History

This article examines the background and recruiting mechanisms of horsemen from the County of Loon who fought for the duke of Brabant at the battle of Baesweiler, 22 August 1371. It argues that socioeconomic incentives had a major role in fourteenth-century military recruitment and that the service of these men can be studied as a form of labour. The County of Loon became involved in the duke's war effort through recruitment at different levels in which noblemen mobilized their relatives, friends and retainers. Mounted military service remained strongly associated with noble status, resulting in every man able to equip himself as a heavy cavalryman with two horses, a man-at-arms, being considered as noble to some degree. The article contextualizes the presence of these warriors within a larger spectrum of military service opportunities, and argues that chivalric ideals and military service as a form of labour are complementary.

This study aims to put the introduction of conscription in a new perspective by examining its effects on the careers and backgrounds of professional soldiers. It specifically considers the Dutch-speaking part of the principality of Liège in 1756–1815, and the service records of more than 2,000 men from this area. It argues that soldiers did become more representative for society at large, but this came at the cost of lowering the prestige attached to military service. Conscription effectively undermined the position of professional soldiers, without giving them proper compensation in terms of promotion or financial rewards.

is niet alleen een van de beroemdste gevechten uit de Honderdjarige Oorlog, maar van de hele middeleeuwen. Hij staat namelijk symbool voor ridderlijk gedrag. Veel minder bekend is echter dat een van de deelnemers, een zekere Crokart, uit het huidige Nederland kwam. In de veertiende eeuw vochten Nederlandse soldeniers over heel Europa. Bretagne, 26 maart 1351. Op een open plek tussen de kastelen van Josselin en Ploërmel maken zestig Franse en Engelse krijgslieden zich op om een tweekamp te houden. Tijd en plaats waren vooraf vastgelegd en herauten zouden waken over het correcte verloop. Enkele uren later en na een zware strijd wordt de Franse zijde als overwinnaar aangeduid; al hun tegenstanders waren gedood of gevangengenomen. Dit gevecht, traditioneel aangeduid als Le Combat des Trente 'De Strijd van de Dertig', werd louter om de meerdere eer en glorie van de deelnemende krijgslieden gehouden. Officieel was er immers een wapenstilstand afgekondigd. Een van de strijders, 'Crokart de Duitser', was eigenlijk een Nederlander. Wie was deze Crokart? We kunnen aannemen dat hij uit het huidige Nederland kwam omdat hij page was van de heer van Arkel. Hij kwam als dienaar van een andere edelman naar Frankrijk om aan Engelse zijde in de Honderdjarige Oorlog te strijden en nam na diens overlijden de leiding over zijn manschappen over. Hij was een succesvol aanvoerder en verrijkte zich door kastelen en mensen voor losgeld vast te houden. Een genereus aanbod van de Franse koning om

'Mosasaurs. Interactions Between Armies and Ecosystems in the Meuse Region, 1250-1850' argues that armies' conscious and concerted protection and conservation of ecosystems long predates the rise of modern environmentalism, and that this supposedly modern behaviour is just one element in a complex web of interconnections between armed forces and their surrounding world. The ecosystem concept provides a good theoretical framework to organize this multifaceted relationship, but it is too complex to apply directly to historical sources. The thesis is thus divided into five chapters (frontiers, fortifications, disturbances, policing, and army health) that together represent the three levels encompassed in the notion of ecosystem: landscapes, biotic communities, and pathogens. The Meuse Region, or the basin of the Meuse River, comprising parts of France, Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands, serves a geographical context in order to avoid the common emphasis on political structures. The choice for 1250 and 1850 as chronological limits reflects the general emphasis on continuity between the High Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period. By studying armies from a holistic perspective across traditional political, chronological, and linguistic boundaries, this thesis provides an alternative view on the military and environmental history of the premodern period, and encourages modern military forces to make more efforts to reduce their environmental footprint.

