In 2010, Wim Blockmans and Bas van Bavel both published major monographs with a clear focus on the economic history of the Low Countries.¹ Though published simultaneously, Peter Hoppenbrouwers points out that ‘they are miles apart when it comes to explaining long-term economic evolution.’² In fact, they correspond well to two of the main ‘supermodels’ of pre-modern economic development.³ Blockmans’ work is largely in line with the ‘commercialisation’ model with origins in a tradition of Smithian economic thought: in this view, international trade and urban demand are the main drivers of development.⁴ Van Bavel, in contrast, focuses on the institutional organisation of factor markets and its social roots: he steers close to the ‘property relations’ model, which is indebted to Marxist approaches stressing the impact of class struggle over key economic resources such as land.⁵ Despite their differences, both narratives focus on the best studied, and arguably most dynamic, western parts of the Low Countries.⁶ This article turns to the east of the duchy of Guelders and shows that radical economic change did not bypass this region. In the eastern Low Countries, capitalist cattle farming emerged during the sixteenth century and the context in which it arose shows that long-distance trade, property relations, and local geographical conditions each played a crucial role.

The capitalist farming central to this article concerned the fattening of Danish-bred oxen. In his 1581 Descrittione di tutti I Paesi Bassi, the Florentine nobleman and long-time resident of Antwerp Lodovico Guicciardini noted how large numbers of cattle were driven from as far away as Denmark to the duchy of Guelders for fattening (Figure 1).⁷ The history of these trade networks is well documented.⁸ During the fifteenth century, urban centres exerted a strong demand for beef, which was initially satisfied through regional trade. From around 1470 onwards, the increasing demand in the Low Countries (especially Antwerp) and the Rhineland (especially Cologne) was met by importing animals bred in Denmark and northern Germany.⁹ Denmark specialised in breeding due to its suitable climate and because the relative ease of transporting live animals compensated for the kingdom’s notoriously bad roads and distance from the European economic centre of gravity.¹⁰ During the studied period, Danish exports soared from an estimated 20,000 oxen per year between 1480 and 1500 to 45,000-50,000 between 1540 and 1580.¹¹ Most animals were driven overland to the Low Countries in spring. On the road, the young animals lost much of their weight, so, over summer, they were fattened on rich pastures along the transport routes before their eventual sale and consumption in autumn.¹² The long-distance trade thus created new opportunities for agricultural economies.

This article shows how the trade in oxen prompted the rise of capitalist cattle farming in two parishes in the eastern Low Countries known as Zeddam and Netterden. The first section introduces a new theoretical perspective on agrarian capitalism by defining it as farming based on the capitalist logic of accumulating capital through the exchange of commodities. It also briefly discusses the current historiography on the rise of capitalist farming in the Low Countries. The second section draws on sixteenth-century fiscal sources to show that a small group of specialised graziers had come to hold an important position within the parishes’ agricultural economies. The third section harks back to the definition of agrarian capitalism introduced in the first section and identifies the graziers as capitalist farmers. Finally, the fourth section explains the rise of capitalist cattle farming in the eastern Low Countries as the combined effect of long-distance trade networks, geographical conditions, and property relations.

The current historiography on the rise of agrarian capitalism in the Low Countries is largely based on the work of Robert Brenner, whose articles kickstarted an influential debate in the 1970s. Brenner argued that the social property relations, resulting from a class struggle over land and the rural surplus, explained why agrarian capitalism took hold in England. In the wake of this debate, historians working on the Low Countries found evidence of shifts to large-scale and arguably capitalist farming in four regions: coastal Flanders, the Guelders river area, and coastal Frisia during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as well as Holland from the late sixteenth century onwards.¹³ In his original article, Brenner defined capitalist agriculture as ‘large-scale tenant farming on the basis of capital improvements and wage labour.’¹⁴ Though this definition is concise, Brenner also stressed other aspects including economic growth resulting from a shift in focus from land to labour productivity, and proletarianisation.¹⁵ Wage labour, economic growth, and proletarianisation are oft-cited elements of (agrarian) capitalism but are also hard to measure for pre-modern societies. The same holds for the dominance of market exchange, often stressed as a defining feature of capitalism.¹⁶ In the eastern Low Countries, Brenner’s typical tenant farmers are not easily found while the macro-societal effects of capitalism are hard to observe if capitalist production has not yet permeated society.

The present article departs from Karl Marx’ idea of capitalism as a mode of production. Marx’ main contribution is that he showed how society-wide effects followed from the way in which productive forces such as labour, tools, and raw materials were used in production. What distinguished capitalism was the producers’ underlying aim of accumulating value through exchanging commodities expressed in the simple formula M-C-M’: A capitalist converts money (M) into commodities (C) that can be sold for more money (M’). Peasant family farmers, meanwhile, aimed to maintain their households based on the household’s labour, either through subsistence farming or by selling crops such as flax to buy necessary foodstuffs (C-M-C).¹⁷ Crucially, neither the purchase of production factors (such as land and labour) nor a profit-motive set capitalists apart. There is nothing to suggest that peasants would not aim for the highest possible output relative to their inputs, and peasants were active on land, labour, and capital markets. The difference lies in their intentions. Peasants acquired land and hired labourers to adjust the size of their farms in line with their household’s developmental cycle and to bridge temporary labour shortages (for instance during the harvest).¹⁸ What defined capitalist farmers was that they bought land and labour with the aim of selling the produced foodstuffs with a profit and to accumulate capital. Based on this underlying logic of capitalist production, capitalist farmers can be identified in the eastern Low Countries.

