Bad Blood and Building Bridges: Rural Communal Networks in the Alps, 1350-1500.

Meier, Joschka (5 July 2023). Bad Blood and Building Bridges: Rural Communal Networks in the Alps, 1350-1500. (Unpublished). In: International Medieval Congress Leeds. Leeds. 05.07.2023.

Rural communities in the Alps in the Middle Ages lived on the political, economic, and geographical periphery of their larger societies. Faced with many challenges, including a lack of natural resources, they developed highly entangled networks which could both support and compete with each other in the utilization of resources. Common pastures, for example, could make areas with poor soil profitable and were vital for transport and logistics, which depended on draught animals. But transportation of goods was, in turn, a common source of conflict on a local and regional level due to problems like overgrazing by passing transport convoys. These and similar issues spurred on the development of new organisations (e.g. transportation cooperatives), which used their influence to regulate conflicts of interest and over time became increasingly independent of established hierarchies of power.

This paper will investigate how rural alpine networks interacted with each other, focusing on the aspects of animal husbandry and transportation, both between and within communes, using case studies from the areas of modern-day Valais, Uri, and Grisons.

Main themes:
• What synergies and conflicts of interest existed between transportation and pasture networks and how were they mediated?
• How did the development of specialised communal organisations like transport cooperatives influence political and economic structures within and among these communities?

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