Andreas Rutz, Die Beschreibung des Raumes. Territoriale Grenzziehungen im Heiligen Römischen Reich. Form und Struktur. Studien zum sozialen Wandel in Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit, 47. Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2018, 30 black-and-white maps and drawings in text, 20 color plates. 583 pp.
Year: 2018
Type: book-review
Abstract: This superb book concerns how territorial boundaries were drawn in the Holy Roman Empire between the Carolingian period and the eighteenth century. It shows how the Land, which from the twelfth century referred to the conglomeration of legal and political rights and offices that a lord held over his subjects and subject areas, became the territory, a geographical concept, in which location determined control. Measurable borders characterize the territory but not the Land. This study explains how and when the transition was made and thus concentrates on cartography and how territorial borders were perceived and eventually drawn. It uses the analytical framework of the transition in the Empire between the state based on personal relations and the institutional-territorial state. The focus is on Bavaria, Franconia, and the Rhineland and Westphalia.
Source: Mediaevistik
Author: David Nicholas
Language: English
Subfield: Geography, Planning and Development
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W3022937520