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The Development of Irrigation in Provence, 1700-1860: The French Revolution and Economic Growth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Jean-Laurent Rosenthal
Jean-Laurent Rosenthal
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Economics, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90024.
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Abstract

Quantiative and qualitative evidence suggest that the returns to irrigation in France were similar during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Old Regime failed to develop irrigation because of fragmented political authority over rights of eminent domain. Since many groups could hold projects up, transaction costs increased dramatically. Reforms enacted during the French Revolution reduced the costs of securing rights of eminent domain.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 50 , Issue 3 , September 1990 , pp. 615 - 638
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1990

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References

1 See, for example, Sutherland, Donald, France 1789–1815: Revolution and Counterrevolution (Oxford, 1985)Google Scholar; and Vovelle, Michel, La Chute de la monarchie, 1787–1872 (Paris, 1972).Google Scholar

2 Cobban, Alfred, The Social Interpretation of the French Revolution (Cambridge, 1968), p. 67.Google Scholar

3 See North, Douglass, Structure and Change in Economic History (New York, 1985)Google Scholar; see also Hoffman, Philip, “Institutions and Agriculture in Old-Regime France,” Political and Society, 16 (06–09 1988), pp. 241–64.Google Scholar

4 Throughout the article Provence will denote the present-day départements of the Vaucluse and the Bouches du Rhône. While these departments represent only lower Provence, the rest of southeastern France, namely, the Cōte d'Azur and upper Provence, has a much lower potential for irrigation development.Google Scholar

5 Abandoning the fallow leads, over two years, to twice the output on the same piece of land but at the cost of more labor and capital. Farmers probably invested some labor and capital on the fallow, so irrigation would not double labor and capital inputs. Because I want to compute a lower bound for total factor productive growth, I assume that labor and capital inputs double. The assumption that nonland inputs double is consistent with estimated labor and capital inputs from rental contracts.Google Scholar

6 Provence was a net importer of grain throughout the eighteenth century. Thus the increased output could have been either consumed locally or used to purchase more food.Google Scholar

7 Not surprisingly, Old Regime government officials promoted irrigation, but royal government protection proved insufficient to overcome institutional obstacles.

8 The canals of Saint-Julien in Cavaillon and l'Hôpital in Avignon were built between 1200 and 1350.Google Scholar

9 I defend these assumptions in the section titled “Technology and Credit.”Google Scholar

10 The hypothetical internal rate of return is simply the rt that sets Rt equal to 1.Google Scholar

11 For any year wages are nearly identical across sources in the area. Avignon, the major city has the most abundant sources, and the ones which were used to construct the series. The noticeable intraregional pattern was that unskilled labor was somewhat cheaper in nearby villages but skilled labor was more expensive there in Avignon. There was considerable seasonal fluctuation in wages, partially due to variation in the working day. For further detail, see the Appendix.Google Scholar

12 Most of the workers who received food were paid not on a per-diem basis, but on a monthly or year basis. Not knowing how many days of work corresponded to a year's wages, I did not use wage bills of workers who received food as part of their compensation.Google Scholar

13 The data also reflect some of the extraordinary levels of inflation associated with the French Revolution, unlike most series previously published. One excellent source for wage data is Baehrel, René, Une Croissance: La Basse Provence rurale (1650–1789) (Paris, 1962). Unfortunately Baehrel's data stop in 1789. The sources used for wages came from the Archives Départementales in Avignon. The sources include the accounts books of the city of Avignon (AC Avignon, CC 550 to CC 805, pièces à l'appui des Comptes), religious institutions (AD Vaucluse, H Bompas 182–185; H Cordeliers Avignon, 62–64), and the hospital of Avignon (AD Vaucluse, H sup. Hôpital Ste Marthe E 103, M 6–18).Google Scholar

14 Cavaillon is a local market town located 17 miles to the east of Avignon, 30 miles northwest of Aix, on the banks of the Durance River.Google Scholar

15 In Old Regime France transportation costs were high. If only a small portion of a given area was irrigated, such land would fetch a very high price. When the irrigation network was completed the price would fall dramatically; thus we want to use a price for irrigation land that is close to the price irrigated land would have fetched after the network was completed and a price for dry land that is the price of irrigation dry land. By 1700, 15 percent of the area of Cavaillon was irrigated. The large area irrigated suggests that most irrigation-specific goods would have commanded only a competitive price. Moreover, most of Cavaillon's nonirrigated land under cultivation was irrigable, so we are in fact measuring the price difference between irrigable and irrigated land with reasonable confidence.Google Scholar

