Historical Geography

""""L’articolo risponde alle aspre critiche mosse da Daniele e Malanima (Perché il Sud è rimasto indietro? Il Mezzogiorno fra storia e pubblicistica, Rivista di Storia Economica, 2014, n. 1) al mio ultimo libro (Perché il Sud è rimasto indietro, Il Mulino, 2013), circa la ricostruzione dei divari regionali in Italia e l’interpretazione della questione meridionale. Per quel che riguarda la ricostruzione dei divari, si mostra che: la mia procedura di stima per il 1871 è trasparente; la procedura di interpolazione realizzata da Da-niele e Malanima non è replicabile e si accompagna a risultati poco chiari; il metodo con il quale Daniele e Malanima dichiarano di essere passati dai confini storici ai confini attuali è incompatibile con i loro risultati; disponiamo oggi di una nuova ricostruzione per anni campione, ai confini attuali, più approfon-dita. Per quel che concerne la reinterpretazione del divario Nord-Sud, a mio giudizio Daniele e Malanima propongono una lettura parziale del mio lavoro, che li conduce a errori di interpretazione (ad esempio nel leggere i modelli econometrici) o a forzature polemiche; inoltre i due autori non considerano importanti o recenti contributi della ricerca storica (mentre supportano una certa pubblicistica storicamente inattendibi-le in circolazione sul Mezzogiorno) e fanno un utilizzo non sempre appropriato della letteratura economi-ca. Nemmeno la loro visione della storia, e all’interno di questa del comune mestiere di «costruttori di stime», a me sembra condivisibile.


The article responds to Daniele and Malanima’s harsh criticism (Perché il Sud è rimasto indietro? Il Mezzogiorno fra storia e pubblicistica, Rivista di Storia Economica, 2014, n. 1) of my last book (Perché il Sud è rimasto indietro, Il Mulino, 2013), about the reconstruction of regional disparities in Italy and the causes of the Italian North-South divide. For what concerns the estimates of regional GDP, it is shown that: my estimation procedure for 1871 was transparent; the interpolation procedure presented by Daniele and Malanima is not replicable, and its results look ambiguous; the procedure through which Daniele and Malanima claim to have converted regional estimates from historical to current borders is incompatible with their own results; nowadays, a new and more accurate estimate at current borders is available. Con-cerning the re-interpretation of the North-South divide, I find that Daniele and Malanima present my work in an unfair way, which leads them to a number of interpretative errors (as in reading the economet-ric results) and to specious controversies; furthermore, the two authors do not consider important or re-cent findings of the historical research (while at the same time supporting a historically unreliable journal-istic literature on Southern Italy) and refer to economic models in a way that is not always correct, neither accurate. They also champion a view of history which looks to me short-sighted and contradictory."""""

The article aims at analysing the cartography in the Netherlands during the XVIIth century, starting from a comparison with the artistic production in the same period. Art and cartography will be shown as results of the same economic, social and political context, deeply changed since the independence of the late XVIth century. The contacts and interactions between the two areas of interest will be studied, in order to investigate the causes and peculiarities of the cartographic development occurred in the Netherlands in the XVIIth century, which was defined as an «happy industry» in the Golden Age. The article is based on Vermeer’s and other Dutch artists paintings, hosted in the exhibition Vermeer. Il Secolo d’Oro dell’arte olandese [Vermeer. The Golden Age of the Dutch art]. In many of those artworks, the artists exemplary reproduced maps and globes, giving a clear idea of which role the geographical elements have had in the Dutch development and the article will try to explain why they were distributed that much.

