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]]>These rights were secured after a long civil war against the King, who had relentlessly expanded his claims of exclusive control of the forest, punishing violators with fines, imprisonment and sometimes death. So it is fitting that we pause a moment and recall that 800 years ago, on November 6, 1217, King Henry III granted the Charter of the Forest, formally recognizing in writing the customary rights of commoners to have access to the things essential to their everyday lives.
The Charter of the Forest, with the Great Seal of King Henry III
Commoners depended on the forest for nearly everything. It provided wood for their fires and houses, pastures for sheep and cattle, and wild game for food. The forest had mushrooms, hazelnuts, berries, dandelion leaves, and countless herbs. The forests were a source of acorns and beech mast for pigs; brush with which to make brooms; and medicinal plants for all sorts of illnesses and diseases.
“More than any other kind of landscape,” wrote English naturalist Richard Mabey, “[the English forests of the 13th Century] are communal places, with generations of shared natural and human history inscribed in their structures.”
How is it that the Charter of the Forest has been nearly forgotten? Historian Peter Linebaugh explains in his wonderful book The Magna Carta Manifesto that the two charters of liberty were often publicly linked. Indeed, the very term Magna Carta was used to distinguish the Great Charter of 1215 with the “lesser” one issued two years later, the Charter of the Forest.
It wasn’t until 1297 that King Edward I directed that the two be treated as the single law of the land. In 1369, King Edward III issued a law that incorporated the two into a single statute, with the Charter of the Forest becoming chapter 7 of the Magna Carta. Over the centuries, the Charter of the Forest, seen as a minor subset of the Great Charter, was largely forgotten.
The Medieval manuscripts blog maintained by the British Library has a nice post on “how our ancient trees connect us to the past,” which mentions the Charter of the Forest and provides a rarely seen image of it. (Thanks to Juan Carlos de Martin and Ugo Mattei for alerting me to this.) The post noted that there are over 120,000 trees listed in the British Woodland Trust’s Ancient Tree Inventory, some of which are over 1,000 years old and were around at the time that the Charter was issued.
The blog post discusses how the Charter of the Forest “rolled back the area of the forests to their boundaries at the beginning of the rule of King Henry II in 1152, where lands could be shown to have been taken wrongfully. (Henry II had vigorously expanded the forest borders to the point of creating hardship.)” An early case of reclaiming the commons, one might say.
But what does the Charter mean for commoners today?
Two years ago, at an event celebrating the Magna Carta’s 800th anniversary, I gave a talk at the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Berlin, called “Who May use the King’s Forest: The Meaning of the Magna Carta, Commons, and Law in Our Time.” My focus was on the functional legal significance of Magna Carta (i.e., the Charter of the Forest) in meeting people’s everyday survival needs and in fulfilling human rights.
The document is significant because it assured that everyone may access the common wealth that we all inherit as human beings – or as I put it, Who may use the King’s forests? The commoners of the early 1200s had a ready answer to this question: “What do you mean, ‘The King’s forests’? They belong to us! They’ve been ours for centuries!”
This is the forgotten legacy of Magna Carta: its frank acknowledgment that commoners have rights to the things essential to human life: the right to use the forest, the right to self-organize their own governance rules, and civil liberties and protections against the sovereign’s arbitrary abuses of power. All of these preceded the very idea of written law. They were considered human rights based on fundamental needs and long-standing traditions.
It is fascinating to realize that, with the rise of the modern nation-state and capitalism, these rights have been steadily pared back and in many cases eliminated. There is no longer any broad enforceable right of access to resources essential to human survival, for example — although Italian legal scholar Stefano Rodota worked hard to try to resurrect this principle.
The struggle to resurrect a law for the commons in modern times is barely underway. But it is becoming clear that commoners must reclaim from reckless market/states their right to act as stewards of the planet’s ecosystems. Let us raise a toast to the Charter of the Forest and remember what it stands for. We will be needing inspiration and instruction for it in the years ahead.
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]]>The Commons
A documentary film about communities all over the world reasserting sustainable, responsible futures using ancient commons principles. The film visits cooperatives, ecovillages, commons lawyers, Occupy activists, Internet commoners, indigenous peoples, community banks and others around the world to explore how commons work for them.
USA, 2016 (forthcoming). Produced and directed by Kevin Hansen.
The Promise of the Commons
A beautifully produced film that focuses on natural resource commons in the global South, with special attention to land grabbing and land rights in India, Nepal, and Mexico.
India/China, 2013. Length, 50 minutes. Produced by Environmental Education Media Project, with the India-based Foundation for Ecological Security. Written by environmental educator John D. Liu and directed by Patrick Augenstein.