Wage labour, economic growth, proletarianisation and market exchange all logically follow from the capitalist’s aim to accumulate value through the exchange of commodities (buying land and labour and selling foodstuffs). First, as Marx points out, wage labour was central to European capitalist farming.¹⁹ He assumes that value can only be added through the labour process, which is valid for pre-modern agriculture.²⁰ Hence, to accumulate through the exchange of commodities, labour needs to be bought as a commodity. Although slavery can be considered a way to buy labour as a commodity, in the Low Countries, wage labour was virtually the only possibility. As Marx shows, wage labour was suited for accumulation because wages tended to be lower than the value the labourer adds during their paid working hours.²¹ Secondly, the capitalist logic implies increasing labour productivity. To maximise the potential for accumulation, capitalists had to increase the price of their output relative to the price of their inputs, including labour. This could be achieved by artificially lowering wages or increasing output prices as well as by forcing labourers to work overtime. These strategies must have been rather unusual in the northern Low Countries, where the labour market generally knew few constraints.²² Here, capitalist farmers would have had to change their production strategies to increase output per labour unit. This strive for higher labour productivity, in turn, helped to increase society’s output per capita.²³ Third, capitalist farming contributed to proletarianisation by drawing labour from the household economy to work for wages. This also worked the other way: the more farmland capitalist farmers accumulated, the less was left for their peasant neighbours. Finally, commodity and factor markets were central. Capitalists, after all, must purchase the means of production and labour, and sell the produced commodities. All aspects commonly associated with agrarian capitalism can thus be traced back to the simple definition of capitalist farming as production aimed at the accumulation of capital through the exchange of commodities.

Why would a capitalist rationale take hold in agriculture, a sector traditionally dominated by household farmers trying to maintain their families based on the family’s own labour? For Brenner, social property relations are the main explanatory variable, which he defines as the relations among producers and exploiters ‘that, taken together, make possible/specify the regular access of individuals and families to the means of production […] and/or the social product per se.’²⁴ Capitalist farming is said to arise when farmers must buy their inputs (especially land) on the market. Only then will they be subject to competition and forced to maximise their profits in a capitalist way.²⁵ According to Brenner, social property relations governing the access to the means of production determined whether capitalist farming could take hold.

Brenner’s line of reasoning looms large in the current historiography on the Low Countries, including the general overview provided by Van Bavel in his Manors and Markets. Wherever historians found evidence of large-scale commercial farming, (large) landed estates let out on commercial leases were predominant too.²⁶ This is especially clear in the case of coastal Flanders where drainage problems combined with reduced opportunities for proto-industrial activities and high levels of taxation brought about the large-scale dispossession of smallholders during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.²⁷ The resulting rise of absentee large landownership and the dominance of lease markets were accompanied by a parallel process of increasing farm size and higher wage-labour inputs.²⁸ A similar argument can be made for Holland, where large-scale farming only really took off from the late sixteenth century onwards, after urbanites started acquiring land on a massive scale and leaseholds became dominant.²⁹ In the Guelders river area, meanwhile, large landed estates had been common since the dissolution of the manorial system. Here, Van Bavel argues, the crucial link was the rise of short-term competitive lease markets. They gained ground from the thirteenth century onwards and became dominant by the end of the sixteenth century. The resulting competition for leasehold land, in turn, coincided with the rise of capitalist tenant farming.³⁰ Agrarian capitalism in the Low Countries thus appears connected to social property relations that rendered producers dependent on the lease market for land.³¹

The perceived correlation between capitalist farming and property relations has pushed other possible explanatory variables to the background. Consequently, a remarkable rift occurred between the historiography on agrarian capitalism and studies on the agricultural history of the Low Countries in general. Whereas the former adopts an approach centred on property relations, the latter focuses, much in line with the work of Blockmans, on commercialisation and dynamics of supply and demand. Changes in cultivation practices are often seen as responses to demand stimulated by urbanisation and international trade, while shifts in farm size and labour organisation are often seen as a response to changes in factor and commodity prices.³²

Piet van Cruyningen, meanwhile, points out that the ‘Brennerian historians have […] paid insufficient attention to natural factors such as soil and the availability or excess of water.’³³ Ironically, it was Brenner himself who did reserve a major role for ecological change in his account of agrarian capitalism in Holland but framed its effects fully within his social property relations perspective. Instead of the class struggle between lords and peasants, Brenner argued that the subsidence of the Holland peat soils rendered farmers dependent on the market for their inputs. Soil subsidence, which occurred through the oxidation of peat soils after their reclamation, aggravated drainage problems and prevented the cultivation of cereals which the farmers now had to procure at the market.³⁴ Based on the case of capitalist cattle farming in the eastern Low Countries, I aim to bridge the gap between the property relations and commercialisation approaches while including geographical conditions as a crucial third variable.

