Resumes

Conference Territorial Expressions of Power from Antiquity to the Modern Era

(Nice - June 21-23, 2023)

Program / abstracts:

Wednesday, June 21

Session - Central power and local power (session chairmen: Frédéric Hurlet & Elie Haddad)

Christophe BADEL (PR, Université de Rennes 2, France) - Provincial Senators under the Roman Empire: myth or reality (1st-3rd century)?

For more than a century, the assessment of the weight of senators of provincial origin (as opposed to Italians) has been a great “classic” in the historiography of the Roman Empire. Their gradual increase appears to be one of the great successes of imperial integration and some modern historians have deduced the existence of regional clans in the Senate. However, the relationship of these senators with the various provincial territories is not so obvious when one considers that a senator had to have a third of his land in Italy and that he had no right to leave the peninsula without the emperor’s permission. The purpose of this communication is therefore to re-examine the territorial anchorage of provincial senators with their land of origin, through material markers (domains, monuments, evergetism) and human networks (clienteles and marriage alliances). It will be especially attentive to the maintenance of this anchor, passed the first generation. The question will be whether the category "provincial senators" is valid only for new men but also has meaning for their descendants. It is also important to see the pace and extent of the «deterritorialization» involved in imperial integration.

Anne-Florence BARONI (MCF, Université Paris 1- Panthéon Sorbonne, France) - Territorial expression of power in the pagi of the Roman colonies in Africa and Numidia (28 BC - mid-3rd century AD)

The paper aimed at examining the territorial expression of power through the example of the pagus in Africa, understood as the territorial district of a Roman colony (M. Tarpin). It focuses on the documentation (mainly inscriptions, but also literature, compilations of law, Roman surveyors' manuals, and, thanks to recent surveys, archaeological data) of the dependencies of the three Roman colonies created by Octavian to organize the territory of the province of Africa around 28 B.C.E. and provided with an extremely large pertica divided into pagi: Carthage, Sicca Veneria (Le Kef) and Cirta (Constantine). Other colonies, such as Ammaedara, created around 75 after the departure of the legio III Augusta, can also be considered.

During the High Empire, the pagi were "laboratories of municipal life" (M. Christol). At the end of a process of institutional change that still needs to be clarified, some pagi were finally detached from the colonial territory during the 3rd century to become fully-fledged cities. Through the question of the “territorial expression of power” in the pagi, the paper analyses the stages and mechanisms of their institutional evolution and thus the legal romanisation on a finer scale than the more frequently studied for what concerns cities. Special attention will be paid to the documents (such as the boundary stones erected by the Roman power, or the interventions of local authorities, from the colony or from the pagus) and the date from which the territorial limits of the pagus can be distinguished.

This analysis will also consider the dialogue between the elites of the pagus and imperial power, the sole bestower of legal promotions. This dialogue may be distinct from the one established by the colony. It is therefore necessary to reflect on the role of intermediaries: the representatives of Roman authority, especially the proconsul of Africa and the legionary legate, but also the members of the local elite who managed to integrate the aristocracies of the Empire, the equestrian order and particularly the senatorial one. The territory of the pagus was actually the locus of agricultural development, and the importance of Africa in supplying Rome, from the end of the first century onwards, offered the owners of large estates both fortune and an economic and political position that fostered their social ascent.

Finally, the institutional evolution of the pagi during the High Empire raises the question of the competences delegated to the authorities of the pagus and of the autonomy from the chief town of the colony, which, at the end of the process, enabled promotion to city status. The question of legal promotion includes the status of people on the territory of the colony and the problem of the theory (which no evidence can prove) of the legal opposition and the territorial coexistence of the pagus of Roman citizens and the castellum considered as a peregrine community.

Fanny COSANDEY (DE, EHESS-CRH, France) –The royal domain, between power base and knowledge of the lands.

In France, the royal domain was an intrinsic part of the legitimization of power. An essential element of the theoretical construction, it is made up of a land base whose contours remain very uncertain. However, the reference to land is a constant feature of the discourse on the origins of public power and on the royal capacity to "live off his own", i.e. the receipts from his domain. This paper will therefore examine the links between land and the king's rights, by attempting to understand what the monarchy knew about its land heritage, by what means it had access to it, and what political benefits it derived from a resource whose evolution made its control extraordinarily complicated.

