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Spaniards on the Silver Roll: Labor Troubles and Liminality in the Panama Canal Zone, 1904- 1914 Author(s): Julie Greene Reviewed work(s): Source: International Labor and Working-Class History, No. 66, New Approaches to Global Labor History (Fall, 2004), pp. 78-98 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of International Labor and Working-Class, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27672959 . Accessed: 27/04/2012 12:52

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Spaniards on the Silver Roll: Labor Troubles and Liminality in the Panama Canal Zone,

1904-1914

Julie Greene University of Colorado at Boulder

Abstract

This article examines the experiences of Spanish workers during the construction of the

Panama Canal by the United States from 1904 to 1914. Spaniards engaged in a wide range

of protest actions during the construction years, from strikes to food riots to anarchist

politics. Employing Victor Turner's concept of liminality, the article highlights the mu

tability of the Spaniards' position and identity and examines several factors that shaped their experiences: the US government's policies of racial segregation and the injustices

Spaniards experienced; the political and racial identities they brought with them from

Spain; and their complex racial and imperial status in the Canal Zone. Spaniards pos

sessed a remarkably fluid racial identity, considered white or nonwhite depending on

circumstances, and that shifting status fueled their racial animosities as well as their

protests.

In July of 1911, during the construction of the Panama Canal by the United

States, common laborers from Spain working on the infamous Culebra cut re

fused to do certain kinds of work and demanded the right to eat on the job. Span ish workers in several other gangs made a similar protest, and soon a strike in

volving dozens of gangs had begun. The foremen suspended these more than 500

workers for insubordination, and the incident blossomed into the biggest strike on the canal during the entire construction period (1904 to 1914).l This strike

formed part of a wave of labor militancy that spread through the labor camps and construction towns of the Canal Zone and that included an assertive anar

chist movement. Spaniards stood at the center of these labor actions; they were

by far the most likely workers to engage in strikes, riots, or anarchist politics dur

ing the construction years. This paper will examine the nature and causes of this

remarkable labor militancy among Spanish workers in the Canal Zone.

Panam? has long served as a crossroads of transnational cultural relations

and imperial adventures. In the 1820s British planters, accompanied by their

slaves, began homesteading there. During the California Gold Rush, construc

tion of a highly profitable railroad turned the Isthmus into an important point of

connection between the laboring worlds of the Atlantic and Pacific. In the late

nineteenth century the French government tried for nine years to build a canal

before its effort ended disastrously, while innumerable banana plantations

International Labor and Working-Class History No. 66, Fall 2004, pp. 78-98

? 2004 International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc.

Spaniards on the Silver Roll 79

emerged farther north. In 1903 the United States forcefully entered the stage. Led by President Theodore Roosevelt, the government supported a group?in

cluding representatives of the New Panama Canal Company?plotting a revo

lution of independence from Colombia. After the revolution succeeded, the US

negotiated a treaty with the new republic of Panam?, giving the former absolute

control over the huge strip of land known as the Canal Zone, and proceeded to

build the canal between 1904 and 1914. The United States maintained the Canal

Zone as its colony until a treaty in 1979 began to return it to the government of

Panam?. Only in December 1999 did Panam? finally resume complete control over the Panama Canal.2

The decade of canal construction provides a dramatic window into US colo

nial policies and working-class experiences during the era of the "New Imperi

alism." To be sure, US politicians and bureaucrats had little time for imperial self-reflection. They were determined to carry out the construction project, one

of the most demanding in world history, efficiently and successfully. It required the ability to manage a workforce from all over the world that reached numbers as high as 45,000 workers at a single time. US government officials created a rigid

system in order to divide and control this diverse group of workers. Known as

the gold and silver rolls, this system divided workers based upon their race, cit

izenship, and level of skill, into two very different categories. "Gold" employ ees, normally white US citizens, received high pay and many luxurious perks

which were off limits to the "silver" workers, most of them black Caribbeans.

Spaniards fit uneasily into this system. As "white" men on a silver roll nor

mally reserved for blacks, and as members of a once triumphant empire now

contributing to building the US canal, Spanish workers felt profoundly liminal,

caught between different worlds, empires, and races. Anthropologist Victor

Turner developed the concept of liminality in the 1960s as a way to capture peo

ple, typically outsiders, whose identity is very much in flux. They inhabit a con

tradictory position, being simultaneously part of and yet not part of the existing structures, which makes them, he argued, structurally invisible. The concept of

liminality helps us highlight both the mutability of the Spaniards' position and

identity, and the fact that it hinged on several factors that were in turn highly flu

id. This paper will explore those factors: the US government's policies of racial

segregation and the injustices Spaniards experienced as a result of those poli cies; the political and racial identities they brought with them from Spain; and

their complex racial and imperial status in the Canal Zone. Spaniards possessed a remarkably fluid racial identity, considered white or nonwhite depending on

circumstances, and that shifting status fueled their racial animosities. They also

came to the Zone as citizens of an empire and nation looked down upon by the

US. These elements shaped the way Spaniards experienced life as well as the na

ture of their resistance. Migrants from a dying empire to one newly emergent,

Spanish workers found much to dislike in the Zone and in the US government's

policies and they responded with strikes, food riots, and anarchist protests.3 When construction got underway in 1904 the Canal Zone became a spec

tacular site of working-class endeavor and imperial construction, drawing mi

80 ILWCH, 66, Fall 2004

grants from dozens of countries around the world, from Barbados to China, from

Greece to India, from Scotland to Turkey and Venezuela. From the very begin

ning the "labor question" loomed larger than any other for US government of

ficials as they contemplated how to build the canal most efficiently. As the canal's

first Chief Engineer, John Stevens, proclaimed: "the greatest problem in build

ing a canal of any type on the Isthmus ... is the one of labor. The engineering

and constructional difficulties melt into insignificance compared with labor."4

Government officials debated at length the virtues of various kinds of workers,

ranking their efficiency by race and nationality. West Indians had supplied most

of the labor during the French effort to build a canal, so they remained a natur

al choice for the United States. Yet many engineers believed their labor to be in

ferior. Stevens, for example, complained: "I have no hesitancy in saying that the

West Indian Negro is about the poorest excuse for a laborer I have ever been up

against in thirty-five years of experience."5 Lacking an alternative, US govern

ment officials relied mostly on West Indians, especially Barbadians and Ja

maicans, to fill the unskilled jobs. But dissatisfaction with Caribbeans fueled

their interest in southern Europeans, especially Spaniards, who became the sec

ond largest source of common laborers. For skilled labor, engineers turned pri

marily to white workers from the United States who would number ultimately between five and six thousand in the Zone and perform such jobs as steam shov

el drivers, machinists, and foremen. Finally, small numbers of skilled workers

also came from Panam?, from Northern European countries like Britain and

Germany, and from the Caribbean.6

Although civilians would build the Canal, the US military's fingerprints lay all over the project. Many of the men in command in the Canal Zone were on

leave from the US Army, such as Colonel George Washington Goethals, Chief

Engineer and Chairman of the Isthmian Canal Commission (ICC) from 1907 un

til the completion of the canal.7 The gold and silver system these officials adopt ed for managing labor originated at the highest levels of the US federal govern

ment and quickly flowered into an all-encompassing form of segregation. The

government paid silver employees far less, fed them unappetizing food, and

housed them in substandard shacks where vermin and filth prevailed. Gold

workers earned very high wages and terrific benefits, including six weeks paid vacation leave, one month paid sick leave every year, and free travel within the

Zone. The government also developed an attractive social life in the Zone and

provided it at no or low cost to white US employees, hiring bands and vaude

ville acts to perform regularly throughout the Zone and building grounds for

baseball and other games. YMCA clubhouses throughout the Zone provided white US citizens with reading rooms, bowling alleys, and gymnasiums. Finally, the system of segregation heralded by this system was not limited to the payroll.

Government officials cracked down, for example, on sexual practices or cohab

itation that crossed racial lines.8

Government officials struggled during most of the construction period to

define the nature of the silver and gold system, disagreeing among themselves even about the reasons for its existence. Some thought it designed to give work

Spaniards on the Silver Roll 81

ers from the North special perks that would help them withstand the tropical cli

mate (giving them, for example, extended paid vacations so they could return

home). Others thought it meant to show, quickly and easily, how many black or

white workers the government employed at any time, or to avoid conflicts be

tween workers of different races.9 Over time, however, the system changed rad

ically. As the government began constructing the canal in 1905, the gold/silver

system remained quite fluid. Many skilled Europeans, Afro-Caribbeans, and

African Americans won inclusion on the gold roll during these early years. In

1907, the system became more racial in nature, as the government ordered that

all "colored employes" be shifted from the gold to the silver rolls, with the no

table exception of "colored policemen, school teachers, and postmasters." Yet

this still did not clarify the situation. What about Spaniards or Italians, whom

the government called "semi-white?" What about Panamanians or West Indians

who claimed to be white? And on which roll did black US citizens most easily

belong? Problems like these vexed the Canal administrators and for years offi

cials refused to issue a specific written policy, preferring to decide each case as

it came along.10

In early 1908 President Roosevelt stipulated in an executive order that

gold-roll employment would be limited to US citizens, except in cases where none were available. Later that same year, Roosevelt added that Panamanian

citizens would also be eligible for gold jobs. Finally in 1909 Goethals got the last

word, reinterpreting Roosevelt's executive order in ways which defined the sys

tem by citizenship and by race. The gold system would consist of all US citizens

and "a few Panamanians." Other "white employees (i.e., not native to the trop

ics)" could be employed when white US citizens were not available.11 These de

cisions clarified the situation for Spaniards, Italians, and other southern Euro

peans: they would all be classified as silver workers, receiving the lower pay and

housing that accompanied that designation. With the government imposing such unrelenting segregation, workers' lives

on and off the job varied tremendously according to their position in the silver/

gold rolls, and the ways workers exercised agency varied radically as well. In this

racialized empire not only did white US workers dominate, enjoying a great ar

ray of perks and luxuries restricted to them alone (and indeed, they gradually evolved into key enforcers of the racial system), they also developed effective

means of protecting and extending their powers and rights.12 The US govern ment desperately needed these skilled workers, needed to avoid costly deser

tions, and wanted the canal project always to remain a popular cause among the

taxpaying citizens back home. To improve their position in the Zone, skilled

workers relied not on strikes but on their unions?most of them powerful and

politically effective ones, like the International Association of Machinists or the

Steam Shovel and Dredgemen's International Union?to press their case before

the government. These circumstances gave white US citizens tremendous lever

age in the Zone. Government officials worked hard to make them happy, pro

viding entertainment precisely in hopes of preventing demoralization, and en

couraging US citizens to bring their families to the Canal Zone in hopes this

82 ILWCH, 66, Fall 2004

would help create stable and satisfying communities (towards this end they dou

bled the amount of free housing and furnishings allotted to male employees if

their wives joined them).13 The experiences of silver workers differed radically from their gold coun

terparts, of course, and although Spaniards and other southern Europeans re

ceived better treatment than West Indians (significantly higher pay, for exam

ple), all silver men confronted low wages and experienced exclusion from

YMCA clubhouses and other perks reserved for white US citizens. When asked

why the state did not furnish amusements for silver workers, Chief Engineer John Wallace responded "These silver men are most all colored, and they flock

by themselves, and have their own methods of recreation." But Wallace was sug

arcoating a more punitive situation. Not only did the government not provide

entertainment for silver workers, it also set strict curfews and attempted to lim

it socializing as much as possible. Silver workers received no paid vacation or

sick leave. The government did grant them medical benefits, but doctors at

tended to them with little urgency and this, combined with harsher working and

living conditions, resulted in a much higher death rate among silver workers?

and particularly among West Indians.14

Although West Indians had their advantages in the eyes of US officials

(chief among them being their gentlemanly style, disinclination to cause trouble, and the fact that most, thanks to British colonialism, spoke English), their per ceived lack of energy led the United States to seek European alternatives dur

ing the earliest days of construction. An easy source of workers immediately

manifested itself amidst the turmoil generated by the decline of the Spanish em

pire. In the years after the War of 1898, Spanish immigration into Cuba soared.15

Peninsulares, as the Spanish immigrants were called, enjoyed many privileges in

Cuba, often winning the best-paying jobs and economic opportunities that were

not available to cre?les or people of color. They could be found working in every sector of the economy, as businessmen and merchants, as skilled workers in ur

ban industries like cigarmaking, but the majority of them flooded into rural ar

eas to take jobs in railroad construction or, most commonly of all, in the bur

geoning sugar industry. Those Spaniards who ended up in rural occupations found the working conditions harsh and the pay lower than they had hoped for, and they probably composed the most likely candidates for US recruiting agents

seeking to lure able workingmen to the Canal Zone. The agents visiting Cuba

sought one thousand men, but US employers in Cuba fought bitterly not to lose

their Spanish workers and so, in the end, canal officials succeeded initially in

bringing only about 500 men to the Canal Zone.16

Impressed with the Spaniards' efficiency, Canal officials contracted to im

port nearly eight thousand more of them. Officials sent recruiting agents direct

ly to Spain and to centers of migrant labor such as Marseilles, France. In Spain, agents focused their efforts in the larger cities but also in the depressed regions of the northwest. The number of Spaniards in the Canal Zone declined over the

years, but as late as 1912 there remained more than four thousand of them. Most

apparently came from Galicia, a depressed area in northwestern Spain where

Spaniards on the Silver Roll 83

subsistence agriculture could not support the growing population (especially during a time of declining agricultural prices), with smaller numbers coming from nearby Asturias and the Basque country. Andalusia, an impoverished

southern region of large estates and landless peasants, also likely provided re

cruits, as it was a common target for government-sponsored labor contracting.

More generally, Spain sent huge numbers of migrants to the Americas between

1870 and 1914, ranking ahead of all other European countries except for Britain

and Italy. Spanish immigrants rarely journeyed to the United States, preferring to land in Cuba, Panam?, Argentina, or Brazil. Galicia contributed more immi

grants to the Americas than did any other region of Spain at the turn of the twen

tieth century, losing roughly half its population during the decades between 1850 and 1930. The rise of commercial agriculture and industrialization and the tu

multuous changes associated with them explain this mass exodus of Spaniards.

Recent research suggests that Spanish immigrants were typically not the most

indigent, but rather working people with ambition who saw in the vast changes around them an opportunity to make a better life. Jose C. Moya found, for ex

ample, that those who left were more often literate than were those who re

mained behind, and that a fierce desire to save money and return home to pur

chase the land they rented influenced many immigrants.17 Arriving in the Canal Zone, Spanish workers were startled by the harsh

conditions and the poor treatment they received. Recruiting agents had blan

keted their towns with leaflets promising spacious houses, pleasant hotels, the

ability to bring one's family and receive special married housing, healthful food, and a variety of recreational activities. In reality, as an investigation carried out

by the National Civic Federation elaborated, much of this was patently false.

Canal officials rarely provided them with married housing, but gave them ragged or torn window screens (allowing insects and disease into their homes), foul wa

ter, stale food, and no recreational opportunities. Spaniards learned that the

pleasant hotel pictured in the leaflet excluded all but white US citizens. On the

job, they found foremen who typically spoke no Spanish and who insulted and

mistreated them, long hours (twelve hour days or longer were common), an ex

pectation that they would work even in the heaviest downpours and accept dan

gerous working conditions without protest, no provision made for families of in

jured or killed workers, and, of course, grave inequalities in terms of what benefits were afforded to gold employees but not to them.18

The position of Spaniards in the Canal Zone?both in terms of the identi

ties ascribed to them by others and in terms of their own consciousness?was

awkward, complex, and highly mutable. They inhabited a liminal sphere both in terms of their racial identity and their status as imperial citizens. In the Canal

Zone they were both white and nonwhite, yet, simultaneously, neither white nor

nonwhite. How they would be considered depended a great deal on the exact

circumstances. Sometimes US government officials referred to them, along with

Italians or Greeks, as "semi-white." At other times, especially when compared to black Caribbeans, they become unambiguously "white."19 These racial iden

tities were linked closely to the legacy of empire. The US government consis

84 ILWCH, 66, Fall 2004

tently perceived Spaniards as common, low, and only questionably civilized. In

large part, this resulted from the War of 1898, when US journalists vividly

reimagined Spaniards as "monstrous brutes," as either uncivilized or weak and

effeminate, any of which made it easier to perceive them as less than white.20

Spaniards' liminal status can be seen not only in the identities ascribed to

them by others, but also in the ways they experienced and expressed their own

racial identity. Spaniards clearly chafed at their status as "white" men working on the low-status silver roll, an employment roll often defined precisely as being for nonwhites. And it must have been difficult to see themselves so completely differentiated from other white men?excluded from hotels, restaurants, and

gymnasiums, or forced to stand in the line for "coloreds" at the post office. Yet

they felt little affinity for their comrades on the silver roll, and fought repeated

ly and bitterly with other Europeans and with Caribbeans. As time went on,

moreover, their bitterness toward whites on the gold roll seems to have declined

while their animosity toward black Caribbeans became ever more pointed. Like Caribbean workers, Spaniards possessed no unions, could not appeal

to the US Congress, and could not threaten the canal officials by saying they would quit (because there existed such a surplus of unskilled workers). Desper ate for help, they called often on the Spanish Consul, the representative of the

Spanish government in Panam?, for assistance, and he responded energetic

ally?though not necessarily successfully. In 1907, for example, Spanish Consul

Juan Potous petitioned the US officials regularly with concerns about accidents, demands for investigation and for compensation to the families of those killed.

In October of that year a gang of workers at Miraflores (see Map 1) loaded a

railroad car with large and heavy timber, while several Spaniards stood atop the

pile of logs. To unload the car, the foreman simply attached a rope to a log near

the bottom and pulled it out, bringing down all the logs and the workers stand

ing on top of them. Several Spaniards were hurt, one of them dragged by the

logs, breaking his neck and one arm. Consul Potous demanded an investigation. US government officials complained privately about the "continual interference

of the Spanish Consul with the laborers...." They worried he was hurting dis

cipline and encouraging Spanish workers to believe they would win better treat

ment by going to an outside authority. Publicly, officials responded that the

workers' carelessness caused such accidents.21

A few weeks after this incident, Spaniards initiated the first major strike on

the canal. More than one hundred men laid down their tools, complaining about

an abusive foreman and unacceptable food. Although the workers immediately

appealed to the Consul for assistance, they had decided his help alone would not

suffice. They described their foreman as somebody "we bear with great patience in spite of his vile language, unfit for an educated man...." Indeed, "we com

plied with his orders notwithstanding the insults flung at the Spaniards merely be

cause they are Spaniards. "

This same foreman discharged one worker although

the latter had "worked with ardor," simply because "he complained of the food

furnished by the ICC. This food can hardly be compared with that furnished in

the penitenciary. [sic]" Soon after this the foreman suspended another man for

Spaniards on the Silver Roll 85

Map of Panama Canal Zone and Republic of Panama, from Frank A. Gause and

Charles Carl Carr, The Story of Panama: The New Route to India (Boston, 1912)

a minor offense, and after such a pattern of "outrage" the strike began. Two days later, US officials sent Italian workers to take the place of the striking Spaniards,

assigned a cadre of police to prevent any trouble between the two European groups, and threatened to evict the Spaniards from their housing if they were

not back on the job by noon of that same day. While the paper trail related to

the strike runs out at this point, we can guess the Spaniards returned to work and

ended their strike.22

Trouble with foremen led to many of the frequent strikes. Spaniards often

86 ILWCH, 66, Fall 2004

complained of foremen who spoke no Spanish or abused them verbally or phys

ically. In 1907 an Italian foreman took charge of a Spanish gang near the con

struction town of Culebra. The Spaniards resented the Italian's authority over

them, and ultimately they attacked the man and beat him. When police arrest

ed a dozen Spaniards for this crime and took them off to jail in the nearby town

of Empire, a group of about 200 fellow workers stopped work and headed to

ward town to liberate them. As the Spaniards marched toward Empire, they at

tempted to convince other workers to join them, but their effort failed. Instead,

police and several foremen met them as they approached town and convinced

them to turn back. Of the Spaniards arrested, all but one was convicted and re

quired either to pay a fine or serve time in jail.23 While strikes rooted in tensions on the job continued, with time two other

grievances emerged: the quality of food, and the role played by black Carib

beans. Repeatedly Spaniards rioted against food or conditions in the mess halls.

They assaulted cooks who failed to prepare food to their liking, they rioted to

protest the absence of Spaniards among the cooking staff in their mess halls, and

occasionally they quit work to press their protest about the food. Government

officials made some effort to hire Spanish cooks for the Spanish mess halls, yet

they remained overall relatively unsympathetic to all the complaints. As Major William Sibert, who headed the Atlantic Division of the canal, declared, "the

food is better than is ordinarily consumed by people of the class in question."24 When food problems became enmeshed with racial hostilities, the result

ing conflicts proved more difficult for police to handle. A major riot broke out

in 1907 at a newly built mess hall for Spaniards in the construction town of Bas

Obispo as a result of new government rules regulating where people could sit

while dining. When one worker sat contrary to the rule, a black Caribbean wait

er tried to instruct him, whereupon the Spaniard hit him. Then a worker named

Angel Negrati jumped onto a table and proclaimed, "Kill the negroes!" Many

Spanish workers followed Negrati by jumping upon tables and throwing plates and glasses while their compatriots attacked and beat the mess hall steward. Po

lice arrived to find the mess hall empty, window screens torn out, lamps de

stroyed, and "the floor almost entirely covered with stones, cups, saucers,

plates, and etc., which had been thrown at the mess steward and his assistants."

On a hillside near the mess hall sat about 200 Spaniards, "evidently contented

with what they had accomplished." Police sent the mess steward over to the hill

side to identify the riot leaders. When he pointed out the first man, "the whole

bunch of Spaniards arose as one man and said that we could not take him, but we did, after drawing our revolvers and warning them that we would shoot the

first man who attempted to rescue the prisoner." In this way they arrested the

twelve men perceived as leaders. Later that night Spaniards again congregated

at the mess hall and stoned the building. The Chief of Police considered the in

cident the "most serious affair of this kind that has yet happened on the Isth mus . . . "25

Spaniards also reacted with hostility when black Caribbeans worked, lived, or commuted to work in too close a proximity to them. As early as 1907 Span

Spaniards on the Silver Roll 87

ish workers at Pedro Miguel threatened a strike, demanding better food and that

"all the negroes [be] taken away from their camp."26 In 1909 crowded labor

trains caused a riot between Spaniards and Barbadians, with both sides using clubs and rocks as weapons. Although normally "white" and "colored" workers

were given different cars to ride, Barbadians had begun encroaching on cars nor

mally reserved for whites because their own had become intolerably crowded.

When the police tried to stop the riot, the Spaniards began attacking the police as well. The police then arrested several rioters. Some 400 Spaniards refused to

work as a result, insisting that they would wait for the Spanish Consul to arrive.

In angry speeches, workers declared the Consul must achieve justice or they would call upon "all the Spaniards on the Canal Zone to lay down their shovels

and organize for the protection of their common rights." These workers de

manded the release of their compatriots from jail and that blacks be prohibited from riding in their train cars. The chief of police acted quickly to respond to the

Spaniards' complaints, ordering the officer in charge to "see that the white la

borers, who I understand are much in the minority, are not imposed upon in any

way by the colored laborers."27

The US government attempted to keep workers segregated by their race

and citizenship, both in transportation and housing. While West Indians and Eu

ropeans often shared the same labor camp, for example, US officials segregated

each group to different parts of the camp. Likewise, the government built com

pletely separate mess halls for West Indians and Europeans. When circum

stances prevented complete segregation, conflicts flared. In 1911, the govern

ment assigned a large group of Barbadians to quarters at Cirio camp that had, until that moment, been totally inhabited by Spanish workers and families. Thir

ty-nine Spanish workers petitioned the US government to get rid of the Barba

dians, saying the latter were thieves and nuisances in terms of "sanitary and

moral conditions." The government conceded that when the Barbadians had

first entered the camp, the bathhouses were not clearly labeled according to gen der, and in some cases male Barbadians had entered a bathhouse and startled a

Spanish female. But the government declined to move the Barbadians out of the

camp. By August of that same year, racial animosities had grown more bitter and

the Spanish, as we'll see below, had become a major concern for canal officials.

This time, Barbadians arrived in the town of Paraiso and needed quarters. The

police visited some of the most influential European laborers to say they would

need to house the Barbadians in the same building with Spanish workers. When

other Spaniards learned of the situation, they threatened trouble if the govern ment brought Barbadians into the building. Fearing a major conflict, the police

quartered the Barbadians in an empty building for the night, lacking even beds or bedding, then moved them the next day to quarters in a building filled with

East Indians. The East Indians protested fiercely against this arrangement, but

with less impact. After housing the two groups together for nearly two weeks, the government found new quarters for the East Indians.28

In short, as one policeman observed, "Race feeling ... here is at fever heat

and is liable to develop seriously at any moment."29 What explains the intense

88 ILWCH, 66, Fall 2004

racial animosity in the Canal Zone? Workers certainly brought a sense of racial

identity and hostility with them from their country of origin. Racism was hard

ly unknown in Spain. Reflecting how mutable racial identities can be, Gali

cians?or, as they were often known, Gallegos?were special targets of ethnic

hatred. In the mines of Asturia in Spain, which began to receive large numbers

of Galician immigrants after 1911, tensions quickly flared. Galicians became the

lowest group in the ethnic hierarchy that emerged. Scholars have hypothesized that Asturians identified Galicians with the Guardia Civil, a militarized law en

forcement agency that was increasingly used to put down strikes from the late

nineteenth century onwards, and that this became a reason for the ethnic hos

tility shown them. The special animosity toward Galicians has been observed in

other parts of Spain as well. As the anarchosyndicalist leader Angel Pesta?a, who grew up in Basque and Leon mining towns, commented "Where this 'race

(raza) hatred' was most notable was between the gallegos and the rest. . . The

gallegos were the butt of all the jokes ..." Even songs captured this hatred:

"They say that a gallego has died,

If only twenty more would die.

The more gallegos who die,

The more hides for oil."30

In the Canal Zone, US officials regularly referred to all Spaniards as gallegos, and yet we know that the migrants came not only from Galicia but from many other parts of Spain. Thus gallego seems to have become a blanket term, one of

ten carrying a negative connotation, for any Spaniard.31

Once in Panam? the racial identity of Spaniards became more complex. One can only imagine how differently they must have felt when enjoying their

leisure time away from the Canal Zone, footloose in the entertainment districts

of Panam? City. There they not only spoke the language, they were also living

representatives of the empire that had colonized Panam?, Colombia, and much

of Latin America. As Europeans they must have stood high on Panama's racial

hierarchy, seen not only as white men but as members of a race of conquerors,

and as such, as members of a racial aristocracy. Those who came to Panam? from

Cuba had experienced there a wide range of privileges based upon their racial

and imperial identity. In the Zone, however, their racial identity mutated into

another, more complicated form. No longer conquerors, they faced a new im

perial power, one that owed its hegemony to victory in a war that destroyed the

Spanish Empire, that looked down upon them, that refused to speak their lan

guage, that classed them as racial inferiors nearly comparable to people of

African descent, and yet, contradictorily, left their exact position within the

structured racial hierarchy of the Canal Zone distinctly unclear.32

The US government's labor and racial policies greatly shaped relationships and animosities in the Canal Zone. Through the silver and gold rolls, the gov ernment elevated racial hierarchy, and the privileges, jealousies, and tensions

that hierarchy generated, into a central tool of labor management in the Canal

Spaniards on the Silver Roll 89

Zone. The segregated rolls encouraged diverse groups to compete against one

another for higher status. The government also pitted workers against one an

other as a means of labor control, thereby complicating the racial hierarchy in a

way that created anxiety. Canal officials carried out a systematic campaign to re

place certain white skilled workers (such as firemen) with less-skilled black West

Indians, to the fury of white US workers. When possible, officials also used "our

higher grade silver men as pacemakers to shame our high grade mechanics in to

doing a fair day's work ..." With time the government realized that employing many different races and nationalities on the construction project was in itself an effective means of labor control, and foremen would commonly request both a Spanish gang and a West Indian one, so that, as one put it, "I could keep them

both on their metal by rivalry between the two."33

The government placed Spaniards in particular in a complicated position relative to Caribbean workers. It originally paid them well because officials had

believed that they would work twice as efficiently as Caribbeans. As time went

on, however, officials ruefully noted that West Indians were doing more work

than the Spaniards. This led the United States to begin replacing Europeans with

black Caribbeans during the final years of construction; with time, Spaniards would suspect a plot underfoot to replace them altogether with blacks.34 Faced

with such developments, Spaniards increasingly felt compelled to position them

selves against black Caribbeans in order to move higher in the Zone's racial hi

erarchy.

1. This shot of Culebra cut was taken near the town of Bas Obispo just after an acci

dental explosion of dynamite which killed twenty-three workers, on Dec. 12,1908.

Photograph taken by Ernest Hallen, United States National Archives.

90 ILWCH, 66, Fall 2004

2. Spanish canal workers eat their lunch at Culebra cut in September, 1913.

Photograph taken by Ernest Hallen, United States National Archives.

All this helps explain the wave of labor militancy among Spanish workers

in 1911, and the connections between that militancy, anarchist politics, and the

growing racial hostility that pervaded the Zone. The big strike that began our

story emerged quickly. The rebellious workers worked in Culebra cut, the nas

tiest spot in all the Zone, where they struggled to deal with the constant slides, avalanches of mud sweeping over labor gangs in mere seconds. One sub-fore

man described this as "the hardest place in the Canal to work on. Nine times out

of ten you got to work noon hours, or got to work night time. You got to work

hard, because the Canal is sliding in there ... we got to work the men hard?

sometimes in mud and water up to their waist?and it is pretty hard."35

Insubordination began spreading on July 22,1911, among different gangs

working the Culebra cut. In the following days more than three dozen gangs re

fused to follow orders, sat down on the job when prohibited from eating, or oth

erwise showed their determination to improve working conditions. Although

striking workers had complaints to varying degrees against all the foremen, in

creasingly they focused on one from the United States named Pike, the foreman

for about 200 of the workers. They accused him of arriving at work drunk and

drinking rum on the job, throwing stones at them, verbally abusing them, mak

ing them work in heavy rain, and punishing West Indians by kicking or pushing them. The Spanish workers also reasserted their right to eat on the job, a prac tice that had previously been allowed them.36

Spaniards on the Silver Roll 91

After some two hundred workers from Miraflores joined the strike in sym

pathy, bringing the total number of strikers close to eight hundred, workers be

gan holding mass meetings to decide their demands and strategy. At these meet

ings representatives from other construction towns, like Las Cascadas, Empire,

Pedro Miguel, and Gorgona, in addition to Culebra and Miraflores, spoke and

contributed to a petition demanding that the government take action. In re

sponse Goethals decided to remove foreman Pike temporarily from the job, and

to allow workers to resume eating on the job. He also instructed foremen to stop

using abusive language, and ordered officials to interview workers and hear their

charges against Foreman Pike. After much discussion, the strikers returned to

work the morning of August 3,1911. Soon thereafter the Committee appointed

by Goethals interviewed a few dozen workers and heard their charges. After re

flection the committee decided that the charges were not sufficiently corrobo

rated, and, perhaps more to the point, they decided that keeping Pike on the job would not result in a significant number of desertions. With Goethals's approval

they reappointed Pike to his original position. This represented a major defeat

for the workers, for by this time the strike had ended and many activists had been

encouraged to leave the Canal Zone.37 Yet other strikes continued to break out

across the Zone, almost all of them among Spanish workers.38

Amidst this wave of labor militancy, with many strikes defeated but some

important demands won, Spanish workers grew increasingly politicized and po

litically active. Anarchism began spreading as an organized movement across^

the Canal Zone, winning hundreds of followers among the Spaniards. What in

formed the Spaniards' resistance and politics in the US Canal Zone? Workers

brought with them from Spain a rich tradition of rebellion and political protest,

ranging from violence against property and other spontaneous acts to organized

efforts to create associations and build schools. In Galicia, for example, peasants

had begun withholding rent payments as early as the eighteenth century in or

der to fight efforts by landowners to renew their leases. In the early nineteenth

century this strategy in Galicia blossomed into a more organized rent strike.

Peasants and urban residents similarly rioted against those who charged overly

high prices for food. A wave of food riots spread in 1904 and 1905, for example,

just before Spaniards began heading to the Canal Zone.39

Anarchism came along with such rebellions. It flourished in Spain after the

mid-nineteenth century, especially in the region of Andalusia, and wherever

Spanish immigrants traveled in the Americas it tended to follow them?to

Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Uruguay, Ecuador, Cuba, Florida, and the Panama

Canal Zone, among other places. Spanish immigrants moved amidst an inter

national world of radical politics, their ideology, strategy, and tactics shaped not

only by experiences constructing the canal or time spent in Spain, Cuba, and sim

ilar sites of international migration, but also by the ideas of a vibrant social and

political movement. In both Spain and Cuba, anarchism became the dominant

ideology among workers during the late nineteenth and early twentieth cen

turies, and although the movements differed in important ways, there were also

close ties between them and Spanish anarchist periodicals were distributed

92 ILWCH, 66, Fall 2004

widely in Cuban cities. Anarchists in Cuba built effective unions, led strike

movements, created schools and workers' associations, and published newspa

pers. They strove to build unity between workers in different industries and of

different levels of skill, and they were unusually supportive of women's strug

gles. They also made antiracism into an important part of their movement, tak

ing an unprecedented stand for solidarity between peninsulares, cre?les, and

people of color. Strong links would emerge between anarchism in the Canal

Zone and its counterparts in other places, especially Cuba and Spain, but im

portant differences as well. As the example of Cuba suggests, anarchism typi

cally emphasized building solidarity across boundaries of skill, status, race, eth

nicity, and nationality. In the Panama Canal Zone, anarchism took a different

form, becoming a movement limited to one group?unskilled male Spanish im

migrants?and never developing an antiracist approach.40

According to US officials, a belief in the principles of anarchism arrived in

the Canal Zone along with the very first Spanish workers in 1906. It appears to

have become an organized movement only in 1911 as the wave of labor protests climaxed. By the autumn of that year, anarchist clubs existed in Rio Grande, Pe

dro Miguel, Las Cascadas, Corozal, Culebra, Empire, Gatun, Libertador, and

Gorgona?in short, in almost every town where a significant number of

Spaniards resided. One close observer of the movement believed it had more

than 800 members across the Isthmus and, he noted, "But for requiring mem

bers to pay dues their organization would undoubtedly be much larger than it

is." Even Chief Medical Officer William Gorgas commented on the ubiquitous movement, observing that hospitalized Spaniards always included anarchist

pamphlets among their reading materials.41

Bernardo Perez, a Spaniard who had previously spent time in Cuba, stood

at the center of this anarchist movement. Perez published an anarchist newspa

per, El Unico, in Col?n, and was, according to a police spy, "an excellent orator,

a well-educated man, and one who appears to have a great deal of experience

along this line." He possessed a vast knowledge of labor conditions and anar

chist organization around the world, and used this knowledge effectively in mass

meetings to educate and motivate his listeners. Aquilino Lopez, a younger man,

assisted Perez. Lopez had only been in the Zone for three months, and "while

he is very enthusiastic in the propaganda, very earnest in his efforts to convince,

it can be seen that he is young in experience, and lacks the training of his com

rade, Bernardo Perez." Lopez demonstrated his earnest enthusiasm when he

tried to convince a government official that anarchists were not the bomb throw

ers suggested by their enemies. Lopez described anarchists as deeply opposed to the Catholic Church and to drunkenness, gambling, war, and prostitution;

they advocated reading and education, international peace, and vegetarian

ism.42

In mass meetings and in the pages of El Unico Perez sounded fiercer than

Lopez. Calling for more readers, Perez promised that by supporting his news

paper "you will have contributed to burying the clericalism which poisons your

conscience, capitalism which sucks your blood, and the State which chokes your

Spaniards on the Silver Roll 93

life." In another article, he declared "We are the junior brothers of those who were hung in Chicago, Vergara, Paris ... and of those who were shot in Warsaw,

Barcelona, Buenos Ayres and in Japan ..." Thus Perez placed the Canal Zone's

anarchist movement within an international context. He also attended to the

specific concerns of canal workers. He demanded public meeting rooms for their

organizations, decried deportations of strikers, and attacked the US government for the abuses of its foremen, for overcrowding workers, and for treating them

like slaves. Contradicting his own internationalism, he echoed the concerns of

the mass of Spanish workers by focusing attention on the threat black

Caribbeans seemed to represent. Declaring that "we should arise when they re

place us by negroes," Perez argued that the government had already begun mov

ing on such a plan. If Spanish workers failed to unite, the black Caribbeans

would gradually overtake them and they would "have to go about the Isthmus

begging." Other speakers developed similar themes. One, in a pointed attack on

the government overseeing the canal construction, declared "We are scorned.