This article focuses on two parishes in the eastern Low Countries: Zeddam and Netterden. They were part of the territories of the lords of Bergh who, by the mid-fifteenth century, had carved out a large seigneurie (heerlijkheid) in the border region between the duchies of Guelders and Cleves. Even today, the area central to this study is part of the Dutch-German border region between the towns of Doetinchem in the Netherlands and Emmerich in Germany. The seigneurie of the lords of Bergh comprised multiple parishes and settlements, of which only some are studied in this article. To denote the areas that are included I use the term parish because they largely, though not entirely, overlap with the parishes of Zeddam and Netterden. Hence, the small hamlet of Wijnbergen and the agricultural land surrounding the small town of ’s-Heerenberg are considered part of the parish of Zeddam even though they respectively fell under the parishes of Doetinchem and ’s-Heerenberg.³⁵ Similarly, the parish of Netterden includes Borghees and Speelberg, even though they fell under a parish church in the city of Emmerich.³⁶ Finally, the settlements of Milt, Wieken, Wals, and Megchelen are not included because the sixteenth-century fiscal sources central to this article record them under the heading of the neighbouring parish of Genderingen.³⁷ Figure 2 maps the studied areas on a palaeogeographical map representing the situation around 1500.

The parishes consisted of multiple localities. Apart from several hamlets, the parish of Zeddam included the village of Zeddam itself and the relatively large settlement of Groot Azewijn. The parish of Netterden counted, apart from the village of that name, a number of hamlets.³⁸ The town of ’s-Heerenberg and the family castle of the lords of Bergh, known as Huis Bergh, were located in between both parishes. Probably due to the presence of the town counting at least 153 hearths in the sixteenth century, the area was relatively densely populated compared to its surroundings with an estimate of more than 20 inhabitants per square kilometre around the year 1500.³⁹ Still, the town was not large enough to be considered an important urban centre.

In terms of geographical conditions, the parishes of Zeddam and Netterden consisted of two main landscapes. The western part of the parish of Zeddam was dominated by a moraine with surrounding Pleistocene sandy areas. This high, dry, and sandy area, however, borders on a riverine landscape consisting of river clay terraces and river dunes. The parish of Netterden also consisted mostly of a riverine landscape, dominated by a large complex of sand dunes in its western parts around Borghees and Speelberg.⁴⁰ The contrast between sandy soils and river clay terraces will highlight the importance of soil structures as a factor in the rise of capitalist livestock farming.

Three different sources from the second half of the sixteenth century testify to the presence of large-scale pastoral farming in the parishes of Zeddam and Netterden. The first source is a crude list of individuals charged for a livestock tax and shows how a few individuals owned surprisingly large herds of oxen. The second is a series of receipt registers of a property tax that makes clear that the large herds were mirrored by a concentration of pastures in the hands of a few leaseholders. Although some individuals could be identified in both sources, a series of court records of the local seigneurial court as the third source provides conclusive evidence that many of the large leaseholders used their pastures to graze their own stock. Overall, the three sources thus highlight a group of large-scale farmers who owned and grazed large numbers of oxen on their leasehold pastures.

The cattle tax register is hard to interpret but shows that large numbers of oxen owned by just a few individuals roamed the area. The source is quite rudimentary; no specific date is mentioned, the selection criteria for the taxed individuals are unclear and the exact number of taxed animals is not always evident. Yet it does pertain at least partially to the studied parishes judged by the names of mentioned pastures. Crucially, the list reveals two important aspects of the pastoral economy: large numbers of oxen roamed the area, and the animals often belonged to just a few individuals. First, the list includes about 2102 oxen, representing 84 per cent of all animals in the list.⁴¹ The oxen were owned by 62 individuals who, on average, owned 34 oxen per person. Furthermore, no less than 74 per cent of all recorded oxen were owned by 20 individuals owning more than 40 animals. The four largest herds, moreover, counted no less than 124, 132, 142, and 263 oxen. By the late sixteenth century, the grazing of oxen had become an increasingly important sector, and one dominated by individuals owning large numbers of animals.