Guillaume CARRE (DE, EHESS-CRJ, France) - Masters of the provinces: the territories of the daimyô in Tokugawa Japan.

The Tokugawa Shogun regime (17th-19th centuries) was based on a division of territory between the Shogun territories and a multitude of seigneurial principalities, of some 270 in the 1860s. The feudal lords (the daimyô) formally held their territories from a Shogun concession, regularly confirmed (or not). These principalities are referred to in historiography as "Han", in imitation of Chinese history, but this is by no means an official designation. These small seigniories were designated and delimited according to a much older administrative geography: this no longer covered any actual reality, but still referred the links between the shogun and the daimyô to outdated, although still prestigious, forms of legitimacy. Moreover, the daimyô themselves, in territories that were frequently fragmented, asserted the existence of their state and their authority through the presence of capitals with castles, or even simulacra of castles, under the suspicious control of the Tokugawa. Based mainly on the example of the principality of Kaga, we will briefly present a few principles of the symbolic and material expression of the domination of the lordly houses over their domains.

Thursday, June 22

Session - Monumental expressions and markings of space (session chairman: Laurent Schneider)

Pierre MORET (DR, UMR 5608 Traces, France) - Stelae, castles and strongholds: spatial markers of warrior aristocracies in the Iron Age and the Early Roman Iberia.

This presentation considers the way in which local aristocracies shaped the landscapes of certain regions of Spain and Portugal over a long period of time, that of the first millennium B.C., in a variety of territorial and architectural ways. From the stelae representing warriors of the first Iron Age to the rural towers of the early Roman period, the examples presented show how these elites, whose power was based on warrior values, staged themselves in the territory rather than within urban walls.

Gwenaëlle DEBORDE (Doctorante, Sorbonne Université, France) - Territorial manifestations of the Roman judicial power in the western provinces: a study of the termini under the High Empire (1st-3rd century).

The study of Roman boundary markers, or termini, enables us to understand the territorial organization of the Roman empire. These objects serve as landmarks between landowners, local cities or local communities, as well as provincial boundaries on a larger scale. Some termini are inscribed with judicial inscriptions that give us some hints about the controversies among local communities (cities, tribes, or infracivic organizations) in the empire. More than only showing the limits of jurisdictions between communities, they materialize the power of Roman justice in territories of the whole empire and offer some territorial context about cases judged, most of the time, far from the lands involved. They also testify about the outcome of these court cases.

Termini as markers for local and provincial legal prerogatives

These sources allow us to map the local jurisdictions and their boundaries, providing us with information about the territory where their mandate applied. It was crucial to know the extent of the territory where their authority was exercised so that communities could count their population and raise taxes. The termini also testify to the connection between the local and the provincial prerogatives in matters of judicial power. In the Roman empire communities have a certain autonomy to administer their local affairs but they are not independent, and our sources outline the limits of jurisdictions of the local authorities and the cases where provincial power applied. When facing issues outside the range of their responsibilities, those entities are looking to the roman provincial magistrates to solve their cases and, by doing so, they adopt the roman legal procedures.

Spatial issues of the Roman judicial power

The termini can be examined for their inscriptions, but also with regard to the object itself, the boundary marker. They publicize the roman judicial power on a local level and allow it to be seen throughout the Roman empire. The purpose of epigraphic inscriptions is to be seen, to be public, but also to commemorate some decisions and verdicts in the long term. Engraving the sentence or some ruling in a boundary stone is a major act, conferring to the stone, and thus to the frontier marked, the legitimacy of the Roman power. Examination of the vocabulary in these inscriptions emphasizes this idea. Moreover, the boundary stones materialize spaces of justice on local territories, which is useful because these places can be difficult to grasp due to their plurality and to the absence of a specific structure dedicated only to this activity.

Coline POLO (Chercheuse associée, UMR 5648 CIHAM, France) – Building to dominate. The example of aristocratic residences in the Comtat Venaissin at the end of the Middle Ages.

