The Great Famine

by William Chester Jordan

The horrors of the Great Famine (1315-1322), one of the severest catastrophes ever to strike northern Europe, lived on for centuries in the minds of Europeans who recalled tales of widespread hunger, class warfare, epidemic disease, frighteningly high mortality, and unspeakable crimes. Until now, no one has offered a perspective of what daily life was actually like throughout the entire region devastated by this crisis, nor has anyone probed far into its causes. Here, the distinguished historian William Jordan provides the first comprehensive inquiry into the Famine from Ireland to western Poland, from Scandinavia to central France and western Germany. He produces a rich cultural history of medieval community life, drawing his evidence from such sources as meteorological and agricultural records, accounts kept by monasteries providing for the needy, and documentation of military campaigns. Whereas there has been a tendency to describe the food shortages as a result of simply bad weather or else poor economic planning, Jordan sets the stage so that we see the complex interplay of social and environmental factors that caused this particular disaster and allowed it to continue for so long.


Jordan begins with a description of medieval northern Europe at its demographic peak around 1300, by which time the region had achieved a sophisticated level of economic integration. He then looks at problems that, when combined with years of inundating rains and brutal winters, gnawed away at economic stability. From animal diseases and harvest failures to volatile prices, class antagonism, and distribution breakdowns brought on by constant war, northern Europeans felt helplessly besieged by acts of an angry God--although a cessation of war and a more equitable distribution of resources might have lessened the severity of the food shortages.


Throughout Jordan interweaves vivid historical detail with a sharp analysis of why certain responses to the famine failed. He ultimately shows that while the northern European economy did recover quickly, the Great Famine ushered in a period of social instability that had serious repercussions for generations to come.

Genres: History, European History, Nonfiction, Medieval History

328 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

William Chester Jordan is an American medievalist who serves as the Dayton-Stockton Professor of History at Princeton University; he is a recipient of the Haskins Medal for his work concerning the Great Famine of 1315–1317. He is also a former Director of the Program in Medieval Studies at Princeton. Jordan has studied and published on the Crusades, English constitutional history, gender, economics, Judaism, and, most recently, church-state relations in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

Reviews

[Debbie · Rating 5 out of 5]

About 25 years before the first outbreak of the Black Death, Europe experienced a climate shift that ruined crops for a few years, causing widespread famine and upheaval. Part of Jordan's argument is that this deficiency in the diets of the children of that period may have led to immunological problems that allowed the Death to hit the adult population much harder than it might have.

This is also an interesting study of famine itself, as well as social upheaval resulting from sudden climate change. My feeling is that this might be an important book in the coming years.

[Caotico09 · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very detailed account of the Famine of 1315. This is probably the first book to refer to for information on this event.

The book is very statistic oriented. In ways this is good, because it allows direct comparisons of different areas. My complaint is this doesn't fully capture personal accounts and hardships. I was hoping for a more direct look and personal accounts from that period. I originally rated it as a 3 because of this, but after correlating my notes from the book I have bumped the rating. The book has a wealth of information. I have noted a few of the more interesting tidbits i marked below:

22: For medieval people famine was unquestionably being caused by recompense for sin. Refer to Poem “ ON EVIL TIMES OF EDWARD II”
50: One note that bread Prices in France rose 800%!! Interesting note that even rumors of a decent harvest cause prices to plummet. This led to mass buying, even when rumors were fake, exacerbating the issue. A Vernacular Ditty: in 1318, before the vintage and threshing, our champion, God, beat down the high prices everywhere
62: Majority of markets were owned by lord. Seigneurs seek benefits from lords (especially concessions of tolls). In difficult times these lords would exploit- confiscation, taxation (specifically of jews)
72: Church forced to take back leases to ensure that they maintained seed corn for planting. This is an interesting note and shows concerns about leases during major downturns like this.
73: There was differences depending on whether the territory was a border nation or not. In borderlands, arbitrary squeezing of tenants couldn’t be done, because those same tenants would simply cross borders and escape. So in borderlands the principal need was to maintain labor force to grow food for garrisons. This caused these lords to actually work on saving their population more so than non-border territories.
100: Farmers felt obligated to sell/mortgage/sublease farms to buy food.
112: Roving bands of beggars creating settlements as massive vagabond population moved east.
116: People were in general not 'starving to death'. People died after becoming weakened by low caloric intake (sickness) and by eating bad food. A good example is eating fungus infested rye- causing paroxysms and ergotism death. This was called 'St Anthony's Fire'.
136: Early on portions of seed crop would be sold in anticipation of quick turn around. This caused 'illegal' trading as farmers tried to get around markets. This was called 'forestalling'. This led to municipal efforts to stop it.
139: Rental Houses are an interesting story. Tenants went down because they spent so much on food. Prices could rise (lords trying to make up for shortfalls) or fall (demand). Immigration could help or hurt as well. One note, that a King filled rentals by "ruthlessly reducing rent" on plots.
141: "The people were in such great need…For the cries that were heard from the poor would move a stone, as they lay in the streets with woe and great complaint, swollen with hunger." In severe cases of famine body temperature is reduced, and anemia is severe. The skin becomes pallid because of reduced bloodflow.
143: Corpses were put in 'refuse heaps' and public highways to await burial. Large common graves in uncultivated fields. Hired laborers would gather corpses. Good wages paid to haulers and grave diggers
151: Competing Warring Nations tried to buy support from cities. Strasbourg had competing back and forth offers from Bavaria and Austria.

[Lauren Albert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very informative but be warned--it is very data-driven and can get repetitive when he reviews the same issues for many different regions (grain yields, population changes, rents, etc.). I found some of this pretty tedious though I recognize how important it is for understanding what happened:

"The events of 1315-1322 were unspeakably difficult. Prices were high and volatile, making it hard, if not impossible, for people to plan for the future. Wages did not keep pace with the steep and nearly decade-long price inflation. Those lords who benefited from the high prices were outnumbered by others who suffered economic crises and near bankruptcy. Rustics and burghers, with few exceptions, bore even heavier financial burdens--losing or abandoning homesteads, selling houses, going into heavy and unproductive debt."

Those terrible years were the consequence of too much rain, then drought, animal disease and war. The consequences of the latter were both direct (destruction) and indirect (taxes).

[Carmen212 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love these dense academic history books. The details, the details. How people farmed in the 13th and 14th centuries. And probably earlier. The famine of 1315-1322 was caused by unceasing rain over a great portion of northern Europe. There were chroniclers - the Chronicle of Wurzburg, the Chronicle of Avignon, and so on. Nothing could be grown, not for people and not for animals.

This book is about lords and peasants (only recently called peasants, formerly slaves), the abbeys, wages and prices, how land was divided, taxes and tolls, market towns (not really towns). I find this fascinating as do many historians. Just looking thru the bibliography so many books about small places. In another life I would be an archivist.

Not even 200 pages, it was slow-going, but never a slog - for me.

[Joyce Hampton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maybe not everyone's first choice for a holiday read but given the difficult times we have been living through with the pandemic, it did seem a good moment to read this.... and I was not disappointed.
The book describes not only the starvation endured by most of northern Europe but examines the economic and social impact on medieval life as it paints a picture of all class strata and points out the relevancy of today's situation.

Food banks, for example, may be perceived as a modern invention but they were being set up, funded and ran by Government and charities back then just as now.

I would thoroughly recommend this book as it is a thought provoking tome worthy of more than a passing glace

[Victor · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 1/2 stars.

[Simon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good history of a major historical event that was eclipsed by the Black Death, but is of similar significance. Fourteenth Century Europe really was calamitous.