Landscape Meanings and Values by Edmund C. Penning-Rowsell David Lowenthal

Author:Edmund C. Penning-Rowsell, David Lowenthal [Edmund C. Penning-Rowsell, David Lowenthal]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781032218373
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2022-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

‘Political’ and ‘vernacular’ landscapes

In the perception of the crown, the nobility, and the clergy such peasant territories had little importance; clusters of small, temporary, crudely measured spaces which constantly changed hands and even changed in shape and size and use. The land which these fortunate persons possessed – the estate of the noblemen, or of a bishop, the forest of the king, to say nothing of his kingdom – all had a definite, almost sacred origin, with sacrosanct boundaries vouched for in a treaty or charter. Moreover they served an entirely different purpose: not year-by-year survival, but economic and political power: the power to collect taxes, administer law, raise armies and accumulate wealth.

That is where we can draw one distinction between what I call the vernacular landscape – that of the village or rural community -and the aristocratic or political landscape of the crown and the nobility: the vernacular landscape seeks to include a small (and visible) territory essential to its survival and to its kind of agriculture, whereas the political landscape largely ignores topography in favour of strategic or economic strong points. In his Economic and social history of the Middle Ages, J. W. Thompson (1959) describes the way in which the Empire of Charlemagne was divided among his heirs:

A form of partition in which bishoprics, abbeys, counties, and crown lands were dealt out like a pack of cards, ignoring and violating any distinction of natural boundary or of race or of language which might inconvenience an even economic settlement. The frontiers between kingdoms formed a confused and intricate network sometimes coinciding, sometimes not, with differences of race and language, sometimes following for a few miles a natural line of division like a river, but as often as not crossing rivers and leaping ranges … There was no sense of either social or territorial amplitude, no sentiment either of nation or of country.

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