Demografische ontwikkelingen rond de afschaffing van slavernij in Suriname
Huub Everaert
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Fertility and mortality rates before and after the Abolition of slavery in Suriname
In several studies it has been argued that with the abolition of slavery it is impossible to calculate fertility and mortality rates of former slaves and their descendents. The freedman left the plantations and disappeared from quantitative history. Contrary to this wide held opinion this article aims to expand our knowledge about events of life and death of (former) slaves and their direct descendents around 1863 in Suriname. This is accomplished by combining slave returns with civil administration on the individual level. Birth and death rates of sugar slaves in the last decade before the Emancipation (1851-1863) are calculated and compared with the period of indentured labour (1864-1873). Mortality rates among freedmen of the sugar estates Fairfield, Breukelerwaard, Cannewapibo and La Jalousie went up after 1863. It is also demonstrated that child mortality was increasing after the abolition of slavery, indicating deteriorated conditions of daily life. There is also broad evidence of higher fertility rates among former female sugar slaves.

Protagonist of antiheld? Over sociaal kapitaal en geschiedenis
Jelle Haemers
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Hero or antihero? Social capital in history
This article evaluates the usefulness of social capital theory for historical research. It gives an overview of the sociological research on the concept, and its application in historical sciences. The author criticizes the vagueness of the term ‘social capital’, and he argues that recent sociological interpretations of the concept are difficult to maintain in the study of history. He suggests that historians return to Bourdieu’s writings if they want to use the concept in their research, because they cannot pass over a detailed scrutiny of the socio-political and economic context of historical actors when studying their social capital. Auxiliary sciences, such as social network analysis, can help to determine the appearance of social capital in history, and to clarify the consequences of its presence among people. In the author’s view social capital is no longer a ‘hero’ in history, who explains incomprehensible social phenomena, nor an antihero, who undermines the accuracy of historical research, but it is a useful concept for historians – if they accept the theoretical premises of Bourdieu’s work.

Van fouten kan je leren. Een kritische benadering van de mogelijkheden van ‘leeftijdstapelen’ voor sociaal-economisch onderzoek naar gecijferdheid in het pre-industriële Vlaanderen en Nederland
Tine De Moor en Jan Luiten van Zanden
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Learning from mistakes. About the possibilities of ‘age heaping’ as a guide to the study of numeracy in pre industrial Flanders and Holland
We present new evidence about the development of age heaping among men and women in Flanders and the Netherlands in the late medieval and early modern period in order to test ideas based on previous research on human capital formation of women and men in the North Sea area. We demonstrate that already in the sixteenth century age heaping was gradually disappearing in large parts of the Low Countries, that (as we expected) there was almost no gender gap (women even outperformed men at times) and that differences between town and countryside were quite small. This probably points to a very early rise of numeracy (or at least ‘number sense’) in this region, linked to demographic change and commercial development. Between 1600 and 1800 in particular Flanders seems to have lost its strong position in this field.

De geboorte van de moderne veiling. Specialisering en commercialisering van publieke verkopen in achttiende-eeuws Antwerpen
Dries Lyna
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The birth of the modern auction. Specialisation and commercialisation of public sales in eighteenth century Antwerp
In the course of the eighteenth century the city of Antwerp witnessed the first signs of an onrushing consumer society. The growing demand for new and fashionable products and a change in mentality towards their used counterparts had a profound impact on the second-hand markets: collections of books, artwork and jewellery were extracted from the traditional estate sales and sold in separate auctions, often in new salesrooms and accompanied by elaborated auction catalogues. In their creation of a new type of auction and a search for another audience, the endeavours of art and book dealers closely resembled the quest for distinction in the eighteenth-century leisure culture of Antwerp’s high society.

Het lichaam van het dorp. Publieke schuld op het Hollandse platteland rond 1500
Jaco Zuijderduijn
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To the credit of the village. Public debt in the countryside of Holland around 1500
Public debt soared in the late-medieval Low Countries: towns borrowed considerable sums from creditors and often ended up defaulting on their financial obligations. The author uses a tax inquiry from 1514 to demonstrate that villages also managed to create funded debt, which they secured on the public body of the village. As a result, around 1500 the majority of the villages in Holland owed annuities to local and foreign creditors. This public debt was particularly contracted to be able to pay taxes to the sovereign, but it also allowed villages to invest in water management and mills and to protect themselves against encroachments by noblemen and towns. Thus they could use their access to capital markets to defend the interests of the public body and its members. Furthermore, the possibilities villages had to borrow and the conditions against which these loans were contracted, tell us a lot about the level of sophistication of capital markets in late-medieval Holland.

Buitenlandse tijdschriften. Van ‘big history’ tot koffiehuizen in Istanboel. De oogst van 2007 en de eerste helft van 2008
Jeroen Touwen
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