The American Government despises us. It spits on us."43

The anarchists continued meeting throughout the autumn of 1911 and at

least through the spring of 1912, and Perez continued to publish El Unico. One

leaflet distributed by the anarchists reflected a sense of grisly humor, noting that a coming meeting would include refreshments such as "Monks' heads, Friars'

Juice, Fried Priests' Heart, Tenderloin of Colonel, and Iced Jesuits' blood."

These dark images were matched by occasional threats of violence as the anar

chist movement grew. In letters and postcards a few anarchists and disgruntled

employees threatened to "BLOW UP THE WORKS" or dynamite the locks.

And a rumor spread through the Canal Zone that someone had threatened to

assassinate Chief Engineer Goethals.44

The threats of violence increased pressure on the government to respond

aggressively. Catholic priests in the area, at least those who had the government's ear, demanded that the government repress the anarchist movement ruthlessly.

Some within the government, most notably M.H. Thatcher, who headed the de

partment of civil administration, agreed. Calling Perez an outlaw who was en

couraging violence, Thatcher urged strong action against him. Gradually, how

ever, most in the government argued for a tolerant policy. The Spanish Consul, who believed that there was nothing threatening about the movement, joined them. The most influential voice, ultimately, appears to have been Goethals's

chief clerk, who read over the spy reports and then assessed the anarchist threat

for his boss. He declared that the anarchists were not inciting their followers to

violence. "They believe that the present organization of society is unjust, and

that their class suffers most from the injustice. What intelligent human being would deny this?" Although he believed their activities could lead to a strike or

encourage an assassination attack, he noted the government's powerful police

and military presence in the Zone, and doubted officials would have any trou

ble repressing either of those. Most emphatically, he warned that suppression would only keep the movement alive. And so the government took no steps to

prohibit mass meetings, and did not deport Perez or any other anarchists?even

94 ILWCH, 66, Fall 2004

though they had routinely deported strike leaders in the past. Officials contin

ued to watch the Spanish workers carefully, keeping all of them, and especially their leaders, under tight police surveillance. In March 1912, the final piece of

evidence regarding anarchism available to us notes simply, after a correspondent

had informed Goethals that an anarchist meeting would soon take place, that

the government refrained from interfering with any such meetings. Interesting

ly, the government took a stronger stance against strikers than against anarchist

agitators.45

After early 1912, Spanish workers in the Canal Zone seem to have sus

pended their strikes, riots, and anarchist meetings. What happened? We can only

guess at the nature of the denouement that followed the conflicts of 1911, be

cause no more mention of Spanish workers exists in the voluminous records kept

by the Isthmian Canal Commission. One might argue that the government's

strategy worked: leniency killed the movement. Yet the basic conditions re

mained the same, and it seems improbable that all tensions and grievances would

abruptly disappear. A more likely possibility is that the Spaniards' nightmare

may have come true and the US government moved ahead rapidly with its plan to replace Europeans with black Caribbeans. We know that the government had

begun this process already by 1911 and that Spanish protests focused precisely on that phenomenon. Furthermore, all the strikes and anarchist agitation must

have encouraged the US government to proceed as fast as it could with this strat

egy, in order to eliminate the troublesome Spaniards. Thus it appears likely the

silence of Spaniards resulted from their losing jobs, and hence their place in the

Canal Zone, to West Indians.

Before their movement ended, however, Spanish workers had launched an

articulate protest, one expressed through political agitation and through labor

actions, against the US government's policies in the Canal Zone. Theirs would

stand as the most effective resistance movement until the great silver workers'

strike of 1920. The Spaniards enjoyed only the rare victory amidst many defeats.

Yet they fought against the inhumanity of foremen and the absurdity of US gov ernment policies on the job. They struggled to win better food. They opposed

police and judges who seemed to them to abuse their authority. And they ex

pressed great hostility towards black Caribbeans whom they saw, increasingly, as the government's best weapon against their efforts to organize.

In all these battles one can sense how the liminal identity of Spaniards both

shaped and was shaped by the conditions they encountered. Spanish workers

came to Panam? with a sense of themselves based upon their culture, politics,

imperial status, and racial or ethnic identity. Once in the Canal Zone, they con

fronted new conditions that challenged their identity in every way and made

them feel poignantly the marginality of their position. The US government's harsh policies, and especially its system of racial segregation, cast Spaniards into

an awkward position, one where their inferiority was made clear while their pre

cise status remained uncertain. This uneasy situation ensured that their strug

gles would involve racial hostilities and competition. While the internationalist

ideals of anarchism might have encouraged cooperation with men of different

Spaniards on the Silver Roll 95

races and nationalities, harsh realities in the Canal Zone pushed the Spaniards' protest in a different direction. Facing their liminal position in a complex racial

hierarchy, these men became increasingly focused on differentiating themselves

from black Caribbeans and proving their superiority as a way to improve their status and clarify their racial and imperial identity.

NOTES

*This paper was researched and written with generous support from the American Coun cil of Learned Societies. For comments on this manuscript I am very grateful to Nicola Miller, Eric Arnesen, Carol Byerly, Christopher Boyer, Bruce Calder, John Enyeart, Leon Fink, Don na Gabaccia, Michael Hanagan, Tobias Higbie, Susan Hirsch, Ren?e Johnson, R. Todd Lau

gen, Susan Levine, Marcel van der Linden, James Maffie, and Diana Paton. 1. A.S. Brook, General Inspector, Memo for Mr. Zinn, July 28, 1911; Paul S. Wilson,

"Memo re. the European laborers of the Culebra District..." July 28,1911; Chairman George Goethals, "Notice to the Spanish Laborers on Strike," August 2,1911: all Records of the Sec ond Isthmian Canal Commission, 2-P-59, United States National Archives, Record Group 185,

College Park, Maryland (hereafter cited as ICC Records). 2. On the history of Panam?, see Aims McGuinness, "In the Path of Empire: Land, La

bor, and Liberty in Panam? during the California Gold Rush, 1848-1860," (Ph.D. Diss., Uni

versity of Michigan, 2001); Michael L. Conniff, Black Labor on a White Canal: Panama, 1904 1981 (Pittsburgh, 1985); Marco A. Gand?segui, Alejandro Saavedra, Andr?s Achong, and Iv?n

Quintero, Las Lucas Obreras en Panam?, 1850-1978, 2a edition (Panama City, 1990); Steve

Marquardt, "'Green Havoc': Panama Disease, Environmental Change, and Labor Process in

the Central American Banana Industry'" American Historical Review (Feb. 2001), 49-80. 3. This article has been influenced by in James R. Barrett and David Roediger's "Inbe

tween Peoples: Race, Nationality and the 'New Immigrant' Working Class," Journal of Amer ican Ethnic History (Spring 1997), 3-44. My perception of Spanish workers is very close to their notion of "inbetween-ness." With the concept of liminality, however, I hope to highlight the mu

tability of Spaniards' position and also detach it from purely racial considerations. Spaniards' marginalization was linked closely not only to race but also to nationality and their position in an imperial world. On liminality, see Victor Turner, The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndem bu Ritual (Ithaca, 1967), especially Chapter Four, "Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage," 93-111; for useful discussions of Turner's concept see Brian Morris, An

thropological Studies of Religion: An Introductory Text (Cambridge, 1987), especially 252-63; and Donald Weber, "From Limen to Border: A Meditation on the Legacy of Victor Turner for

American Cultural Studies," American Quarterly, 47 (3), Sept. 1995, 525-36. For a rather dif ferent way of using liminality to understand working people's actions, see Eric Rothenbuhler, "The Liminal fight: mass strikes as ritual and interpretation," in Jeffrey C. Alexander, ed.,

Durkheimian Sociology: Cultural Studies (Cambridge, 1988), 66-89. Thomas Guglielmo's re cent book, White on Arrival: Italians, Race, Color, and Power in Chicago, 1890-1945 (Oxford, 2003), also revises Barrett and Roediger's thesis. Distinguishing between "race" and "color,"

Guglielmo argues that Italians in the US were never consistently perceived as non-white but that they were, nonetheless, perceived as racially inferior. His argument is quite persuasive for

Chicago, but in the highly stratified environment of the US Canal Zone things played out rather

differently. Southern Europeans were clearly classified as inferior and this involved a racial

judgment as well as judgments about nationality, ethnicity, class, and imperial status. 4. US Senate, Investigation of Panama Canal Matters: Hearings before the Committee on

Interoceanic Canals of the United States Senate, 50th Congress, 2d Session, Document No. 401, vol. Ill, (Washington, 1907) vol. 1, 47. David McCullough notes in The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914 (NY, 1977) that workers came to the Zone from

ninety-seven different countries around the world (471). 5. Stevens quoted in Conniff, Black Labor on the White Canal, 25. 6. Hearings Concerning Estimates for Construction of the Isthmian Canal, for the Fiscal

Year 1911 (Washington, 1910); Message from the President of the United States, Transmitting the

Report of the Special Commission Appointed to Investigate Conditions of Labor and Housing of Government Employees on the Isthmus of Panama, 60th Congress, 2d Session, Document No.

96 ILWCH, 66, Fall 2004

539 (Washington, 1908), 7; and Quartermaster's Department, Census of the Canal Zone (Mount

Hope, Canal Zone, 1912), especially 29-31.

7. David McCullough, The Path Between the Seas; Michael Conniff, Black Labor on a

White Canal.

8. On efforts to police sexual relations between white men and "native or colored

women," consult ICC Records, 62-B-248 Part 1, Box 364.

9. Assistant Chief Engineer J.G. Sullivan to D.W. Bolich, Aug. 4, 1906, ICC Records, 2

F-14, "Transfers, Gold to Silver"; E.A.M. Mcllvaine to Mrs. William Swiget, Jan. 1,1916, ICC

Records, 28-B-233, Part I.

10. For this and the preceding paragraph see ICC Records, 2-F-14, especially: E.S. Bisson, General Auditor, to Charles E. Magoon, Sept. 4,1905; Assistant Chief Engineer to D.W. Bolich,

August 4, 1906; M.G. Tucker, Chief Clerk to General Manager, to E.P. Shannon, Secretary to

Vice President, Sept. 1, 1906; H.W Reed to John F Stevens, Feb. 15, 1907; Hiram J. Slifer to

Major D.D. Gaillard, Feb 12,1908. 11. During this same period diplomatic maneuvering established that Puerto Ricans, while

not considered eligible for the same privileges as US citizens, would be given preference over

other aliens. The government thus ensured that colonial subjects would benefit from their sta

tus. President Roosevelt's Executive Order, Feb. 8,1908; Executive Order, by Authority of the

President, Dec. 23, 1908; George Weitzel, American Charge D'Affairs, American Legation, Panama, to Goethals, Nov. 17,1908; Goethals to Heads of Departments, Nov. 23,1908; all pre

ceding from ICC Records, 2-E-ll, on employment of aliens. ICC Records, Isthmian Canal Commission Records, 2-F-14, especially George W Goethals to W.W Warwick, Nov. 16,1909.

12. See Julie Greene, "As I am a True American: White U.S. Workers, Race, Empire, and

Citizenship in the Canal Zone, 1904 to 1914," unpublished paper presented at the Organiza tion of American Historians annual conference, Memphis, April 4, 2003.

13. US Senate, Investigation of Panama Canal Matters, Hearings before the Committee on

Interoceanic Canals of the U.S. Senate, 59th Congress, 2d Session, Document No. 401, vol. Ill

(Washington, 1907), 2265-66 and 617; Supplement to Hearings Concerning Estimates, passim, and 347-48; Supplement to Hearings on the Panama Canal, Senate Committee on Interoceanic

Canals (Washington, 1908), 52, 89.

14. Investigation of Panama Canal Matters, 616,798; G. Bonhamy, Consulate of France, to

Charles Magoon, Nov. 16,1905, ICC Records, 2-P-69.

15. A note on terminology: the so-called "Spanish-American War" is now customarily re

ferred to as the Spanish-American-Cuban-Filipino War. As even this cumbersome title does not fully grasp the spatial reach of this conflict (Puerto Rico, Guam, etc.), I refer to it simply as

the War of 1898.

16. On Spaniards in Cuba, see Louis A. P?rez, Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution (Ox ford, 1988); Ada Ferrer, Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation, and Revolution, 1868-1898 (Chapel Hill,

1999); Joan Casanovas, Bread, or Bullets! Urban Labor and Spanish Colonialism in Cuba, 1850-1898 (Pittsburgh, 1998); Jackson Smith, "European Labor on the Isthmian Canal," March

25,1907, ICC Records, 2-E-3.

17. See Jackson Smith, "European Labor on the Isthmian Canal," March 25, 1907, ICC

Records, 2-E-3; Census of the Canal Zone, 30; Jose C. Moya, Cousins and Strangers: Spanish

Immigrants in Buenos Aires, 1850-1930 (Berkeley, 1998); Salvador Palaz?n, Los Espa?oles en

America Latina, 1850-1990 (Madrid, 1995), 130-34; Walter Nugent, Crossings: The Great Transatlantic Migrations, 1870-1914 (Bloomington, IN, 1992), 101-105; Adrian Schubert, A

Social History of Modern Spain (London, 1990); Yolanda Marco Serra, Los obreros espa?oles en la construcci?n del Canal de Panam?: la emigraci?n espa?ola hacia Panam? vista a trav?s de

la prensa espa?ola (Panam?, 1997). 18. Gertrude Beeks, "Report for the National Civic Federation," issued to William H.

Taft, Jan. 28,1908, especially pp. 43-46, ICC Records, 28-A-5; and "Statements made by a Del

egation of European Laborers," Aug. 9,1911, ICC Records, 2-P-59.

19. The Assistant Chief Engineer referred to Europeans as semi-white in a letter to D.W.

Bolich, August 4,1906, ICC Records, 2-F-14: "The point that I have always maintained is that

in deciding whether or not a white foreigner, or semi-white foreigner (Dago) should be put on

a gold basis is the fact as to whether or not they would take or whether or not they need, a trip to the States every year. We know that many of these men who have always lived in the trop ics, or that come from warm climates, do not require a trip to the States, nor would they take it if they were given the opportunity. They would simply lay around the Isthmus and be less effi

cient for work when their vacation was over than they were when it started." For an example

Spaniards on the Silver Roll 97

where Spaniards are unambiguously referred to as white, see Acting Chief of Police to Com

manding Officer, Culebra, Feb. 25,1909, ICC Records, 2-P-59.

20. Amy Kaplan and Donald E. Pease, eds., Cultures of United States Imperialism

(Durham, NC, 1993), especially the article by Amy Kaplan, "Black and Blue on San Juan Hill"; Theodore Roosevelt, The Rough Riders (New York, 1899).

21. Juan Potous to Joseph Blackburn, Oct. 5,1907; G. Garibaldi to Joseph Bucklin Bish

op, Oct. 16, 1907; Joseph Blackburn to Juan Potous, June 18, 1907: all ICC Records, 2-P-69.

Only very rarely did the French or British Consul get involved to assist Caribbean workers, and

I have seen no evidence of involvement by the Italian or Greek Consuls.

22. Spanish workmen to Juan Potous, Oct. 30,1907; Potous to Joseph Blackburn, Oct. 31,

1907; and governmental memo, Nov. 1,1907: all ICC Records, 2-P-69.

23. George Shanton, Chief of Police, to H.D. Reed, Executive Secretary, Feb. 26, 1907; S.B. Schenk to George Shanton, Feb. 26, 1907; Benjamin Wood to George Shanton, Dec. 13, 1906: all ICC Records, 2-P-59.

24. William Sibert to Joseph Blackburn, September 6, 1907; George Shanton to Black

burn, June 1, 1908; A.K. Evans, Zone Policeman, to George Shanton, May 2, 1907: all ICC

Records, 2-P-59.

25. J.P. Cooper, Sergeant, Zone Policemen, to George Shanton, March 13, 1907; George Shanton to H.D. Reed, March 14,1907: ICC Records, 2-P-59.

26. Clipping from the Panam? Sunday Sun, March 31, 1907; Stanley Ross, Zone Police

man, to George Shanton, May 2,1907: ICC Records, 2-P-59.

27. Sgt. Kennedy to George Shanton, Chief of Police, Feb. 25, 1909; Capt. G.A. Porter,

Acting Chief of Police, to Commanding Officer of Culebra, Feb. 26, 1909; Porter to Juan Po

tous, Feb. 26,1909; Charles Palacio, Zone Policeman, to Porter, Feb. 26,1909: ICC Records, 2

P-59.

28. Memo, March 7,1911, to Col. C.A. Devol, Chief Quartermaster; Devol to Chairman

Goethals, March 17,1911; J.B. Cooper, Zone Policeman, to Chief of Division, August 24,1911; M.J. Thatcher to Goethals, Sept. 9, 1911; Devol to Goethals, Sept. 12, 1911: all ICC Records, 28-B-233.

29. George Shanton to Redd, Executive Secretary, April 9,1907, forwarding a letter writ

ten by G.H. Skinner, Zone Police, ICC Records, 2-P-59.

30. Shubert, Social History of Modern Spain, 124-25.

31. Jose C. Moya found this to be the case in Argentina as well. See his Cousins and

Strangers, 15.

32. On the decline of the Spanish empire and its impact on Spanish immigrants see Se

bastian Balfour, The End of the Spanish Empire, 1898-1923 (Oxford, 1997); and Jordi Malu

quer de Motes Bernet, Espa?a en la Crisis de 1898: de la gran depresi?n a la modernizaci?n econ?mica del siglo XX (Barcelona, 1999). For the experiences of Spaniards in Cuba or Ar

gentina, see Casanovas, Bread, or Bullets!; and Moya, Cousins and Strangers. 33. See Julie Greene, "Race and the Tensions of Empire: The United States and the Con

struction of the Panama Canal, 1904-1914," unpublished paper presented at the Johns Hopkins Conference "Between Two Empires," November, 2000; and George Brooke to Goethals, Feb.

1,1909, ICC Records, 2-P-49/P; Jackson Smith, memo, March 25,1907, ICC Records, 2-E-3.

34. US Congressional Hearings Supplement, Senate Committee on Interoceanic Canals, United States Senate, 62nd Congress, 1908, p. 90.

35 "Notes of Investigation held on Sunday, July 30,1911, in Office of Division Engineer at

Empire Regarding Complains [sic] of Spanish Laborers in Culebra District," p.6, ICC Records, 2-P-59.

36. A.S. Brouk, memo to Mr. Zinn, July 28,1911; Petitions of the Strikers, n.d.; Jose Buigas de Dalmau, Spanish Consul, to Goethals, July 28, 1911: ICC Records, 2-P-59. Traditionally

Spaniards drank only coffee at breakfast time. Prohibiting eating on the job meant they would

eat nothing between 6:20 a.m., when they arrived on the job, until lunchtime at 1:00 p.m. 37. J.P Fyffe to M.H. Thatcher, Head of Dept. of Civil Administration, Aug. 3, 1911;

George Goethals, "Notice to the Spanish Laborers on Strike," Aug. 2, 1911; for the workers'

petition to the government see La Asamblia A La I.C.C., n.d.; Goethals to D.D. Gaillard, Di

vision Engineer, Aug. 7, 1911; "Notes of Investigation Held on Sunday, July 30,1911"; C.A.S.

Zinn, Acting Division Engineer, to Joseph Little, Superintendent of Construction, July 31,1911: all ICC Records, 2-P-59.

38. A. Cornelison to Assistant Division Engineer, August 10,1911; Cornelison to Division

Engineer, Sept. 2,1911: both ICC Records, 2-P-59.

98 ILWCH, 66, Fall 2004

39. Shubert, Social History of Modern Spain (90-103,193-96). 40. See especially Casanovas, Bread, or Bullets!; and also Temma Kaplan, "The Social

Base of Nineteenth-Century Andalusian Anarchism in Jerez de la Frontera," Journal of Inter

disciplinary History 6,1, Summer 1975,47-70; George Reid Andrews, "Black and White Work

ers: Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1888-1928," The Hispanic American Historical Review 68,3, Aug. 1988,

491-524; Shubert, Social History of Modern Spain, 97-99; George R. Esenwein, Anarchist Ide

ology and the Working-Class Movement in Spain, 1868-1898 (Berkeley, 1989); Raymond Carr,

Spain, 1808-1975 (Oxford, 1982); Edward Malefakis, Agrarian Reform and Peasant Revolution

in Spain: Origins of the Civil War (New Haven, 1970); Eric Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels: Stud

ies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the 19th and 20th centuries, 2nd Edition (NY, 1963);

Gary R. Mormino and George E. Pozzetta, The Immigrant World of Ybor City: Italians and

their Latin Neighbors in Tampa, 1885-1985 (Urbana, 1987); Maxine Molyneux, "No God, No

Boss, No Husband; Anarchist Feminism in Nineteenth-Century Argentina," Latin American

Perspectives 13,1, Winter 1986,119-45; Barry Carr, "Marxism and Anarchism in the Formation

of the Mexican Communist Party, 1910-1919," The Hispanic American Historical Review 63,2,

May 1983, 277-305; John M. Hart, Anarchism and the Mexican Working Class, 1860-1931

(Austin, 1978); Vicente D?az Fuentes, La clase obrera: entre el anarquismo y religi?n (Mexico

City, 1994); Anton Rosenthal, "The Arrival of the Electric Streetcar and the Conflict over

Progress in Early Twentieth-Century Montevideo," Journal of Latin American Studies 27,2,

May 1995, 319-41; Jose C. Moya, Cousins and Strangers. 41. Paul Wilson to Joseph Bucklin Bishop (Secretary of the ICC), Aug. 31,1911; William

Gorgas to Goethals, Sept. 9,1911: ICC Records, 2-P-59.

42. Wilson to Bishop, Aug. 31, 1911; Corporal #5, Zone Police, to Chief of Police, Sept. 19,1911; Father Collins to Goethals, Oct. 13, 1911: ICC Records, 2-P-59.

43. El Unico, Suplemento al n?mero 1, Sept. 12,1911; P.V. (Police spy) to Chief of Police,

Sept. 25, 1911; F.H. Sheibley to Joseph Bucklin Bishop, Sept. 25, 1911: ICC Records, 2-P-59.

44. Father Collins to Goethals, Oct. 10, 1911; FB. alias Punatazot to Goethals, Nov. 6,

1911; R.J. Cochran to Goethals, Oct. 24,1911; C.A.M. to the Chairman, August 17,1911: ICC

Records, 2-P-59.

45. Father D. Quijano to Charles Mason, Sept. 26,1911; Father Henry Collins to Goethals, Oct. 13,1911; Gorgas to Goethals, Sept. 30,1911; M. H. Thatcher to Goethals, Sept. 29, 1911; J.K.B. to Goethals, n.d.; Eugene T. Wilson to Acting Chairman, March 21,1912: ICC Records, 2-P-59.

  • Article Contents
    • p. [78]
    • p. 79
    • p. 80
    • p. 81
    • p. 82
    • p. 83
    • p. 84
    • p. 85
    • p. 86
    • p. 87
    • p. 88
    • p. 89
    • p. 90
    • p. 91
    • p. 92
    • p. 93
    • p. 94
    • p. 95
    • p. 96
    • p. 97
    • p. 98
  • Issue Table of Contents
    • International Labor and Working-Class History, No. 66, New Approaches to Global Labor History (Fall, 2004), pp. 1-222
      • Front Matter
      • New Approaches to Global Labor History [pp. 1-11]
      • A Multinational and Its Labor Force: The Dutch East India Company, 1595-1795 [pp. 12-39]
      • The Seaman Feels Him-self a Man [pp. 40-56]
      • Laboring across National Borders: Class, Gender, and Militancy in the Proletarian Mass Migrations [pp. 57-77]
      • Spaniards on the Silver Roll: Labor Troubles and Liminality in the Panama Canal Zone, 1904-1914 [pp. 78-98]
      • From East to West and West to East: Ties of Solidarity in the Pan-Pacific Revolutionary Trade Union Movement, 1923-1934 [pp. 99-117]
      • Sustainable Alliances: The Origins of International Labor Environmentalism [pp. 118-135]
      • Defense Workers' Struggles for Patriotic Control: The Labor-Management-State Contests over Defense Production at Brewster, 1940-1944 [pp. 136-154]
      • Interview
        • Interview with Allan Sekula: Los Angeles, California, October 26, 2002 [pp. 155-172]
      • Review Symposium
        • Review: untitled [pp. 173-193]
      • Book Reviews
        • Review: untitled [pp. 194-196]
        • Review: untitled [pp. 197-199]
        • Review: untitled [pp. 200-202]
        • Review: untitled [pp. 202-204]
        • Review: untitled [pp. 205-207]
        • Review: untitled [pp. 207-210]
        • Review: untitled [pp. 211-213]
        • Review: untitled [pp. 213-215]
        • Review: untitled [pp. 216-218]
        • Review: untitled [pp. 218-222]
      • Back Matter

__MACOSX/Hist Reading and class lectures/._Greene_2004.pdf

Hist Reading and class lectures/HIST285_Spring2010_Week2_Commerce.pptx

HIST 285: Technology in Historical Perspective

Department of History and Politics, Drexel University

Prof. Lloyd Ackert

 

Lecture 2: “Techniques of Commerce”

 

 

I. Introduction - The Expansion of Commerce

 

A. The waning of the courts

II. Technology and Trade

 

A. “Voyages of Discovery”

 

 

B. Trading networks

 

 

 

 

C. Capitalistic, but not industrial

 

 

 

The earliest history of boating?

Case Study: “Dutch Shipping”

The difficulties of writing the

history of shipping.

Two early drawings.

The Rhine River

Methods of construction:

Nicolas Witsen (1641-1717),

- Architectura navalis et regimen nauticum (Naval Architecture

and Nautical Regimen) (1671)

Two different styles of

ship building described in

Witsen’s work.

III. The Dutch Republic

 

A. The Dutch Golden Age

 

 

1. Natural resources – The Rhine river

 

 

2. Shipbuilding

 

a. The Dutch Herring Buss

- large volume and high quality products

 

 

Dutch Herring Busses (buizen) at sea in the North Sea.

Side-view

b. The Fluytschip

 

- “an artifact shaped by commerce”

 

- specialization in design

The Dutch Fluyt.

A round-stern,

Flat-bottom, and

relatively narrow vessel.

Dutch Fluyt. Side and Stern views.

Dutch Warship with 2 Canon Galleries

Engraving by W. Barentsoen (1594)

Stylized Man-of-war.

Whipstaff – for maneuverability!

Reinier Nooms (1624-1664)

Amsterdam Harbor.

IV. Creating Global Capitalism

 

 

A. The Dutch East India Company (1602-1798)

 

 

 

B. Innovations in capitalism

 

1. The Amsterdam Commodity Exchange

 

 

 

2. The 1630s Tulip Bubble

 

 

3. The VOC and Fortress-factories

http://www.pepysdiary.com/p/3947.php

C. The Slave trade

V. “The Great Traffic”

 

 

A. Traffics, not manufactures

 

1. Sugar refining, papermaking, brewing, tobacco processing, shipbuilding

 

 

B. Specialized activities

 

1. Processing dyes and glazes, cutting diamonds, grinding glass lenses,

and dying broadcloth

 

 

 

C. Not high levels of output, but specialized techniques and superior quality

 

 

VI. Why the Dutch did not dominate in the Industrial Era

 

A. Raw materials and energy

 

 

B. International trade

 

 

C. Traffic industries

VII. Conclusions

 

 

A. The interrelationship between commerce and technology

 

 

B. Culture

 

 

 

VIII. Discussion

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__MACOSX/Hist Reading and class lectures/._HIST285_Spring2010_Week2_Commerce.pptx

Hist Reading and class lectures/HIST285_Spring2010_Week3_Industry.pptx

HIST 285 - Technology in Historical Perspective

Department of History & Politics, Drexel University

Prof. Lloyd Ackert

“Geographies of Industry”

I. Introduction

 

A. The Industrial Revolution

B. New industries

C. Industry, class, culture.

 

D. London, Manchester, Sheffield

 

 

 

II. London:

 

A. The largest and fastest growing site of industry

 

B. The canal and dock complex

 

 

C. Coal

 

 

 

D. Beer Brewing

1. Porter

 

 

2. Watt steam engine

 

 

 

3. By-products and ancillary industries

 

4. Control of the Market

a. “Pubs” and the Beer Act of 1830

 

  beer

 

E. Women and children

 

 

III. Manchester (Cottonopolis)

 

A. Cotton textile Industry

B. Unified cotton factory system

 

C. Gender issues

 

D. Ancillary industries

 

1. Machine builder and iron

 

James Heargreaves ‘Spinning Jenny’

Arkwright’s Water Frame

Crompton’s Spinning Mule

IV. Sheffield

 

A. Steel

 

 

B. Geography

 

C. Not a factory system

 

 

D. Steam power

E. Ancillary products

 

The Steel Manufacturers of Sheffield : The Hull or Workshop of the Razor-Grinder

Razor grinders at work in a steel mill in Sheffield, England, 1866. Flues situated in front of the grinding stones serve to carry away any harmful dust and metal particles produced during the grinding process.

IV. Critics

 

A. Charles Dickens

 

B. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

 

 

C. Luddites

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__MACOSX/Hist Reading and class lectures/._HIST285_Spring2010_Week3_Industry.pptx

Hist Reading and class lectures/HIST285_Spring2010_Week4_Empire.pptx

HIST 285 - Technology in Historical Perspective

Department of History and Politics

Drexel University

Professor Lloyd Ackert

 

“Instruments of Empire”

I. Introduction

 

1. Technology and Imperialism

Overseas empires

Reciprocal relationship

Profit in empire?

2. Steamships, telegraphs, railroads

 

Phases of empire:

a. Penetration

-warships, medicine

b. Consolidation

- public works  

3. “Free trade”

 

End of the East India Company monopoly.

4. History of medicine

 

Chinchona tree – tropical diseases

II. Steamships and trade

 

 

1. Introduction of steam power.

 

 

 

2. Anglo-Burmese war (1824-1826)

 

 

A. Irrawaddy river

 

 

-Diana “fire devil”

http://michelhoude.com/

B. mapping as a technology of imperialism

 

 

-James Rennell’s Map of Hindoostan (1782) and Bengal Atlas (1779)

 

 

 

 

 

James Rennell (1742-1830)

C. The Ganges river between Calcutta and Allahabad (1834- )

-Hugh Lindsay (2 80 hp engines, Suez Canal (1869), Mediterranean, Bombay)

 

 

 

Hooghly River, 1915

Hugh Lindsay

Suez Canal

 

- Opium

 

 

Opium Den in Calcutta

—The following table, compiled from official documents, exhibits the growth of the three most important sources of the public revenue of India, namely, land, opium and salt, in the ten financial years, ending March 31, 1871-80:

 

III. Telegraphs

 

 

1. Different contexts:

 

 

 

 

A. Western Europe and North America

 

 

 

 

 

B. India

2 Marquis of Dalhousie

 

A. cotton in Nagpur for example

 

B. Network

 

C. The so-called ‘Indian Mutiny’ (1857)

 

 

 

circa 1850: British politician and administrator James Andrew Broun-Ramsey (1812 - 1860). Ramsay, the 10th Earl of Dalhousie, was elected governor-general of India in 1847 and held the post until 1856. He was created Marquis of Dalhousie in 1849 but the title died with him. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

3. Public Works Department

A. Dharwad cotton

B. Royal Indian Engineering School at Cooper’s Hill

 

 

 

Sir Matthew Digby Wyatt's Royal Indian Engineering College at Cooper's Hill, overlooking the Thames at Runnymede,

IV. Railroads

 

 

1. Powerful influence on commerce, politics and society

 

 

 

2. Large banking investments

 

 

A. India

 

B. South Africa

 

 

V. Conclusions

 

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__MACOSX/Hist Reading and class lectures/._HIST285_Spring2010_Week4_Empire.pptx

Hist Reading and class lectures/HIST285_Week1_Renaissance.pptx

HIST 285, Technology in Historical Perspective Department of History & Politics, Drexel University

Professor Lloyd Ackert

Lecture 1: “Technologies of the Court, 1450-1600”

 

 

I. Introduction

 

A. Course themes

 

 

B. Mechanical worldview

 

 

C. Court patronage

 

 

II. Patronage politics and science/technology

 

A. Medici family

 

 

B. Machiavelli and Da Vinci

 

 

C. City States

 

 

III. Applications of technology

 

A. Warfare

 

 

B. Entertainment

 

 

C. Civil

 

 

D. Dynastic displays

 

Joachim Friess was a German goldsmith who became master goldsmith in 1610 in Augsburg.Renaissance Augsburg was, after Nuremberg, the greatest of the German manufacturing and commercial cities, and a ready supply of silver enabled its guild of goldsmiths to fashion great numbers of richly ornamented vessels for export. This automaton, in which the goddess Diana, designed in late Mannerist style, is seated on a hollow-bodied stag with a removable head, functioned as a drinking vessel. A mechanism in the base causes the automaton to roll about on a tabletop in a pentagonal pattern and then stop; the person before whom it stopped would have to drain the contents. Diana's quiver and arrow and the jewels set in the trappings of the stag are modern replacements.

http://www.wga.hu/html/f/friess/diana_st.html

IV. Characteristics of the period

 

A. Three dimensional art and technical drawing

 

1. Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472)

 

 

B. Perspective technique

 

V. Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519)

 

A. Early life

 

1. Andrea del Verrochio

 

 

B. Florence Cathedral

 

1. Dome

 

 

Da Vinci Biography, cont’d.

C. Ludovico Sforza

 

 

D. Luis XII, King of France

 

 

E. Francois I

 

1. Lion automaton

 

 

VI. Historical method and resources

 

A. Da Vinci’s notebooks

 

1. Francisco di Giorgio

 

 

2. Four types of technical projects

B. Da Vinci website:

www .museoscienza.org/english/ leonardo

VII. Printing

 

A. Four components

 

1. Moveable metal type

 

a. Johann Gutenberg

 

 

2. Paper

 

 

3. Oil-based ink

 

 

4. Presses

 

B. Literacy

 

1. Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation

 

 

2. Information explosion

 

 

3. Scholastic debates

 

VIII. Technology and tradition

 

A. Comparing technology transfer in China and Europe

 

  

IX. Mining

 

A. Prince-practitioners

1. Georgius Agricola, De re metallica (1550)

 

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__MACOSX/Hist Reading and class lectures/._HIST285_Week1_Renaissance.pptx

Hist Reading and class lectures/Long_1997.pdf

Power, Patronage, and the Authorship of Ars: From Mechanical Know-How to Mechanical Knowledge in the Last Scribal Age Author(s): Pamela O. Long Reviewed work(s): Source: Isis, Vol. 88, No. 1 (Mar., 1997), pp. 1-41 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/235824 . Accessed: 05/04/2012 15:13

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

The University of Chicago Press and The History of Science Society are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Isis.

http://www.jstor.org

Power, Patronage, and the

Authorship of Ars

From Mechanical Know-how to Mechanical Knowledge in the Last Scribal Age

By Pamela 0. Long*

ABSTRACT

"Power, Patronage, and the Authorship of Ars" is a study of books on the mechanical arts that appeared in the fifteenth century from Italy and south Germany. At this time a sig- nificant proliferation of such books occurred, some profusely illustrated, others exclusively textual. They include Latin books on military apparatus and other kinds of machines, German-language codices on gunpowder artillery and machines, humanist treatises on painting, sculpture, architecture, and the military arts, and vernacular writings on such subjects by practitioners. The author argues that the patronage that encouraged the creation of such books developed because of a new close alliance between political and military praxis and the mechanical arts. She suggests that such authorship elevated the status of the mechanical arts by explicating them in writing, rationalizing them, and associating them with ancient traditions. They were thus prepared for appropriation by the new ex- perimental philosophy of the next era.

MANUSCRIPT BOOKS ON THE MECHANICAL ARTS proliferated rapidly in fif- teenth-century Europe, particularly in south Germany and north and central Italy.

Despite some important ancient and medieval exemplars, there is simply no precedent for the great number and variety of such codices that appeared from the early years of the

* Department of the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland 21218.

The research for this article was supported by National Science Foundation grant DIR-9112729, by a fellow- ship from the Dibner Library of the National Museum of American History, Washington, D.C., and by a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship at the Folger Shakespeare Library. Aspects of this research were presented at the Folger Library, the Society for the History of Technology, London, the Departmental Colloquium at Johns Hopkins University, the New York Academy of Sciences, the Graduate Program in Science and Tech- nology Studies at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, the Renaissance Society of America in New York, and as the Guy F. Goodfellow History Lecture at Washington College, Chestertown, Maryland, for which I especially thank Nate Smith. I am grateful to members of the audiences, colleagues, and friends whose discussions and comments have greatly improved this study. For their careful and critical reading of the entire manuscript, I thank especially Priscilla Long, Gabrielle Spiegel, the anonymous referees, and the editor of Isis.

