Peat Bogs, Marshes and Fen
as Disputed Landscapes in
Late Eighteenth-Century
France and England
Ian D. Rotherham and David McCallam
Abstract: Buffon and the Encyclopédistes had a certain impact on the
contemporary appreciation of peat bogs and fenland as a particular
form of landscape; but, as this chapter demonstrates, the daily management of, and interaction with, such bog landscapes benefited much
more from the migration of practices and ideas between countries and
regions of Western Europe. Clear examples of this given here are the
reception of Arthur Young’s work in France and La Rochefoucauld’s
study of English Fenland draining and irrigation techniques in the
1780s.
In early modern Europe marshes and fens were commonly perceived
as places of fear and loathing. Shrouded in King Lear’s “fen-sucked
fogs”,
1 they were unsafe and evil wastes where drowning was common, where one could be poisoned by the corrupted waters or the foul
air, contracting the “ague” or marsh malaria which until the late nineteenth century was literally thought to originate in the bad air (malaria) of these stagnant wetlands. Other dangers included getting lost in
their featureless expanses, or flooding destroying nearby cultivations
and manufactures. In 1629 one tract urging the draining of the East
Anglian Fens described them as sunk in “water putred and muddy, yea
___________________________
1 William Shakespeare, King Lear, II, iv, 169 (New York: Bantam Books, 1964), p.
82.
as Disputed Landscapes in
Late Eighteenth-Century
France and England
Ian D. Rotherham and David McCallam
Abstract: Buffon and the Encyclopédistes had a certain impact on the
contemporary appreciation of peat bogs and fenland as a particular
form of landscape; but, as this chapter demonstrates, the daily management of, and interaction with, such bog landscapes benefited much
more from the migration of practices and ideas between countries and
regions of Western Europe. Clear examples of this given here are the
reception of Arthur Young’s work in France and La Rochefoucauld’s
study of English Fenland draining and irrigation techniques in the
1780s.
In early modern Europe marshes and fens were commonly perceived
as places of fear and loathing. Shrouded in King Lear’s “fen-sucked
fogs”,
1 they were unsafe and evil wastes where drowning was common, where one could be poisoned by the corrupted waters or the foul
air, contracting the “ague” or marsh malaria which until the late nineteenth century was literally thought to originate in the bad air (malaria) of these stagnant wetlands. Other dangers included getting lost in
their featureless expanses, or flooding destroying nearby cultivations
and manufactures. In 1629 one tract urging the draining of the East
Anglian Fens described them as sunk in “water putred and muddy, yea
___________________________
1 William Shakespeare, King Lear, II, iv, 169 (New York: Bantam Books, 1964), p.
82.