The biological standard of living in a cold century: Long-term effects of climate and the economy on average height in Ancien Régime France

Francia. Forschungen zur Westeuropaischen Geschichte

Volumn 31, Issue 2, 2004, Pages 25-51

  Ewert, Ulf Christian ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33646069714     PISSN: 09377743     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (79)

1. R. GLASER, Klimageschichte Mitteleuropas. 1000 Jahre Wetter, Klima, Katastrophen, Darmstadt 2001, pp. 176-177, p. 181 (data for Central Europe)
2. See also C. PFISTER, Wetternachhersage. 500 Jahre Klimavariationen und Naturkatastrophen (1496-1995), Bern et al. 1999
3. E. LE ROY LADURIE, Histoire du climat depuis l'an mil, 2 vols., Paris 1987
4. th centuries is estimated to have been about 1 °C below today's level. Cf. M. LACHIVER, Les années de misère. La famine au temps du Grand Roi 1680-1720, Paris 1991
5. T. R. MALTHUS, An Essay on the Principle of Population, 1798 (edition New York 1976)
6. R. GOMMEL, R. KLUMP, Merkantilisten und Physiokraten in Frankreich, Darmstadt 1994
7. On Louis Messance see E. BRIAN, C. THÉRÉ, Fortune et infortune de Louis Messance (2 janvier 1734-19 avril 1796), in: Population 53 (1998) pp. 45-92
8. Les années où le bled a été le plus cher ont été en même temps celles où la mortalité a été la plus grande et les maladies plus communes, et celles au contraire où le bled a été à meilleur marché, ont été les plus saines et les moines mortelles. L. MESSANCE, Réflexions sur la valeur du bled tant en France qu'en Angleterre depuis 1674 jusqu'en 1764, appendice aux Recherches sur la population des Généralités d'Auvergne, de Lyon et de Rouen, et de quelques provinces et villes du Royaume, Paris 1766, pp. 280-292
9. [printed in P. GUILLAUME, J.-P. POUSSOU (eds.), Démographie historique, Paris 1970, pp. 163-165], p. 165
10. J. M. TANNER, Introduction: Growth in Height as a Mirror of the Standard of Living, in: J. KOMLOS (ed.), Stature, Living Standards and Economic Development. Essays in Anthropométric History, Chicago and London 1994, pp. 1-6
11. T. CUFF, Historical Anthropometries - Theory, Method, and the State of the Field, in: J. KOMLOS (ed.), The Biological Standard of Living on Three Continents. Further Explorations in Anthropométric History, Boulder et al. 1995, pp. 1-15
12. R. H. STECKEL, Stature and the Standard of Living, in: Journal of Economic Literature 33 (1995) pp. 1903-1940
13. th Centuries, in: Economies and Human Biology 1 (2003) pp. 243-257
14. J. KOMLOS, M. HAU, N. BOURGUINAT, The Anthropométric History of France, in: European Review of Economic History 7 (2003) pp. 159-189
15. R. H. STECKEL, New Light on the 〉Dark Ages〈: The Remarkably Tall Stature of Northern European Men during the Medieval Era, in: Social Science History 28 (2004) pp. 211-229
16. th century was due to a significant change in solar activity. For the Maunder Minimum see e. g. B. FRENZEL, C. PFISTER, B. GLÄSER (eds.), Climatic Trends and Anomalies in Europe 1675-1715, Stuttgart 1994, pp. 151-171 (Paleoklimaforschung, 13)
17. R. GLASER, Data and Methods of Climatological Evaluation in Historical Climatology, in: Historical Social Research 21/4 (1996) pp. 56-88
18. R. GLASER, C. BECK, Weather and Climate During the Maunder Minimum 1675-1715 in Central Europe. ADVICE Working Paper 3, University of Würzburg, April 1997
19. See below and also J. KOMLOS, U. C. EWERT, Global Warming and the Secular Increase in Human Height. Evidence from the End of the Little Ice Age in France, Working Paper, University of Munich, 2002 (19 pp.)