Isis, 1997, 88: 1-41 C 1997 by The History of Science Society. All rights reserved. 0021-1753/97/8401-0001$01.00

1

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2 POWER, PATRONAGE, AND THE AUTHORSHIP OF ARS

fifteenth century until its end. Both university-educated humanists and artisan-trained prac- titioners created treatises, some chiefly pictorial, others primarily textual, on constructive and other processes in the material world. Topics included gunpowder and artillery; ma- chines, such as mills, pumps, fountains, and cranes; machine parts, particularly gears and pulleys; vehicles, including war carriages, carts, cars, and boats; and numerous other de- vices. Treatises also appeared concerning the ornamental and constructive arts, especially painting, sculpture, and architecture. These books usually have been studied within par- ticular disciplines such as military history, the history of technology, and the history of art and architecture; they have been investigated primarily for their multifarious technical content. This essay focuses, rather, on the authors who created them, on the context of their authorship, and on its cultural implications.'

This study is further delimited in that it concerns authorship on the mechanical arts that occurred within the context of scribal rather than print culture. Some of the writings treated here (such as Leon Battista Alberti' s De re aedificatoria) were later printed, but they were originally composed as handwritten and hand-copied works, either before the invention of the press or outside of its immediate influence. Despite the fact that the printing press was invented in Germany around the mid-fifteenth century, this investigation does not concern printing directly. Yet in its focus on the scribal proliferation of technical books in the era just before printing, it does call for a modification of Elizabeth L. Eisenstein's thesis that posits the press as the most important causal agent for the resurgence of technical literature in early modern Europe.2

This investigation concerns authorship on the mechanical arts within the political and cultural context of north Italy and -south Germany, and it claims as well to have relevance to the historiography of early modern science. Among other issues, it elucidates the role of the artisan in the development of experimental philosophy. The thesis positing artisanal influence on early modern science originated most significantly in a series of important articles published by Edgar Zilsel in the early 1940s. Zilsel's views have been reiterated and elaborated by Paolo Rossi and, more recently, by J. A. Bennett, among others.3 In this

1 See esp. William Crossgrove, Die deutsche Sachliteratur des Mittelalters (Bern: Peter Lang, 1994), esp. pp. 103-144; Gerhard Eis, Mittelalterliche Fachliteratur (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzlersche, 1962); Bertrand Gille, Engi- neers of the Renaissance, trans. anon. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1966), esp. pp. 55-170; Bert S. Hall, "Der Meister sol auch kennen schreiben und lesen: Writings about Technology ca. 1400-ca. 1600 A.D. and Their Cultural Implications," in Early Technologies, Vol. 3, ed. Denise Schmandt-Besserat (Malibu, Calif.: Undena, 1979); Hall, The Technological Illustrations of the So-Called "Anonymous of the Hussite Wars": Codex Latinus Monacensis 197, Part 1 (Wiesbaden: Ludwig Reichert, 1979), esp. pp. 121-133; and Max Jahns, Geschichte der Kriegswissenschaften vornehmlich in Deutschland, Vol. 1: Altertum, Mittelalter, XV. und XVI. Jahrhundert (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1889), pp. 241-443. More recently, the best introduction-especially to the Italian ma- terial-is Paolo Galluzzi, ed., Prima di Leonardo: Cultura delle macchine a Siena nel Rinascimento (Milan: Electa, 1991).

2 Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Trans- formations in Early-Modem Europe, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1979), esp. Vol. 2, pp. 520- 574. Recent scholarship concerning particular kinds of early modern technical authorship includes William Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modem Culture (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1994); Pamela 0. Long, "The Openness of Knowledge: An Ideal and Its Context in Sixteenth-Century Writings on Mining and Metallurgy," Technology and Culture, 1991, 32:318-355; and Mary J. Voss, "Between the Cannon and the Book: Mathematicians and Military Culture in Sixteenth-Century Italy" (Ph.D. diss., Johns Hopkins Univ., 1994).

3 See esp. Edgar Zilsel, "The Sociological Roots of Science," American Journal of Sociology, 1942, 47:544- 562; and Zilsel, "The Origins of Gilbert's Scientific Method," in Roots of Scientific Thought: A Cultural Per- spective, ed. Philip P. Wiener and Aaron Noland (New York: Basic, 1957), pp. 219-250. For Zilsel's life and work see Johann Dvorak, Edgar Zilsel und die Einheit der Erkenntnis (Vienna: Locker, 1981). For a collection of Zilsel's essays that includes important.biographical and bibliographical scholarship by the editors see Zilsel,

PAMELA 0. LONG 3

essay, I extend but also revise the Zilsel thesis in two ways. First, I stress authorship as an important and heretofore neglected modality of artisanal influence. Second, I question Zilsel' s view of the artisan as separate in every way from learned and elite groups. Artisanal authorship came about through the patronage of oligarchs and rulers who supported the technological authorship of learned humanists as well. I argue that technical books attracted the patronage of elites because in the fifteenth century the practice and representation of rulership came to be closely associated in particular ways with technological power and the mechanical arts.

Artisan-trained practitioners authored a significant number of books concerning the me- chanical arts, although by no means all of them. They represent a select group of artisans, most of whom had turned away from the support of craft guilds to the patronage of elite rulers; they wrote books in part to further that patronage. I suggest that not only artisanal practice per se, but artisanal authorship, influenced the development of thought by chang- ing the status and character of certain mechanical arts.

Some historians focusing on seventeenth-century topics, such as Mario Biagioli and Steven Shapin, have emphasized the low status of the mechanical arts and the efforts of experimental philosophers to dissociate themselves from them. Others have,elaborated a picture of more complex interaction.4 In my view experimental philosophy, given its meth- odology of testing hypotheses by manipulating mechanical devices, must be said to have appropriated both values and specific knowledge from the mechanical arts. That appro- priation was possible because those arts had increased in status and cultural significance in the preceding two centuries. Rather than contest the low status of the mechanical arts within particular local cultures in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, I suggest that there is a complicated prior history concerning those arts that needs further study.

Another issue, underscored recently by Alan Gabbey, involves the transition from the mechanical arts to the science of mechanics. What, he has asked, is the conceptual history that transformed the mechanical arts from "artificial" human construction produced in opposition to nature (the traditional view) to the science of mechanics as a branch of physics devoted to the study of certain aspects of nature?5 The present study, which is restricted to fifteenth-century manuscript books, obviously does not elucidate the entire

The Social Origins of Modern Science, ed. Diederick Raven, Wolfgang Krohn, and Robert S. Cohen (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science) (Dordrecht: Kluwer, forthcoming). Later scholarship that is indebted to Zilsel's work includes Paolo Rossi, Philosophy, Technology, and the Arts in the Early Modern Era, trans. Salvator Attanasio, ed. Benjamin Nelson (New York: Harper & Row, Harper Torchbooks, 1970); Pamela 0. Long, "The Contribution of Architectural Writers to a 'Scientific' Outlook in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries," Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1985, 15:265-298; J. A. Bennett, "The Mechanics' Philosophy and the Mechanical Philosophy," History of Science, 1986, 24:1-28; and Bennett, "The Challenge of Practical Mathe- matics," in Science, Culture, and Popular Belief in Renaissance Europe, ed. Stephen Pumfrey, Rossi, and Mau- rice Slawinski (Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press, 1991), pp. 176-190.

4Mario Biagioli, "The Social Status of Italian Mathematicians, 1450-1600," Hist. Sci., 1989, 27:41-95; Bia- gioli, Galileo, Courtier: The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1993); and Steven Shapin, A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1994), esp. pp. 355-407. For views that suggest greater interaction and parity see Alexander Keller, "Mathematics, Mechanics, and the Origins of the Culture of Mechanical Invention," Minerva, 1985, 23:348-361; Bruce T. Moran, "German Prince-Practitioners: Aspects in the Development of Courtly Science, Technology, and Procedures in the Renaissance," Technol. Cult., 1981,22:253-274; and Pamela H. Smith, The Business of Alchemy: Science and Culture in the Holy Roman Empire (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1994).

5Alan Gabbey, "Between Ars and Philosophia naturalis: Reflections on the Historiography of Early Modem Mechanics," in Renaissance and Revolution: Humanists, Scholars, Craftsmen, and Natural Philosophers in Early Modern Europe, ed. J. V. Field and Frank A. J. L. James (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993), pp. 133- 145. See also W. R. Laird, "The Scope of Renaissance Mechanics," Osiris, 2nd Ser., 1986, 2:43-68.

4 POWER, PATRONAGE, AND THE AUTHORSHIP OF ARS

transformation to which Gabbey alludes. Yet an early part of that process, I suggest, involved the explication and rationalization of certain craft practices in books. To put it another way, the textual and pictorial elaboration of the mechanical arts in codices allowed their transformation from "know-how," available for constructing things in the world, to "knowledge" involving rational or mathematical principles-and taken to be true.

Books on the mechanical arts became useful in patronage relationships because of a newly perceived alliance between technology and military and political power. In the fifteenth century a close affiliation developed between the ancient, separate categories of praxis, meaning political and military action, and techne, referring to productive and con- structive activities in the material world. Military strength and political legitimacy came to be closely associated with construction, technology, and technique. Rulers, princes, and military captains who wanted to consolidate their power achieved legitimation through the remodeling of urban space, the construction and decoration of great palaces, and the crea- tion of painting, sculpture, and other material artifacts. As Christine Smith has put it, such projects were indicative of the "use of the built environment as evidence for the authority of the state."6

New political maps were carved by individuals and groups who did not enjoy the le- gitimacy provided by membership in the traditional noble classes. Urban patriciate elites, including bankers, merchants, and other beneficiaries of late medieval commercial capi- talism, created new power configurations. Members of the nobility who did achieve power did so more through military skill than through kinship relationships. In oligarchic repub- lics such as Florence, Venice, Nuremberg, and Augsberg, commercial activity and wealth did not automatically confer political legitimacy. Nevertheless, the German emperors relied on patriciate oligarchs in the imperial cities in their struggle against the traditional nobility. In Italy, men who started their careers as condottiere, military captains leading mercenary armies, often achieved autonomous power as princes of city-states. Initially they estab- lished control through military force-a consequence of their ability to lead soldiers. Thereafter, like the merchant oligarchs of the republics and the free imperial cities, they sought to augment their authority by other means. They created visible manifestations of power-by reordering urban space, building and decorating great palaces and churches, staging elaborate festivals, and creating courts that became centers of culture and learning.7

6 Christine Smith, Architecture in the Culture of Early Humanism: Ethics, Aesthetics, and Eloquence, 1400- 1470 (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1992), p. 50. The distinctions between episteme (knowledge of unchanging things), praxis (action requiring phronesis or judgment in contingent situations), and techne (material construc- tion) were emphasized in Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 6.4-6.5 (1140a-1 141a). The analysis and recasting of such distinctions is at the heart of the work of political philosophers such as Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1958); and Juirgen Habermas, Theory and Practice, trans. John Viertel (Boston: Beacon, 1973), esp. pp. 41-81, which treats the classical separation of praxis and techne and its subsequent fusion in the thought of Machievelli. See esp. Joseph Dunne, Back to the Rough Ground: "Phronesis" and "Techne" in Modem Philosophy and in Aristotle (Notre Dame, Ind.: Univ. Notre Dame Press, 1993), for an important study of Aristotelian and twentieth-century discussions; and Alasdair Maclntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 2nd ed. (Notre Dame, Ind.: Univ. Notre Dame Press, 1984). Historians of science such as Owen Hannaway and Pamela Smith have much to say about the changing nature of these relationships: Hannaway, The Chemists and the Word: The Didactic Origins of Chemistry (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1975); and Smith, Business of Alchemy (cit. n. 4), esp. pp. 56-92.

7Studies that elucidate relationships between political power and the decorative and constructive arts in the Renaissance include Richard A. Goldthwaite, The Building of Renaissance Florence: An Economic and Social History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1980); Goldthwaite, Wealth and the Demand for Art in Italy, 1300-1600 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1993), esp. pp. 212-255; Mary Hollingsworth, Patronage in Renaissance Italy: From 1400 to the Early Sixteenth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1994); Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, "Editor's Statement: Images of Rule: Issues of Interpretation," Art Journal, 1989,

PAMELA 0. LONG 5

No longer the result of mere craft know-how and skill, the built environment became the material manifestation of rational and mathematical principles that were elaborated in books. Construction projects were carried out with the help of machines that themselves came to be illustrated and explicated on the folios of codices. Similarly, the praxis of military leadership came to be closely associated with armaments and techniques-in contrast to most ancient models, in which generalship was perceived to rest on character and qualities of leadership rather than on technology.8 In this environment technical books, whether lavishly illustrated and thus a visual manifestation of power, or predominantly textual, involving the explication of rational principles, came to be highly appropriate gifts for princes.

Such books necessitated the open display and explication of the technical, craft, and mechanical disciplines that constituted their subject matter. The degree and nature of such openness varied from one author to another. Some authors candidly explained and illus- trated aspects of their subject while suggesting that further secrets might be revealed if employment or patronage were forthcoming. Others wrote in an unambiguously open fashion. In either case, the openness of fifteenth-century books on the mechanical arts constitutes a striking contrast to the well-documented secrecy of late medieval craft guilds.9

The argument I have outlined can be demonstrated only by careful attention to specific authors, the books that they created, and the contexts within which they undertook au- thorship. Fifteenth-century books on the mechanical arts can conveniently be separated into four groups: illustrated Latin treatises from the first half of the century; German treatises, composed throughout the century, that primarily although not exclusively treat gunpowder artillery; humanist Latin writings; and, finally, diverse treatises by practition- ers, mostly Italian, mostly from the second half of the fifteenth century. It will be seen

48:119-122; Joanna Woods-Marsden, "Images of Castles in the Renaissance: Symbols of 'Signoria'/Symbols of Tyranny," ibid., pp. 130-137; Kaufmann, Court, Cloister, and City: The Art and Culture of Central Europe, 1450-1800 (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1995); Bram Kempers, Painting, Power, and Patronage: The Rise of the Professional Artist in the Italian Renaissance, trans. Beverley Jackson (London: Allen Lane, Penguin, 1993); F. W. Kent and Patricia Simons with J. C. Eade, eds., Patronage, Art, and Society in Renaissance Italy (Canberra: Humanities Research Centre, 1987); Lauro Martines, Power and Imagination: City-States in Renais- sance Italy (New York: Random House, Vintage, 1980); Charles M. Rosenberg, ed., Art and Politics in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Italy: 1250-1500 (Notre Dame, Ind.: Univ. Notre Dame Press, 1990); Randolph Stamn and Loren Partridge, Arts of Power: Three Halls of State in Italy, 1300-1600 (Berkeley/Los Angeles: Univ. California Press, 1992); Roy Strong, Art and Power: Renaissance Festivals, 1450-1650 (Berkeley/Los Angeles: Univ. California Press, 1984); and David Thomson, Renaissance Architecture: Critics, Patrons, Luxury (Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press, 1993).

8 See Pamela 0. Long and Alex Roland, "Military Secrecy in Antiquity and Early Medieval Europe: A Critical Reassessment," History and Technology, 1994, 11:259-290, which suggests that the openness of much ancient military culture (with the exception of imminent battle situations) is based on the association of military success with the character of the military leader rather than with military technology.

9 For secrecy and intellectual property attitudes within medieval craft contexts see Pamela 0. Long, "Invention, Authorship, 'Intellectual Property,' and the Origin of Patents: Notes toward a Conceptual History," Technol. Cult., 1991, 32:846-884. Openness and secrecy within fifteenth-century technical authorship are complex issues that will be treated at length in my book in progress: Long, "Openness, Secrecy, Authorship, Ownership: Studies in Premodem and Early Modem Practical, Technical, and Knowledge Traditions." My point here is that the context of authorship within patronage relationships involved at least some requisite display and explication of technological material and led to the open explication of the mechanical arts in manuscript books. Here and elsewhere, issues of openness and secrecy are influenced closely by context. See William Eamon, "From the Secrets of Nature to Public Knowledge," in Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution, ed. David C. Lindberg and Robert S. Westman (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1990), pp. 333-365; and Roger Hahn, "The Meaning of the Mechanistic Age," in The Boundaries of Humanity: Humans, Animals, Machines, ed. James J. Sheehan and Morton Sosna (Berkeley/Los Angeles: Univ. California Press, 1991), pp. 142-157, both of which associate openness more broadly with developments in science (such as "mechanization of the world picture") or with technological developments, such as printing.

6 POWER, PATRONAGE, AND THE AUTHORSHIP OF ARS

that the books themselves often contain crucial evidence concerning patronage or hoped- for patronage. Moreover, the explication of machines and instruments is at times closely connected with assumptions about political and military power and the representations of that power. Finally, the mechanical arts are rationalized in a variety of ways and newly associated with learning, the liberal arts, and classical antiquity.

BETWEEN EMPIRE AND CITY-STATE: LATIN TECHNICAL AUTHORSHIP IN

THE EARLY FIFTEENTH CENTURY

The first group of writings to be considered comprises Latin technical treatises from the early fifteenth century. The authors of these books, Conrad Kyeser (1366-1405), Giovanni Fontana (ca. 1393-ca. 1455), and Mariano Taccola (1382-1453), explicated numerous kinds of machines and weapons both in writing and pictorially.10 The three men worked in the contiguous regions of north and central Italy and south Germany. The area was divided linguistically and encompassed a multitude of changing political and military territories, but it also contained common features and was characterized by porous bound- aries. The German emperors had long-standing interests in Italian territories, certain com- ponents of which were formally if not effectively part of the empire. Italian princes re- ceived patronage from the emperor and fought for him as condottiere. Mercenary soldiers traveled back and forth between Italian and German regions; most gunners in north Italian armies in the early fifteenth century were German. Other facilitators of interchange between the two regions were the church, commerce, and banking. In important ways, the three authors shared a single political and military culture.11

Conrad Kyeser, the son of South German burghers, authored Bellifortis [Strong in War] between 1402 and 1405 while in exile in his home town of Eichstiitt. A strikingly illustrated treatise written in Latin verse, Bellifortis is the earliest fifteenth-century technical book from the German territories. Kyeser was exiled in 1402 when Sigismund, king of Hungary and of Germany, defeated Prague, imprisoned his half-brother, the Bohemian king Wen-

10 Kyeser, who had worked as a physician in the imperial army, wrote his military treatise, Bellifortis, between 1402 and 1405; see Conrad Kyeser aus Eichstaitt, Bellifortis, ed. and trans. Gotz Quarg (Dusseldorf: Verlag des Vereins Deutscher Ingenieure, 1967). Fontana's treatise, Bellicorum instrumentorum liber, treats military ma- chines, fountains, and other mechanical devices and includes Latin text that is partially encrypted. See Eugenio Battisti and Giuseppa Saccaro Battisti, Le macchine cifrate di Giovanni Fontana (Turin: Arcadia, 1984). Mariano Taccola was a notary from Siena who authored De ingeneis in the 1420s and 1430s and De machinis in the 1440s. See Mariano Taccola, De ingeneis: Liber primus leonis, Liber secundus draconis, addenda; Books I and II, On Engines, and Addenda (The Notebook), ed. and trans. Gustina Scaglia, Frank D. Prager, and Ulrich Montag, 2 vols. (Wiesbaden: Ludwig Reichert, 1984); Prager and Scaglia, Mariano Taccola and His Book "De ingeneis" (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1972); and Taccola, Liber tertius de ingeneis ac edifitiis non usitatis, ed. J. H. Beck (Milan: II Polifilo, 1969). For De machinis see Taccola, De machinis: The Engineering Treatise of 1449, ed. and trans. Scaglia, 2 vols. (Wiesbaden: Ludwig Reichert, 1971); and Taccola, De rebus militaribus (De machinis, 1449), ed. Eberhard Knobloch (Baden-Baden: Valentin Koemer, 1984).

11 For the older literature see Paolo Brezzi, "I comuni cittadini italiani e l'impero medioevale," in Nuove questioni di storia medioevale (Milan: Marzorati, 1969), pp. 177-207. See also Heinz Angermeier, "Die Sforza und das Reich," in Gli Sforza a Milano e in Lombardia e i loro rapporti con gli stati italiani ed europei (1450- 1535) (Convegno intemazionale, Milano, 18-21 maggio 1981) (Milan: Istituto Editoriale Cisalpino-La Goliar- dica, 1982), pp. 165-191; Hermann Kellenbenz, "Oberdeutschland und Mailand zur Zeit der Sforza," ibid., pp. 193-227; and M. E. Mallett and J. R. Hale, The Military Organization of a Renaissance State: Venice c. 1400 to 1617 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1984), for much information about the relationship of one city- state, Venice, to the empire, including Venetian recruitment of German soldiers (pp. 21, 79). For German soldiers in Italy see Mallett, Mercenaries and Their Masters: Warfare in Renaissance Italy (London: Bodley Head, 1974), esp. pp. 27-36; Karl H. Schaifer, Deutsche Ritter und Edelknechte in Italien wdhrend des 14. Jahrhunderts (Paderbom: Ferdinand Schoningh, 1911); and Marino Vigano, ed., Architetti e ingegneri militari italiani all'estero dal XV al XVIII secolo (Livomo: Sillabe, 1994).

PAMELA 0. LONG 7

ceslas, and sent the court, presumably including Kyeser, into exile. Banished to his home- town of Eichstaitt in Bavaria, Kyeser wrote his treatise in the last years of his life. The manuscript, of which there are at least fourteen exemplars, was illustrated by illuminators from the Prague scriptorium who were passing through Eichstatt after their own expul- sion.12

Bellifortis is the response of a bitterly angry military physician to the imperial politics of his time. Kyeser had been present at Nicopolis on that "impious day" in 1396 when the Ottoman Turks had precipitated the flight "with unheard of audacity of Prince Sigismund, hermaphroditic Hungarian king," and his imperial army. He was a victim in the struggle between Sigismund and Wenceslas, both sons of the Luxembourg emperor Charles IV. Kyeser dedicated his treatise to the emperor Ruprecht (ruled 1400-1410) from the Palat- inate (Pfalz), a weak emperor chosen by the electors after their unprecedented deposal of Wenceslas in 1400.13

In Bellifortis Kyeser offers technological strength to the emperor Ruprecht, advertising the efficacy of astrology, sorcery, mechanical technology, and weaponry. The lavish il- lustrations of the treatise depict cannon, rockets, chariots, a counterweight trebuchet, bat- tering rams, mobile bridges, ships, mills, scaling ladders, incendiary devices, crossbows, and instruments of torture-weapons, machines, and devices both old and new. The large, expensive format, the striking illustrations, and the text in Latin verse all suggest that the emperor Ruprecht to whom the treatise was dedicated was also representative of the in- tended audience. Kyeser wrote a prince's book, not an engineer's.14

12 Kyeser, Bellifortis, ed. and trans. Quarg (cit. n. 10), is an edition and German translation of the work that includes extensive notes and a facsimile reproduction of a manuscript at Gottingen dated 1405 (Niedersiichsische Staats- und Universitiitsbibliothek, MS philos. 63 cim.). However, see the critical review of Quarg's edition by Hermann Heimpel in Gottingische Gelehrte Anzeigen, 1971, 223:115-148. The identity of the Bellifortis Kyeser with a "Master Conrad of Eichstatt" who authored medical tracts is uncertain. Lynn White, Jr., "Kyeser's 'Bellifortis': The First Technological Treatise of the Fifteenth Century," Technol. Cult., 1969, 10:436-441, on p. 438 n. 2, identified Kyeser as the "Master Conrad of Eichstatt" who composed a collection of medical recipes in an early fifteenth-century manuscript associated with the court of Wenceslas in Prague. But Guinter Kallinich and Karin Figala, "Konrad von Eichstiitt, eine Arztpers6nlichkeit des deutschen Mittelalters," Sudhoffs Archiv, 1969, 52:341-346, argued that the author of medical texts was a well-known physician from Eichstatt who lived in the early fourteenth century.

13 Kyeser, Bellifortis, ed. and trans. Quarg, Vol. 1, p. 4 (fol. 3a): "diem impium," "inaudite audacie principis Sygismundi Regis ermifroditi ungarie." In a later passage (Vol. 1, p. 53, fol. 85a) Kyeser reiterates that the Turks had defeated "Sigismund, a deserter and madman, deceitful good-for-nothing [Sygmundum perfugum atque furibundum/Fallacem nequam]." The disadvantages of a weak emperor had become apparent after the electors had watched Ruprecht lead an embarrassingly incompetent imperial army in and out of Italy in 1402. The electors reverted back to the Luxembourg line in 1410, choosing the far more powerful, if less malleable, Sigismund. Thereafter, Sigismund became king of Bohemia in 1419 (after the death of Wenceslas) and king of the Lombards in 1431. He was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 1433. For Ruprecht see Aug. Thorbecke, "Ruprecht III," in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1889), Vol. 29, pp. 716-726; for his 1402 military adventure in Italy see Brian Pullan, A History of Early Renaissance Italy: From the Mid-Thirteenth to the Mid-Fifteenth Century (London: Allen Lane, 1973), pp. 234-235. For Sigismund's career see esp. Jdnos Bak, "The Late Medieval Period, 1382-1526," in A History of Hungary, ed. Peter F. Sugar et al. (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1990), pp. 54-64; Wilhelm Baum, Kaiser Sigismund: Hus, Konstanz und Tutrkenkriege (Graz: Styria, 1993); Friedrich Bernward Fahlbusch, Stddte und Konigtum im Friihen 15. Jahrhundert: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte Sigmunds von Luxemburg (Cologne: Bohlau, 1983); Heinrich Koller, "Sigismund, 1410- 1437," in Kaisergestalten des Mittelalters, ed. Helmut Beumann (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1984), pp. 277-300, 375- 376; Elem6r Mdlyusz, Kaiser Sigismund in Ungarn, 1387-1437 (Budapest: Akad6miai Kiad6, 1990); and Sabine Wefers, Das politische System Kaiser Sigmunds (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1989). See also Bertalan K6ry, Kaiser Sigismund: Ikonographie (Vienna: Anton Schroll, 1972), a thorough study of the many portraits and other visual images of Sigismund. For the Battle of Nicopolis see Aziz Suryal Atiya, The Crusade of Nicopolis (London: Methuen, 1934).

14 I refer to the illustrations in the facsimile edition-Kyeser, Bellifortis, ed. and trans. Quarg-of one particular manuscript (Gottingen, Niedersiichsische Staats- und Universitiitsbibliothek, MS philos. 63 cim.). The illustra-

8 POWER, PATRONAGE, AND THE AUTHORSHIP OF ARS

As would befit a prince, the technology of Bellifortis includes a full panoply of magical and mechanical weapons. Kyeser enhafces the prestige of that technology by tying it to both learning and classical antiquity. He insists upon the relevance of letters to military strength: "The ambition of Caesar [i.e., Sigismund] is foolish, for art is worth gold / And letters rule the shield and sword of the soldier / Letters alone govern the chasuble and the robe / All things are under letters, with which the One Almighty rules."15 Kyeser praises the strong soldiers of Germany and simultaneously applauds her liberal and mechanical arts: "just as the sky shines with stars, Germany shines forth with liberal disciplines, is embellished with mechanics, and adorned with diverse arts." 16

Kyeser's hero is Alexander of Macedon, conqueror of the east, whose triumph stands in stark contrast to Sigismund's eastern debacle at Nicopolis. Yet his portrait of Alexander as technologically efficacious in his own person is antithetical to ancient notions of military leadership. In Bellifortis Alexander stands with a rocket-like weapon inscribed with the mysterious letters MEUFATON (see Frontispiece). The accompanying verses explain the efficacy of the weapon against all enemies. Elsewhere, Kyeser reports that Alexander is the inventor of a huge war carriage (see Figure 1). He thus represents Alexander's power as rooted in technical competence that is both mechanical and magical.'7 Kyeser's Alex- ander brings together the categories of praxis and techne. In striking contrast to ancient mores, he is a military leader armed with magical, mechanical, and incendiary devices.

Kyeser presents himself as a dying man in 1405, the date inscribed at the end of his dedication to Ruprecht. His own portrait appears near the end of the treatise, accompanied by a self-composed funeral ode and epitaph, a list of rulers and princes with whom he had been associated (Wenceslas, Sigismund, and Francis of Carrara in Padua, among others), and a prayer for his about-to-be departed soul (see Figure 2). He includes verses for the arts that have informed his treatise-the seven liberal arts and also geomancy, theology, philosophy, law, canon law, physics, alchemy, the theurgical arts, and the military arts. He represents himself as famous and loved by all and as an expert on military matters whose Bellifortis will scatter armies. He will be widely mourned, by nobles, the wealthy, the poor, and even animals-quadrupeds, tripeds, birds, worms.18

Nothing in Giovanni Fontana's writings corresponds to the bizarre finale of Kyeser's treatise. Yet Fontana shared with his German counterpart both a delight in mechanical contrivances and the assumption that power is associated with technological efficacy. Fon- tana first took up technical authorship at the University of Padua, where he wrote three small treatises-two concerning clocks and one treating measurement from a distance.

tions in other copies (e.g., New York Public Library, Spencer MS 58) are not in every case identical to those of the Gottingen codex.

15 Kyeser, Bellifortis, ed. and trans. Quarg, Vol. 1, p. 2 and n. 1 (fol. 2a): "Caesaris ambicio desipit, nam ars valet aurum / Et littera clippeum militis gerit atque mucronem. I Casulam cum stola gubernat littera sola / Litteris cuncta subsunt, agla quibus imperat unus." Quarg suggests that "agla" is an old Hebraic name for "Almighty," derived from the first four letters of an ancient Jewish prayer and used by Kyeser to display his linguistic knowledge. "Stola," in line 3, can refer to a royal robe, in which case the line suggests that letters govern both priestly and royal realms.

16 Ibid., Vol. 1, p. 3 (fol. 2b): "sicud celum ornatur sideribus, sic alemania prefulget disciplinis liberalibus, honestatur mechaniis diversisque artibus adornatur."

17 Ibid., Vol. 1, p. 15, and Vol. 2 (fol. 1 lb), for Alexander holding the rocket; and Vol. 1, p. 17, and Vol. 2 (fol. 16a) for the war carriage. Quarg suggests that MEUFATON refers to Philip of Macedonia's conquest of Methone in 353 B.C., during which conflict the Macedonian king lost an eye. What Kyeser makes clear is the almost magical properties of the weapon, which will cause enemies to flee. Concerning the war carriage, Kyeser writes: "Hoc instrumentum ab allexandro repertum [this instrument was invented by Alexander]."

18 Ibid., Vol. 1, pp. 100-105 (fols. 135a-139a).

PAMELA 0. LONG 9

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Figure 1. A giant tank invented by Alexander of Macedon. From Conrad Kyeser, Bellhforti,s Cod. phil. 63, fol. 16a. (Courtesy of the Niedersdchsische Staats- und Universitditsbibliothek, Gttingen.) Kyeser again emphasizes the technological skill of a powerful ruler with his depiction of this gigantic tank, which he claims was invented by Alexander of Macedon. To view the tank coherently, push the ram at the top down and flip the round wheels on the sides underneath. The soldiers enter by the door in front. The vehicle's defenses include a combination of scythes and cannon placed in alternating positions between the wheels, which are (we are told) hidden. Thus can the army safely approach the enemy and destroy it. The tradition extolling Alexander here enters a new phase, as the Macedonian king becomes the inventor of large-scale military hardware. The illustratin beautifully evokes the combination of ancient warfare (scythes) with modern weaponry (cannon).

After receiving his medical degree in 1421, evidence suggests, he worked as a military physician and was based, for a time at least, with the Venetian army in Brescia.'9

'9 For a discussion of Fontana's life and writings see Marshall Clagett, "Te Life and Works of Giovanni Fontana," Annali dell'Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza di Firenze, 1976, 1:5-28; and Battisti and Saccaro Battisti, Macchine cifrate di Fontana (cit. n. 10), pp. 7-52. His three early treatises, bound together in the university library in Bologna (Bibliotheca universitaria, 2705), are De horologio aqueo (fols. 53r-84v), on water clocks; Nova compositio horologii guod ex pulverum casu consistit (fols. lr-52v), on sand clocks; and De pisce, cane et volucre (from fol. 85r), on measurement from a distance. Fontana's illustrations were clearly influenced by Giovanni da Dondi, whose treatise on the astraium he must have seen in Padua. See Jane Andrews Aiken,

10 POWER, PATRONAGE, AND THE AUTHORSHIP OF ARS

A i4Nisctu4*~~~~n

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FIgure 2 Portrait of Conrad Kyeser, author of the Bellifortis From Conrad Kyeser Bellifortis Cod.. phl 3 ol13a.(Cures o te ieerAchiceSat n nvriisiohkGtign Ths emrkbl prtai dpit Kesr eanga ren hi tecoorofphsiias ndofths

born under the sign of Jupiter (including Alexander of Macedon) The portrait appears in the codex~~~~~~~~~~~~.... . . .... accompaied by he authCs selfcompse epiAphadfnrlod ncnrs o h aia n tehnlgia pwrseantigfrmth elfrts yse reetshmslf(it dely5are face presumably displaying a battle wound) as a, .. dyn man.. Th. bakpceTathelftfr.i.dt of death was never filled in.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~. ...... .

PAMELA 0. LONG 1I1

The military context of such a career involves the early fifteenth-century expansion of Venetian rule to the terra ferma in the form of direct military control and the creation of a standing army to protect the newly acquired territory. Venetian conflicts included the successful war against the Carrara of Padua in 1404-1405, the defense against Hungarian invasions, prompted by Sigismund's expansionist policies, in 1411-1413 and 1418-1421, and the wars against Milan between 1426 and 1454. Venetian military expansion required the hiring of captains-general, a move undertaken with great trepidation by the Venetian senate. Fontana's presence in Brescia is presupposed by his documented role in transmit- ting a message from the senate to the captain-general of the Venetian army, the ill-fated Francesco Carmagnola. Although Fontana's whereabouts for a number of years are un- documented, he records in a treatise of the 1440s some of the details of his life as a physician in Udine, an outpost of the Venetian army.20

It seems probable that Fontana wrote his Bellicorum instrumentorum liber in the 1420s and intended it for Carmagnola. The Latin treatise, which concerns military machines, fountains, and other mechanical devices, is written partially in cryptographic code. It con- sists of seventy folio sheets and close to 140 drawings of numerous kinds of machines and devices: fountains and pumps, magic lanterns, machines for lifting and transporting heavy weights, clocks, defensive and offensive devices to protect forts and castles, battering rams, incendiary and other kinds of weapons, alchemical furnaces, magic lanterns, measuring instruments, a mechanical devil and witch, towers, locks, keys, and scaling ladders, to name a few. Although the illustrations are often self-explanatory, most sheets also contain textual explication that begins in alphabetic Latin and then shifts to encryption. Fontana uses identical encryption in a later work, the Secretum de thesauro experimentorum, that treats experiments and natural philosophy.2'

The encryption of the Bellicorum instrumentorum liber can be seen as a display of writing technique involving codification rather than as a means of concealing technical information. In a cogent analysis, the editors of the facsimile edition conclude that the single existing manuscript of the work and the manuscript of Fontana's Secretum were both produced by scribes. They hypothesize that Fontana developed the code when he wrote the Secretum and that he then instructed scribes to use it to copy the earlier Belli- corum instrumentorum liber. In the latter, encrypted text usually appears directly under alphabetic Latin on each page, regardless of the content. On one sheet, for example, Fon- tana illustrates a fountain and in alphabetic Latin exclaims upon his love for fountains and

"Truth in Images: From the Technical Drawings of Ibn Al-Razzaz Al-Jazari, Campanus of Novara, and Giovanni de' Dondi to the Perspective Projection of Leon Battista Alberti," Viator, 1994,25:325-359; and Carlo Maccagni, "Le scienze nello studio di Padova e nel Veneto," in Storia della cultura Veneta dal primo quattrocento al Concilio di Trento, Vol. 3, ed. Girolamo Arnaldi and Manlio Pastore Stocchi (Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 1981), pp. 135-171, esp. pp. 142-147. Fontana's other writings include Tractatus de trigono balistario (Oxford, Bodl. libr. canon. misc. 47), a treatise on measurement using the triangle, composed in Udine in 1440; and a natural history that exists in a printed edition-Liber Pompilii Azali Placentini De omnibus rebus naturalibus - . . (Venice: Ottaviano Scoto, 1544). He also wrote a work, presumed lost, on perspective that he dedicated to the Venetian painter Jacopo Bellini. Battisti and Saccaro Battisti hypothesize that it may be the partially extant perspectival treatise attributed to Toscanelli in Alessandro Parronchi, "Le fonti di Paolo Uccello, II: I 'filosofi,' " Paragone, 1957, no. 95, pp. 3-33; see Battisti and Saccaro Battisti, Macchine cifrate di Fontana, pp. 18-24.

20 For Venetian military matters in the early fifteenth century see Mallett and Hale, Military Organization of a Renaissance State (cit. n. 11), esp. pp. 20-43, upon which this account depends. Battisti and Saccaro Battisti, Macchine cifrate di Fontana, pp. 27-28, notes Fontana's mission to Brescia. Fontana's view of the captain- general Carmagnola's execution by order of the senate in 1432 can perhaps be inferred from his recording of the evil omens that he saw beforehand.

