Avoiding tragedies: a Flemish common and its commoners under the pressure of social and economic change during the eighteenth century¹

Abstract

Despite the wide application of the metaphor of 'the tragedy of the commons', there is little historical literature that points to the weaknesses of its historical basis. There is, however, sufficient qualitative and quantitative evidence to prove that commons were well regulated and organized in order to achieve a sustainable management, that also took into account the needs and wishes of its commoners. This case study of a common in Flanders looks at the evidence for this in the eighteenth century, examining bookkeeping and other archival sources. A model that incorporates the different functions of the commons (sustainability, efficiency, and utility) is explained and applied. I n 1968, in his article 'The tragedy of the commons', Hardin described how a medieval common pasture was over-exploited due to the selfish behaviour of the villagers. 2 In his account, all inhabitants of the medieval European village could use the common pasture.There seemed to be no clear restrictions on access to the common, nor on the number of livestock each of the users could put on the common, nor was there a collective management (in terms of use and maintenance) of the land. Moreover, the commoners seemed not to communicate with each other about the use or management of their common. 3 This 'freedom on the commons' gave the commoner the incentive to put as many cattle on the common as he possibly could; after all, surely every rational herdsman would conclude that selfish behaviour was the most advantageous strategy for survival. As long as diseases and adversity decimated the cattle and the herdsmen from time to time, no real problems arose on the common. However, due to population growth, this freedom of use would eventually lead to the over-exploitation and degradation of the common; hence, 'the tragedy of the commons'. Internet searches and citation indexes confirm that it would be difficult to find a stronger or more widely used metaphor. Because Hardin made clear links among population issues, property rights, and environmental degradation, his ideas found an eager audience among

Ruling the Commons. Introducing a new methodology for the analysis of historical commons

“…As a consequence of this gradual shift, questions such as what the driving forces were behind the expansion of commons in western Europe from the late medieval period onwards, how communities were able to maintain these collective organizations, or which adjustments and changes they witnessed throughout time are becoming increasingly attractive for economic, agrarian and environmental historians. To this date, however, the number of works addressing these questions has remained relatively small (Van Zanden 1999;De Moor et al 2002;Casari 2007;De Moor 2009;Rodgers et al 2011;Laborda and De Moor 2013;De Moor 2015;Grüne et al 2015). With our project, our aim has been to push these recent efforts among historians forward -initiating a line of research which systematically sheds light on the internal workings of what until recent times has largely remained the 'black box' of historical commons.…”

“…From their perspective, local communities would have been a particularly important device for coordinating and protecting property rights during pre-industrial times -in a time when a powerful -enough state was simply not yet there. Merchant and craft guilds (Epstein 1998;Greif 2006;De Moor 2008), communes and other local self-governed institutions (Van Zanden and Prak 2006;Stasavage 2014) or commons (Casari 2007;De Moor 2009) are the main subjects of these recent studies. The claims have gone so far as to suggest that a high density of such communities in all realms of social and economic life would have been a distinctive feature of western Europe when compared to other regions of the world (China, Japan, the Islamic world) (Putnam 1993;De Moor 2008;Van Zanden 2009).…”

Did the Commons Make Medieval and Early Modern Rural Societies More Equitable? A Survey of Evidence from acrossWesternEurope, 1300–1800

“…As a result, a dominant ‘positivist’ conception of the commons has emerged in recent years as a necessary counter to those extolling the virtues of private property forms, where it has in fact been shown that the commons (sometimes in combination with private property arrangements) gave pre‐industrial societies real identifiable benefits, including the possibility of negating risks, creating advantageous economies of scale and reducing transaction costs (De Moor ). In the historical context, Tine De Moor in particular has shown how the commons, in some conditions and circumstances, could be used as an effective institutional framework for limiting environmental degradation and in turn improving the sustainability of rural societies and economies (2009, 2010a). Historical cases have been used to show that when the commons were forced into dysfunction and unravelled, environmental degradation, in the form of assarting, soil erosion and sand drifts, frequently followed close behind (Van Zanden ).…”

Social and Environmental Filters to Market Incentives: The Persistence of Common Land in Nineteenth‐Century Spain

“…On the one hand, open fields were not that inefficient with respect to enclosed fields in terms of agricultural productivity (Allen ; Clark ). On the other hand, the communal regime offered economies of scale, lower transaction costs and risk‐insurance mechanisms (De Moor ) . The role of the commons in mitigating inequality has been seen as another advantage in order to explain why this institutional arrangement persisted in spite of its supposed inefficiency (Humphries ; Neeson ; Clark , 75).…”