Polish historians rarely devote their attention to the subsistence crises and famines in early modern Poland. They tend to focus on the problems of wartime destruction and diseases, which are still associated strongly with the economic crisis of the 17th and first half of the 18th centuries. Nevertheless, in southern ...
(Show more)Polish historians rarely devote their attention to the subsistence crises and famines in early modern Poland. They tend to focus on the problems of wartime destruction and diseases, which are still associated strongly with the economic crisis of the 17th and first half of the 18th centuries. Nevertheless, in southern Poland (and probably in other parts of the contemporary Kingdom of Poland) there were at least two great famines during the 18th century: in 1714/1715 and 1736/1737. From this latter until the 1840s there were several less severe subsistence crises; the famine of 1771/1772 which affected Central Europe (Germany, Bohemia, Silesia) was not so acute, for instance. In 1772 this region was occupied by Austria and became one of the poorest provinces of the Habsburg Empire, dominated by a rural population (about 75% in 1880) and a manorial economy based on peasant serfdom. In spite of these circumstances, from the beginning of the Austrian regime until 1846/1847 there were no other such substantial crises caused by harvest failure.
The main problem faced by the scholar is the lack of sufficient statistical data relating to demography, harvests and prices. Some important materials remain scattered (parish registers to the end of the 18th century). Nevertheless, I will try to answer the question about the vulnerability of the rural population to subsistence crises using parish registers above all (fertility, mortality). The paper will be also an attempt to describe the dependencies between the above-mentioned crises and other factors, such as:
- level of production of main crops (using the first land cadastre of 1785/1787, known as the Josephine Cadastre, as well as tithe records);
- the socio-economic structure of the peasant class (division into full farmers and crofters);
- geographical circumstances and causes of harvest failures (e.g. floods).
This paper is a continuation of similar subjects which will be raised in my paper at the Rural History 2015 Conference in Girona (the subsistence crisis of 1846/1847), and they are connected with the papers presented at the 12th International Conference on Urban History in Lisbon in 2014 (urban farming) and the Rural History Conference 2013 in Berne (the introduction of potatoes).
(Show less)