The installation of the popes in Avignon in 1309 brought changes in the organization of the seigneuries and upset the contours of the Comtadine aristocracy. It amplified the movement of aristocrats, multiplying social opportunities and intensifying the logic of territorial conquest. This double process accelerated the upward or downward mobility of certain branches of the aristocratic families who had been settled in the Comtat for a more or less long time. This paper will study the characteristics of the territorial anchorage of the Comtadine aristocracy at the end of the Middle Ages. Its objective is to underline how settlement strategies and social preeminence are closely linked. It will be articulated around three main axes: the materiality of aristocratic spaces, the spatialization of social mobility and finally the example of the bastides and their role in the structuration of the territory.

Choosing a particular domain or district as a place of residence rather than another is a way of constructing an identity, of anchoring a power spatially and of inscribing the lineage in a space that helps to distinguish it. Their implantation may reflect their political involvement in urban centers, or their matrimonial alliances. The site of the residential building also provides information on the links maintained with other aristocrats or with the community of locals : from the desire to integrate to distancing.

Social belonging is thus mediated by spatial belonging. The aristocrats, through their residence network, occupy space on a double scale: the place of residence and the territory by means of itinerancy. This multi-residence makes their power and social superiority visible. When they are absent, the aristocrats delegate their control in order to ensure the permanence of their domination over this space.

In order to consider this link between the spatial anchorage of aristocrats, the dynamics of settlement, and the valorisation of the territory, we will develop the example of a "relay habitat" used in the Comtat Venaissin: the bastide. We will question the reason for their establishment: Is it a mode of supervision that allows the lower fringe of the aristocracy to exercise their domination ? Are they the result of the fragmentation of the family patrimony or of the opening up of the aristocracy?

Aude LAZARO (Doctorante, Université Côte d’Azur, UMR 7264 CEPAM, France) - Gallows: symbols of power and territorial markers in eastern Provence from the late Middle Ages to the modern age.

As places of execution and display for those condemned to death, the gallows (or gibbets) were part of the vast judicial arsenal that allowed the lords to exercise their authority. Made up of pillars or wooden posts joined at the top by one or more wooden crosspieces, the gallows were used to hang those convicted of murder, robbery, or sedition.

If the punishment was not only retributive but also exemplary and dissuasive, the gallows, in their tangible dimension, participated in the setting up of a ‘décor justicier’ or ‘justice landscape’ (Prétou 2019). Symbols of power for their owners, some of the sites, located on the border between two territories, also proved to be territorial markers, showing, like the boundary stones, the hold of the seigneuries.

The geographical framework chosen concerns eastern Provence, a border area between the sea and the Alps and the object of numerous conflicts, rivalries, and territorial struggles. The first evidence of gallows in eastern Provence - as in the whole French area - dates from the middle of the 14th century, and since hanging was abolished (with a few exceptions linked to the judicial system of the kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia) in favour of decapitation at the end of the 18th century, the work carried out essentially covers the second Middle Ages and the modern period.

The corpus selected is based on the results of a thematic survey campaign conducted in 2022 on the gallows of the Alpes-Maritimes. Using archive documents and field data, this work mainly mobilises toponymic data, both those from the BD TOPO® proposed by the National Institute for Geographic and Forestry Information (IGN) and those compiled in ancient maps.

Whether it be the gallows of Le Broc built on the border of the territories of Le Broc and Carros, those of Saint-Paul-de-Vence, straddling the territories of Saint-Paul-de-Vence and La Colle-sur-Loup, or the gallows of Tourrettes-sur-Loup on the border of the territory of Vence, this lecture aims to study the logic behind the establishment of the gallows in eastern Provence, which were both spatial markers of power and 'tools of territorial delimitation' (Challet 2015), as well as the durability of the toponyms and what this reveals about the projection of power over space.

Fadila HAMELIN (Doctorante, Rennes 2, France) - Chapel, manor, prison, common mill and enclosures: the territorial expression of power in Breton Cistercian granges from the 12th to the 18th century.

On the scale of six monastic temporalities in the former duchy of Brittany, the Cistercians established landed and common lordships superimposed on the grange space. The manifestations of their power on the territory are expressed by monumental markers, sometimes ostentatious, implanted on the domain of the granges that are the manor, the water or wind mill and the different enclosures. The possession of high justice is manifested by the presence of an auditorium, prisons and pitchforks. But the immaterial dimension of their power was more applicable to the religious field through the regular association of a chapel and a market or a fair. Thus, the supervision and regulation of commercial activities were placed under the patronage of a saint and generated income from taxes levied on merchandise and on rights of passage, for which the numerous enclosures sometimes formed the tool of this capture.