At the end of the eighth century BC the Judean king Hezekiah began making preparations for a rebellion against the Assyrian Empire. These preparations, it has been argued, appear today in the archaeological record in the form of the lmlk jars, which presumably contained rations for government officials stationed throughout Judah. In addition to providing rations, it is generally assumed that Hezekiah also created a comprehensive nationwide defensive network meant to protect his kingdom. Such a network, however, has never been explicated fully, rather discussions have focused on individual tells, fortresses, or specific regions. That no full discussion of Hezekiah’s defensive network has appeared is related to the available data; many sites have only been surveyed or are not preserved in the archaeological record. Further, it is not always possible to date a site to the reign of a specific monarch, even Hezekiah. However, when multiple variables are considered together, such as, ceramic forms, the presence of lmlk impressions, the presence of destruction layers, and the geographical context of a site, the attribution of a given site to the period of Hezekiah becomes more feasible. Despite limitations, this paper argues that a comprehensive assessment of Hezekiah’s defensive network can be made when all the available archaeological data is viewed through an historical geographic lens. Geography dictated everything in Judah, and when military considerations are juxtaposed with geographical realities and the material culture, the function of individual sites and the larger defensive network in general can be clarified.

"In 1603, Dutch Admiral Jacob van Heemskerk plundered a Portuguese merchantman, the Santa Catarina, travelling from Macao to Melaka. The sale of the cargo at a public auction made traders across Northern Europe aware of the riches to be reaped from Asian trade. However, the episode raised legal questions and the United Dutch East India Company (VOC) commissioned the young Hugo Grotius to defend Heemskerk's actions. Grotius produced two classic legal texts, The Law of Price and Booty and its spin-off, The Free Sea, among the greatest works in the history of international legal and political thought. His observations dealt with free trade in the East Indies, the Dutch Republic's military conflict with the Portuguese and Spanish in Asia, and the legal and moral grounds for attacking and plundering Portuguese and Spanish mercantile shipping.

This book considers the background to the treaties then content and significances, and what Grotius actually knew about Southeast Asian politics and Portuguese institutions of trade and diplomacy when he wrote them.

Grotius' work on the freedom of the sea was a cornerstone in his enduring reputation as one of the founders of modern international law. The present book provides a valuable resource for historians of Southeast Asia and for students of international relations, political theory, maritime history and public law.
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"The Great Famine (AD 1315–1322) was one of the most severe climate-driven catastrophes of the Middle Ages. Europe was marked by cool and rainy weather, and the famine is well documented in West-European medieval sources. Presumably, the Great Famine spanned from the British Isles to Russia, and from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean. However, the north-eastern extent of the famine has never received specific examination, and written sources from the region barely acknowledge its presence. Nevertheless, this cannot be interpreted as evidence of the famine not reaching North-East Europe, as medieval sources from the region are few in number and fragmented. Paleoclimatological studies covering North-East Europe indicate that the second decade of the fourteenth century was considerably cool and wet, but it is unclear if this led to harvest failures and hunger. By exploring the regional food system vulnerability, this paper aims to evaluate the likelihood of the famine reaching the region.

Assessing and identifying food system vulnerability to climate impacts, especially when written source material is scarce, requires an interdisciplinary approach. Here, the theoretical framework is drawn from various bodies of literature, such as landscape ecology and climate history, while different indicators of social and environmental vulnerability are gathered from historical, archaeological and paleoecological evidence. As different disciplines work with varying spatial and temporal frameworks, a special emphasis is laid on bringing social and environmental factors in compatible scales. By centering the research approach on reconstructing the food system vulnerability and its adaptive capacity in the fourteenth century North-East Europe, I thus evaluate if the region was afflicted by the Great Famine."

This paper examines the vision of Empire spelled out in the memorials of Admiral Cornelis Matelieff de Jonge written between 1608 and 1612. Matelieff was the third fleet commander to set sail from Europe under the flag of the Dutch East India Company in May 1605 and is best remembered today for his accomplisments in battle and not for his business acumen. Among his most memorable achievements are his seaborne-attack on the Portuguese colony of Malacca in 1606 and his founding of the first fort on the island of Ternate n June 1607. Matelieff’s memorials offer a both vision of Empire and a blueprint for fundamentally reforming the way the company operated across the Indian Ocean and West Pacific. Most of Matelieff’s recommendations were implemented over the course of about a decade and arguably set the stage for the first Dutch Empire in Asia.