A comparison with other regions shows that the herds recorded in the cattle tax register were surprisingly large. In 1672, only 9% of the capitalist dairy farmers in Delfland (in Holland) owned more than 40 heads of cattle and no one more than 76.⁴² In general, herds of more than 30 animals were unseen or a clear exception in Western European regions as diverse as the Overijssel district of Zwollerkerspel, the Veluwe region, Holland, Frisia, Oldenburg, Ostfriesland, South Staffordshire, and the Lincolnshire marshes.⁴³ Before the onset of agrarian capitalism in early sixteenth-century Holland, herds were even smaller with on average 4 to 6 cows while the richest farmers possessed 10 to 12. In the Zeevang area to the north of Amsterdam, the average herd size even declined from 4 in 1506 to 2.8 in 1554.⁴⁴ With herds of more than 40 oxen, the individuals mentioned in the livestock tax list were on par with farms held in direct exploitation by religious institutions in coastal Flanders and the Guelders river area. During the sixteenth century two of these farms in coastal Flanders kept around 44 oxen per year, while the abbey of Mariënweerd in the Guelders river area kept about 50.⁴⁵ The four individuals in the cattle tax register with the largest herds could even compete with the seventeenth-century farms (Vorwerke) of the count of Oldenburg that kept, on average, 77 oxen and 96 cows with a maximum of 213 oxen and 196 cows.⁴⁶ It appears that a group of large-scale graziers had emerged in the parishes of Zeddam and Netterden.

The question arises whether the individuals paying the cattle tax can be considered farmers. It is, for instance, possible that they were merchants who paid local farmers to graze their cattle. The second source, a series of receipt registers of a property tax surveyed in 1570, however, shows that the graziers also controlled land as the crucial production factor. Although they are more systematic than the cattle tax register, the property tax registers still require careful analysis as outlined in Appendix A. Nonetheless, the property tax registers provide a clear overview of the rental value of agricultural land in both parishes. The tax was levied on all properties (erfgoederen), including land. Leased properties were taxed based on their lease price while all properties that were used by their owners were taxed according to an estimate of their potential lease price.⁴⁷ The tax was levied on the property owners, but since most of the land was leased out, the receipt registers also typically record the leaseholders’ names. Consequently, ten out of the twenty graziers charged for more than 40 oxen in the cattle tax list also appear in the property tax registers as leaseholders of pastures or lands that can be assumed to have been pastures.⁴⁸

Moreover, the sizes of the herds mentioned in the cattle tax list correspond well to the sizes of pastures held by the largest leaseholders recorded in the property tax registers. The surface area of plots are not generally recorded, but the tax register on Groot Azewijn states that two pastures, both worth six daler, could graze respectively two oxen and one ox and another bovine (rund).⁴⁹ Although the lease value of a pasture reflects the bargaining position of both parties, it also relates to the productive capacity of the land. Hence, the ratio of three daler per ox can be applied to all pastures to get a rough indication of the number of cattle they could sustain. The property tax registers for Zeddam and Netterden show there were at least fourteen leaseholders and owner-users with pastures that could graze between 40 and 280 oxen.⁵⁰ Both the overlap in names and the corresponding sizes of pastures recorded in the property tax registers and herds in the cattle tax registers suggests the presence of large-scale pastoral farmers who controlled both land and animals as production factors.

Court records of the seigneurial court with jurisdiction over the parishes of Zeddam and Netterden provide the final evidence as the third source. They cover the years 1574-1576 and include multiple cases of landlords confiscating the oxen of their lessees as collateral for outstanding lease payments. This clearly shows that the oxen were owned by the leaseholders. Among the affected lessees were graziers known from the fiscal sources such as Lodewijk and Johan Everwijn, Theunis de Haan, Henrich van de Hovelick, Johan van Schrieck, Conrad vanden Vurde, and Gerrit Everwijn.⁵¹ The possibility that some of the large leaseholders identified in the property tax registers were not actually farmers but sublet their pastures can be dismissed. It was common in the studied parishes for the leaseholders of pastures to graze their own oxen.

The property tax registers have the additional advantage of allowing for a quantitative estimate of the large-scale pastoralists’ share in the total rural economy based on their share in the parishes’ total taxed lease value. By using the threshold of 120 daler as representing pastures able to graze 40 oxen, a group of 14 graziers can be identified. This threshold remains arbitrary to a certain extent, but the discussion of herd sizes in other regions suggests that pastoral farmers with 40 head of cattle can no longer be considered typical farmers. In the parishes of Zeddam and Netterden, they held respectively 24 and 33 per cent of all leasehold value.⁵² As shown in Table 1, their prominence was even more pronounced on a local scale. The extreme case of Groot Azewijn, where graziers used 49 percent of all taxed land, was contrasted with localities where graziers were barely or not active at all. The local variability is a key point to which the final section of this article returns when discussing explanations for the rise to prominence of the graziers. Overall, large-scale pastoral farmers or graziers had come to hold a prominent place in the agricultural economies of Zeddam and Netterden around 1570.

Large-scale graziers and farmers geared towards pastoral agriculture are often considered hallmarks of agrarian capitalism both in the Low Countries and England. In coastal Flanders as well as in the Guelders river area, the rise of agrarian capitalism was accompanied by a shift from arable to pastoral farming. The fattening of beef for urban markets gained prominence in both regions while horse breeding gained ground in the Guelders river area.⁵³ This section argues that the large-scale pastoral farmers in the parishes of Zeddam and Netterden also operated as capitalist farmers seeking to accumulate capital through the exchange of commodities.

