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Over the past few decades, economic and maritime historians have shown growing interest in the wages earned by regular seamen in merchant shipping. Due to a lack of sources, however, the composition and size of these earnings remain an elusive topic, as are the economic, demographic, and political processes that shaped them. In this article, I conduct a micro-history of seamen’s earnings in Ostend’s merchant marine during the early 1780s, a period of commercial uptick in the principal port town of the Austrian Netherlands. I show how a confluence of wartime circumstances and domestic economic policies led to extraordinary wage levels. From a micro point of view, I show how individual seamen reaped the returns of this runaway port economy by successfully wrangling over wages and harnessing the mobility of their profession, both between and within ports. As such, this article provides a perspective on wage-formation from a neutral and small maritime power, as well as a novel history from below of Ostend’s boom years.

This article will consider certain art objects and underlying acts of patronage in the waning days of the ancien regime in Europe, partly through a trifecta of personalities who either produced or consumed art. Michel-Paul-Joseph Dewez (1742–1804) was a Brussels goldsmith and bronze caster; James Lockhart (1727–1790) was a Scottish military officer in the Austrian service and a court official; and Prince Charles Alexandre of Lorraine (1712–1780) was the governor general of the Austrian Netherlands from 1744 until his death in 1780. The works by Dewez that form the focus of this study include a pair of silver candlesticks that he made and Lockhart bought in about 1778, a rare survival from an age that ended in chaos and catastrophe as the ancien regime fell and revolutions erupted across Europe. Dewez also produced massive quantities of gilt bronze (ormolu) ornaments for a new Audience Chamber and Grand Salon commissioned by Prince Charles Alexandre of Lorraine for his Winter Palace in Brussels. While they lasted these rooms were among the most extraordinary courtly interiors in Europe. They have not survived, and with a few exceptions their sumptuous furnishings were also consumed in the fires of the French and Brabanconne Revolutions and their aftermaths. By assembling these stories of persons, things and their interrelationships into a single narrative, it is hoped that a soupçon more of light will be cast on a tumultuous time and its art, during the twilight years of the old Europe before the advent of the modern age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most historians agree that quarantine practices in the Mediterranean Sea played a pivotal role in the disappearance of plague from Western Europe. Although maritime quarantine originated in the Middle Ages, its importance increased during the seventeenth and eighteenth century when centralising states, guided by ‘populationist’ ideas of statecraft doctrines like mercantilism, began to develop and enforce isolation periods more elaborately. While extensive scholarship has explored maritime quarantine in Mediterranean port cities, little attention has been paid to the harbours of northwestern Europe. This study aims to fill this gap by examining maritime quarantine practices in the Austrian Netherlands during the eighteenth century. I survey measures taken in the region’s coastal area between 1715 and 1795 and examine if these precautions were influenced by theories of statecraft or prophylactic policy evolutions in the Mediterranean world. I argue that central involvement in maritime quarantine increased during the eighteenth century, driven by the growing influence of populationism in government circles as well as a heightened focus on commercial development. De meeste historici zijn het erover eens dat ziektewerende maatregelen in de havensteden rond de Middellandse Zee een belangrijke rol speelden in het verdwijnen van de pest uit West-Europa. Hoewel maritieme quarantaine zijn oorsprong had in de middeleeuwen, werd de praktijk belangrijker tijdens de zeventiende en achttiende eeuw. In die periode begonnen centraliserende staten, geïnspireerd door de ideeën van het populationisme in staatstheorieën, zoals het mercantilisme, isolatieperiodes in havensteden steeds beter te organiseren en af te dwingen. Hoewel maritieme quarantaine in het Middellandse Zeegebied al grondig werd onderzocht, is dat niet het geval voor de havens van noordwestelijk Europa. In deze studie wil ik dit bijstellen door maritieme quarantaine in de Oostenrijkse Nederlanden tijdens de achttiende eeuw te onderzoeken. Ik geef een overzicht van de maatregelen die genomen werden in de kuststreek van de Zuidelijke Nederlanden tussen 1715 en 1795 en onderzoek of die voorzorgen beïnvloed werden door staatkundige theorieën of evoluties in ziektewerende maatregelen in het Middellandse Zeegebied. Ik suggereer dat de betrokkenheid van de centrale overheid toenam gedurende de achttiende eeuw, zowel als gevolg van de toenemende invloed van populationisme in regeringskringen als van de groeiende aandacht voor commerciële ontwikkeling.

This article examines the emotional dynamics between six siblings of the Merode family in the eighteenth century and the ways in which they used emotional expression as a mechanism to communicate and negotiate existing forms of power within their sibling group. Using the extensive personal correspondence between the siblings, the article explores how the hierarchical nature of their relationship related to expectations of unity, arguing that the siblings had to find a balance between keeping the peace and challenging inequality related to gender, age, and marital status. Sibling emotionality played an important role in negotiating these unequal power dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1724, the prosecutor-general of the Grand Council of Malines, the supreme court of the Austrian Netherlands, opened a judicial investigation into the marquis of Westerlo, one of the highest aristocrats in the Low Countries. It was alleged that he had abused his power against a peasant from Herselt, one of the villages in the marquisate of Westerlo. The investigation ultimately led nowhere, but its records do reveal frequent and far-reaching abuses of power against the inhabitants of the marquisate. Moreover, they show that the villagers were not powerless but could organise themselves in various ways against their lord's coercive actions. Additionally, the case illustrates the gradual and growing penetration of the state apparatus into the administration of local seigneuries. Finally, this essay demonstrates the need for more research on the relationships between lords and villagers. This is a neglected field of inquiry although the majority of the population in the Austrian Netherlands lived in the countryside, large parts of which consisted of seigneuries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Klaas van Gelder, Regime Change at a Distance. Austria and the Southern Netherlands Following the War of the Spanish Succession (1716-1725) (Dissertation Ghent University 2012; Verhandelingen van de Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie van België voor Wetenschappen en Kunsten, Nieuwe reeks 29; Leuven/Parijs/Bristol: Peeters, 2016, 449 pp., ISBN 978 90 4293 242 5).