20. th Century, in: The Journal of European Economic History 30 (2001) pp. 9-47, p. 34, Figure 8
21. e siècle, in: Annales. Économies. Sociétés. Civilisations 43 (1988) pp. 25-53, pp. 34-35
22. 31988, pp. 38-39
23. E. LE ROY LADURIE, J. GOY, Tithe and Agrarian History from the Fourteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries. An Essay in Comparative History, Cambridge et al. 1982
24. In the region of Beauvais, for instance, the amount of contributions to pay for farmers was about 52 percent of their yield. Since another 20 percent were necessary for sowing, farming households had to live with slightly more than a quarter of their annual crop. Cf. P. GOUBERT, Beauvais et le Beauvaisis de 1600 à 1730, 2 vols., Paris 1960, pp. 180-181
25. th century was between 25-40 percent of the average level reached between 1700 and 1789. Cf. E. LE ROY LADURIE, De la crise ultime à la vraie croissance 1660-1789, in: Histoire de la France rurale, vol. 2, éd. by E. LE ROY LADURIE, Paris 1975, pp. 359-599, pp. 394-396
26. On French Ancien Régime agriculture see in general A. BARRIÈRE, Feudal Incomes and Demand Elasticity for Bread in Late Eighteenth-Century France, in: Journal of Economic History 18 (1958) pp. 317-344
27. J. SAINT-GERMAIN, La vie quotidienne en France à la fin du grand siècle, Paris 1965
28. R. FÖRSTER, Obstacles to Agricultural Growth in Eighteenth-Century France, in: American Historical Review 75 (1970) pp. 1600-1615
29. e siècle (p. 367-416)
30. L'expansion agricole: La montée de la production (pp. 417-471)
31. e siècle (pp. 529-563), in: F. BRAUDEL, E. LABROUSSE (eds.), Histoire économique et sociale de la France, vol. 2: Des derniers temps de l'âge seigneurial aux préludes de l'âge industriel (1660-1789), Paris 1970
32. e siècle, in: Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine 19 (1972) pp. 414-433
33. O. W. HUFTON, The Poor in Eighteenth-Century France, 1750-1789, Oxford 1974
34. e siècle, in: Cahiers d'histoire 19 (1974) pp. 1-27
35. M. BAULANT, Niveau de vie des paysans autour Meaux en 1700 et 1750, in: Annales. Économies. Sociétés. Civilisations 32 (1975) pp. 505-518
36. S. L. KAFLAN, Lean Years, Fat Years: The >Community< Granary System and the Search for Abundance in Eighteenth-Century France, in: French Historical Studies 10 (1977) pp. 197-230
37. J.-L. GOLDSMITH, The Agrarian History of Preindustrial France: Where Do We Go from Here?, in: Journal of European Economic History 13 (1984) pp. 175-200
38. P. T. HOFFMAN, Growth in a Traditional Society. The French Countryside, 1450-1815, Princeton 1996
39. e siècle, in: Annales. Économies. Sociétés. Civilisations 29 (1973) pp. 765-791
40. e siècle, in: Revue d'histoire moderne 8 (1906/07) pp. 409-445
41. e siècle, in: Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine 11 (1908/09) pp. 97-114 and 268-292
42. French agriculture did not improve significantly in those times because of the inadequate internal communications and numerous inland tolls. A lot of different measures and weights made the exchange even more difficult Thus, even with improving productivity, agricultural products could not be distributed adequately. Cf. H. KELLENBENZ, The Rise of the European Economy. An Economic History of Continental Europe from the fithteenth to the eighteenth Century, London 1976, pp. 236-237
43. th Century, in: P. JONES, A. OGILVIE, T. DAVIS (eds.), History and Climate. Memories of the Future?, New York 2001, pp. 201-218
44. R. GLASER, U. BEYER, C. BECK, Die Temperaturentwicklung in Mitteleuropa seit dem Jahr 1000, in: Tübinger Geographische Studien 125 (1999) pp. 23-46
45. e siècle, in: F. BRAUDEL, E. LABROUSSE (eds.), Histoire économique et sociale de la France, vol. 2: Des derniers temps de l'âge seigneurial aux préludes de l'âge industriel (1660-1789), Paris 1970, pp. 329-365
