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This article argues that the long-term development of premodern Dutch water management was partly shaped through a combination of institutional factors, and cultural norms and values. Departing from the institutional focus in the narrow sense that predominates in Milja van Tielhof's Consensus and conflict, it makes the case that historians should take into account the influence of changes in the nature and ideology of the Dutch political elite between the late medieval 'princely period' and the early modern Dutch Republic. This is mainly demonstrated in reference to changes around the ideological precept of the Common Good (bonum commune). Using a combination of late medieval and early modern examples, the central contention is that the oligarchical elite that came to dominate both water management and the overarching political structure of the Dutch Republic, acquired a new notion of 'shared interests' due to their engagement on all political levels of the new state.

This article offers an examination of the seigneurie (heerlijkheid) as an element in the institutional framework of Netherlandish water management. The investigation builds on a recent historiographical trend that questions whether inclusive systems of water management can be tied to 'proto-democratic' decision-making in the premodern Low Countries. Focusing on the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century river region of the duchy of Guelders, the central question is to what extent lords, ladies, and their seigneurial officials impacted the natural environment of people living in rural regions. Based on a combination of seigneurial accounts and court records, the main thesis is that the aristocratic element formed an ambiguous yet important cog in the late medieval system of water management in Guelders.

AbstractThis article charts the long-term development of seigneurial governance within the principality of Guelders in the Low Countries. Proceeding from four quantitative cross-sections (c. 1325, 1475, 1540, 1570) of seigneurial lordships, the conclusion is that seigneurial governance remained stable in late medieval Guelders. The central argument is that this persistence of seigneurial governance was an effect of active collaboration between princely administrations, lords, and local communities. Together, the princely government and seigneuries of Guelders formed an integrated, yet polycentric, state. The article thereby challenges the narrative of progressive state centralisation that predominates in the historiography of pre-modern state formation.