In 1856, the mayor of Brussels proposed the establishment of a municipal laboratory with a chemist to analyse food and beverages to restrain fraud. His proposal was accepted and a laboratory – possibly one of the first municipal laboratories in Europe – was set up. The laboratory still exists today. This paper aims at tracing the conditions in which it emerged, situating it within the laissez-faire context of the time. It was brought into existence by a liberal administration, in a period of little interventionism replete with unencumbered private interests (those of bakers, butchers, grocers, millers, pharmacists, doctors and so on). What will be considered here is the general mood with regard to food fraud, fair trade, correct price, and the quality of food in the first half of the nineteenth century. On a broader level, this contribution addresses the frictions between private and public initiative, while focusing on the process of construction of expertise. The paper makes use of contemporary documents such as reviews, newspapers, association reports and city council chronicles.

Nowadays, brands are inescapable. Economists and marketing experts trace this pervasive presence back to the 1980s when brands and branding seemed to promise new, crucial assets for both producers and consumers. Of course, brands existed much earlier, and although some authors claim that “brands are as old as known civilization,” most researchers accept that they burgeoned with the coming of large consumer-goods–oriented factories in the 1870s, generating the “first golden era for the modern brand mark” in the 1890s. The recent success of brands has stimulated historians' attention to product variety, advertisements, brand management, firms' and products' reputations, consumer loyalty, the significance of brands, and much more.

In November 1894 the new store of the Ghent consumer cooperative Vooruit was inaugurated with sumptuous celebrations. One visitor was struck by the “grandiose vision of splendor and luxury,” while another admired the “long, huge and impressive facade, that instantly caught the attention of every passer-by.”Jules Van Den Huevel, Une citadelle socialiste. Le Vooruit de Gand (Paris, 1897), 6; “Le Vooruit. La coopération et l'organisation socialiste en Belgique,” Musée Social 20 (1897):460. A cascade of similar phrases may be found in books and newspapers of the time. The ornamented exterior of the Vrijdagmarkt became the symbol of a well-functioning social democracy, lending self-confidence to this movement inside and outside Belgium.Guy Vanschoenbeek, Novecento in Gent. De wortels van de sociaal-democratie in Vlaanderen (Antwerp, 1995), 69, 76. The admiration for the building was also accompanied by critical comments varying in view and vigor. Christian-Democratic, bourgeois, and middle-class observers were shocked by the extravaganza of the cooperative store, so distant from their image of the unpretentious cooperative supplying plain goods. Radical socialists and anarchists condemned the bourgeois style of the store as reformist.Jean Puissant, “L'historiographie de la coopération en Belgique,” Revue belge d'Histoire Contemporaine 22 (1991):21–25. The new building catalyzed feelings for and against the social-democratic co-op movement at the same time as it testified to the effervescence of a booming commercial enterprise.