TSEG - The Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History

Consensus en conflict: een discussiedossier

Petra J.E.M. van Dam — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Publications on water management in medieval and early modern times usually focus on one or a few regions, but Consensus and Conflict covers the entire area of the Netherlands. The book by Milja van Tielhof addresses important questions as: who shaped water management? How could farmers and other landowners exert influence? How did landowners participate in decision-making and which groups, including non-landowners, had influence or were even represented in the water board? The editors of TSEG asked four historians to reflect on the book from their own areas of expertise. They endorse many conclusions, for example that the myth of the "democratic" water board is a thing of the past with this book, and that social relations left a strong mark on governance and management of water works. They also highlight underexposed themes, formulate new questions, argue for alternative visions and for (further) international comparison.

De teloorgang van het poldermodel

Tim Soens — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

The myth was that, If there is one field in which the polder model prevailed, it would have to be the water management. Yet even there the historiography is evolving in the opposite direction: already in the 2000s, it was demonstrated that many polders and water boards were by no means paragons of consultation and participation, and that, if such participation existed, it declined considerably in importance from the late Middle Ages onwards. Just as society was unequal, participation in water management was unequal.

Translated with DeepL

Waterbeheer en ideologische belangen in de premoderne Nederlanden

Jim Van der Meulen — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

This article argues that the long-term development of premodern Dutch water management was partly shaped through a combination of institutional factors, and cultural norms and values. Departing from the institutional focus in the narrow sense that predominates in Milja van Tielhof’s Consensus and conflict, it makes the case that historians should take into account the influence of changes in the nature and ideology of the Dutch political elite between the late medieval ‘princely period’ and the early modern Dutch Republic. This is mainly demonstrated in reference to changes around the ideological precept of the Common Good (bonum commune). Using a combination of late medieval and early modern examples, the central contention is that the oligarchical elite that came to dominate both water management and the overarching political structure of the Dutch Republic, acquired a new notion of ‘shared interests’ due to their engagement on all political levels of the new state.

Water, Politics and Society

Raphaël Morera — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Consensus en conflict takes stock of twenty years of research in Dutch environmental history and at the same time offers fruitful perspectives for the years to come. Since the Middle Ages, wetlands and marshes have been attractive areas for societies seeking to exploit their resources or to cultivate them. In Italy, Spain, England, the Germanic countries and France, impressive amounts of land were conquered from the water, sometimes explicitly inspired by the Dutch example. The works are old and temper the exceptionalist reading long promoted by Dutch historians. However, on the whole, they are oriented towards an understanding of the developments and the modalities of the transformations of the environments. In reality, these historiographies do not really question the daily functioning of the organisations exploiting the hydraulic commons. In this sense, Consensus en Conflict is a valuable source of inspiration and invites us to shift our focus.

Consensus en conflict in waterbeheer

Karel Davids — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Consensus en conflict. Waterbeheer in de Nederlanden 1200-1800 is an impressive book. The question is topical. Who shaped water management in the Low Countries? Is the traditional image that water management was a matter of cooperation and striving for consensus correct, or was there often a conflict of interests and conflict? The purpose of my contribution is not so much to criticize but rather to stimulate a further exchange of views on certain aspects of the book. This concerns in particular the international comparative perspective. Although Consensus and Conflict focuses on "the Netherlands" (including the Flemish coastal plain), at several points it also takes a look at areas beyond, especially France, England and Northwest Germany.

Discussies over zes eeuwen waterbeheer en samenleving

Milja van Tielhof — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

In this response, I would like to respond to the main issues they raised. the nature of the widespread participation of the peasantry in the large-scale water systems that were established in the Middle Ages; the commons, a major reorganization of management of waterworks that runs as a thread through six centuries of Dutch water management; new questions concerning ideology, political culture, everyday practices and material culture; and, finally, Dutch water management in an international perspective.

De ontsluiting van het Amsterdamse notariële archief

Jirsi Reinders — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

The archives of the Amsterdam notaries (1578-1915) are an extremely rich but complex source for historical research. Although well known amongst researchers for decades, it was never possible to search the archive completely due to its enormous size (over 3.5 kilometers of shelve length). From 2016 onwards the Amsterdam City Archives have started a renewed attempt to disclosure this archive with new techniques such as crowd sourcing and Handwritten Text Recognition in the project Alle Amsterdamse Akten. This article provides insight in the way the Amsterdam City Archives unlocks the deeds of the seventeenth and eighteenth century notaries and how researchers can benefit from the results of this mass digitization project.

