Environmental History of Early Modern Agricultural Administration

Today effects of administrative action can be seen in the landscape: Boundaries between nation states often can be discerned from satellite as agricultural landscapes bear the signs of different administrations. In Early modern times agriculture was the most important sector in the economy, as both food and energy needs had to be served. During the 16th. to the 18th. centuries various new techniques were developed to sustain control over the agricultural production. Such tools were maps, registers with topographical descriptions and inventories of homesteads, livestock and infrastructure. The grip on the -rural population was tightened, and various conflicts arose around questions of resource use and allocation. A well known example are forests and the regulations developed to optimize their use according to the different interests seigniors and rural population had in it. Whereas thematic approaches (as in a "forest history") have produced very valuable material, an understanding of the ecological consequences agricultural operations had on the land must come from a complete analysis of the total agro-ecosystem in question. Thus a whole seigniorial estate has to be focused on, with special attention to examples where natural boundaries define an agro-ecosystem distinct from others under the same persons rule. In a precursor to this project it was decided to use an alpine village and a village situated on marginal non-alpine land as examples in an interdisciplinary study on population, production and agro-ecosystem as the three basic factors of the development of cultural landscape. The historical study undertaken within this project aims at putting these two examples into the broader perspective of the seigniorial estate, looking for the mutual cause-effect web of the administrative actions and ecological and social consequences they had. The situation in the Archbishopry of Salzburg in the 16th century will be analyzed, as well as the 18th century estate of the Benedictine Monastery of Göttweig, Lower Austria. A large and yet unedited body of sources will be prepared for edition in the project. The edited texts will be supplied for further research on CD. Comparative analysis of administrative action and its effects will be undertaken. A database on local village regulations of environmental matters such as water, soil and infrastructure, the "Environmental History Database Austria" will be used for further comparative evaluation. The material will be published in a wide range of journals with emphasis put on various issues, times and places to foster interdisciplinary use of the material for landscape planning processes as well as for use within the scientific communities.