ABSTRACT
In 1596, the merchant capitalists governing Amsterdam introduced a new tool in their battle against vagrancy, the Rasphuis. This was a workhouse to incarcerate and reform the men arrested for the new crime of begging in the city. In accordance with its dual goals, the Rasphuis came equipped with a room to punish inmates who refused to do their fair share of the work that helped fund the institution. Administrators placed recalcitrant men into this cell and then let it fill with water. Forced to use a hand pump to save themselves from drowning, these men learned in a very literal sense that only hard work would ensure their survival. For historians, the Rasphuis captures the significant transformations that occurred in European poor relief during the early modern period, from secularization to a new emphasis on the redemptive power of labor. These changes inevitably altered the range of options that Europe’s poor had come to rely upon in their strategies to endure. Throughout the Middle Ages, individuals hoping to prevent a disastrous slide into poverty turned principally to their family, neighbors, or, in urban areas, occupational group. For those unfortunate enough to have lost that struggle, relief could come from those same sources, and from formal institutions operated by the church, begging, and, in desperate cases, crimes like theft and prostitution. Despite some variation, especially in the range of formal institutions open to the poor, these strategies were basically the same throughout the pre-modern world. And, between 1450 and 1750, they remained basically the same in much of the world. Thus, while the world economy slowly introduced a new dynamic in the history of poverty around the globe, only in Western Europe did this translate into dramatic alterations to the structure of poor relief.1
