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Abstract
Entrepreneurship played a crucial role in the development and diffusion of steam technology. To account for this, we need to map the entrepreneurial activities that helped spread steam technology across Europe and beyond. Because tracing this history’s contours requires attending to local contexts, strategies and uses along with large-scale trajectories, it makes sense to speak of historical ‘geographies’ rather than of steam technology’s historical ‘geography’. Speaking of geographies in the plural also refers to the recognition that places can simultaneously be located in multiple spatial situations, their geographical identities the product of historical work, negotiation and perspective. To illustrate these points, this essay begins by reflecting on what might be called the ‘spatial turn’ in the history of technology and the role of entrepreneurship in the spread of steam technology in France during the second half of the eighteenth century, which is the historical focus of this essay. It then discusses a small number of representative cases of entrepreneurial engagement with steam technology in France and concludes by considering what this tells us about the relationship between the French state and its regions and the impact of the French Revolution in this geographically complex history.
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to Simon Werrett and Martin Collins for their careful reading and thoughtful criticisms of previous drafts.
Notes
1. Hill, Boswell’s Life, 459.
2. Robinson, ‘Matthew Boulton’; Marsden, Watt’s Perfect Engine; Roberts, ‘Full Steam Ahead’. For a recent overview of literature, see Swedberg, Entrepreneurship. On the centrality of entrepreneurship to the industrial revolution, see Hudson, ‘Industrial Revolution.’
3. For a similar approach, see Berg and Bruland, Technological Revolutions.
4. Roberts, ‘Full Steam Ahead.’
5. Crouzet, First Industrialists; Mokyr, ‘Entrepreneurship.’
6. More than 230 improvement and patriotic societies have been identified in Europe during the eighteenth century. Van Dülmen, Die Gesellschaft; Daniels, Seymour, and Watkins, ‘Enlightenment, Improvement.’ Recent work linking financial support for manufacturing initiatives, etc. to enlightenment goals such as public education, social improvement and promotion of useful knowledge was presented at a workshop on ‘Economies of Improvement: Technological Innovations, the Sciences and the Public Sphere in the Eighteenth Century,’ held at Warwick University in May 2010. http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/people/research_assistants/sorger/programmewarwickn.pdf. For Dutch cases, see Roberts, ‘J.P. Kasteleyn’ and Roberts, ‘Instruments of Science and Education.’
7. For mechanical engineers, Cookson, ‘Innovation.’ For the Anglo-centric bias of much comparative history, see Horn, Path not Taken, 2–7.
8. Allen, British Industrial Revolution; Mokyr, ‘Entrepreneurship.’ Lack of due attention to historical geography can lead to odd – if prevalent – comparisons, especially in the case of on-going discussions that set compare ‘Europe’ (itself sometimes little more than a thinly veiled reference to Great Britain) and China.
9. For transnational circulation, see Pérez and Verna, ‘Dissemination.’ On transnationalism more generally as a key historical concept, see Christopher A. Bayly et al., ‘AHR Conversation’ and Iriey and Saunier, Transnational History. For regional differences, Misa, Leonardo to the Internet and MacLeod, Inventing the Industrial Revolution, esp. 115.
10. Warf and Arias, The Spatial Turn; Livingstone, Putting Science in its Place; Withers, Placing the Enlightenment; Finnegan, ‘The Spatial Turn’; Middell and Naumann, ‘Global History.’ Drayton, Nature’s Government, 81, 93–4, demonstrates how scientific enterprises carried out in British colonies during the nineteenth century simultaneously involved the colonization of the metropole by extra-European interests.
11. For ‘Tensions of Europe’ see Misa and Schot, ‘Inventing Europe’ and http://www.tensionsofeurope.eu/default.asp. Revill, ‘William Jessop.’
12. Mukerji, Territorial Ambitions; Mukerji, Impossible Engineering; Bieringa, Tunneling to France.
13. On port cities see McPherson, ‘Port Cities’; Broeze, Brides of the Sea.
14. For details of the rivalries and negotiations among these three nobles, see Geiger, The Anzin Coal Company, 18–19.
15. Taylor, ‘Types of Capitalism.’
16. Rouff, Le mines de charbon, 173–208.
17. Geiger, Anzin Coal, 495.
18. Mukerji, Territorial Ambitions, 116–17; Mukerji, Impossible Engineering, 21.
19. Ramsault de Raulcourt directed the Royal School of Engineering between 1764 and 1776. For Laurent, see Thbaut, Le mechanicien anobli.
20. De Croÿ, ‘Letter’; De Croÿ, ‘Observation.’ The company’s document of incorporation is quoted in Hurlbert, France and the Republic, 328.
21. Mémoire sur les Mines d’Alsace (1741), reprinted in Gobet, Les anciens mineralogistes and cited by de Ricouart d’Hérouville, ‘La dessechement des Moeres,’ 18, n. 35.
22. The original documents are collected and reprinted in Anon, ‘Mémoire sur le dessèchement des Moeres.’ For d’Hérouville’s utilitarian argument, see 71. For his lettres patentes and associated documents from the Austrian crown, see Plaeccaert boeck van Vlaanderen.
