Land and credit as driving forces

DETAILS

Used dataset:

LOKSTAT, POPPKAD

Date:

October 2023

Category:

Doctoral research

LAND AND CREDIT AS DRIVING FORCES

Recently, Nicolas De Vijlder earned his doctorate in History and Business Economics at Ghent University. His dissertation delves into the structural significance of capital in the development of the Southern Low Countries between 1400 and 1900.

Emphasizing the role of land and credit as dominant productive factors, the author explores how the exchange of these forms of capital profoundly influenced society. Market transactions of land and credit were examined in both urban and rural settings, utilizing detailed case studies and macro-analyses. The research highlights the commercialization of the countryside, the growing interconnection between city and rural areas, and the long-term effects of market activities on socio-economic relationships. This study also demonstrates the feasibility and relevance of applying quantitative and econometric research methods to historical issues.

Nicolas De Vijlder based his research in part on datasets from LOKSTAT and POPPKAD, including outcomes from trade and industry censuses.

Publication:

Nicolas De Vijlder, Essays on Land and Credit Markets: The Southern Low Countries 1500-1900. Ghent, PhD Dissertation, 2023.


Local communities under pressure

DETAILS

Used database:

LOKSTAT

Date:

October 2022

Category:

Scientific research

Local communities under pressure

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.

Landless Flanders

DETAILS

Used database:

LOKSTAT

Date:

August 2022

Category:

Scientific publication

Landless Flanders

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.

Green of the past

DETAILS

Used database:

LOKSTAT

Date:

March 2022

Category:

Scientific publication

Green of the past

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.

Masters of the street

DETAILS

Used database:

LOKSTAT

Date:

April 2022

Category:

Scientific Research

Masters of the street

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.

The Spanish flu in Belgium

DETAILS

Used dataset:

LOKSTAT, HISSTER, S.O.S. ANTWERPEN

Date:

December 2021

Category

Publication

The Spanish flu in Belgium

This article provides the first comprehensive overview of the severity and impact of the Spanish flu in Belgium (1918-1919) and thereby makes a long overdue connection with the extensive international literature on pandemics in general and Spanish flu in particular. Leveraging ego documents (diaries), municipal-level excess mortality, and individual-level cause-of-death registers, we present new evidence on the chronology and spatial distribution of Spanish flu mortality in Belgium in 1918 and 1919 as well as social and demographic characteristics of the Spanish flu deaths in the city of Antwerp and discuss the government measures taken in the difficult context of the German occupation. In Belgium, our analysis shows that the chronology and geography of the Spanish flu cannot be seen in isolation from the vagaries of the First World War, in terms of soldiers and evacuees both acting as likely vectors of influenza transmission as well as inflating crude death rates at the municipal level.

Article: 

Devos, I., M. Bourguignon, et al. (2021), “The Spanish Flu in Belgium, 1918–1919. A State of the Art”, Historical Social Research Supplement 33: 251-283.


Regional industrialization in a comparative perspective

DETAILS

Used Database:

LOKSTAT

Date:

December 2020

Category:

Scientific publication

Regional industrialization in a comparative perspective

Over the past two centuries, regions in Europe and Asia have industrialized in very different ways. A recently published book highlights the similarities and differences in industrialization processes in Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Yugoslavia, China and Japan. Attention is paid to, among other things, the consequences of industrial policy, agglomeration forces, globalization and the determinants of industrial location over time.

The book was edited by Bas van Leeuwen (IISH), Robin Philips (IISH and history alumnus of Ghent University) and Erik Buyst (KULeuven). It contains case studies and other contributions from an international team of researchers with the participation of Ghent University (Glenn Raypp and Stijn Ronsse, Department of Economics).

The research on Belgium is based on LOKSTAT data from the industry and population censuses, as well as contextual data on the development of the traffic infrastructure.

Book:

Van Leeuwen, Bas, Robin Philips and Erik Buyst eds. An Economic History of Regional Industrialization. New York/London: Routledge, 2020.

Abstract:

This book offers a comprehensive study of regional industrialization in Europe and Asia from the early nineteenth century to the present. Using case studies on regional industrialization, the book provides insights into similarities and differences in industrialization processes between European, Eurasian and Asian countries. Important factors include the transition from traditional to modern industrial production, industrial policy, agglomeration forces, market integration, and the determinants of industrial location over time. The book is an invaluable reference that attempts to bridge the fields of economic history, political history, economic geography, and economics while contributing to the debates on economic divergence between Europe and Asia as well as on the role of economic integration and globalization.