50-minute version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uN2b1syMsA
20-minute version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=59&v=AFnNy0WkWbE
16-minute version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJe19JoB8x8
Peter Linebaugh: Who Owns the Commons? on The Laura Flanders Show
An interview with historian and author Peter Linebaugh on the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta and the significance of that legal document and the struggle behind it today.
USA, 2015. Length, 18 minutes. Produced by GRITtv.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSF3m_Uav6Y
The Commons
A left-libertarian-anarchist perspective on the commons that explains the logic of capitalism and the potential of the commons to meet needs beyond the state and market. The video features a variety of slides and a voiceover narration.
USA, 2013. Produced by Anarchist Collective. Length, 36 minutes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0BXCiKOsKY
Script for video narration: https://theleftlibertarian.wordpress.com/2013/09/11/the-commons-beyond-the-state-capitalism-and-the-market
This Land is Our Land: The Fight to Reclaim the Commons
Author and activist David Bollier provides a survey of notable enclosures of the commons, especially in the American context, and the growing international movement to reclaim the commons.
USA 2010. Length, 46 minutes. Directed by Jeremy Earp & Sut Jhally. Written by David Bollier & Jeremy Earp.
http://www.mediaed.org/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=146
Short Videos
Better Not More: Principles and Practices Towards the Next Economy
This video provides an overview of activist movements to decommodify nature, re-imagine the character of work, liberate knowledge and democratize wealth. USA. Length, 5 minutes. Produced by Kontent Film and EDGE Funders Alliance.
Mutiny! Why We Love Pirates and How They Can Save Us
Kester Brewin, a mathematics teacher in South East London, explains what our love of pirates tells us about renewing the commons. The talk draws upon his 2012 book, Mutiny!
UK, 2013. Length, 13 minutes. Produced by TEDx Exeter (UK).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=escnWFDUYhI
A Commons Conversation
Participants in a workshop hosted by the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) and the German Institute for Human Rights provide a thoughtful introduction to subsistence and traditional commons, especially in Africa, with a focus on secure land tenure and food security.
Germany, 2014. Length, 5 minutes. Produced by the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies and German Institute for Human Rights.
Remix The Commons
The website for this collaborative multimedia project (see profile on pp. 132-135) features dozens of short video interviews with commoners from around the world, focusing on key ideas and practices.
France/Canada, 2010 – 2015. In English and French.
http://www.remixthecommons.org/en
Commons in Action
A series of short animated videos about a variety of different types of commons.
USA, 2014. Each is less than three minutes. Produced by the International Association for the Study of the Commons. Animations by Viumasters.
- Knowledge Commons
- A Japanese story
- Grupo de Estudios Ambientales’ story
- Foundation for Ecological Security story
- Grupo Autonómo para la Investigación Ambiental’s story
- Open Spaces Society story
All videos are available at http://www.iasc-commons.org/impact-stories.
Patterns of Commoning, edited by Silke Helfrich and David Bollier, is being serialized in the P2P Foundation blog. Visit the Patterns of Commoning and Commons Strategies Group websites for more resources.
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Now here’s a fun audio experience – a 56-minute podcast, “The Deeper Magic of the Commons,” which functions as a kind of introduction to the commons by several eminent commons historians and commentators George Caffentzis, Massimo de Angelis,Peter Linebaugh, along with Dr. Bones, and yours truly.
Besides conveying some great history, the podcast is an audio treat. The interviewer and producer, James Lindenschmidt, is a sonic engineer who cleverly splices in all sorts of short audio segments and atmospherics to the podcast. Lindenschmidt is producer of the Crafted Recordings Podcast and resident audiogeek for Gods & Radicals, “A Site of Beautiful Resistance.”
The website explains itself this way: “We think that resistance should be beautiful, because the idea isn’t to replace a violent world with more violence, or a dreary world with more drearyness, but to replace what has become destructive and cruel with something beautiful and life-affirming.”
From the shownotes to the podcast
After a much-longer-than-I’d-like break, we are finally back with another episode of the Crafted Recordings Podcast. This episode is an extended discussion of the Commons, with contributions from David Bollier, George Caffentzis, Massimo de Angelis, Peter Linebaugh, and Dr. Bones.
The music came from several sources. Thanks to The Droimlins — Eddy Dyer on guitar and Jimmy Otis on accordion — with their songs “Horse Hooves on the Steppes of Eurasia (765 AD)” and “Tenement Polka.” Also thanks to Eddy Dyer for his vocals and Ethan Winer for his bass on our punk-tinged cover of “You Don’t Know What You’ve Got” by Ral Donner. Above all, thanks to the birds in the forest for allowing me to record their conversations one morning.
For a detailed discussion on the content of this episode — both on what The Commons is and why I am using the term “magic” to describe it — is available on the writeup over at Gods & Radicals.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 56:23 — 91.5MB)
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