Mulling over the Millers: Insights on Guild and Governance in Eighteenth-Century Brussels.

This blog is the first in a series of guest blogs planned for 2024 which explore issues relating to the grain trade across Europe in the period 1315-1815.

The city of Brussels was, among others, home to the millers’ guild, a group which up until the second half of the eighteenth century held the privilege to mill grain into meal and sell it. Judicial documents reveal that this privilege was not without exceptions, that being members of the same guild did not automatically indicate a harmony of purpose, and that regulating the early modern food trade was in the hands of those who plied it.

In 1705 the former deans of the millers’ guild were embroiled in a conflict with their successors, the sitting deans. The sitting deans of the guild had successfully petitioned the Brussels magistrate for an ordinance which would limit who in the guild could sell meal. Meal was the pre-cursor to flour, the main ingredient of bread, and the most important staple of the early modern diet. Therefore, who could sell meal and at what price had far reaching implications.

The ordinance dictated that to be allowed to sell meal, members of the guild had to have rented or owned a mill for a minimum duration of six years. In doing so, the sitting deans had in effect raised the entry barriers to the trade.

The former deans of the guild protested this before the Council of Brabant, the highest court in the Duchy of Brabant, in which Brussels was situated. According to them, the consequences of the ordinance were unheard of, unreasonable, damaging, even ruinous to the guild.  The former deans argued that leasing a mill for six years was unattainable to many members of the guild, that there were simply not enough mills in Brussels and that it was incredibly expensive. It would also be particularly ruinous for the guild widows and orphans. The former deans asserted that the effects of this ordinance would be disastrous for the guild as it would force meal sellers to pour their funds into leasing mills and make it necessary for them to raise the price of the meal to cover their investment. Domestic price rises would thus drive the demand for cheaper imported meal.

This case highlights the socio-economic divide in the guild: those who owned mills versus those who worked in them. Or as put by the former deans: the case pitted the rich of the guild against the poor.

The litigants in this case were not only the former deans of the guild and their successors, but also the Brussels magistrate who had published the offending ordinance. The magistrate’s involvement in this conflict allows for unique insight into the relationship between guild and government. In this case the sitting deans allied themselves with the magistrate against their predecessors. The magistrate spoke out against the former deans, noting that it was only in the previous century that the meal sellers had been enfolded into the millers’ guild with permission of the magistrate and this could easily be revoked.

In the end it did not come to this, but the specific results of this court case are unclear in the absence of a verdict. The absence of a verdict is a familiar bump in the road in judicial history. Often the conflict petered out with those involved coming to an informal arrangement, and even when a verdict was reached, these documents were often separated from the case file. There is however reason to believe that the law was not formally overturned.

In 1733 the original ordinance raising the entry barriers was republished. The republication of an ordinance indicates a few factors, the main one being that dean leadership felt the need to reiterate the rules once more. But more interesting than the stricter barriers to the trade being republished were the actions of two masters of the guild in 1735.

It was then that Petrus van den Daele and Adam Jacobs, both meal sellers, petitioned the Brussels magistrate. In their petition they said that the deans of their guild had forbidden them from having a shop because they did not meet the prerequisites of having owned a mill for six years. This illustrates that, when they petitioned their own guild leadership to be allowed to sell meal, they were denied based on the stipulated -six-year mill ownership- rule, meaning that it was in effect. Following the petition by van den Daele and Jacobs the magistrate turned to the dean leadership for comment. This was a recurring practice whenever petitions were presented to the magistrate relating to guild interests.

In a surprising turn of events the dean leadership was quick to disavow the rule that, according to van den Dale and Jacobs, had been applied to deny them the right to sell meal. The leadership wrote to the magistrate that the rule had fallen out of practice, and they saw no need to retain it. The reasoning behind this change of heart is unclear. Perhaps the leadership was prepared to deny a petition from their own members, but not so willing to entertain the risk that the magistrate would disregard a negative recommendation. In any case the results were clear. Thirty years after the former deans of the millers’ guild were unsuccessful in protecting the poorer members of the guild, van den Daele and Jacobs were free to set up shop.

Cases such as these allow us to delve deeply into the relationships between the food guilds, their members, the magistrate, and the food market. In the Southern Low Countries, particularly in Brussels, urban governance and the food guilds were enmeshed up until the end of the eighteenth century. By studying episodes such as the one above we can better understand how these relationships were navigated by those involved. In turn these individuals reveal how they managed to hold steady against the undercurrents of change rocking eighteenth-century Europe.

Robin Rose Southard, PhD student, Social History of Capitalism Research Group