Geography & cartography (c. 500-1500)
More general subjects:
The Rise of Cities Revisited
Reflections on Adriaan Verhulst's Vision of Urban Genesis and Developments in the Medieval Low Countries
Adriaan Verhulst's The Rise of Cities in North-West Europe (1999) is the last comprehensive work written by a single author on the urban genesis and spatial developments of cities in the medieval Low Countries. Since then monographs specialised studies and articles have been published on various cities and towns while urban archaeologists have carried out numerous excavations. Much new knowledge has been gained yet many gaps and the need for comparative overviews remain.Twenty-five years after Verhulst’s synthesis The Rise of Cities Revisited takes a fresh look at the origins and developments of cities and towns in the Low Countries between the tenth and the sixteenth centuries critically assesses progress made in scholarship and outlines future directions for research. The chapters of the book are written by senior and junior specialists from various fields including medieval history historical geography economic history archaeology and building history. The Rise of Cities Revisited presents a state of the art and provides scholars with tools to study this complex subject in future.
‘With Our Backs to the Ocean’: Land, Lordship, Climate Change, and Environment in the North-West European Past
Essays in Memory of Alasdair Ross
This collection of ten essays celebrates the life and career of Dr Alasdair Ross one of Britain’s foremost environmental historians who died in 2017. Inspired by Ross’ own research interests the chapters gathered here explore interlinked themes of land management and property rights terrestrial and aquatic resource exploitation mortality crises and environmental change viewed largely through the lens of the Scottish experience within the broader context of the eastern North Atlantic region and covering a chronology that spans from the sixth century ce up to the present. Including a previously unpublished paper by Ross himself which overturns long-held perceptions of fiscal regimes in medieval Scotland the contributors present radically revisionist or wholly new analyses of key documents and datasets mostly through applying an interdisciplinary ‘environmental turn’ to primary record and narrative sources or advancing new methodological approaches to systems analysis. From saintly interactions with nature to monastic exploitation of natural resources charter records of land-ownership to the physicality of the landscapes recorded on parchment and the human cost of subsistence and mortality crises these papers humanize the discourse around historical climate and environmental change.
Medieval Landscapes of Southern Etruria
The Excavations at Capalbiaccio (1976–2010)
The fortified hilltop town of Capalbiaccio is a lost Etruscan settlement a site that developed out of prehistory to become an important colony and grain provider for the Roman Empire before being sacrificed to medieval intrigue and conquest by the Republic of Siena. The site together with the castle of Tricosto was first excavated forty-five years ago but the results were never published. Then in recent years archaeologist Michelle Hobart was invited to explore the area with a new team and employ the latest techniques of remote sensing to explore the landscape and fortifications. The results of both explorations are presented here for the first time in this volume which combines the invasive and non-invasive approaches of two generations of archaeologists to reveal what attracted settlers to this site from the inhabitants of the late Bronze Age through to the most important families of medieval Tuscany. This book employs the best of the latest geophysical techniques and time-tested approaches to ground the history of Capalbiaccio and to narrate how the fate of this small village was inextricably linked to regional and national networks as control of the territory and the settlement’s reason for being evolved over time.
Territoires, régions, royaumes
Le développement d’une cartographie régionale et locale dans l’Occident latin et le monde arabe (x e-xv e siècle)
Pendant longtemps les travaux sur la cartographie ont surtout porté sur les mappemondes aussi bien dans le monde latin que dans le monde arabo-musulman. Les représentations cartographiques des espaces locaux et régionaux ont suscité un intérêt plus modéré même si les études sur la cartographie à grande ou à moyenne échelle des xii e-xv e siècles connaissent depuis quelques années un renouveau notable tant dans le domaine latin que dans le domaine arabe.
