Table Of ContentHistorical Geography and Geosciences
Robert Dodgshon
Farming Communities
in the Western Alps,
1500–1914
The Enduring Bond
Historical Geography and Geosciences
Advisory Editors
Jacobo García-Álvarez, Humanities: History, Geography and Art, Universidad Carlos III de
Madrid, Getafe, Madrid, Spain
Stefan Grab, School of Geography, Archaeology & Environmental Studies, University of the
Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
Ferenc Gyuris, Department of Regional Science, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest,
Hungary
André Reyes Novaes, Department of Human Geography, Rio de Janeiro State University,
Maracanã, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
HelenRozwadowski,DepartmentofHistory,UniversityofConnecticutAveryPoint,Groton,
CT, USA
Dorothy Sack, Department of Geography, Ohio University, Athens, OH, USA
Charles Travis , School of Histories and Humanities, The University of Dublin,
Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland
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Robert Dodgshon
Farming Communities
in the Western Alps,
–
1500 1914
The Enduring Bond
123
RobertDodgshon
Department ofGeography andEarthSciences
Aberystwyth University
Aberystwyth, UK
ISSN 2520-1379 ISSN 2520-1387 (electronic)
Historical GeographyandGeosciences
ISBN978-3-030-16360-0 ISBN978-3-030-16361-7 (eBook)
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Preface
ThisstudyhasitsrootsnotjustinanaccumulatingfieldknowledgeoftheWesternAlpsthatI
gradually acquired from the 1980s onwards, but equally, in a first-year human geography
coursethatIhelpedtoteachatwhatwasthentheUniversityofWales,Aberystwyth.Asmall
section of the course on peasant societies provided me with an opportunity to draw on the
stimulating Alpine studies of scholars like Robert Netting, Pier Paolo Viazzo and Eric Wolf
andtodeepenmyinterestintheacademicquestionsposedbytraditionalfarmingcommunities
in the region. Developed alongside my ongoing research on the farming communities of the
Scottish Highlands and Islands over the medieval and early modern period, I could see the
similarities between the two regions as regards how they approached the challenges of
resource exploitation but I also came to appreciate the quite fundamental ways in which they
differed. Retirement from my post at Aberystwyth provided the opportunity to take this
interest in the Western Alps forward through a project on the strategies of resource
exploitation employed by farming communities during the period 1500–1914 and on some
of the questions raised by how they coped with the challenges of their setting. Inevitably, as
someoneworkingontraditionalcommunitiesinmountainareas,Ihaveastronginterestinthe
ideas of cultural ecology and adaptation. These have been used to inform my approach
throughout. For those who wish to see whether I emerge out of the study as a possibilist or
determinist,Ithinkchoosingbetweensuchframinginterpretations,asiftheypresentabinary
or simple either/or choice, serves little purpose. Alpine environments are extremely diverse
and, by extension, so also are its resources. As I try to make clear inmy book, the long-term
survival of Alpine communities, their sustainability, has relied on exploiting as much of this
diversity as was feasible, maximising possibility and doing so to good effect. This range of
resource exploitation though has been developed within the broad bounding framework var-
iously set by factors like climate, altitude, insolation, soil depth, slope and plant growth
factors, whose impact could vary over time as well as space. When we bring these two sides
oftheproblemtogether,asystemofresourceexploitationthatmaximisedpossibilityacrossa
range of different settings and a bounding framework that was equally varied, it defeats any
attempt to reduce their continuous, negotiated interaction to a simple binary.
A project of this sort involves time and travel. I am extremely grateful to the Leverhulme
Trustforthepersonalgrantwhichtheyawardedmefortheworkinvolved.Thegrantenabled
metocarryoutvitalresearchinallthemajorregionalarchiveswithinthestudyregion,aswell
as library work. Without their generosity, carrying out this primary research for the study
would not have been possible. Special thanks are also due to the staff at all the regional
archivesfortheirconsiderablehelpduringmyvisits.Aswithotherprojects,Iamalsograteful
for the support received from my department, now the Department of Geography and Earth
Sciences, at Aberystwyth University.
