Call for papers EAUH 2026 – Governing Water: Administrative Responses to Urban Water Management in the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period
Session organised at EAUH 2026 (September 2-5, 2026) by Nele De Raedt (UCLouvain), Merlijn Hurx (KU Leuven) and Jaap-Evert Abrahamse (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam).
Deadline for applications: 22 October 2025
Water management is a central issue in urban governance. Both an essential resource for human life and a potential existential threat, water plays a crucial role in daily urban environments, from providing potable water, maintaining sanitary conditions, to facing environmental hazards such as prolonged droughts or flood risks. In addition, water determined the economic success of cities as waterways were indispensable for long-distance trade. Furthermore, the supply and drainage of water is by definition a collective problem that must be addressed at the level of the urban community. This presented local governments with numerous challenges that required city-wide responses. While water is ubiquitous, our relationship with water is deeply shaped by cultural factors. Urban communities across the world have historically developed very distinct approaches to addressing challenges posed by water. Communities are necessarily dependent on natural sources for their water supply, ranging from rivers and natural springs, to groundwater and rainfall. Also, the unpredictability of these natural supplies, the excess or the lack of it, caused by prolonged dry spells or floods, temporarily exposed urban communities to numerous risks.
Historical research has demonstrated that these issues were not unfamiliar to late medieval and early modern administrations (1200-1800). Indeed, in recent years research on the ways societies have dealt with different aspects of water has gained traction. However, the critical role of the development of administrative bodies remains insufficiently explored. In this historical period, numerous cities across the globe developed local governing bodies; coping with the challenges of water management was a central administrative issue. Additionally, attitudes toward water were significantly influenced by social, medical,and religious beliefs as well as available technology, which played a crucial role in shaping how local governments formulated their very own responses to these challenges.
This session examines the administrative challenges that late medieval and early modern cities faced regarding water management (1200-1800) and primarily explores the responses they developed. What governing bodies were established to regulate water management? How were these governing bodies organized? On what knowledge did administrators base their decisions? Was this knowledge exchanged between cities, and if so, in what ways? What specific architectural, infrastructural and landscape projects were implemented to address the challenges of water? How did social, medical and religious beliefs inform the political and social discourse surrounding water management?
By bringing together scholars from various disciplines (political history, architectural history, medical history, history of technology…), this session aims to discuss to what extent water management became a topic of knowledge exchange between cities across the globe.