Water Cultures, water knowledge, water conflicts: Rethinking water in the early modern period. Some notes from the Water Cultures Conference

This note will investigate different ways to understand water in the early modern and modern periods, by taking inspiration from the recent conference The Water Cultures of Europe and the Mediterranean, 1500-1900. Held in Venice on the 13th, 14th and 15th September 2023, the conference was organised by the ERC project The Water Cultures of Italy 1500-1900’s team, composed by Principal Investigator David Gentilcore, together with Gaia Bruno, Oscar Schiavone, Rachele Scuro, Salvatore Valenti, and myself. Given the multiplicity of research questions and methodological approaches mobilised by the conference participants, this paper is of course not an exhaustive review of how various strains of historiography have rethought key questions of the early modern period through the lens of water studies, but will rather offer a series of glimpses into macro areas, which have been divided into ‘Water knowledge’, ‘Water Cultures’, ‘Water conflicts’. These macro areas, which correspond to the various panels of the conference, are of course not separated from each other, instead presenting many points of contact, in terms of themes and methodology. Due to constraints in space and the expertise of author of the present note, not all sessions of the three-day conference have been given equal attention, despite being all included in the discussion.