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Saturday 15 April 2023 11.00 - 13.00
O-14 TEC07a Premodern Urban Ecologies: Water & Fire in European Environments, Markets and Infrastructures
E43
Networks: Health and Environment , Science & Technology , Urban Chairs: -
Organizer: Bob Pierik Discussants: -
Janna Coomans : Fire Ecologies in Netherlandish Cities
In premodern society, the use of open fire was pervasive. It was clear for contemporaries that fire disasters were caused by humans, often by careless humans, or by those with bad intentions. It was also clear that blazes were fed by and spread rapidly through flammable building materials, jumped corners ... (Show more)
In premodern society, the use of open fire was pervasive. It was clear for contemporaries that fire disasters were caused by humans, often by careless humans, or by those with bad intentions. It was also clear that blazes were fed by and spread rapidly through flammable building materials, jumped corners in small alleys, and sprang from open hearths, bakers’ ovens and smithies’ forges. This paper explores responses to mitigate fire risks by using the concept of a fire ecology or regime, defined broadly as the social, political and economic and cultural function of fire within specific periods and regions. Especially before the later nineteenth century, when other energy sources replaced (open) fire to warm, heat and (industrially) produce, scholars see a persistent centrality of fire in a complex of practices and beliefs systems. During some specific periods and in specific places, assertive steps were taken by a range of agents to alter fire regimes, as a way to create social change. This paper argues that this is the case in the Low Countries during the later Middle Ages. Fire prevention measures in the Low Countries are arguably the first instance of official interference with the construction and use of private properties. Between the thirteenth and sixteenth century, Netherlandish cities transformed due to their increased use of stone (verstening or petrification). However, grasping the importance and the impact of fire prevention practices on the urban community and the built environment across several centuries – linking them as part of a fire ecology– remains to be explored in depth. There is also no comprehensive overview of fire disasters, let alone of safety-promoting practices for the Low Countries. This paper offers a first exploration of these lacunae. (Show less)

Armel Cornu : Drinking Mineral Waters in Eighteenth-Century France: a Study of Popular Practices through the Network of Water Distributors
Mineral waters gained significant popularity over the course of the eighteenth century, and were sold to the public in increasing quantities, pushed by new spring discoveries and by the prescriptions of eager physicians. Despite the widespread nature of the commerce of mineral waters, the practices surrounding their consumption remain largely ... (Show more)
Mineral waters gained significant popularity over the course of the eighteenth century, and were sold to the public in increasing quantities, pushed by new spring discoveries and by the prescriptions of eager physicians. Despite the widespread nature of the commerce of mineral waters, the practices surrounding their consumption remain largely unexplored. In this paper, I aim to explore the popular uses of mineral waters, shedding light on their medical application across the diverse social world of the French eighteenth century.
Mineral waters were available in two ways: at the spring or in bottles. Each was characterised by a distinct set of practices. These practices can be studied via the writings of those who distributed and administered this unique market. Spa town intendants, mineral water sellers, state-mandated inspectors, these actors reveal much about the unspoken practices of water drinking. The drinkers were characterised by a broad social diversity. Spas are known for elite visitors, but they were more often frequented by bourgeois, merchants, soldiers and the poor. These various groups had different relations to the medical authorities, but all showed an enthusiasm for the cure offered by waters.
The different modes of consumption highlight an understudied facet of water usage in the eighteenth century. The market of mineral waters had national reach, and despite the low profit margins of most actors in that trade, it only fostered the popularity of mineral waters within the public, who showed a persistent demand for cheap, medically backed and freshly supplied waters. (Show less)

David Gentilcore : Acquaroli: The Role of Water-Carriers in Early Modern Venice
Early modern cities had four main options when it came to obtaining their water: utilising adjacent rivers and streams; building aqueducts and channels to bring water from distant sources; digging wells to access underground water; and harvesting rainwater and storing it in cisterns. Of course, they could also employ a ... (Show more)
Early modern cities had four main options when it came to obtaining their water: utilising adjacent rivers and streams; building aqueducts and channels to bring water from distant sources; digging wells to access underground water; and harvesting rainwater and storing it in cisterns. Of course, they could also employ a mixture of these. But whatever option was in use, it seems that the urban water-carrier was a universal presence, necessary to augment the supply at time of limited water resources. London’s ‘water-bearers’ each had their own regular clientele and established neighbourhoods where they plied their trade, and there were almost 2,000 porteurs d’eau in eighteenth-century Paris. Yet there is no single study of water-carriers in Italian cities; we know very little of how they operated.

My paper examines the lagoon city of Venice, which, famously, ‘is in water yet has no water’ (according to the chronicler Marin Sanudo). Venice may have been unique in having two distinct categories of water-sellers: in addition to the inferior-status bigolanti, who sold well-water retail to people without easy access to a well, there were the higher-status acquaroli, with their own guild, who brought in fresh water from the river Brenta in special barges and sold it wholesale, topping up the city’s numerous well-cisterns. My paper focuses on these acquaroli, through an analysis of their guild registers which survive in three volumes in Venice’s Museo Correr. The guild registers, or mariegole, contain the 1471 statues of the guild and detail various aspects of their activities (organisational, financial, judicial, devotional) over the following three hundred years, but have never been systematically studied. Their analysis can shed light on the important contribution of the acquaroli to the city’s fresh water supply, as well as the broader social, economic and cultural worlds of which they were a part. (Show less)

Bob Pierik : Early Modern Amsterdam’s Hydrological Assemblage: Everyday Practices of Urban Water
Urban water is an important social-natural site, which can be understood as a nexus of human practices and material arrangements (Winiwarter and Schmid, 2020). European cities have had a considerable ‘water plurality,’ where different types of water systems co-existed. (Janssens and Soens, 2019). Recent research on early modern Amsterdam has ... (Show more)
Urban water is an important social-natural site, which can be understood as a nexus of human practices and material arrangements (Winiwarter and Schmid, 2020). European cities have had a considerable ‘water plurality,’ where different types of water systems co-existed. (Janssens and Soens, 2019). Recent research on early modern Amsterdam has nuanced the view that the city was wholly dependent on clean water imports from the Vecht river and only relieved of its water problems with the introduction of piped water in the 19th century (Van Roosbroeck, 2019). We now know that the period of pre-piped water in Amsterdam was rather characterized by a mixed system of rain-water harvesting and water imports for direct consumption, while even the ground water and surface water had their roles to play.
In this paper, I examine the interplay of everyday practices, technological infrastructures and urban governance to reconstruct the hydrological assemblage of early modern Amsterdam, taking the system of rainwater harvesting as major case study. For this, I consider various sources such as the encroachment tax registers (precariobelasting) and notarial deeds on everyday urban conflict, to investigate how access to urban waters was facilitated. The encroachment tax registers provide unique insight into the locations where captured rain water was stored on public ground, for private use. The notarial depositions provide snapshots of everyday life, where conflicts about using, owning or maintaining parts of water infrastructures feature prominently. It allows insight in the social-natural agencies that shaped the urban ecology of water access. (Show less)



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