The territorialization of the Cistercian temporaries is finally reflected in a larger-scale reflection on the different components of the territorial network conceived by the monks: the center of monastic grange, annexed farms, warehouses located near river and sea ports, land and sea routes, and town houses, which also raises the question of the status of these rural and urban possessions.

In an antechronological approach, the method adopted crosses textual, planimetric and archaeological sources over a long period of time and at several scales in order to highlight the particularities and recurrences of Breton temporalities by using, in particular, a GIS-type mapping software. This tool highlights the gradual loss of the polarizing role of the grange and its role as an abbot's relay for the benefit of new ways of exercising power, on the human, symbolic and monumental levels. But the end of the expansion of monastic temporalities does not mean the absence of conflicts between neighboring seigneuries. If the period of expansion of the monastic domains ended in the 15th century, the collaborations between religious and local aristocrats are especially perceptible in the medieval period with the creation of villages or the co-financing of seigneurial mills. A few centuries later, the archives only provide evidence of quarrels essentially concerning seigneurial rights.

Session - Competitions and conflicts (session chairwoman: Fanny Cosandey)

Brice RABOT (PRAG, Nantes Université, France) - Territorial expressions of seigneurial power in southern Brittany facing the disruptions of the 14th and 15th centuries.

The Southern countrysides of Brittany – which can be divided both in county of Nantes and Vannetais’ country – are confronted to several disruptions during the 14^th and 15^th centuries. They give some trouble for territorial structures and more precisely landlord’s authority. Armed confrontations during the Inheritance War of Brittany (1341-1365), linked with the Hundred Years War (1337-1453) and with the Kingdom of France during the second part of the 15^th century (1468 and 1487-1491) oblige landlords to undertake reconstructions and to adapt their requirements, given to new modes of representative means. The emergence and consolidation of « domaines congéables » in Vannetais area, the gradual strengthening of farms in the county of Nantes during the 15^th century transformed both landscapes and relationships between holders of authority – landlords and their officers – and tenants. These inflections are sometimes difficult to understand in late-medieval Breton sources owing to lack of chronological follow-up and lack of explicit references.

In these conditions, it is necessary to overlap information from economic sources – account registers, aveux and enumerations – with traces of building. The mansions grid, well known and strictly studied, is one of the most obvious signs. He is not alone indeed. Prisons, places where seigneurial foundations were held or gathering places in which tenants pay their levies – granaries and barns – also interrogate the relationship between authority and territorialization of power, furthermore in the context of dispersion of men such as in the Western part of France. The Dukes of Brittany competed with the power of landlords – at all levels of the hierarchy – with scattered patrimony too, which were more or less intertwined with the possessions of other nobles and sieurs.

Data taken from the study of landlords structures must be put into perspective with the regional subset to understand the logics of territorial organization. This paper proposes to focus on these themes by questioning the relationships between men, authority – both ducal and seigneurial – and territories at different scales, in order to identify some strainlines, in link with the latest research conducted in Southern part of Brittany.

Hervé CHOPIN (Chercheur associé, UMR 5138 ARAR Lyon, France) - The western limits of Savoy in the 15^th century: the example of the Saône River.

The principality of Savoy kept on growing between the 13th century and the 15th century and more particularly in its western margins, always pushing its limits further, till they reach the Saône. Arriving at this river, the limit between the kingdom of France and the empire, the dukes found themselves caught in a power game between, on the one hand, ecclesiastical communities which had possessions across the Saône although located in the kingdom such as the abbeys of Tournus, Cluny, Ainay or Île-Barbe in Lyon, the Church of Lyon but also the Duke of Bourbon, heir of the Beaujolais possessions in the land of the Empire, and on the other hand the king of France who wanted to protect these communities pretending they had founded by their ancestors. Thus, in the 15th century, the clashes between Savoy with these different actors were frequent, thus forcing the King of France to intervene. The stakes were indeed power stakes that passed through the boundaries of these States. Thus, the marking of the limits by signs of wood, then of stone, was requested by Louis XI in 1476 in order to consolidate them and then avoid their destruction. These power issues went through the possession of strongholds such as that of Vimy (Neuville-sur-Saône) which had,been exchanged in 1435 by the Abbot of Île-Barbe Aynard de Cordon to Amédée VIII, giving him direct access to both one of the important strongholds on the left bank of the Saône but also to one of the main ports on the Saône upstream from Lyon. Finally, through various examples taken from the many documents kept in Lyon, Turin or Dijon, it is possible to retrace the exchanges and treaties made between the king and the duke, but also the means implemented to bring together the arguments to justify these limits and the duke’s claims.

