Sustainability and the history of knowledge

The Journal for the History of Knowledge recently published an article by Sebastian Felten, "Sustainable Gains: Dutch Investment and Bureaucratic Rationality in Eighteenth-Century Saxon Mines". The abstract:

A late-eighteenth-century encounter between Dutch merchants and cameralist Saxon officials is used to argue two related points. First, the history of knowledge can help us rethink hierarchical power structures like the Saxon mining bureaucracy. Mine owners had a right to information and could not be forced to pay contributions, which meant that mining officials were solicitous in sharing knowledge, fretted about investors’ favor, and took their desire for revenue into consideration. These observations directly challenge the traditional absolutist image of the Saxon mining bureaucracy. Second, the history of knowledge can help explain how certain rationalities (that is, combinations of means, ends, and values) came into being. Saxon officials sought to situate short-term income and expense in a success story that spanned decades and centuries. Informed by the concept of Nachhalt (sustainability), Saxon officials saw profit even in mines that lost money. This kind of sustainability thinking is best explained via the archival practices of the mining bureaucracy: officials collected information from yield sheets and local lore in order to calculate long-term outputs, to speculate about untapped deposits, and to disburse as little profit as possible. When the Dutch eventually understood this rationality, they withdrew. Saxony’s early modern mining bureaucracy was dismantled by liberal reforms in 1850s, but its peculiar brand of sustainability, aiming to extract resources at almost all costs, likely survived the dawn of industrial capitalism as young engineers and administrators became versed in it at the Freiberg Mining Academy.

For a different take on the origins of German sustainability thought, see Peter Sand's post here. 

Star vaulting on the ground floor of the Saxon Mining Office, Freiberg
(photo: Norbert Kaiser)

Regional planning in a decentralized state

The early-modern Netherlands continue to inspire interesting historical scholarship on environmental regulation (see, e.g. here). Last year's Environment and History had an article by Milja van Tielhof, "Regional Planning in a Decentralised State: How Administrative Practices contributed to Consensus-Building in Sixteenth-Century Holland". The abstract:

This article examines how a regional drainage system in the northern part of Holland in the Late Middle Ages could emerge despite the fact that the weak central state was hardly able to provide the necessary coordination nor prevent free-riding. Institutions, defined as rules and norms, including practices, procedures and techniques, play a key role in the argument. Four traditional administrative practices are identified as essential to the emergence of regional water control: a broad consultation process, by which opponents of new plans were also heard; landowners giving their explicit consent to plans and their costs; the proportional division of the costs; and the use of compensation for damage suffered. These practices respected local autonomy and broadened the level of support among the local stakeholders. The effectiveness of the practices was strengthened when they were used in combination with a technique provided by the Habsburg state: the enqueste or inquiry. This was a technique for gathering reliable, relevant and detailed information at the local and regional level. In this case study, the information on landscape and water use, collected by the 1544 Commission of Inquiry, facilitated cooperation between communities that enjoyed a high degree of self-governance.

Inter-imperial riparian law VI: Miner as an inter-imperial legal authority and Conclusion

On Friday we discussed the place of French and American law in Privy Council water decisions, leading up to the seminal 1858 case of Miner v. Gilmour. Today we'll look at how Miner became an inter-imperial authority, as Lord Kingsdown's summary of the relative rights of riparian owners was cited widely throughout the British Empire and beyond (for examples of the case's influence, see the article on which this series is based).

Though arising in a case in which the applicable law was the old French law of Canada East, on the imperial periphery, it was taken as a faithful exposition of the common law of England, the imperial metropolis. In the 1876 case of Lyon v. Fishmongers’ Company, for instance, dealing with the right of access of riparian owners to the River Thames, the House of Lords (at the time the highest court for cases arising in Britain itself) referred to it as one of ‘the best authorities’ on riparian doctrine.

"a lord of appeal" [Colin Blackburn].
(Spy, Vanity Fair, 19 Nov. 1881)

Perhaps the most interesting reliance on Miner (for our purposes) in the water jurisprudence of the British Empire came in two decisions authored by the British judge Colin Blackburn. In the House of Lords case of Orr Ewing v. Colquhoun (1877), Blackburn rejected the rule of Scottish law applied by the Scottish court below, arguing (inter alia), "If such be the law of Scotland it is different from what Lord Kingsdown, in [Miner v. Gilmour], states to be the law of England and France". Lord Blackburn, it seems, was ready to modify the law of the metropolis (albeit of Scotland, a jurisdiction of secondary importance, and one in which the civil law, not the common law, applied), bending it to conform to the law as laid down in Miner, a case governed by the law of a foreign empire.

