Framing Mediterranean Famine: Food Crisis in Fourteenth-Century Barcelona

Abstract

The study of famine has long been a part of the broader historical literature on late medieval crisis, but until recently the anglophone literature on this subject has tended to focus on the experience of northern Europe. The present article examines two famine cycles in the city of Barcelona: one in the 1330s, the other in the 1370s. Using sources ranging from chronicles to municipal ordinances to royal correspondence, this article analyzes these famine cycles within three distinct frameworks: a Europe-wide approach focusing on the effects of late medieval climate change, a regional approach that situates these famines within the fourteenth-century conflicts that disrupted Mediterranean trade networks, and a local approach that considers how the city’s distinct responses to each of these famines reflected important shifts in the urban context of Barcelona over the course of the fourteenth century. By juxtaposing all three approaches in an exploration of one city’s experience of fourteenth-century crisis, this article realizes two interrelated goals: to bring the experience of Mediterranean Europe into the broader conversation about late medieval famine, and to offer a case study of how employing various combinations of structure and contingency can nuance our conclusions about historical famine more generally.