Smallholders, spinsters and weavers suffering from 'a scarcity of markets' on the Flemish countryside between the late eighteenth and the middle of the nineteenth century: motivations behind the multiplication of periodic markets

Between the last decades of the eighteenth century and the middle of the nineteenth century, a large number of new markets were established on the Flemish countryside. The multiplication of rural markets tends to be seen as part of the process of market integration, with rural producers responding to the opportunities provided by growing external demand, such as that of growing towns. However, an analysis of the motivations behind new establishments, based on the files treating the requests for new markets, reveals that markets were more often established for entirely different reasons. In this period, markets were expected to permit households to intensify their activities in order to overcome the increasing difficulty to cope. Developments within rural society, namely rising population pressure, the need to produce and sell more, and deteriorating informal exchange networks among countrymen, coupled to a decline in demand for rural industrial products, were the main drive behind the multiplication of markets. This contribution shows the necessity to see how new markets and market integration in general fitted within the goals and strategies of the country dwellers themselves.