16 Cabedan-Neuf irrigated 600 hectares in and around Cavaillon and was built from 1764 to 1766; Crillon irrigated 1,000 hectares around Avignon and was completed in 1777. Plan-Oriental, another canal in Cavaillon, watered 800 hectares to the north of Cavaillon; it was built in 1823. Carpentras was very large; built in the 1850s, it irrigated more than 4,500 hectares.Google Scholar

17 The interest rate data for the eighteenth century comes from J.-L. Rosenthal, “Credit Markets in Southeastern France, 1650–1788” (UCLA Dept. of Economics Working Paper No. 589). For the nineteenth century I have relied on Homer, Stanley, A History of Interest Rates (New Brunswick, 1977), pp. 156–57, 172, 195–96, 222–23. I preferred to ignore the interest data in David Weir and François Velde, “The Financial Market and Government Debt in France, 1750–1793” (Paper presented at the Second International Cliometrics meeting, Santander, 1989). The data they probability of default. As a consistency check I did estimate benefit-cost ratios using these data with results similar to those from using the rentes data. In fact, none of the results depend strongly on the choice of an interest rate, provided it is less than 8 percent. An interest rate of 8 percent is higher than any paid in the eighteenth century by the French government (except in 1770) or by private borrowers.Google Scholar

18 The data and results are presented in detail in the Appendix.Google Scholar

19 A valuable source on eighteenth-century canal technology is Delalande, , Des Canaux de navigation (Parris, 1777).Google Scholar See also Maistre, André, Le Canal des deux mers: Canal royal du Languedoc, 1666–1810 (Toulouse, 1968), chap. 3.Google Scholar

20 Rigaud, Jean, La Canal de Craponne, Etude historique et juridique relative aux concessions complexes des arrosages communaux d'Istre et Grans (Aix-en-Provence, 1934)Google Scholar; Caillet, Roger, Le Canal de Carpentras (Carpentras, 1925), chaps. 2, 3.Google Scholar

21 Masson, Paul, Encyclopédie des Bouches du Rhône (Paris, 1929–1930), vol. 7, pp. 162–67. This canal ran nearly 100 kilometers through a very rugged part of Provence to deliver water to Marseille.Google Scholar

22 The canal of Boisgelin, the most ambition canal realized prior to the Revolution, shows that risk was small. The engineer, Brun, had warned of the very large costs associated with the tunnel. Yet he did not doubt that the tunnel could be built. BM Méjanes, Ms. 840(853). My section titled “Institutional Failure: Eminent Domain and Rent-seeking” will discuss how instutional factors raised costs on this canal.Google Scholar

23 Goubert, Pierre, L'Ancien Régime (Paris, 1973), vol. 2, chap. 7, offers an introduction to Old Regime finance.Google Scholar See also Chaussinant-Nogaret, Guy, Les Financiers du Languedoc au XVIIIeme siècle (Paris, 1976).Google Scholar

24 The canal of the Midi was primarily financed by the estates of Languedoc through loans. See Forster, Robert, The Nobility of Toulouse in the Eighteenth Century: A Social and Economic Study (Baltimore, 1960), pp. 66–74Google Scholar; Beik, William, Absolutism and Society in Seventeenth-Century France: State Power and Provincial Aristocracy in Languedoc (New York, 1985), pp. 292–97; and Maistre, Le Canal des Deux Mers, chap. 4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25 See Masson, Paul, “Le Canal de Provence”, in Revue historique de Provence (Aix-en-Provence, 1901), pp. 423–25;Google ScholarElie, Hubert, “La Spéculation sous la Régence: l'Affaire du Canal d'Avignon à la Mer,” Provence Historique, 3 (1953), pp. 112–13;Google Scholar and Reboulet, A., “Construction du Canal de Crillon,” Mémories de l'Académie de Vaucluse, 33 (1914), pp. 46–47. In the case of the canal of Crillon, 25 percent of the construction costs was advanced by Jews and another 25 percent by nobles and bourgeois. Landowners were the largest source of credit in France because they could borrow money through mortages. Had promotes been able to interest more than a small number of landowners, the credit problem would never have existed.Google Scholar

26 Other causes of failure were the costs associated with securing water rights and the severe revenue problems related to the fact that most of the costs of the network were sunk when the builder bargained with landowners to sell them water rights. Although these other causes were important, they were due to the same division of authority that encouraged rent-seeking over rights of eminent domain. Focusing solely on rights of way simplifies the argument.Google Scholar

27 On the canal of Craponne see Bertin, J.-B. and Autier, P., Adam de Craponne (Paris, 1904)Google Scholar; Rigaud, Le Canal de CraponneGoogle Scholar; Villeneuve, Jean de, Encyclopédie des Bouches du Rhône (Marseille, 1825–1829), vol. 3, pp. 698–714Google Scholar; and Masson, , Encyclopédie, vol. 7, p. 148.Google Scholar