21 See Battisti and Saccaro Battisti, Macchine cifrate di Fontana, pp. 35-37 (concerning the encryption), 141- 158 (for the Secretum de thesauro). The manuscript is in Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, Lat. nouv. acq. 635.

12 POWER, PATRONAGE, AND THE AUTHORSHIP OF ARS

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PAMELA 0. LONG 13

his great skill and ingenuity in inventing them (see Figure 3). The encrypted section includes the following: "All parts of the Fountain, and the complete figure of this thus are depicted clearly so that you can understand with facility."22 The secrecy embodied in the encryption is unrelated to technological detail. As the editors of the work suggest, Fontana was interested in the idea of the code itself rather than in hiding technological secrets per se.

Fontana's contemporary Mariano Taccola, from Siena, authored two pictorial machine books: De ingeneis, created in the 1420s and early 1430s, and De machinis, composed in the Veneto in the 1440s. Although they are by no means identical, both works are filled with drawings of constructions and machines-cannon, trebuchets, incendiary weapons, winches, pumps, mills, gears, cranes, and ships, among many others. Most sheets also contain explanatory Latin text.23

Mariano came from a middle level of Sienese society-his father was a wine dealer, and his wife, Madonna Nanna, was the daughter of a leather merchant. Evidence suggests that his early education included the surprising combination of craft practice and notarial training, including Latin. In 1424 he became a camarius, or secretary, of the Domus Sapientae, a hospital and student lodging that served as a temporary residence for foreign visitors. Guests included some of the entourage of Sigismund during the emperor' s nine- month Sienese stay in 1432, an interlude necessitated by negotiations with the papacy concerning the imperial coronation. Later, Mariano became a stimatore for Siena, one who tallied completed work at a building site, assigned wages, and perhaps estimated the amounts of required materials. In 1441 he was appointed viaio, a superintendent of streets, fountains, and bridges.24

On one level, Mariano's technical treatises speak to the concerns and problems of the

22 Battisti and Saccaro Battisti, Macchine cifrate di Fontana, p. 96 (fol. 62v of manuscript): "Partes omnes fontis, et figura eius completa ita clare depingantur, ut cum levitate intelligas." See Frank D. Prager, "Fontana on Fountains: Venetian Hydraulics of 1418," Physis, 1971, 13:341-360, for a detailed study of Fontana's foun- tains. Battisti and Saccaro Battisti's conclusion that the single extant copy was produced by scribes is made on the basis of analysis of mistakes, which are of the sort that would have been made by a copyist rather than by the author. They call Fontana's cryptographic system a simple, rational cipher based on signs without letters or numbers. Fontana had devised a "complete and organic system of signs" that was equivalent to and could substitute for the conventional alphabet. They conclude that Fontana's cryptographic system responded "not so much to the criterion of secrecy as to an awareness of a conscious symbolism of signs and their systems." He was interested in "a system of significance" rather than a system "of the occultization of significance." Battisti and Saccaro Battisti, Macchine cifrate di Fontana, pp. 36-37 (my translation of the Italian).

23 For a facsimile of the first two books (Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Codex latinus monacensis 197, Pt. II) with transcription, translation, and notes see Taccola, De ingeneis, ed. and trans. Scaglia et al. (cit. n. 10). See also Prager and Scaglia, Taccola and His Book "De ingeneis" (cit. n. 10), which contains reproductions of the sheets, transcription, and translation of books 3 and 4. For a facsimile edition of books 3 and 4 see Taccola, Liber tertius de ingeneis, ed. Beck (cit. n. 10), which includes transcriptions of the documents pertaining to Taccola as well. For De machinis see Taccola, De machinis, ed. and trans. Scaglia (cit. n. 10), which includes a facsimile edition of Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Codex latinus monacensis 28 800; see also Taccola, De rebus militaribus (De machinis, 1449), ed. Knobloch (cit. n. 10), which includes a facsimile of Paris, Bib- liotheque Nationale, Codex parisinus latinus 7239. An excellent introduction to Taccola and fifteenth-century Sienese culture is Paolo Galluzzi, "Le macchine senesi: Ricerca antiquaria, spirito di innovazione e cultura del territorio," in Prima di Leonardo, ed. Galluzzi (cit. n. 1), pp. 15-44.

24 The evidence for his background and training includes his commissions to carve heads for the choir stalls in 1408 and to produce sculptures in 1441, both for the Sienese cathedral; and his nomination in 1417 as an applicant for admission to the Sienese Guild of Judges and Notaries. For a summary of Taccola's career see Taccola, De ingeneis, ed. and trans. Scaglia et al., Vol. 1, pp. 11-15; and Prager and Scaglia, Taccola and His Book "De ingeneis," pp. 3-21. Most of the relevant documents are published in Gaetano Milanesi, Documenti per la storia dell' arte senese, Vol. 2: Secoli XV e XVI (1854; rpt., Holland: Davaco, 1969), pp. 284-286. For the role of the stimatore see Nicholas Adams, "The Life and Times of Pietro dell'Abaco, a Renaissance Estimator from Siena (Active 1457-1486)," Zeitschriftfiir Kunstgeschichte, 1985, 48:384-395.

14 POWER, PATRONAGE, AND THE AUTHORSHIP OF ARS

Sienese state. They explicate numerous aspects of ships, harbors, and naval warfare, re- flecting Siena's efforts to control Tuscan rivers and to develop a commercial port at Tal- amone on the Tuscan Sea. Taccola's many depictions of pumps, dams, siphons, aqueducts, and other water-controlling devices constitute a response to the perennial Sienese problem of a water supply insufficient for the needs of the population and local industries, especially leather and textile manufacture. His multifarious depictions of cannon, firearms, cannon lifting and transport devices, and weaponry of various sorts suggest a response to Sienese military problems that included the frequent ravaging of the contada, or countryside, by marauding mercenary companies and the constant pressure of Florentine expansionist ef- forts (see Figure 4).25

If Taccola's authorship developed out of Sienese concerns, he also used it in a quest for imperial patronage. In 1432 he presented Sigismund with a copy of books 3 and 4 of the De ingeneis that included two portraits of the emperor.26 Taccola specifies that he desires a position in Sigismund's Hungarian court. Pictorially, he has Saint Dorothy rec- ommend him as a master of machines for waterworks in the Hungarian regions (he has drawn her pointing to the relevant text), and he includes authorship (involving a compi- lation of the emperor's "places") as one of the services he can perform. Although he probably never made it to Hungary, there is indirect evidence that Taccola worked in the Veneto and northern Italy in the late 1430s and 1440s and that he wrote his later treatise De machinis, completed in 1449, in the Veneto as well. For example, a copy was made for the Venetian captain-general Bartolomeo Colleoni; his authorial efforts may also have been prompted by renewed hope for imperial patronage, this time from the early Hapsburg emperor Frederick III, whose coronation in Rome was being discussed in Italy in 1447.27

De machinis is a pictorial treatise, written as an aid to "fighting the infidels." It is divided into ten sections or books and contains more than two hundred illustrations, many of which

25 For an introduction to Sienese history and culture in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries see esp. Mario Ascheri, Siena nel Rinascimento: Istituzioni e sistema politico (Siena: Edizioni "II Leccio," 1985); Duccio Bal- estracci and Gabriella Piccinni, Siena nel trecento: Assetto urbano e strutture edilizie (Florence: Cooperativa Libraria Univ. Studi Florentini, 1977); William M. Bowsky, A Medieval Italian Commune: Siena under the Nine, 1287-1355 (Berkeley/Los Angeles: Univ. California Press, 1981); Bowsky, "Siena," in Dictionary of the Middle Ages (New York: Scribner's, 1987); David L. Hicks, "The Sienese State in the Renaissance," in From the Renaissance to the Counter-Reformation: Essays in Honor of Garrett Mattingly, ed. Charles H. Carter (New York: Random House, 1965), pp. 75-94; and Judith Hook, Siena: A City and Its History (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1979). The Sienese aqueducts are the subject of a dissertation-in-progress by Michael P. Kucher (Univ. Delaware). See also Balestracci et al., I bottini medievali di Siena (Siena: Alsaba, 1993). The aim of the harbor was to rival those at Pisa and Genoa and to assist in importing grain from Sicily in the face of chronic food shortages.

26 The manuscripts of books 3 and 4 of De ingeneis are in Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale, Palat. 766, fols. 27-57 and 58-76, respectively. See Prager and Scaglia, Taccola and His Book "De ingeneis" (cit. n. 10), pp. 70-71, for the portraits and the accompanying text, which appears on the verso along with an illustration of the measurement of the height of a tower. For the portrait of Sigismund see James H. Beck, "The Historical 'Taccola' and Emperor Sigismund in Siena," Art Bulletin, 1968, 50:309-320; Lionello G. Boccia, "L'armamento defensivo nei trattati di Mariano di lacopo detto il Taccola," in Prima di Leonardo, ed. Galluzzi (cit. n. 1), pp. 47-56, esp. pp. 52-53; and Gustina Scaglia, "An Allegorical Portrait of Emperor Sigismund by Mariano Taccola of Siena," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 1968, 31:428-434.

27 Prager and Scaglia, Taccola and His Book "De ingeneis," pp. 15-16 (for the titles that he received as a result of his presentation), 144-145 (for his recommendation by St. Dorothy). Although Sigismund seems never to have granted Taccola's wish to join the court in Hungary, he did name him familiares in 1432, and in the next year in Mantua, on his return to German territories, he granted him and some other Sienese citizens the title comites palatini. For (inconclusive) evidence concerning Taccola's authorship of De machinis in the Veneto see Milanesi, Documenti, Vol. 2 (cit. n. 24), pp. 299-300; Prager and Scaglia, Taccola and His Book "De ingeneis," pp. 16-20; and esp. Taccola, De machinis, ed. and trans. Scaglia (cit. n. 10), Vol. 1, pp. 19-23, 29- 58 (for a detailed discussion of the manuscripts).

PAMELA 0. LONG 15

FIgure 4 A sheet of Taccola s De ingeneis depicting cannon, a pump, and other devices. From Mariano Taccola, De ingeneis, Codex Latinus Monacensis 197, Pt. II, fol. 52v. (Courtesy of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich.) This sheet is one of several hundred in Taccola's notebook. It includes sketches of machines and devices central to both Taccola's own interests and those of Siena-military equipment, including mortars, cannon, cannon camages, and scaling ladders, and hydraulic equipment such as a pump and a syphon.

are explained textually. The table of contents represents an early attempt to rationalize types of machines into coherent groups, such as "Bnidges and Structures on Water," "Bom- bards and Guns," and "Weights Raised Higher and Lowered Down."28

28 Taccola, De machinis, ed. and trans. Scaglia, Vol. 1, p. 18 (for the list of subjects), 59-60 (for Taccola's detailed statement about the uses of his book for fighting the infidels and "bad Christians" who try to usurp the land and power of other Christians).

16 POWER, PATRONAGE, AND THE AUTHORSHIP OF ARS

In this, his later treatise, Taccola calls himself the "Archimedes of Siena." Archimedes' fame as an inventor of military machines was widespread in the fifteenth century, especially through the account in Plutarch's Life of Marcellus. Yet Plutarch's Archimedes explicitly declined to write down his military and mechanical inventions because of the vCulgarity of such a utilitarian activity.29 In striking contrast, Taccola, the Sienese Archimedes, embraces technical authorship, presenting a great array of machines with both pictorial and textual explication; he leaves no doubt that they constitute both the proper subject of rational thought and the essential instruments of civic success and military victory.

Although the treatises of Kyeser, Fontana, and Taccola exhibit important differences, they also share a number of characteristics. They are written in Latin, are lavishly illus- trated, and display a variety of mechanical contrivances and weapons in lucid detail. They are dedicated to rulers or, in some cases, seem to have been written for rulers or military captains. They directly associate military and political power with technological power in a new way. They enhance the status of mechanical disciplines by explicating them in Latin and by associating them with antiquity and with learning.

GERMAN BOOKS ON GUNPOWDER AND ARTILLERY

Alongside these Latin books, numerous German-language treatises, primarily concerning gunpowder artillery and machines, appeared beginning in the early decades of the fifteenth century and continuing until its end. Although the specific authors of these books are often unknown, clearly many of them were practitioners in the burgeoning field of gunpowder artillery. Their books contain a wealth of technical information, such as how to make gunpowder and how to load cannon. Yet they also attempt to rationalize their practice by treating the causes of particular phenomena, and they treat ethical issues such as the de- sirable attitudes and deportment of both practitioners and patrons. These books transmitted technical knowledge concerning gunpowder and artillery. Yet they also elevated such practices by making them rational, by explicating them in writing, and by holding prac- titioner and patron to a set of ethical norms.30

An example from the early fifteenth century, Cgm 600 in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich, is a small book of twenty-two sheets that treats the manufacture of gunpowder

29 Ibid., pp. 59-60: "However, I, Ser Marianus Taccola, also called Archimedes of great and magnificent Siena, have not designed these engines, machines and weapons that they may operate against Christians, but have invented, composed and designed them that they may go against the infidel and barbarian people." For Plutarch's account see Plutarch's Lives, 11 vols., Vol. 5: Agesilaus and Pompey, Pelopidas and Marcellus, trans. Bernadotte Perrin (London: William Heinemann, 1917), pp. 479-481 ("Life of Marcellus" 17.4). For Archimedes in the fifteenth century see W. R. Laird, "Archimedes among the Humanists," Isis, 1991,82:629-638; and P. L. Simms, "Archimedes and the Invention of Artillery and Gunpowder," Technol. Cult., 1987, 28:67-79.

30 Over a hundred individual examples of fifteenth-century manuscript military treatises of German provenance are extant, including multiple copies of particular texts. The most complete recent list is Hall, Technological Illustrations (cit. n. 1), pp. 121-133; see also Jiihns, Geschichte der Kriegswissenschaften, Vol. 1 (cit. n. 1), pp. 241-443. For gunpowder artillery and other military technologies that form the technological context of this literature see esp. Kelly DeVries, Medieval Military Technology (Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview, 1992), pp. 143-168; Bert S. Hall, Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance Europe: Gunpowder, Technology, and Tactics (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1997); Gerhard W. Kramer, Berthold Schwarz: Chemie und Waffen- technik im 15. Jahrhundert (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1995); and Volker Schmidtchen, Bombarden, Befestigungen, Biichsenmeister: Von den ersten Mauerbrechern des Spdtmittelalters zur Belagerungsartillerie der Renaissance: Eine Studie zur Entwicklung der Militdrtechnik (Dusseldorf: Droste, 1977). See also Erich Egg, Der Tiroler Geschiitzguss: 1400-1600 (Innsbruck: Universitiitsverlag Wagner, 1961); and Egg, Das Handwerk der Uhr- und der Biichsenmacher in Tirol (Innsbruck: Universitaitsverlag Wagner, 1982), esp. pp. 184-201.

PAMEELA 0. LONG 17

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Figure 5. Loading a cannon barrel and igniting the powder. From Cod. germ. 600. (Courtesy of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich.) The illustration on the left shows two gunners, depicted in an eady fifteenth-century book on gunpowder artillery, loading a cannon barrel. As the text explains, one is hammering in wooden wedges between the stone ball and the interior surface of the barrel. The other holds containers with other substances to be poured in-loam, oakum (part of flax), or hay. On the right, a gunner is igniting the cannon. The text wams of the danger of the barrel exploding. The gunner should stand back and ignite the powder with a long rod. The clamps that secure the barrel to the carriage are shown but not mentioned in the text. Notice the serious expressions, the industrious demeanor, and the simple clothing of the artisans, each of whom is depicted with his own distinctive clothing, suggesting his individuality.

and loading and firing cannon. On most pages a pictorial image dominates. For example, on one page instructions are given concerning how to load the barrel of the cannon. Another illustration (see Figure 5) shows a gunner igniting a cannon, a highly dangerous task: sometimes the weapon itself exploded rather than discharging the ammunition. The text cautions the gunner to stand some distance away and to use a rod when lighting the powder.3' Cgm 600 transmits technical information but also presents images of practition- ers deeply absorbed in technical procedures. Each of the human figures depicted in the woodcuts is distinguishable from the others-each has a distinct physiognomy, wears his

31 Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cgm 600. For a detailed description see Karin Schneider, ed., Die deutschen Handschriften der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek, Munchen, new ed., Vol. 5, Pt. 4 (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1978), p. 227. See also Wilhelm Hassenstein, Das Feuerwerkbuch von 1420 (Munich: Verlag der Deutschen Technik, 1941), pp. 48, 56.

18 POWER, PATRONAGE, AND THE AUTHORSHIP OF ARS

own particular clothes, and sports his own hat or hairstyle. Some work in pairs, some alone. All are dressed plainly and clearly belong to the artisan class. All are busy at work, with serious demeanor, carrying out the procedures described in the text below. Although authored anonymously, Cgm 600 validates a new group of practitioners who are repre- sented in the process of doing their work, their individuality exhibited along with their virtues of seriousness, industriousness, and care.

The practitioner is also a central figure in the Feuerwerkbuch, an anonymous treatise that was written around 1420 and widely distributed in manuscript copies before it was printed in 1529. The treatise describes itself as concerned with the guns, missiles, gun- powder, and pyrotechnics by which princes, counts, lords, knights, and cities protect them- selves when besieged. These princes and cities should have "servants who are godly and steady people," who will voluntarily give their bodies, lives, and property in the fight against the enemy before surrendering. They should also be "wise people" who know how to bring up guns and missiles in an emergency, how to attack, how to build walls and bulwarks, and how to use arms effectively. Finally, they need to get along with each other, not quarrel, and settle their disputes according to the best advice.32

The author suggests one reason why he wrote his treatise-that technical details of gunpowder manufacture are too complex to remember without the help of writing. Yet concerns beyond the transmission of technical information are also evident. The treatise begins with twelve questions, some of which indicate an interest in causes. For example, the first question asks whether it is the fire or the force of the vapor produced by the fire that drives the stone from the cannon. The author argues that it is the vapor and proposes an experiment to prove it. Take a pound of good powder, put it in a thick wine cask, and close the cask well so that no vapor may come out. Then ignite the powder at the hole; the powder at hand is burned and the vapor destroys the cask. The second question asks whether the saltpeter or the sulfur pushes the stone. It is both. When the powder is kindled, the sulfur is hot and the saltpeter cold. Since heat won't admit cold and cold won't admit heat, they are two contradictory things that won't tolerate each other. Other questions concern technique: How much powder should be used? Should the wedges pushed against the stone ball in the barrel be made of soft wood like linden or hard wood like oak or beech? Is the gunpowder better corned or in the form of a fine powder?33

The Feuerwerkbuch also enumerates the qualities of a good gunner. "Above all he should honor and hold God before his eyes." In addition, he should exercise great care when handling guns and powder. He should "rest content with the world in which he

32 For a reprint of the 1529 edition and a translation into High German see Hassenstein, Feuerwerkbuch von 1420, pp. 15-16; see pp. 41-43 for the modem German: "diener / die als from[m] unnd fest leiit seyen"; "sy durch eeren willen / ir leyb lebe[n] und gilt / und was in Got ye verleyhen hat gegen iren feinden / darstrecken und wagen diirfften"; "weissleut." The author further admonishes princes and rulers that they need good smiths, bricklayers, carpenters, cobblers, and also good gunners; they must be good masters to their gunners, giving them all the supplies and equipment that they need. Kramer, Berthold Schwarz (cit. n. 30), pp. 52-23 1, includes a facsimile edition and transcription of one manuscript version of the Feuerwerkbuch (Freiburg, Universitat Freiburg, HS. 362). See also Jahns, Geschichte der Kriegswissenschaften, Vol. 1 (cit. n. 1), pp. 392-408.

33 Hassenstein, Feuerwerkbuch von 1420, p. 16: "And thereupon since the subjects belonging to it [gunnery] are so many, which every good gunner should know, and which a master without writing cannot remember in his mind," all the necessary details are provided in the manual. ["Und darumb wann der stuck sovil sind die darzugehored / die ein yetlicher gtitter puchsenmaister ktinden soll / und die ein mayster on die geschrift in seinem sinne nit gedencken kan."] The treatise provides instruction on how to treat the ingredients of gunpowder (sulfur, saltpeter, and charcoal), how to mix them together, how to load the barrel, and how to discharge the cannon in diverse situations and with various kinds of ammunition such as flaming bolts and stone balls. See also ibid., pp. 16-17 and 43-45 (for modem German).

PAMELA 0. LONG 19

travels" and should be a "strong, undaunted man." In war, he should "hold himself pleas- antly," for such people are greatly trusted. "The master should also know how to write and read"-all the elements of the art cannot be held in the head, but they can be read in the book at hand. He should know something about purifying and distilling and about defensive operations, and he should understand weights and measures. He should teach with honesty and friendliness in both his words and his works, should be thoughtful and avoid drunkenness at all times.34

The author proffers advice to rulers as well. Many have found themselves besieged and haven't taken proper care for defense, nor have they brought people to them "who through their technical wisdom [Kunst Weissheit] advise and aid in fighting their enemies." As a result, many God-fearing princes and lords of the Holy Roman Empire have come to destruction. Thus, "the advice of a true advisor of all princes" is that they, as well as other nobles and cities, provide themselves with sober, skillful gunners to whom they give adequate provisions and supplies.35 The Feuerwerkbuch addresses, then, a double read- ership-gunners and the princes and nobles who employ them. It provides a written text that recommends and enhances an image of learning, character, and technical competence for gunner and patron alike.

Much more study is needed of the many further manuscript treatises on weaponry and other kinds of machines and devices that proliferated in the fifteenth-century German empire. They are diverse in both their specific subject matter and their form; some are illustrated, some written in prose, others in verse. Examples include HS. 25,801, in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg, which depicts various ways in which gun carriages and their aiming mechanisms (such as the elevating arch and the screw) might be constructed; the manuscript known as the "Anonymous of the Hussite Wars," which illustrates and describes machines such as mills, cranes, and aquatic devices, as well as military apparatus; and the Mittelalterlichen Hausbuch, from about 1480, which illustrates, among other things, cannon, weight-lifting machines, mills, a spinning wheel, a wagon train, and mining activities and machines.36

In the last third of the fifteenth century, several prominent gunners in the region of southwest Germany supplemented their military practice with authorship. One was Johann Formschneider, active in Nuremburg between 1460 and 1470, whose name is attached to a particular group of writings and drawings of cannon.37 Martin Merz (d. 1501) served the

34 Ibid., pp. 18 and 47 (for modem German): "sol er got eren und vor allen dingen vor auge[nI haben"; "sich auch bescheidenlich mit der welt halten / mitt der er dann wandelt"; "ain endlicher unverzagter man sein"; "sich trostlich halten"; "d[er] maister sol auch kunden schreiben un[d] lesen."

35Ibid., pp. 31 and 69 (for modem German): "durch der kunst weissheit / radt und htilff/ sy iren feinden widerstan . . ."; "radt der getrew radtgeb allen fursten."

36 Nuremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, HS. 25,801, "Kriegsmachinen," is an early fifteenth-century manuscript that provides explanatory text in verse. Hall, Technological Illustrations (cit. n. 1), includes a fac- simile edition of the "Anonymous of the Hussite Wars," with a transcription and English translation of the text and a technological commentary. For the last-named text see Helmuth Th. Bossert and Willy F. Storck, eds., Das mittelalterliche Hausbuch nach dem originale in Besitze des Fursten von Walburg-Wolfegg-Waldsee im Auftrag des deutschen veneinsffir Kunstwissenschaft (Leipzig: E. A. Seemann, 1912). For descriptive inventories of fifteenth-century German manuscripts of this kind see Hall, Technological Illustrations, pp. 11-25, 118-133; and Jihns, Geschichte der Kriegswissenschaften, Vol. 1 (cit. n. 1), pp. 243-443.

37 Formschneider's works include Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cod. germ. 734, fols. 60v-71r, of which fol. 60v is signed "Johann Formschneider, biichsen meister und gutter aben teurer"; a group of similar drawings is found in fragments in Munich, Bibliothek des Deutschen Museums, MS 1949/258, and Nuremberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, HS. 719 (formerly Kr. 300), among others. See esp. Hall, Technological Illus- trations, pp. 21-22, 127-129; Jiihns, Geschichte der Kriegswissenchaften, Vol. 1, pp. 392, 411; Hassenstein, Feuerwerkbuch von 1420 (cit. n. 31), p. 86; and Eduard A. Gessler, "Hans Formschneider von Ntirnberg," in Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters: Verfasserlexikon, 4 vols., ed. Wolfgang Stammler and Karl Langosch (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1933-1953), Vol. 1, col. 637.

20 POWER, PATRONAGE, AND THE AUTHORSHIP OF ARS

energetic duke Friedrich I of Siegreich (ruled 1451-1476), who reorganized his state ad- ministratively while expanding his territorial power. In 1471, apparently while in Fried- rich's service, Merz wrote a treatise on the mathematics of aiming cannon. His tomb is in the parish church of Amberg. The oldest memorial of a European gunner, it is covered by a full-length relief sculpture of Merz dressed in a richly ornamented cloak. Inscriptions declare that he was "famous before others in the mathematical art of gunning" and that the dukes of Pfalz always received his heart and work and were truly served by him.38 Another Pfalz gunner, Philipp Monch, following Merz's example, wrote a military treatise near the end of the century and included his own portrait on the title page.39

A very different kind of military codex was created when the emperor Maximilian, as part of a reorganization and augmentation of the imperial army, ordered the arsenals throughout his far-flung territories to be inventoried by means of large, spectacularly il- lustrated books-Zeugbticher. For each arsenal location, cannon and other weapons were listed on one or more folios and illustrated in beautiful, hand-painted images. Other Ger- man princes created similar books by collecting images from the many technical books of the preceding century in large, hand-painted weapons books.40 Large codices containing exquisitely rendered drawings of cannon and other machines served as new visual repre- sentations of princely power.

The many German manuscript codices within this tradition of authorship need much more study with regard to both their substantive content and their relationships to one another. The variety and richness of these books suggest the probability of diverse uses. Certainly the transmission of technical information from one practitioner to another can be included among these uses. Also evident are the value of the artillery codex in patronage exchanges and its cultural utility as a representation of the power of the prince or emperor.

38 One of his eyes is covered with a patch, his hands hold rosary beads in prayer, and his feet rest on a cannon barrel. The sculpture displays two coats of arms, one depicting a basilisk and the other a heavy gun built into a wheeled gun carriage. The treatise is in Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cod. germ. 599, fols. 66r-lOlv. For a description see Schneider, ed., Deutschen Handschriften, Vol. 5, Pt. 4 (cit. n. 31), pp. 225-226. The location of the copy mentioned in earlier sources-Vienna, Bibliothek des Fiirsten Liechtenstein, Cod. MS 3, 1471-has to my knowledge been unknown since the end of World War II. For Merz see Eduard A. Gessler, "Martin Merz (Mercz)," in Deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters, ed. Stammler and Langosch, Vol. 3, cols. 368- 370; George Sarton, Introduction to the History of Science, Vol. 3, Pt. 2: Science and Learning in the Fourteenth Century (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution, 1948), p. 1553; and Schmidtchen, Bombarden, Befestigungen, Buichsenmeister (cit. n. 30), pp. 153, 182-183. For Friedrich of Siegreich see Henny Griineisen, "Friedrich I. der Siegreiche," in Neue deutsche Biographie (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1961), Vol. 5, pp. 526-528.

39 Monch's treatise is in Heidelberg, Universitatsbibliothek, Cod. palat. germ. 126. See Eduard A. Gessler, "Philipp Monch," in Deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters, ed. Stammler and Langosch, Vol. 3, col. 427; Hall, Technological Illustrations (cit. n. 1), pp. 23, 125; Jiihns, Geschichte der Kriegswissenschaften, Vol. 1 (cit. n. 1), p. 271; and Hans Wegener, Beschreibendes Verzeichnis der deutschen Bilder-Handschriften des spdten Mittelalters in der Heidelberger Universitdts-Bibliothek (Leipzig: J. J. Weber, 1927), pp. 99-101.

40 One example is Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cod. icon. 222, a large vellum codex of 296 folios of hand-painted illustrations of cannon with their stone or iron balls, culverins (light field guns), and other arma- ments from specific sites in the empire, by Bartholomeus Freysleben, a locksmith by trade who became master gunner at Innsbruck for the emperor Maximilian I between ca. 1493 and 1509. The compilation of Zeugbuicher was an aspect of the reorganization and strengthening of the imperial army that included the creation of a center of cannon founding and arms production and a central arsenal at Innsbruck. See especially Erich Egg, "From the Beginning to the Battle of Marignano-1515," in Guns: An Illustrated History of Artillery, ed. Joseph Jobe (Greenwich, Conn.: New York Graphic Society, 1971), pp. 26-3 1; Egg, Tiroler Geschiitzguss (cit. n. 30), pp. 49-94; Hall, Technological Illustrations, pp. 23, 126; and Schmidtchen, Bombarden, Befestigungen, Butchsen- meister (cit. n. 30), esp. pp. 172-174. Another example is the large Kriegsbuch-Erlangen, Universitiatsbib- liothek, Ms. 1390 (B26)-an illustrated encyclopedia of military drawings taken from fifteenth-century books, done by Ludwig von Eybe zum Hartenstein (the younger) (1450-1521) for Pfalzgraff Philipp bei Rhein, ca. 1500. See Hall, Technological Illustrations, p. 124; and Otto Piiltz, Die deutschen Handschriften der Universi- tdtsbibliothek Erlangen, ed. Armin Dietzel and Gunther Bauer (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1973), pp. 39- 40.

PAMELA 0. LONG 21

A careful look at particular codices suggests another point. Take, for example, a codex in the New York Public Library-Spencer MS 104. The codex retains its fifteenth-century binding, made of beautiful hand-tooled calf leather stretched over wooden boards, and its iron clasp, lock, and key. Inside are careful copies of two treatises-the Feuerwerkbuch and a Gernan translation of Kyeser's Bellifortis. The illustrations for the latter are only partially completed, and the specific ownership history of the codex in the early modern period is unknown.41 Yet the two texts-very different treatises, which I have treated in different sections here-were put together for readers or collectors who (the beautiful binding tells us) were far from lowborn. My point is that the tradition of authorship dis- cussed here also had the effect of creating a readership made up of individuals who valued, collected for their libraries, and perhaps even read books on the mechanical arts.

THE HUMANIST SYNTHESIS OF TECHNE AND PRAXIS: ALBERTI, CUSANUS, VALTURIO

Unlike the books of German gunners, humanist writings on the mechanical arts have been the focus of extensive scholarship. Humanism was a broadly based cultural and educational movement that favored rhetoric and ethics over logic and philosophy. In general, humanists advocated a life of active civic participation over one of contemplation. They attempted to reinstate classical, Ciceronian Latin in the place of the "barbarisms" of medieval Latin- ity. Finally, they wrote histories, both ancient and contemporary, the latter often undertaken as part of their service in the courts and republics of patrons.42 To put it another way, the humanists embraced praxis, that is, political and military action, and the linguistic strate- gies that shaped it. Some humanists joined this interest in praxis with a concern for techne or ars, construction in the material world, and they undertook to write about that construc- tion.

Three key figures in the humanist synthesis of praxis and the constructive arts were contemporaries and probably acquaintances-Leon Battista Alberti, Nicholas Cusanus, and Roberto Valturio. Alberti (1404-1472), the illegitimate son of an exiled Florentine banker, was one of the most important humanists of the fifteenth century. Supported by ecclesiastical positions and benefices, as well as the patronage of princes, he wrote on a wide range of subjects-literary, moral, and technical, including painting, sculpture, and architecture-and was involved as well in urban reconstruction and building design.43 The German cardinal Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464) attended the University of Heidelberg

41 New York Public Library, Spencer MS 104. 42 For an introduction to humanism, including extensive further bibliography, see esp. Albert Rabil, Jr., ed.,

Renaissance Humanism: Foundations, Forms, and Legacy, 3 vols. (Philadelphia: Univ. Pennsylvania Press, 1988); Pamela 0. Long, "Humanism and Science," ibid., Vol. 3, pp. 486-512; and Anthony Grafton, Defenders of the Text: The Traditions of Scholarship in an Age of Science, 1450-1800 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1991).

43 The foundational study of Alberti's life and work was Girolamo Mancini, Vita di Leon Battista Alberti, 2nd ed. (Florence: G. Carnesecchi, 1911). See also esp. Franco Borsi, Leon Battista Alberti (Milan: Electa, 1975); Cecil Grayson and Giulio C. Argan, "Leon Battista Alberti," in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1960), Vol. 1, pp. 702-713; and Joan [Kelly] Gadol, Leon Battista Alberti: Universal Man of the Early Renaissance (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1969). Recent studies include Mark Jarzombek, On Leon Baptista Alberti: His Literary and Aesthetic Theories (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1989); Paolo Marolda, Crisi e conflitto in Leon Battista Alberti (Rome: Bonacci, 1988); and Giovanni Ponte, Leon Battista Alberti: Umanista e scrittore (Genoa: Tilgher-Genova, 1981). See also Susannah Foster Baxendale, "Exile in Practice: The Alberti Family In and Out of Florence, 1401-1428," Renaissance Quarterly, 1991, 44:720-756; and Susannah Kerr Foster, "The Ties That Bind: Kinship Association and Marriage in the Alberti Family, 1378-1428" (Ph.D. diss., Comnell Univ., 1985). A brief, useful introduction to Alberti's life is Martin Kemp, "Introduction," in Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting, trans. Grayson (London: Penguin, 1991).

22 POWER, PATRONAGE, AND THE AUTHORSHIP OF ARS

before coming to Italy, where he absorbed humanist learning. He pursued an illustrious career in the papal court, often served as a diplomat between Italian and German regions, and wrote brilliantly original treatises devoted primarily to theological subjects. Roberto Valturio (1405-1475) was born in Rimini, where he received a humanist education, then worked in Rome as secretary in the papal court, and finally returned to his native city to serve the lord, Sigismund Malatesta. Unlike Alberti and Cusanus, Valturio wrote only one book, Elenchus et index rerum militarum. It became the most widely disseminated military treatise of the fifteenth century.44

Battista Alberti was a preeminent man of letters who was also deeply involved in the constructive arts. Although his complex literary production cannot be recapitulated here, two points deserve emphasis. First, in addition to a base of ecclesiastical service and benefices, Alberti's authorship was fundamentally grounded in the patronage of oligarchs and princes such as the Este of Ferrara, the Gonzaga of Mantua, the Rucellai of Florence, Sigismund Malatesta of Rimini, and the Florentine pope Tommasso Parantucello-Nich- olas V. Second, Alberti himself became active in the constructive arts as a consultant and designer of building projects, such as churches and the redesign of cities.45

Arriving in Florence sometime after the ban against his family was lifted in 1428, Alberti was deeply influenced by Florentine developments in the visual and constructive arts. He came in time to observe the spectacular achievements of Brunelleschi: his engineering feat of raising the immense dome of the Florentine cathedral, his classically proportionate building design, and his discovery of painter's perspective. Alberti also observed the per- spective paintings of Masaccio and others, the gilded bronze relief sculptures by Ghiberti on the doors of the Florentine baptistery, and Donatello's newly classical sculpture.46 He

44Among his other achievements, Nicholas of Cusa contributed to the resolution of the "great schism" by arguing for the authority of councils (De concordantia catholica, 1433) and wrote a proposal for negotiation with the Hussites. For an introduction see J. E. Hofmann, "Nicholas Cusa," in Dictionary of Scientific Biography, ed. Charles C. Gillispie, 18 vols. (New York: Scribner's, 1970-1990), Vol. 3, pp. 512-516; Jasper Hopkins, A Concise Introduction to the Philosophy of Nicholas of Cusa (Minneapolis: Banning, 1978); and Pauline Moffitt Watts, Nicolaus Cusanus: A Fifteenth-Century Vision of Man (Leiden: Brill, 1982). For Valturio's life see Friedrich Klemm, "Roberto Valturio," in Dictionary of Scientific Biography, ed. Gillispie, Vol. 13, pp. 567-568; and Pier Luigi Bassignana, ed., Le macchine di Valturio nei documenti dell'Archivio Storico Amma (Turin: Umberto Allemandi, 1988), pp. 13-16.

