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American Technique and Steam Navigation on the Saône and the Rhône, 1827–1850*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 February 2011
Extract
In the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Continental Blockade momentarily ruined the maritime commerce of Western Europe and, by the same token, increased the importance of the land routes of this area. More dian other regions, the valley of the Saone and the Rhône, squeezed between the Alps and the Massif Central on the isthmus separating the Mediterranean from the North Sea, profited from the dislocation and came to know an intense activity. For some 105 leagues from Marseilles to Chalon, the products of Provence and Languedoc, as well as colonial goods brought in along the Mediterranean, took this road leading to Paris and the countries of the Northwest on the one hand, to Strasbourg, Alsace, and Germany on the other. Superbly situated in an obligatory point of passage, Lyons enjoyed at that time an exceptional prosperity; placed as she was at the terminus of the new Cenis road, she added to the Rhone traffic proper the free importation of silk from Lombardy and the Piedmont and the trade in Illyrian and Levantine cotton which had crossed the plains of northern Italy. Thus was realized little by little that “Lyonnaise conquest of the peninsular market of the Empire” described by Marcel Blanchard. Coming ahead of even the traditional silk industry, transport constituted the primary source of wealth of a city where nearly two hundred truckers and shipping agents built up solid fortunes, all the while hoping that nothing would come to halt the process.
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- Copyright © The Economic History Association 1956
References
1 This article, which summarizes one part of a large work now in preparation, is based above all on French and non-French archival documents. Among printed sources, one should cite particularly the indispensable thesis of Marcel Blanchard, Les routes des Alspes occidentales à I'époque napoléonienne, 1796–1815 (Grenoble, 1920), and the articles of the same author which appeared from 1922 to 1942 in various reviews: Etudes rhodaniennes, Revue de géographic alpine, Bulletin de la Société de géographie languedocienne, Annales d'histoire économique et sociale. Note: one league equals four kilometers.
2 There had been a corps of cantonniers royaux under the Old Regime whose man power consisted essentially of temporary peasant labor conscripted as the circumstances required. This was still the situation after the Decree of December 16, 1811, which reorganized the service. Not until the General Regulation of June 17, 1827, were the laborers converted into classified civil servants. The period referred to above is that from 1811 to 1827.
3 An article could be written on the river craft alone. Of the three boats mentioned above, the bark (barque), which headed the string of vessels, was very long and narrow (30 x 3.5 meters), of oval shape, built of pine with prow coming up to a point; a large bar served as tiller; the cables of the horse team were attached to a mast (arbotuvier). The penelle, also of pine, was slighdy wider, with both ends raised and pierced for oars. The seysselande or cislande was named after the town of Seyssel on the Upper Rhône; it was essentially a large bark.
4 Forty-three, according to the inquiry of Cavenne in 1827. The number varied; it had reached a maximum of 109 during the famine of 1816.
5 The major inconvenience of these tariff barriers would seem to have been the need to stop repeatedly and satisfy complicated formalities. The goods in transit were apparently allowed to pass free of duty.
6 From Milan to Rotterdam.
7 The career of Edward Church in Europe has hitherto been very obscure. Thanks to Professors Lucien Febvre and John U. Nef, I was able to enter into correspondence with Dr. S. C. Gilfillan, Curator of Ships in the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, author of Inventing the Ship (Chicago, 1935), and with Professor David S. Landes, of Columbia University. Their extreme kindness, for which I should like to express here my sincere gratitude, has made it possible for me to throw light on this very active personage. The principal sources of information available to me in this regard were the following: an article in the National Cyclopedia of American Biography, Vol. XX, p. 52; an article extracted from Church, John A., Descendants of Richard Church of Plymouth, Mass. (Rutland, 1913)Google Scholar; manuscript documents from the State Department Archives, under three different rubrics, Appointment Papers, Miscellaneous Letters, and Consular Dispatches—Nantes, vol. I; Archives of the Canton of Geneva; finally, some French archives, extremely scanty on this subject.
8 For a detailed description of this engine, see the paper of the Port Engineer of Bordeaux, Deschamps, Rapport fait à l'Académic royale des sciences et arts de la ville de Bordeaux … sur les bateaux à vapeur, le 23 août 1818 (Bordeaux, 1821)Google Scholar. [Cf. Hunter, L. C., Steamboats on the Western Rivers (Cambridge, Mass., 1949)Google Scholar, Ch. iii, for an excellent discussion of both low- and high-pressure steamboat engines. According to Hunter, p. 62 and n. 163, an auxiliary engine for the water pump was not introduced on the Western rivers of the United States until the 1840's. (Translator's note.)]
9 Délibération du Conseil d'Etat de Genève, November 1, 1822.
10 Richard Church settled at first in Kentucky, then in Massachusetts. He introduced into this country the sugar beet, whose merits he had discovered in France. But his true vocation had not changed; as late as 1841 we find him, hit by reverses of fortune, soliciting the post of Consul at Havana, while showing a particular interest in the establishment of a steamer service between Cuba and New Orleans. His request does not seem to have been granted. He died in 1845.
11 Gibbons vs. Ogden. Thomas Gibbons had established a ferry service between Elizabethtown, N.J., and New York City in open competition with Aaron Ogden, who held a license from the Fulton-Livingston group. According to Hunter, Steamboats, p. 14, the decision simply dissolved a monopoly already abandoned six years before. (Translator's note.)
12 Bourdon became chief engineer of Le Creusot; then in 1848, with the encouragement of Eugène Schneider, who was not interested in seeking the renewal of his legislative office, offered himself as a candidate and was elected to the Constituent Assembly. It was after the events of 1851, which sent him back to private life, that he entered the “Mediterranean Forges and Shipyards.” On Bourdon, see Boutmy and Flachat, Notice sur la vie et Us travaux de François Bourdon (Paris, 1884)Google Scholar; Robert, A. and Cougny, G., Dictionnaire des parlementaires (5 vols.; Paris, 1889–1891)Google Scholar, article “Bourdon”; and the Rapports du Jury of the various industrial expositions (1839, 1844, etc.). I should also like to express my thanks for certain information provided by the Schneider firm.
13 In America the high-pressure engine operated characteristically without condenser; but the combination was not unknown. See Hunter, Steamboats, 126–27, 130. (Translator's note.)
14 On this struggle, see Bouvier, J., “Une dynastie d'affaires lyonnaise au XIXé siècle: les Bonnardel,” Revue d'histoire moderne, II (1955), 186–88Google Scholar. Apparently in 1845, before the railroad had been built, Jean Bonnardel had been ready to sell out to Talabot and the other promoters of the Lyons-Avignon line. Once the government had indicated, however, its definitive disapproval of such combinations, Bonnardel led the shippers in their fight against the railway. (Translator's note.)