Regions as vehicles for local interests: the spatial strategies of medieval and modern urban elites in the Netherlands

The importance of an historical perspective on the formation of regions is widely accepted. Academics and regional policy-makers use regional history to explain or legitimise the current political position of particular regions, while history is also widely regarded as an important element in the social construction of regions. The dominant evolutionary approach to regions has provided useful insights, but suffers from some fundamental problems, as illustrated here through the example of the present-day Dutch province of Gelderland. We propose to shift the focus from the historical analysis of the evolution of given regions to the comparison of the spatial strategies used by local stakeholders in different historical settings. We identify four logically distinct though empirically interrelated spatial strategies used by local stakeholders to promote their interests through their support of specific regions: (1) the territorialisation of networks to realise economies of scale; (2) cooperation against sub-regional threats; (3) regional territorial defence against other regions; 4) scalar politics against supra-regional control. This framework is then applied to two case studies of spatial strategies: those of urban elites in medieval Nijmegen, and of contemporary bulb growers in the western part of the Netherlands. Historical analysis of the reasons why actors in these widely divergent historical cases sometimes use regions to promote their specific interests can help us to understand the conditions under which regions may become important political entities.

► History is important to understand current regions.
► As social objects, medieval and modern regions are difficult to compare.
►  Regions are more the outcome of spatial strategies of local stakeholders than objects.
► The spatial strategies of medieval and contemporary local stakeholders are comparable.
► Medieval and current local actors support regions for similar reasons.