La publication des actes du colloque international qui s'est tenu à Tours en juin 2018 rassemble quinze études consacrées à la représentation cartographique du territoire et plus généralement à la cartographie des espaces régionaux et locaux qui émerge dès le x e siècle dans le monde arabo-musulman et à partir du xii e siècle dans l’Occident latin pour connaître un essor remarquable dans les deux derniers siècles du Moyen Âge. Le livre réunit des articles de synthèse et des études de cas abordant les questions complexes de l'émergence de cette cartographie de ses formes et de ses usages dans le monde arabo-musulman et dans l'Occident latin.
Christian Maps of the Holy Land
Images and Meanings
This book offers a way of reading maps of the Holy Land as visual imagery with religious connotations. Through a corpus of representative examples created between the sixth and the nineteenth centuries it studies the maps as iconic imagery of an iconic landscape and analyses their strategies to manifest the spiritual quality of the biblical topography to support religious tenets and to construct and preserve cultural memory.
Maps of the Holy Land have thus far been studied with methodologies such as cartography and historical geography while the main question addressed was the reliability of the maps as cartographic documents. Through another perspective and using the methodology of visual studies this book reveals that maps of the Holy Land constructed religious messages and were significant instruments through which different Christian cultures (Byzantine Catholic Protestant and Greek Orthodox) shaped their religious identities. It does not seek to ascertain how the maps delivered geographical information but rather how they utilized the geographical information in formulating religious and cultural values.
Through its examination of maps of the Holy Land this book thus explores both Christian visual culture and Christian spirituality throughout the centuries.
From Topography to Text: The Image of Jerusalem in the Writings of Eucherius, Adomnán and Bede
From Topography to Text: The Image of Jerusalem in the Writings of Eucherius Adomnán and Bede uses topographical detail to examine the source material religious imagination and the image of Jerusalem in three related Latin texts from the fifth seventh and eighth centuries. The work introduces an original methodology for analyzing the Jerusalem pilgrim texts defined by their core interest in the commemorative topography of the Christian holy places. By newly identifying the topographical material in Adomnán’s description of Jerusalem the study exposes key distortions in the text its exclusive intramural focus on the Holy Sepulchre and the eschatological image of New Jerusalem that emerges from its description of contemporary Jerusalem. The study verifies the post-Byzantine provenance of Adomnán’s topographical material namely the oral report of Arculf thus redressing scholarly ambivalence regarding Adomnán’s contemporary source.
The new insights into Adomnán’s De locis sanctis including its mental map of Jerusalem provide a template with which to analyze the text’s relationship with the writings of Eucherius and Bede. While Bede’s De locis sanctis has commonly been regarded as an epitome of Adomnán’s work when the sequence structure and images of the texts are compared Eucherius not Adomnán is for Bede the authoritative text.
From Topography to Text offers a significant discussion on the Jerusalem pilgrim texts and the Christian topography of the Holy City while analyzing the image of Jerusalem in the writings of three remote authors who never set foot in the city.
From Topography to Text offers a significant discussion on the Jerusalem pilgrim texts and the Christian topography of the Holy City while analyzing the image of Jerusalem in the writings of three remote authors who never set foot in the city.
Visions of North in Premodern Europe
The North has long attracted attention not simply as a circumpolar geographical location but also as an ideological space a place that is ‘made’ through the understanding imagination and interactions of both insiders and outsiders. The envisioning of the North brings it into being and it is from this starting point that this volume explores how the North was perceived from ancient times up to the early modern period questioning who where and what was defined as North over the course of two millennia.
Covering historical periods as diverse as Ancient Greece to eighteenth-century France and drawing on a variety of disciplines including cultural history literary studies art history environmental history and the history of science the contributions gathered here combine to shed light on one key question: how was the North constructed as a place and a people? Material such as sagas the ethnographic work of Olaus Magnus religious writing maps medical texts and illustrations are drawn on throughout the volume offering important insights into how these key sources continued to be used over time. Selected texts have been compiled into a useful appendix that will be of considerable value to scholars.