Raphaël MORERA (CR-CNRS, EHESS-CRH, France) - Water, king and lords in the Île-de-France region during the modern age.

Water, in its various forms, is the source of modern economic activity. Collected through drainage or irrigation, it is required for livestock rearing and agriculture. Channeled and directed, it supports navigation and powers the machines used in manufacturing or the simplest mills. In the modern Île-de-France region, economic and demographic growth led to a frantic race for water. The city of Paris' need for flour increased as much as its demand for processed products, whether textiles or metal. The dynamism of the capital meant that the driving force of water had to be harnessed ever more intensively.

In its natural state, a river divides and forms marshes within its major bed. Similarly, alluvial deposits regularly modify the course of the river and slow down the speed of flow. The flow of water is thus the manifestation of a hierarchical organisation, depending on the case, and is the result of the exercise of power. The customary law of the Viscounty of Paris, which governed issues relating to water, provided for the distribution of uses within the seigneurial framework and gave priority to milling. Conversely, industrial growth benefited primarily from the support of the monarchy, notably through the establishment of privileged factories. Along the rivers, the inhabitants and landowners, the lords, and their officers, as well as the monarchy and its representatives, all interacted to create a hydrography that was also a way of using the land.

The aim of this paper is therefore to understand the flow of water as the expression of a normative system, and consequently to analyse water conflicts as oppositions between normative logics. It will be built around the hypothesis that the optimisation of water uses has been achieved through a constant search for balance between discordant normative logics, resulting in a substantial change in the ways in which the Ile-de-France territories are administered.

Sandro GUZZI-HEEB (Maître d’enseignement et de Recherche, Université de Lausanne, Suisse) - Religious powers and the construction of spaces in the Swiss Entremont (canton of Valais, 1600-1850)

One could think that it is an easy task to describe the secular and spiritual powers in the Entremont region – in the Swiss canton of Valais – during the early modern period.

Following the example of many history books, we could draw a map showing the influence spheres of the ancient abbey of St-Maurice and of the monastery of the Grand-Saint-Bernard, with the borders of the different parishes and political communities depending on them.

But this would be an enormous simplification. A map would give the illusion of the existence of homogeneous spaces. In fact, the Entremont is mostly represented two dimensionally. But what does actually define that space? Does this space have a volume, a height?

Studying the catholic brotherhoods in this alpine region between 1600 and 1850, we can observe that the practices of individuals are regularly connected to perceptions in which heaven, as it was imagined in the catholic religion, occupies a central position. This image of heaven is not an abstract one, but corresponds to a concrete space, which is closely related to the earth, to nature and to human beings. The ex-voto pictures from this region illustrate vividly this close relation.

From another point of view, the borders of the different parishes and communities correspond to significant spatial limits, although they always allowed exchanges with the outside world, and they did not ward off internal conflicts. Since the Counter-reformation, this space was additionally complexified by large investments in local religious foundations, which strengthened the village autonomies and modified the complex relation to heaven. In fact, every new religious building or foundation established a relation with a particular space, which ensured the capital and the income for maintenance in the long term.

Our paper aims at discussing early modern representations of spaces in order to understand how they influenced religious and political practices, which often conflicted with the spiritual and political powers.

Eventually, our goal is to better understand the concept we call “catholic salvation economy” as a peculiar development model, as well as its spatial logic and its transformation.  This approach allows a different reading of the early modern history of rural catholic societies.

Friday, June 23

Session - Communities and local dynamics (session chairwoman: Frédérique Bertoncello)

Michel CHRISTOL (PR, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, France), Marie-Jeanne OURIACHI (MCF, Université Côte d’Azur) et Laurent SCHNEIDER (DR-CNRS, Directeur des études cumulant EHESS, UMR 5648 CIHAM) - From the end of the 2nd century BC to the 8th century AD: community spaces and power centres in the Mediterranean Bas-Languedoc.

