Preliminary Programme

The manors of Borregard and Hafslund in Southeastern Norway developed during the 17th and 18th centuries into quite large estates based and agriculture and forestry. The owners belonged to the small noble elite in Norway, and their lifestyle was deeply rooted in the aristocracy.

Due to their control over waterfalls and forests, the estates from around 1800 became the object of economic speculation and investments, not only by Norwegian merchants and industry owner, but also by German and English capitalists. The “manor dimensions” were mostly demonstrated by the monumental buildings and impressive parks, while the surrounding areas were turned into industrial and - eventually - urban landscapes.

The paper will present and discuss the different stages of these developments and relate them to the more general historical development of modern Norway. (Show less)

The estate landscape in England has often been taken to be the timeless basis of social and political power. However, its evolution from the medieval manor to the modern estate has therefore escaped careful scrutiny. Arguably the change was dramatic, but it was effected over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and so its impact is sometimes hard to assess. The imprint of changes in tenure, tax and inheritance can be traced in the remaking of the English landscape – the redrawing of the fieldscape, the remodelling of farms and settlement. Understanding these changes can help situate the dramatic changes of the nineteenth century through industrialisation and political reform. (Show less)

Around 1850 an elite of noble and patrician great landowners had a strong hegemonial position in the Dutch, agricultural province of Friesland. Even half a century later, some noble Frisian families still owned relatively big landed estates – complexes of historic houses, gardens, parks, woods and lease farms– in the southern and south-eastern parts of Friesland. Already in the 1920’s a Frisian noble widow, owning just a tiny part of such a former complex, wrote in her family memoirs: ’Our world doesn’t exist anymore.’ After the Second World War, nearly all the noble landed estates would rapidly disappear in Friesland, which was an overall trend in the Netherlands. In our paper we will follow two tracks: 1. An analysis of the conditions and causes leading to the rise and fall of these Frisian landed estates (including variables as agricultural crises, estate management and afforestation); 2. A description and overview of the impact of losing land tenure (combined with migration of notable families to villa parks elsewhere in the Netherlands) for the collective identity of this former, aristocratic landed elite. Especially letters, diaries and family memoirs from family archives show us the narratives of an adapting and transforming aristocratic elite ‘from within’. (Show less)

In the eighteenth century, nobles in the eastern provinces of the Netherlands had an income strategy based on office-holding combined with ownership of a relatively small manor. The manors not only provided direct revenue from rents and wood sales, but also indirectly, because they provided access to the provincial Estates, and thus to lucrative offices. This strategy came to an abrupt end after the Batavian Revolution of 1795, which abolished entry to the Estates based on noble status and ownership of a manor. This resulted in a transformation of aristocratic landownership. Many smaller nobles sold out and opted for a military or bureaucratic career. A small group of very wealthy families, however, chose to maintain and even enlarge their estates, and increase their incomes by improving management and introducing new methods of forestry and farming. This resulted in increasing economic inequality within the nobility, but also had consequences for the landscape, because smaller manor houses were demolished and the remaining ones were often enlarged and embellished and provided with larger gardens and parks. The paper will explore the causes and consequences of these changes. (Show less)