Of the communal institutions elaborated by medieval Spaniards,
the most significant and longest-lived were the irrigation
communities which the Muslims had established centuries earlier in
the Valencian region.
The objective of these remarkably democratic communities was
justice and equity in water distribution; and the irrigators
succeeded in combining traditional rules with consensual authority
to maintain their systems with a minimum of conflict. Above the
community level, however, regional powers including king, nobles,
church, and town all sought to derive, at each other's expense, the
maximum benefit from the available water supply. The resultant
interplay of power politics was a sharp contrast to the democracy
of the communities.
Thomas F. Glick has drawn on original documents of the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to present in this volume a
thorough and lively study of Valencian irrigation and society. In
Part One Glick describes medieval Valencian irrigation in the epoch
of its fullest documentation (1238-4500), focusing on the
institutional dynamics of both the local irrigation
communities--those irrigating from a single main canal--and the
larger regional units, the "huertas." He examines the huerta
environment and the administration of the irrigation communities
and then discusses intracommunity conflict, the city's role in
irrigation development, the search for new sources of water, and
regional arrangements for irrigation.
Part Two is concerned generally with the spread of Islamic
irrigation technology and, more specifically, with cultural
diffusion and the persistence of cultural forms during the
transition in Spain from Islamic to Christian rule. Here the author
examines the antecedents of medieval Valencian irrigation on the
basis of Islamic survivals in medieval Christian institutions and
of comparative data from other Islamic irrigation systems. He also
touches on aspects of acculturation and cultural transition that
extend beyond the geographical and temporal bounds of this study,
explaining that "the history of Spanish irrigation is but one
example of the administrative creativity and genius for cultural
synthesis which characterized Iberian culture at the dawn of the
modern age."
General
Imprint: |
Harvard University Press
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Release date: |
February 1970 |
First published: |
February 1970 |
Authors: |
Thomas F. Glick
|
Dimensions: |
234 x 156 x 24mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Hardcover - Sewn / Cloth over boards
|
Pages: |
404 |
Edition: |
Reprint 2014 ed. |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-674-28179-0 |
Categories: |
Books >
Social sciences >
Sociology, social studies >
Social institutions >
General
|
LSN: |
0-674-28179-9 |
Barcode: |
9780674281790 |
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