The rise of industrial Belgium

DETAILS

Used database:

LOKSTAT

Date:

OCTOBER 2020

Category:

Doctoral research

The rise of industrial Belgium

Which factors were decisive for the breakthrough of industry in the 19th century? Franz Xaver Zobl investigated industrial development in France and Belgium in search of these determining factors. As part of his PhD at the London School of Economics (LSE), he studied the importance of access to coal and markets to explain regional patterns of Belgian industrialization. His analysis shows that both access to coal and markets played a crucial role. In general, more attention must be paid to supply and demand to explain industrialization processes. Zobl based his statistical analysis on the extensive industry census of 1896 made available by Lokstat.  Recently, the doctoral dissertation from 2018 has become freely available to interested readers in full and without restrictions (see below).

PhD thesis:

Zobl Franz Xaver. Regional Economic Development under Trade: Liberalisation, Technological Change and Market Access: Evidence from 19th century France and Belgium. PhD thesis, London School of Economics (LSE), 2018.

Real estate at the service of economic development

DETAILS

Used Database:

LOKSTAT & POPPKAD

Date:

NOVEMBER 2020

Category:

Scientific publication

Real estate at the service of economic development

Nicolas de Vijlder (Department of History UGent) and Koen Schoors (Department of Economics UGent and Higher School of Economics, National Research University Moscow) investigated the factors that have led to the industrialization and economic development of Flanders. They analyzed the development of the economy in most Flemish localities in the period 1830-1910. They explain the regional differences that their analysis reveals with the help of Hernando de Soto’s thesis, which identifies a well-ordered property system as an essential condition for economic development. In regions where real estate generated significant income and was used as collateral for loans, the local economy grew through investment in trade and industry. This pattern is in line with de Soto’s predictions.

The research is based on an extensive analysis of land prices and data on real estate, employment, industry and trade in 1,179 municipalities from LOKSTAT and POPPKAD.


Article:

De Vijlder, Nicolas and Koen Schoors. “Land rights, local financial development and industrial activity: evidence from Flanders (nineteenth–early twentieth century)”.  Cliometrica, 14(2020), 3: 507-50.

 

Abstract:

In this paper, we investigate the hypothesis that the economic divergence across Flemish localities between 1830 and 1910 is explained by the theory of Hernando de Soto. We hypothesize that the uniform land rights installed after the French revolution provided borrowers with an attractive form of collateral. Conditional on the presence of local financial development provided by a new government-owned bank this eased access to external finance and fostered industrial and commercial economic activity. Using primary historical data of about 1179 localities in Flanders, we find that the variation in the local value of land (collateral) and the variation in local financial development jointly explain a substantial amount of the variation in non-agricultural employment accumulated between 1830 and 1910. By 1910, industrial and commercial economic activity was more developed in localities where both early (1846) rural land prices were high and early (1880) local financial development was more pronounced, which is in line with the ‘de Soto’ hypothesis.

Crisis for whom?

DETAILS

Used database:

LOKSTAT & POPPKAD

Date:

February 2020

Category:

Scientific publication

Crisis for whom?

In the 1840s, Belgium was in the grip of an economic and social crisis. Esther Beeckaert and Eric Vanhaute (History Department, Ghent University) devote a chapter to this serious crisis in the book “An economic history of famine resilience” (Routledge 2019). They describe the crisis in its magnitude and complexity and show how strongly the consequences differed between regions. They then come to an explanation for the varying impact of the crisis. Their findings are largely based on data from population and agriculture censuses that the Quetelet Center has compiled for them. In addition, employees of the Center produced important maps for this research and the publication.

Summary:

In this paper, Esther Beeckaert and Eric Vanhaute make a regional comparison to understand the divergent impact of the 1840s potato famine in Belgium. This famine resulted from successive harvest failures in 1845 and 1846. Initially a potato blight destroyed 87 percent of the harvest and the next year the grain harvest was also partly damaged due to bad weather conditions. The authors start from the observation that the mortality rates were much higher in Inner-Flanders (Kortrijk, Roeselare, Tielt) than in Walloon Brabant (Nivelles), the Campine (Turnhout) and the Ardennes (Neufchâteau). They explain the regionally different impact on the basis of two basic characteristics of rural societies: secure and stable household access to land and performant local redistributive mechanisms through extended labour networks or public poor relief systems. In the Campine and the Ardennes considerable numbers of households were able to survive supported by systems of common access to public land. In Walloon-Brabant these common lands had largely disappeared by then, but impoverished families were relatively successfully sustained by local poor relief institutions and employed by large farms in the region. In contrast, in Inner-Flanders these safety nets were largely absent by the 1840s. Subsistence means from land and labour of many households have been reduced in the years preceding the crisis and the local poor relief institutions were not capable to meet the growing needs.  


