Workers’ Gardens and Urban Agriculture. The Belgian Allotment Movement within a Global Perspective (from the Nineteenth to the Twenty-first Century)

Despite the sometimes still powerful „master narrative“ of the all-destructive Fury of the Thirty Years War, since Günther Franz at the latest modern research has been laying emphasis on the different intensity of destruction and depopulation caused by war both geographical and chronological. This article concentrates on the aspects of the profound socio-economic changes in a migrationhistorical perspective that had taken place in vast parts of the Holy Roman Empire and central Europe following the war. It focuses on the rural societies in northern German territories. The article attaches particular weight to two aspects: firstly to bring out the role of the respective authorities in the process of demographic (re-)construction of destroyed and depopulated rural societies. Special attention is being given to the forms of directed (im-)migration as defined by „migration regimes“ (migration control). Secondly, the article aims to illustrate the significance of specific „migration systems“ and their networks for the phenomenons of migration and mobility within a rural society.