Traditional Water Management Systems in the Danube Basin before the Introduction of River Regulation. An Essay on Environmental History

Abstract

The Danube Basin is the most extensive part of the Central European basin area (with the Czech- and the Vienna Basins). The critical peculiarity of the geographical landscape of the basin is the significant expansion of temporarily or permanently water-covered areas. In the traditional age, the size of the water-covered regions depended to a significant degree on the climate and climate changes. The important regional peculiarity of the Danube Basin is that global changes in climate are reflected primarily not in the temperature but rather in levels of precipitation. In my short environmental history essay, I survey the history of water management in the Danube Basin from the Hungarian conquest to the beginning of modernisation in the first half of the nineteenth century. Following the conquest and settling of nomadic tribes, one of the most critical challenges was adapting the subsistence system to the environmental conditions, which was inappropriate for nomadism. From a water management viewpoint, meadow transhumance efficiently takes advantage of the ecological potential of the floodplains, and the channel network manages the problems caused by water shortage or water surplus. Water management became the responsibility of the village communities, which reduced the systemʼs efficiency in the feudal world of the late Middle Ages, but increased its historical stamina. The water-covered areas grew radically in the age of the Turkish wars. This process supported the cold and wet climate regime of the Little Ice Age and demonstrated the need for wartime defence around the forts. After centuries of the Turkish wars, a fundamental need arose to increase the cropland to support demographic growth. Therefore a crucial question of Hungarian modernisation became the regulation of waterways.