Beeckaert, Esther and Eric Vanhaute. “Whose famine? Regional differences in vulnerability and resilience during the 1840s potato famine in Belgium.” In: Jessica Dijkman and Bas van Leeuwen (eds.) An economic history of famine resilience. Routledge, 2019: 115–41.  


Guardians of the state

DETAILS

Used database:

LOKSTAT

Date:

January 2020

Category:

Doctoral defense

Guardians of the state

Jan Naert successfully defended his dissertation on the mayors of occupied Belgium and France during the First World War on January 29. For the research, he relied, among other things, on nominative lists of mayors and population figures from the period 1900-1913 that the Quetelet Center makes available.

Summary

This study deals with the mayors who served under the German occupation of Belgium and northern France during World War I. It addresses two central questions. The first gauges the political legitimacy of the mayor and his governance during the war. Was it subject to change as a result of the occupation context? Did the definition of what ‘legitimate’ or ‘good’ governance is, acquire a different interpretation? How did mayors try to respond to that? And finally, what was the verdict at the end of the war? The second question in this dissertation assesses how the local level of administration related to the Belgian or French central state. World War I historians seem to agree nowadays that the state, and by extension the governmental authority in occupied Belgium and northern France, ‘disintegrated’ as a result of the war context. This study tests this thesis against the events at the local level. How did this disintegration process manifest itself? And how did it impact the local governance level and the functioning of the mayors? This research study answers these and other questions from of a combined transnational and local historical point of view. The analysis starts from several specific themes which are studied from the bottom up at six local case studies: Antwerp, Lille, Alost, Fourmies, Houdeng-Aimeries and Solesmes. 

PhD thesis :

Jan Naert. Hoeders van de staat: burgemeesters in bezet en bevrijd België en Noord-Frankrijk (1914-1921). PhD scriptie, Universiteit Gent, 2020.  

The roots of political division

DETAILS

Used database:

LOKSTAT

Date:

15 October 2019

Category:

Doctoral defense

The roots of political division

Maayan Mor recently successfully defended her doctoral dissertation “Rethinking the Origins of Electoral Cleavages: How States Create Cleavages Through Policies” (Department of Political Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison). She investigated the causes of electoral divisions in Western Europe, in particular in Belgium, Prussia, Bavaria and Baden. Her research devotes the emergence of electoral cleavages to the reactions of voters and political entrepreneurs to government policies. The way in which the government makes choices in the distribution of resources and controls access to social mobility, politicizes social identities when they divide society into winners and losers based on the same identities. With this, Mor rejects the current theories that are more likely to find the cause of electoral cleavages in major events, called “critical junctures”.

Maayan Mor based her research on Belgium largely on data about municipal elections, spoken languages and population characteristics (1900-1970) from LOKSTAT.


Murderous prices

DETAILS

Used database:

LOKSTAT & POPPKAD

Date:

August 2019

Categorie:

Scientific publication

MURDEROUS PRICES

The crisis that hit hard parts of Flanders in the 1840s was the result of a long development and a combination of various factors. Historians blame the depression on the decline of the cottage industry, social inequality, high population pressure, fragmentation of land ownership and a series of crop failures. In a contribution to the recently published book “Histoire rurale de l’Europe, XVIe-XXe siècle”, Wouter Ronsijn (Bocconi University of Milan and Ghent University) examines the different causes from a long-term perspective and points to the important role that the prices and wages played in the crisis. Due to the sharp fall in revenues from the outdated linen industry on the one hand and the rise in food prices on the other, many families were no longer able to make ends meet and many ended up in poverty. Wouter Ronsijn bases his findings on an extensive series of figures, including data on agriculture, industry and property relationships from LOKSTAT and POPPKAD.

Article:

Ronsijn, Wouter. “Alternance d’effets de ciseaux dans l’espace rural de la Flandre intérieure, XVIIIe – XIX siècle”, in Histoire rurale de l’Europe, XVIe-XXe siècle, edited by Laurent Herment (ed.), 203-229.  Paris: EHESS, 2019.

Prosperity and demography at the time of Malthus

DETAILS

Used database:

STREAM

Date:

May 2019

Category:

Scientific publication

PROSPERITY AND DEMOGRAPHY AT THE TIME OF MALTHUS

Article:

Devos, Isabelle, Thijs Lambrecht and Anne Winter. “Welfare and demography in the time of Malthus. Regional and local variations in poor relief and population developments in Flanders, c. 1750-1810”. Study Week Fondazione Istituto Internazionale di Storia Economica “F. Datini”, 1-25. Prato, 2019.