A few years later came Commissioners of French Hoek v. Hugo, an appeal to the Privy Council of a judgment of the supreme court of the Cape Colony, in today’s South Africa.  Governing the dispute over the waters of two small watercourses was what is known as Roman-Dutch law. This was the law in force in the Cape Colony when it was ceded by the Dutch to the British at the end of the Napoleonic wars (the metropolitan Netherlands had by this point adopted the Napoleonic Code for use in the home country), and, as the colony had been conquered from another state, not “settled”, this was the law that remained in force under British rule. Like the pre-Revolutionary French law in force in Quebec, Roman-Dutch law was based largely on the writings of learned ‘civilian’ jurists writing in the Roman law tradition. Indeed, in addition to Cape Colony cases and Roman-Dutch sources, lawyers for the appellants cited French treatises in support of their argument.

Writing for the Privy Council in French Hoek, Lord Blackburn referred approvingly to the summary of the law of riparian rights in Miner v. Gilmour, seeming to attach some importance to the similar positions of the Roman-influenced civil law in Canada East and the Cape Colony:

Dutch drinking water

David Zetland and Bene Colenbrander recently posted "The Evolution of the Dutch Drinking Water Sector". The abstract:

Dutch drinking water companies (DWCs) have brought more water of better quality to more people over the past 160 years, but their institutional environment has changed with social priorities. We divide these changes into four eras in which an initial solution leads to a new constraint that forces a change in priorities and thus DWC actions. The first era begins around 1850 when polluted common pool water attracts sellers of drinking water as a private good. Priorities changed around 1900 as the government pushed for a network expansion that would bring drinking water services to all as a public good. The third era began around 1950 as strains on common-pool budgets and water supplies shifted the focus to rationalization and efficiency. The fourth and current era began around 1970 with DWCs being asked to restore ecosystems and play a larger role in the community. These shifts demonstrate how the path towards clean, safe drinking water may twist and turn as new opportunities eclipse past successes and changing priorities shift the relative costs and benefits of different actions.

Legal history of the Scheldt

Fragment of an engraving by F. Galle, ca 1580
(Bergen op Zoom in Pictures)

Otto Vervaart's Rechtsgeschiedenis Blog recently posted on "The Schelde river, a disputed boundary", examining, among other sites, the Scheldt River Collection of the Peace Palace Library. Vervaart gives some background (the river is called Schelde in Dutch and Escaut in French):

The navigation on the Schelde had been already an issue long before the Belgian independence in 1839. During the Dutch Revolt in the sixteenth century the blockade of the Schelde massively damaged the trade to and from Antwerp, and prompted many Flemish merchants to go to the North. Amsterdam’s growth in economic power around 1600 is to a substantial degree due to an influx of merchants from Flanders, their talents and networks. However, this period does not come into view in the digital collection. The Peace Palace Library has digitized books from its own collection. Apparently fifteen works from 1784 and 1785 are the earliest available. Among these works is a treatise by someone more famous for his role in French history. Honoré Gabriel de Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau (1749-1791) published a treatise with the title Doutes sur la liberté de l’Escaut, réclamée par l’empereur; sur les causes & sur les conséquences probables de cette réclamation (London 1785). It was this work that brought Mirabeau to the attention of the general public in France. The Peace Palace Library digitized also a contemporary Dutch translation of this treatise. Some of the digitized publications discuss the role of the Schelde in Dutch and Belgian history starting with the medieval period, for example Charles Terlinden’s study ‘The History of the Scheldt’, History 4 (1920) 185-197, 5 (1921) 1-10, which sparked immediately a reaction from a Dutch historian, F. de Bas, ‘Another version of the Scheldt history’, History 5 (1921) 159-170.

