IMC 2017: Sessions

How did late medieval political actors perceive and represent the territory they were living in, and its boundaries? What was their concept of territory before cartography and state formation turned national, regional, and urban borders and territories into more fixed geographical entities? This session wants to investigate the fluidity and multiplicity of the concept of territory in the later Middle Ages before the availability of accurate scale maps. Our point of departure is the idea that territory was viewed and constructed differently by different political actors (e.g. princes, ecclesiastics, nobles, urban elites). To analyse the notion of territory in a historical setting, we want to look at territorial practices and representations of territory in concert, in order to understand the correlation and interaction between the two. This session aims to be interdisciplinary and hopes that contributors will treat a wide range of relevant sources: architectural, heraldic, cartographic, narrative, and administrative. In this way, the session can offer a new perspective on the fluidity and multiplicity of the concept of territory in the later Middle Ages.