Page 106 - Mocarelli, Luca, and Aleksander Panjek. Eds. 2020. Maize to the People! Cultivation, Consumption and Trade in the North-Eastern Mediterranean (Sixteenth-Nineteenth Century). Koper: University of Primorska Press
P. 106
maize to the people!
Table 2. Cereal prices in Ljubljana at the end of the eighteenth century: yearly averages for
100 litres in Austrian florins*
1795 1796 1797 1798
6.07 5.88
Wheat 4.69 6.62 4.37 4.17
Rye 4.02 4.01
Barley 4.51 4.70 2.91 3.38
Oats 5.70 4.51
Buckwheat 3.79 4.07 4.52 4.24
Millet 3.85 4.29
Maize 2.79 2.72
63.4 73.0
Wheat (=100) 3.21 4.24 88.1 102.9
Rye (=100) 67.5 95.1
Buckwheat (=100) 4.36 4.54
4.15 4.52
Maize price index compared to
88.5 68.3
92.0 96.2
129.3 106.6
* Convention value, 1 Fl. = 11.69 g of silver; calculation based on monthly averages in Valenčič
1977, 157-159.
Interpretive conclusions and hypotheses:
chronology and trajectories of diffusion
With these considerations about maize trade in the eighteenth century, we
have somehow already anticipated the last part of this contribution, which
is dedicated to conclusions and interpretations based on the information
gathered so far. Starting with the chronology of diffusion, we have noticed
how at the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth cen-
turies the Slovenian regions seem to be surrounded by early mentions of
maize cultivation and trade, while in the present territory of Slovenia such
examples are lacking. The question is whether this reflects the historical sit-
uation or perhaps more so the state of research. A basic observation may
be that while Austrian historians have engaged in tracing the earliest men-
tions and early evidence of the presence of maize, Slovenian historians have
not concentrated specifically on maize, dedicating most of their attention
to central Slovenia (Carniola), where maize had a later and more scarce dif-
fusion, and to the richer eighteenth-century sources. This may be the rea-
son why we lack more archival evidence about maize in Slovenia, and its
western part in particular, for most of the period until the eighteenth cen-
tury. Something Austrian and Slovenian historians have in common is that
104
Table 2. Cereal prices in Ljubljana at the end of the eighteenth century: yearly averages for
100 litres in Austrian florins*
1795 1796 1797 1798
6.07 5.88
Wheat 4.69 6.62 4.37 4.17
Rye 4.02 4.01
Barley 4.51 4.70 2.91 3.38
Oats 5.70 4.51
Buckwheat 3.79 4.07 4.52 4.24
Millet 3.85 4.29
Maize 2.79 2.72
63.4 73.0
Wheat (=100) 3.21 4.24 88.1 102.9
Rye (=100) 67.5 95.1
Buckwheat (=100) 4.36 4.54
4.15 4.52
Maize price index compared to
88.5 68.3
92.0 96.2
129.3 106.6
* Convention value, 1 Fl. = 11.69 g of silver; calculation based on monthly averages in Valenčič
1977, 157-159.
Interpretive conclusions and hypotheses:
chronology and trajectories of diffusion
With these considerations about maize trade in the eighteenth century, we
have somehow already anticipated the last part of this contribution, which
is dedicated to conclusions and interpretations based on the information
gathered so far. Starting with the chronology of diffusion, we have noticed
how at the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth cen-
turies the Slovenian regions seem to be surrounded by early mentions of
maize cultivation and trade, while in the present territory of Slovenia such
examples are lacking. The question is whether this reflects the historical sit-
uation or perhaps more so the state of research. A basic observation may
be that while Austrian historians have engaged in tracing the earliest men-
tions and early evidence of the presence of maize, Slovenian historians have
not concentrated specifically on maize, dedicating most of their attention
to central Slovenia (Carniola), where maize had a later and more scarce dif-
fusion, and to the richer eighteenth-century sources. This may be the rea-
son why we lack more archival evidence about maize in Slovenia, and its
western part in particular, for most of the period until the eighteenth cen-
tury. Something Austrian and Slovenian historians have in common is that
104
