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The Spade in de Dijk is the first synthesis on the organisation of water management in Coastal Flanders during the later Middle Ages. Based on the unique archival evidence produced by local water boards (wateringen), large landowners and local and regional authorities, Tim Soens argues for the occurrence of profound changes in coastal water management in the later Middle Ages. Water management gradually became less inclusive, investments lowered, and flood risk increased. This evolution was triggered by the social transition from a peasant society of land-owning smallholders to a society of absentee landlords and large tenant farmers.

Al in de jaren 2000, werd aangetoond dat heel wat polders en waterschappen allerminst toonbeelden van overleg en inspraak waren, en dat, als dergelijke inspraak bestond, deze vanaf de late middeleeuwen aanzienlijk in belang afnam. Voor zover nog nodig, doorprikt Milja van Tielhof in Consensus en Conflict moeiteloos alle nog resterende romantische ideeën over middeleeuwse en vroegmoderne waterschappen als potentiële wieg van de naoorlogse overlegeconomie of de moderne democratie. Het idee dat 'ijder die slegts maar een tuijntje in eijgendom besit' evenveel te zeggen zou hebben als een grote gelande in deze of gene polder, klonk de doorsnee bewoner van het kustgebied als gevaarlijke nonsens in de oren. Zoals de samenleving ongelijk was, was ook de inspraak in het waterbeheer ongelijk.

ABSTRACTFrom the High Middle Ages on, the coastal wetlands of the North Sea area have been intensively reclaimed and settled. In order to enable intensive agricultural production in these areas, a complex drainage and flood control system was gradually installed, one that demanded a permanent investment of huge amounts of capital and labour. As the maintenance of the water control system was vital for the coastal agro-system, the long-term evolution of investments is an important, yet rarely used, indicator of the economic, social and environmental fortunes of the coastlands. Based on new and very early serial data on water control funding in late medieval Flanders, this article argues that long-term fluctuations in the funding of drainage and flood control were first and foremost related to structural changes within the coastal economy, where an overall decline of investment levels ran parallel to the fourteenth-century crisis of the peasant smallholding economy in this region. Exogenous pressures on the other hand, such as storm surges, only provoked a short-term disruption of investments.

Dike builders or disrupters of the peace? The counts of Flanders and water management in the coastal wetlands (from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries). During the late mediaeval period, water management in the coastal wetlands of the Low Countries was strongly decentralized. It remained untouched by the judicial and administrative policies pursued by Burgundian and Habsburg rulers which aimed to centralise control. In the case of Flanders, this had more to do with government indifference to the situation on the ground than with local resistance government policies. Many initiatives in the field of water management that have been traditionally attributed to the counts of Flanders, were in fact initiatives that were developed, financed and implemented locally, with only tacit support from central government. And yet in the extremely fragmented water management organisation of late medieval Flanders, a coordinating authority was vital to accommodate the divergent interests of local water boards or cities, and to overcome structural disparities in the funding of sea walls. In the absence of any obvious financial reward for themselves and constrained by the private strategies of their officials, the Flemish rulers did not dare disturb the local balances of power to overcome obvious deficiencies in coastal water management.

ABSTRACTThe acceptance of mapmaking in medieval and early modern Europe was neither a uniform nor a linear process. Comparing two neighbouring regions in the Low Countries, we explain the varying appetite for maps and mapmaking first by unravelling how people dealt with space before the introduction of modern mapmaking and, second, by identifying the actors that actively promoted its adoption. In regions where local elites had already been considering space as a commodity with a preference for clear-cut, geometric forms before the introduction of mapmaking, the latter was enthusiastically accepted and rapidly became instrumental in propagating this 'modern' concept of space. Other regions did not develop this appetite for mapmaking and continued to prefer different and more negotiable representations of space.

Urbanity was a distinguishing feature of the medieval Low Countries, but even in its most urbanised core a majority of the population continued to live outside the city walls. In his new and encompassing synthesis of the history of the Low Countries in the later Middle Ages, Wim Blockmans emphasises the fundamental intertwining of urban and rural societies in this region, but also the existing historiographical gap between urban and rural historians. This contribution pleads for a reconsideration of the impact of urbanisation and urbanity on rural society as a whole, exemplified for instance, by the role of urban demand as a driving force in the rural economy or by the spread of an 'urban-modelled' civic life beyond the city walls. Although every village community was in one way or another connected to the urban world, villages were not entirely shaped by the latter and striking regional differences in both economic development, social cohesion and political organisation persisted well beyond the medieval period. In order to explain these differences the endogenous dynamics of rural societies have to be taken into account.

Urbanity was a distinguishing feature of the medieval Low Countries, but even in its most urbanised core a majority of the population continued to live outside the city walls. In his new and encompassing synthesis of the history of the Low Countries in the later Middle Ages, Wim Blockmans emphasises the fundamental intertwining of urban and rural societies in this region, but also the existing historiographical gap between urban and rural historians. This contribution pleads for a reconsideration of the impact of urbanisation and urbanity on rural society as a whole, exemplified for instance, by the role of urban demand as a driving force in the rural economy or by the spread of an 'urban-modelled' civic life beyond the city walls. Although every village community was in one way or another connected to the urban world, villages were not entirely shaped by the latter and striking regional differences in both economic development, social cohesion and political organisation persisted well beyond the medieval period. In order to explain these differences the endogenous dynamics of rural societies have to be taken into account. This review is part of the discussion forum 'Four Golden Ages' (Wim Blockmans).