45An example of Alberti's use of authorship to acquire patronage can be seen in his treatise on painting. He dedicated the Latin version of De pictura to Giovan Francesco Gonzaga (1407-1444), "illustrious prince of Mantua." Alberti praises the prince's kindness, glory in arms, and skill in letters. The aim of the dedication is explicit: "You could know my character and learning, and all my qualities best, if you arranged for me to join you, as I indeed desire. And I shall believe my work had not displeased you, if you decide to enrol me as a devoted member among your servants and to regard me as not one of the least." Alberti's dedication brought the desired results. Although Giovan Francesco died in 1444, his son Lodovico became an important patron of Alberti's architecture, including two major churches in Mantua-S. Sebastiano and S. Andrea. See Alberti, On Painting, trans. Grayson (cit. n. 43), p. 36; and Leon Battista Alberti, "De pictura," in Opere volgari, Vol. 3, ed. Cecil Grayson (Bari: Laterza, 1973), pp. 7-107 (for the Latin text and Alberti's Italian translation). For Alberti's architecture, in addition to works cited above, see esp. Smith, Architecture in the Culture of Early Humanism (cit. n. 6), pp. 19-39 (for his relationship to Brunelleschi), 98-129 (for Pienza). For Alberti's in- volvement in Nicholas V's Rome see Carroll William Westfall, In This Most Perfect Paradise: Alberti, Nicholas V, and the Invention of Conscious Urban Planning in Rome, 1447-1455 (University Park: Pennsylvania State Univ. Press, 1974); and Manfredo Tafuri, " 'Cives esse non licere': The Rome of Nicholas V and Leon Battista Alberti: Elements toward a Historical Revision," Harvard Architecture Review, 1987, 6:60-75.

46For an introduction to these developments see Frederick Hartt, History of Italian Renaissance Art: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, 4th ed., revised by David G. Wilkins (New York: Abrams, 1994). On artist's perspective see Samuel Y. Edgerton, Jr., The Renaissance Rediscovery of Linear Perspective (New York: Basic, 1975); and John White, The Birth and Rebirth of Pictorial Space, 3rd ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, Belknap, 1987).

PAMELA 0. LONG 23

made his own significant contributions to this visual revolution, in part through technical authorship.47

Traditional scholarship portrayed Alberti as one who changed the status of painting and architecture from mechanical to liberal arts by making those disciplines mathematical. It emphasized those aspects of Alberti's work that concerned design and mathematical pro- portion and tended to disregard his interests in engineering and material construction. More recently, the traditional erasure of Alberti's grounding in material manipulation and con- struction has been corrected. Christine Smith has cogently argued that Alberti's admiration for Brunelleschi was based not so much on his design of proportionate buildings as on the engineering triumph represented by the dome of the Florentine cathedral and the many ingenious weight-lifting machines that he invented to build it. Similarly, John Oppel sug- gests that although it is usually said that Alberti "raised architecture to the status of one of the liberal arts," it is "at least as true and historically more appropriate to argue that he did just the reverse, that he brought the liberal arts down to the level of the mechanical ones." For Alberti, indeed, "the whole of architecture is based on mechanics."48 I would say, rather, that for Alberti both painting and architecture remain firmly grounded in ma- terial construction but that they are mathematical as well and are placed emphatically within the ethical world of human society. Instead of "mere" mechanical arts, they now exist as a focal point of ethical and civic life, of material construction, and of mathematics.

Alberti produced two versions of his treatise on painting-one in Latin, dedicated to a potential patron, Giovan Francesco Gonzaga, and the other in Italian, dedicated to Bru- nelleschi.49 He begins De pictura by insisting that he is writing not as a mathematician

47In addition to the treatises on painting and architecture that I discuss in greater detail, Alberti's technical writings include the following:

Elementi di pittura, probably written in Florence in the early 1430s, on geometric figures and their transposition onto foreshortened planes. See Leon Battista Alberti, "Elementi di pittura," in Opere volgari, ed. Grayson, Vol. 3 (cit. n. 45), pp. 109-129, 341-351; and Alessandro Gambuti, "Nuove ricerche sugli 'Elementa picturae,'" Studi e Documenti di Architettura, 1972, 1:133-172.

The De statua, a treatise on sculpture that deals with human proportions and with a device for reproducing such dimensions in stone or clay. See Alberti, "On Painting" and "On Sculpture": The Latin Texts of "De pictura" and "De statua, " ed. and trans. Cecil Grayson (London: Phaidon, 1972), pp. 117-144; and Jane An- drews Aiken, "Leon Battista Alberti's System of Human Proportions," J. Warburg Courtauld Inst., 1980,43:68- 96.

The Ludi rerum mathematicarum (ca. 1450), on measuring distances, dimensions, and weights. See Alberti, "Ludi rerum mathematicarum," in Opere volgari, ed. Grayson, Vol. 3, pp. 131-173; and Luigi Vagnetti, "Con- siderazioni sui 'Ludi matematici,' " Stud. Doc. Architettura, 1972, 1:173-259.

A treatise on the use of an instrument to survey the city of Rome-Discriptio urbis Romae. See Vagnetti, "La 'Discriptio urbis Romae,' uno scritto poco noto di Leon Battisti Alberti," Quaderno, 1968, 1:25-78.

A now-lost work that explains how he attempted to raise a sunken Roman galley from Lake Nemi-De navis; and another lost book on lifting weights. See Gadol, Leon Battista Alberti (cit. n. 43), p. 204; Mancini, Vita di Alberti (cit. n. 43), pp. 281 (on De navis), 286-288 (on De motibus ponderis). On De motibus ponderis see esp. Alberti, Opere volgari, ed. Grayson, Vol. 3, p. 431.

A tract on cryptography, De compondendis cifris, that explains his invention of a code wheel. See Gadol, Leon Battista Alberti, pp. 207-211.

48 Smith, Architecture in the Culture of Early Humanism (cit. n. 6), pp. 19-39; and John Oppel, "The Priority of the Architect: Alberti on Architects and Patrons," in Patronage, Art, and Society, ed. Kent and Simons with Eade (cit. n. 7), pp. 251-267, on pp. 251, 262. The traditional view is elaborated most importantly in the classic work: Rudolf Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism, 4th ed. (London: Academy, 1973), esp. pp. 1-56.

49 Alberti, On Painting, trans. Grayson (cit. n. 43), p. 34, where Alberti praises the great achievements in the arts carried out by Brunelleschi, as well as by "our great friend the sculptor Donatello" and by Ghiberti, Luca della Robbia, and Masaccio. Alberti describes the achievements of these men as "in no way inferior to" those of the ancients and asks that Brunelleschi correct any aspect of his treatise that seems to need amendment. For the dedication to Francesco Gonzaga see note 45, above.

24 POWER, PATRONAGE, AND THE AUTHORSHIP OF ARS

but as a painter. What he means is that "mathematicians measure the shapes and forms of things in the mind alone and divorced entirely from matter." He, on the other hand, wants to speak in terms of Minerva, about visible things. Speaking as a painter-one who does not separate mathematical and theoretical concerns from the visible world-Alberti also frequently alludes to ancient texts and the ancient art of painting. He speaks, that is, not as an ordinary but as a learned painter. De pictura treats the process of vision, the creation of the illusion of three-dimensional space on a flat surface by one-point perspective, and procedures of composition, light, and color. It also concerns the painter's creation of istoria, that is, a dramatic effect in the painting that moves the soul of the viewer. Finally, it enumerates desirable moral attributes of the painter, of which the first is that he should "be a good man, well-versed in the liberal arts."50

Alberti presented his architectural treatise, De re aedificatoria, to Pope Nicholas V around 1452, during the time when both were involved in the urban renovation of Rome.51 In this, the most important architectural treatise of the Renaissance, Alberti separates ar- chitecture from craft practice by means of mathematics and design. Yet he also grounds it in engineering for the improvement of civic life. The architect is not a carpenter but, rather, one "who by sure and wonderful reason and method, knows both how to devise through his own mind and energy, and to realize by construction, whatever can be most beautifully fitted out for the noble needs of man, by the movement of weights and the joining and massing of bodies." Architecture provides houses, walks, swimming pools, and baths to maintain human health. It supplies vehicles, mills, timepieces, and other smaller inventions that play a vital role in everyday life. It has devised methods of drawing up vast quantities of water for many purposes, and it has produced buildings for divine worship. Further, by cutting through rock, tunneling through mountains, filling in valleys, restraining the waters of the sea and lakes, draining marshes, building ships, altering the course of rivers, dredging the mouths of rivers, and constructing harbors and bridges, the architect has not only "met the temporary needs of man, but also opened up new gateways to all the provinces of the world," allowing nations to exchange food and goods as well as experience and knowledge. Architecture moreover has provided ballistic engines and machines of war, fortresses, and other things that protect liberty.52

Alberti repeatedly emphasizes that architecture, civic life, and human nature are closely linked. "When you erect a wall or portico of great elegance ... good citizens approve and express joy for their own sake, as well as for yours, because they realize that you have used your wealth to increase greatly not only your own honor and glory, but also that of your family, your descendants, and the whole city." Types of buildings should be com- mensurate, Alberti insists, with types of people. The patron should take account of his

50 Kemp, "Introduction," in Alberti, On Painting, trans. Grayson, pp. 12, 37. The allusion to Minerva is to Cicero's De amicitia, where the ancient author refers to a more popular kind of knowledge; for Alberti's use of De amicitia 5.19 see Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting, rev. ed., trans. John R. Spencer (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1966), pp. 18-20. For the desirable moral attributes of the painter see Alberti, On Painting, trans. Grayson, p. 87. On istoria see esp. Jack M. Greenstein, "Alberti on Historia: A Renaissance View of the Structure of the Significance of Narrative Painting," Viator, 1990, 21:273-299.

51 Leon Battista Alberti, L'architettura (De re aedificatoria), ed. and trans. Giovanni Orlando, 2 vols. (Milan: I1 Polifilo, 1966); and Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books, trans. Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach, and Robert Tavemor (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1988).

52 Alberti mentions several of his own inventions that have to do with rigging gangplanks of ships to prevent boarding by an enemy and other devices for sinking and burning enemy ships. He promises that he will deal with war machines at greater length elsewhere, implying, perhaps, a plan to write a treatise on the subject: Alberti, Art of Building, trans. Rykwert et al., pp. 3-4 (quotation), 135-136 (war machines and his own military inventions); and Alberti, L'architettura (De re aedificatoria), ed. and trans. Orlando, Vol. 1, pp. 6-13, 386-393.

PAMELA 0. LONG 25

social standing when he commissions a building because "it is a sign of a well-informed and judicious mind to plan the whole undertaking in accordance with one's position in society and the requirements of use." The variety of buildings is the result of the differences in human nature. Just as various human types, such as the wise, the skilled and practical, and the wealthy, have different functions in society, so also do different building types. Some buildings are appropriate for society as a whole, some for the foremost citizens, some for the common people. Among leading citizens, those presiding over domestic councils require different buildings than those involved in executing decisions or those occupied with accumulating wealth. More broadly, the type of government determines the architectural decisions of the ruler-tyrants must make different architectural decisions than magistrates.53

Architecture is an ethical discipline, and one that also involves the acquisition of knowl- edge. It is not a perfected set of principles but involves an ongoing process of study. It requires empirical investigation and observation, as well as the collection of advice from the past-"we shall collect, compare, and extract into our own work all the soundest and most useful advice that our learned ancestors have handed down to us in writing, and whatever principles we ourselves have noted in the very execution of their works. We shall go on to report things contrived through our own invention, by careful, painstaking investigation, things we consider to be of some future use." This reporting, Alberti re- peatedly emphasizes, must be open and clear, achieved with the use of concise, under- standable technical language.54

Although Alberti's literary and practical interests were in some ways very different from Cusanus's theological concerns, the two men shared the conviction that knowledge and practical life, including practical mathematics, were closely interrelated.55 Cusanus's views concerning such connections are strikingly evident in his Idiota: De sapientia, De mente, De staticis experimentis (ca. 1450). Idiota contains four books, the first two of which, on wisdom, take the form of a dialogue between an unlearned man (the idiota) and an educated orator. The idiota points the way to wisdom by rejecting the learning of the orator, which is based on the authority of books. He suggests instead that wisdom can be found in the streets and the marketplace, where ordinary weighing and measuring occur. By elaborating

53 Alberti, Art of Building, trans. Rykwert et al., pp. 4-5, 367 n. 12 ("good citizens approve"), 37 ("judicious mind"), 92-94 (building types), 117-125 (types of government and architecture). For a discussion of Alberti's civic and moral positions, as well as his debt to Cicero's De officiis, see John Onians, Bearers of Meaning: The Classical Orders in Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1988), pp. 147-157.

54 Alberti, Art of Building, trans. Rykwert et al., p. 7; see also p. 24, where Alberti stresses inventiveness rather than slavish imitation as a desirable approach to the architectural orders. On writing about architecture, he remarks: "But since it is our desire to be as limpid, clear, and expeditious as possible in dealing with a subject otherwise knotty, awkward, and for the most part thoroughly obscure, we shall explain, as is our custom, the precise nature of our undertaking. For the very springs of our argument should be laid open, so that the discussion that follows may flow more easily." Ibid., p. 7. Elsewhere (p. 155) Alberti lamented the obscurity and poor Latinity of Vitruvius's text, but, like Vitruvius, he stressed the difficulty of writing on architecture. He preferred that his own "speech seemed lucid [rather] than appeared eloquent" and believed that his writing was "in proper Latin, and in comprehensible form." Openness and clarity are values that Alberti repeatedly emphasizes. See Richard Krautheimer, "Alberti and Vitruvius," Acts of the Twentieth International Congress of the History of Art (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1963), Vol. 2, pp. 42-52; and Alberti, "Ludi rerum mathematicarum" (cit. n. 47), p. 173.

55 For the reciprocal influence of Alberti and Cusanus see Riccardo Gavagna, "Un abbinamento editoriale del '500: Vitruvio e Cusano," Rivista Critica di Storia della Filosofia, 1975, 30:400-410; and Gavagna, "Cusano e Alberti a proposito del 'De architectura' di Vitruvio," ibid., 1979, 34:162-176. Cusanus's own mathematical writings include the Transmutationes geometricae (1445), which treats changing a circle into a square and a straight line and includes many examples from practical geometrical problems.

26 POWER, PATRONAGE, AND THE AUTHORSHIP OF ARS

upon these activities as they see them in the Roman Forum, the unlearned man leads the orator to wisdom, that is, comprehension of the divine, through mathematics. Wisdom, which all men by nature desire to know, is higher than knowledge and utterly unknowable, unspeakable by all language, unintelligible by any understanding, immeasurable by all measure. Cusanus's elaboration involves the notion that the divine involves absolute num- ber, precision, equality, and other mathematical entities that in the human realm can only be relative.56

The third book, De mente, concerns the human mind; Cusanus argues that the word for it-mens-derives from the same word as measure (mensur). In this book, which is set in the Jubilee year of 1450, a philosopher seeking knowledge about the mind from ancient books in Rome is found by the orator and led to the Forum, where the idiota is busy making spoons in the Temple of Eternity. The unlearned man defends his "unworthy" occupation by claiming that the maker of spoons and pots is even closer to the divine than the painter and others who imitate nature. There are no spoons in nature; likewise, the divine creation was original, not imitative.57

Cusanus moves from this remarkable vindication of artisanal labor to the fourth book, De staticis experimentis, which describes a series of experimentis in practical measure- ment, including the determination of specific gravities and the assaying of metals. Speaking through the idiota, Cusanus points to many situations in which comparative measurement of the weight of various substances, including the blood and urine of sick and well men, water from different fountains, stones, and metals, could lead to a better knowledge of the nature of those substances. The idiota insists that the myriad results of such measurements should be written down in charts and that one result would be human benefit-for example, physicians could better diagnose and treat patients.58 For Cusanus, divine and human math- ematics are separated by a conceptual gulf that renders the first perfect and absolute, the second always imperfect and relative. Nevertheless, the two remain linked, and Cusanus demonstrates a continuing interest in both.

Around the time that Cusanus completed De mente, Sigismund Malatesta (1417-1468), lord of Rimini, instructed his secretary, Roberto Valturio, to write a treatise on military matters. Sigismund had acquired Rimini through his father, the famous condottiero Pan- dolfo Malatesta, who had bestowed it upon him and his brothers. At the precocious age of fourteen, Sigismund wrested it by military force from his brothers and from an uncle who was contesting the bequest. In 1433, some time after his spectacular adolescent mili- tary victory, Sigismund, lord of Rimini, was knighted by the emperor Sigismund during a stop in Rimini on his way north after the imperial coronation. Thereafter, the lord of Rimini consolidated his rule by means of an extensive building campaign that included the construction of the great fort and palace, the Rocca Malatestiana, and the radical

56 Nicolai de Cusa, Opera omnia, Vol. 5: Idiota: De sapientia, De mente, De staticis experimentis, rev. ed., ed. Renata Steiger et al. from edition of Ludwig Bauer (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1983). There is an anonymous seventeenth-century English translation-Cusanus, The Idiot in Four Books (London: William Leake, 1650), from which I have paraphrased text on pp. 7-8; and more recent English translations of the third book-Nicholas de Cusa, Idiota de Mente: The Layman: About Mind, trans. Clyde Lee Miller (New York: Abaris, 1979)-and of the fourth book-"De staticis experimentis," in Henry Viets, "De staticis experimentis of Nicolaus Cusanus," Annals of Medical History, 1922, 4:115-135.

57 Cusa, Idiota de Mente, trans. Miller, pp. 41-45. For the importance of the dialogue for the idea of creativity see Hans Blumenberg, " 'Nachahmung der Natur': Zur Vorgeschichte der Idee des schopferischen Menschen," Studium Generale, 1957, 10:266-283. Idiota involves a complicated commentary on Plato's Apology (21a-23b), in which Socrates recognizes the wisdom of understanding his own ignorance in the face of divine wisdom, and on the Timaeus.

58 Cusa, Opera omnia, Vol. 5: Idiota: De staticis experimentis, ed. Steiger et al. (cit. n. 56), pp. 219-242; and Viets, "De staticis experimentis" (cit. n. 56).

PAMELA 0. LONG 27

redesign (primarily by Alberti) of the Church of San Francesco, with a facade in the form of a triumphal arch, that came to be known as the "Tempio Malatestiano" (see Figure 6).59 The form and decorations of the Tempio Malatestiano bring together Roman antiquity, humanist learning, and Sigismund's power and rulership-affiliations that Valturio also repeatedly invokes in his military treatise.

The Elenchus et index rerum militarium (often cited as De re militari) is a humanist tour de force in which Valturio compiles a vast amount of material from ancient military literature and discusses Sigismund's own military and architectural feats as if they con- stituted extensions of Roman magnificence. The most widely disseminated military treatise of the fifteenth century, it exists in at least twenty-two manuscript copies and (after 1472) in numerous printed editions and translations. Yet the favor it found in its own time has not been shared by modem scholars, who have generally ignored or scorned it. Samuel Y. Edgerton, Jr., for example, suggests that the popularity of the treatise discouraged the printed publication of engineering books for fifty years. His judgment seems to be based on a model of technological progress in which the most desirable engineering books are deemed to be those that convey the latest technical information.60 Such a judgment would not have been shared by Valturio's contemporaries, who seem to have appreciated his erudite explication of ancient writings, his ability to bring together ancient and contem- porary weapons, and his brilliant success at representing the power and glory of Sigismund Malatesta, his patron and prince.

Unlike most of his multifarious ancient military sources, Valturio supplements his ex- amination of strategy, generalship, military rituals, order of battle, recruiting, and the like with extensive treatment of weapons technology-ancient, fantastical, and modem. Manu- script copies of the treatise include numerous beautifully hand-painted illustrations of military machines, indebted in part to the illustrations of Kyeser's Bellifortis.6'

59 For Sigismund Malatesta see esp. Philip J. Jones, The Malatesta of Rimini and the Papal State: A Political History (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1974), pp. 176-239; and Mario Tabanelli, Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta: Signore del medioevo e del rinascimento (Faenza: Stabilimento Grafico Fratelli Lega, 1977). Older studies include Salvatore Sibilia, Sigismondo Malatesta: Signore di Rimini (Turin: G. B. Paravia, 1942); and Charles Yriarte, Un condottiere au xv siecle Rimini: ttudes sur les lettres et les arts a la cour des Malatesta (Paris: J. Rothschild, 1882). For Sigismund's building projects see especially Carla Tomasini Pietramellara and Angelo Turchini, eds., Castel Sismondo e Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta (Rimini: Ghigi, 1985); and Woods- Marsden, "Images of Castles in the Renaissance" (cit. n. 7). For the Tempio Malatestiano see Corrado Ricci, Il Tempio Malatestiano, with appendix by Pier Giorgio Passini (1924; rpt., Rimini: Ghigi, 1974); and Charles Hope, "The Early History of the Tempio Malatestiano," J. Warburg Courtauld Inst., 1992, 55:51-154, esp. pp. 58-59 (for the papal bulls), 91 (for Piero della Francesca), 86-87 and 118-119 (for Roberto Valturio), 95 ff. (for Alberti), and 59-62, 66-68, 94-96, and 151-154 (for Sigismund's personal involvement in the project). For Piero della Francesca's work in Rimini see Marilyn A. Lavin, Piero della Francesca a Rimini: L'affresco nel Tempio Malatestiano (Bologna: Nuova Alfa, 1984).

60 Valturio began the treatise around 1450 and completed it about 1455-1460. See Roberto Valturio, Elenchus et index rerum militarium quae singulis codicis huius voluminibus continentur ut inpromptu sint universa hoc est ne talim Rerum curiosa perleganti (Verona: Johannes ex Verona oriundus Nicholai Cyrugie Medici Filius, 1472). For a partial facsimile reproduction of one manuscript at Turin, Archivio Storico Amma, MS. lat., cart., sec. XV, 142 cc., and useful articles concerning the illustrations see Bassignana, ed., Macchine di Valturio (cit. n. 44), which includes an (incomplete) list of manuscript copies and further bibliography; and Galluzzi, ed., Prima di Leonardo (cit. n. 1), pp. 199-201. For Edgerton's discussion see Samuel Y. Edgerton, Jr., The Heritage of Giotto's Geometry: Art and Science on the Eve of the Scientific Revolution (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1991), pp. 145-147.

61 The respect accorded Valturio by the Malatesta is indicated by his burial in one of the exterior niches of the Tempio Malatestiano. Most of the material concerning military technology is in book 10, which concerns military armor, weapons, machines, and other devices. The early printed edition contains eighty-two woodcuts of military machines and devices, possibly made by Matteo de' Pasti, a sculptor in the court of Sigismund; see Bassignana, ed., Macchine di Valturio, pp. 13-16.

28 POWER, PATRONAGE, AND THE AUTHORSHIP OF ARS

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Valturio suggests that by means of authorship he has placed Sigismund "in the seats of the celestial and terrestrial councils of the immortals." Just as the fame of Hector and Achilles in the Trojan War, and of many other ancients as well, has been transmitted "by the protection of letters," so his writings will serve the same function for the lord of Rimini.62

War itself boasts an ancient and honorable history. Emphasizing the civic nature of the military arts, Valturio suggests that military leaders develop by means of three necessary elements-nature, teaching, and practice. Also important are the instruments of war and the "many ornaments of liberal and noble arts" that are part of military science. Following the Vitruvian list of disciplines necessary to the architect, Valturio insists that the military leader must be literate, emulate the precepts of philosophy, understand history, and have good recollection. He is not ignorant of oratory and poetry; he understands music, arith- metic, geometry, the stars of the sky, the laws and rules of diverse people, and, finally, gymnastics and military practice in both peace and war.63

The military leader should be both "literate ... and learned." He should be knowledge- able, not in "the vulgar, crass, and crude" things that are now used in camp, but in "noble and very precise subjects joined with knowledge of many things." Such knowledge enables the captain to read and understand the precepts and examples of those who wrote. Indeed, Valturio counsels Sigismund, when at home "you can be alone with old friends, that is, with books. Before all things, it is necessary to be soaked with ingenuity and almost seized by the work of the best teachers."64

Valturio provides a long list of Greek and Roman generals who were both great soldiers and learned and studious men. Primacy belongs to Alexander of Macedon, whose tutor was Aristotle. The list also includes Julius Caesar-"it is said that Julius Caesar never missed a day in the pursuit of letters"-and Augustus, an avid reader and patron of poets and scholars. Valturio moves from his last ancient example, Marcus Aurelius, directly to Sigismund himself, describing the lord of Rimini as one who reads and hears much, who has great knowledge and the seeds of all the arts, who takes pleasure in subtle questions, favors orators and poets, and collects books, which will be useful in the present and the future. Valturio praises Sigismund for his military prowess, his poetry, his buildings (he describes the palace and fort of Rimini in detail), and his growing library, which he com- pares to the famous libraries of antiquity. Given the vicissitudes of fortune, the imper- manence of all monuments, the monument of letters lasts longest.65

The writings of Valturio, Cusanus, and Alberti exemplify a strain of humanism that was deeply concerned with the technical and constructive arts. Yet the three men were not artisans but university-educated humanists who stand among the most learned and influ- ential authors of the fifteenth century. Their collective grasp of ancient learning and hu-

62Valturio, Elenchus et index rerum militarium (cit. n. 60), "Ad magnanimum ... Sigismundu[m}," n.p.: "concilium caelestium terrestriumq[ule insedibus i[m]mortalitatis"; "litterar[um] custodiae." Valturio adds that he hopes that he himself might also achieve immortality in future generations through his writings.

63 Ibid., bk. 1, ch. 2.: "plurima liberaliu[m] et optimarum artiu[m] orname[n]ta." (Book 1 treats the origin of war and its history in ancient times.) For the Roman architect Vitruvius's list of the disciplines that should be known by the architect see De architectura 1.1.3.

64 Valturio, Elenchus et index rerum militarium, bk. 1, ch. 3: "litteratum ... et eruditum"; "Non vulgarem: non crassam: et barbaram"; "sed pr[a]eclaram et accuratam illam cum rerum multarum scientia coniunctam" (what the crude, vulgar camp learning is, he does not elaborate); "cum veteribus amicis idest libris esse seorsu[mI possis: ante omnia tinctu[m] esse oportet ingeniu[m] et quasi iniciatu[m] pr[a]eceptoris optimi opera."

65 Ibid.: "Nullum a studiis litterarum diem intermisisse Iul. Cae. traditur." Valturio describes the Rocca Mal- atestiana, including its walls, towers, and munitions, as "a true marvel of the magnificence of Italy [italic(a)e magnificenti(a)e vera admiratio]."

30 POWER, PATRONAGE, AND THE AUTHORSHIP OF ARS

manist Latinity was unparalleled in their own time. These men were not stooping to dabble in the low mechanical arts. Rather, they were participating in a reformulation of the value and place of technological culture. Valturio's studious military leader with a technological arsenal at hand; Cusanus's orator leaving his books to learn from transactions in the mar- ketplace and from the unlearned artisan; Alberti's reformulation of the principles of paint- ing, sculpture, and architecture in terms of rational principles, mathematics, and engineer- ing-these were not the delusions of men whose fantasies had taken them outside of their own cultures. Neither is there the slightest reason to believe that any of the three was engaged in combating the hierarchical social structure of his time. The careers and au- thorship of all three were fundamentally based on patronage, whether clerical or princely. Their writings represent the highest expression of a culture in which political power and certain constructive and mechanical arts had come to form a close alliance.

PRACTITIONER AUTHORSHIP IN LATE QUATTROCENTO ITALY

Just as humanists were influenced by visual and constructive arts in the fifteenth century, artisan practitioners were inspired by humanist writings on such arts. In the second half of the century, artisan-trained practitioners such as Lorenzo Ghiberti, Antonio Averlino, Piero della Francesca, Francesco di Giorgio Martini, and Leonardo da Vinci practiced skilled crafts and also wrote treatises. By means of authorship, they aided in the transfor- mation of certain arts from skilled practice to rational discipline and simultaneously im- proved their own fortunes as well. Artisans trained in workshops, such as Ghiberti, Fran- cesco di Giorgio, and Leonardo da Vinci, struggled to learn Latin; yet they shared with the humanists a cultural arena of common interests and patronage. Practitioners and hu- manists together created a middle ground of discursive and constructive practice within the space that had separated learned and artisanal culture in earlier centuries.

The Florentine Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378?-1455) trained as a goldsmith in the workshop of his stepfather Bartolo di Michele, called Bartoluccio. In 1400 he established his repu- tation by winning a competition to make relief panels for the gilded bronze doors of the Florentine baptistery. The award, which made the Bartoluccio workshop the most impor- tant bronze foundry in the city, also provided the basis for Ghiberti's subsequent career (see Figure 7).66 Much later, around 1447, Ghiberti wrote his tripartite treatise on sculpture known as the Commentarii, which includes a history of sculpture that begins in antiquity and ends with a catalogue of his own works. Like Valturio, Ghiberti excerpts extensively from ancient writings, beginning with a citation from the book on siege machines by Athenaios Mechanicos that advocates brevity and clarity over rhetorical polish. Ghiberti believed that in antiquity skilled practitioners routinely wrote books that elucidated the principles of their art but that this practice had lapsed. Only in his own age (and his own work) were ancient heights again reached in matters of art itself and in the elucidation of the principles of art in writing.67

66 For Ghiberti's life and works see Richard Krautheimer with Trude Krautheimer-Hess, Lorenzo Ghiberti, 3rd ed. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1982). See also Lorenzo Ghiberti: "Materia e rationamenti" (Firenze, Museo dell'Accademia e Museo di San Marco, 18 Ottobre 1978-31 Gennaio 1979) (Florence: Centro Di, 1978); and Lorenzo Ghiberti nel suo tempo, 2 vols. (Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi, Firenze, 18- 21 Ottobre 1978) (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1980).

67Julius von Schlosser, Lorenzo Ghibertis Denkwulrdigkeiten (I commentarii), 2 vols. (Berlin: Julius Bard, 1912). See also Klaus Bergdolt, ed. and trans., Der dritte Kommentar Lorenzo Ghibertis: Naturwissenschaften und Medizin in der Kunsttheorie der Frulhrenaissance (Weinheim: Acta Humaniora, 1988), a commentary on and German translation of Ghiberti's third book on perspective. There is also an Italian edition in which Ghiberti's often difficult Italian has been modernized: Lorenzo Ghiberti, I commentari, ed. Ottovio Morisani (Naples: Riccardo Ricciardi, 1947).

PAMELA 0. LONG 31

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large panels of Old Testament scenes rendered in Albertian perspective. Ghiberti included his own self-portrait within one of the medallions of the frame, placing it near his signature at about the eye level of the average viewer. The doors took more than twenty years t6-complete. The scenes were first modeled in wax, then cast in bronze, then gilded with gold, and finally finished. As he completed the process of construction, Ghiberti also worked on his Commentanii

32 POWER, PATRONAGE, AND THE AUTHORSHIP OF ARS

The difficulty and obscurity of the Commentarii are the evident result of Ghiberti's attempt to utilize Latin texts, a project for which his command of the language was clearly inadequate. Yet his linguistic difficulties should not obscure his shrewd choice of excerpts or his astute use of them to develop his own notion of learned practice. Ghiberti repeatedly refers to the writings (gleaned primarily from Vitruvius and Pliny) of ancient practitioners. Painting and sculpture "is a knowledge adorned with many disciplines and various teach- ings, which is the highest invention of all the other arts. It is made with certain meditation which is completed through material and reasoning." Things that are fabricated, Ghiberti insists, "through proportions by astuteness and by reason" can be demonstrably explained. Paraphrasing Vitruvius (De architectura, 1.1.2), he points to the weaknesses of both the unlettered practitioner and the unskilled learned man. Both skill (ingegnio) and learning (disciplina) are necessary to sculpture. Moreover, the sculptor must have good character traits as well. He must learn philosophy because it fills him "with [a] great soul," one that "is not arrogant" and, moreover, is "moderate and humble and faithful and without ava- rice." A work made without faith or chasteness cannot be perfect.68

The author of the first Italian vernacular architectural treatise, Antonio Averlino (ca. 1400-ca. 1462), was trained as a goldsmith in Florence, probably in the Ghiberti workshop. In 1433 Averlino, who called himself Filarete, "lover of virtue," was working in Rome, assisting in the coronation ceremonies of the emperor Sigismund. From 1433 to 1445 he was at work on the bronze relief panels for the great doors of St. Peter's. In the early 1450s, enticed by the patronage of Francesco Sforza, he moved to Milan, where he su- pervised the design and construction of a number of important buildings over the protests of local guildsmen. He completed his architectural treatise in the early 1460s, dedicating one copy to Francesco Sforza and another to Piero di Medici of Florence.69

Francesco Sforza (1401-1466) was one of the most famous condottiere of the fifteenth century who in 1450 became the duke of Milan through marriage, diplomatic maneuver, and military conquest. Averlino's treatise, a direct product of Sforza's patronage, is a narrative tale in which a new city, Sforzinda, is designed and constructed. The treatise provides a highly idealized account of the relationship between architect and patron, rep- resented by Averlino and Francesco Sforza themselves. Throughout, the architect is treated as an equal, admired greatly, and paid handsomely.70

68 Schlosser, Lorenzo Ghibertis Denkwiirdigkeiten, p. 4 (1.2): "L'iscultura et pictura e scientia di piid discipline et di varij amaestramenti ornati, la quale di tutte I'altre arti e somma inventione, e fabricata con certa meditatione la quale si compie per materia et ragionamenti." Ibid., pp. 4-6: "per proportione d'astutia et di ragione"; "con magno animo"; "non sia arrogante"; "agevole et humile et fedele et san,a avaritia."

69There is a modem Italian edition of the treatise and an English translation, both of which contain biographical and bibliographical information. Antonio Averlino detto il Filarete, Trattato di architettura, 2 vols., ed. Anna Maria Finoli and Liliana Grassi (Milan: II Polifilo, 1972), wherein pp. lxxxviii-xci is a useful chronology of Averlino's life; for the English translation see John R. Spencer, ed. and trans., Filarete's Treatise on Architecture, 2 vols. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1965). See also Angiola Maria Romanini, "Antonio Averlino (Averulino), detto Filarete," in Dizionario biografico degli italiani (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1962), Vol. 4, pp. 662-667.

70 See, e.g., Spencer, ed. and trans., Filarete's Treatise on Architecture, Vol. 1, p. 79, where a dinner conver- sation between the architect, the patron, and other nobles is described. The architect (Averlino himself) explains the many good omens that have occurred during the building of the city and reports that "my Lord and the others were so taken with love for me that they gave me enough to live honorably." For Francesco Sforza and the court of Milan under his rule see esp. Franco Catalano, Francesco Sforza (Milan: dall'Oglio, 1983); Giorgio Chittolini, ed., Gli Sforza, la chiesa lombarda, la corte di Roma: Strutture e pratiche beneficiarie nel ducato di Milano (1450-1535) (Naples: Liguori, 1989); Gli Sforza a Milano e in Lombardia (cit. n. 11); Gary Ianziti, Humanistic Historiography under the Sforzas: Politics and Propaganda in Fifteenth-Century Milan (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988); and Evelyn S. Welch, Art and Authority in Renaissance Milan (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press,

PAMELA 0. LONG 33

Architect and patron alike are fascinated both by design and by the technical aspects of construction. Averlino describes a dinner in which the architect, the lord, and the lord's son eat together as equals and discuss the new city. The lord's son is "so pleased by our conversation" that he falls "in love with this science of architecture" and begs his father to let the architect show him everything that had been done. The request granted, the young prince becomes the pupil of the architect, ever gaining in skill and delighted with his instruction. The prince's interests include strictly technological ones. He wants to know how metal is melted, how furnaces for melting bronze are made; he also asks for infor- mation about glass furnaces.71

The close association of the architect practitioner and the noble patron is paralleled by institutions in the new city in which learned disciplines and the crafts are taught side by side. Averlino proposes a school for impoverished youth that would provide instruction in letters and good habits but also in "every branch of knowledge and every skill." Instruc- tors would include doctors of laws, of medicine, of canon law, and of rhetoric and poetry. The proposed school is unusual, however, because "some manual arts would also be taught here" by craftsmen. These include "a master of painting, a silversmith, a master of carving in marble and one for wood, a turner, an iron smith, a master of embroidery, a tailor, a pharmacist, a glassmaker and a master of clay." All the children could thereby be trained under the same roof in the discipline to which their souls and intelligences were most suited. Filarete's city also contains a "House of Virtue" in which instruction is offered in the seven liberal arts, areas are designated for military exercises, and all the crafts and trades are both practiced and taught. When the students are "judged by good masters, and have been educated in this place," they are "given the degree like the doctors." Three governors rule the temple of virtue-a doctor, a decorated soldier, and an artisan.72

Like Averlino, the painter Piero della Francesca (ca. 1415-1492) combined craft practice with authorship. Piero was born in Sansepolcro in central Italy and often worked there, but he also traveled to other Italian courts and cities at the behest of princely patrons. In addition to painting, Piero worked at constructive projects such as fortification and hy- draulic engineering. As a painter, he was called to Perugia, Florence, Arezzo, Rome, and Rimini (where he painted a fresco, in the Tempio Malatestiano [see Figure 6], of Sigismund Malatesta kneeling before a St. Sigismund who strikingly resembles the emperor). He also worked in Urbino in the court of Federico II da Montefeltro.73 Federico was a skilled

1996). For Francesco's father, Musio Attendolo Sforza, and his early career as a soldier see Mallett, Mercenaries and Their Masters (cit. n. 11), pp. 66-69 and passim; and Georges Peyronnet, "Frangois Sforza: De condottiere a Duc de Milan," in Gli Sforza a Milano e in Lombardia, pp. 7-25. For the Sforza court under Francesco's son Galeazzo Maria Sforza (1444-1476) see Gregory Lubkin, A Renaissance Court: Milan under Galeazzo Maria Sforza (Berkeley/Los Angeles: Univ. California Press, 1994).