Genèse des espaces politiques (IXe-XIIe siècle)
Autour de la question spatiale dans les royaumes francs et post-carolingiens
Depuis le XIXe siècle les historiens français et allemands racontent une histoire fondamentalement différente de la transition entre le monde carolingien et les Xe-XIIe siècles : pour les premiers l’apparition de principautés « territoriales » dans le monde post-carolingien est avant toute chose le signe de la désagrégation des institutions carolingiennes et représente une mutation fondamentale dans l’organisation des pouvoirs. Pour les seconds il n’y a pas de véritable solution de continuité dans un système où le pouvoir a toujours reposé non sur la domination d’un territoire mais sur l’importance des liens interpersonnels entre le roi et l’aristocratie et cela dès l’époque carolingienne. Le but de cet ouvrage est de montrer comment l’importance dévolue au caractère territorial du pouvoir – largement remis en question par la recherche actuelle – a influé sur la manière dont on raconte l’histoire de l’empire carolingien et des royaumes post-carolingiens à l’Est et à l’Ouest du Rhin grâce à plusieurs mises au point historiographiques et à de nombreuses études de cas.
Islands in the West
Classical Myth and the Medieval Norse and Irish Geographical Imagination
This monograph traces the history of one of the most prominent types of geographical myths of the North-West Atlantic Ocean: transmarine otherworlds of blessedness and immortality. Taking the mythologization of the Viking Age discovery of North America in the earliest extant account of Vínland (‘Wine-Land’) and the Norse transmarine otherworlds of Hvítramannaland (‘The Land of White Men’) and the Ódáinsakr/Glæsisvellir (‘Field of the Not-Dead’/‘Shining Fields’) as its starting point the book explores the historical entanglements of these imaginative places in a wider European context. It follows how these Norse otherworld myths adopt adapt and transform concepts from early Irish vernacular tradition and Medieval Latin geographical literature and pursues their connection to the geographical mythology of classical antiquity. In doing so it shows how myths as far distant in time and space as Homer’s Elysian Plain and the transmarine otherworlds of the Norse are connected by a continuous history of creative processes of adaptation and reinterpretation. Furthermore viewing this material as a whole the question arises as to whether the Norse mythologization of the North Atlantic might not only have accompanied the Norse westward expansion that led to the discovery of North America but might even have been among the factors that induced it.
Journeying along Medieval Routes in Europe and the Middle East
Focusing on routes and journeys throughout medieval Europe and the Middle East in the period between Late Antiquity and the thirteenth century this multi-disciplinary book draws on travel narratives chronicles maps charters geographies and material remains in order to shed new light on the experience of travelling in the Middle Ages.
The contributions gathered here explore the experiences of travellers moving between Latin Europe and the Holy Land between southern Italy and Sicily and across Germany and England from a range of disciplinary perspectives. In doing so they offer unique insights into the experience conditions conceptualization and impact of human movement in medieval Europe. Many essays place a strong emphasis on the methodological problems associated with the study of travel and its traces and the collection is enhanced by the juxtaposition of scholarly work taking different approaches to this challenge. The papers included here engage in cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary dialogue and are supported by a discursive contextualizing introduction by the editors.
Land Assessment and Lordship in Medieval Northern Scotland
This book re-examines the ancient landscape divisions of medieval northern Scotland and discusses these in a European context. It demonstrates for the first time that the secular and ecclesiastical units of lordship across more than half of medieval and later Scotland were built out of an earlier Pictish (pre-ad 900) unit of land assessment the dabhach (plural dabhaichean). It is also demonstrated that these dabhaichean remained in use as viable units of land assessment for many hundreds of years. Some were still being listed in estate rentals in the 1930s giving them a working lifespan of over 1000 years.
Essentially dabhaichean were the building blocks from which the medieval kingdom of the Scots was largely founded. They formed the basis of larger units of secular and ecclesiastical lordship parishes tax assessments and common services. The latter included bridge service road service fighting service and hunting service. They provided order for society. Importantly this book also argues that each of these units contained all of the natural resources required to sustain communities from year to year such as access to fishings woodland peat meadows arable land and grazings. In terms of environmental history the division of the landscape into dabhaichean resulted in the increasingly efficient exploitation (and management) of these resources across time.