The rivalry between the Dutch North and the Flemish South has not been the only cause for conflicts. The Dutch neutrality during the First World War made matters even more acute. After the First World War the attempts at a new treaty about the Schelde and the proposals to build a canal between the Schelde and the Rhine-Meuse estuary failed in the end in 1927 after heated national debates. More than one hundred publications in the digital collection bear witness to this prolonged affair. Legal historians, too, looked at the Scheldt question. The digital collection contains two publications by Ernest Nys, ‘Les fleuves internationaux traversant plusieurs territoires : l’Escaut en droit des gens’, Revue de droit international et de législation comparée 5 (1903) 517-537 (1903), and L’Escaut en temps de guerre (Brussels 1910). In 1940 Eduard Maurits Meijers published his study ‘Des graven stroom’, Mededelingen van de Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie der Wetenschappen, Afdeling Letterkunde, new series, 3/4, pp. 103-205, in which he traced the medieval claims and jurisdictions on the several branches of the Schelde. Meijers thoughtfully added transcriptions of the main documents he discussed. In 1953 Chris van der Klaauw, between 1977 and 1981 the Dutch minister of foreign affairs, defended his Ph.D. thesis in history about the interwar relations between the Netherlands and Belgium [Politieke betrekkingen tussen Nederland en België, 1919-1939 (Leiden 1953)].

'Townscape' of BoZ (detail) by Samuel de Swaef and J. ab Heede, Atlas van Stolk (1634)
(Bergen op Zoom in Pictures)

National parks in the Netherlands

Wolff en Hoeck in de Purmer: Jan van der Heijden (1678) (courtesy SKBL)

Over at Environmental History Resources, Jan Oosthoek recently posted "Cultured nature: The Nature Scenery Act of the Netherlands", based on his podcast interview with Wybren Verstegen, whose article, "The Nature Scenery Act of 1928 in the Netherlands", was published last year in Forest History Today. There's also a video. Oosthoek writes:

When thinking of national parks most people think of famous examples like Yellow Stone and Yosemite in the United States or the Serengeti in Tanzania. These parks are large in scale with an emphasis on wild life conservation and the preservation of scenic landscapes. Human activity and presence are restricted and regulated and people are visitors.

In smaller and densely populated countries like Britain or the Netherlands, the creation of large national parks is complicated. In these countries landscapes are far from natural and humans are part of the fabric of the landscape. For this reason, it is difficult to restrict human access and activities to create national parks.

In the Netherlands nature and human activity are almost inseparable because about half of the country is at or below sea level and is reclaimed or drained. Consequently, the landscape of the Netherlands is mostly the product of human intervention and can therefore be described as a cultural artefact. As a result, formal protection of landscapes and wildlife came late. One of the early attempts to create protected conservation areas came in 1928 with the Natuurschoonwet, freely translated as Nature Scenery Act. This Act was mostly about protecting country houses set in park like settings.

As Oosthoek himself notes in the video, even in the US park landscapes are far from natural. But, as anyone who has visited parks in the US and in Europe knows, there is a big difference in the degree to which parks aspire to a wild or "natural" aesthetic on the two continents, with European parks tending to distinguish far less sharply than their American counterparts between nature and culture.

Resource extraction and property rights in Guyana

Joshua Bryant, Rainbow over a Plantation (Demerara, early 19th century)

Environment and History recently published Janette Bulkan's "'Original Lords of the Soil'? The Erosion of Amerindian Territorial Rights in Guyana". The abstract:

The consequences of State claims to, and controls over, the territories of Guyana's Indigenous Peoples (Amerindians) are traced through successive Dutch and British colonial to post-Independence governments. From the mid-eighteenth century, a numerically small sugar plantocracy wielded influence within local government and ensured that colonial policy served its interests located on the coastland. Hinterland policies extended the capitalist approach to natural resources extraction and favoured the dominance of the small stratum of monied interests over the majority of Crown licences for forestry, mining and ranching, which were superimposed on claimed Indigenous lands. The colonial governments' approach to Amerindians was protectionist, but the Amerindian land rights were not codified in law. Authoritarian post-Independence governments have used the discretionary power in the legislative framework inherited from the colonial times to expand the numbers of, and areas covered by, logging and mining licences. The State is aided by the lack of a participatory reservation process for forests and/or a formal settlement process to determine and codify pre-existing customary rights of Indigenous Peoples, twin processes that were instituted in the majority of British colonies. Indigenous rights and privileges on their customary lands have been steadily eroded in law, policy and practice. Amerindians receive few economic benefits from natural resources operations on either their legally titled communal lands or customary lands.