Abstract:

“Poor relief has often been attributed a dynamic role in early modern economic and demographic change, from easing transitions to wage labour and thereby encouraging economic growth and industrialization, to mitigating the effects of high mortality, or conversely, stimulating high levels of fertility. Recent historical research, however, is more sceptical about these Malthusian claims. To this date, the mechanisms between economic inequality, welfare spending and demographic behaviour have hardly been investigated for areas outside England. Flanders represents a particularly interesting region for research that aims to investigate the development of socio-economic inequalities at the local and regional level. Not only because of the existence of distinct socio-economic structures within Flanders, but also due to the uniform presence of local poor relief institutions and general rules on entitlement. At the same time, the dissimilar income structure of local poor tables, based on past and present charitable donations rather than taxation, implied a high degree of inelasticity in times of dearth and could imply great local differences in poor relief practices from one parish to the next. However, the relationship between and effects of structural socio-economic characteristics on the one hand and micro-level variations on the other hand remain unclear. The data collected by the STREAM project (streamproject.ugent.be) together with its tailored geographical information system (GIS) allow us to explore these relationships for the rural parishes of early modern Flanders. In this paper we examine spatial patterns in poor relief and demographic behaviour and how these were interrelated.”

Doctoral defense Marjolein Schepers

DETAILS

Used database:

LOKSTAT & STREAM

Date:

May 2019

Category:

Doctoral defense

DOCTORAL DEFENSE MARJOLEIN SCHEPERS

The public defense takes place on Friday May 31th at the campus of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Pleinlaan 2, 1050 Brussels, in building D, in the ‘promotiezaal’ auditorium D. 2. 01.

PhD dissertation: 

Schepers, Marjolein. “Membership revisited: negotiating migration regulation and access to welfare in eighteenth-century Flanders”. PhD diss., Vrije Universiteit Brussel – Ghent University, 2019.

Abstract:

The Ypres Concordat was founded in June 1750 by cities and rural regions in West Flanders and Northern France. This bottom-up agreement amended the regulations on assisted living, which had an impact on mobility and on access to care for the poor. Research into this concordat teaches us about the relationships between city and countryside in migration regulation, as well as the discrepancies between the different levels of local, regional and central governments. Above all, it offers more insight into the operation of containment and exclusion systems in practice. In particular, research into whether poor migrants were sent away or allowed to stay in their hometown offers new insights into historiography. As such, this Ph.D. research also fits in with a lengthy discussion about Poor Law and settlement in the UK and shows that these systems were not limited to the anglophone world. On the contrary, the Flemish coast and the region of South East England showed many similarities in dealing with poor migrants. The research is based on archive sources from different archives in Belgium and France to which qualitative, quantitative and spatial analysis has been applied. During the research, digital methods of mapping were also used, Sven Vrielinck and Torsten Wiedeman from the Quetelet Center assisted the researcher in creating a digital GIS environment for the research. The digitized census of the year IV was one of the sources for this. This census has been digitized in the context of the STREAM project.


The mobility transition revisited

DETAILS

Used database:

STREAM & LOKSTAT

Date:

july 2019

Category:

Scientific publication

THE MOBILITY TRANSITION REVISITED

Article:

Deschacht, Nick and Anne Winter, “Micro-Mobility in Flux. Municipal Migration Levels in the Provinces of Flanders and Antwerp, 1796–1846”, Journal of Migration History 5, no. 1 (2019): 1-30. 

Abstract:

“In this article we use new, unique data on population composition and socio-economic structure for the c. 670 municipalities of the Belgian provinces of East Flanders, West Flanders and Antwerp in 1796, 1815 and 1846, in order to gain insight into the changing patterns of local migration intensity from the late eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century. Although so-called micro-mobility is often disregarded in migration studies, this article argues that a spatial and diachronic analysis of local migration rates provides insight into the dynamics of social and economic change in relation to migration behaviour. The data show that the proportion of non-native residents varied strongly in accordance with different regional economies at the end of the eighteenth century, but that spatial variation declined markedly as overall migration rates converged on a higher average level by the mid-nineteenth century – leading to a re-interpretation of the mobility transition hypothesis.”

