Periodic Reporting for period 1 - DEXCORE (The Digest and the Exploitation of the Countryside in the Western Roman Empire (2d cent. BC-3rd cent. AD).Evidence of the water control)
Période du rapport: 2017-09-01 au 2019-08-31
Water control raised a great interest from the ancient jurists who, from the 2nd c. BC onwards, provided sophisticated legal solutions for the exploitation of the resource and for the management of hydraulic risks (shortage, floods, and erosion). At the same period, Romans started to rule over new territories and peoples who had developed their own solutions to cope with their environment and conflicts emerged between the global (i.e. the Roman Empire) and the local level. This historical process is extremely topical as we observe today’s difficulties to reconcile local and global interests, and to integrate local and global regulatory systems. In this regard, contemporary examples are plenty: conflicts over the global warming, the fossil fuel industries or the management of the Amazonian forest. The challenging implementation of overarching legal solutions is at the heart of international negotiations. It is the case of the Paris Agreement on climate change, approved in 2016 by 195 countries. The possible withdrawal of the USA from the agreement clearly shows the potentiality for conflicts between local and global environmental interests.
On the methodological level, jurisprudential sources illustrate: firstly, the perception that human practices may increase the risks and that it was more efficient to act on the human behaviour than to try and control the natural hazard; secondly, the acknowledgement that private individuals, while protecting their private interests, were the best in managing the risks for the benefit of the whole community. The investigation was then directed towards the case studies. While central Italy and the Ebro Valley, in Spain, have been carefully considered, the case of Africa and especially of the Medjerda wadi (Tunisia) still needs to be explored.
In central Italy, the fellow proposes that access to water provided by land servitudes were primarily designed for small, intensively cultivated plots devoted to market gardening around the metropolis. The most favoured areas were in the valleys, where the proximity of navigable rivers facilitated the transportation of goods towards the urban market. The pressure on natural resources was high in this kind of suburban landscape and the jurists were asked to regulate the competition for accessing the water (see M. Ronin « Sharing Water in the Roman Countryside: Environmental Issues, Economic Interests and Legal Solutions », Water Management in Ancient Civilizations, Jonas Berking éd., Berlin, 2018). On the contrary, it is proposed that the legal action to ward off rainwater was developed for the exploitation of terraced landscapes, which became crucial in the supplying of Rome with the expansion of cultivated areas towards the nearby hillsides in the 2nd c. BC. The main concern, there, was not to access water, easily stocked in reservoirs and cisterns, but to prevent waterlogging and erosion. By shaping the sophisticated and detailed features of the legal action to ward off water, jurists help to prevent these risks.
In Spain, the Ebro valley constitutes the example of a landscape comparable with the Tiber Valley, where irrigation was necessary to intensive cultivations, presumably destined to long-distance (and maybe overseas) export. On the rural territory of the colony of Caesaraugusta (Zaragoza), the Roman administration provided the institutional framework for irrigation communities along the river. The existence of these communities was besides authorized by the legal status that Romans granted to a public river like the Ebro: the water was freely accessible to riverside landowners.
Our understanding of issues linked with the management of natural resources and risks in the Roman Empire is highly relevant for today’s society. The fellow’s engagement with students during the Oxford’s Faculty of Classics Open days and teaching activities clearly focused on the idea that the Roman example not only provides a historical model of integration of different regulatory systems, but also reveals how, twenty centuries ago, were implemented legal solutions which are, for some, still in use in the countries of roman law tradition in Africa, South America and Europe.