Food security policy in the Middle Ages: historical-philosophical aspect

Abstract

This article examines the Western and Eastern parts of the Roman Empire during the Middle Ages for finding the evidence of implementation of food security policy therein. The object of this work is the cultural peculiarities and socioeconomic relations in the society, which determine and promote the process of implementation of food security policy. The subject of this work is the theoretical, practical and normative sources on ensuring food stability of the state, normative acts of the government institutions reinforced by the results of archaeological explorations. The author is one of the first within the Russian and foreign literature to demonstrate the facts that testify to the implementation of food security policy in the Middle Ages. Based on the historical example of France under the Capetian dynasty, it is demonstrated that the maintenance of food sustainability in the “mansion state” was implemented by the following means: restrictions on the goods for export, collection of special transit fees, establishment of the customs institutions. The success of the Byzantine food security policy was guaranteed by creating the large grain depots during the reign of Julian the Apostate; establishing the institutions that were accountable to the authorities and controlled the consistent procurement of essential food products; the order of Anastasios II on expulsion from the city of anyone who did not provide themselves with a yearly supply of food; consolidating trade regulations and distribution restriction in the in the “Book of the Prefect”.