So far, all evidence suggests that the graziers operated as capitalists. By leasing land, they in fact bought it as a commodity to be used in the production process. The oxen also must have been bought as commodities since oxen are castrated adult male bovines and thus incapable of reproduction. The only way the graziers could obtain large herds of oxen was by buying them, relying on the trade network in Danish and north-German oxen that had been well-established by the mid-sixteenth century. One of the main trade routes in this network passed through the area of the parishes of Zeddam and Netterden.⁵⁴ A private account kept for the brothers Daam and Hector van den Bergh, both illegitimate sons of lord William ii of Bergh, testifies to their involvement in both the oxen trade and fattening business. According to the account, they imported no less than 153 Danish oxen in 1535, sold 31 of them immediately after arrival, and 84 after they had been fattened.⁵⁵ Finally, the graziers certainly sold their oxen as commodities because it made no sense for a household to consume 40 oxen.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, households in Holland cities and Hamburg are reported to have bought between one half and three fat oxen per year. The meat was typically salted and consumed throughout the year.⁵⁶ The graziers also relied on long-distance trade routes for selling their fattened animals. One of the seigneurial accounts of the lords of Bergh covering the year 1551/1552 records how Johan van Schrieck, one of the lord’s leaseholders, transported oxen to ’s-Hertogenbosch – a crucial link in the oxen trade.⁵⁷ It is beyond doubt that the graziers bought and sold commodities, the main question is whether they did so to sustain their households or to accumulate capital.

The private account of the brothers Daam and Hector van den Bergh, combined with evidence on lease prices deduced from the lord’s seigneurial accounts, suggests the fattening of oxen could work as a capitalist enterprise. On average, the brothers sold their meagre oxen for 6.6 guilders and the fat animals for 11.4 guilders. Through fattening, the stock’s value thus increased with 73 per cent. This number corresponds closely to the average increase of 72 per cent in the prices of oxen fattened by the St. Elisabeth hospital in Antwerp between 1522 and 1545.⁵⁸ Expressed as a percentage of the sales price, the increase was 42 per cent, which corresponds to Heinz Wiese’s findings for Denmark and Schleswig-Holstein (varying from 35 to 54 percent).⁵⁹ The nearest surviving seigneurial account (1528/1529), meanwhile, provides information on the costs for pastures. It bases the price of two large pastures on the number of oxen they could graze, using the ratio of 3.25 golden guilders per ox. If this ratio applied in 1535 too, the profit margin of a grazier having to lease all his pastures had been reduced to 1.55 golden guilders per ox. Although wages and other costs for oxen dying or falling ill are not included, the return on investment was about 16 per cent. This was considerable compared to average sixteenth-century interest rates of about six per cent as documented for Holland and Utrecht.⁶⁰ Around 1530, the fattening business could function well as a capitalist enterprise.

The definitive answer on whether the graziers operated as capitalist farmers hinges on the question whether they bought their labour inputs as commodities. This is unfortunately the domain for which no direct evidence is available. If they predominantly relied on their household’s labour and only hired labour to keep the household business afloat, they cannot be considered capitalists. Only to the extent that they accumulated capital by buying land (pastures), labour (hired staff) and raw materials (oxen) and by selling fattened oxen, did they follow a capitalist logic. By combining indirect evidence on the size of the graziers’ holdings, estimated labour requirements, and the characteristics of the fattening business, it is made plausible that the graziers indeed followed a capitalist logic.

Although the property tax registers do not generally record the surface area of plots, the size of the graziers’ holdings can be estimated. On a few occasions, the registers do record the surface area of pastures yielding an average of 2 daler per morgen.⁶¹ Assuming that the morgen was about the size of the common Rhineland morgen of 0.85 hectares, the size of landholdings of graziers leasing pastures worth more than 120 daler can be estimated as being larger than 50 hectares.⁶² This estimate is probably too high, since, as argued below, only the best pastures were reserved for the fattening of oxen. Therefore, average lease prices are not a reliable basis. The seigneurial account for 1528/1529 provides an alternative. It both mentions the surface of two large pastures and defines their lease prices based on the number of oxen they could graze. In these cases, the number of oxen per hectare can be estimated at respectively 1.4 and 1.7.⁶³ As a result, in the best case, a grazier with 40 oxen would have needed just 23.5 hectares: less than half the estimate based on the average lease price. This second estimate is also more in line with evidence from Flanders, where even more oxen could be grazed on one hectare. Around Furnes each gemet (about 0.45 ha) of good grassland could feed one ox (2.2 oxen per ha) while in the Scheldt polders each bunder (c. 1.3 ha) could fatten three oxen (2.3 oxen per ha).⁶⁴ The number of 1.7 oxen per hectare suggests the graziers in Zeddam and Netterden farmed holdings roughly measuring between 23 and 165 hectares.

