Hunger for Ghent

Hunger for Gent, 14th century

How do you feed a city in times without a truck or a fridge? That is what a look at Ghent, which at that time already had more than sixty thousand mouths to feed, teaches us. The city ensured food security by acquiring a monopoly on the grain trade, the famous staple right. Besides grain, you could also find fish from Denmark, beer from Germany, cheese and wine from France and plums from Damascus. Because of the threat of shortages or spoilage, food was strictly regulated: who could sell what food, where and when. This organisation of the food system was closely linked to the guild system, a unique form of self-organisation of medieval townspeople. But food was always more than providing food: it was equally about power, lobbying, fighting for free trade or just for protectionism. Or how the Graslei and Korenlei were in fact the Manhattan of the Middle Ages. Welcome to the culinary-political era of the Van Eyck brothers.

Hunger for Ghent, 19th century

Ghent, the Manchester of the North: one more time the glorious city amasses wealth and puts itself on the map with its textile production. While in stately bourgeois houses the Bourgeoisie enjoys Cauderlier’s dishes, a cup of chocolate milk and a delicious cigar from Java, in filthy belches people die of cholera and typhoid and malnutrition reigns, the great masses survive on bread and potatoes. In the pubs full of gin and skimpy beer, the songs of Karel Waeri echo as the breeding ground for a new idea ‘Socialism’. Thus, workers will take their destiny back into their own hands. On this walk, Dirk and Noël take you to a Ghent full of challenges, class differences that are also evident on the board, but also tell you about ‘the improvement of Ghent’, the rise of the train and the appearance of public baths. In short, again a must for those who, like us, are ‘crazy about Ghent’.