This paper focuses on the manner in which the living environment of the communities located between the Rhone and Narbonne was reshaped over a long period of time by an external power, whether Rome or the Visigothic kingdom (when this area took the name of Septimania): we will give up the classical periodisation, in order to link a history traditionally written from the point of view of Antiquity and another one apprehended from the perspective of the High Middle Ages.

We will emphasise the scansions of a history drawn by the interactions (placed under the sign of violence and/or negotiation, or even integration in the case of aristocracies) between central power and local populations, by focusing on their spatial repercussions: polarising role of the chief towns of cities within the province, restructuring linked to the emergence of episcopal seats, castella and castra, etc. These evolutions will be analysed through the lens of political and geopolitical imperatives, but also through the economic context and natural constraints that haveindeed played a role in the process of deconstruction and reconstitution of political spaces and finally of the breathing of territories in the long term.

From a methodological point of view, we will pay close attention to the fact that reweaving the threads of a history whose narrative is usually interrupted (or begins) at the end of Antiquity implies considering the diversity of sources and requires from us not to erase the specificities of each context.

Alexandre VLAMOS (docteur, ATER Université de Lille, France) - Civic Territory and Plural Sovereignties in the Aegean Greek poleis (3rd century BCE - 1st century CE).

The power of the Greek city over its territory has long been conceptualised on the basis of the notion of sovereignty, an indivisible and ultimate sovereignty, thinking of the contemporary nation states. This approach was criticized for the cities of the Hellenistic period and led scholars to question the notion of independence for these states dominated by the Hellenistic monarchies and, later, by Rome. But the polis thought as the community of citizen, continued to be considered as the sole master of a territory they still manage.

Studies of civic subdivisions and divine ownership led to the fragmentation of the powers that were exercised over polis territory. The city does not have absolute power over its entire territory: certain territories and infra-civic communities are like islands of sovereignty inside the polis. The aim of this paper, focusing on the Aegean cities during the Hellenistic and early imperial periods, is to study the plurality of powers that were exercised over the same civic territory, then to understand their hierarchies and to delimit their own spaces, and to on the use of the concept of "sovereignty" in order to understand the relationship of Greek communities to their territory. I thus respond to the following axis of the call for papers: "What co-spatialities do the powers produce and with which modalities: coexistence, superposition, complementaritý, competition, or even confrontation of the different powers on the same territory?"

My paper will focus on epigraphic sources and will highlight the importance, on the part of the cities and infra-civic communities, to vote a decree, to have it inscribed on a stele and to erect it in a public space in order to make intangible the borders of their power over a territory, borders negotiated between several actors.

I will first study the relations between the city and the civic subdivisions in Rhodes and Cos: In these island cities resulting from the fusion of several communities, the latter managed to negotiate with the city the conservation of certain territorial prerogatives; I will then see, in the case of Delos, a territory attributed to Athens by Rome after 168/7, the way in which the respective powers of Rome, Athens and the gods come into tension on an island with a complex status; Finally, I will continue the reflection on the integration of Greek cities into the Roman imperial framework, asking myself how the addition of a layer of sovereignty was able to modify the internal balance of coexistence and superposition of powers.

Pierre VEY (Doctorant École des Chartes, France) - Bounding the territorium of Marseille (1275-1294): territorialisation as a consequence of a new balance of powers between countal authority and urban autonomy.

I intend to point out how an undefined space gradually crystallized into a territory through the two decades long litigation over the boundaries of Marseille’s territorium. Indeed, between 1275 and 1294, the city council of Marseille’s lower town repeatedly tried to enforce the boundaries of its territorium, conceived in the first place as the space where applied the privilege of the wine defined in the municipality’s Statutes, against the neighbouring lords. In that purposed, the council petitioned its overlord, the count-king of Provence who in return ordered his officials to ascertain the boundaries. Facing the resistance of the lords, the council brought the matter up the judicial system of the county until it reached its supreme court. Thus, the case saw the growing involvement of the whole countal administration and was finally settled thanks to the intervention of a legal expert who ran a thorough investigation before setting the boundaries. My point is to analyse how the territorialisation stem from the surprisingly converging interests of the city council and its tutelage: the former aiming at protecting its privilege and increasing its autonomy through the allegation of the documents subjecting it to the count; the latter seizing the opportunity to assert its power to organize spatial and political hierarchies in the county and thus strengthening the county as a political entity structured by the countal authority. Whilst this process gave the territorium a more and more political significance, I would point out that another parallel process – entangled into the former – was decisive in the territorialisation of the territorium: the growing legal formalisation of the procedure. By this means, the countal administration stated its own authority upon the political divisions of space and the city council the identification between the territorium and its own jurisdiction, altogether against the pretentions of the neighbouring lords. Both of these processes changed the meaning, the use and even the very nature of a peculiar space – the territorium – into a more formalised one which fits with the definition of a territory, while they aimed at settling local power struggles. This crystallisation was the paradoxical and unexpected result of opposed political goals: the city council’s desire to broaden its autonomy and the count-king's ambition to build up his position at the top of the power structure of Provence. This way I intend to underline how a litigation over the spatial application of the wine privilege set in motion a new perception and use of space as a territory through the converging interests of both a state-framing higher power and a subordinated municipality seeking to extend its self-government.