Even on relatively large farms, pastoral farming did not require high labour inputs. Based on data collected by Arthur Young for the English Midlands around 1770, Robert Allen calculated the average labour requirements on pastoral farms. His data can be used to estimate the labour requirements on the farms of the graziers in the parishes of Zeddam and Netterden, although only the lowest possible estimates are appropriate. While the fattening of livestock was notoriously labour-extensive, pastoral farms as studied by Allen could also practice some labour-intensive arable cultivation. Furthermore, it remains unclear to what extent they practised dairying which also required more labour than fattening. Based on the lowest possible requirements given by Allen, pastoral farms of between 20 and 165 hectares would need between 0.45 and 3.7 men, and between 0.16 and 1.35 boys and women.⁶⁵ For Holland and inland Flanders, Van Bavel assumed households could provide 3.7 man-years.⁶⁶ Purely based on the size of their farms, the graziers operating in the parishes of Zeddam and Netterden could probably just have gotten by as family farmers.

It is the nature of the labour required in the fattening business that suggests all graziers used hired labour. Because the oxen did not need to be milked or stalled over winter, labour-intensive tasks such as milking or haymaking were not necessary. Most labour must have pertained to supervising the animals, driving them to and from their pastures and to maintaining the pastures’ enclosures in the form of hedges, fences or ditches. As Allen points out, hiring wage-labour could increase labour productivity in such a context. For the easiest tasks such as herding, cheap labour could be substituted for the farmers’ relatively expensive time. Difficult tasks such as making and repairing hedges, in contrast, could be done more efficiently by hired specialists.⁶⁷ In addition, as shown below, the rise of the fattening business went hand in hand with the formation of large pastures measuring between four and twelve hectares. This type of fields was perfectly suited to increase the labour productivity of hired workers in two ways. First, supervision costs were lower when animals were concentrated in fewer pastures. Secondly, larger pastures generally require shorter fences and ditches relative to the surface area they enclose, thus reducing the labour costs for hedging and digging. Moreover, Allen’s data on labour requirements shows that for pastoral farms smaller than 40 hectares the demand for men, maids and boys was roughly equal, while male labour was relatively more important on larger farms.⁶⁸ The main tasks associated with large-scale grazing thus align perfectly with capitalist farming but appear ill-suited to household farming.

A second kind of indirect evidence pertains to the graziers’ social status. Eight out of the thirteen graziers identified in the 1570s tax registers could be identified. The largest grazier, Johan Bongert, is often referred to in the registers as the major of the city of Wesel, at about 46 kilometres south-east of ’s-Heerenberg.⁶⁹ It is beyond doubt that he did not herd his cattle himself but solely acted as an investor. In a similar vein, Johan van Schrieck is mentioned to have lived in the city of Rees (22 kilometres from ’s-Heerenberg), where members of his family served at least three times in the city government between 1557 and 1599.⁷⁰ Three others are recorded as living in the cities of Doetinchem, Emmerich, and Xanten, while a fourth grazier was said to live in the settlement of Issum (about 50 kilometres of ’s-Heerenbergh).⁷¹ Finally, Gerrit Everwijn is known to have served as alderman of ’s Heerenberg while the last grazier was the convent of Bethlehem close to Doetinchem.⁷² It is possible that the monastery grazed oxen for their own consumption but this is unlikely. The convent could graze almost 50 oxen in the studied area alone which comes close to the herds of abbeys in coastal Flanders and the Guelders river area that did fatten oxen for the market. One exception that proves the rule is Peter Smit. Apart from a leasehold farm of about 25 hectares, he leased pastures that could graze about 87 oxen.⁷³ Operating the leasehold farm alone must have already required hired labour input, so even for this local farmer the fattening business appears to have been a capitalist enterprise.⁷⁴ Overall, it is hard to imagine how the identified graziers managed their herds, if not by hiring labour as a commodity.

Analogies with scarce information from other areas where graziers were active suggest they used locals as semi-permanent supervisors. The large Scueringe farm in coastal Flanders, measuring about 200 hectares and held in direct exploitation by the Bruges St. John’s hospital, increasingly relayed its focus to the fattening of oxen over the sixteenth century. Though the farm hired more day labourers instead of servants for their arable farming, they continued to rely on permanent servants to take care of their livestock.⁷⁵ An even better example was Matheus Groenewout who, in 1748, grazed 55 oxen and 25 cows in the Purmer area north of Amsterdam. He did not live in the area himself but his two servants and one maid did.⁷⁶ Although he does not present direct evidence, Spencer Dimmock also argues capitalist graziers in the parish of Lydd in Kent lived in the town while the marshes were mostly populated by their shepherds and keepers.⁷⁷ It is likely that the graziers operating in the parishes of Zeddam and Netterden also made use of the local cottagers’ labour.

The property tax registers from the 1570s suggest potential labour reserves existed among the recorded leaseholders of farmsteads. Using the average lease price of 2 daler per morgen (of about 0.85 hectares), the size of holdings can be estimated. In addition, Van Bavel estimated for the western parts of the Guelders river area that farms of less than 4 hectares required 0.9 man-years per hectare and that households, as mentioned, typically counted 3.7 members able to conduct a man-year of labour.⁷⁸ Table 2 uses these estimates to assess the number of cottagers with a theoretical surplus of labour in settlements where the graziers were active. These numbers are clear minima because houses are typically not recorded in the tax registers. As a result, locals living on plots of land or gardens could not be recognised and included in the table. Most potential surplus could be found in the church village of Zeddam while the other settlements counted between 0.5 and 2.9 surplus man-years. This distribution aligns rather well with the requirements of the graziers who would have needed a few semi-permanent local labourers for supervision and larger groups of temporary labourers for the upkeep of hedges and ditches, who could be sought from a little further (perhaps even from the town of ’s-Heerenberg). Even though direct evidence of wage labour in the fattening sector is lacking, all available information and the nature of the fattening industry suggest the graziers operated as capitalist farmers.

