This dataset contains a number of files containing subsidies (
bede or
aide) for the Duchy of Brabant, starting from 1383. The dataset is linked to the GIS dataset
Historical Atlas of the Low Countries (1350-1800).
The 1383/1385 data was collected and digitised with the great help of Bastiaan van den Akker, who worked in 2018/19 as an intern at the International Institute of Social History and, as part of the NWO-funded project 'Imagining a Territory (led by Dr. Mario Damen), at the University of Amsterdam.
The data on the 100th penny (1569-1572) comes from P. Stabel and F. Vermeylen,
Het fiscale vermogen in Brabant, Vlaanderen en de heerlijkheid Mechelen. De Honderdste Penning van de hertog van Alva (1569-1572). Académie royale de Belgique. Commission royale d’histoire. Publications gr. in-8 (Bruxelles: Académie Royale de Belgique 1997). This data (currently not made open access) was digitised and linked to the GIS codes by us.
The methodology behind these files is described in A.E. Oostindiër and R.J. Stapel, 'Demographic Shifts and the Politics of Taxation in the Making of Fifteenth-Century Brabant', in: M.J.M. Damen and K. Overlaet eds.,
Constructing and Representing Territory in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press), which is currently under review.
The files in the folder "summary" refer to data files prepared for further analysis, by disaggregating counts of combined areas using the disaggregated hearth censuses made available
here. The hearth censuses were disaggregated using known ratios of other years, by interpolating missing values using nearest-neighbour-analysis of growth rates, and by creating a consistent time series by relating each figure to a predefined spatial part of the duchy which remains fixed.
For users not familiar with creating spatial joins in GIS, we would like refer to
this related dataset. It contains a number of specially prepared GIS layers for the Duchy of Brabant, that store some of the data available below. (2020-05-09)