Nicolas VIDONI (MCF, Aix-Marseille Université, France) – Territorialisation of power in times of crisis during the plague of 1720-1724.

The conflicts of competence can change spaces where power is exerced. This process is especially perceptible in the case of the cities during the « Ancien Régime » in France.

In this schema, the sanitary crisis are moments where the practices of power, the territorial and spatial forms of powers, and their expression are reformulated. The Provence during the plague of 1720-1724 can be studied to understand this process. During a short period of legal « exception », the monarch State decided to administrate the province without local authorities. This classical interpretation must be renewed to understand the new forms of territorialization of the power.

In fact, a spatial breaking between the Conseil du roi and the provincial officers existed. This breaking reinforced the vacancy because the « intendant » and the urban elites got away the cities, especially Aix (the main administrative city) and Marseille (the most populated town). The intendant was obliged getting from city to city. This roaming made him unable to exerce his functions and it is why he imagined new forms of government. These new forms, that supposed to administrate the Province in a equal way, against the privileges and the rights of communities, was juged too innovative by the Monarchy itself.

The second aspect appears at the urban level. The case of Aix can be studied to understand how the physical absence of urban elites made possible new experiences of the urban and territorial forms of power. These experiences created some revolts from a part of urban populations. These revolts were localizated around public and common places.

The third aspect of this paper show how many was important the links between the fixed agents and the mobile agents of the Monarchy. The importance of these links emphasized the bureaucratic structuration of the administration, and this is perceptible at different scales: national scale, provincial scale and local and micro-local scale.

This communication is based on archives of the Intendance (série C of the Archives Départementales des Bouches-du-Rhône), of the Contrôle Général (Archives Nationales and BnF), and the municipal Archives of Aix and Marseille (séries BB and GG). Some narratives of the plague also can be used and some maps produced before and after the plague.

Session - Aristocratic families and land holdings (session chairman: Michaël Gasperoni)

Frédéric HURLET (PU Université Paris Nanterre, France) - Augustan senators in their estates. Territorial footprint, land wealth and visibility of power.

Rooted in the holding of magistracies at the service of the res publica, the legal status of senator was inextricably linked to land holdings that enabled him to be placed in the higher social category at the time of each census and whose exploitation ensured him the material means to devote himself to a full-time political career. This study aims to show how Augustus' seizure of power after a civil war reconfigured the wealth of senators in Italy and their imprint on the estates in their possession. It will achieve such a research through the trajectories of two senators who have in common to have chosen the camp of Augustus or to have rallied to the future victor, but whose destinies differed thereafter: first that of L. Tarius Rufus, who became very rich at first before ending up totally ruined, to the point that his son refused the inheritance; then that of L. Munatius Plancus, whose financial patrimonium survived over several generations (children and grandchildren). This study will also look at how and why this social group strengthened its territorial footprint in the domains they first owned in Italy.

Maxime FULCONIS (docteur, UMR 8596 Centre R. Mousnier, France) - Territorial principality or family principality? The manifestations of the power of the Marchiones over central Italy in the 11th century.

During the 11th century, the Marchiones family extended its influence over the center of the Italian peninsula, between Lucca, Spoleto and Tarquinia. They then ruled a principality similar to those controlled further north by the Obertenghi, the Aleramici and the Arduinici, and similar to the French territorial principalities.

