Water management in pre-industrial economies: the Lombardy and Friuli cases compared and reconsidered (18th–20th centuries)

In recent decades, historiography has increasingly investigated the management of waters and other collective resources in modern Europe, considering it a crucial issue of the socio–economic systems of the continent. As scholars have documented, since the industrial revolution, water consumption has grown continuously. Its use for manufacturing needs, particularly energy production, has led to a deterioration of this resource to the point of its disappearance, especially in the absence of any kind of regulation. Based on this assumption, a tradition of studies considering this problem as typical of the industrial society has developed. Pre–industrial Europe, on the other hand, would not have known the need to preserve these resources, either because of limited demographic pressure or circumscribed use of energy sources. The article aims to test this assumption, by investigating the management of waters for manufacturing purposes in two pre–industrial regions of Northern Italy, Lombardy and Friuli.