Public events

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Thursday, December 4, 2025 - 19:30 PM
UGent - Belvedere Book Tower

The Book Tower, Amsab-ISG and Ghent University History Alumni invite you to the book presentation of Poor Flanders: A World History – Hunger, Disease, and Globalization in the Mid-19th Century. by Maarten Van Ginderachter.

Giselle Nath (De Standaard) will be in conversation with author Maarten Van Ginderachter (University of Antwerp) and Eric Vanhaute (University of Ghent). We'll finish by raising a glass together. Register quickly via the link below, as space is strictly limited due to the beautiful location.

Cover of the book Poor Flanders by Maarten Vanginderachter

About the book

Flanders in 1850: poverty, hunger, and cholera are rampant. We shudder at the sight of so much misery from a distant past. Yet, this era is closer to us than we think. Here, our modern, globalized world is born.

The history of Poor Flanders isn't just a local tragedy of failed harvests and dying crafts. It's also a global account of a potato plague from America, of Peruvian bird droppings and Senegalese gum, of an unprecedented import from the Wild West and the Far East. In short, this story is world history par excellence.

About the author

Maarten Van Ginderachter (born 1973) is a full professor at the PoHis Center for Political History at the University of Antwerp, where he teaches world history and contemporary history, among other things. Van Ginderachter has written, among other things, The red fatherland (2005) in The Everyday Nationalism of Workers (2019), and he was co-editor of The Land That Never Was (2014)