Event Description
In the past decades, not independent of growing concerns about water access in a rapidly changing world, research into historical water management has intensified but little scholarly interest has been paid to issues of water property rights. Unlike that of lands, the ownership of waters – streams, rivers, or even lakes – in premodern times was a recurrent source of debates that exceeded the limits of simple territorial disputes. They concern issues that going back to Roman legal authors were difficult to resolve such as: who owns the alluvium; how can one own something that moves such as rivers; who owns an island that emerges from the river; what happens if a river that was an estate border relocates itself; how much water can one withhold by a dam in a river? Is it allowed to change the quality of the water running through one’s estate? These questions can be well studied using normative sources, such as law codes, and pieces of pragmatic literacy – charters. The presentation aims to address the above questions using a large pool of sources from late medieval Hungary.
Event Information
Free and open to the public; registration required. Please email Eileen Huhn at [email protected] with any questions.
Hosted by the Harriman Institute at Columbia University.
