Rural communities, land clearance and water management in the Po Valley in the central and late Middle Ages

This article shows how groups that acquired the highest concentration of social and politicalpower in the Po Valley in the High and late Middle Ages, firstly rural seigniorial lords andlatterly urban governments, tried to subordinate rural communities to their policies of landclearance and water management. The development of forms of collective organisationamong the rural population implied the ready availability of local structures that couldmobilise manpower and provide knowledge of environmental conditions in the locality.Rural communities developed these functions through negotiation between their populationand the socio-political forces that framed the government of the countryside, first the lordsand then urban governments.