71 Spencer, ed. and trans., Filarete's Treatise on Architecture, Vol. 1, p. 79. Filarete explicates technology as well as design. His treatise contains one of the earliest descriptions of a modem blast furnace and describes techniques such as how to make a plaster that does not stain. He mentions technical books that he is in the process of writing (none of which, if they were completed, are extant) on "agriculture," on "technical matters," and on "engines." See ibid., pp. 232-233 (furnaces), 258-259 (plaster), 277 (treatise on engines), 317 (where he notes that two books of his treatise on agriculture are complete); see books 22, 23, and 24 of his treatise for his discussions of drawing, perspective, and painting. See also John R. Spencer, "Filarete's Description of a Fifteenth-Century Italian Iron Smelter at Ferriere," Technol. Cult., 1963, 4:201-206.

72 Spencer, ed. and trans., Filarete's Treatise on Architecture, Vol. 1, pp. 228, 254-255. 73 Piero was the son of a leather merchant whose family became involved in the production of the herb guado,

which-made into dyer's indigo-was an important ingredient in the production of cloth. He owned property in Sansepolcro and seems to have enjoyed financial security based on his own and his family's holdings. For his life and works, with reference to the extant documents, see esp. Eugenio Battisti, Piero della Francesca, 2 vols. (Milan: Istituto Editoriale Italiano, 1971), which includes a summary of documents and sources (Vol. 2,

34 POWER, PATRONAGE, AND THE AUTHORSHIP OF ARS

military leader who reshaped his city-state by means of a massive building program and surrounded himself with courtiers distinguished in letters and the arts. He had a frieze depicting military and other machines taken from the treatises of Valturio and Francesco di Giorgio built into the facade of his palace in Urbino.74

In Urbino and elsewhere, Piero della Francesca created luminous, riveting paintings that reveal his fundamental grasp of mathematics and perspective.75 Through his writings, Piero elaborated his acute understanding of mathematical principles, which was informed by his knowledge of ancient texts, especially those of Euclid. Trattato d'abaco (ca. 1450), con- ceming commercial mathematics and geometry, was written for a member of a merchant family of Sansepolcro.76 De prospectiva pingendi, written for Federico II da Montefeltro in the 1470s, treats painter's perspective; and De corporibus regularibus, composed be- tween 1482 and 1492 for Federico's son, Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, is devoted to the

pp. 213-246); Carlo Bertelli, Piero della Francesca, trans. Edward Farrelly (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1992), esp. pp. 7-50; Paolo Dal Poggetto, Piero e Urbino, Piero e le corti rinascimentali (Venice: Marsilio, 1992); Marilyn Aronberg Lavin, Piero della Francesca (New York: Abrams, 1992); and Antonio Paolucci, Piero della Francesca: Catalogo completo dei dipinti (Florence: Cantini, 1990). For Piero's activity as "ingegnere idraulico" see Margaret Daly Davis, Piero della Francesca's Mathematical Treatises: The "Trattato d'abaco" and "Libellus de quinque corporibus regularibus" (Ravenna: Longo, 1977), pp. 16-47 n. 49.

74Federico (1422-1482), prince of Urbino, was a brilliant soldier who led his army in the service of the pope, Venice, Florence, and the Aragonese of Naples and against his fierce rival Sigismund Malatesta of Rimini. His courtier Vespasiano da Bisticci presents him in terms of the "Valturian" soldier-scholar: "no other united as he did, in his own person the soldier and the man of letters, or knew how to make intellect augment the force of battalions." Vespasiano da Bisticci, Renaissance Princes, Popes, and Prelates: The Vespasiano Memoirs: Lives of Illustrious Men of the Fifteenth Century, trans. William George and Emily Waters (1926; rpt., New York: Harper & Row, Harper Torchbooks, 1963), p. 83. For Federico and his court at Urbino see esp. Giorgio Cerboni Baiardi, Giorgio Chittolini, and Piero Floriani, eds., Federico di Montefeltro: Lo stato, Le arti, La cultura, 3 vols. (Rome: Bulzoni, 1986); Luciano Cheles, Lo studiolo di Urbino: Iconografia di un microcosmo principesco (Ferrara: Franco Cosimo Panini, 1991); Walter Tommasoli, La vita di Federico da Montefeltro (1422-1482) (Urbino: Argalia, 1978); and Pasquale Rotondi, The Ducal Palace of Urbino: Its Architecture and Decoration (London: Alec Tiranti, 1969). For the frieze on the facade of the palace see esp. Grazia Bemini Pezzini, Ilfregio dell'arte della guerra nel palazzo ducale di Urbino: Catalogo dei Rilievi (Rome: Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, 1985); and Antonio Manno, "Architettura e arti meccaniche nel fregio del palazzo ducale di Urbino," in Federico di Montefeltro, ed. Baiardi et al., Vol. 2: Le arti, pp. 89-104. The copy of Valturio's treatise that was in Federico's library is now Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS. urb. lat. 281.

75 See Martin Kemp, The Science of Art: Optical Themes in Western Art from Brunelleschi to Seurat (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1990), pp. 27-35, for a brief, illuminating discussion of Piero's painting, in which he describes Piero as "a man deeply conversant with pure and applied mathematics, capable of writing treatises to match in quality anything produced in the Italy of his day" (p. 27). See also J. V. Field, "Mathematics and the Craft of Painting: Piero della Francesca and Perspective," in Renaissance and Revolution, ed. Field and James (cit. n. 5), pp. 73-95; Field, "Piero della Francesca's Treatment of Edge Distortion," J. Warburg Courtauld Inst., 1986, 49:66-90; and Marilyn Aronberg Lavin, ed., Piero della Francesca and His Legacy (Studies in the History of Art, 48) (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1995).

76 Piero della Francesca, Trattato d'abaco dal Codice Ashburnhamiano 280 (359*-291*) della Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana di Firenze, ed. Gino Arrighi (Pisa: Domus Galilaeana, 1970). This treatise was written for the Picchi family of Sansepolcro; see Battisti, Piero della Francesca (cit. n. 73), Vol. 1, p. 281, and Vol. 2, index, s.v. "Picchi famiglia di Sansepolcro." For the abacus tradition within which Piero worked see Richard A. Goldthwaite, "Schools and Teachers of Commercial Arithmetic in Renaissance Florence," Journal of European Economic History, 1972, 1:418-433; Paul F. Grendler, Schooling in Renaissance Italy: Literacy and Learning, 1300-1600 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1989), pp.22-23,72-73; and Warren van Egmond, Practical Mathematics in the Italian Renaissance: A Catalogue of Italian Abbacus Manuscripts and Printed Books to 1600 (Monografia no. 4) (Florence: Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza, 1980). Yet Piero moves rapidly beyond the needs of commercial mathematics. He introduces innovative methods of algebraic computation, treats the measurement not of real buildings but of abstract polygons and polyhedra, handles both plane and solid geometry, and, following Euclid's Elements, discusses the measurements of the five regular solids and irregular solids within a sphere. See Davis, Piero della Francesca's Mathematical Treatises (cit. n. 73), pp. 11-20; and S. A. Jayawardene, 'The 'Trattato d'Abaco' of Piero della Francesca," in Cultural Aspects of the Italian Renaissance: Essays in Honor of Paul Oskar Kristeller, ed. Cecil H. Clough (Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press, 1976), pp. 229-243.

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five regular solids. Piero explicated both the mathematical reasoning and the procedures required for the practice of painting, yet in range and complexity his account goes far beyond the needs of workshop practice. His prospective audience included noble patrons and learned men. Both treatises were quickly translated into Latin.77

Francesco di Giorgio Martini (1439-1501), from Siena, was a contemporary of Piero's who also found patronage at court in Urbino. Francesco started out as a painter and sculptor and became one of the most respected architects and military engineers of the late fifteenth century. His career was based primarily in three locations: his native city of Siena; Urbino, where he enjoyed the patronage of Federico II da Montefeltre and his successor Guido- baldo; and Naples, where he was employed by Alfonso II, duke of Calabria (1448-1495).78

In addition to his work as an architect and engineer, Francesco struggled to learn Latin, translated Vitruvius, and created pictorial notebooks and illustrated treatises on architec- ture, fortification, and military engineering. An early example of his authorship, Opuscu- lum de architectura, is a book of drawings of machines and plans of fortification without descriptive text, dedicated to Federico, duke of Urbino. Reminiscent of Mariano Taccola' s De machinis, the machine drawings-which number over two hundred-are divided into types, such as mills, pumps, siphons and waterwheels, and military devices. Francesco also authored two major treatises on architecture, engineering, and the military arts. Al- though the exact dates of the treatises are debated, a comparison of the earlier work to the later one reveals the striking development of his ideas and of his skills as a translator of Vitruvius.79

Francesco divided Trattato I (probably written around the late 1470s) into untitled

77 Piero della Francesca, De prospectiva pingendi, ed. Giusta Nicco-Fassola, 2nd ed., ed. Eugenio Battisti et al. (Florence: Le Lettere, 1984); and Girolamo Mancini, "L'opera 'De corporibus regularibus' di Pietro Fran- ceschi detto Della Francesca, usurpata da Fra Luca Pacioli," Memorie della Rendiconti della Accademia dei Lincei: Classe di Scienze Morali, Storiche e Filologiche, Ser. 5, 1916, 14:441-580. The Latin translation of De prospectiva pingendi was made by Matteo da Borgo, who probably translated the Libellus on the regular solids as well; see Davis, Piero della Francesca's Mathematical Treatises, p. 54. Although extant copies of Piero's perspectival treatise are lacking front matter that would include a dedicatory letter, evidence that it was dedicated to Federico exists in De corporibus regularibus, concerning the five regular solids. The dedication letter of this later treatise, addressed to Guidobaldo, duke of Urbino, expresses Piero's hope that De corporibus regularibus would find a place on the shelf next to the book on perspective that he had written for Guidobaldo's father, Federico da Montefeltre. New editions of the treatises, based on additional manuscript sources, by Marisa Dalai Emiliani, Cecil Grayson, and Carlo Maccagni are forthcoming.

78 For a comprehensive introduction to Francesco di Giorgio's career and to an extensive bibliography see Francesco Paolo Fiore and Manfredo Tafuri, eds., Francesco di Giorgio architetto (Milan: Electa, 1993); Gustina Scaglia, Francesco di Giorgio: Checklist and History of Manuscripts and Drawings in Autographs and Copies from ca. 1470 to 1687 and Renewed Copies (1764-1839) (Bethlehem, Pa.: Lehigh Univ. Press, 1992); Ralph Toledano, Francesco di Giorgio Martini: Pittore e scultore, trans. Massimo Parizzi (Milan: Electa, 1987); and Francesco di Giorgio Martini, Trattati di architettura ingegneria e arte militare, ed. Corrado Maltese, transcribed by Livia Maltese Degrassi, 2 vols. (Milan: I1 Polifilo, 1967), Vol. 1, pp. xi-xxii.

79The dates and chronology of Francesco's notebooks and treatises are the focus of ongoing scholarly debate. See esp. Richard J. Betts, "On the Chronology of Francesco di Giorgio's Treatises: New Evidence from an Unpublished Manuscript," Journal of the Society ofArchitectural Historians, 1977,36:3-14; Carolyn Kolb, "The Francesco di Giorgio Material in the Zichy Codex," J. Soc. Architect. Hist., 1988, 47:132-159; and Massimo Mussini, "La trattatistica di Francesco di Giorgio: Un problema critico aperto," in Francesco di Giorgio archi- tetto, ed. Fiore and Tafuri, pp. 358-359. For the Opusculum, some of the drawings of which derive from the books of Taccola, see Scaglia, Francesco di Giorgio: Checklist, pp. 43-50; for the manuscript see London, British Museum, Codex 197 B 21 [MS Harley 3281] (Scaglia, Francesco di Giorgio: Checklist, pp. 101-104); for the manuscript that includes the dedication to Federico see Turin, Biblioteca Reale, Codex serie militare 383 [cod. 14856; 14876; 14896 d[otazione] c[orona]; see Scaglia, Francesco di Giorgio: Checklist, p. 56, for Fran- cesco's sketches on the autograph manuscript of Taccola's De ingeneis in Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Codex CLM 197, part II. For Francesco's two major treatises, along with a thorough discussion of the manu- scripts, see Francesco di Giorgio, Trattati, ed. Maltese (Vol. 1 contains Trattato I, Vol. 2, contains Trattato II).

36 POWER, PATRONAGE, AND THE AUTHORSHIP OF ARS

sections according to subject matter, such as fortresses, cities, temples, theaters, geometry, waterwheels and water mills, ways of lifting and transporting water, and military machines. Trattato II, although lacking a formal dedication, contains a lengthy tribute to Federico II da Montefeltre. Francesco commences this, his most mature treatise, with an introductory essay, based loosely on Pliny, that extols arithmetic and geometry. He maintains that in antiquity drawing was "reputed in the first grade of the liberal arts," rather than-as in his own time-"reputed low and inferior to many other mechanical arts." Drawing is necessary "to every human work," including invention, the explanation of concepts, and operations such as the military arts; and it is related to geometry, arithmetic, and perspective, all of which are necessary for making things "with right reason."80

Francesco di Giorgio's career was in many ways parallel to that of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), and indeed the two men knew each other and were consulted together on at least one occasion (concerning the cathedral at Pavia). Leonardo was apprenticed in the Florentine workshop of Verrocchio in the late 1460s, at a time when the shop's numerous projects included the task of placing the heavy gilded copper sphere on top of the lantern that centered Brunelleschi's cupola. Leonardo was fascinated by this operation and by the machines employed to accomplish it, as he was also intrigued by the machines that Bru- nelleschi had invented to build the cupola itself. Eventually, however, he left Florence, turning to the patronage of princes, most importantly Ludovico Sforza of Milan, and others such as Cesare Borgia, condottiero nephew of the pope, and, finally, Francis I, king of France. These patrons valued not only Leonardo's work as a painter but also his abilities as an engineer. Leonardo's lifelong technological interests included hydraulic works, ma- chines of all kinds, fortification, and weaponry.81

During most of his working life as a painter, sculptor, and engineer, especially after his arrival in Milan in the early 1480s, Leonardo created voluminous notebooks, of which approximately a third (about six thousand sheets) still exist, including the Madrid Codices, two long-lost volumes discovered in the early 1960s in the Spanish National Library. Taken as a whole, Leonardo's notebooks represent at least two kinds of authorship. Some are private notes and sketches, made in the notebooks that he habitually carried with him- Codex Madrid II is an example. Leonardo clearly intended others, such as Codex Madrid I, to be formal treatises. Leonardo planned treatises on mechanics, painting, anatomy, and hydraulics, among other things. While he was well aware of the technical writings of his contemporaries and predecessors, his own authorship was also, at least in part, motivated

80 Francesco di Giorgio, Trattati, ed. Maltese, Vol. 2, pp. 293-294 (for citations), 293 n. 2 (for a discussion of the relationship of this text to Pliny's): "nel primo grado de le liberali era reputata"; "reputata vile et inferiore a molte altre arti mecaniche"; "in ogni opera umana"; "con dritta ragione." See also Vol.2, p.425, for Francesco's tribute to Federico. For Francesco's architectural theory, which involved anthropomorphic, modular methods of design, see esp. Henry Millon, "The Architectural Theory of Francesco di Giorgio," Art Bull., 1958, 40:257- 261.

81 The best general introduction to Leonardo's life and work is Martin Kemp, Leonardo da Vinci: The Mar- vellous Works of Man and Nature (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1981). For Francesco di Giorgio and Leonardo in Pavia and Milan see Pietro C. Marani, "Francesco di Giorgio a Milano e a Pavia: Consequenze e ipotesi," in Prima di Leonardo, ed. Galluzzi (cit. n. 1), pp. 93-104; and Gustina Scaglia, "Leonardo da Vinci e Francesco di Giorgio a Milano nel 1490," in Leonardo e l'etai della ragione, ed. Enrico Bellone and Paolo Rossi (Milan: Scientia, 1982), pp. 225-253. For Leonardo as an engineer see esp. Paolo Galluzzi, "The Career of a Technologist," in Leonardo da Vinci: Engineer and Architect, ed. Galluzzi (Montreal: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1987), pp. 41-109; for his interest in Brunelleschi's machines see Salvatore Di Pasquale, "Leonardo, Brunelleschi, and the Machinery of the Construction Site," ibid., pp. 163-181. See also Frank D. Prager and Gustina Scaglia, Brunelleschi: Studies of His Technology and Inventions (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1970), esp. pp. 65-109; and Scaglia, "Drawings of Brunelleschi's Mechanical Inventions for the Construction of the Cupola," Marsyas, 1960-1961, 10:45-67.

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by patronage concerns. For example, we know from a sixteenth-century note that he began part of a book on painting (the paragone comparing the nobility of painting to that of sculpture) at the request of his patron Ludovico Sforza. Beyond the concerns of patronage, Leonardo was intensely involved in the world of books, as is evidenced by the list of over a hundred codices in his personal library. His own early writings were clearly inspired by Alberti's Della pittura.2

Leonardo failed to complete his treatises and presented none to patron or publisher, a circumstance that presents problems of evaluation. Unlike the writings of most other fif- teenth-century technical authors, his manuscripts exist almost exclusively as autographs. Yet as Ladislao Reti pointed out, Leonardo was well aware that his unique drawings could not be reproduced by scribes, nor could woodcut print technology reproduce their fine detail. The new method of copper engraving was adequate in theory but would have been too expensive and difficult, given the large number of drawings embedded in text that he produced. Leonardo developed a whole set of illustrative techniques that allowed him to demonstrate clearly exactly\ how a machine, a device, or even a human body was put together. Although his inability to complete his treatises had complex causes, his awkward positioning between the cultures of scribe and print, neither of which could in his time adequately reproduce his books, clearly must have been a factor.83

Leonardo's Codex Madrid I constitutes a formal treatise on mechanics with two parts, one on theory and the other on practice (see Figure 8). Concerning practice, he presents often strikingly beautiful drawings of machines and mechanisms and comments on how to build them and how they work. His working methods have been elucidated by Reti, who compared several sheets of Codex Atlanticus (from one of Leonardo's private note- books) with those of the formal treatise. Machines roughly sketched in Codex Atlanticus are redrawn with care and deliberation in Codex Madrid I. Paragraphs of text in Codex Atlanticus are crossed out and then reappear neatly inscribed (but still in mirror writing) in Codex Madrid I. Leonardo treats machines, including how to make them and how they

82 For the complex tradition of Leonardo's notebooks see Galluzzi, "Career of a Technologist," pp. 43-47; Augusto Marinoni, "I manoscritti di Leonardo da Vinci e le loro edizioni," in Leonardo: Saggi e ricerche, ed. Comitato Nazionale per le Onoranze a Leonardo da Vinci nel Quinto Centenario della Nascita (Rome: Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato, 1954), pp. 231-274; Marinoni, "The Writer: Leonardo's Literary Legacy," in The Un- known Leonardo, ed. Ladislao Reti (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974), pp. 56-85; and Carlo Pedretti, Leonardo da Vinci: On Painting, a Lost Book (Libro A) (Berkeley/Los Angeles: Univ. California Press, 1964), pp. 9 (for the note by Giovan Paolo Lomazzo), 252-259. For the Madrid Codices see Leonardo da Vinci, The Madrid Codices, 5 vols., ed. Reti (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974), Vol. 2, fols. 2v-3r, Vol. 3, pp. 91-108, Vol. 5, pp. 5-8 (for Leonardo's library). Despite intense scholarship and the approximate dating of many individual sheets, Leonardo's notebooks as he wrote them cannot be fully reconstructed. Evidence that Leonardo planned formal treatises includes remarks addressed explicitly to readers and experiments with alternative tables of contents scattered throughout his notebooks; see, e.g., Jean Paul Richter, ed., The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, 2 vols. (1883; rpt., New York: Dover, 1970), Vol. 1, pp. 13-17, 69, 190, Vol. 2, pp. 107-112, 144, 175-181, 388- 389.

83 For Leonardo's brilliantly innovative illustrative techniques see James Ackerman, "The Involvement of Artists in Renaissance Science," in Science and the Arts in the Renaissance, ed. John W. Shirley and F. David Hoeniger (Washington, D.C.: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1985), pp. 94-129, esp. pp. 102-111; Galluzzi, "Ca- reer of a Technologist" (cit. n. 81), pp. 96-109; and Kemp, Leonardo da Vinci (cit. n. 81), pp. 54-57. Francesco di Giorgio was an important predecessor in such illustration; see Martin Kemp, " 'La diminutione di ciascun piano': La rappresentazione delle forme nello spazio di Francesco di Giorgio," in Prima di Leonardo, ed. Galluzzi (cit. n. 1), pp. 105-112. For Leonardo's difficulty with contemporary methods of printing by woodcut and copper engraving and his invention (on paper) of relief etching see Ladislao Reti, "Leonardo da Vinci and the Graphic Arts: The Early Invention of Relief-Etching," Burlington Magazine, 1971, 112:189-195. Leonardo discusses this invention in Codex Madrid II; see Leonardo, Madrid Codices, ed. Reti, Vol. 2, fol. 1 19r, Vol. 5, pp. 255-256.

38 POWER, PATRONAGE, AND THE AUTHORSIIIP OF ARS

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PAMELA 0. LONG 39

work; he also discusses theoretical mechanics, which for him primarily concerned weight, force, impact, and motion.84

Paolo Galluzzi has argued that Leonardo's technical authorship was clearly different from that of predecessors such as Mariano Taccola and Francesco di Giorgio because of his profound interest in theory and his use of practical mechanics to study theoretical issues. As Galluzzi has noted, Leonardo brought together two separate traditions of the mechanical arts-one based on Aristotle's mechanics and medieval statics and kinetics, the second involving the explication of machines and the mechanical arts of the fifteenth- century engineer. My caveat is that Leonardo's predecessors included not only Mariano Taccola and Francesco di Giorgio but also Fontana, Alberti, Ghiberti, Roberto Valturio, and Piero della Francesca, among others. Leonardo's attempt to integrate theory (especially ancient and medieval theories of mechanics) with practice, as well as his use of a com- bination of pictorial and textual explication in his treatises, represents a development from the work of his immediate predecessors, one that arose naturally out of the rich tradition of technical authorship that preceded him.85

CONCLUSION

The new alliance of praxis and techne in fifteenth-century Italian and south German regions was a nexus within which authorship concerning the mechanical arts flourished. Men from diverse backgrounds-university-educated humanists and artisan-trained practitioners- took to writing about matters that had previously existed primarily in the arena of skilled practice. These authors usually wrote within the context of patronage, dedicating their books to princes, emperors, and oligarchs. Such books possessed value in relationships between patrons and clients because the arts that they treated themselves had gained cul- tural significance. Newly associated with learning and the liberal arts, and with the writings and heroes of antiquity, they had come to be considered intrinsic to civic, moral, and political life beyond their technical realization in the material world. The new cultural value of the constructive arts promoted the development and explication of their rational principles in writing.

The rise in status of the mechanical arts is one result of the use of building, urban redesign, and visual ornamentation to represent and promote political power in the fifteenth century. Authorship involving such arts also produced new images of practitioners-from the gunners of the Feuerwerkbuch to the goldsmith and architect Averlino-self-described "lover of virtue"-who embodied both skill and virtue. Nevertheless, the new cultural status of the mechanical arts, although it clearly aided the careers of certain practitioners, particularly if they wrote books, should not be taken to indicate a rise in the status of artisans in general. Whereas authorship helped to transform some arts from the arena of skilled know-how to that of discursive knowledge, it did not change artisans into learned men. It is more accurate to say that it prepared certain of the mechanical arts for appro- priation by learned culture.

84Leonardo, Madrid Codices, ed. Reti, Vol. 1, fol. 18r, Vol. 4, pp. 45-48; Leonardo da Vinci, II Codice Atlantico di Leonardo da Vinci: Edizione in facsimile dopo il restauro dell' originale conservato nella Biblioteca Ambrosiana di Milano, 12 vols. (Florence: Giunti Barbera, 1973; New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Johnson Reprint, 1973), Vol. 1, fol. 77v; and Augusto Marinoni, ni Codice Atlantico della Biblioteca Ambrosiana di Milano, diplomatic and critical transcription, 12 vols. (Florence: Giunti Barbera, 1975), Vol. 1, p. 57. See also Carlo Pedretti, The Codex Atlanticus of Leonardo da Vinci: A Catalogue of Its Newly Restored Sheets, 2 pts. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Johnson Reprint, 1978), Pt. 1, p. 57.

85 Galluzzi, "Career of a Technologist" (cit. n. 81), pp. 92-95.

40 POWER, PATRONAGE, AND THE AUTHORSHIP OF ARS

The complex history of that appropriation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is beyond the scope of this essay. By the phrase "from mechanical lknow-how to mechanical knowledge," I do not refer directly to Galilean mechanics or to the "mechanization of the world picture." Rather, I mean to suggest a change in the status of the mechanical arts accomplished in part by means of authorship-from a kind of artisanal know-how trans- mitted for the most part orally and utilized in the service of material construction to a group of rationalized disciplines informed by principles and explicated in books both pictorially and in writing. Without ignoring occasional prior writings on the mechanical arts, including ancient exemplars, I emphasize the significance of the great expansion of authorship concerning such arts in the fifteenth century and point to the essential context of such authorship-patronage and the use of the constructive arts for the display and legitimization of political power.

The fifteenth century is a forgotten era in the historiography of medieval and early modem science, all the more so with the burgeoning of interest in local context and meaning. Yet if the proper study of mechanics and the mechanical world view as it de- veloped in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries involves the meticulous study of key texts and the careful investigation of the local cultures that inform the meanings of those texts, it should also take account of what Hans-Georg Gadamer calls the "traditionary material" that was available. Gadamer's phrase is useful because it suggests not continuous traditions, unbroken threads from the past, but cultural legacies and materials available for appropriation.86 To put it another way, if it is methodologically sound to study "islands of discourse" in the context of local cultures (as I believe it is), it is also important to assess critically the ways in which we construct the boundaries of those discursive islands and to assess the nature of the materials from the past that are available for appropriation within those boundaries.

Fifteenth-century writings on the mechanical arts can be investigated on their own terms; they can be understood, as well, with regard to their significance for a later period. The substance of this essay concerns authorship on the mechanical arts during the fifteenth century. Yet I also suggest that such authorship had significance for the development of experimentalism and the mechanical philosophy in a later era. Scholars of the later tradition often seem to assume that seventeenth-century developments occurred against the back- ground of a long, relatively uniform tradition of low status assigned to the mechanical arts. I hope that the present study-which, despite important differences, belongs to the tradition of scholarship represented by the late writings of Edgar Zilsel-has demonstrated the extent to which such an assumption involves an oversimplification. As a study based in the fifteenth century, it does not of course tell the complete story of transformation and appropriation that forms the background for the development of experimentalism and the mechanical philosophy. It does, however, demonstrate that the fifteenth-century prolifer- ation of authorship in the mechanical arts forms an essential early chapter in such a story and that the history itself is far more complicated than is often assumed.

Printing greatly increased the number of technical books produced and gave far wider exposure to practitioner authors, as well as to the learned. As books became commodities, hundreds of printed technical books on artillery and fortification, mechanics, mining, met- allurgy, machines, and architecture appeared, along with books of secrets and works on many other topics. Yet the positive valuation of the mechanical arts and their role in the

86 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd rev. ed., trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York: Continuum, 1993).

PAMELA 0. LONG 41

legitimization of rulership were cultural phenomena that developed significantly in the century before printing. Organized textually and pictorially in manuscript books and pro- vided with elaborated rational principles, the mechanical arts became central features of moral and political life, as they also began to take part in the construction of knowledge itself.

  • Article Contents
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  • Issue Table of Contents
    • Isis, Vol. 88, No. 1 (Mar., 1997), pp. 1-204
      • Front Matter
      • Power, Patronage, and the Authorship of Ars: From Mechanical Know-How to Mechanical Knowledge in the Last Scribal Age [pp. 1-41]
      • Cartesian Optics and the Mastery of Nature [pp. 42-61]
      • From Science to Practice, or Practice to Science? Chickens and Eggs in Raymond Pearl's Agricultural Breeding Research, 1907-1916 [pp. 62-86]
      • LSD before Leary: Sidney Cohen's Critique of 1950s Psychedelic Drug Research [pp. 87-110]
      • Essay Review
        • Review: Darwinism Fleurit! [pp. 111-117]
      • Book Reviews
        • Review: Feature Review [pp. 118-121]
        • General
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          • Review: untitled [p. 124]
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          • Review: untitled [pp. 127-128]
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        • Antiquity
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        • Middle Ages & Renaissance
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        • Seventeenth Century
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        • Eighteenth Century
          • Review: untitled [p. 147]
          • Review: untitled [pp. 147-148]
          • Review: untitled [pp. 148-149]
          • Review: untitled [pp. 149-150]
          • Review: untitled [pp. 150-151]
          • Review: untitled [p. 151]
        • Nineteenth Century
          • Review: untitled [pp. 151-153]
          • Review: untitled [pp. 153-154]
          • Review: untitled [pp. 154-155]
        • Twentieth Century
          • Review: untitled [pp. 155-156]
          • Review: untitled [pp. 156-157]
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          • Review: untitled [p. 167]
          • Review: untitled [pp. 167-169]
          • Review: untitled [p. 169]
          • Review: untitled [pp. 169-170]
        • Sociology & Philosophy of Science
          • Review: untitled [pp. 170-171]
          • Review: untitled [pp. 171-172]
        • Reference Tools
          • Review: untitled [pp. 172-173]
          • Review: untitled [p. 173]
        • Collections [pp. 173-177]
      • News of the Profession
        • Eloge: Richard S. Westfall, 22 April 1924-21 August 1996 [pp. 178-181]
        • Eloge: Jane Marion Oppenheimer, 19 September 1911-19 March 1996 [pp. 181-183]
        • Eloge: Alistair Cameron Crombie, 4 November 1915-9 February 1996 [pp. 183-186]
        • Annual Meeting of the History of Science Society: Atlanta, 7-10 November 1996 [pp. 187-194]
      • Back Matter [pp. 195-204]

__MACOSX/Hist Reading and class lectures/._Long_1997.pdf

Hist Reading and class lectures/Mason_2001.pdf

"The Sovereign People Are in a Beastly State": The Beer Act of 1830 and Victorian Discourse on Working-Class Drunkenness Author(s): Nicholas Mason Reviewed work(s): Source: Victorian Literature and Culture, Vol. 29, No. 1 (2001), pp. 109-127 Published by: Cambridge University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25058542 . Accessed: 05/04/2012 15:16

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Victorian Literature and Culture (2001), 109-127. Printed in the United States of America.

Copyright ? 2001 Cambridge University Press. 1060-1503/01 $9.50

"THE SOVEREIGN PEOPLE ARE IN A BEASTLY STATE": THE BEER ACT OF 1830 AND VICTORIAN DISCOURSE ON

WORKING-CLASS DRUNKENNESS

By Nicholas Mason

i

On July 23, 1830, Parliament passed "An Act to permit the general Sale of Beer and

Cyder by Retail in England." Commonly known as the Beer Act of 1830, this law called for a major overhaul of the way beer was taxed and distributed in England and Wales. In

place of a sixteenth-century statute that had given local magistrates complete control over the licensing of brewers and publicans, the Beer Act stipulated that a new type of drinking establishment, the beer shop, or beer house, could now be opened by any rate-paying householder in England or Wales (Scotland and Ireland had their own drink laws). For the modest annual licensing fee of two guineas, rate-payers in England could now pur chase a license to brew and vend from their own residence.1

In addition to dramatically deregulating the licensing of drink establishments, the Beer Act also repealed all duties on strong beer and cider. By conservative estimates,

eliminating this tax immediately reduced the cost of a pot of beer by approximately twenty percent (Harrison, Drink 80). The only major restriction in the new law came in an amendment added in the House of Lords requiring all beer shops to close by 10 P.M.

Eventually beer-sellers would complain vociferously about the competitive advantage this

early closing time gave to publicans, who could remain open at all times except during Sunday morning church services. But in the months following the Beer Act's passage, beer-sellers had few complaints, as the law granted liberties and conveniences never

imagined under the old system. So attractive was the idea of the beer house to both retailers and consumers, in fact, that within six months of the Beer Act's taking effect, over

24,000 beer houses had sprung up throughout England and Wales (Gourvish and Wilson

16). As might be expected, the laboring poor, for whom beer had traditionally been a

dietary staple, were the chief beneficiaries of the Beer Act. Several decades after the Act's

passage, beer houses in England still rang with the chorus,

109

110 VICTORIAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE

Come, neighbours all, both great and small,

Perform your duties here, And loudly sing Live Billy our King,

For bating the tax upon beer. (Hughes 116; see also Hackwood 102)

However historically inaccurate this song may be ? "Billy," or William IV, in reality had

little to do with the new law ? it effectively captures the general popularity the Beer Act

enjoyed among the nation's laborers.

At the opposite end of the social spectrum, however, the Beer Act quickly proved a

cause for concern. From the moment the new law took effect on October 10,1830, many members of England's privileged classes complained about the widespread debauchery the

law had supposedly incited. In a steady stream of sermons, poems, crime reports, and stump

speeches, the beer house came to represent intemperance, idleness, and a lack of discipline ?in short, all the self-destructive vices of the working class. The Reverend Robert Ousby, a

Lincolnshire curate, spoke for many when in 1834 he insisted that the only solution to Eng land's drunkenness problem was "'to close every beer-shop as soon as possible; to cut them

up root and branch.'" He continued, "The public-houses, I thought, were bad before, and I

endeavoured to counteract them; but it is absolutely impossible to do anything with these

beer-houses'" (Report from the Select Committee on Inquiry into Drunkenness 288). It is claims such as Ousby's that I would like to explore in this paper. As I will show

below, most evidence, both statistical and anecdotal, suggests that the Beer Act at least

initially increased levels of drunkenness among England's working class. But the most

significant long-term effect of the Beer Act of 1830,1 would argue, was not so much the

real levels of drunkenness it produced as the perceptions that were formed in its after

math. From 1830 until the 1870s, it was counted as something of a truism in middle- and

upper-class society that the Beer Act had touched off an irreversible course of working class drunkenness. Social commentators of all political persuasions, ranging from the conservative Henry Mayhew to the communist Friedrich Engels, viewed the Beer Act as

a defining moment in the fortunes of England's working class, and few flinched when in

1884 the historian Richard Valpy French argued that the Beer Act was "prominent among the legislative beacons of the present century" (349). In this essay, then, I will analyze the

discourse surrounding the Act of 1830, showing how writers and speakers in a wide variety of genres depicted this law as a major turning-point in working-class history. In the end, I

hope to have shown that while the year 1830 lacks the associative power of an 1832 or an

1848, it warrants recognition by cultural historians as a crucial moment in working-class

history for the simple reason that it is the year in which this landmark piece of legislation

passed into law.

//

Eight years after the passage of the Beer Act, James Bishop, Secretary of the Metropoli tan Protection Society, attempted to explain Parliament's motivations for passing this law:

The year 1830, it will be recollected, was ushered in by a period of unexampled privation and want of employment among the working classes, agricultural and commercial; insubordina

tion was spreading; and breaking of machinery and tumultuous meetings in the factory and

The Beer Act of 1830 and Victorian Discourse on Working-Class Drunkenness 111

commercial districts, and riots and incendiary burnings in the agricultural parts of the king

dom, were unhappily too general. In this state of affairs, Government was appealed to for

relief .... [T]he greatest measure of relief it was in their power to bestow was, the repeal of

the beer duty, and the opening of the Beer-trade. (6)

In his own terse manner, Cobbett shared this interpretation, dubbing the Beer Act "a sop to pot-house politicians" (398). Without question, the law offered much to like for English laborers, as it provided them with beer in greater abundance and at a lower price. In an

era when many laborers questioned whether any Act of Parliament had been designed with the nation's workers in mind, the Beer Act seemed strong proof that England's leaders were indeed concerned about the plight of the masses.

