Dealing with drainage: state regulation of drainage projects in theDutchRepublic,France, andEngland during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

Abstract

In the early modern period the viability of large-scale drainage projects implemented by courtiers, officials, or merchants could be endangered by litigation or violent conflicts with landlords, commoners, cities, or water boards whose interests were harmed by the implementation of such projects. A comparison between the Dutch Republic, England, and France shows that the Dutch had developed institutions to deal with this efficiently. State patents for drainage granted compensation to all parties involved and precluded long drawn-out lawsuits. When large-scale drainage began in England and France from c. 1600 onwards, these states had no experience with drainage regulation. They had to find their way by trial and error. In England this led to lawsuits and riots by commoners that ruined several drainage schemes.The decentralized nature of the Dutch state turned out to be an advantage. Dutch politicians and entrepreneurs were used to compromises, and solutions could be adapted to local circumstances. In more centralized England and France this was more difficult to achieve. The Dutch also profited from the fact that territorial lords had already abolished common rights of usage in the coastal provinces in the late middle ages, thus removing an important source of conflict.T he sixteenth and seventeenth centuries witnessed the heyday of wetland reclamation in Europe. In the Low Countries, Venice, and the north German principalities, vast tracts of land were drained in the sixteenth century, 77,000 hectares in Venice alone. Later, wetland reclamation in Venice decreased, but in the Dutch Republic at least 131,000 hectares were reclaimed between 1590 and 1665. In northern Germany 98,000 hectares were drained between 1500 and 1650. 2 Wetland reclamation was driven by the demographic growth of the long sixteenth century, which caused rising grain prices and made large-scale commercial arable agriculture in improved wetlands profitable. From the beginning of the seventeenth century drainage projects were also initiated in France and England.

Drain for Gain: Managing salinity in irrigated lands—A review

“…When in the 16 th century large-scale drainage began in Western Europe, the viability of these projects was often endangered by litigation or violent conflicts with landlords, commoners, cities, or water boards whose interests were harmed by the implementation of such projects. A comparison between the Dutch Republic, England, and France shows that the Dutch developed institutions to deal with these conflicts more efficiently than the others (Van Cruyningen, 2015). The decentralized nature of the Dutch state turned out to be an advantage: Dutch politicians and entrepreneurs were used to compromises, and solutions could be adapted to local circumstances.…”

Review of periodical literature published in 2015

“…In a richly detailed case study of the contribution of the Le Stranges to the drainage of the coastal marshes of north‐west Norfolk, Griffiths is able to show that a competent and committed local gentry were able to oversee a much smoother and more consensual process than that associated with the fiercely contested state‐sponsored ‘adventures’ in the Fens that dominate the literature on drainage. Van Cruyningen adopts a comparative approach to early modern drainage schemes across the Low Countries, France, and England, and he too argues that the Fenland drainage schemes were notably ineffective and antagonistic—the Dutch and French states were much more attuned to the need to negotiate with existing rights users to make a success of drainage, whereas the government of Charles I in particular adopted a heavy‐handed approach to backing the drainers that ultimately proved counter‐productive, especially when compared to the methods deployed elsewhere in Europe or even in north‐west Norfolk.…”