Early modern Dalmatian landscape and demographic changes in the multiple borderland area: cartographic vs. statistical data

Abstract

This paper shows interdisciplinary insight into economy-driven early modern environmental change, using the example of the privately financed venture of marshland reclamation on Count Borelli's Vrana Estate. The research goal was to compare cartographic and demographic statistical sources to see how such an improvement was represented in correlated data, and if certain quantitative features of ecological, economic, and demographic development could be accurately measured. The focus was on the direct relationship between the enlargement of arable fields by drainage and the gradual overall advancement of the area. Quantitative analysis failed to offer reliable results, primarily due to inconsistent cartometric and content comparability of available sources. Qualitative analysis revealed that marshland drainage and soil improvement of potentially very fertile land, along with the colonisation of new inhabitants as agrarian land users and taxpayers, provided a moderate opportunity for demographic increase in rather depressive circumstances. Due to Venetian-Ottoman wars, the once agriculturally prosperous area of Vrana was rendered into an ecologically-unstable, economically-devastated, politically and militarily-pressured, socially-wrecked, and demographically half-deserted landscape.