La frontière méditerranéenne du XVe au XVIIe siècle
Échanges, circulations et affrontements
Le cadre géographique et chronologique retenu par cet ouvrage collectif le place immédiatement sous les auspices de Fernand Braudel. Comme la fameuse Méditerranée de celui-ci il semble osciller entre ce qui fait l’unité économique et culturelle du bassin méditerranéen et ce qui au contraire le divise de façon radicale essentiellement le conflit entre Islam et Chrétienté. Mais en rassemblant des contributions de spécialistes des deux bords il tente de connecter des historiographies rarement amenées à se rencontrer.
Les affrontements entre Chrétienté et Islam se poursuivent à cette époque et des références à la croisade ou au djihad sont employées à l’appui de la revendication d’une souveraineté universelle ou de la légitimation d’une action aux yeux de l’opinion. Mais les conflits internes aux deux camps l’emportent et amènent à des alliances plus ou moins explicites entre « chrétiens » et « musulmans » tandis que les échanges commerciaux s’intensifient. La circulation de biens matériels et les transferts de technologie de part et d’autre de la frontière sont attestés souvent dans un contexte d’opposition sourde ou de compétition.
La notion même de frontière se précise alors à travers l’essor de la cartographie l’affirmation de la souveraineté des Etats sur les territoires et la conclusion de traités. L’évolution de l’art de la guerre amène un renforcement des lignes de frontière et du contrôle du centre politique sur les périphéries. Les juristes s’emploient à légitimer l’appropriation de la mer par les Etats à travers la notion « d’eaux territoriales ». Néanmoins des zones de l’entre-deux demeurent et offrent des ressources à des spécialistes de l’affrontement aussi bien que de la négociation et de la circulation dont plusieurs apparaissent dans ce livre en tant que groupes ou individus.
Selon une démarche aujourd’hui bien établie chez les historiens les contributions à ce volume combinent une approche locale et une approche globale qui s’éloignent des grands déterminismes géographiques et économiques braudéliens. Des fragments de vie peuvent par leur particularité révéler un aspect plus vaste et représentatif du type de relations qui s’instaurent alors en Méditerranée en un temps où course transport et commerce sont étroitement imbriqués.
Landscapes or seascapes?
The history of the coastal environment in the North Sea area reconsidered
This volume deals with the geographical evolution of the coastal areas adjacent to the North Sea with a focus upon the last two thousand years. Although many articles are reworked in a fundamental way most of them are the result of a conference which took place in 2010 at Ghent University (Belgium) and which was actually the third in a series of symposiums on the same broad theme. The first took place in 1958 and the second in 1978. Recognized specialists were invited to present their research in a variety of fields relating to the subject. The various disciplines in which the coastal plains are studied too often remain within their own borders and so we have set out to thoroughly interweave them in the hope that this will spur greater interdisciplinary cooperation. This collection of texts is intended to appeal not just to experts in historical geography but to historians and scientists working in any field who wish to gain insights into the present ‘state of play’.
Detailed geological research about many areas provided new data and researchers gradually gained a better understanding of the close relationship between the processes of deposition sea-level change and land formation taking place across multiple regions. In the same time historical and archaeological research also evolved. Most significantly ideas regarding the chronology of human occupation have changed a lot. This scope of the research collected in this volume is important because it has increasingly become evident that land loss and gain were the results of regional factors including and especially human activities. Moreover it is now clear that humans devised survival strategies and thus organized their activities in relation to the environment on a regional basis which means that the causes of local changes must have been both natural and socio-historical. It has now become clearer than ever that there is no single chronological scheme capable of explaining the coastal evolution across the entirety of the North Sea area.
Erik Thoen is professor in rural history and environmental history at Ghent University (B) and co-ordinator of the CORN network.
Guus J. Borger is emeritus professor in historical geography at the University of Amsterdam and the VU University Amsterdam (NL).