Peter Sand on Karl Neumeyer as precursor of transnational environmental law

Alongside the thread on early environmental law courses, people have been wondering about the first environmental law textbook. Today Peter H. Sand, Lecturer in International Environmental Law at the University of Munich, joins us for a guest post on a contender for the title (see also his comment here). Peter writes [notes are after the jump]:

The history of international environmental law as an academic topic is generally associated with the emergence of treaties and case law on specific sectors such as shared watercourses, the oceans, or – from 1900 onwards – selected wildlife species. Doctrinal attempts at identifying common (trans-sectoral) elements, and a coherent discipline of international regulation and governance in this field, did not make their appearance until well into the second half of the 20^th century, with a prevailing and near-exclusive focus on public international law.

One notable exception was the pioneering work of Karl Alexander Neumeyer (1869-1941), who approached the subject from his distinct perspective of conflict of laws, in a monumental four-volume treatise titled Internationales Verwaltungsrecht (International Administrative Law, 1910-1936).[1] His life-time vision was the development of a new unified system of rules applicable to the transnational aspects of administrative law, to match the well-established conflict rules of private international law and procedure. And in the process, as part of an effort to demonstrate the pragmatic foundations of his approach in different sectors of public administration, he also assembled and analyzed a unique compendium of contemporary legal source materials that would indeed qualify today as typical ‘transnational environmental law’.

Chapter 8 in volume 2 of Neumeyer’s treatise (pp. 1-135), published in 1922, was headed Naturkräfte und Naturerzeugnisse (forces and products of nature). The first section, dealing with internationally shared water resources and water power, is based on the author’s earlier study of “water uses in international administrative law” (1915),[2] criticizing the rigid territorial sovereignty principle invoked by the Austrian Administrative High Court in the notorious 1913 Leitha River case,[3] and advocating the reciprocal protection of foreign legal interests along the lines of the 1909 US-Canadian Boundary Waters Treaty.[4] Other sections deal with the transboundary regulation of mineral resources; agriculture, forestry, hunting and fishing (based in part on the author’s early practical experience as law clerk at a district court in the Bavarian-Austrian border region); and the management and conservation of marine living resources, including a discussion of the 1893 Bering Sea fur seals arbitration.[5] Karl Neumeyer’s emphasis on the need for a mutual ‘other-regarding’ accommodation of foreign concerns, across the entire spectrum of nature-related topics, was way ahead of his times.

Neumeyer taught international law – with a focus on history and conflict of laws – at the University of Munich from 1901 onwards, until the Nazi regime forced him into retirement in 1934 because of his Jewish ancestry and barred him from continuing to work with the Hague Academy of International Law (where he had first lectured in 1923) and the Institut de Droit International (which had elected him to full membership in 1926).[6] Ultimately, when he was notified of the impending eviction from his house and the confiscation of his library, he and his wife decided to commit suicide on 16 July 1941.[7] There is a memorial tablet at their former home near the university; a Neumeyer-Strasse in the city; and in 2008, the Munich Law Faculty (whose dean he was in 1931-32) named the building that houses its Institute of International Law (which he had helped to create) in Karl Neumeyer’s honor and memory. 

Institutions for water control

from  Hoogheemraadschap van Rijnland

Following up on yesterday's post on bonds issued by early modern Dutch water agencies, an earlier post by Rechtsgeschiedenis Blog had the following interesting things to say on water institutions and law:

The peculiar legal nature of Dutch institutions for water control in the broadest sense of the word is their independent origin and – at least to a considerable extent – still independent status. A Dutch waterschap or hoogheemraadschap is not a municipal, provincial or national institution. Some of the waterschappen occupied themselves only with a part of a region, but since a major reorganization in the nineties of the past century only a small number of large water control boards exist, six hoogheemraadschappen and some twenty waterschappen.... A waterschap had and has its own governing body, organizes its own elections for representatives and its board, collects itself special annual taxes, creates its own regulations (keuren), including penalties to be inflicted. In history some waterschappen could even threaten to impose the death penalty for major infractions against its bylaws, for example not complying to orders to repair dikes or not helping against the imminent threat of a flood.

*****

Leiden is situated on a minor branch of the Rijn, the Leidse Rijn. This river gives its name to the hoogheemraadschap Rijnland.... Rijnland has been often the subject of studies and source editions. The oldest surviving registers have been published for the Society for the Study of Old Dutch Law, De oudste bestuursregisters van het hoogheemraadschap van Rijnland (1444-1520). Regesten van de handelingen van dijkgraaf en hoogheemraden, J.H.M. Sloof (ed.) (Leiden 1999). A section of the Rijnland website is devoted to its heritage, with an image database in which you can find also old documents, artefacts, online finding aids and a treasure gallery. One can find further materials for the history of this heemraadschap at the Regionaal Archief Leiden. This archival centre, too, has an online searchable image database. You will find for example building construction drawings submitted to the hoogheemraadschap.

