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Clusters and the spatial concentration of economic development are themes which crop up more and more in recent debates in social and economic history. This special issue wants to foster an interdisciplinary crossover of theories and ideas between economic geographers and historians, and focuses on the development of several branches of agribusiness (dairy, horticulture, olive oil and agricultural machinery) in South-western and North-western Europe during the past two centuries. The five case studies unravel and analyse the connections and interdependencies between economic actors, knowledge institutions and the State in the agro-food chain.This analysis results in four main conclusions. Firstly, in the formation of regional economic clusters not only natural conditions played a major role, or other economic determinants such as an easy access to markets. Social and cultural connections between individuals and organizations that were shaped over time, and related to geographical proximity, were important too. Secondly, governments, entrepreneurs and interest organizations, who were firmly rooted in the region's history, often cooperated and stimulated cluster development via regulatory frameworks, educational and scientific policies.Thirdly, not only consensus but also discord and competition can foster the clustering of economic activities. Finally, multi-scalar perspectives are needed in order to grasp the importance of connections between clusters and actors outside the region.

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The centenary of the Great War has amplified the voices that advocate the preservation of remaining war traces in the Belgian landscape. Modern technologies, such as Lidar, have recently highlighted that much war heritage is still preserved either at or below the surface, including mine craters, shell holes and trenches. However, these traces are largely hidden from the human eye. Less is known about the impact of the Great War on the overall landscape properties and the changing experience of the rural landscape. In this study, changes in land use and landscape structure since the mid-19 th century were reconstructed for four study sites in Flanders that experienced the Great War differently. Historical maps and aerial photography were combined to produce time series of landscape properties, time depth maps and landscape fragmentation and diversity metrics. The interpretation of changes in land use and landscape patterns reveals that the Great War and postwar land recovery did only mark a break for some landscape elements. For two study sites along the Belgian front that were intensively degraded by the war activities, no significant difference in landscape evolution could be identified compared to two study sites that hardly suffered during the Great War. For the most part, long-term socioeconomic developments eroded the significance of the war as a short-term cataclysmic event.