The baker of last resort and his critics

Provisioning food was a concern for most local and central governments in pre-industrial Europe. Public granaries sought to stabilise prices by strategic purchases when prices were low and by disbursements to urban and rural wage-earners when prices soared. Most governments were also involved in the regulation of foreign trade, imposing export bans and/or stimulating imports of grain when it was in short supply. These ad hoc bans were usually lifted when harvest outcomes and prices returned to normal. Price volatility caused by disruptions in the grain supply imposed large temporary changes in consumption on urban and rural wage-earners and therefore posed a threat to the political order. Those advocating grain supply regulation were aware of the fact that they were continuing a tradition that reached back to antiquity.

Attempts at stabilising grain supply were given a new lease of life with urban growth in medieval Europe. Those attempts grew out of local concerns, but gradually became identified with the nation-state. The most ambitious centralised systems of food provisioning developed in France under Colbert and in Prussia under Frederick the Great. In England these policies were gradually disbanded from the end of the seventeenth century on, but on the Continent they continued in full force well into the eighteenth century. The remark – made by a historian (Steven Kaplan) of the ancien régime – that the king was ‘the baker of last resort’ was not far off the mark.