In continuing with my previous post on Tim Blanning's account of the Europe of 300 years ago, I present two follow ups on what happened in Europe (and indeed the early American Republic) in transportation. The first involves looking at the rest of the lessons from improved road building and my next blog entry will look at Blanning's writings on the use of waterways in Europe.
As was intimated in the previous post, Blanning writes that it was the British and the French who worked hardest at improving road building. However, pouring large amounts of money into road building did not in of itself translate into a leap towards modernity, indeed the results between what happened in France and what happened in Britain could scarcely be different. Though the French monarchs of the Ancien Regime poured growing resources into road building in the 18th century, where those resources went was a bit uneven as were the results. The highways and arterial roads were greatly improved and this indeed sped up travel in France considerably. However lateral roads linking up provincial towns were still in dire condition, something that was noticed by none other than Adam Smith:
In France, however, the great post-roads, the roads which make the communication between the principal towns of the kingdom, are in general kept in good order, and in some provinces are even a good deal superior to the greater part of the turnpike roads of England. But what we call the cross-roads, that is, the far greater part of the roads in the country, are entirely neglected, and are in many places absolutely impassable for any heavy carriage. In some places it is even dangerous to travel on horseback, and mules are the only conveyances which can safely be trusted.
Adam Smith then went on to add something else that was a big problem in France with regards to road building:
The proud minister of an ostentatious court may frequently take pleasure in executing a work of splendour and magnificence, such as a great highway, which is frequently seen by the principal nobility, whose applauses not only flatter his vanity, but even contribute to support his interest at court. But to execute a great number of little works, in which nothing that can be done can make any great appearance, or excite the smallest degree of admiration in any traveller, and which, in short, have nothing to recommend them but their extreme utility, is a business which appears in every respect too mean and paltry to merit the attention of so great a magistrate. Under such an administration, therefore, such works are almost always entirely neglected.
As the French say, plus ca change, plus c'est la meme.
Blanning goes on to write that the problem in France was that only a small proportion of the population could travel up and down the royal routes. Blanning writes that according to Pierre Goubert most of the population of France still lived in the conditions mentioned in my previous post - i.e. they were still living out their lives within a 5-10 mile radius of their places of birth, ergo their lives were still limited to that of the family, neighbors, the notary, the weekly farmers market and the seigneurial court. This meant that France continued to be fragmented in character, inhibiting the initial formation of an 18th century French national economy along with its vast advantages to entrepreneurs and businessmen of being able to reap economies of scale and scope through greatly expanded markets. That would not be accomplished until much later. In other words, the royal roads of the French Monarchy were not reaching the peasantry of France and they were the majority of the nation's people!
To be fair to the French, they were not the only ones which fell to the siren song of building roads mostly to please the courts of nobility, rather than to tie together cities and lesser towns. Blanning writes that the Spanish elites were also guilty of committing this sin, as were the Italians. And to reiterate, pursing this policy of road building for royal privilege rather than to integrate the nation resulted in fragmentation. According to John Lynch:
As natural produce, raw materials and manufactures could usually be transported only on the backs of mules and donkeys, the radius of any local economy was correspondingly short. For example, the price of wheat in Almeria was twice of what it was at Guadix, just 50 miles (80 kilometers) away. So the population followed the examples of the other coastal towns and imported grain from France, Italy or even Africa.
These issues (including the substantial price differentials in goods resulting from fragmented economies) were sidestepped in the United Kingdom. Of course helped immensely that the UK is a correspondingly small island, ergo the distances were not as great which was a big advantage in a world where travel was slow. It also helped that solutions from the national center were not trusted in Britain, ergo the solution of using turnpikes which were self funding. Moreover, they were also extended to towns and villages in the periphery, a fact that led to better and busier roads outside the main highways and arterials, which was noticed by contemporaries of the day.
It also helped businessmen, entrepreneurs, and travelers that the United Kingdom had a unified system of tariff structures, outside of those levied by the operators of turnpikes. When most people in the modern day world think of trade issues, they probably think of the some alleged exploitation of workers in the developing world, or of some disease or defects of products shipped in from other countries. It seems people seldom remember from history that the single biggest inhibition to trade were the seemingly endless number of levies which were slapped on travelers and merchants by an ongoing parade of officials - royal, provincial, and municipal, not to mention those laid by estates and monasteries! The Holy Roman Empire was particularly riddled with this problem, as was the Habsburg Monarchy. However France and Spain also suffered badly, even though they were nation states on paper. In fact both countries were a motley accumulation of territories which were acquired over hundreds of years. There was little movement for political reform on tariffs since so many were profiting from the system that was in place - and yes, much of that profiting was personal and was not going into public coffers. Stopping to pay the endless line of tariffs not only made trade and travel much more expensive, it also slowed trade and travel down. America's Founders noticed this and stipulated in the United States Constitution that the power to set tariffs was to be denied to the States without Congressional authority.
And last but not least, the improvement of European roads also helped alleviate to some degree one of the greatest horrors our ancestors faced - that of hunger and famine. Blanning writes that there is good evidence that Europe went through a cooling period that was particularly pronounced in the latter half of the 17th century. Mean temperatures were 0.9 - 1.5 Celsius cooler than they were from the 1920's - 1960's and that this cooling had a negative impact on agricultural production. Of course, agriculture was much different 300 years ago. Machinery did not exist. Cereals were a big part of the European diet and varieties were often not adapted to take maximum advantage of the soils.
For our ancestors, it wasn't a question of whether a crop failure and a year (or more) of dearth would come. It was a matter of when and it wasn't unusual for mortality rates to reach 20 percent when crop failures did strike. In two of his most unforgettable pages, Blanning describes in a hair raising narrative what would happen in a year where a crop failure struck. Still, the situation did start to improve during the 18th century and into the 19th. Some of the improvement came from improved governmental action made possible by the improved road and distribution system, while better farming and agricultural methods, not to mentioned improved weather all helped to cut down the length and severity of food shortages, though Europeans continued to be plagued by subsistence outbreaks. Widespread shortages occurred in France in 1741, the 1770's and most notably in 1788-1789 (which many believe was one of the factors which helped trigger the French Revolution), but it should be noted that many acute food shortages were local in scope!
Enough for now. Part three comes next week.
Wizard