It was always planned to publish the results of this project in book form though its
preparation has taken longer than expected. The commune- and regional-level archival
resources available for its main themes are extensive. Even a book-length report can only
unlockasmallpartoftheirpotentialbut,hopefully,mystudyhastappedenoughtocontribute
some ideas and conclusions of value to the wider debate. As regards the final manuscript, I
v
vi Preface
owe particular thanks to an unnamed reviewer for valuable help and advice over its presen-
tation. My final thanks are to the publishers, Springer Nature, and to the editor who handled
my book, Dr. Michael Leuchner, for their support and help in seeing the book into press.
Aberystwyth, UK Robert Dodgshon
Contents
1 Introduction: Traditional Alpine Communities and the Challenge
of Long-Term Sustainability. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 Mountain Societies: A Fractured Political Landscape? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2 Living in the Alps: The Fundamental Role of Adaptive Strategies . . . . . . . . 4
1.3 The Alpine Farm Community and its Resource Base: Closed or Open
System? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2 The Landholding Basis of Alpine Farming. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.1 Framing the Commune. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.2 Aligning Communes, Settlements and Farming Communities . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.3 The Farming Community: Steady State or Change?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.4 The Farming Community and its Private Spaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.5 Field Structures and Layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.6 When Did the Commons Become the Commons? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.7 The Shifting Bounds between Private and Communal Space . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
3 Face to the Sun: The Exploitation of Arable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
3.1 The Ecology of Arable. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
3.2 Who Held Arable?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
3.3 The Diversity of Cropping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
3.4 Cropping Strategies and the Individual Family. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
3.5 Alpine Arable: Cropping Strategies and the Challenge of Nutrient Flow . . . . 50
3.6 Between Scarcity and Abundance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
4 The Ties that Bind: Livestock Farming in the Western Alps, 1500–1914. . . . . 59
4.1 Livestock: The Ties that Bind. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
4.2 Stocking the Commune . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
4.3 Pre-1700 Listing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
4.4 The Eighteenth Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
4.5 Changes in Stocking 1800–1914. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
4.6 Seasonal Stock Listings 1800–1914 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
4.7 Regional Stocking Data 1800–1914 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
4.8 Changes in Stock Management 1500–1914 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
5 The Alps and Their Common Property Rights: Resource, Regulation
and Exploitation 1500–1914 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
5.1 The Commons: What Did They Have to Offer?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
5.2 Regulating the Commons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
5.3 How Was Entitlement Defined? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
5.4 Disputing the Commons. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
5.5 The Exploitation of the Commons: Wood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
5.6 The Exploitation of the Commons: Watering the Ground . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
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viii Contents
6 The Alpage of the Western Alps, 1500–1914: Europe’s Highest Cultural
Landscape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
6.1 How Alpage was Defined on the Ground?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
6.2 The Ecology of the Alpage. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
6.3 Who Controlled the Alpage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
6.4 How was the Alpage Controlled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
6.5 The Alpage: Calculations of Capacity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
6.6 What Use Rights Meant on the Ground. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
6.7 How the Alpage Changed. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
7 Coping with Risk, 1500–1914. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
7.1 Profiling Weather-Based Disasters in the Western Alps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
7.2 Weather-Based Disasters in the Western Alps 1500–1914 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
7.3 Risk Minimisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
7.4 Coping with Risk. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
8 Epilogue. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Glossary. ..... .... .... .... .... .... ..... .... .... .... .... .... ..... .... 155
Bibliography .. .... .... .... .... .... ..... .... .... .... .... .... ..... .... 159
Index ... ..... .... .... .... .... .... ..... .... .... .... .... .... ..... .... 163
About the Author
Robert Dodgshon is an Emeritus Professor of Aberystwyth University. He was formerly
Gregynog Professor of Geography and Director of the Institute of Geography and Earth
Sciences at Aberystwyth. He has written extensively on historical geography. His previous
work includes books on Europe and on farming communities in the Scottish Highlands and
Islandsduringthemedieval and early modernperiod.He haslong had aparticular interest in
thelivelihoodsandstrategiesbywhichmountaincommunitiesgenerallyensuredstability.As
well as being a Founding Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales, he is also a Fellow of the
British Academy.
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