Holocaust, resistance and religion

DETAILS

Used database:

LOKSTAT

Datum:

August 2019

Category:

Publication

HOLOCAUST, RESISTANCE AND RELIGION

Which groups resisted the persecution of Jews during the Second World War? In the recently published book “Protectors of Pluralism: Christian Minorities and the Rescue of Jews during the Holocaust” sociologist Robert Braun (University of California at Berkeley) shows that religious minorities offered more help to Jews. The assistance was greater among both Protestants in Belgium and Catholics in predominantly Protestant areas of the Netherlands. These minorities had well-organized illegal networks and felt more closely connected with the persecuted.

Braun bases his findings on unpublished archive sources and on statistical research using various data collections, including LOKSTAT. The Quetelet Center made unique datasets about the population, elections and church attendance in Belgium available for the research.

Book:

Braun, Robert. “Protectors of Pluralism: Christian Minorities and the Rescue of Jews during the Holocaust.” Cambridge University Press, 2019. 


Researchers draw on LOKSTAT for a study of building permit policy in Flanders

DETAILS

Used database:

LOKSTAT

Date:

November 2017

Category:

Publication

RESEARCHERS DRAW ON LOKSTAT FOR A STUDY OF BUILDING PERMIT POLICY IN FLANDERS

The memorandum “Building permit policy in Flanders”, which is part of a four-part report commissioned by the Flemish government, presents an analysis of the building permit database for the whole of Flanders for the period 1962-2016. The database contains more than 3.5 million building permit applications. The LOKSTAT data were used to estimate population growth, which has a direct effect on the number of building permit applications. The LOKSTAT dataset on municipal population sizes is a unique historical source which enables a diverse range of quantitative analyses.

Memorandum:

Vanoutrive, Thomas, and Jeroen Cant. Vergunningenbeleid in Vlaanderen: kwantitatieve analyse van de vergunningendatabank (Building permit policy in Flanders: quantitative analysis of the building permit database). Brussels: Flemish Planning Bureau for the Environment and Spatial Development, 2017.


500 years of housing rents

DETAILS

Used database:

POPPKAD

Date:

April 2019

Category:

Research report

500 YEARS OF HOUSING RENTS

Thies Lindenthal (University of Cambridge, Department of Land Economy), Matthijs Korevaar and Piet Eichholtz (both from Maastricht University, School of Business and Economics) took a close look at the rental prices of urban housing and set out their findings in a paper for the Real Estate Research Centre in Cambridge. They studied the development of prices in seven major cities (Amsterdam, Antwerp, Bruges, Brussels, Ghent, London and Paris) between 1500 and 2017. For their research, they had access to a collection of unique historical data, including cadastral data and more than 6000 rental contracts from the POPPKAD database.

Apart from temporary fluctuations due to local circumstances, the relationship between housing rents to wages has been more or less constant for centuries. Rental prices clearly rose from 1900 onwards. The increase was more a result of the improvement in the quality of housing than an increase in the rent itself.

Research report:

Lindenthal, Thies, Matthijs Korevaar and Piet Eichholtz. “500 Years of Urban Rents, Housing Quality and Affordability”. University of Cambridge, Department of Land Economy, Working Paper Series, 2019-1, 1–71.

A piece of land for everyone?

DETAILS

Used database

LOKSTAT and POPPKAD

Date:

2017

Category:

Conference paper

A PIECE OF LAND FOR EVERYONE?

Article:

Ronsijn, Wouter. “‘Gaining ground’ in Flanders after the 1840s: access to land and coping mechanisms of (semi-)landless households in Flanders, ca. 1850-1900”, Rural History Conference, 1–35. Leuven, 2017

Abstract: 

“This paper explores whether, as a result of this shifting power balance, rural households in Flanders in the second half of the nineteenth century were literally gaining ground. All scholars see this period as a profound turning point for the Flemish countryside, affecting both rural coping mechanisms and agricultural production methods. […] Up until then, livelihoods in Flanders often combined small-scale farming for one’s own account with wage labour or market-oriented production, although there were regional variations to that pattern. This paper focuses on what happened with access to land, the indispensable condition for the first component. Did access to land increase, as would be consistent with the change of fortunes mentioned above, or did it decrease, as would be consistent with the overall, long-term European trend of rising landlessness? […] The paper reconstructs the extent of landlessness (households without land) and semi-landlessness (households with less than 2 ha of land, the minimum required for subsistence; this includes households without land) in Flanders, and to indicate the factors affecting that extent in the second half of the nineteenth century. It asks how many landless and semi-landless households there were in Flanders, and how access to land fit in with their other activities? The paper focuses on developments in four regions showing divergent patterns: the districts of Veurne, Kortrijk, Sint-Niklaas and Oudenaarde.”