Daily Bread: Early Modern Food Protests, Politics, and Archival Silencing (1550–1750)

This NWO-funded project, led by Maartje van Gelder (University of Amsterdam), takes on two fundamental historical questions: How have ordinary men and women shaped politics before they had the right to vote? And how have power relations shaped archives, determining whose histories have been written, and whose have been silenced?

To answer these questions, we analyze and compare popular food protests across Dutch, Italian, and Ottoman cities between 1550 and 1750. Our research explores how urban communities responded when climate change disrupted agricultural production.

Protesting Women: Gender and Politics

Premodern protests are widely seen as the foundation of modern political equality. Yet food protests—arguably the most common collective actions of the era—are largely missing from this narrative. Because these protests were often led by women, historians traditionally assumed they were driven by hunger rather than politics.

The Daily Bread Project argues that this view stems from archival silencing. Contemporary authorities did not view women as political actors, which biased the records they created. Later historians relied on these skewed sources. Consequently, they viewed women’s participation as part of their domestic roles rather than a political statement. By comparing early modern food protests and gender relations in European and Ottoman cities, our project uncovers the power relations at play—not just in the streets, but in the archives and the writing of history itself.

Funding & Partners

The Daily Bread project is funded by a VICI grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) and supported by the UvA’s Faculty of Humanities and the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome (KNIR).