28 The Terres Adjacentes were a set of administratively independent communities that included Marseille, Arles, and a number of villages on the border between the Comté and the Comtat. These communities had never been directly incorporated into Provence. In fact, until they become part of France, the Terres Adjacentes recognized only the direct authority of the Court of Provence. The best reference detailing the political divisions of Provence is Baratier, Edouard, Historie de la Provence (Toulouse, 1969).Google Scholar For more detail, see Masson, , Encyclopédie, vol. 4Google Scholar; and Villeneuve, , Encyclopédie, vol. 3.Google Scholar

29 Elie, “La Spéculation sous la Régence,” pp. 112–13; and Reboulet, “Construction du Canal de Crillon,” pp. 37–50.Google Scholar

30 Masson, , Encyclopédie, vol. 7.Google Scholar

31 Bertin and Autier, Adam de Craponne, p. 113.Google Scholar

32 AN Hl 1515 (March 1780).Google Scholar

33 Syndicat du Canal de Cabedan-Neuf, Archives et Documents 1230–1883 (Cavaillon, 1883), pp. 48–69. Cavaillon chose to bargain with Merindol directly rather than with the Assemblée for a right of eminent domain. Presumably both Merindol and the Assembleé were seeking rents and Merindol proved cheaper to pay off.Google Scholar

34 Across the Durance, in the Comté, the town of Châteaurenard also attempted to build a canal in the 1780s. Châteaurenard was also forced to negotiate over rights of way and water rights with the nearby town of Noves and its seigniors. See Barral, Jean-Auguste, Les Irrigations dans les Bouches du Rhône (Paris, 1875), vol. 1, pp. 370–71.Google Scholar

35 BM Cecano, Ms. 2549. Appeals were heard in the Apostolic Chamber and then in Rome throughout the 1780s. Again the settlement gave free water to Gadagne.Google Scholar

36 See Villeneuve, , Encuclopédie, vol. 3, pp. 714–21.Google Scholar

37 BM Cecano, Ms. 1605 2459, 4°6198; and Reboulet, “Construction du Canal de Crillon,” pp. 41–44.Google Scholar

38 The Terres Adjacents took advantage of Provence for much more than irrigation. See Villeneuve, , Encyclopédie, vol. 3, pp. 755–61.Google Scholar

39 See, for example, Mousnier, Roland, La Venalité des offices sous Henri IV et Louis XIII (Paris, 1971)Google Scholar; and Bossenga, Gail, “La Révolution française et les corporations: Trois examples lillois,” Annales ESC, 43 (03 1988), pp. 405–26.Google Scholar

40 AD Vaucluse S (Usines et Cours d'Eaux, Cavaillon and L'Isle sur Sorgues). The series S was being classified and sorted at the time I looked through it, thus no precise references can be given.Google Scholar

41 Petot, Jean, L'Administration des ponts et chaussées (Paris, 1958), pp. 383–87;Google ScholarBergeron, Louis, L'Episode napoléonien: Aspects intérieurs (Paris, 1972), p. 33Google Scholar; Sutherland, France 1789–1815, p. 345; and AD Vaucluse S, Usines et Cours d'Eaux.Google Scholar

42 Ponteil, Fernand, Les Institutions de la France de 1814 à 1870 (Paris, 1965), pp. 30–34.Google Scholar

43 Caillet, René, Le Canal de Carpentras, pp. 75–76.Google Scholar

44 Veto power was widely used to extract rents from development in Old Regime Provence; see Baehrel, La Basse Provence rurale, pp. 450–56;Google ScholarPillorget, René, Les Mouvements insurrectionnels de Provence entre 1596 et 1715 (Paris, 1975), pp. 196–207Google Scholar; Agulhon, Maurice, La Vie sociale en Provence intérieure au lendemain de la Révolution (Paris, 1970), pp. 43–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

45 One hundred forty thousand acres. The total cultivated area in the Bouches du Rhône and the Vaucluse was 201,000 hectares (excluding olive groves and vines). Since I was concerned with output that could be increased by irrigation, I excluded both olives and vines from my measure of total cultivated area. Barral, J.-A., Les Irrigations dans le Vaucluse (Paris, 1876), pp. 323–34;Google Scholaridem, Les Irrigations dans les Bouches du Rhône, pp. 83–87, 511–12.

46 Caillet, Canal de Carpentras, pp. 194–212.Google Scholar

47 AD Vaucluse, I doc. 221. See also AD Vaucluse, S, Usines et Cours d'Eaux (Avignon, canal de Crillon, 1820).Google Scholar