Marktkontakte adeliger Güter in Rheinland, Westfalen und Lippe, 1650-1850

• Antragsteller: Professor Dr. Ulrich Pfister
• Fachliche Zuordnung: Neuere und Neueste Geschichte (einschl. Europäische Geschichte der Neuzeit und Außereuropäische Geschichte) ; Agrarökonomie, Agrarpolitik, Agrarsoziologie ; Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte
• Förderung: Förderung von 2014 bis 2022
• Projektkennung: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Projektnummer 255912480

Markets are a defining characteristic of the modern age. Historically, their existence constituted a precondition for regional industrialization, because the latter relied on expanding exports of manufactures and rising imports of basic foodstuffs. This project studies the records of seven noble estates in the lower Rhineland and Westphalia from the 17th to the 19th centuries with respect to the practices surrounding the commercialization of grain. The analysis is expected to provide insights into the role of changes relative to economic behaviour, institutions and the constellation of actors in bringing about modern markets for agricultural products. This forms the first investigation of this type in European historiography.We submit this prolongation request because it is impossible to complete the work of this project within three years as planned in the initial project proposal. Three reasons account for the delay in the completion of the research: The first is that the source material has proved to be more heterogeneous, more complex and more difficult to handle than thought initially. Second, in some cases sources turned out more abundant than it seemed at first inspection. Leaving part of the relevant sources aside would have undermined the validity of the study. Third, in order to put practices related to the commercialization of grain in their economic and social context, more information is gathered than planned according to the original proposal.The research of this project focuses on three topics. The first relates to the institutions present in informal, local markets and the relationship between these markets and reference markets in nearby towns. The hypothesis is that the development of regional grain markets led to a more frequent use of formal forms of transactions, a shift of transaction partners from the local lower class that depended from an estate to merchants as well as to a better synchronization between prices obtained at the castle gate and those prevailing on reference markets. The second topic addresses the economic behaviour of noble estates along the continuum between profit maximization and the embeddedness of transactions in interlocking markets and a local culture of paternalism. We identify the presence of profit-maximizing behaviour and of related heuristics through an analysis of seasonal grain sales and of intra-annual and carry-over stocks. Conversely, transfers of grain to local poor relief institutions and informal sales to the local lower class point to a paternalistic mode of behaviour. The third topic relates to the internal coordination of the economic behaviour of an estate. Owners were absent during long periods, and estates were managed by administrators. This created a principal-agent problem and hindered the formulation of coherent business strategies. We use evidence from correspondence between the actors involved to bring light into these issues and into the remedies applied to resolving them.

• DFG-Verfahren: Sachbeihilfen