46. P. BERGER, French Administration in thé Famine of 1693, in: European Studies Review 8 (1978) pp. 101-127. Especially the extremely high amount of rainfall in late summer and early autumn 1692 had desastrous consequences for the harvest in that particular year
47. e siècle (Paris 1977)
48. vol. 2: La production des céréales et la société rurale (Paris 1987)
49. vol. 3: Le commerce des grains et la conjoncture (Paris 1988)
50. e siècles, in: Annales. Économies. Sociétés. Civilisations 35 (1980) pp. 205-234
51. e siècle), in: Annales. Économies. Sociétés. Civilisations 35 (1980) pp. 235-252, pp. 238-240
52. The German sister-in-law of King Louis XIV, Elisabeth Charlotte, Princess Palatine, who was married to his brother, the Duke of Orleans, described the situation in Versailles as follows: Mein tag des lebens habe ich keinen solchen ratten winter erlebt taie dießer; der wein erfriert in den bouteille (cited from J. Voss, Liselotte von der Pfalz [1652-1722]. Eine europäische Fürstin und ihr Zeitalter, in: Pfälzer Heimat 52 [2001] pp. 45-60, p. 54)
53. M. W. FLINN, Plague in Europe and the Mediterranean Countries, in: The Journal of European Economic History 8 (1979) pp. 131-148. In total about 120 000 people died from plague, the city of Marseille almost lost 50 percent of its inhabitants
54. J. D. POST, The Last Great Subsistence Crisis in the Western World, Baltimore 1977
55. J. D. POST, Food Shortage, Climatic Variability, and Epidemic Desease in Preindustrial Europe: The Mortality Peak in the Early 1740s, Ithaca 1985
56. C. A. BOUTON, The Flour War. Gender, Class, and Community in Late Ancien Régime French Society, Pennsylvania 1993, p. xix
57. See also C. A. BOUTON, Gendered Behavior in Subsistence Riots: The Flour War of 1775, in: Journal of Social History 23 (1990) pp. 735-754. There were about 300 riots in the region. Almost all local and regional grain markets were affected threatening the Paris grain supply system seriously
58. For a description of this system see S. L. KAPLAN, Provisioning Paris: Merchants and Millers in the Grain and Flour Trade During the Eighteenth Century, Ithaca 1984
59. For the situation during the »Flour War« around the town of Beauvais see R. SAMSON, La guerre des farines dans le Beauvaisis 1775, Beauvais 1983
60. e siècle (1774-1789), in: Revue bourguignonne de l'enseignement supérieur 16 (1906) pp. i-xxiii and pp. 1-145
61. e siècles, Paris 1979). Average height was shifted forward on the time axis by 20 years in order to model the lagged influence of control variables. The value for decennial average height in use for 1700-1709, e. g., is calculated out of the averages of birth cohorts from 1680-1689. All regressors in the height regression are lagged by one decade
62. On the demographic development see P. GOUBERT, La force du nombre (pp. 9-21)
63. Le régime démographique français au temps de Louis XIV (pp. 23-54)
64. J. DUPAQUIER, La France avant la transition démographique, in: J.-P. BARDET, J. DUPÂQUIER (eds.), Histoire des populations de l'Europe, Paris 1997, vol. 1, pp. 435-452
65. For the concept of path analysis see e. g. H. M. BLALOCK, Causal Inferences in Nonexperimental Research, Chapel Hill 1964
66. O. D. DUNCAN, Path Analysis, in: American Journal of Sociology 72 (1966) pp. 1-15
67. R. BOUDON, A New Look at Correlation Analysis, in: H. M. BLALOCK, A. B. BLALOCK (eds.), Methodology in Social Research, New York et al. 1968
