Notes from Fernand Braudel: The Structures of Everyday Life

I highly recommend Fernand Braudel's The Structures of Everyday Life: Civilization & Capitalism 15th-18th Century, Volume 1, to anyone interested in modeling an ancient economy.

When I read the book, I found the following bits of special interest. Page numbers are from the Harper & Row paperback edition.

• In France, 1.5 hectare of cultivatable land supported one person, allowing for crop rotation. An estimate made in 1709 was 3 acres of good land or 4 of average land (1.2 to 1.6 hectare). [61]
• Births and deaths both were about 40 per 1000.The poor and the young were always the first to die. [71]
• France "is reckoned to have experienced 10 general famines during the tenth century; 26 in the eleventh; 2 in the twelfth; 4 in the fourteenth; 7 in the fifteenth; 13 in the sixteenth; 11 in the seventeenth and 16 in the eighteenth." Florence "experienced 111 years when people went hungry, and only sixteen 'very good' harvests between 1371 and 1791." [74]
• Tuscan proverb: 'The best remedy against malaria is a well filled pot.' During a famine in Russia, a malaria epidemic reached even as far north as the Arctic circle. [81]
• "In the Beauvaisis in the seventeenth century 25 to 33% of new-born children died within twelve months; only 50% reached their twentieth year." [90]
• In a given area, agriculture can feed 10-20 times as many people as stock-raising. [104]
• "Wheat cannot be cultivated on the same land for two years running without serious harmful effects. It has to be rotated." [114]
• "... wheat requires careful manuring. This treatment was never given to oats or to any 'sprint sowing,' with the result that the yield from oats, which were sown more closely, was normally half that of wheat -- the reverse of persent results. Manure intended for wheat was so important that it was closely supervised by the landholder." [116]
• Wheat had a low yield -- "for every grain sown, the harvest was usually no more than five and sometimes less." Between 1-2 hectolitres of wheat were sown per hectare. [120]
• "In Europe, grain represented approximately half man's daily existence." [133]
• "Wheat yields much less to the hectare than rice (16.6 quintals against 26, on average)." But rice loses 20%-25% of its weight when husked. [145]
• After milling, rice produces "7,350,000 calories per hectare, as compared with 1,500,000 for wheat and only 340,000 animal calories if that hectare were devoted to stock-raising and produced 150 kilograms of meat." [151]
• The harvest from one grain of maize is between 70 and 80 grains in the dry zone of colonial Mexico; in Michoacan, a yield of 150 to 1 was considered low. Yields in the colonial period might have been 5-6 quintals/hectare, about that of small properties today. [161]
• "Of the territory of Melun, covering 18,800 hectares in the Brie, 14,400 hectares were given over to arable in 1717 and an almost negligible 814 to pasture." [197]
• The price of eggs is a valid measure of the standard of living in any given town. [212]
• "In every town in the world the water carrier was indispensable" -- there were 20000 carriers in Paris in 1782. [230]
• The Chinese attributed "different qualities to water according to its origin: ordinary rain water, storm water (dangerous), rainfall in the early spring (beneficial), water from melted hailstones or frost in winter, water collected from stalactites in caves (a sovereign remedy), water from river, well or spring -- but they were also concerned about the dangers of polution and recommended boiling any suspect water." [230]
• "At every proclamation demanding wood for imperial buildings, the peasants in the Hupeh and Szechwan provinces 'wept with despair until they choked.'" [273]
• "For a long time, floors at ground level were made of beaten earth: later they were paved or tiled." "The most curious ancient custom, which continued until the sixteenth century (and even later), was to cover the floors of the ground-floor rooms and the bedrooms with straw in winter and herbs and flowers in summer." [294]
• "Two tons of wood are equal to a ton of coal." [367]
• Iron played only a modest role. "At the dawn of history, in the age of Homer, a warrior's armour was worth 'three pairs of oxen, a sword seven, and the bit of a horse's bridle more than the animal itself.' The period covered by this book was still very much the age of wood." [382]
• "A 150-page manuscript on parchment required the skins of a dozen sheep 'which meant that the actual copying was the smallest expense of the operation.'" [397]
• "It was the general rule to cover at most 100 kilometres in 24 hours." [424]
• Carrying cloth from the Netherlands to Florence in 1320 and 1321 was about 16% the cost of the cloth -- and this for an expensive but not too bulky item. In the 17th century, it cost 100-200 francs to have a cask of wine, often not worth more than about 40 francs, from Beaune to Paris. The cost and problems of transportation were usually greater on land than on sea. "In the thirteenth century, the price of English grain increased by 15% for every eighty kilometres it travelled overland, whereas wine from Gascony shipped to Hull or Ireland via Bordeaux only cost an addtional 10% despite the long sea journey." In 1828, it was cheaper to ship 1000 leagues by sea than 10 leagues overland. [425-428]
• Clearing land for cultivation requires heavy plows, strong teams and many hands, which means asking for help from the neighbors. [431]
• "'The armour of Diomede,' said Homer, 'cost only nine oxen, but that of Glaucus cost an hundred oxen.'" [441]
• "Iceland, according to regulations of 1413 and 1426 had a centuries-old market price list for commodities, payable in dried fish (1 fish for one horseshoe, 3 for a pair of women's shoes, 100 for a barrel of wine, 120 for a cask of butter, etc.)" [443]
• "In France in Cantillon's time, the urban population was only 16% of the total. And, of course, it all depends on the base level adopted. If towns are cnsidered to be settlements of over 400 inhabitants, then 10% of the English population was living in towns in 1500, and 25% in 1700. But if 5000 is taken as the minimum definition, the figure would only be 13% in 1700, 16% in 1750, 25% in 1801." "The lowest urbanization figures relate to Russia (2.5% in 1630; 3% in 1724; 4% in 1796; 13% in 1897)." [483]
• "In the eleventh century, a town of 3000 inhabitants required, to survive, the land of some ten villages, or approximately 8.5 square kilometres, 'in view of the low yield of agriculture.'" [486]
• Cities had to constantly recruit new inhabitants because they were areas of high mortality. [490]

Copyright ©1998 David Dunham. Last updated 14 Nov 98.

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