Food Policing in Early Modern Danish Towns

This article explores the efforts of early modern authorities to provide food security in three different Danish towns in order to understand the goals and methods of early modern food policing. As in other European countries, urban authorities were expected as part of the regulation called ‘the police’ to control the guilds and fix the prices on bread, meat, beer and other life necessities in order to avoid scarcity among the urban poor. In 1682–83 the Danish king established a police force in Copenhagen and the other market towns. The goal of the metropolitan police was to increase the population of the capital and thus increase the military-fiscal power of the absolutist state, by providing food security and even a comfortable life. In practice, the vigilant policing of bakers, butchers and brewers proved difficult. The positive economic effect of food policing was doubted early on and was reduced as a means to avoid food riots at the end the 18th century. In a major provincial market town like Aalborg, the food trade was policed in a similar manner by the town council and the police, but especially the intermediate trade proved difficult to stop. In a tiny, agrarian market town like Sæby, food policing was more a question of feeding the poor with the town’s own products.