Adriaan M.J. de Kraker is senior researcher in historical geography at the VU University Amsterdam (NL).
Tim Soens is professor in rural history and environmental history at the University of Antwerp (B).
Dries Tys is professor at the Brussels Free University (VUB) (B).
Lies Vervaet is assistant specialised in rural history at Ghent University (B).
Henk J.T. Weerts is senior researcher paleogeography at the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands.
The Indies and the Medieval West
Thought, Report, Imagination
Winner of The European Society for the Study of English - Book Award 2014 (Cultural Studies in English - Junior scholars)
This volume offers a wide-ranging and interdisciplinary treatment of European representations of the Indies between the twelfth and the fifteenth centuries. Drawing on encyclopaedias cosmographies and cartography romance hagiography and legend it traces the influence of classical late antique and early medieval ideas on the later medieval geographical imagination including the imagined and experienced Indies of European travellers. Addressing the evidence of Latin and vernacular manuscripts the book explores readers’ encounters with the most widely read travellers’ accounts in particular those of Marco Polo Odorico da Pordenone and Niccolò Conti. Chapters on The Book of Sir John Mandeville medieval Europe’s most idiosyncratic yet popular work of geography alongside world maps produced across Europe point to the ways in which representations of the Indies were inflected by temporal concerns specifically their relationship to Latin Christendom’s past present and future. The Indies relates the texts documents maps and manuscripts it discusses closely to the changing ideological concerns of their times notably those of mission and conversion crusade conquest and economics. Nonetheless the relationships that the work delineates between spatial representations and notions of dominance whether religious political economic or epistemic have implications for the post-medieval world.
Sacred Sites and Holy Places
Exploring the Sacralization of Landscape through Time and Space
In this volume two important veins of interdisciplinary research into the medieval period in Scandinavia and the Baltic region are merged namely the Christianization process and landscape studies. The volume authors approach the common theme of sacrality in landscape from such various viewpoints as archaeology philology history of religion theology history classical studies and art history. A common theme in all articles is a theoretical approach complemented by illustrative case studies from the Scandinavian Baltic or Classical worlds. Aspects of pagan religion as well as Christianity and the establishment of the early Church are considered within both geographical setting and social landscape while the study of maps place names and settlement patterns introduces new methodologies and perspectives to expose and define the sacral landscape of these regions. The contributions are put into perspective by a comparison with research into the sacral landscapes of Central Europe and the Classical world.
New interdisciplinary research methods and new models have been developed by the contributors to present new vistas of sacrality in the Scandinavian and the Baltic landscape. To open up these case studies a selection of over sixty images and maps accompanies this cutting-edge research allowing the reader to explore sacralization and the Christianization process within its medieval setting.
Synesios von Kyrene: Politik - Literatur - Philosophie
Philosopher and man of letters Lybian magnate political writer in Constantinople pupil of Hypatia the neoplatonist and eventually metropolitan bishop of Ptolemais - Synesius of Cyrene is among the most interesting figures of Late Antiquity.
The present volume brings together the papers presented at the conference “Synesios von Kyrene: Politik - Literatur - Philosophie” held at the University of Constance in November 2008. They offer a broad approach to selected aspects concerning Synesius’ works as well as to the historical background philosophical contexts and reception in scholarship and literature from Late Antiquity to the present.
Helmut Seng is Associate Professor at the University of Constance and Lecturer at the Institute of Classical Philology at the University of Frankfurt. Main research interests include Synesius and the Chaldaean Oracles as well as aspects of form and of intertextuality in Greek and Latin literature.
Lars Hoffmann was a researcher at the University of Mainz where he taught in all fields of Byzantine studies. Since 2010 he has been a researcher at the Max-Planck-Institute for European Legal History at Frankfurt and in collaboration with other scholars he is responsible for a new edition of a collection of Byzantine legal sources. Main research interests include the cultural history of Byzantium as well as the tradition and reception of ancient and Byzantine Greek texts.
