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19 Walker, P., Famine early warning systems: victims and destitution (London, 1989), 28Google Scholar. Similar arguments can be found in Watts, M. J. and Bohle, H. G., ‘The space of vulnerability: the causal structure of hunger and famine’, Progress in Human Geography 17 (1993), 43–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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22 While this type of source is rare, it is certainly not unique in the early modern period, although it is seldom used due to the time-consuming nature of the analysis required. Paul Warde, for example, used grain inventories to investigate peasant household and market strategies unrelated to a crisis: Warde, P., ‘Subsistence and sales: the peasant economy of Württemberg in the early seventeenth century’, Economic History Review LIX, 2 (2006), 289–319CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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26 For Nijvel (in the south of Brabant), Daelemans suggests a drop of 15.05 per cent in the harvest year 1556/57, compared to the average harvest. See Daelemans, F., ‘De tienden van het Sint-Geertrudekapittel van Nijvel (15e–18e eeuw): een eerste benadering. Bijdrage tot de conjunctuurstudie’, in Verhulst, A. and Vandenbroeke, C. eds., Landbouwproduktiviteit in Vlaanderen en Brabant, 14e–18e Eeuw (Ghent, 1979), 201–366Google Scholar.

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37 This would only change in the course of the nineteenth century, as described in Vanhaute and Lambrecht, ‘Famine, exchange networks and the village community’.

38 Such bans were nothing new, bans on grain exports were issued repeatedly from 1531 onwards, particularly during times of war, such as the Habsburg-French war of 1551–1559. See Scholliers, De levensstandaard, 52.

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45 The old and the young are usually identified as being particularly vulnerable. Gender inequalities in vulnerability are also mentioned, but there are two opinions in the literature about the form these take, some authors arguing that women were more vulnerable, due to their ‘inferior’ position and the responsibility for caring for the sick, while others believe they were less vulnerable, due to their control over the preparation of food. See Walker, Famine early warning systems.

46 The Moen inventory is contained in the archival class with the censuses of 1556/57, but on closer scrutiny it was compiled during the grain crisis of 1565/66.

47 As the inventories were compiled in the second half of February, most of them indicate how much grain each household would need to survive through the next five months, until the end of July, after which the next harvest season would begin.

48 Many thanks go to Thijs Lambrecht (Ghent University) for tracking down the 1565 censuses.

49 Thoen, Landbouwekonomie en bevolking, 1242.

50 See the supplementary material for all the relevant sources, to which a link is provided at the end of this article.

51 These inventories were drawn up when the deceased had underage (under 25 years old) children.

52 Used in Thoen, Landbouwekonomie en bevolking, 1142–5.

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63 State Archives of Bruges (hereafter RABr), Oud Archief Pittem, 275 B&C, 1551–1570.

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68 In 1457 it was ordained that one quarter of the freight grain that traders were transporting was required to be unloaded and sold in Ghent. In the second half of the sixteenth century there was a slight change: ships going upstream only had to unload one sixth of their cargo, for all other grain traders (that is, those going downstream), the rules remained in place. See Van den Broecke, R., Het hongerjaar 1556–1557 in Gent (Ghent, 2001)Google Scholar.

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71 Ibid., 43.

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77 Walker, Famine early warning systems.

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