'Mosasaurs. Interactions Between Armies and Ecosystems in the Meuse Region, 1250-1850' argues that armies' conscious and concerted protection and conservation of ecosystems long predates the rise of modern environmentalism, and that this supposedly modern behaviour is just one element in a complex web of interconnections between armed forces and their surrounding world. The ecosystem concept provides a good theoretical framework to organize this multifaceted relationship, but it is too complex to apply directly to historical sources. The thesis is thus divided into five chapters (frontiers, fortifications, disturbances, policing, and army health) that together represent the three levels encompassed in the notion of ecosystem: landscapes, biotic communities, and pathogens. The Meuse Region, or the basin of the Meuse River, comprising parts of France, Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands, serves a geographical context in order to avoid the common emphasis on political structures. The choice for 1250 and 1850 as chronological limits reflects the general emphasis on continuity between the High Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period. By studying armies from a holistic perspective across traditional political, chronological, and linguistic boundaries, this thesis provides an alternative view on the military and environmental history of the premodern period, and encourages contemporary military forces to make more efforts to reduce their environmental footprint.

is algemeen bekend dat de mens dier-en plantensoorten heeft doen uitsterven of op de rand van uitsterven heeft gebracht. Voor de laatste 100 à 150 jaar hebben we redelijk betrouwbare gegevens over hoe de biodiversiteit in Nederland is geëvolueerd. 1 Hoe de Nederlandse natuur voor die tijd veranderde is echter veel minder duidelijk. Voor een aantal grote, opvallende soorten, zoals de oeros of de bruine beer , weten we dat ze in respectievelijk de late oudheid en rond het jaar duizend verdwenen zijn, maar dit geeft een zeer onvolledig beeld. 2 Het uitsterven van bepaalde dieren of planten kan immers doorheen de tijd vertraagd of versneld zijn, en bepaalde soorten kunnen zijn teruggekeerd of zich voor het eerst in Noordwest-Europa hebben vertoond, al dan niet als gevolg van menselijk handelen. Op dit moment worden de Nederlandse fauna en flora na de laatste ijstijd-dat is 11.700 jaar geleden-meestal als uitgangspunt genomen. Sommige natuurorganisaties willen zelfs expliciet de Nederlandse 'oernatuur' herstellen. De 'Big Five van de Nederlandse Wilde Natuur' zouden dan de beer, het edelhert, de eland, de wolf en de wisent moeten zijn. 3 Het beeld van prehistorisch Nederland dat deze organisaties promoten komt echter niet echt overeen met archeologisch onderzoek. Bovendien is het aantal mensen sinds de prehistorie exponentieel toegenomen. 4 Men kan zich dus afvragen of het relevant is juist de laatste ijstijd als uitgangspunt te nemen. De ijstijden zijn gepaard gegaan met grote uitstervingsgolven, waardoor de Noord-Europese natuur, zeker in verge-1

Dit artikel maakt een onderscheid tussen everzwijnen (ook bekend als evers, wilde zwijnen of wilde varkens) en gedomesticeerde zwijnen of varkens. Om verwarring te voorkomen wordt de eerste soort aangeduid als everzwijn of ever en de tweede als varken of tam varken.

This article studies the presence of the Eurasian beaver (Castor fiber) in the IJssel River (the Netherlands) in the second half of the fifteenth century on the basis of preserved financial records. It argues that the beaver may have become functionally extinct in the Netherlands as early as 1500, several centuries before the last individual was reportedly killed (in 1826). The study also demonstrates the value of using medieval administrative sources to reconstruct the historical range of mammals in Western Europe. At least 153 beavers were presented to the city councils of Deventer and Zutphen in 1454-1489 in order to receive a financial reward. The species was hunted for multiple reasons, among which the prevention of economic damage was the most important. The introduction of a bounty system to capture beavers was probably a deliberate attempt to exterminate the animal. The presence of large numbers of beavers in the fifteenth-century Netherlands is remarkable, because the species may have become very rare or extinct in most of the Low Countries by 1400. Its possible reappearance and temporary recolonisation of large stretches of the IJssel River could be interpreted in the context of environmental changes. The digging of a new canal, which connected the city of Deventer with its German hinterland, may have created a new corridor that facilitated beaver migration from refugia in northwestern Germany. The volume of water transported by the IJssel towards the Zuiderzee also declined significantly during the fifteenth century, which may have limited the species' dispersal options and exacerbated conflicts with humans.

This article studies the spread of horse archery, a military technique of steppe origin, to a peripheral region on the Eurasian continent, namely northwestern Europe (the British Isles, Norway, Denmark, northern France, the Low Countries and western Germany) from 400 to 1500. It analyses how various factors-cultural, environmental, socioeconomic , and political-either facilitated or limited the tradition's dissemination across geographical and cultural contexts. Horse archery was probably introduced more or less simultaneously with falconry as a hunting technique in Late Antiquity. This adoption of select elements of the Eurasian "royal hunt" can be seen as an attempt to develop new marks of status in the volatile political context of the Late Roman Empire. Horse archery long remained restricted to a small number of elite warriors, mostly household archers and hunters. The spread of the couched lance technique in combination with the development of more effective types of crossbows led to the disappearance of composite bows and traditional horse archery in northwestern Europe by the early fourteenth century. Late medieval English and Burgundian archers may occasionally have shot their simple bows on horseback. From the thirteenth century onwards, mounted crossbowmen became increasingly common in the Holy Roman Empire. By the late fifteenth century they dominated the mounted contingents raised there. These horsemen were the direct predecessors of the pistol-armed Reiter of the sixteenth century.