It is generally assumed from something said by the French surveyor Cassini de Thury in his bookRelation d’un voyage en Allemagne(1775) that count de Ferraris had incorporated Cassini’s geodetic data into his own maps of the Austrian Netherlands: the manuscriptCarte de cabinet(1777) and theCarte marchande(1777). Cassini had carried out a triangulation of the northern part of the Austrian Netherlands during the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748), but the extent to which his geodetic data was used by de Ferraris has been the subject of debate. In this article, Cassini’s contribution to de Ferraris’s mapping is reassessed by combining a reinterpretation of the archival record with a metric analysis of de Ferraris’s maps, which shows that de Ferraris used Cassini’s measurements only selectively. This leads to the conclusion that the reason was the limited availability of Cassini’s data and the primarily economic motives for de Ferraris’s use of them. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Whereas early modern migration history has been traditionally based on citizenship rolls, marriage registers, censuses and myriad other sources, this research explores the value of eyewitness reports before the Antwerp criminal court in the eighteenth century. On the face of things, these proceedings of the hoogere Vierschaer corroborate earlier findings. Due to the economic slump, Antwerp merely drew an endless stream of humble, unskilled labourers from its rural fringe; immigrants who were often relegated to the most menial, dirty and low-paid jobs. Acts of xenophobic violence against these new arrivals, who spoke a (slightly) different language or had different habits, were no exception. Most migrants seemed to have left town after they had saved a penny. Yet, the files of the Vierschaer also shed light on some slow-burn processes of integration, which have been less thoroughly scrutinized in the past. Some migrants blended smoothly into their new environment, by finding a permanent job (mostly as publican, peddler, or unskilled labourer); by mastering new skills (literacy and language); by seizing opportunities for (modest) social rise; or by establishing strong bonds with their new neighbours, friends, colleagues or parishioners. Findings also suggest that this integration process eventually stroke home. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article looks how eighteenth century rulers shift back and forth between ecclesiastical and worldly leadership to obtain their goals. The setting is the small ecclesiastical and abbatial Principality of Stavelot-Malmédy during the election of its prince-abbot in 1787. This principality became increasingly entangled in the geopolitical-ecclesiastical rivalries between the Austrian Netherlands and the Prince-bishopric of Liège. Although this election has been studied before, little attention was given to the way leadership was influenced and how it reacted to these ecclesiastic and economic constraints. The archival sources can be found in the Archives générales du Royaume in Brussels (Conseil des Finances), Archives de l'état à Liège (États du Pays de Liège et du Comté de Looz, Abbaye de Stavelot-Malmédy, Principauté de Stavelot-Malmédy) and the Österreichisches Staatsarchiv in Vienna (Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the response of the government to a revolt in Brussels, modern Belgium. Specifically it describes the role of the marquis of Prié, the governor of the Netherlands at the time. The author argues that the marquis could not have been a tyrant as the author contends popular notions of Belgian history portray the man due to the nature of government at the time.

Files of the local criminal court in Antwerp – the Hoogere Vierschaar – are used in this article to assess the evolution of literacy and numeracy in Antwerp. Both forms of human capital are habitually seen as strongly intertwined, yet our evidence shows that they were not always geared to one another. Literacy did not grow significantly in Antwerp during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, while it reached its high-water mark in other European towns. Faced by a severe economic crisis, the local government had to trim down free public education in Sunday schools, while private boarding schools (Duytsche scholen) saw their number of pupils fall abruptly as the recession impoverished a wide swath of society. Numeracy, however, followed a different course. Despite the economic crisis, people's age awareness took a huge leap forward in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries as basic arithmetic skills were bound to a more informal, everyday training. Moreover, this idea, that literacy and numeracy were not always geared to each other is buttressed by marked social and gender variations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines an exchange of dispatches between two prominent eighteenth-century British foreign policy makers, Charles Townshend (1674-1738) and Horace Walpole (1678-1757), wherein the former proposed a partition of the Southern Netherlands. In the immediate aftermath of the 1725 Ripperda treaty, whereby Austrian Habsburgs and Spanish Bourbons surprisingly came together in a potential new universal monarchy, Townshend saw opportunities to diminish Emperor Charles VI through conquest of his positions in the Low Countries. Habsburg, and not France, is seen as the main menace to European stability. Although the plan was never put into practice and consequently but scantly discussed in historiography, the arguments put forward by both men reveal crucial long-term thinking patterns. Townshend adapted his aggressive plans to the prevailing ideational dominance or balance-of-power-thinking after the 1733 Peace of Utrecht. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]