CONCEPTS

Historical region, region, macro-region

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The concepts of landscape, region, historical region are often used indiscriminately and confusingly. IdEnt uses the following concepts and definitions

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Historical region

Geographers have tried to define the concept of (natural and cultural) landscape, in order to help determine their study object. However, because of the enormous amount of variables, they most of the time had to conclude that it was impossible to delineate a landscape. Over the years, the historical element, and the sentiments going with it, gained an increasing role in the process. Lucien Gallois was one of the first scholars to pay attention to it – albeit for him the 'natural' region still kept pride of place. From then on, historians scoured local chronicles to find proof for the continuity of regional sentiments going back to ancient principalities, provinces and feudal entities (for instance in France going back to Roman pagi) and being experiencedas constituting a unity throughout the ages, despite often changing and overlapping state borders (or, as Fernand Braudel wrote, "boundaries, if long enough in place, are felt to be nature-given" (1). Also Ghent historian Jan Dhondt perceived a connection between historical principalities and present regional consciousness: "The principalities, arisen from the de-integration of the Carolingian empire, have not all persisted until the 18th century or longer as administrative entities, but they still continue to play a role in regional consciousness" (2). Some even predicted a return during the 21st century to historical defined regions (3). However, only a few scholars have tried to describe the characteristics of such a 'historical region' (and to begin with mainly geographers!). One of the first was Jean Brunhes, who, rather vaguely, considered provinces, as regional entities, being the heirs to old administrative circumscriptions with a certain geographical permanence, as a result of the interaction between human activity and a natural given, and with the names as expression of tradition (4). His colleague Andrey Cholley opted for a rather political-economical definition, but concluded that historical landscapes were something from the past, by being only adapted to the means of transport and production of its time (5). Abel Châtelain also emphasized production and transport as main elements for the genesis of historical landscapes (exceptions being 'refuge-provinces' like Bretagne and Auvergne), but refuted Cholley's conclusion: for Châtelain the historical landscape, and this being the difference with an economic region, took shape by the connection between economic-social history and contemporary human geography (later partly taken on board by Fernand Braudel) (6). It was only from German historian Franz Steinbach onwards that the whole of human activity in the past, as reflected in the present, i.e. the whole (cultural) landscape, was taken into consideration: "Envelops and expressions of political, cultural and social life, as cells of more comprehensive communities from the past" (7). According to Steinbach, the historian has an image of landscape of his own, albeit intimately entwined with the geographical image: he called it the 'Geschichtslandschaft', not to be confounded with the 'historische Landschaft' which is the geographical landscape from the past (8). With that, a cultural community could be 'delineated': for instance, Ghent historian Ludo Milis based himself on the classical definition by Edward B. Tylor (in Primitive Culture, 1871), to delineate a cultural (language) area with the help of a complex whole of (ethnical, geographical, political, social, religious) elements: historical circumstances constantly change the amount of cultural contacts and consequently demarcate cultural zones and thus also cultural patterns: so, elements slowing down and stimulating the process, create cultural isomorphs that together demarcate cultural zones (9). However, an 'applied' publication like the Territorien-Ploetz, which also looked at the 'historische Raum' as a result of political, social, economical and cultural forces (with a closer cohesion through which it delineates itself from neighbouring areas), still considered the map to be too vacant to be already able to put territorial, settlement, economical and cultural "'Räume" on top of each other (10). It therefore rather presented territorial 'spaces' (that is to say, with the state as carrying construct for the 'historische Räume'), thus neglecting the psychological aspect (11). From the 1980's onwards however, research tended to the deconstruction of linguistic localisation of culture, leaving a grey area between the planetary and the micro-social level. This grey area has over the last decade been coloured in by a rethink of and renewed work on the spatiality of cultural differences between societies, for instance on the traces left by former territories on modern social practices (12).

For the concept of historical region used for IdEnt (13), we refer to Steinbach's (ambitious) Geschichtslandschaft as cultural landscape from the past that has been preserved into the present, to be grafted unto the territorial-historical (state structure) and the psychological (the regional consciousness of the population). Thus an historical region is a (contemporary) landscape with the territorial-historical as framework and the psychological as agent. They are regionally delineated and historically grown human space divisions and tradition-linking structures (14).

Mark! IdEnt uses the term historical region and not historical landscape: the latter is equally valid as term, but it is more often than not also being used for the geographical landscape of the past. So, in order to avoid confusion, the former term is used throughout IdEnt (15).

Region

In comparison to the historical region, region is fundamentally future-oriented, purpose-bound and institutionally sanctioned. Of course, both types can coincide (and further down the line develop into a nation, a federal entity or even a state) but an historical region is only one of the possible points of departure to constitute a region. So there are several options for the correlation of historical regions and the modern administrative systems - taking into account the existing administrative divisions i.e. boundaries (Spain) or partly (Poland) or ignoring them completely (Ukraine).

