Common lands were traditionally an indispensable element in the economic existence of rural people. Thanks to common user rights to forests, meadows, heaths and other land, many poor people were able to keep their heads above water in difficult times. With the privatization of these lands, this form of exploitation largely disappeared during the 18th and 19th centuries. However, this process was not linear and was accompanied by different trajectories of development in various regions. 

Esther Beeckaert (UGent) examined how the complex system of common lands and rights evolved in the Belgian Ardennes during the period 1750-1850. Her study shows that this ancient system did not exclude social change, contrary to what is often claimed in literature. It changed in interaction with commercialization, increasing inequality and government-imposed privatization. 

The research resulted in a doctorate in history that will be publicly defended on 7 October at Ghent University.

Publication:

Esther Beeckaert, Rural transformation in the Ardennes: The commons as landscapes of change, 1750-1850. Ghent, PhD Dissertation, 2022,  pp. 1-346.

In a recently published study, historian Wouter Ronsijn (UGent) studies the evolution of the number of landless families in Flanders in the second half of the 19th century. Landlessness was especially high around 1850. No longer able to earn a living from spinning and weaving while land rents rose, many households lost their land. By 1846, no less than a quarter of households were landless. In 1895 this figure dropped again in large parts of Flanders to ten percent, apart from some regions where it rose to forty percent. The decline was due to demographic stagnation on the one hand and an increase in the number of small farms on the other. 

These findings are based on census data and data series from LOKSTAT which the author has analyzed and visualized on map.

Publication:

Wouter Ronsijn, “’Gaining ground’ in Flanders after the 1840s: access to land and the coping mechanisms of landless and semi-landless households, 1850-1900”, in: Landless households in rural Europe, 1600-1900. Boydell Studies in Rural History, 2022, pp. 91-116.

At the beginning of the 19th century Charles Van Hoorebeke collected and preserved all wild plant species from East Flanders. Thanks to his herbarium, East Flanders is the only province of Belgium that has a complete catalogue of the flora of his time. Using this collection, biologist Katrijn Vannerum and historian Thijs Lambrecht (Ghent University) compared the plant diversity of today and two centuries ago. No fewer than 133 species in the herbarium appeared to have disappeared. The authors examined the causes of this loss. One important explanation is the disappearance of specific landscapes. Thanks to LOKSTAT, the researchers were able to reconstruct and analyse the landscape transformation in detail. 

The authors’ findings are summarised in an illustrated book intended for a broad audience and anyone with an interest in plants and biodiversity. The book includes a number of overview maps of historical plant locations and landscapes made by the Quetelet Center.

Katrijn Vannerum and Thijs Lambrecht. Groen van toen: de verdwenen flora van Oost-Vlaanderen.  Ghent, Academia Press, 2022, 128 p.

Cities underwent a radical transformation from the 19th century onwards. Industrialisation, rural exodus and democratisation had a profound impact on relations between city dwellers and their sense of local identity. Through street protests, riots and violence, groups tried to push through their response to these developments. 

Martin Schoups examined these protest actions in the city of Antwerp between 1884 and 1936. He identifies three fault lines that formed the basis of the collective actions: the divergent world views of liberals and catholics, the erosion of the privileges of urban workers in the economic field and the attempts of the bourgeoisie to impose its values and norms on the proletariat. The research is partly based on contextual data about the socio-economic relations from LOKSTAT.

The described research was carried out as part of the doctoral dissertation that Martin Schoups will defend on 23 May at the Department of History of UGent.

Dissertation:

Martin Schoups. Meesters van de straat: collectieve actie en de strijd om de publieke ruimte: Antwerpen (1884-1936) [Masters of the street: collective action and the struggle for public space: Antwerp]. Ghent, 2022, 408 p.