The struggle for bread. The Emperor, the city and the bakers between moral and market economies of food in Vienna, 1775–1791

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn the second half of the eighteenth century, a larger socioeconomic struggle about society, the market, and food occurred in Vienna, the capital of the Habsburg Empire. As in Paris two decades earlier and New York City some decades later, in Vienna food was reconceptualised from a public to a private good. This paper argues that in all three cities, surprisingly similar attempts were made to commodify food and to make it a ‘fictitious commodity’. As this triggered resistance, the process can be described as a double movement between embedded and disembedded markets coined by Karl Polanyi that significantly affected how food was sold and bought. By using heretofore-disregarded archive material of the capital’s Bakers’ Guild, the contribution traces the double movement around bread between 1775 and 1791 and introduces Vienna into the internal debate on the political economy of food and the city.