Historical regions remain the most common basis for the formation or promotion of regional identitIes in Europe: identity as an instrument for regional integration. Historical regions are areas characterised by socio-cultural (ethnic, linguistic) unity and/or limited to political or administrative boundaries in the past.

Researchers in European regionalism have over the last decade payed more and more attention to ethnic and socio-psychological aspects rather than to political centers and regimes, understanding a region as a historical landscape with collective historical memories (16).

Macro-region

A special kind of historical region is also included in IdEnt: the supranational areas (like the Balkans or the North), called macro-regions (or geopolitical regions) (17).

NOTES

1 F. Braudel, L'identité de la France, 1, Paris, 1986, 281.

2 J. Dhondt [tbc]

3 R. Bauer, Europa zal ook 'Vlaanderen' aantasten, in: De Standaard, 4 april 1998; Belgian politician Louis Tobback spoke of "medieval growth centers": De Standaard, 7 april 1998.

4 J. Brunhes, Géographie humaine de la France, Paris, 1920-1926, 1, 337-368.

5 A. Cholley, Guide de l'étudiant en géographie, Paris, 1942, 42-43.

6 A. Châtelain, Les fondements de la région historique, in: Revue de géographie de Lyon, xxx, 1955, 1, 43-45.

7 F. Steinbach, Die Aufgaben der landschaftlichen Geschichtsverein, Neuss, 1952.

8 But not for instance by Hans Klecatsky who uses the latter (historische Landschaft ) for our concept: H.R. Klecatsky, Region und Landschaft, in: Österreichs Rechtsleben in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Festschrift für Erst C. Hellbling zum 80. Geburtstag, Salzburg, 1981, 296-299.

9 L. Milis, Cultuurhistorische en -sociologische overwegingen bij het fenomeen taalgrens, in Ons Erfdeel, 27, 1984, 5, 641-650.

10 Geschichte der deutsche Länder "Territorien-Ploetz", Freiburg-Würzburg, 1978, 1, XIII-XIV.

11 This approach was followed by, for instance, G. Köbler, Historisches Lexikon der deutschen Länder, München, 1988: the author counted 27 German 'historische Räume'.

12 B. Von Hirschhausen, Les provinces du temps. Frontières fantômes et expériences de l'histoire, Paris, 2023. She differentiates between two kinds of invisible borders (not demarcated in the landscape): 'mental borders' that determine the interface between communities and 'ghost-borders' that do not and which you therefore can pass but not 'cross'. Past territorialities can leave three types of discontinuities: the passive, inert 'relict borders' (areas where traces remain in artefacts, material forms or how land has been delineated: a very slow process, often surviving the states that have installed them); 'survival borders' (areas where initial configurations resulting out of complex social processes, are actively and systematically reproduced; and 'ghost borders' (areas where fleeting and temporary spatial discontinuities are made by choice in the present).

13 Very useful for the definition is the study of regions by Czech historian Miroslav Hroch in order to ascertain the role played by regional history in constructing regional identity (in comparison with national history and national identity), as it saw him first of all trying to define the concept of region: M. Hroch, Regional memory: the role of history in (re)constructing regional identity, in: S.G. Ellis e.a. (ed.), Frontiers, regions and identities in Europe, Pisa, 2009, 1-15. Based on the criterium of political subjectivity, he distinguishes between different types of region: (1) those that coincide with former historical entities (like for instance Moravia, Transylvania, Bavaria, Holland, Tuscany a.s.o.); (2) the usual entities of internal state-administration, without political subjectivity (for instance the French départements) and (3) the non-political entities mainly determined by geographical or ethnographical characteristics; and (4) newly created, 'artificial' regions. The entities in (1) and some of those that fall under (3), more or less answer to the concept of historical region as used on this website. Another possible criterion, size, gives birth to another classification system, distinguishing between (1) small, non-political regions, (2.1) sub-national regions with more or less stable historical borders (Moravia, Slavonia, Saxony are some examples), (2.2) sub-national regions without clear-cut borders (like the Provence or Pomerania) and (3) macro-regions (or mezzo-regions) of extra-national size (like the Baltic, Central Europe, the Balkans). For IdEnt, all categories here apply.

14 K.-H. Faber, Was ist eine Geschichtslandschaft?, in: Festschrift für Ludwig Petry, dl. 1, Wiesbaden, 1968, p. 1 e.v Wikipedia keeps it succint: "a geographical region which, at some point in history, had a cultural, ethnic, linguistic or political basis [...]".

15 In German, distinction is made between a Geschichtslandschaft (for the actual historical region) and a historische Landschaft (for the geographical of the past), but the latter is sometimes also used for the former kind of region.

16 O. Gnatiuk & A. Melnychuk, Identities with historical regions - are they adapting to modern administrative divsion? The case of Ukraine, in: European Spatial Research and Policy, 26, 2019, 1, 175-194.

17 See for instance: J. Szücs, Die drei historischen Regionen Europas, Frankfurt, 20153 .Translation of: Vazlat Europ harom törteni regiojarol, Budapest, 1983.