Byzanz in Europa. Europas östliches Erbe
Akten des Kolloquiums 'Byzanz in Europa' vom 11. bis 15. Dezember 2007 in Greifswald
The role of Byzantium in the Middle Ages is comparable to that of a modern political superpower such as the United States. The latter has a pervasive cultural impact on Europe and Asia and similar cross-cultural relationships between East and West were also evident in medieval Europe when Byzantine literature music art and ritual were not only known but also studied and appropriated throughout the West. Scholarship on Byzantium and its relationship with Western Europe has yet to explore the full dynamics of this relationship or the extent to which the West was influenced by Byzantine culture. The papers presented in this volume offer a wide interdisciplinary perspective on the crucial importance of Byzantium for Western Europe featuring articles on art and architectural history social and religious history musicology literature historiography gender studies. The essays originate from an interdisciplinary conference held in the Wissenschaftskolleg Greifswald in December 2007 which brought together an international group of scholars. The proceedings of this gathering give a new and compelling testimony to the exceptionally high status of Byzantine culture in Western Europe and invite further studies on the exceptional and unique role of the Byzantine Empire positioned at the crux between Europe and Asia.
Michael Altripp received his PhD in Early Christian Archaeology and Byzantine Art from the University of Mainz and currently holds an Associate Professorship at the University of Greifswald. His main fi elds of interests are at the crossroads of art and architecture with theology and address in particular issues of exegesis iconography and liturgy as well as the dynamics of cross-cultural exchange between East and West.
Au-delà de la Perse et de l'Arménie. L'Orient latin et la découverte de l'Asie intérieure
Quelques textes inégalement connus aux origines de l'alliance entre Francs et Mongols (1145-1262)
L'apparition des Mongols surgissant dans les premières décennies du XIIIe siècle des profondeurs de l'Asie a changé le destin de l'Europe orientale. Elle a en même temps ouvert aux Européens de l'Ouest les routes de l'Asie. Depuis la fin de l'époque romaine des peuples venus des steppes s'étaient succédés pénétrant à plusieurs reprises plus ou moins profondément dans l'espace européen où plusieurs d'entre eux s'étaient implantés. Les Occidentaux ne s'étaient guère préoccupés de s'informer das causes de ces migrations et de leur llieu d'origine. La première campagne mongole en 1222 n'avait pas inquiété l'Occident. Il en fut autrement de la seconde pendant laquelle les "Tartares" arrivèrent en Hongrie en 1237 et poursuivirent leur avance en direction de l'Ouest; mais cette menace s'estompa vers 1260. Il fallut pour que les choses changent que le danger se rapproche des terres franques du royaume latin d'Orient. C'est lorsque les Mongols menacent Antioche en 1243 que l'on commence à s'émouvoir. Et c'est alors qu'apparaissent les ambassades qui seront en même temps des voyages de découverte. Ce sont ces relations de voyage les unes développées les autres très brèves qui sont présentées dans ce recueil. On y lira les témoignages suivants: l'émergence de l'image du Prêtre Jean chez Otton de Freising la Relation de David (en deux versions) les renseignements donnés à Mathieu Paris par André de Longjumeau l'Histoire des Tartares de Simon de Saint-Quentin des lettres du gouverneur de Perse Eljigideï ou celle de Hülegü à Saint Louis ou celle du connétable d'Arménie à des cousins francs. Tous ces documents antérieurs aux voyages de Marco Polo nous offrent un aperçu inédit en traduction française de la façon dont les occidentaux ont essayé de s'informer sur la civilisation et le monde mongols dans la deuxième moitié du XIIIe siècle.
Jean Richard membre de l'Institut professeur émérite de l'université de Dijon est un spécialiste reconnu internationalement pour ses recherches sur les récits de voyages au moyen âge.
Texte français.
