Rural communities, land clearance and water management in the Po Valley in the central and late Middle Ages

Campopiano, Michele

doi:10.1080/03044181.2013.834644

Cited by 11 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…This idea takes for granted that hydraulic and pumping machines of the type that flourished in England in the nineteenth century have but a 200-year history at best. The historical record proves that these machines have a millennial-long history, as historians have demonstrated elsewhere (Brooks, 2006;Campopiano, 2013;Cascio & Malanima, 2008;Ceccarelli, 2008;Smith & Wolfe, 1997). The idea of natural limits also takes for granted that there was one and only one industrial revolution, that of the eighteenth century, that catapulted mining to an industrial level.…”

Section: Reconsidering the Marxist Viewmentioning

confidence: 57%

Capital and Mining Property Relations: Reconsidering Marxist Understanding of Feudal Mining Land

Graulau¹

2020

J Historical Sociology

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Marxism holds that feudal mining land was characterized by production relations that gave lords the upper hand. Lacking productive capital, mining land was generally a site of coercive feudalproperty relations. The idea is indefensible, as evidence shows that mining lands triggered property arrangements antagonizing lordly power. This article discusses the labor and capital relations that transformed feudal land into mining land. It argues that this transformation challenged the supremacy of feudal lords by triggering property relations relatively unconstrained by feudal lordly power. The article concludes that mining lands were sites of antagonistic relations, were capital confronted feudal landed property, aiming at isolating lords from the gains of mines. 1 | INTRODUCTION The dominant Marxist explanation of the European transition has problems making sense of feudal mining lands. It acknowledges that mining flourished across feudal Europe, from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries. But it never admits that economic and social relations inherent to feudal mining lands contributed to the European transition

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Section: Reconsidering the Marxist Viewmentioning

confidence: 57%

Capital and Mining Property Relations: Reconsidering Marxist Understanding of Feudal Mining Land

Graulau¹

2020

J Historical Sociology

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“…In turn, situations such as these could also work detrimentally to the future sustainability of the commons as an institution, a low participation rate bringing with it associated problems in regulation and investment (as in more contemporary situations: Trawick ; Bankoff ). The same type of story, with strong parallels, has been told with regard to the effective functioning of water management institutions (another possible form of institution for collective action) in the late medieval and early modern Low Countries and northern Italy; the polarization of landownership, frequently becoming absentee, lessening the amount of stakeholders with the propensity to invest labour, time and funds in a sustainable ecosystem (Soens ; Campopiano ; Curtis and Campopiano ).…”

Section: A Commons For All? Contextualizing the Commonsmentioning

confidence: 92%

Did the Commons Make Medieval and Early Modern Rural Societies More Equitable? A Survey of Evidence from acrossWesternEurope, 1300–1800

Curtis

2015

Journal of Agrarian Change

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The view of the commons as archaic, 'backward' and 'irrational' institutions for the management of resources has now been revised in favour of a more positive one, for both past and present societies. Indeed, it is clear that the commons had multifarious ecological and economic benefits for both medieval and early modern rural societies in Western Europe. That being the case, many scholars have seen the increasing expropriation of the commons in the transition to the early modern period as a sign of increasing inequality characterizing pre-industrial Europe, and many have lamented the loss of communal grazing privileges connected to processes such as land enclosure -pushing poor peasants into the 'abyss' with the removal of their final form of welfare. However, in this paper it is argued that the social distribution of the benefits to the commons were rarely, if ever, entirely equitable. In fact, in many historical contexts the benefits of the commons could also be highly restricted -crystallizing and entrenching stratifications themselves, and even serving as the 'vehicle' of further inequality. The expropriation of the commons did not necessarily make Western European rural societies any more unequal.

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“…Hydrological features of the river were in constant change given the agrarian colonization of its valleys between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries. Much of the labour of medieval men and women here was expended into clearing lands and fighting against the enlargement of swamps, marshes, and marginal lands (Andreolli, ; Bassetti & Borsato, ; Bonoldi, ; Campopiano, ; Chiogna et al, : 431–432; Curtis & Campopiano, ; Franceschini, : 251; Hoffman, ; Saggioro, ; Squatriti, ).…”

Section: Capital Requirements Of Growth Of Mining: Cementing the Breamentioning

confidence: 99%

Capitalist miners in feudal Europe: A commentary on Marxist agrarian history

Graulau

2019

Journal of Agrarian Change

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Marxist agrarian history conceives of medieval mining as a pre‐capitalist and backward economy isolated from all forms of capitalist change. Mining history says otherwise. Evidence confirms that mining labour enjoyed the conditions for an early emancipation from serfdom, rooted in the ascent of a European silver‐based monetary economy from the eleventh century onwards. Feudal lords were caught between Scylla and Charybdis, vulnerable to the rise of free miners and a mining economy that demanded capital outlays. Drawing upon the case study of mining in the feudal principality of Trent, the article briefly sketches the rise of capitalist miners and the conditions that gave them decisive advantages over feudal lords. The article summarizes general arguments and lines of inquiry for opening the field of Marxist agrarian history to the study of mining and extractive economies.

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Rural communities, land clearance and water management in the Po Valley in the central and late Middle Ages

Cited by 11 publications

References 0 publications

Capital and Mining Property Relations: Reconsidering Marxist Understanding of Feudal Mining Land

Capital and Mining Property Relations: Reconsidering Marxist Understanding of Feudal Mining Land

Did the Commons Make Medieval and Early Modern Rural Societies More Equitable? A Survey of Evidence from acrossWesternEurope, 1300–1800

Capitalist miners in feudal Europe: A commentary on Marxist agrarian history

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