Prices and Wages as Development Variables: A Comparison between England and the Southern Netherlands, 1400–1700

Abstract

The study of prices and wages has become of the highest importance in Belgium since the second World War, due inter alia to the stimulus of C. Verlinden and his collaborators. The great amount of information on prices, wages, and rents that has been collected and published, provided a basis for the study of the relationship between prices and the quantity of money available, to determine whether ‘quantitive theory’ is applicable to the history of prices in the southern Netherlands during the ancien régime. Prices, wages, and rents have also been even more useful in the study of social and economic conditions, making possible an answer to the following questions: Which factors governed the long-term movement of prices or the short-run price cycle? What was the latter’s influence on rural incomes, on the incomes of commercial speculators and of urban wage earners? Which variables governed the movement of house rents and land leases?

This article is a translation of ‘Prijzen en lonen als ontwikkelingsvariabelen. Een vergelijkend onderzoek tussen Engeland en de Zuidelijke Nederlanden, 1400–1700’ in: Album offert à Charles Verlinden à l’occasion de ses trente ans de professorat (Ghent, 1975) 413–35. The price and wage series on which this article is based have been published in Album Verlinden, 436–47. The author would like to thank Mr. M. Grow and Mrs. M. Pappas for their assistance and, particularly, professors J. Munro, S. Eddie and C. Harley of the University of Toronto for their most useful comments.