Städte an Zuiderzee und IJssel auf den Hansetagen

This article deals with the representation of the towns along the southern and eastern coasts of the former Zuiderzee and the River IJssel at the Hanseatic Diets between 1367, when Harderwijk, Elburg, and Kampen first attended, and 1507. Out of 102 assemblies in that period the Zuiderzee and IJssel towns’ delegates took part in 57. Unluckily, the extant sources provide little information on the course of the debates and the influence the councillors from the Zuiderzee and IJsseltowns might have exerted on the deliberations. Better documented are the numerous regional Diets which were held in order to prepare for the general gatherings. These regional meetings were convened in order to sound out the opinions of the regional Hanse towns and to decide on practical courses of action. This regional co-operation attained formal recognition when in 1447 a Tohopesate (a military alliance of Hanse towns) was signed, one which created an entirely new Hanseatic Quarter, uniting towns from the eastern Netherlands, the Rhine region and Westphalia, with Deventer and Nimwegen (Nijmegen) as conveners. Since taking part in the Hanseatic Diets and influencing its decisions was predicated on being a member of the Hanse, the exact status of Zwolle and Kampen is a crucial question, since both formally applied for ‘readmission’ to the Hanse in the first half of the 15th century. However, ‘readmission’ is a misleading term, since Zwolle and Kampen had long been part of the Hanse. It would seem that they were interested in a merely formal acknowledgement of their membership, even if their reasons are difficult to fathom. In the case of Kampen trade in Bergen might have been a factor. More importantly, these re-admissions to the Hanse occurred at a time when the towns of Holland were beginning to disengage from the Hanse and emerge as its competitors. This forced the Zuiderzee and IJssel towns to take sides. They managed to remain in favour with the Hanse, without breaking off commercial relations with Holland. This turned out rather well for the Hanse in general and for the towns. Thus, the Zuiderzee- and IJsseltowns functioned as a hinge (Bert Looper) between Holland and the Hanse. Once again, we see that the interplay of regional independence and common solidarity was an essential characteristic of the Hanse.

Sustainable Societal Infrastructures: A Resilient Approach to Prevent Conflicting Claims of Drinking Water and Other Infrastructures

Societal infrastructures are the lifeblood of societies, and the sustainability of infrastructures is very important. Societal infrastructures can experience conflicting spatial claims with other societal infrastructures, disturbing the sustainable situation. The objective of this paper is to design large infrastructures, with a focus on the Drinking Water Infrastructure (DWI), in a more sustainable way by using the resilience concept. To study this, a case study was done in the Netherlands, where an overlap is present between the DWI and the protection zones, and a new railroad and water safety measures in the river IJssel. The case showed that conflicting infrastructures are inflexible and unable to adapt to change due to several reasons in the governance and in the infrastructure system itself. The case was useful for identifying eight design principles to prevent conflicting claims between large infrastructures.

Ontstaan en vroege ontwikkeling van Kampen

The emergence and early development of Kampen The town Kampen, at the mouth of the river IJssel (The Netherlands), seems to have originated in the 12th century ex nihilo. To explain this enigmatic start, many theories have been proposed. This article attributes its origin to a series of events, that started with the silting up of the Limjefjord after 1120 in the north of Jutland. This fjord was an important connection between the North Sea and the Baltic Sea for the small boats of the Frisian trade. The silting up of the fjord was a direct reason for the creation of the cog, a larger bulk carrier, that could circumnavigate Cape Skagen. Moreover, it could also take a shortcut over high seas to the mouth of the Vlie, and over the Almere to the mouth of the river IJssel. From there, the smaller Frisian ships used to sail over the IJssel to the German Rhine area, which was impossible for the seagoing cog. Therefore, the introduction of the cog prompted the foundation of a port for transshipment in the first half of the 12th century. This means Kampen did already exist as a settlement, when a storm surge in 1170 turned the Almere into the Zuiderzee and the settlement could take advantage of this environmental change.

Determination of soil permeability in situ.

The theory of non-stationary flow has, been applied to the movement of water in the upper layers of the Pleistocene terrace on the western side of the river IJssel. A Fourier analysis of the movement of the water levels in the river and in several wells permitted calculation of the ratio of permeability to the storage coefficient of the soil. Assuming that the storage coefficient was o. I0 and the average thickness of the aquifer was I5 m, the average permeability was calculated to be 53 m/day. The discharge of water from the soil (0.8 cu m/day) can be calculated without knowing the thickness of the aquifer. The method can be used to calculate the amount of water needed for irrigation and the amount of water percolating from the hinterland to the river. (Abstract retrieved from CAB Abstracts by CABI’s permission)