Armies and Ecosystems in Premodern Europe: The Meuse Region, 1250–1850

Abstract

The interplay between warfare and the environment has received considerable attention from scholars of modern history. By contrast, there has been comparatively little scholarly discussion of the intersection of these two areas of historical inquiry in the medieval period. In this highly innovative study, Sander Govaerts, researcher in the department of history at Ghent University, seeks to address this lacuna through a longue durée investigation of a vast number of questions pertaining to the impact of armies on ecosystems as well as the influence of the natural environment on warfare in the Meuse river valley over a period of six centuries. The volume is divided into three sections, with a total of five chapters, as well as a lengthy introduction and brief conclusion. In a pattern that repeats throughout the volume, Govaerts uses the introduction to discuss a wide range of topics. These include an examination of contemporary conceptions of the impact of modern armies on the environment, both negative and positive, an analysis of previous scholarship on medieval environmental history, a discussion of his conceptualization of the terms ‘armies’ and ‘ecosystem’ and an overview of the history of the Meuse region from the high Middle Ages into modernity. He also challenges two underlying assumptions in most earlier scholarship, namely that premodern armies lacked the technology to influence environments in systematic and meaningful ways and the concomitant (albeit somewhat inconsistent) view that premodern armies were always destructive.