A solid ‘liquid’ base of power: the water between Vercelli and Novara (tenth and eleventh centuries)

If the politics of land were central to political prac- tice in the early middle ages, the aim of these chapter is to interpret the centrality of rights concessions over the waters (torrents, rivers, lakes) and its resources, in order to create a complex political organisation, di- rected by the kings and emperors to control a strategic area of the regnum Italiae such as the Po plain and, in particular, the territory located around the territories of Novara and Vercelli.