Snakes in the Dutch Golden Age: The Notes of Ernst Brinck In the early seventeenth century Dr. Ernst Brinck, mayor of Harderwijk (1582-1649), compiled notes on ‘four-legged’ animals, including snakes and insects. This article discusses his remarks on the ‘snakes’ and ‘adders’ found in the Dutch Republic and neighboring Germany. Information on other herpetofauna are given in a separate text box. Brinck’s comments are a mixture of folk belief and - rather accurate - eyewitness testimonies. He mentions that common European adders (Vipera berus) are oviparous, and provides a description of the eggs found in a pregnant female snake (probably a grass snake, Natrix helvetica) killed by a friend of his. The mayor also refers to the skin of a particularly large ‘adder’ caught near Münster, which he kept in his cabinet. This could have been an Aesculapian snake (Zamenis longissimus). His observation that peasants bury the body part of people and livestock bitten by adders in the soil for a few days to make the poison leave the body is noteworthy. Brinck believed that adder tongues were ‘hard and stony’, and that snakes love drinking milk. His claim that adders were absent in the province of Holland may be accurate. Other historical sources suggest, however, that the geographical range of the adder was much larger in the late medieval and early modern period. Brinck refers to toadstones and mentions seeing European tree frogs (Hyla arborea) in Germany. He provides a detailed description of the sand lizard (Lacerta agilis).

‘Het is etlichemalen op Veluwen gebeurt, dat huijßluijden int’ veldt adderen aengetroffen hebbende, ende met de schuppe haer wat tergende, sij so fell met haer tonge tegen de schuppe aen geslagen hebben, dat het vuijr vuijt de schuppe gevlogen is.’ Op deze manier beschrijft Dr. Ernst Brinck (1582-1649), burgemeester van Harderwijk, agressieve ontmoetingen tussen adders en Veluwse boeren. Het is slechts één van vele aantekeningen in zijn notitieboekje over ‘viervoetige dieren’, waartoe hij ook slangen en insecten rekende. Deze aantekeningen zijn gebaseerd op eigen ervaringen of die van ooggetuigen, maar vaak ook doorspekt met vormen van bijgeloof.

ABSTRACT With the growing awareness of environmental sustainability issues worldwide, there has been a proliferation of responses and measures in the Flanders region of Belgium since late 1980s. While the environmental measures are proliferating, the pervasive growth based economic development pressures have not gone away, leading to the unfolding of a variety of conflicts and their further intensification. Typically the conflicts between, on the one side local residents, environmental NGO’s, green parties and on the other side economic developers, enterprises and the government rise when open spaces are claimed for economic purposes and projects. Based on an inventory of a larger number of such conflicts in the Belgian coastal area, this chapter presents an in-depth analyses of three specifically selected conflict cases – privatization of Ostend airport, widening of Schipdonk canal, and inland expansion of the Zee-Brugge harbour. All the three cases are characterized by economic development interests vs. environmental protection. The conflicts are mainly triggered by the initiation of these infrastructural projects that are being imagined to unfold greater economic prosperity in the otherwise economically depressed coastal region of West Flanders province. The infrastructural logic of improved connectivity and efficiency for reducing the cost of doing business [increased economic development] is a short term interest that is in conflict with the long term environmental benefits of the natural resources and eco-system services of coastal space. Decisions about these infrastructural projects are made project-wise and not within the framework of an overarching mobility plan that has a participatory approach at its core and duly takes into account the long-term environmental benefits, leaving the decision making process for all three cases unguided and not concerted. The conflicts are aggravated by the lack of participatory approach in these projects and, specifically, the perceived lack of communication between the Flemish government and local residents. Underpinning the detailed analyses of these three conflict cases presented in this chapter is the main argument that an in-depth understanding of the nature of these conflicts - the way they are constructed and evolved, their thematic and typological classification, their current trends and possible future impacts – is not only a prerequisite for their resolution but also for imagining alternative and more sustainable futures in the coastal urban environment.