Pendant la hausse et la décadence de Bruges médiéval, une extension portuaire vers la mer du Nord était enchaîné, poldérisé et flanqué avec des canaux, des digues et des avant-ports. Ainsi, on créait un paysage historique ce qui est marqué par la interaction dynamique entre l’homme et la nature. L’objective de cette contribution est de reproduire une critique sur les approches précédents et courants à propos l’évolution du port médiéval de Bruges. Premièrement, presque 150 ans d’étude étaient subdivisés en quatre phases caractéristiques afin de construire un aperçu général. Puis, deux éléments du paysage étaient examinés en détail afin d’exposer les déficits spécifiques de la recherche jusqu’à présent. Cette étude révèle que le débat sur le Zwin est obsolète parce qu’il ne tenait pas compte des tendances et des techniques modernes. En plus, il montre que l’histoire du paysage régional n’est pas interprété selon les résultats courants de la géomorphologie et d’archéologie.

Agriculture is always a struggle with the environment since agricultural production is in fact applied ecology. However, in the past the struggle with the environment was to a large extent determined by the social organisation which was regionally very diverse. The aim of this volume is to find out how, when and within which structural boundaries, land was made useful for agriculture. In the first part of each chapter, this is studied in general, focusing on the evolution of land use: how and why was land reclaimed and by whom? How intensively was this land used? Which actors played a part in this process? What were the environmental and social limits? In the second part the production techniques and production systems are scrutinized: crop choices, crop rotations,the importance of fallow and cattle, crop yields etc. All this is looked at in light of different farming strategies and social conditions. The comparative approach of this volume also enables a new and innovating perspective on the occurrence and impact of ‘agricultural’ and ‘green’ revolutions in the past.

This volume deals with the geographical evolution of the coastal areas adjacent to the North Sea, with a focus upon the last two thousand years. Although many articles are reworked in a fundamental way, most of them are the result of a conference which took place in 2010 at Ghent University (Belgium) and which was actually the third in a series of symposiums on the same broad theme. The first took place in 1958, and the second in 1978. Recognized specialists were invited to present their research in a variety of fields relating to the subject. The various disciplines in which the coastal plains are studied too often remain within their own borders, and so we have set out to thoroughly interweave them in the hope that this will spur greater interdisciplinary cooperation. This collection of texts is intended to appeal not just to experts in historical geography, but to historians and scientists working in any field who wish to gain insights into the present ‘state of play’.