De l'Inde. Les voyages en Asie de Niccolo de' Conti
De varietate fortunae, livre IV
Le Livre IV du "De varietate fortunae" de Poggio Bracciolini rapporte le compte rendu que Niccolo de' Conti fit de ses voyages en Inde et dans le Sud-Est asiatique entre 1414 et 1439. A ce titre il a joui d'une vaste diffusion indépendamment du reste de l'ouvrage comme l'attestent un certain nombre de manuscrits contenant le seul livre IV ainsi que la première édition du texte latin du "De varietate fortunae" ("India recognita" 1492) limitée elle aussi à ce dernier livre. Le succès du livre est lié aux informations nouvelles qu'il contient sur des régions jusque là mal connues (intérieur de l'Inde Birmanie Java Bornéo ...) qui seront exploitées par la cartographie et par les recueils de voyage en particulier celui de Ramusio "Delle navigazioni et viaggi". Mais le compte rendu de Conti assume aussi un intérêt majeur car il se situe à une période charnière transition entre l'époque où l'Asie est "découverte" par les missionnaires et les marchands lors de la domination mongole (XIIIe et XIVe siècles: Guillaume de Rubrouck Marco Polo etc. ...) et celle où les expéditions maritimes des portugais vont leur assurer la maîtrise du commerce dans ces contrées. Le texte de Conti nous intéressera donc aussi bien dans son contenu que dans sa forme; l'introduction ainsi que les notes s'efforceront d'établir des comparaisons nombreuses avec d'autres récits de voyage concernant les mêmes contrées tant par ceux qui ont précédé Conti (Marco Polo Ibn Battuta ...) que par ceux qui l'ont directement suivi (Duarte Brabosa Tomé Pires ...).
Bruxelles et sa rivière
Genèse d'un territoire urbain (12e - 18e siècle)
Le contrôle et le partage de l'eau sont d'importants outils du pouvoir qu'il s'agisse d'orienter le développement d'une ville de maîtriser certaines activités ou de soutenir la stabilisation des populations. L'étude de la gestion de l'eau trop souvent oubliée des grandes synthèses historiques mérite un regard approfondi tant elle éclaire d'un jour nouveau l'histoire de nos villes. Cet ouvrage dans lequel la Senne rivière de Bruxelles sert de fil conducteur à un périple historique renouvelé entraîne le lecteur depuis le bassin des fontaines jusqu'à la roue des nombreux moulins de la région et montre que quelles que soient l'époque et l'échelle spatiale concernées la maîtrise de l'eau a été au cœur de logiques territoriales dont nous sommes encore les héritiers.
A l'échelle du Brabant le prince veilla dès le 12e siècle à maximiser le potentiel économique de la Senne. Il cadenassa la rivière à l'amont de Bruxelles et établit plusieurs moulins en son cœur. A l'échelle de l'hinterland bruxellois les capitaux urbains valorisèrent les moindres affluents durant tout le Moyen Age par l'établissement de longs chapelets d'étangs de pisciculture et d'innombrables moulins tandis qu'au 16e siècle le creusement du canal de Willebroek consacra l'emprise de la cité bien au-delà de ses murs. Enfin à l'intérieur de la ville la géographie de la distribution de l'eau quotidienne traduisait bien l'emprise des différents pouvoirs urbains. Les grandes familles bruxelloises contrôlaient les premiers points d'eau dispersés dans les quartiers urbanisés les autorités communales étalaient la magnificience de la ville dans un réseau de fontaines d'apparat érigées aux points névralgiques de la cité tandis qu'au 17e siècle la Cour développait son propre réseau au départ de la machine hydraulique de Saint-Josse.
Ces aménagements hydrauliques provoquaient bien souvent des réactions imprévues dans le milieu. Inondations tarissements ensablement etc. venaient régulièrement contrecarrer les désirs des gestionnaires entraînés malgré eux dans de nouveaux cycles d'interventions. Ce livre richement illustré montre que les dynamiques environnementales participent pleinement à la construction des rapports socio-économiques souvent conflictuels qui se nouent autour de la gestion de l'eau.