Ian D. Rotherham and David McCallam
84
small and large landowners alike: “the more a farm is improved, the
better is the return secured upon the money expended”.
37
Yet it would be wrong to presume that the profitability of wetland reclamation was an eighteenth-century realization. Already at the
start of the seventeenth century, Henri IV of France had invited and
paid Dutch engineers to oversee the reclamation of large areas of
marsh in the Somme estuary, the lower reaches of the Seine and in
Normandy. Their expertise consisted in “assécher, dessaler, drainer,
construire des polders [reclaimed lowlands] avec leurs canaux”.
38 The
most famous of these drainage experts was Peter Bradley, the
unlikely-sounding name of a Dutchman from Bergen op Zoom, who
became Henri IV’s Master of the Dikes, and supervised the reclamation of the great Poitevin marshes to the north of La Rochelle. Another
controversial Dutchman, Cornelius Vermuyden, performed the same
function in England, draining Hatfield Close, south of the Humber estuary, from 1626 to 1629. He also advanced projects for similar massive draining of the Somerset Levels, although these were never
executed.
39 As Marc Bloch has suggested, these Dutch engineers did
not undertake this work purely for the public good; their operations in
the Fens and French coastal marshes were proto-capitalist exercises
“directed by an association of technical experts and business men […]
financed by a few large business-houses, mostly Dutch”.
40 Their objective was less public land reclamation than private wealth generation. As such, these wetland initiatives became the financial model for
eighteenth-century reclamation enterprises in Brittany and Guienne
where “companies were founded for the express purpose of financing
– or indeed speculating in – land reclamation, which now also received government patronage”.
41 Obviously, as we noted earlier, there
was often deep suspicion, indeed open hostility, among local land
workers towards these speculators and investors, these “Adventurers”
as they were sneeringly called by the seventeenth-century Fenmen
who smashed their sluices and pulled down their dikes.
42
___________________________
37 La Rochefoucauld, A Frenchman in England, p. 237.
38 Goubert, La Vie quotidienne des paysans français, p. 14.
39 Purseglove, Taming the Flood, pp. 46-49.
40 Marc Bloch, French Rural History: An Essay on its Basic Characteristics, trans.
Janet Sondheimer (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), p. 19.
41 Bloch, French Rural History, pp. 19-20.
42 Purseglove, Taming the Flood, p. 55.
84
small and large landowners alike: “the more a farm is improved, the
better is the return secured upon the money expended”.
37
Yet it would be wrong to presume that the profitability of wetland reclamation was an eighteenth-century realization. Already at the
start of the seventeenth century, Henri IV of France had invited and
paid Dutch engineers to oversee the reclamation of large areas of
marsh in the Somme estuary, the lower reaches of the Seine and in
Normandy. Their expertise consisted in “assécher, dessaler, drainer,
construire des polders [reclaimed lowlands] avec leurs canaux”.
38 The
most famous of these drainage experts was Peter Bradley, the
unlikely-sounding name of a Dutchman from Bergen op Zoom, who
became Henri IV’s Master of the Dikes, and supervised the reclamation of the great Poitevin marshes to the north of La Rochelle. Another
controversial Dutchman, Cornelius Vermuyden, performed the same
function in England, draining Hatfield Close, south of the Humber estuary, from 1626 to 1629. He also advanced projects for similar massive draining of the Somerset Levels, although these were never
executed.
39 As Marc Bloch has suggested, these Dutch engineers did
not undertake this work purely for the public good; their operations in
the Fens and French coastal marshes were proto-capitalist exercises
“directed by an association of technical experts and business men […]
financed by a few large business-houses, mostly Dutch”.
40 Their objective was less public land reclamation than private wealth generation. As such, these wetland initiatives became the financial model for
eighteenth-century reclamation enterprises in Brittany and Guienne
where “companies were founded for the express purpose of financing
– or indeed speculating in – land reclamation, which now also received government patronage”.
41 Obviously, as we noted earlier, there
was often deep suspicion, indeed open hostility, among local land
workers towards these speculators and investors, these “Adventurers”
as they were sneeringly called by the seventeenth-century Fenmen
who smashed their sluices and pulled down their dikes.
42
___________________________
37 La Rochefoucauld, A Frenchman in England, p. 237.
38 Goubert, La Vie quotidienne des paysans français, p. 14.
39 Purseglove, Taming the Flood, pp. 46-49.
40 Marc Bloch, French Rural History: An Essay on its Basic Characteristics, trans.
Janet Sondheimer (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), p. 19.
41 Bloch, French Rural History, pp. 19-20.
42 Purseglove, Taming the Flood, p. 55.