68. Annual market prices for wheat and oats from the city of Douai in Northern France are used as indicator for the development of prices in France. See M. MESTAYER, Les prix du blé et de l'avoine de 1329 à1793, in: Revue du Nord 45 (1963) pp. 157-176, pp. 168-173, for the publication of series. Wheat and oats prices for Douai have been aggregated to a single price index which represents the price (in livres tournois) of a fixed quantity of grain, 100 liters of wheat and 100 liters of oats each. Up to 1667 the city of Douai belonged to the Spanish Low Countries Following the death of the Spanish King Philipp IV, Louis XIV claimed the heritage and subsequently conquered the southern pans of Flanders. With the Treaty of Aachen (1668) Douai then became officially part of the French crown. The grain market of Douai together with the market of Valenciennes has had regional importance since the Middle Ages, because grain was traded to the Low Countries from there
69. th centuries local grain markets were integrated to a large degree, series of grain prices from various locations show the same cyclical pattern of increases and decreases. The Douai grain price series is highly correlated with the Paris grain price series published by M. BAULANT, Le prix des grains àParis de 1431 à 1783, in: Annales. Économies. Sociétés. Civilisations 23 (1968) pp. 520-554, pp. 537-540 (for the period of 1666-1788 the correlation coefficient r is 0.617)
70. and with the series of grain prices in the city of Beauvais (r = 0.671, published by P. GOUBERT, Bauvais et le Beauvaisis de 1600 à 1730, 2 vols., Paris 1960)
71. th centuries
72. See J.-P. LEGRAND, M. LEGOFF, Les observations mété orologiques de Louis Morin, 2 vols., Paris 1992 (Direction de la Météorologie Nationale, Monographie No. 6)
73. and C. PFISTER, W. BAREISS, The Climate in Paris Between 1675 and 1715 According to the Meteorological Journal of Louis Morin, in: B. FRENZEL, C. PFISTER, B. GLÄSER (eds.), Climatic Trends and Anomalies in Europe 1675-1715, Stuttgart 1994, pp. 151-171 (Paleoklimaforschung, 13). For the period of 1676-1712 the average temperature in Paris is correlated to the average temperature in England with r = 0.636. The winter temperature in Paris (average temperatures in december, January and february) is correlated to the Swiss winter temperatures with r = 0.799. The above cited Elisabeth Charlotte, Princess Palatine, possessed a thermometer and since she inserted weatherrelated observations into numerous of her letters, she seems to have measured temperature on a regular basis at the same time when Morin recorded his measurements
74. D. DE VRIES, Burgundian Historical Climate Data, paper 2000 (23 pp.) [available under www.unc. edn/depts/anthro/frencb/projects/climate/data_hist...]
75. See also D. S. MURRAY, An Introduction to the Historical Climatology of Burgundy, paper 2001 (7 pp.) [available under www.unc.edu/depts/anthro/french/ projects/climate/introduction...]
76. For an explanation of this assumption see J. KOMLOS, Nutrition and Economic Development in the Eighteenth-Century Habsburg Monarchy. An Anthropometric History, Princeton 1989, p. 29
77. In anthropometries this approach has been used for the analysis of lagged influences of GDP per capita on the prevalence of stunting in developing countries by H.-J. BRINKMAN, J. W. DRUKKER, B. SLOT, Height and Income: A New Method for the Estimation of Historical National Income Series, in: Explorations in Economic History 25 (1988) pp. 227-264
78. th International History Congress »The Biological Standard of Living and Economic Development: Anthropométric Measures, Nutrition, Health and Well-Being in Historical Perspective«, Munich 1997 (43 pp.)
79. 31984, pp. 352-358, on the econometrics of polynomial distributed lags model (Almon lag model). Whether these restrictions on the estimated regression coefficients are reasonable can be tested by comparing the performance of such a model to that of the free parameter estimation with a F-test