How to explain the rise of capitalist graziers in the parishes of Zeddam and Netterden? The timing of the graziers’ emergence shows that their capitalist farming existed by virtue of the long-distance trade in Danish livestock. Danish exports really kicked off from about 1470 onwards with exports more than doubling after 1500 to between 45,000 and 50,000 oxen per year.⁷⁹ Meanwhile, large-scale pastoral farming does not appear to have been a profitable business in Zeddam and Netterden before the sixteenth century. Clearly upset by the economic headwinds of the time, the treasurer of the lord of Bergh noted in his 1472/1473 account that he failed to lease out a plot and had let two oxen and a bull graze the field ‘so one would get something out of it.’⁸⁰ During these years, the fattening business was a last resort, not a growth sector. A list of confiscated livestock owned by citizens of Emmerich in 1447 also shows that large-scale pastoral farming lay in the future. The largest confiscated herd counted 28 animals followed by two herds of 10 oxen each.⁸¹ Oxen were already fattened before the sixteenth century, but only for regional (urban) markets.

In the first half of the sixteenth century, a clear process of upscaling occurred. The 1503/1504 seigneurial account records three relatively large composite pastures consisting of multiple individual plots. The first had been fenced off by Derick van Syck who combined plots he owned and leased into one large pasture measuring about 36 malder gezaais, or around 12 hectares. After he passed away, the seigneurial administration of the lords of Bergh decided to keep the pasture intact by buying, leasing, and exchanging plots.⁸² At the same time, the account mentions two other pastures that were most likely formed and fenced off on the initiative of the seigneurial administration. They measured about four and six hectares respectively.⁸³ The 1516/1517 seigneurial account mentions two other large pastures which must have been about the same size as Derick van Syck’s pasture, as indicated by their lease prices.⁸⁴ The accumulation of holdings continued until 1552, when all three and multiple other pastures were leased by one leaseholder: Gerrit Smit. The lease price he paid for the combined pastures constituted about 23 per cent of what the treasurer recorded as his total revenues for the year 1552/1553.⁸⁵ The rise of large-scale capitalist farming thus only took off when the trade network in Danish oxen expanded, indicating that this type of capitalist farming depended on long-distance trade networks.

The fact that the graziers restricted their enterprise to the best pastures available shows that geographical conditions also played a major role. The 1832 cadastre (land survey) as digitised in the HisGis database provides a perfect illustration. Table 3 lists the weighted average yield per hectare for all pastures listed in the HisGIS database ordered per location and the percentage of the graziers’ holdings as recorded under these localities in the property tax registers. The precise methodology is outlined in Appendix B. In general, the relatively high average yields per hectare and the high percentage of grazier-holdings corresponds very well; only the settlements of Klein Azewijn and Vethuizen stand out. A small note in a series of land surveys of some of the lord of Bergh’s leaseholds dating from 1542 also shows that the best pastures were reserved for fattening oxen. For a leasehold farm in Borghees, the lease price for each morgen of pasture that could graze oxen was 12.5 per cent higher than the price for normal pastures.⁸⁶ Wiese explains why suitable soils were of such high importance. Only good quality soils, that provided enough grass to fatten the animals, allowed graziers to compete with fatteners located in the vicinity of consumption centres.⁸⁷ Hence, in early eighteenth-century tax registers on Oldenburg, the average value of oxen more than doubled between the least and most fertile areas.⁸⁸ Capitalist cattle rearing clearly depended on the availability of suitable soils.

The pastures used by the graziers in the parishes of Zeddam and Netterden corresponded closely to the ideal described by Konrad Heresbach in his Rei Rusticae Libri Quatuor (Four books on Husbandry). Heresbach owned an estate close to the river Rhine in the vicinity of the town of Wesel located about 35 kilometres from ’s-Heerenberg.⁸⁹ Although he does not mention the large-scale fattening of oxen, he must have been well aware of the local conditions. He argued that new pastures were best created on fertile, clay-rich soils that were dewy and even or gently inclined. Although good pastures required moisture, they also should not be too wet because the animals would otherwise trample the soil.⁹⁰ Figure 3 shows that the graziers were mostly active in areas that correspond closely to Heresbach’s description. Most of the graziers’ holdings were recorded under the headings of Groot Azewijn (32%) and Netterden (43%) that were both part of the lower-lying fluvial plains dominated by clay soils. Settlements such as Stokkum, Kilder, and Braamt, in contrast, were located on the edges of the moraines with unsuitable dry sandy soils and slopes too steep to retain sufficient water. Present-day height maps show that the height could differ from 20 to 13 metres above the Amsterdam Ordnance Datum (nap).⁹¹ As Heresbach prescribed, the area between Groot Azewijn and Netterden was relatively flat at about 15 to 14 meters above nap. Moreover, it was not the lowest part of the area but tended to fall towards the north. The area around Klein Azewijn and Vethuizen lay between 14 to 12 metres above nap. Hence, the area of the grazier’s preference was probably not too wet as it could be drained to the north. The locations where the graziers were active ticked all the boxes of Heresbach’s ideal pastures.

