Medieval Frontier: Culture and Ecology in Rijnland (Environmental History Series) - Hardcover

Tebrake, William H.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0890962049 ISBN 13: 9780890962046

Publisher: Texas A & M Univ Pr, 1985

Synopsis

Title: Medieval Frontier: Culture And Ecology In Rijnland

Author: William H. Tebrrake

Format: Hardcover Book, No. Pages: 294

Publisher: Texas A&M University Press, ISBN: 0890962049, Year: 1985

The story of Rijnland. a small strip of coastal lowland in the western Netherlands, is part of the legendary Dutch struggle against encroaching water. Rijnland was for centuries a stretch of uninhabited peat bogs and sand dunes. The reclamation and colonization processes that eventually transformed these remote marshes into a commercialized agricultural center form the heart of this book, which chronicles events from a.d. 950 to 1350. Unlike most studies of the European Middle Ages, this work focuses on how people of earlier times dealt with their physical environment.

Combining historical and archaeological research techniques. William TeBrake reconstructs the world of tenth-century Rijnland, at that time one of the most underpopulated and underdeveloped parts of Europe. The author pinpoints the ecological dilemmas faced by Rijnland's settlers, including subsidence, flooding, and destruction of the peat bogs. He shows how, by reclaiming and colonizing the bogs, its residents gradually turned a frontier wilderness along the North Sea into a highly productive agrarian landscape. The settlers dug drainage ditches; constructed a network of canals, dikes, dams, and sluices; and founded more than forty villages. By the late fourteenth century, Rijnlanders, like many of their contemporaries elsewhere in Europe, had managed fairly successfully to harness nature to meet their physical and cultural needs. Their efforts ushered in a new civilization, encouraged the production of food and fiber, and laid the foundation for the picturesque, thriving Netherlands of today.

With its new approach to understanding medieval subsistence strategy, this book will be particularly useful to historical geographers and environmental historians...

About this title

About the Author

WILLIAM H. TEBRAKE received the A.B. degree from Calvin College, the M. A. from the University of Cincinnati, and the Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. He specializes in the environmental and social history of pre-Modern Europe, on which he has published a number of articles. He is associate professor of history at the University of Maine at Orono.

Edition details

• Publisher: Texas A & M Univ Pr
• Publication date: 1985
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0890962049
• ISBN 13: 9780890962046
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 1000