23. Anon, ‘Mémoire,’ 74.
24. Archives Nationales (AN), F12 95.055, letter of 15 January 1778.
25. Harris, Industrial Espionage, 297–314.
26. MacAllester, A Series of Letters.
27. ‘Despatch on Dunkirk.’
28. Lemaire, Histoire de Dunkerque.
29. ‘… les ouvriers s’en tenaiént à leurs fourneaux, sans étudier aucune forme nouvelle … ils s’imaginaient qu’on ne peut faire mieux que ce qu’ils sont; on est ennemi de leur intérêt quand on leur propose d’autres manoeuvres … . Ils croyaient avoir satisfait à vos objections, quand ils avaient dit “c’est la méthode du pays”.’ De Ricouart d’Hérouville, ‘La dessechement,’ 18, n. 35.
30. My discussion of Conte draws on Daumalin and Raveux, ‘Se batter pour des moulins.’
31. For the early use of steam engines in Cartagena, see Chaves, ‘Innovación tecnológica’; Merino, ‘Cartagena.’
32. Daumalin and Raveux, ‘Se batter,’ 112.
33. Ibid., 114–15.
34. For d’Arnal and correspondence with the Bureau de consultation, see Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers (CNAM), Q 473-Q 475∗ (1779, an IV) (M, PL).
35. Maxine Berg defines Arkwright style factories as ‘purpose-built buildings of several storeys, employing over fifty workers.’ By the end of the eighteenth century, some 300 such textile factories operated in Great Britain. Berg, ‘Factories,’ 133.
36. CNAM, U 629 (1781) (PR).
37. J.R. Harris notes that watchmakers were brought into the making of steam engines ‘because of their mathematical rather than their engineering ability.’ Harris, Industrial Espionage, 298. As the following discussion shows, this was not always the case.
38. Blakey, A Comparison, 11.
39. There is reason to doubt some details of Blakey’s reminiscences. Hutton, Mathematical and Philosophical Dictionary notes that Blakey had already communicated with the Royal Society about ‘the best proportions for Steam-engine cylinders of a given content’ in 1752. See 522.
40. Blakey, A Comparison., n. 30, 11.
41. Blakey, Recueil de lettres, 40. For an extended description of the work, extracted from the records of the Académie royale des sciences, see idem, ‘A letter to Monsieur Falise, celebrated natural philosopher at Liège,’ Miscellaneous Works, in Two Parts (London, undated), 18–21. Blakey refers to the work as forthcoming, though the letter was dated 20 August 1790 (24).
42. D’Auxiron argued that his plan to power the delivery of municipal water supplies with steam could be adapted throughout France. Projet patriotique, xi. For Lavoisier’s report, see Lavoisier, ‘Rapport.’ For details see Morand, L’art d’exploiter, vol. III, part 2; Starrs, ‘Lavoisier’s Technical Reports.’ Compare Graber, ‘Inventing Needs.’
43. D’Hérouville announced his plan in the Courier d’Avignon (12 July 1765) rather than in a Parisian publication. Bertrand Gille claims that d’Hérouville had already written a memoire on the subject in 1759, but provides no citation. Gille, ‘La machine à vapeur,’ 157.
44. Van den Berg and Dhesi, ‘The Equilibrium,’ 4–5.
45. Compare Blakey, ‘A Letter,’ 10, 14–16 and Payen, Capital et machine à vapeur, 53–4.
46. Harris, Industrial Espionage. For piracy of Watt engines, see Tann, ‘Mr. Hornblower.’
47. Blakey, ‘A Letter,’ 5. Essonnes, seven leagues south of Paris, was one of the first sites in France where iron was rolled. See Pérez, ‘Steel and Toy Trade,’ 129.
48. Cowper to Blakey, 10 August 1761. AN cote Y 13701, Blakey Correspondence.
49. Benjamin Franklin Correspondence, William Blakey to Benjamin Franklin, 9 January 1778.
50. On Pinto, see Roberts, ‘Full Steam Ahead.’
51. Brieven betreffende, letters Nos. 82, 83, 103.
52. Ibid., letter No. 84.
53. Bensaude-Vincent and Blondel, Science and Spectacle.
54. For a list of his inventions, see CNAM, D1(M,R Sur). For his mining contracts in Burgundy and Duppenweilers, see Brieven betreffende, letters Nos. 113, 120.
55. Journal des sçavans, September 1784, 627–9. For the prospectus, see AN O11293. For his interest in ballooning and opportunism during the revolution, see Mercier, ‘Portefeuille industriel.’
56. For Danglus, see AN NA F12 – 2197.
57. Allen, The British Industrial Revolution, 1–2.
58. See e.g. Cameron, ‘A New View,’ 5–6; MacLeod, ‘The European Origins’; Roberts, ‘Full Steam Ahead.’
59. Misa, Leonardo to the Internet, chap. 3.
60. For the role of state involvement in Great Britain, see Ashworth, Customs and Excise.
61. De Tocqueville, L’ancien regime, 89 (see also De Tocqueville, The Old Régime).
62. CNAM T566 (MS, PL).
63. CNAM, Q 473-Q 475 ∗ (1779, an IV) (M, PL).
64. Daumalin and Raveux, ‘Se batter,’ 114–15.