Food Policing in Early Modern Danish Towns

Jørgen Mührmann-Lund

doi:10.16993/rl.26

Abstract

This article explores the efforts of early modern authorities to provide food security in three different Danish towns in order to understand the goals and methods of early modern food policing. As in other European countries, urban authorities were expected as part of the regulation called ‘the police’ to control the guilds and fix the prices on bread, meat, beer and other life necessities in order to avoid scarcity among the urban poor. In 1682–83 the Danish king established a police force in Copenhagen and the other market towns. The goal of the metropolitan police was to increase the population of the capital and thus increase the military-fiscal power of the absolutist state, by providing food security and even a comfortable life. In practice, the vigilant policing of bakers, butchers and brewers proved difficult. The positive economic effect of food policing was doubted early on and was reduced as a means to avoid food riots at the end the 18 th century. In a major provincial market town like Aalborg, the food trade was policed in a similar manner by the town council and the police, but especially the intermediate trade proved difficult to stop. In a tiny, agrarian market town like Saeby, food policing was more a question of feeding the poor with the town’s own products.

Highlights

Urban food security was one of the core concerns of the early modern police, as Steven Kaplan has shown in his studies of the policing of the grain trade and the bakers in 18th century Paris
Concluding remarks From the three cases of Copenhagen, Aalborg and Sæby it can be concluded that food policing was one of the most important tasks of the early modern police
It was the responsibility of police authorities to ensure that the market towns were supplied with a sufficient amount of bread, meat and beer of a good quality and most importantly at a just price in accordance with the moral economy

Summary

Introduction

Urban food security was one of the core concerns of the early modern police, as Steven Kaplan has shown in his studies of the policing of the grain trade and the bakers in 18th century Paris. The bakers and the brewers are ordered to provide bread and beer of a good quality and sell it in accordance with an annual tariff set by the town council in accordance with ‘the times’—the annual harvest yield and prices on hops and grain. The town council and the police master replied that they could complain to the king, but moderated the tariff in order to stimulate the grain trade and not to ruin the bakers.

Results

Conclusion