Finally, property relations were also a crucial variable in this case, though not in the way envisioned by Brenner. As the property tax registers from the 1570s show, leaseholds dominated the agricultural economy in both parishes. Measured by lease value, 87 per cent of all taxed landholdings were held in lease, while 3 per cent was explicitly recorded to have been used by its owner, and the user of a final 9 per cent remains unclear. In the parish of Netterden, 84 per cent was leased, 2 used by their owners, and the users of 14 per cent remain unclear.⁹² Moreover, the formation of large fenced-off pastures during the first decades of the sixteenth century demonstrates that property rights were well defined so other villagers could claim no usage rights to the graziers’ pastures. From a Brennerian perspective, most producers relied on the lease market for land as a crucial input. The capitalist cattle farmers, however, were only active in specific parts of the parishes, and only after their integration in the cattle trade networks. The rise of capitalist farming was not prompted by property relations.⁹³

A comparison with the situation in Holland shows that property relations including large landownership and lease markets were crucial because they allowed for the easy accumulation of land by users. By the sixteenth century, the fattening of oxen was an important business in the northern parts of Holland as well. In some villages around Medemblik and Oostwoud, it was considered the main source of the residents’ livelihood.⁹⁴ Most farms in this area, however, were extremely small (0.5 to 4 hectares). Moreover, most farmers owned their land and, during periods of population growth, subdivided their family holdings which led to further fragmentation.⁹⁵ Only from the mid-sixteenth century onwards did capitalist farming gain ground. Crucially, this shift was preceded by attempts at clarifying lease rights and the increasing accumulation of land in the hands of urban landowners who leased it out on the market.⁹⁶ In the northern parts of Holland, commercialisation and soil conditions allowed for the fattening of oxen but small-scale peasant landownership hampered the easy accumulation of holdings and the rise of capitalist farming.

Interpreting the role of the property relations as providing opportunities for accumulation, rather than as the prime mover of capitalist development, allows for integrating the ‘property relations’ and ‘commercialisation’ models. Combining these approaches, in fact, corresponds rather well to the earlier work of Van Bavel on the Guelders river area. In these publications, he formulates the role of the lease market as allowing capitalist farmers to grasp the opportunity to accumulate land presented by a combination of high prices and low wages, as well as military turmoil that was detrimental for small producers lacking reserves.⁹⁷ Trade networks and geographical conditions, in turn, should be considered as crucial in providing profitable opportunities for capitalist farming.

The case of the parishes of Zeddam and Netterden shows how property rights, trade networks, and geographical conditions can be combined in one explanatory framework. That this frame can be applied to other regions, too is evident from the account by Gérard Sivéry on the rise of large-scale pastoral farming in the south-west of Hainaut after the Black Death. He points out that pastoral farming and upscaling occurred in this region thanks to the increased urban demand for meat from Flemish, Brabant, and even Holland cities, which rendered pastoral farming profitable. Sivéry, however, also stresses that this shift was only possible in areas with soil structures suitable for grassland. Finally, he includes property relations as well, arguing that small-scale producers lost out because communal grasslands were increasingly leased out to wealthy farmers.⁹⁸ In the end, the relatively peripheral parishes of Zeddam and Netterden, whose integration in long-distance trade was not self-evident, shows how property relations, geography, and trade were all crucial elements in the rise of capitalist farming.

In 2010, the two main explanatory models of the economic history of the Low Countries came into direct competition when Blockmans and Van Bavel simultaneously published major monographs on this topic. While Blockmans stressed the impact of commercialisation and long-distance trade, Van Bavel focused on property relations as the main explanatory variable. Based on a case study of capitalist farming in the sixteenth-century eastern Low Countries, this article argues that both models are not mutually exclusive but complementary and that geographical conditions should be added as a crucial third variable.

The main benefit of the studied case is that it is not one of the areas commonly associated with the emergence of capitalist farming. However, by reducing the concept of capitalist production to its essentials – accumulation through the exchange of commodities – capitalist cattle farmers can be identified in the area during the sixteenth century. Because capitalist cattle farming in the eastern Low Countries arose in a different context than capitalist agriculture in the western regions, the present study provides a new perspective on the explanatory variables that have been addressed in the historiography so far. The emergence of capitalist graziers in the eastern Low Countries was the result of the region’s integration in the long-distance trade in Danish oxen, of geographical conditions suitable for the fattening of large livestock, and of property relations that allowed for the easy accumulation of land. Not only was capitalist farming not unique to the western Low Countries, explaining its rise requires a model that integrates trade, geography, and property relations.