inscitia on Nostr: From 1584 to 1585, Antwerp was besieged by Spanish forces led by the Duke of Parma ...

From 1584 to 1585, Antwerp was besieged by Spanish forces led by the Duke of Parma who was intent on maintaining the rule of the Habsburg Empire in the Lowlands. Naturally, during a siege, food quickly becomes a scarce commodity and prices accordingly rise. The City Fathers of Antwerp reacted as many others in their position have done before and since: they passed a law fixing a maximum price for each item of food. Severe penalties were prescribed for anyone who attempted to charge the market price. “The consequences of this policy were twofold,” according to the historian John Fiske. “It was a long time before the Duke of Parma, who was besieging the city, succeeded in so blockading the Scheldt as to prevent ships laden with eatables from coming in below. Corn and preserved meats might have been hurried into the beleaguered city by thousands of tons. But no merchant would run the risk of having his ships sunk by the Duke’s batteries merely for the sake of finding a market no better than many others which could be reached at no risk at all. . . . . If provisions had brought a high price in Antwerp they would have been carried thither. As it was the city, by its own stupidity, blockaded itself far more effectually than the Duke of Parma could have done.” “In the second place,” Fiske concludes, “the enforced lowness of prices prevented any general retrenchment on the part of the citizens. Nobody felt it necessary to economize. So the city lived in high spirits until all at once provisions gave out. . . .” In 1585 the city of Antwerp surrendered and was occupied by the forces of Spain.

Robert L. Schuettinger in "Forty Centuries of Wage and Price Controls: How Not to Fight Inflation"