I a Society Built for Sustainable Management | the Campine Area 1400-1600

I A SOCIETY BUILT FOR SUSTAINABLE MANAGEMENT | THE CAMPINE AREA 1400-1600 Against all odds, the late medieval Campine commons proved to be ecologically sustainable and socio-economically successful. Despite its location within the most urbanised, commercially orientated and densely populated area of the Low Countries, the region was able ecological value of the environment for its future generations (Hardin, 1968). While Hardin has stated that communal property inevitably leads to over-exploitation and environmental destruction, when we consider this particular Premodern society his theory can be proved wrong. This conclusion does, however, come as quite a surprise although not in terms of communal management. Indeed Elinor Ostrom has argued convincingly that collective management and common resources could be as efficient as private or state-driven initiatives (Ostrom, 1997). Until now, however, it has generally been accepted that Premodern marginal economies such as the Campine area, together with similar ecosystems such as the Veluwe and Drenthe in the Netherlands or the Brecklands in Norfolk, was subject to ecological degradation, leading to deforestation, and eventually even disastrous sand drifts. Marginal experienced challenging ecological circumstances due to the subsoil being largely made up of barren, acid and loose sandy soils (Bailey, 1989). Consequently, arable production was limited and a majority of the region could only be used in a more extensive way as pasture or wasteland. Therefore adopted a mixed farming system, combining intensive arable production on the infields near village centres with extensive grazing and the collecting of resources on the infertile wastelands. In addition, these regions have been classified as "marginal" because they lagged behind on the transformation towards modern factor markets and capitalistic growth (van Bavel, 2010; Brenner, 2001). According to Jan Luiten Van Zanden, only a substantial commercialisation of the use of resources together with management could save the heathland ecosystems from depletion (Van Zanden, 1999). The studying deforestation and sand drifts that occurred in the Campine area or similar ecosystems located within the cover sand belt region. Due to over-exploitation, growing population pressures and intensive road networks, the late medieval Campine area was supposed to have witnessed a surge in sand drifts which provided proof that it was an ecosystem pushed beyond its limits (Derese, 2010). 1 Fig 1 Location of the Campine area in relation to the comparative case studies: the Brecklands in Norfolk and the Geest region in Schleswig-Holstein. Map made by Iason Jongepier. Nevertheless, thanks to new dating methods such as optically stimulated luminescence (OSL), it appears that sand drifts were certainly not only a late medieval phenomenon. It has been demonstrated that even late Neolithic communities living 5000 years ago caused sand drifts to occur (Sevink, 2013). Moreover, the most disastrous sand drifts that have been uncovered in the Campine area date back to the ninth century CE. By uncovering the soil in order to create arable fields without enclosures, exploit forests and graze their livestock, serious sand drifts started to cover parts of the village and arable fields, resulting in the forced abandonment of a part of the settlement of Pulle (Derese, 2010; Heidinga, 2010; Ibid, 1984). By the thirteenth century, sand continued to drift although it did not cover increasingly larger areas, nor did it fundamentally threaten village centres, arable fields or the agrosystem in general. Campine peasants had adapted their way of life to cope with these "landscapes of risk" (Mauelshagen, 2007; Bankoff, 2013). By introducing hedges to surround individual plots of land, planting trees and woodlands on the sand dunes, prohibiting grazing in fragile regions and rigorously controlling these regulations, they were able to contain the sand dunes, prevent disasters and even obtain a level of sustainable management. 2 I Efficient institutions | Agent or instrument? The basic question to be answered is: how did these Campine communities overcome the challenge of over-exploitation? According to Elinor Ostrom, the implementation of efficient institutions provided the key to success in preventing such over-exploitation. Strict rules with regard to the community of users and the allocation of resources are often deemed necessary for a long- (Ostrom, 1997). Thanks to such an institutional framework, with strict rules, social control and graduated sanctions, the behaviour of society would be altered and free-riding, over-exploitation and trespassing reduced (Ostrom, 1997) Institutional E they are economically (or in this case also ecologically) efficient (North, 1990). This perspective has also been adopted by some historians, particularly a cluster of historians operating within the ollective Action Network , who believe that the creation of formal common pool resource institutions was the most efficient way of dealing with a scarcity of resources and rising population pressures, commercial activities and imperfect markets.1 After all, in a large area, covering most of North-western Europe, remarkably similar institutions and regulations set up to manage natural resources sprung up. Tine De Moor has called this Ages. While engaging in the market as individuals with private property could entail high profits and economic gains, it also entailed risk. Introducing institutions for collective action and managing resources, skills or even threats such as floods in a communal manner was a way of avoiding risks or spreading the costs of a crisis across the community, benefiting from the advantages of scale and reducing transaction costs (De Moor, 2008). In short, it was believed to be the most rational and efficient way of operating given the circumstances. In addition, the formal aspect of these institutions was considered important. In their and Tine De Moor argued that those common pool resource institutions that were accepted and legitimised organisations possessing formal charters had a fundamental advantage when compared to the more informal common pool resource institutions of eastern Europe for example. This was due to the fact that they were better equipped and were able to manage and protect the resources and their regime more efficiently (Laborda Peman and De Moor, 2013). There are, however, two problems with this point of view. While institutions are important and provided important and necessary frameworks, their role is often overestimated. Firstly, 1 For all information concerning the etwork , see: http://www.collective-action.info/ 3 the hypothesis that these institution immanent agency, enabling them to steer communities towards sustainable management, has been disputed by Jean Ensminger. According to her, these institutions were in fact instruments held in the hands of the different interest groups within society, used in order to obtain their goals. The way institutions were designed was mostly based upon the bargaining power, interests and ideology of the different subgroups, rather than evolving out of any immediate reactions to particular economic or ecological situations. As such, the institutions that eventually developed were not necessarily the most efficient nor rational option open to these communities in terms of managing the allocation of resources. Rather, they benefitted the interests of various subgroups within them (Ensminger, 1996; Haller, 2007; Ibid, 2010). The same perspective is shared by Sheilagh Ogilvie who stated that institutions could very well survive through their ability to distribute large shares of a limited economic or ecological pie to certain interest groups, rather than being efficient for the whole economy (Ogilvie, 2007). actual balance of power within these communities rather than the most efficient way of dealing with scarce resources. In the late medieval period, and especially in the Low Countries, population densities were high and the pressure to intensify production either through the demand of urban markets or due to patterns of reproduction within peasant communities was large (van Bavel, 2010). As a result, many common pool institutions opted to reduce the allocation of resources or to limit the amount of users. In several regions, both measures were even applied (Casari, 2007; Winchester, 2008; Winchester and Straughton, 2010). Within the Campine area, however, no such restricted or exclusive institution was introduced or developed over time. All members of the community, one that was based on place of residence, were allowed and indeed did use the commons in very diverse ways as well as being permitted to graze as many animals as they considered necessary on the common wastelands. This peculiar combination was the result of a compromise between the varying interests of the different social layers present within Campine villages, on which I will elaborate further below. Secondly, Premodern institutions for collective action were not as uniform as has previously been asserted. Despite the resemblance of the charters, regulations and designs of the institutions as portrayed by normative sources, different societies also developed quite divergent common pool resource institutions. Thanks to the work of Erik Thoen, Bas van Bavel, Tim Soens and other rural historians working in their tradition, it has become clear that even within the relatively restricted area of the Low Countries, rural societies could diverge

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