Polders zonder poldermodel? Een onderzoek naar de rol van inspraak en overleg in de waterstaat van de laatmiddeleeuwse Vlaamse kustvlakte (1250-1600)

The management of the coastal water control system in the medieval Low Countries was characterized by a bottom-up organisation, with apparently broad participation of all people concerned. The joint effort of rural communities facing the threat of inundation and land-loss, is often considered to have been at the very origin of a long-lasting tradition of non-hierarchical, bottom-up decisionmaking – the so-called ‘polder-model’. This hypothesis is verified for the latemedieval Flemish coastal plain. Notwithstanding the formal attention paid to participation and broad consultation, the everyday practice of decision-making in rural water management was probably more influenced by hierarchical relations and income strategies of elite social groups than often thought, with the participation of peasant populations even further limited as the commercialisation of the rural economy went on

History and the Social Sciences

Since the turn of the Millennium, major changes in economic history practice such as the dominance of econometrics and the championing of “big data,” as well as changes in how research is funded, have created new pressures for medieval economic historians to confront. In this article, it is suggested that one way of strengthening the field further is to more explicitly link up with hypotheses posed in other social sciences. The historical record is one “laboratory” in which hypotheses developed by sociologists, economists, and even natural scientists can be explicitly tested, especially using dual forms of geographical and chronological comparison. As one example to demonstrate this, a case is made for the stimulating effect of “disaster studies.” Historians have failed to interact with ideas from disaster studies, not only because of the general drift away from the social sciences by the historical discipline, but also because of a twin conception that medieval disaster study bears no relation to the modern

Disasters and History

Disasters and History offers the first comprehensive historical overview of hazards and disasters. Drawing on a range of case studies, including the Black Death, the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 and the Fukushima disaster, the authors examine how societies dealt with shocks and hazards and their potentially disastrous outcomes. They reveal the ways in which the consequences and outcomes of these disasters varied widely not only between societies but also within the same societies according to social groups, ethnicity and gender. They also demonstrate how studying past disasters, including earthquakes, droughts, floods and epidemics, can provide a lens through which to understand the social, economic and political functioning of past societies and reveal features of a society which may otherwise remain hidden from view

Waterbeheer in de Vlaamse kustvlakte in de Late Middeleeuwen en het Ancien Régime: van landschapsgeschiedenis naar ecologische geschiedenis

This article argues that changes in the historical landscape cannot be studied without a thorough knowledge of the economic and social structures of the area in question. Geographically, it deals with the Flemish coastal plain, and more specifically with Zeeland Flanders adjacent to the river Scheldt, which is studied from the medieval to the early modern period. From the thirteenth century on, this area was particularly troubled by disastrous inundations followed by the loss of land. These inundations cannot be explained by natural phenomena only. A defìcient water management needs to be taken into account as well. From the twelfth century on, water management was the task of specifìc institutions, the 'waterschappen'. Although often praised for the quality of their work, evidence seems to suggest that the water boards' officials were mainly driven by self-interest and not by the overall welfare of the area's inhabitants. This article however, is only a prolegomenon. More research has to be done to explain the evolution of the historical landscape. This is only possible when taking into account the social structuring of the area. In this way the history of the landscape turns into ecological history, concentrating on the multiple relations between man and nature

Elevage, prés et pâturage dans le compté de Flandre au Moyen Âge et au début des Temps Modernes. Les liens avec l'économie rurale régionale

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