Much more contributed to the passage of the Beer Act, however, than compassion for

the laboring poor or paranoia over the prospects of insurrection. Most of the Parliamentary debates on the subject, in fact, centered not so much on the plight of workers as on theories

of free trade and the dangers of monopolies.2 Prior to 1830, the only way to obtain public house licenses was through local magistrates, whose stinginess is evident in the steep decline in the number of public houses per capita during the eighteenth and early nine

teenth centuries (Clark 333). By the 1820s, the common perception in England was that

magistrates were in the pockets of the dominant brewers, issuing licenses only to those who

agreed to sell a certain brand of beer and purposely keeping the number of pubs low so the

brewers could maintain their watchful eye over the industry. The actual extent of the

conspiracy between brewers and magistrates is, of course, difficult to measure, but statistics

bear out the degree to which the nation's leading brewers flourished in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In 1748, most brewing still took place in the home or the

small shop, with the twelve major brewers of England only producing 42% of the country's beer. In contrast, by 1830 new technology and the now-standard contracts between large brewers and publicans had pushed the major brewers' market share up to 85%, essentially twice what it had been eighty years earlier (Mathias 26; see also Park 64). Although in some

regions small brewers still prospered, the trend clearly pointed to a future where the major brewers would have absolute control over the distribution of beer in England.

Not surprisingly, in an era when the public was increasingly enamored of free trade and

hostile towards anything resembling a monopoly, the supposed collusion between the big brewers and the country's magistrates became a frequent subject of complaint. During the

first quarter of the century, several official and unofficial expos?s attempted to unearth the misdeeds of the brewing industry. Perhaps the most damning of these was an 1818 survey

by the Committee on Public Breweries which documented not only the extent to which the

major brewers had dominated the manufacturing and retailing of beer, but also how they had colluded to fix prices and adulterate their product with cheap stimulants (Gourvish and

Wilson 6). Enflamed by reports such as this, fourteen thousand Londoners signed an 1818

petition protesting the high prices and poor quality of the city's liquor (Clark 334).

By the early 1820s, free-traders and monopoly busters had persuaded Parliament

to begin debating brewing reform. It took another drink-related crisis, however, to pro duce the final momentum for the Beer Act. Independent of the beer debates, in 1825

Parliament passed an act calling for a 40% reduction of the duties on spirits, a measure

theoretically designed to reduce the temptation toward illicit trading and tax-dodging

(Gourvish and Wilson 10). As would be the case five years later with the Beer Act,

112 VICTORIAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE

this reduction of the spirits tax at least initially prompted a significant increase in con

sumption. Whereas between 1821 and 1825 the annual quantity of spirits consumed in

England fluctuated between 3.7 and 4.7 million gallons, the average annual consumption between 1826 and 1830 exceeded 7.4 million gallons (Harrison, Drink 66-67).

Much of the blame for this upsurge in consumption fell on the working class, who were

said to have abandoned their pot of beer for the much more intoxicating dram of gin. Once

again, statistics are useful here in demonstrating the declining popularity of beer. In the

early nineteenth century, when the population of England and Wales was increasing by slightly more than 15% per decade, beer sales were essentially stagnant. Between 1818 and

1830, for instance, English brewers never produced more than 4.1 million nor less than 3.6 million barrels of beer in a given year. All told, in the decade prior to the Beer Act, roughly the same amount of beer was being consumed in England and Wales as had been consumed

thirty years earlier, when the population was approximately one-third smaller (Mathias 543).3

In the eyes of many, beer's declining popularity signified much more than a simple shift in taste. Rather, it represented the abandonment of a key component of Englishness.

As George Evans Light has recently shown, since the sixteenth century, when the English began to cultivate hops on a large scale, beer had factored prominently into the English national identity. From a practical standpoint, beer was not only safer than the cholera-in fested water of many communities, but it was also widely seen as a major source of nutrition for the poor. Into the late Victorian age, laborers made claims such as, "Beer's

made of corn as well as bread, and so it's stand to reason it's nourishing." Others argued that beer helped them "keep up their strength" during the long workday (Humpherys 59-60). Over time, however, beer became much more than a practical drink, but a means

by which the English distinguished themselves from the wine-drinking French. In 1909, Frederick Hackwood recollected how "at a recent Conference of Brewers, Lord Burton claimed that this country owed its high and proud position among the nations of the earth

simply on account of its characteristic dietary, 'Beef and Beer.' Whereupon some one

made the waggish comment, 'Why drag in the Beef?'" (94). That the Beer Act of 1830 was at least in part designed to turn English workers from gin

back to the national drink is evidenced in a commentary appearing in the October 21,1830 issue of the Times. Written less than two weeks after the Act went into effect, this brief arti cle defends the new law primarily on the grounds that beer was the lesser of two alcoholic evils. The anonymous writer of the article contends, "Now if, as is assumed (not proved) by the cavillers, a greater number of people do indulge themselves inordinately with the Eng lish beverage of beer than formerly, it is plain to us, at least, that the consumption of beer has

been increased at the expense of ardent spirits, and to their positive diminution." After a

paragraph championing the free trade principles demonstrated by the Act, the writer goes on to point out that, compared to spirits, beer is "a far more salubrious, or rather a far less

destructive liquor" and that "to commit excess in beer costs considerably more money, time, and trouble, than a similar performance with British gin, or whisky."

///

With its promises of breaking up a monopoly, promoting free trade, and converting the poor away from the false religion of gin and back to the orthodoxy of beer, the

The Beer Act of 1830 and Victorian Discourse on Working-Class Drunkenness 113

Beer Bill received unusually bipartisan support in the House of Commons, where it

passed on its second reading by a margin of 245 to 29 votes. The only serious opponents of the bill were publicans and brewers, who anticipated that the new beer houses would

vastly diminish their market share, and High Tories, who traditionally had allied them selves with the brewing industry. Both of these groups, however, lacked the numbers in the House of Commons to seriously challenge the popular measure, and thus it easily

passed to the House of Lords, where after further discussion and a decision to add the

closing-time amendment, the bill became law on July 12, 1830 (Harrison, Drink 75-79). Even evangelists and moral reformers, who were laying the foundations of the Tem

perance Movement in 1830, voiced little objection to the new law, holding out hope that the spread of beer shops would put an end to the gin craze of the late 1820s (Clark 336).

Over the years, historians have presented a wide range of views on what the actual

legacy of the Beer Act turned out to be. Prior to the 1970s, the standard interpretation was

what Brian Harrison has labeled the "debauchery theory." Most famously promoted in

Sidney and Beatrice Webb's 1903 study, The History of Liquor Licensing in England, this

theory holds that the Beer Act led to widespread degeneracy and should thus be remem

bered as one of the great legislative blunders of British history. For nearly three-quarters of a century, the Webbs' reading of the Beer Act remained largely unquestioned. Since

then, however, several of the most prominent historians of England's drink industry have raised doubts about just how large of an effect the Beer Act actually had on English culture. In his landmark study, Drink and the Victorians (1971), Harrison concedes that for some "working people the beerhouse helped to emancipate their leisure from super vision" (83). This said, however, he calls for restraint when interpreting the long-term effects of the Beer Act, arguing that the Webbs' strong feelings about this law were less the product of rigorous analysis than the couple's "taste for discipline, their puritanism, and their distance from popular culture" (84). Similarly, T. R. Gourvish and R. G. Wilson have recently argued that while the Beer Act certainly had a short-term impact on English society, by the 1840s the law's novelty had all but died out and it ceased to have a

significant impact on daily life in England (16). Although picking sides in this debate is not my goal here, it is important to examine

at least briefly the evidence that has produced such varying interpretations. As I alluded to in the beginning of this paper, the statistics measuring the Beer Act's influence can be

staggering. In the first six months after the law took effect, the existing 51,000 licensed

public houses in England and Wales were joined by over 24,000 beer shops (Gourvish and Wilson 3,16). According to some counts, Liverpool alone supported eight hundred beer

shops within three weeks of the Act's implementation, a number which only grew over the next several months, when fifty new beer shops reportedly opened in the city every week

(Gourvish and Wilson 16; Webb and Webb 116). As might be expected, the steepest rise in the number of beer shops occurred in late 1830 and early 1831, when the idea of vending from one's own home remained something of a novelty. Nevertheless, it wasn't until

nearly a decade later that the rate at which beer licenses were issued began to decrease

significantly. By 1838 at least 40,000 ?

and, according to one count, closer to 46,000 ?

beer shops were operating in England and Wales, a number which neared the sum total of other public houses, which had grown in number from 51,000 to 56,000 during the decade (Inhabitant 8; Hamer 3; Gourvish and Wilson 16).

114 VICTORIAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE

Not surprisingly, this exponential increase in the number of retailers reflected a

corresponding rise in the amount of beer that was being consumed during the 1830s. For

the years following the repeal of the beer tax, the most reliable figures on beer con

sumption come from records on malt duties. These figures indicate that between 1829

and 1831 there was a 40% increase in the amount of malt taxed in England and Wales.

Tracking the shifts in malt consumption over a longer period, one sees an increase from

an average of 26.5 million imperial bushels being taxed annually in the 1820s to 33.5

million in the 1830s, a growth of 26% (Mitchell 402). Even factoring in the 16% popu lation increase that occurred in England and Wales between 1821 and 1831, the malt

duty figures still strongly suggest that the Beer Act led to immediate increases in con

sumption. For the first time in the nineteenth century, beer drinking was on the rise.

As Harrison and Gourvish and Wilson point out, however, it is debatable whether the

beer house continued to have so significant an impact on the English cultural landscape

beyond the 1830s. Technically, the number of beer houses in England and Wales actually increased between 1840 and 1869, the year in which the system of magisterial licensing was

reinstituted. But, all told, the increase in the number of beer shops was relatively small in

light of the population boom of the mid-nineteenth century. Moreover, malt duty figures

suggest that after the significant upswing in beer drinking during the 1830s, beer produc tion fluctuated between 30 and 40 million imperial bushels per year throughout the 1840s

and 1850s (Mitchell 402). Statistics on drunkenness arrests in London show a similar trend of peak years

coming on the heels of the Act of 1830 followed by a gradual leveling out or decline.

During each of the first three years following the passage of the Beer Act, the Met

ropolitan Police arrested approximately 20 people per 1,000 residents of London on

drunkenness charges. Between 1834 and 1839, drunkenness arrests dipped slightly, but

continued at a rate of roughly 13 per 1,000 residents. In 1840, however, the number of

drunkenness arrests dropped to 8 per 1,000 residents, beginning a 35-year trend in which

arrests for intoxication never again exceeded 1% of the population (Report from the

Select Committee of the House of Lords 1:342). At least part of the decline in arrests

per capita, of course, may have resulted from changes in police department policies or

the simple fact that the police force was overwhelmed by the swelling population. It

seems at least as likely, however, that these statistics point to a general trend also seen

in the figures for the licensing of beer houses and the taxing of malt ? namely, that

beer consumption surged in the aftermath of the Beer Act but began to decline roughly a decade later.

IV

EVEN USING THE BEST available statistics, tracing trends in alcohol consumption or drunk

enness from a distance of more than a century and a half is at best an inexact science.4 This

is particularly the case when dealing with England, given the sheer number of recorded

binges in the country's past. Nearly every period of modern history is replete with ac

counts of a soused English populace. During the sixteenth century, Rabelais coined the

simile "as drunk as an Englishman" (Hackwood 154). A century later, Shakespeare's lago observed that the English were "most potent in potting" and that "your Dane, your

German, and your swag-bellied Hollander ... are nothing to your English" in their ability

The Beer Act of 1830 and Victorian Discourse on Working-Class Drunkenness 115

to imbibe (II.iii.77?79). During the first half of the eighteenth century, several authors and

painters ? most notably Gay in The Beggar's Opera and Hogarth in Gin Lane ?

depicted what they saw as the general drunkenness of England's underclass. Even during the

Romantic period, an era historians have often treated as a moment of sobriety between

the alcohol sprees of the mid-eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries, many Britons

described their age as one marked by excessive drinking. As Anna Taylor has recently shown, during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries several physicians began studying England's "crisis" of heavy drinking, and Coleridge

? far from a teetotaler himself ?

lamented, "'No Country in God's Earth labours under the tremendous curse of

Drunkenness equally with England'" (qtd. in Taylor 13). In light of commentaries such as these, it can be difficult when reviewing English

history to tell when one binge ends and another begins. In the case of the increased levels

of drunkenness in the 1830s, for example, it might be asked whether this phenomenon was

merely a continuation of the gin craze of the late 1820s or a distinctive consequence of the

Beer Act. Pushing the issue even further, in light of Taylor's recent findings on drunken ness in the Romantic era, it might even be argued that England experienced one unbroken

spell of intoxication from the 1720s through the end of the Victorian Age.

Considering the frequency of drunkenness in England's cultural past, I would argue that what ultimately makes the Beer Act of 1830 distinctive is not the actual debauchery it produced, but the degree to which for many Victorians it came to symbolize a clear

turning point in the behavior of the laboring people. Whether in Temperance tracts, satirical poems, or Parliamentary reports, much of the Victorian discourse on working class drunkenness repeats a narrative in which the Act of 1830 almost instantly placed a

beer house in every neighborhood, thus exposing the poor to temptations they were too

weak to resist. In the perception of many middle- and upper-class Britons, after 1830 the

nation's poor were never the same. A working-class culture previously centered around

the home, the church, and the work-site now quite clearly found its focal point in the

neighborhood beer house.

Literally within hours of the Beer Act's passage, several members of the privileged classes believed they were witnessing unprecedented levels of drunkenness among the nation's laborers. In perhaps the most famous observation on the Beer Act's immediate

effects, the Reverend Sydney Smith reported to John Murray, "Everybody is drunk. Those who are not singing are sprawling. The sovereign people are in a beastly state"

(Holland 481). In another account, an observer at King's Lynn recorded how October 10, 1830 "was kept as a jubilee by all the devotees of Sir John Barleycorn," with drunken

workers spilling out of the town's forty-plus new beer houses into the streets (Clark 336). Three years later, William Holmes, a former mayor of Arundel, recalled before a Select Committee on the Sale of Beer, "T was obliged to get out of my gig three times from

people coming along, waggoners drunk, when I was returning from shooting on the very

day of the operation of this Bill'" {Report from the Select Committee on the Sale of Beer

45-46). Even an ardent supporter of the Beer Act had to admit in the October 21,1830 issue of the Times that "people have now and then, since the Act was passed, been seen

'summot fresh' with beer."

Within a few years, a number of voices were calling for a repeal of the new law. An

anonymous pamphlet from 1833, for instance, labels the statute "one of the most mischie vous measures, which a mistaking policy ever devised" and claims that in a few short years

116 VICTORIAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE

the law had "materially increased the domestic distress" of the laboring poor (A Few

Remarks 4). To illustrate how the Beer Act had proven particularly disastrous in the

provinces, the pamphleteer includes a "General Report of the disturbed district of East

Sussex." After recounting how beer shops had immediately become havens for prosti tutes, thieves, and radicals, this report quotes an East Kent magistrate who believes "'no

single measure ever caused so much mischief in so short a time, in demoralizing the

labourers'" (23). One of the best indicators of how widely discussed the Beer Act was during the 1830s

is its appearance in satire. In the mid-1830s, for instance, the parodist James Smith penned an eight-line poem simply entitled "Beer Shops":

"These beer shops," quoth Barnabas, speaking in alt,

"Are ruinous ?

down with the growers of malt!"

"Too true," answers Ben, with a shake of the head,

"Wherever they congregate, honesty's dead.

That beer breeds dishonesty causes no wonder,

'Tis nurtured in crime ?

'tis concocted in plunder; In Kent, while surrounded by flourishing crops, I saw a rogue picking a pocket of hops."

While the agricultural wordplay of the punch-line ? a "pocket" as used here is literally a

large bag used for harvesting hops ?

may be lost on most modern readers, the poem's

general idea remains fairly clear. Smith's target is not the beer shop itself, but the debates

that have followed in its wake. Specifically, he lampoons the frenzied morality of Temper ance advocates, suggesting that detractors of the Beer Act have seized upon the slightest

misdeeds of the working class to make sweeping statements about the law's "ruinous"

effects.

By 1833 the types of complaints Smith parodies had become so numerous that Parlia

ment saw fit to organize a Select Committee on the Sale of Beer. This would be the first

in a long series of such bodies that summoned magistrates, physicians, temperance work

ers, and other members of the privileged classes to testify concerning the social problems excessive drinking was causing among England's poor. Typical of the testimonies given before the 1833 committee is that of the chaplain of Reading gaol, who estimated that

"'four-fifths of the offences committed by the agricultural population are traceable to beer

houses'" (Report by the Select Committee on the Sale of Beer 86). Similarly, the chief

constable of Leeds reported that there had been three times as many arrests for drunken

ness in his city in the thirty months since the Beer Act as in the preceding three years.

Following up on the work of the 1833 committee, in 1834 the Select Committee on

Inquiry into Drunkenness deposed witnesses from around the country, who gave further

testimony about the general dissipation that had followed the Beer Act. Edwin Chadwick, a member of Parliamentary committees on factory labor and the poor laws, reported how

"'the workman when he comes home from work, in passing through the village where

there was formerly only one public-house, has now to run the gauntlet of three or four

beer-shops, in each of which are fellow-labourers carousing, who urge him to stay and

drink with them'" (Report from the Select Committee on Inquiry into Drunkenness 31). At

the same session, the Temperance worker Joseph Livesey related how he had long been

The Beer Act of 1830 and Victorian Discourse on Working-Class Drunkenness 111

in the practice of visiting the poor on Sunday mornings, which had given him occasion to note the significant increase in levels of drunkenness since the appearance of beer houses

(89-92).

Perhaps the most interesting trend in the 1834 testimonies, however, is the number of witnesses who suggested that the Beer Act had not only created beer houses, but had also

precipitated the conversion of traditional pubs into "gin palaces." Witness after witness detailed a pattern in which competition from beer houses drove publicans to remodel their taverns or inns into extravagant gin palaces. The glamour of these new establishments,

according to most accounts, lured in curious laborers, which led to another wave of

gin-drinking. In the end, then, rather than turning workers away from gin, the Beer Act had only increased the amount of spirits being consumed by the working class. The most succinct testimony concerning this trend is that of Robert Edwards Broughton, a London barrister and magistrate, who explained,

"In the course of things, [beer houses] very much interfered with the business of the regular publicans, and the capital laid out by the original houses was materially wasted and damaged, and therefore the persons are driven, many of them as a matter of necessity, to try those

schemes which should retrieve them, or prevent them from failing, and that is the cause of a great number of what are called in the newspapers gin-palaces. The old public-houses,

where a man could have his steak dressed, and sit down and take his ale, are extinct; they are obliged to convert them into splendid houses, and sell gin at the bar." {Report from the Select Committee on Inquiry into Drunkenness 14-15)

As Broughton implied, whereas the only enticements of the beer house tended to be the company and the drink, the gin palace offered workers an escape from reality, complete with hired musicians, comfortable surroundings, and strong drink. Observing the rapid proliferation of gin palaces following the Beer Act, in 1835 Dickens wrote "Gin Shops," an essay he eventually included in Sketches by Boz. In this piece, Dickens describes how the fashion for ostentatiously decorating one's shop had begun with the haberdashers and drapers of London but had recently spread "with tenfold violence" to the city's publicans. Trying to build the most extravagant gin palace yet, publicans had taken to "knocking down all the old public houses, and depositing splendid man

sions, stone balustrades, rosewood fittings, immense lamps, and illuminated clocks, at the corner of every street" (182). The allure of such edifices for workers is perhaps

best captured in another commentary from 1835, Cruikshank's The Gin Juggarnath, Or, the Worship of the Great Spirit of the Age (Figure 1). With dark clouds gathering ominously in the background, Cruikshank's gaudy gin palace stands as a beacon for the drunken masses, who throng forward to partake of its splendors. As if the scene

weren't already self-explanatory, Cruikshank includes a caption, warning that the Gin

Juggarnath's "Devotees destroy themselves ? It's progress is marked with desolation, misery and crime."

Concluding that the Beer Act was at least partially responsible for the rise of the gin palace and a number of other social ills, the Select Committee on Drunkenness issued a

report in 1834 calling for a major crackdown on beer houses. This report demonstrates the extent to which the new beer law was already being recognized as a turning point in the behavior of English laborers. Rather than condemning drunkenness as a vice prevalent

118 VICTORIAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE

Figure 1. George Cruikshank, "The Gin Juggarnath," 1835. Etching, from William Bates, George Cruikshank: The Artist, the Humorist, and the Man (London: Houlston and Sons, 1879). Between

56-57.

among all ranks of society, the Committee's report focuses explicitly on the working class,

going so far as to maintain that "the vice of Intoxication has been for some years past on

the decline in the higher and middle ranks of society; but has increased within the same

period among the labouring classes" (Report from the Select Committee on Inquiry into

Drunkenness iii). In the Committee's assessment, the crisis of working-class drunkenness

had reached such a point that it now constituted a distinct threat to the nation's economic

well-being. Across the country, one work day in six was reportedly being lost to drunken ness (v), and, all told, the Committee concluded that "the retardation of improvement caused by the excessive use of Intoxicating Drinks, may be fairly estimated at little short

of fifty millions sterling per annum" (vi). Based on findings such as these, in 1834 Parliament conceded that "much Evil" had

arisen from the creation of beer houses and determined to make amends by revising the

Act of 1830 ("An Act to amend an Act"). The new law increased the annual beer-shop

licensing fee from two to three guineas, granted police unlimited rights to inspect beer

shops for fugitives, and required beer-sellers to obtain a "Certificate of Good Character"

The Beer Act of 1830 and Victorian Discourse on Working-Class Drunkenness 119

signed by six rate-payers in their district.5 The most radical aspect of the 1834 Act, however, came in its division of beer shops into two types: those that could serve drinks on-site and those that could only sell "take-out" beer.

According to the dictates of the new law, beer-sellers with an on-site license were to

post a sign above their door declaring "To be drunk on the Premises." The potential ambiguity in this wording provoked Richard Polwhele to write "Beershops," another satirical poem from the era that suggests the extent to which the Beer Act had become a

favorite subject of popular discourse:

Whether Beershops encourage or not inebriety, Of opinions, it seems, there has been a variety. But, unless he would fly in the face of an Act,

(The product, too true, of the crazy or crackt) The Lord or the villein, will hail kidliwinks, An honester subject the deeper he drinks; And a sot tho' he be, who can fancy the blame is his,

Required by the law "to be drunk on the premises?"

Unlike James Smith, who in the previously quoted poem mocks the doomsday rhetoric of the Temperance crowd, Polwhele sees the nation's lawmakers as being the most deserving target of ridicule. Suggesting that the Beer Act of 1834 could only have proceeded from the "crazy or crackt," Polwhele questions the competence of a legislative body that

attempts to curb drunkenness by posting signs in beer shops advising laborers "to be drunk on the premises." Cruikshank also noticed the potential humor in the new signs, drawing a caricature of workers who had become "'Drunk' ?

according to Act of Parliament"

(Figure 2).

Considering Polwhele's and Cruikshank's mockery of the Act of 1834, it comes as

little surprise that the new law ultimately did little to calm the storm over beer shops. That the original Beer Act of 1830 continued to be viewed as a pivotal event in English cultural life even after the Act of 1834 is manifest in an 1838 Manchester pamphlet debate. The

participants in this dispute were two local citizens: "An Inhabitant of Manchester," who

not-so-artfully attempts to disguise his actual identity as a publican, and John Hamer, one

of the new class of beer-sellers. The first shot in the battle came from the Inhabitant, who

begins his pamphlet with the sweeping claim that "if ever public opinion was unanimous

upon a parliamentary measure, it is in its condemnation" of the Beer Act of 1830 (3). He

proceeds to suggest that publicans and beer-sellers alike were on the verge of financial

collapse as a result of the competition the Beer Act had introduced. Furthermore, he

argues that beer shops had quickly established themselves as hubs for England's under world. In the pamphlet's most agitated passage, the Inhabitant maintains, "The Beer Act has planted the source of vice at every man's door. As if drunkenness was not before

sufficiently prevalent, that Act has sent for 40,000 missionaries to inculcate it. Under its

influence, the most odious exhibitions of indecency have acquired a locomotive power, by which they have penetrated every lane, alley, and street" (9).

Hamer's relatively polished reply to the Inhabitant's "malignant and scurrilous at tack" addresses his antagonist's arguments point by point. From Hamer's perspective, by ending the tyranny of magistrates and brewers, lowering prices, and improving the quality

120 VICTORIAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE

Figure 2. George Cruikshank, "To Be Drunk on the Premises," c. 1834. Illustration, from George

Cruikshank, Four Hundred Humorous Illustrations (London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, 1895),

of England's beer, the Act of 1830 had accomplished all of its original purposes (5).

Significantly, though, the only point from the Inhabitant's pamphlet that Hamer sidesteps is the link between the rise of beer shops and the increase in levels of working-class drunkenness. Perhaps perceiving that public opinion on this matter was firmly set, Hamer

chooses first to express how strongly he "deplores" the "great national evil" of drunken

ness and then to deflect a portion of the blame away from beer houses and toward "those

public-houses which are regularly the scenes of midnight revelry and dissipation" (16). In

the end, Hamer's inability to dissociate the beer house from working-class drunkenness

suggests that in the late 1830s even a beer-seller had little hope of disproving what most

middle- and upper-class Britons had come to accept as an established fact ? that the

Beer Act of 1830 had had a disastrous impact on the behavior of England's laborers.

V

While the conversations from the 1830s about the Beer Act's effects are certainly

important, the Act's real legacy comes through the continued prominence it held in the

The Beer Act of 1830 and Victorian Discourse on Working-Class Drunkenness 121

discourse on working-class drunkenness for decades to come. Even after the growth rate of beer shops began to decline in the early 1840s, the beer shop remained a prominent symbol of working-class degeneracy in the discourse of the privileged classes. For several

generations to come, middle- and upper-class Britons would remember how seemingly overnight the beer house went from being non-existent to being conspicuously present on

nearly every block of the average English town. Given this memorable explosion of

drinking establishments, 1830 seemed an obvious (and conveniently round) date for the

beginning of the most recent phase in working-class history. In surveying the plight of England's poor during the 1840s, both Friedrich Engels and

Henry Mayhew devoted a significant amount of space to what they saw as the trail of drunkenness that followed the Beer Act. In The Condition of the Working Class in

England (1844), Engels notes how beer shops had become the hubs of Manchester's slums. This was not due to the elegance of these houses or the comforts they provided, but because the poor "are deprived of all enjoyments except sexual indulgence and drunken

ness, are worked every day to the point of complete exhaustion of their mental and

physical energies, and are thus constantly spurred on to the maddest excess in the only two

enjoyments at their command" (129). While Engels assures his readers that he advocates neither promiscuity nor intoxication, he also makes it clear that the blame for working class drunkenness lay not with the workers themselves, but with the nation's leaders and the system they had created. In ratifying the Beer Act, he argues, Parliament "facilitated the spread of intemperance by bringing a beerhouse, so to say, to everybody's door" (152).

Although he stops short of arguing, as some Temperance workers were wont to do, that the Beer Act was little more than a conspiracy of the rich to subjugate the poor (Harrison, "Pubs" 183), Engels insists that the poor should not be held accountable for conditions over which they have no control.7

In this era's other monumental survey of working-class life, London Labour and the London Poor (1849-52), Mayhew records numerous tales of families on the brink of starvation because of the ever-present appeal of the local beer shop. The typical pattern is for a husband to receive his wages on Saturday night and to have spent them all on

drink by Sunday morning (423-24). One working-class woman observes that in post-Beer Act London, "a shilling goes further with a poor couple that's sober than two shillings does with a drunkard" (127). Overall, Mayhew describes a potentially catastrophic trend

among the poor of beer shops leading to drunkenness, drunkenness leading to poverty, poverty leading to children on the streets, and children on the streets leading to robbery, prostitution, and the general decay of English society (162). Whereas Engels sees a

proletarian revolution as the only solution to the cycles of poverty, Mayhew suggests that the most effectual means of reducing the poor rates would be providing "wholesome amusements" as alternatives to drink (41-42). In Mayhew's thinking, if working people have alternatives to "the conversation, warmth, and merriment of the beer-shop" (17), they will be able to save their wages and rise from the squalor into which they have sunk.8

To the extent that Mayhew's comments on the evils of drunkenness derive from his

participation in the Temperance Movement, London Labour and the London Poor be

longs to a large body of Temperance literature designed to counteract or overturn the Beer Act. Perhaps the figure most responsible for the dissemination of the Temperance message during the mid-nineteenth century was Cruikshank, whose Gin Juggernath was

122 VICTORIAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE

just one of many images he created to convince the nation of the dangers of drink.

Cruikshank's extremely popular series The Bottle (1847), which tells of a father's addiction

to drink and how it reduces his family from relative comfort to misery, murder, and

insanity, was priced at a shilling so that, as Cruikshank explained, "'it might be within the

reach of the working classes'" (qtd. in Evans and Evans 127). A year after the remarkable success of The Bottle, Cruikshank produced a sequel

entitled The Drunkard's Children. As had been the case with The Bottle, The Drunkard's

Children was accompanied by a Charles Mackay poem that added details to the story found in Cruikshank's drawings. One scene from The Drunkard's Children that Mackay

develops at some length is how the drunkard's son, Edward, receives lessons in debauch

ery amid "the 'Beer-shop's' wild uproarious throng." Mackay's poem invokes all of the

increasingly stereotypical images of beer-shop culture, as is evidenced in the fourth stanza

of Part III:

There Ben, half-drunken, bounets drunken Hal,

There Jack, that swept the crossing all the day, Calls for his pipe and pot: there joyous Sal Takes from her prostrate Joe his "yard of clay"; Places her bonnet, decked in ribbons gay, Upon his head, and sports his fantail hat; And Costermonger Dick attempts a lay From the "Flash Songster," dull, obscene, and flat

All noises mixed in one, songs, laughter, shrieks, and chat.

For most middle- and upper-class Victorians, for whom beer shops were socially

off-limits, images such as these provided the only access they had to beer-shop society. Not

surprisingly, then, beer shops increasingly became favorite symbols of the moral depths to

which the English working class had sunk. Typical of the mid-nineteenth-century rhetoric

surrounding beer shops and the Beer Act is the Reverend J. M. Calvert's 1852 sermon The

Impropriety of Religious Characters Keeping Beer-Houses. As his title suggests, Calvert's

general message is that, no matter how religiously inclined, Christians who sell beer from

their homes inevitably fall under condemnation for bringing drunkenness to their commu

nities and, more deplorably, vice into their homes. When addressing the specific effects of

the Beer Act, Calvert falls back on what had by 1852 become the conventional ways of

assessing the law's effects. Near the beginning of his sermon, he reflects, "I am just old

enough to remember the law being passed which gave leave to open houses of an inferior

character for the sale of beer and porter; and well do I recollect the change for the worse

which took place in the village where I then resided, after the opening of two or three of

these Beerhouses" (4).

By 1864 public distress over the Act of 1830's ruinous effects had become so wide

spread that a group of concerned citizens organized the "Special Committee of Temper ance Reformers for Procuring the Repeal of the Beer Act of 1830." Five years later, the

Convocation of Canterbury published a Report by the Committee on Intemperance, which

demonstrates the extent to which the discourse surrounding the Beer Act remained

virtually unchanged since the Select Committee hearings of the early 1830s. For example, one clergyman quoted in this report maintains,

The Beer Act of 1830 and Victorian Discourse on Working-Class Drunkenness 123

"If I am asked to point out the great cause and encouragement of Intemperance, I have no

hesitation in ascribing it in a great measure to that most disastrous Act of Parliament which set Beer-Shops on foot. It has inflicted a terrible curse on this country. I would sooner see a

dozen Public-Houses in a parish than one Beer-Shop. I believe no greater boon could be

conferred on the working classes than to repeal that Act." (23)

Another veteran minister recollected, '"Many families in which the wives and children were formerly well clad and apparently well fed have since the introduction of the

Beer-Shops been in rags and poverty-stricken'" (25). Records from the numerous Parliamentary hearings on drunkenness held during the

1870s are filled with similar claims about the Beer Act of 1830. In 1872, for instance, several magistrates, constables, and physicians told the Select Committee on Habitual

Drunkards that the simple solution to England's drunkenness problem would be reducing or altogether eliminating beer houses (12-13,136,176). Similar testimonies occur through out the three reports issued in 1877 by the Select Committee of the House of Lords on the

Prevalence of Habits of Intemperance. Speaking before this committee, Henry William

Schneider, the Mayor of Burrow-in-Furness, called the beer shop "the very worst style of

house that is licensed in England; it is impossible to have anything so bad" (2: 333). Another witness, the Reverend Canon Ellison, a former chairman of the Church of

England Temperance Society, conceded that the original intentions of the Beer Act were

"essentially and thoroughly good" (3: 84). The Act's results, however, had been nothing short of disastrous in his estimation. According to a statistical report Ellison prepared for

the Committee, between 1824 and 1874 there was an 88% increase in England's popula tion but a 92% increase in the consumption of beer, a 237% increase in the consumption of British spirits, a 152% increase in the consumption of foreign spirits, and a 250%

increase in the consumption of wine {Reports from the Select Committee of the House of Lords on the Prevalence of Habits of Intemperance 3:85). From Ellison's perspective, the

Beer Act of 1830 had sparked a general revolution in the way all alcoholic beverages were

marketed and distributed in England. Simply put, the single most significant cause of

England's drunkenness problem in 1877, as Ellison saw it, was the Beer Act that had been

passed forty-seven years earlier.

Although Ellison doesn't appear to have noticed, by 1877 what he had long been

campaigning for ? the demise of the English beer house ? was already underway. The first major blow to the common beer house came in 1869, when Parliament placed the licensing of beer-sellers under the control of magistrates, effectively reversing one

of the most radical elements of the Act of 1830. At approximately the same time, the

country's major brewers began aggressively purchasing beer shops and pubs and ex

panding their distribution networks. Under the watchful eye of both the magistrate and

the large brewer, the distinctively working-class character of the beer house gradually

disappeared (Clark 338, Gourvish and Wilson 19-20). Because of this, historians of

British brewing have traditionally defined the "beer shop era" as stretching from 1830

until roughly 1870.

During this forty-year span, the beer shop undeniably had a profound effect on the

English cultural landscape. For the poor, the rise of the beer house impacted where they

congregated, what they drank, and how much beer they consumed. At the same time, the

Beer Act also influenced the drinking customs of the middle and upper classes. In the

124 VICTORIAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE

years following 1830, the social codes for what respectable Englishmen could drink and

where they could drink it changed dramatically. Whereas in the early nineteenth century beer was a common form of refreshment for the wealthy, from roughly 1830 forward, tea,

spirits, and wine increasingly replaced beer in the homes of the well-to-do (Davidoff and

Hall 385, Pool 212). Moreover, during this same era London gentlemen began to do their

drinking at home, establishing a trend that would eventually spread to the provinces. As

Harrison documents, "By the late 1830s the village inn, where all classes drank together, had become a nostalgic memory

? even if it had never been as widespread as its

admirers imagined. By the 1850s no respectable urban Englishman entered an ordinary

public-house" (Drink 46).9 In the end, the Beer Act of 1830, a law initially designed to ease class tensions, only

exacerbated the rifts between the various ranks of society. On one level, the Beer Act

literally isolated the rich from the poor, replacing the public house of the eighteenth

century ? which in many ways had been the embodiment of the Habermasian public

sphere ? with the exclusively working-class beer house. Although no laws prohibited the

rich from frequenting a beer house or the poor from drinking at an inn, the Beer Act

intentionally made the beer house the most convenient and inexpensive place for the poor to do their drinking. In addition to increasing the actual space between the rich and the

poor, the Beer Act also widened the imaginary gap separating the classes. Cumulatively, the myriad attacks on the Beer Act and the beer shops it produced only reinforced

stereotypes of the poor. During an era when wealthy Britons increasingly prided them

selves on their domestic virtues, the discourse surrounding the Beer Act suggested that

the working poor were moving in the opposite direction, abandoning the simple comforts

of the home for the revelry of the beer shop. The ultimate legacy of this law, then, was

much more than the beer binge of the 1830s. In significant ways, the Beer Act of 1830

helped shape how the rich viewed the poor and, undoubtedly, how the poor came to view

themselves.

Brigham Young University

NOTES

1. At this early point in my argument, I should clarify some of the terms I will be using

frequently. Technically speaking, a "publican" is anyone who operates a "public house." A

"public house," in the term's broadest sense, could be any site where alcohol is legally consumed on the premises. In the debates surrounding the Beer Act, however, the term

"public house" was narrowed to refer primarily to the old-style establishments, such as

taverns and inns. In contrast to beer houses, which were generally quite spartan and were

only licensed to sell beer, public houses tended to be more comfortably furnished and could

sell all types of alcoholic beverages. Another distinction which grew out of the Beer Act was

between the publican, who operated a public house, and the beer-seller, who operated a beer

shop. Occasionally the generic meanings of public house and publican were still used after

1830, but for the sake of clarity, in this essay I follow the tradition of speaking of public houses and beer houses, and publicans and beer-sellers, as mutually exclusive categories.

