Communities, Environment and Regulation in the Premodern World: Power and Community Formation in Premodernity

Who had a say in making decisions about the natural world, when, how and to what end? How were rights to natural resources established? How did communities handle environmental crises? And how did dealing with the environment have an impact on the power relations in communities? This volume explores communities’ relationship with the natural environment in customs and laws, ideas, practices and memories. Taking a transregional perspective, it considers how the availability of natural resources in diverse societies within and outside Europe impacted mobility and gender structures, the consolidation of territorial power and property rights. Communities, Environment and Regulation in the Premodern World marks Peter Hoppenbrouwers’s career, spanning over three decades, as a professor of medieval history at Leiden University.