Jaap Evert Abrahamse, Henk Baas, Sonja Barends, Dré van Marrewijk, Ben de Pater, Michiel Purmer, (red.), Het landschap beschreven. Historisch-geografische opstellen voor Hans Renes

Erik Thoen — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Gerrit van Oosterom, Boeren op de buitenplaats. De relatie tussen landbouw en buitenleven in het Amstellands Arcadië (1640-1840)

Piet Van Cruyningen — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Veronica van Amerongen, Vrouwelijke muziekmecenassen in de Republiek der Nederlanden

Joost Welten — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Jos Wassink, Dagelijks leven in ‘ontugt’. Prostitutie in de vestingstad ’s-Hertogenbosch, 1629-1795

Marion Pluskota — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Erik Odegard, Graaf en gouverneur. Nederlands-Brazilië onder het bewind van Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen, 1636-1644

Mark Meuwese — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Alan Moss, Gemaakt op reis. Nederlandse jongeren op reis in de zeventiende eeuw

Janneke Budding — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Doris Jedamski and Rick Honings (eds), Travelling the Dutch East Indies. Historical Perspectives and Literary Representations

Mikko Toivanen — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Jim van der Meulen, Woven into the Urban Fabric. Cloth Manufacture and Economic Development in the Flemish West-Quarter (1300-1600)

Francesco Ammannati — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Dave De ruysscher, Albrecht Cordes, Serge Dauchy, Stefania Gialdroni, and Heikki Pihlajamäki, (eds), Commerce, Citizenship, and Identity in Legal History

Mary Lindemann — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Paul Nelles and Rosa Salzberg (eds), Connected Mobilities in the Early Modern World. The Practice and Experience of Movement

Alisa Van de Haar — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Marc van Alphen, Jan Hoffenaar, Alan Lemmers, Christiaan van der Spek. Military Power and the Dutch Republic. War, Trade and the Balance of Power in Europe, 1648-1813.

David Parrott — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

J. van Duijl, Goederenverwerving van het Duitse Huis te Utrecht 1218-1536

Arnoud Jensen — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Den armen gedeylt

Jan Peeters — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

This article bridges the gap between studies of urban and of rural poverty by including both contexts it a comparative analysis. Using the accounts of the Holy Ghosttables it compares the sixteenth century poor relief between rural and urban communities in the Campine region and focusses on differences in the financing and the structure of the social expenditure, the social position of the Holy Ghostmasters and the generosity of the relief. Although surprisingly many similarities in outdoor relief existed between town and village, the extent of the relief was significantly higher in the Campine cities of Herentals and Hoogstraten than in the neighbouring villages. Not the different power structures or degrees of social cohesion and inequality but the scale of the local urban economies and the surplus capacity of the urban middles classes explain these differences.

Tussen corporatisme en kapitalisme?

Wouter Ryckbosch, Anne Winter — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

This article uses returns by nineteen Flemish cities to an industrial survey undertaken by the central authorities in the Austrian Netherlands in 1738, to explore the state of urban industries in the County of Flanders on the eve of an economic revival that would lead into the first industrial revolution on the European continent. By focussing on three empirical questions – the extent and nature of industrial activity, the importance of craft guild organization, and indications of capitalist labour relations – the study aims to contribute to wider debates on the relationship between guilds and economic change in the run-up to industrialization. While the sundry nature of the data complicates their quantitative analysis, they provide valuable insight into the underlying diversity of both social realities and conceptions of ‘industry’ and ‘work’ in this period of transformation. The resulting image confirms a continued dominance of textile production in Flemish cities, in which mixed fabrics have replaced traditional woollens, while showing the tentative emergence of new consumption-culture oriented sectors (such as earthenware, tobacco, soap) and signalling the presence of varied organizational forms (workshops, manufactures, subcontracting, domestic workers, family labour). While the bulk of urban industrial activity was still craft-organized, this did not preclude the presence of highly proletarianized labour relations in both guild-based and non-guild-based activities.

A Clash between Citizenship Projects at Utrecht’s Houtplein in the 1970s

Jasper Bongers — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

This article explores the clashing of two citizenship projects at Utrecht’s Houtplein, a re-education facility for so-called asocial families. On the one hand, there was a citizenship project led by the Public Housing Association, which existed between 1924 and 1974. This organisation’s view was that inhabitants of the Houtplein could be developed into full members of the community if they learned to adhere to the norms of neatness and orderliness. On the other hand, there was the Action Committee Pijlsweerd, a left-leaning organisation consisting of students and other inhabitants of the Pijlsweerd neighbourhood, which challenged the Public Housing Association’s project in the 1970s. Although their goals were very different, also the Action Committee pursued a citizenship project. Their aim was to encourage the inhabitants of the Houtplein to claim citizenship in a direct manner, by standing up against the Housing Association’s alleged paternalism. Analysing the interactions, and ultimate clash, between these two projects provides insight into how citizenship was contested, at the Houtplein and beyond.