*****

In my opinion creating or having independent institutions for water control is not only a phenomenon for institutional historians but a subject worth of further investigation. This century will witness the growing importance of natural resources, will perhaps even see battles and wars for water, and you are invited to contemplate the example of a region with in this respect a special balance of powers.

I would add that independent institutions for water control is not a uniquely Dutch phenomenon, but one found in many cultures and legal systems - think for instance of irrigation districts, user-owned corporations, or acequias. Though the issue of individual property rights in water gets a lot of attention, in practice water is usually managed and allocated through these collective institutions.

Yale's Dutch water bond

Courtesy Yale University

The story of the 1648 bond held by the Yale rare books library, on which the university will be paid interest, has been making the rounds. The always erudite Rechtsgeschiedenis Blog (Legal history with a Dutch view) explains:

This week news came out about the upcoming payment of interest to Yale University on a perpetual bond issued in 1648 by a Dutch water authority, the Hoogheemraadschap van de Lekdijk Bovendams. Next week its legal successor, the Hoogheemraadschap Stichtse Rijnlanden, will pay the sum of €136,20 ($154), the interest over twelve years. Yale’s Beinecke Library bought the bond in 2003 as a cultural artefact. 

*****

The website of the Regionaal Historisch Centrum Rjnstreek en Lopikerwaard, the regional archive at Woerden, offers a concise history of this institution. In 1285 a dam had been placed in the Hollandse IJssel to prevent the water of this river to stream into the Lek near the village of Vreeswijk, now a part of Nieuwegein. After floodings in this region of the diocese Utrecht due to neglect of this dam bishop Jan van Diest published in 1323 an ordinance for its maintenance. The schouwbrief of 1323 was followed by more instructions, in particular by ordinances published on behalf of Charles V in 1537. “Bovendams” means “ahead of the dam”, in this case up to Amerongen, to the east, 33 kilometers. From the dam westwards another water authority came into existence dealing with the Lekdijk Benedendams up to the town of Schoonhoven. 

*****

The bilingual website Beursgeschiedenis/Exchange History has a short article showing the 1648 bond is not the oldest surviving one from this hoogheemraadschap, but one from 1624, since 1938 in the possession of the New York Stock Exchange, thus one of the oldest surviving shares worldwide. The 2,5 percent interest yields even today 15 euros. The bonds of 1648 were issued specifically to build a krib, a pier in the Lek near the hamlet of Honswijk, now situated within the municipality Houten. Maintaining such piers and fighting against piers and other structures at the other side of the river kept the hoogheemraadschap busy for centuries.... Like other Dutch water authorities the hoogheemraadschap was an independent authority which could proceed in court against for instance the counts of Culemborg or the States of Guelders. The website for the history of stock exchange does call to attention the fact that even the counts of Holland and the bishops of Utrecht, in medieval times often deadly enemies, both invested money in the maintenance plans of water authorities. 

*****

Some elements in this week’s story need elaboration. You can shake your head in disbelief about a rich university welcoming a payment of just over one hundred dollars, but you might also marvel at the fact of the longevity of institutions vital for the protection of areas threatened by the powers of mighty rivers or seas. Issuing perpetual bonds or rents was not an invention of the Dutch Republic. Medieval rents issued by cities are documented for regions such as Tuscany and Flanders since the thirteenth century. Water authorities could levy taxes to get money, but these taxes were meant to cover the costs of normal maintenance. 

More on early modern water law treatises

In response to my desire to hear more about the water law treatises described in Mark Weiner's video, "Water, Paper, Law", Yale Law's Rare Book Librarian Mike Widener (featured in the video) has posted information on the books featured in the video. These include a treatise by the great medieval jurist Bartolus and other works on Italian, German, and Dutch water law.

The page below is taken from a 4-volume Italian treatise on Roman water law, published originally 1670-86. Stay tuned for more on Mike's work on these interesting books.

from Francesco Maria Pecchio, Tractatus de aquaeductu (2nd ed., Ticini Regii, [1700?]-1713)
Rare Book Collection, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School