The power of the family then rests on the establishment or the appropriation of territories of two types: on the one hand, administrative districts (counties, duchies, marquisate) of which it obtains the load and, on the other hand, of various types of socio-cultural territories. On a day-to-day basis, this power manifests itself in the construction of fortifications, bridges or curtes, the holding of court or justice in certain places, the establishment of networks of followers, the accumulation of land and rights, or still by a practice of space made of itinerancy between several places of life, hunting parties, or appropriation of certain places marked of the family seal even in their toponymy.

We first propose to experiment how GIS make it possible to represent these practices, these manifestations of power and these territories, while overcoming certain problems induced by the nature of the sources. The use of the cards will also make it possible to highlight their distribution in space and their superposition, because the power of the Marchiones is largely based on cospatial games. These tools will make it possible to analyze and explain the functioning of the principality and its territorial manifestations, from which it is then possible to distinguish between “internal zones” and its “external zones”.

Finally, we propose to study the evolution of these phenomena over time. It will therefore be a question of exploring the usefulness of the concept of “complex adaptive systems” to analyze the permanent reconfigurations of the power of the Marchiones and its territorial manifestations⁴. Indeed, the Marchiones modify at each generation their relationship to the family territory, a process which leads them to become in the 12th century simple territorial lords with very local influence and behavior.

Denise BEZZINA (Post-doctorante, Università di Padova, Italie) - Manifestation of power and urban territoriality through the case of the Genoese alberghi (12th - early 15th century).

Within the multifarious context of communal Italy, the Genoese aristocratic alberghi, known thanks to the studies of Jacques Heers and Edoardo Grendi, stand out as a peculiar example that enables to

observe the relationship between aristocracy and urban space throughout the late Middle Ages. The Genoese case is peculiar not only because of its originality, already emphasised by past literature, but also in view of the presence of an extremely rich notarial documentation, the first examples of which date back to the mid-12th century. In a city characterised by multiple and overlapping territorial subdivisions (compagne, conestagie, contrate), it is thus possible to follow the evolution of these aristocratic confederacies (involving around 200 families of different sizes) from the early communal period. Grendi had emphasised the ‘demotopographic’ character of the alberghi which express a principle of organisation of the urban space based on a common cognomen. Thanks to in-depth research on notarial records and the few extant tax registers of the late 14th and early 15th century, and by debating past historiography, the paper aims to reconsider the relationship between the power of the late medieval aristocratic alberghi and urban territory through two main aspects:

1)     Families, territoriality, and toponymy. The influence of the elites on the development of the urban fabric is evident in the toponymy (plathea illorum de, contrata illorum de), as early as the end of the 12th century, during a phase of social mobility for many families. What do these references show us about the relationship between a rising aristocracy and urban space?

2)     Alberghi, residential layouts and urban topography. Since the beginning of the communal period aristocratic families began investing heavily in the construction of residential complexes with distinctive features, putting down solid roots in certain neighbourhoods. What were the spatial consequences of these residential strategies and what was their long-term impact on urban sociotopography? What is the relationship between these residential ‘islands’ and the administrative territorial subdivisions (compagne, conestagie)?

Elie HADDAD (CR-CNRS, EHESS-CRH, France), Valérie PIETRI (MCF, Université Côte d’Azur, France) – / Noble families and their seigneuries: a transformation of the spatialization of powers in early modern France.

The possession of seigneuries was a fundamental element of the nobility's power under the Ancien Régime. At the same time, the nobility was diverse, and the seigneurial regime was characterized by numerous variations within the kingdom of France. This paper addresses the question of the territorial expression of seigneurial power using a sample of families belonging to the upper and middle provincial nobility, characterized by the possession of several seigneuries. This allows us to analyze the spatial relationship these families had with their seigneurial territories at different scales. On the scale of a seigneury, what perception did they have of this territory, and how did they mark the space with their power? On the scale of their possessions, how did they conceive the dispersion or concentration of their seigneuries, and the power they conferred on them, sometimes well beyond a single province? Did they have a specific policy for acquiring or preserving their seigneuries, and what does this say about the way they conceived the space of their power? Last but not least, what changes can be noted in the modern period regarding the spatialization of seigniorial power on these different scales? The presentation will compare families from northern France and Provence, to assess any specificities engendered by two different feudal histories, two different legal regimes and two different foundations of seigneurial possession.