1750-1833)
A recent research project has made available data on prices and real wages in Portugal from 1300 to 1910 (PTDC/HIS-HIS/123046/2010). Results show that the second half of the eighteenth century was characterized by a relative stability of prices and wages. This situation has reversed dramatically from 1790 onwards. Since then ... (Show more)
A recent research project has made available data on prices and real wages in Portugal from 1300 to 1910 (PTDC/HIS-HIS/123046/2010). Results show that the second half of the eighteenth century was characterized by a relative stability of prices and wages. This situation has reversed dramatically from 1790 onwards. Since then prices increased significantly and real wages decreased.
However, probate inventories in Lisbon show that, despite this scenario, the standard of living and consumption appear to have increased at the end of the Ancient Regime. It is possible that inventories distort the real image of living standards because of its problems of representativeness, since the elite and the intermediate groups are overrepresented in this source.
To have a more comprehensive look on the subject, we will focus on a single occupational group from the popular layers of society, which is liable to be subject to comparison with other case studies. We propose to analyse a sample of 30 probate inventories from Lisbon carpenters and masons from 1750-1830 and evaluate the impact of the evolution of prices and wages in wealth levels, composition of fortune and consumption. Limiting the analysis to a single socioprofessional category within the same age group (in their thirties and forties) it is possible to neutralize the impact of these two important determinants of wealth and, consequently, to assess the influence of the economic environment on living standards and grasp different and similar mechanisms of responses of the households. (Show less)

Sebastian Keibek : From Inventories to Households: what Removing Inventories' Social Bias Reveals about Eighteenth-century English Consumption
Much evidence for the consumer revolution in eighteenth century England is derived from probate inventories. These suffer, however, from strong bias towards wealthier households, making them problematic as a data source on contemporary society as a whole, rather than on a (poorly defined) relatively wealthy section of that society. This ... (Show more)
Much evidence for the consumer revolution in eighteenth century England is derived from probate inventories. These suffer, however, from strong bias towards wealthier households, making them problematic as a data source on contemporary society as a whole, rather than on a (poorly defined) relatively wealthy section of that society. This paper presents a new approach to overcome the problem of social bias of the probate inventory record, and discusses what this approach reveals about the spread of the consumer revolution across the social strata. (Show less)

Wouter Ryckbosch : A Material Culture Approach to Living Standards in Flanders & Brabant (Belgium), 14th-18th Centuries
This paper seeks to assess whether evidence on material culture, derived from probate inventories, can produce new insights into the long-term development of living standards in Flanders and Brabant. In this way, it seeks to establish a new approach to the debate on living standards before the industrial revolution. A ... (Show more)
This paper seeks to assess whether evidence on material culture, derived from probate inventories, can produce new insights into the long-term development of living standards in Flanders and Brabant. In this way, it seeks to establish a new approach to the debate on living standards before the industrial revolution. A selective sample of inventories left by buildings craftsmen and labourers from a variety of towns in Flanders and Brabant, from the late 14th until the late 18th century, will be used. The developments in the material culture in these inventories will be contrasted with the available data on the development of real wages and relative commodity prices during the same period. (Show less)

Judy Stephenson : Inequality within the Trades: Variance in Wealth and Living Standards among Masons and Carpenters in London, 1650 – 1800
Data from the building trades is predominantly used by economic historians to evaluate wages and living standards across Europe (Allen 2001, Van Zanden 1999). Assumptions underpinning the aggregate figures include regular employment, a hierarchal organizational structure and that the median is representative of the trades as a whole (Phelps, ... (Show more)
Data from the building trades is predominantly used by economic historians to evaluate wages and living standards across Europe (Allen 2001, Van Zanden 1999). Assumptions underpinning the aggregate figures include regular employment, a hierarchal organizational structure and that the median is representative of the trades as a whole (Phelps, Brown Hopkins, 1956). Yet in England’s case the use of contractors bills, (Gilboy 1934, Schwarz 1985, Boulton 1996) has given us an inflated sense of building craftsmen and labourers pay, and also given us a idealized version of the variance or inequality of pay and living standards. This paper uses archival data from key London sites; St Paul’s Cathedral, Westminster Bridge, Greenwich Hospital where architectural surveying was developing as a profession for the first time, and large-scale contractors were responsible for the organization and execution of advanced projects. Using actual pay records from contractors account books, apprenticeship and limited probate records it is shown that the variance of living standards or wealth with masonry, carpentry and other building trades in London in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries was far higher than previously thought. The paper examines ownership of tools, trading in materials and other goods, and working hours and practice to augment our knowledge of the relative welfare of building craftsmen in early modern London. (Show less)



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