Two terms I will use interchangeably are "beer shop" and "beer house," since in the

nineteenth century there was generally no distinction between the two. In various regions of

The Beer Act of 1830 and Victorian Discourse on Working-Class Drunkenness 125

the country, unique nicknames developed for beer-only establishments. In the Midlands, for

instance, beer shops were often called "Tom and Jerries," while in the West they were

commonly known as "kiddle-a-winks" or "kidliwinks" (Clark 336). 2. While nearly every historical account of the Beer Act of 1830 discusses the role theories of

free trade played in the law's passage, Gourvish and Wilson and Harrison provide particu larly detailed narratives of the principal figures involved in the debates and the history behind the issues at hand. See Gourvish and Wilson 3-22 and Harrison, Drink 64-86.

3. According to census figures, 8,893,000 people lived in England and Wales in 1801. By 1831, the total population had risen to 13,897,000, a 64% increase (Mitchell 9).

4. In an 1834 pamphlet on the Improvement of the Working People, Francis Place implies that

many crusaders against working-class drunkenness manipulate statistics to support their

arguments. According to Place, if statisticians were to study patterns of consumption among the different classes, they might discover that the incidences of drunkenness per capita were

just as high among the rich as the poor. "When a man in easy circumstances gets drunk," he

argues,

it is either at his own house or at the house of a friend, whence he goes home in a coach and is not exposed to the public gaze. A working man gets drunk at a

public-house and staggers along the streets; here he is seen by every body, and is

inconsiderately taken as a fair example of his class; and thus, through the occa

sional drunkard, or the drunken vagabond, the whole body are stigmatized and condemned as drunkards, when in fact the number of those who are really drunkards is, when compared with the whole body, a very small number. (21)

5. Supposedly to compensate for these new restrictions, the Beer Act of 1834 allowed beer-sell ers to remain open until 11 P.M. upon approval from the local magistrate. As beer-sellers

later complained, however, the magistrates, still stinging from the limits the original Beer Act had placed on their authority, often abused this new power, forcing some beer shops to close as early as 9 P.M., an hour before the closing time mandated in the Act of 1830. Of the 1834 Act, James Bishop complained in 1838,

These circumstances left the Beerseller in a position much worse than that in which he was previously. He has to pay an additional price for his license, and to

give additional guarantee for good behaviour .... [T]he very hour, for the

attainment of which he had agreed to pay an increase of fifty per cent, upon the

price of his license, was made subject to the control and caprice of those, by whom he is looked upon as an innovator, and who cannot be unbiassed [sic] thereby. (16)

6. See note 1 on alternative names for beer shops. 7. To corroborate his opinion that working-class drunkenness is the direct result of poverty and

is thus morally excusable, Engels later cites two physicians, a Dr. Hawkins and a Dr. Kay, who subscribe to the same theory (178,193).

8. However convinced Mayhew may have been that the increased availability of "whole amuse ments" would solve the drink problem, he did acknowledge that on occasion the squalor of

working-class dwellings left them little alternative but to escape through drink. At one point he records a conversation with a tenant of a particularly run-down boarding house who

claims that drinking is the only way to tolerate life amid such conditions. This poor man

insists, '"You must get half-drunk, or your money for your bed is wasted. There's so much

rest owing to you, after a hard day; and bugs and bad air'll prevent its being paid, if you don't

126 VICTORIAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE

lay in some stock of beer, or liquor of some sort, to sleep on'" (115). Such a pragmatic approach to drink echoes the sentiment expressed in an oft-repeated working-class maxim

of this era: "Drink is the quickest way out of Manchester" (Shiman 3). 9. The penalties for transgressing the new class-based drinking codes are laid out in several

literary texts of this era. In Thackeray's Vanity Fair, for instance, we learn exactly how taboo

it was for a member of the privileged classes to drink working-class beverages in a working

class setting. In the process of attempting to secure his place in the will of his wealthy aunt, James Crawley makes the unpardonable blunder of getting drunk at a lowly tavern. As

expected, Miss Crawley subsequently disinherits him, leading the narrator to explain, "Had he drunk a dozen bottles of claret, the old spinster could have pardoned him. Mr. Fox and

Mr. Sheridan drank claret. Gentlemen drank claret. But eighteen glasses of gin consumed

among boxers in an ignoble pothouse ?

it was an odious crime and not to be pardoned

readily" (377). By the time Hardy published Far From the Madding Crowd in 1874, the doctrine of

separate drinks for separate classes had become unmistakably clear. At the harvest home

celebration in Chapter XXXVI of this novel, the reckless Sergeant Troy decides to treat his laborers to brandy instead of their usual beer. Realizing the danger in this, Bathsheba

implores her husband, "No ? don't give it to them ? pray don't Frank. It will only do

them harm" (252, ch.36). Troy persists, however, and, before long, all have passed out from

too much brandy. After describing this scene, the narrator explains, "Having from their

youth up been entirely unaccustomed to any liquor stronger than cider or mild ale, it was no

wonder that they had succumbed one and all with extraordinary uniformity after the lapse of about an hour" (256, ch. 36).

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Bishop, James. A Defence of the New Beer Trade. London: Dean and Munday, 1838.

Calvert, J. M. The Impropriety of Religious Characters Keeping Beer-Houses. Sheffield: J. Blurton,

1852.

Clark, Peter. The English Alehouse: A Social History 1200-1830. London: Longman, 1983.

Cobbett, William. The Political Register. 27 March 1830.

Davidoff, Leonore and Catherine Hall. Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle

Class, 1780-1850. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1987.

Dickens, Charles. "Gin Shops." 1835. Dickens' Journalism: Sketches by Boz and Other Early Papers.

Ed. Michael Slater. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1994.

Engels, Friedrich. The Condition of the Working Class in England. 1844. London: Penguin, 1987.

Evans, Hilary and Mary Evans. The Man Who Knew the Drunkard's Daughter: The Life and Art of

George Cruikshank 1792-1878. London: Frederick M?ller, 1978. A Few Remarks on the Beer Act. Gloucester: Jew and Wingate, 1833.

French, Richard Valpy. Nineteen Centuries of Drink in England. London: Longmans, Green, 1884.

Gay, John. The Beggar's Opera. 1728. New York: Penguin, 1987.

Gourvish, T. R. and R. G. Wilson. The British Brewing Industry 1830-1980. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994.

Hackwood, Frederick W. Inns, Ales, and Drinking Customs of Old England. London: T. Fisher

Unwin, 1909.

Hamer, John. A Letter to Her Majesty's Ministers on the Operation and Beneficial Results of the New

Beer Act, and the Evils of the Licensing System. Manchester: H. Lowes, 1838.

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Hardy, Thomas. Far From the Madding Crowd. 1874. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1993.

Harrison, Brian. Drink and the Victorians: The Temperance Question in England 1815-1872. 2nd edition. Keele: Keele UP, 1994.

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London: Routledge, 1973.1:161-90.

Holland, Lady. A Memoir of the Reverend Sydney Smith. London: Longmans, Green, 1874.

Hughes, Thomas. Tom Brown's Schooldays. 1857. London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1949.

Humpherys, Anne. Travels Into the Poor Man's Country: The Work of Henry Mayhew. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1977.

An Inhabitant of Manchester. A Letter to Her Majesty's Ministers on the Operation and Repeal of the New Beer Act. Manchester: Clarke, 1838.

Light, George Evans. "Beer, Cultivated National Identity, and Anglo-Dutch Relations, 1524-1625."

Journal x 2.2 (1998). www.olemiss.edu/depts/english/pubs/jx/2_2/light.html. Mackay, Charles. The Drunkard's Children. London: D. Bogue, 1848.

Mathias, Peter. The Brewing Industry in England 1700-1830. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1959.

Mayhew, Henry. London Labour and the London Poor. 1849-52. London: Penguin, 1985.

Mitchell, B. R. British Historical Statistics. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988.

Park, Peter. "Sketches Toward a Political Economy of Drink and Drinking Problems." Journal of Drug Issues 13 (1983): 57-75.

Place, Francis. Improvement of the Working People: Drunkenness ?

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Polwhele, Richard. Reminiscences in Prose and Verse. London: J. B. Nichols, 1836.

Pool, Daniel. What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist ? the

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Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice. 1604. The Riverside Shake speare. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1974.

Shiman, Lilian Lewis. Crusade Against Drink in Victorian England. New York: St. Martin's, 1988.

Smith, James. Comic Miscellanies in Prose and Verse. London: Henry Colburn, 1840. Literature

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  • Article Contents
    • p. 109
    • p. 110
    • p. 111
    • p. 112
    • p. 113
    • p. 114
    • p. 115
    • p. 116
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    • p. 126
    • p. 127
  • Issue Table of Contents
    • Victorian Literature and Culture, Vol. 29, No. 1 (2001), pp. i-viii, 1-240
      • Front Matter
      • Erratum [p. vi-vi]
      • Editors' Topic: Constructions of Victorian Classes [Part II]
        • The Smell of Class: British Novels of the 1860s [pp. 1-19]
        • Down among the Dead: Edwin Chadwick's Burial Reform Discourse in Mid-Nineteenth-Century England [pp. 21-38]
        • The Importance of Being an Earnest Improver: Class, Caste, and "Self-Help" in Mid-Victorian England [pp. 39-50]
        • Charles Kingsley, the Romantic Legacy, and the Unmaking of the Working-Class Intellectual [pp. 51-65]
        • Thomas Carlyle, "Chartism", and the Irish in Early Victorian England [pp. 67-83]
        • Instructive Sufficiency: Re-Reading the Governess through "Agnes Grey" [pp. 85-108]
        • "The Sovereign People Are in a Beastly State": The Beer Act of 1830 and Victorian Discourse on Working-Class Drunkenness [pp. 109-127]
        • Performing the Voyage out: Victorian Female Emigration and the Class Dynamics of Displacement [pp. 129-146]
      • Review Essays
        • Review: Victorian Art History: Rap 2 Unwrapped [pp. 149-158]
        • Review: Millennial Victoria [pp. 159-170]
      • Works in Progress
        • Making What Will Suffice: Carlyle's Fetishism [pp. 173-193]
        • Wilde's "Salomé" and the Ambiguous Fetish [pp. 195-218]
        • Ethnographic Collecting and Travel: Blurring Boundaries, Forming a Discipline [pp. 219-239]
      • Back Matter

__MACOSX/Hist Reading and class lectures/._Mason_2001.pdf

Hist Reading and class lectures/Stork_ScientificAmerican_2004.pdf

__MACOSX/Hist Reading and class lectures/._Stork_ScientificAmerican_2004.pdf

Hist Reading and class lectures/Unger_1980-2.pdf

Economic History Association

Dutch Herring, Technology, and International Trade in the Seventeenth Century Author(s): Richard W. Unger Reviewed work(s): Source: The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Jun., 1980), pp. 253-280 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Economic History Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2120179 . Accessed: 05/04/2012 15:15

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Dutch Herring, Technology, and International Trade in the Seventeenth Century

RICHARD W. UNGER

Herring exports to the Baltic from the Netherlands in the seventeenth and eigh- teenth centuries were closely related to exports of the previous year rather than to aggregate levels of trade. Dutch domination of the European market for salted her- ring in the seventeenth century thus cannot be explained by some external factor but rather by the internal nature of the Dutch fishery: by technology, organization, and the institutions which administered it. Regulation was designed to maximize rents but, as other fishermen gained the skills of their Dutch competitors, that strat- egy turned into one which at first limited sales and then returns to the Dutch indus- try.

... 0, wat een gulden Neeringh en voedsel brengt ons toe de Conincklijke Heringh; hoe menig duysend ziel bij dezen handel leeft en winnende sin brood God dank en eere gheeft.'

THOSE were the words of Joost van den Vondel, the greatest Dutch poet of the seventeenth century, mi adulation of the "royal herring."

As he suggested, the herring was an important commodity in the inter- national trading network of the Dutch Republic. The herring fishery was a transforming industry, a trafiek. Netherlanders caught the fish at sea, treated them using imported salt, and packed them in casks of imported wood. They exported the final product. Herring played an integral part in the "mother trade," the shipping of corn and forest products from Baltic ports to the west coast of France and Iberia to be exchanged for salt, wine, and other goods which in turn were brought back to the Netherlands. Those goods were shipped on to the Baltic in their original form or in some processed form or, in the case of some of the salt, transformed by combination with herring. It was that and related exchanges that made the Dutch Republic unquestionably the leading trading state per person in seventeenth-century Europe. Though it is true that Dutch herring ex- ports were only possible because of the existence of the trading network, the quantity of fish sent overseas was not a function of the quantity of any

The Journal of Economic History. Vol. XL, No. 2 (June 1980). ? The Economic History Associa- tion. All rights reserved. ISSN 0022-0507.

The author is Associate Professor of History at the University of British Columbia. The analysis and preparation of this paper depended on the assistance of Virginia Green. The University of British Columbia supplied computer time. The author is indebted to Piet van der Veen for his personal help and to Robert Allen, Don Paterson, Jan de Vries, and especially John Norris for reading and com- menting on an earlier draft.

'Joost van den Vondel, "Lofsangh op den Scheepsvaart," De vernieuwde Gulden Winckel (Amster- dam, 1622), lines 197-200. "O what a golden industry is created for us by that food, the royal herring. How many thousand souls, thank God, live by this trade and earn their living from it."

253

25 4gUnger

or all of the other goods exchanged in the "mother trade." Rather, herring exports depended on factors internal to the Dutch herring fishery and the herring fisheries of other northern European states.

An examination of the short-run relationship between Polish export earnings and Polish expenditure on herring imports shows little causal connection. Grain exports fluctuated widely, depending on the weather, levels of violence, and other exogenous factors. Moreover, Polish land- owners had many things to spend their earnings on other than herring. While over the long term Dutch herring sales in the Baltic showed some connection with Polish exports, year on year the relation was very weak. The principal reason for Dutch success in exporting herring to the Baltic has to be found elsewhere.

Price differentials and profits offer a more complete explanation. Above all, however, it was certain specific technical changes and the develop- ment of certain political institutions in the course of the fifteenth and six- teenth centuries that allowed the Dutch herring fishery to gain a dominant position in European markets. Over time, Dutch technical superiority was eroded as competitors developed the same skills. As alternate sources of supply emerged, the Dutch chose to limit production in order to maintain the premium prices their herring commanded. This led first to a decline in the volume of fish exported and then to a decline in value. In these new circumstances, the strategy that had previously led to market dominance and high rents became a contributor to falling total output and falling re- turns. The contraction of the Dutch herring fishery developed into just an- other part of the relative stagnation of the Dutch economy in the eigh- teenth century.

Vondel was not the only writer who was impressed with the value of the herring as a source of food, as a popular medicine, and as the product of a major industry. Commentators both in the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe remarked on the size of the Dutch herring catch and its contribu- tion to the economic growth of Holland in the years after 1600.2 By the eighteenth century the Dutch herring fishery had taken on something of a

2 H. Blink, "De Geschiedenis en Beteekenis der Nederlandsche Haringvisscherij," Vragen van den Dag, 45 (1930), 985-86. Adriaen Coenen Zn., Visboeck, Handschriftkamer, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, begun 1577, fol. 15r-16v. In this lavishly illustrated short manuscript on the fishery the author twice pictures the herring with a crown on its head and calls the fish, "our noble herring, the king above all other fish." John R. McCulloch, ed., A Select Collection of Scarce and Valuable Tracts on Commerce (London, 1859), pp. 21-22. Sir Walter Raleigh estimated for his king, James 1, the employment which grew directly and indirectly out of the Dutch herring fishery. Pieter de la Court, The True Interest and Political Maxims of the Republick of Holland and West-Friesland... Written by John DeWitt and other Great Men in Holland (originally published in Dutch in 1662; London, 1702), pp. 37-42, added recognition of the secondary jobs created in shipping and manufacturing, the value of the fishery as a school for seamen, and the value of herring as an exportable good. His estimate of 19 percent of the population earning their living from the fisheries is too high. Raleigh was also much too extravagant: his claim that the net gain to the Dutch Republic from the herring fishery was 21,500,000 guilders was well above the actual figure of about 2,500,000 guilders. See H. A. H. Kranenburg, De Zeevisscherij van Holland in den Tijd der Republiek (Amsterdam, 1946), pp. 39, 212. The contribution of the herring fishery to total Dutch output had been stated officially as early as 1476.

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mythical quality for writers-Voltaire, for example-and it is through that myth that historians in later years have come to write about the in- dustry. The claims in some cases go to the extreme of explaining the Dutch navy, the trade of the Netherlands, and the overseas colonies all as children of the North Sea fisheries.3 Even less extreme writers point to the herring fishery as one of the bases of seventeenth-century Dutch prosper- ity, noting the fishery's chief contribution as a commodity-return in multi- lateral trade, as well as its being a direct source of income. Certainly, it was already an important contributor to gross output in the sixteenth cen- tury, when Charles V's personal physician said that the Dutch got more gold and silver by catching and selling fish than other countries did by digging the metal out of the ground. The Dutch government in 1624 called the fishery the gold mine of the republic. The estimates perhaps better embody the moral the authors wanted to draw than they do actual output figures, and so they should not be taken seriously.4 The history of the herring fishery-especially the internal history of the whole range of activities associated with it-has then been typically obscured, the contri- bution of the industry being seen in gross terms and never examined as a result of what went on in the fishery itself.

The method for curing or pickling herring was well known during the Middle Ages. Soon after the herring were caught, the packer eviscerated the fish, mixed them with salt to form a brine, and then packed them into casks with more salt. The contribution of Low Countries fishermen was to adapt this method for use on board ship, which meant that the herring had to be repacked when it was brought to port. By doing the work of pre- serving at sea, Dutch fishermen could stay away from shore longer. That in turn enabled them to seek out and exploit new deepwater fishing grounds off the coast of Scotland, off the Shetland Islands, and off Ice- land. Netherlanders cured herring on board ship before 1400, and in the second third of the fifteenth century market phenomena and government policy combined to allow a sharp nse in the production of salted herring in the Low Countries.' Salt importing began in the fifteenth century. The

I For Voltaire see Gerard Doorman, "Nogmaals: de middeleeuwse haringvisserij," Bijdragen voor de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden, 14 (1960), 104. Nels A. Bengston and William Van Royen, Funda- mentals of Economic Georgraphy (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1956), pp. 314-15, made the most lavish claims for the importance of the herring fishery. The extreme statement appeared in the first (1935) through the fourth (1956) editions, but was dropped in the fifth (1964) and subsequent editions.

4Robert Fruin, Tien Jaren uit den Tachtigjarigen Oorlog, 1588-1598, 5th ed. (The Hague, 1899), p. 185. McCulloch, Tracts on Commerce, p. 97. The implied comparison was presumably with mines in the New World. In the first half of the seventeenth century, even in the best years for the fishery, spe- cie of a value almost four times that of the Dutch herring catch arrived annually in Spain from Amer- ica. Compare Earl J. Hamilton, American Treasure and the Price Revolution in Spain, 1501-1650 (Cambridge, Mass., 1934), pp. 32-35, and Kranenburg, De Zeevisscherij, pp. 133, 212. Nicolaas W. Posthumus, Inquiry into the History of Prices in Holland (Leiden, 1946-1964), vol. I, pp. cxv-xvi. The value of the herring catch in the 1630s, one of the best decades for the fishery, was annually about 30 metric tons of silver. Incidentally, in the same decade Spain received an annual average of 140.5 met- ric tons of silver.

'Richard W. Unger, "The Netherlands Herring Fishery in the Late Middle Ages: The False Leg- end of Willem Beukels of Biervliet," Viator, 9 (1978), 335-56.

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herring fishery was the chief consumer of that salt brought from France, Spain, and Portugal. The sea salt, becasue of its relatively high magne- sium sulphate and magnesium chloride content, was well-suited for pre- serving the herring. It was also cheaper than domestic salt which was sup- plied by burning peat from coastal bogs, impregnated over the centuries with sea salt.6 Despite the fact that the transfer to curing on board had been made by 1400, and that supplies of sea salt from the Atlantic coast were available well before 1500, it was not until the seventeenth century that Dutch herring production reached its peak. The explanation for the long delay lies in the history of the fishery itself, in developments in both the economics and the technology of the fishery. Those two factors also help to explain the decline in output after about 1650 and then the col- lapse in the eighteenth century.

The development of technology in the herring fishery extended from the fourteenth to the mid-sixteenth century and took many forms. The wide range of new techniques and new equipment laid the basis for the long-term growth in output. By the time of the Dutch Revolt against Spanish rule beginning in 1568, the Netherlands fishery enjoyed a marked superiority in Europe. There was little improvement in techniques during the period of the Republic down to 1795. The technical changes in the fif- teenth and sixteenth centuries included, first, improvements in the tech- niques of curing on board ship; second, changes in the organization of the herring fishery; third, improvements in the equipment, in the capital goods; and fourth, the development of political institutions which pro- tected fishing boats and regulated production to maintain quality. Changes in method often set up compulsive sequences whereby one tech- nical development leads to the use of others. In the herring fishery, such a sequence occurred, for example, with the design of ships. Moreover, the long-term process of learning-by-doing gave the Netherlands a large pool of experienced and knowledgeable personnel at all steps in the prepara- tion of herring. The greatest impetus to the use of all the superior methods

6W. Brulez, "De Zoutinvoer in de Nederlanden in de 16e eeuw," Tiydschrift voor Geschiedenis, 68 (1955), 181-84. Johannes van Dijk, "The Technology of Herring Utilization," Report of the FAO Meeting (Bergen, 1950), pp. 224-25. H. de Jager, De Middeleeuwse Keuren der Stad Brielle (The Hague, 1901), pp. 161-62, 190-91. Herman van der Wee, "De groei van de Nederlandse haringin- dustrie en het raadsel van het Zeeuwse Zout, 14e-16e eeuw," De Vier Ambachten (1964-1965), pp. 18-23.

Production in the Zeeland coastal salines seems to have fallen off in the fifteenth century, making the importation of salt from the Atlantic coast of Europe even more advisable. The cause was prob- ably the frequent and disastrous floods. Herman van der Wee, The Growth of the Antwerp Market and the European Economy (The Hague, 1963), vol. I, pp. 287-91. The advantages of imported sea salt were partly offset by its higher level of impurities, which meant that it had to be extensively refined. Moreover, it took only four casks of Zeeland salt to treat fourteen lasts of herring whereas it took five and one-half casks of refined sea salt.

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was the presence of a market for the preserved herring and a market that had potential for growth.7

When Dutch fishermen first began to cure herring on board ship in the fourteenth century, the product was of lower quality than fish treated on shore. By the end of the sixteenth century, however, that was no longer the case.8 In fact, in the seventeenth century Dutch herring sold at a pre- mium over herring pickled in France or England. The experience gained over time in gutting and treating the herring at sea may help to explain the improvement in quality. The same may be true for the job of repack- ing the fish in port. Dutch fishermen may have accidentally stumbled on the advantages of leaving part of the stomach, the pyloric caecae, in the fish to promote curing. Those appendices of the stomach contain trypsin, which speeds the curing process and also improves the aroma of the final product. There is some indication that seventeenth-century Dutch fish- ermen did not remove all of the stomach and pancreas simply because the work was done so rapidly. Typical Dutch practice was to gut the fish the morning after they were caught, which minimized deterioration. This made the gutters work quickly, handling up to 2000 fish per hour, and so they may have often failed to remove all of the stomach. An illustration dated 1652 shows gutted herring with parts of the viscera left behind. A modern survey shows that from 10 to 50 percent of herring gutted using the same process still had the entire stomach; therefore, an even higher proportion had at least the pylonrc caecae.9 While Dutch producers may have taken advantage of higher concentrations of trypsin without under- standing their value, it is probable that they did learn by experiment the optimal salt concentrations both for packing on board ship and for the re- packing done on shore.

The shift of the Dutch from coastal to deep-sea fishing for herring also increased the complexity of investment and marketing in the fishery. The increase in the duration of voyages-from overnight to from five to eight weeks-increased the turnover capital requirements of fishing ventures. They required larger and more expensive boats and crews. Under local sea law, the men on board had to be fed at the expense of the investors for the entire trip. More casks and salt were needed for curing. All this was very different from the modest capital demands in the early fifteenth cen- tury when the herring fishery was pursued by small boat owners who re-

I The pattern is similar to that noticed in general for the adoption and widespread use of any tech- nical change. Nathan Rosenberg, "The Direction of Technological Change: Inducement Mechanisms and Focusing Devices," Economic Development and Cultural Change, 17, no. 1 (1969), 1-24; idem, "Factors Affecting the Diffusion of Technology," Explorations in Economic History, 10 (Fall 1972), 7- 28.

8Eric Dardel, La Peche Harenguiere en France: Etude d'historie &onomique et sociale (Paris, 1941), p. 153. Ysbrand N' Ypma, Geschiedenis van de Zuiderzeevisserij (Amsterdam, 1962), p. 40. Van der Wee, Growth of the Antwerp Market, vol. I, p. 278.

9Gerard Doorman, "Het Haringkaken en Willem Beukels," Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 69 (1956), 373. Luijpen, De Invloed, pp. 37-39, 61-73.

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lied on brokers for financing and marketing, all for about 5 percent of gross income. By the mid-fifteenth century the brokers were becoming owners and operators of ships as well. They were merchants with an inter- est in more assured supplies of preserved fish. They usually divided the functions in a partnership, one partner acting as broker-merchant and an- other as skipper. Other merchants, ship chandlers, and even individuals with no direct connection with fishing could and did invest in the boats and their supplies. The status of the fishermen changed, too, from being owner-operators of boats to being wage laborers. The trend toward con- centration of capital and of marketing in the hands of a smaller number of men continued in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Ownership was vested increasingly in the hands of greater merchants in the large ports on rivers and inland seas with international trading connections.10 After about 1600, financing was subjected to even greater specialization. In- creasingly, single fish merchants replaced partnerships supplying all of the capital as impersonal investors lost interest in the herring fishery. At the same time the international herring traders became more interested in gaining control over supplies." The seventeenth-century Dutch fish mer- chant pressed vertical integration to the point where he supplied all the capital and owned the product from the time it was caught, through proc- essing and shipment, until it was sold to the final consumer.

Such concentration was not common in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It occurred in the Duch herring fishery for a number of reasons. Falling capital costs-the average herring boat cost less over time-and rising merchant incomes combined to put ownership of the vessels within reach. By owning the boats and paying a wage to fishermen, merchants took the risk of failure into their own hands. But with the catch rising, risks were falling. The merchants effectively appropriated any rent which the fishermen might have earned. There were advantages to extending in- vestment into production and also good reasons for merchants to extend their interest in the other direction, into marketing. As the final consumer became more distant from the producer, access to knowledge of markets and prices became more critical. A well-informed merchant was in the best position to sell the catch and to get the highest possible price. The

'?Coenen Zn., Visboeck, fol. 20v. Renee Doehaerd, "La Genese d'une entreprise maritime: les pecheurs de Wenduine au XVe siecle," Contributions a l'Histoire Economique et Sociale, 1 (1962), 9- 25. Dardel, La Peche Harenguiere, pp. 55-56, 86-92. H. A. H. Kranenburg, "Het Visserijbedrijf van de Zijdenaars in de 15e en 16e Eeuw," Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 62 (1949), 328-32. Towns estab- lished rules to protect investors from unscrupulous skippers who might not pay them what they de- served. For example, Klaas Heeringa, Rechtsbronnen der stad Schiedam (The Hague, 1904), p. 245. Also, H. de Jager, De Middeleeuwse Keuren der Stad Brielle, p. 162, paragraphs 6, 7.

" The van Adrichems, a prominent Delft business family of the late sixteenth century, is a good example of these structural changes. Algemeen Rijksarchief, The Hague, Archief van Adrichem, 12, 13, 126, 127. H. Enno van Gelder, "Gegevens Betreffende de Haringvisscherij op het einde der 16de Eeuw," Bijdragen en Mededeelingen van het Historisch Genootschap, 32 (1911), 1-62, publishes 3 of the 29 surviving accounts of the van Adrichems' herring fishery ventures. Kranenburg, De Zeevissche- rij, pp. 61-71, 117-25.

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work on land, the repacking of the herring, was important to the quality of the final product. Having a resident merchant who was in a position to organize and oversee that work was necessary for the success of the entire operation, from catching to selling the fish. Above all, though, the herring industry was subject to integration because it was a transforming industry relying on imported raw materials and on overseas markets. Greater mer- chants dominated the industry because they had access to information about and control over the prices and supply of inputs and of output.

Improvements in equipment for the herring fishery were made mainly in the principal capital good, the boat. Low Countries shipbuilders around 1400 developed the herring buss, a vessel specifically suited for use in the deep-sea fishery. Herring busses were much more efficient than the small, flat-bottomed, keelless boats of the coastal fishery. Busses, pur- pose-built for the herring fishery, were certainly in widespread use in Hol- land in the 1440s. They were large enough to survive North Sea storms and to carry all the necessary gear including the big nets and the casks. There was space on board for men to work at gutting and packing the fish. Over time, builders modifed the buss so that by the early sixteenth century it was a three-masted vessel with sharply curved bows. There was a full deck with cover for the crew and for the empty and full casks. A ship with a relatively high ratio of length to breadth is better able to keep pressure on a long drag net when fishing, so busses were designed with higher ratios-usually about 4.5:1-than other seagoing ships.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the buss underwent signifi- cant changes, making it even more efficient. The flat stern was replaced with a rounded one which increased the ships' manageability. The three sails, one on each mast, were orignally square and remained so until early in the eighteenth century when rigging changed completely. The three masts were reduced to two, and one of those carried a fore-and-aft sail which needed fewer men to handle it. In general, herring busses were highly durable, lasting on average more than twice as long as cargo ships of similar size. A cross-section of the hull near the center would give the impression of an oblong rectangle with the corners not quite square. That shape and the high ratio of length to width gave the buss sizable carrying capacity for its length compared to similar boats. Carrying capacity grew over time as well. In the early fifteenth century busses were probably about the same size as coastal craft, but by the sixteenth century busses of 60 tons were not uncommon. The maximum feasible size was about 200 tons, and in the late sixteenth century busses of about 140 tons were typi- cal. In the seventeenth century, however, builders and fishermen found that 60 tons and lengths of less than 20 meters overall were optimal. The smaller vessel cost less to build and much less to operate since the crew was only about 13 men instead of between 18 and 30. The change to smaller busses may have also been a result of increased specialization in shipping, with busses used exclusively for fishing and not carrying cargo

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in the off-season. While the ability to earn in alternative employment may have eased the adoption of the buss at the outset, by about 1600 the type was fully job-specific. The increasing efficiency of the buss contributed to the greater effectiveness of Dutch fishermen going after North Sea her- ring. The Dutch government demonstrated its recognition of the contribu- tion of the buss design by consistently prohibiting the export of busses.'2

Political institutions emerged to provide protection for herring fish- ermen because the busses, being equipped solely as fishing boats, were highly vulnerable to attack. In the fifteenth century herring fishermen or- ganized convoys for mutual protection, and they fitted out vessels to de- fend the convoys. By the 1440s town governments were cooperating in the convoying of fishing vessels from the coastal provinces of the Low Coun- tries. By the mid-sixteenth century the government of the Low Countries had assumed responsibility for supplying protection for the herring fleet, assessing taxes, and administering and paying for warships doing convoy duty.'3 Convoying continued under the Dutch Republic and became much better organized. The attacks of Dunkirk privateers and the increas- ing capabilities of defending warships broke down residual opposition to convoys and convoy charges. In the seventeenth century Dutch convoys were effective against most privateers and enemy warships, except in cer- tain wars and at certain times. Convoys served a valuable purpose: they allowed Dutch fishermen to range widely without as much fear of attack and they allowed shipbuilders to construct even more job-specific fishing vessels.

Government in the Low Countries also developed an elaborate set of regulations governing all phases of the production of herring. The legisla- tion was directed largely at maintaining the quality of the domestic prod- uct. The body of rules first began to develop in certain port towns, and in

I2Jan van Beylen, Schepen van de Nederlanden Van de late middeleeuwen tot het einde van de 1 7e eeuw (Amsterdam, 1970), pp. 135-41. The earliest trustworthy illustration of a herring buss dates from 1504 or 1540. The change from a flat to a rounded stern on larger busses has been dated to be- tween 1600 and 1650. Nicholaes Witsen, Architectura Navalis et Regimen nauticum ... 2nd ed. (Am- sterdam, 1690), pp. 186-87. Johannes E. Tillema, "Ontwikkeling van de Nederlandsche Haring- visscherij in den Loop der Eeuwen," Het Nederlandsche Zeewezen, 16 (1917), 66-67. Kranenburg, De Zeevisscherij, pp. 15-18, 56-58, 200-01. J. Ploeg, "Speurtocht naar Haringbuizen," Mededeelingen van de Nederlandse Vereniging voor Zeegeschiedenis, 25 (1972), 25-31. Two-masted busses apparently ex- isted as early as the sixteenth century but did not dominate the three-masted type until after 1700. Coenen Zn., Visboeck, said that busses of his day could land 30-36 lasts of herring, a last being made up of fourteen casks each containing about 900 fish.

13 Roger Degryse, "De Omvang van Vlaanderens haring- en zoutevisbedrijf op het einde van het Frans-Bourgondisch conflict (1482)," Acadimie de Marine de Belgique, Communications, 15 (1963), 37-38. Rudolf HApke, Niederlandische Akten und Urkunden zur Geschichte der Hanse und zur Deuts- chen Seegeschichte (Munich, 1913-1923), vol. 1, #14, #115, #628. Algemeen Rijksarchief, The Hague, Archief van de Rekenkamer der Domeinen van Holland, 4990, is an account, dated 1523, for the fitting out of 11 warships for protection of herring boats. Roger Degryse, "De Konvooieering van de Vlaamsche visschersvloot in de l5de en de l6de eeuw," Bijdragen voor de Geschiedenis der Neder- landen, 2 (1948), 1-24. Roger Degryse, "Het tucht- en politiereglement voor de Hollands-Vlaamse krijgsvloot van buiskonvooiers van 1547," Acadimie de Marine de Belgique, Communications, 15 (1963), 17-30.

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1424 the province of Holland started its regulation of the herring catch, salting, packing, and the size of casks. Apparently, governments were of- ten inspired to greater regulation by complaints from overseas;'4 thus the rise in regulation after 1424 was partly attributable to the growth of her- ring exports. In 1519 Charles V issued the first general law dealing with the entire Low Countries herring fishery. The law, which continued in force with minor changes into the nineteenth century, subjected the fish- ery for the first time to one undivided authority.

After the Revolt the States of Holland carried on the policy, leaving in- tact a standing committee, first set up in 1567, of representatives from the major producing towns. The committee, the College Van Commissarissen van de Groote Visscheriy, was originally intended by the States to advise lawmakers on the best legislation for the herring fishery. By 1600, though, the committee had acquired the power to lay down laws limiting the oper- ation of the deep-sea fishery, and it used that power to systematize the va- riety of existing rules. The frequently expanded legislation dealt largely with fixing precise dates for the fishing season and preventing the use of inferior materials in packing. The committee was also responsible for or- ganizing convoys, paid for by a tax on salt imports. Although producers were independent, each of the many individual firms was subject to the precise rules of the College. Moreover, each producing town took on the job of enforcing those regulations, and so surveillance was close. Size of casks and the minimum weight of fish per cask were fixed, as was the vol- ume of salt used in packing. Casks had to be branded by inspectors, the brand serving to differentiate Dutch from other herring. The College met annually at Delft at the start of the herring season and issued licenses to busses. A boat could not go out for herring without this license; thus, reg- ulation effectively controlled production. The College combined rules to dominate European markets and manipulate production and price, as best it could, to the advantage of all Dutch producers. To do that it forced the producers to act in consort, like one producer."5 Regulation certainly lim- ited the scope of activity for Dutch fishermen but it enabled them to com- mand a higher price for their herring than could competitors.

Essentially a federation of producers' representatives, the College tried

'4Rijksarchief in Noord-Holland, Verzamling aanwinsten, L. 504, fols. 99r-lOOr, is a set of rules established by Duke Philip for the herring fishery, both deep-sea and in inland waters. J. A. Fruin, De Oudste Rechten der Stad Dordrecht en van het Baljuwschap van Zuidholland (The Hague, 1882), vol. II, #229, is a town ordinance on herring selling and packing dating from 1494. Heeringa, Rechtsbron- nen, pp. 232-50, is a town ordinance on the proper practice of commanders of herring boats and on packing and salting the herring dating from 1434. S. Haak, "Brielle als vrije en bloeinde Handelsstad in de l5de eeuw," Bijdragen voor Vaderlandsche Geschiedenis en Oudheidkunde, 4th ser., 6 (1907), 36- 37.

1s The government of the Netherlands began its first tentative regulation of the herring fishery in 1509. Nelly Gottschalk, Fischereigewerbe und Fischhandel der niederlandischen Gebiete im mittelalter (Bad W6rishofen, 1927), pp. 16-19. J. Travis Jenkins, The Herring and the Herring Fisheries (London, 1927), pp. 68-75. Kranenburg, De Zeevisscherij, pp. 73-79, 151-57. Tillema, "Ontwikkeling," 15 (1916), pp. 348-49, 360-63, 371-72; and 16 (1917), 19-20.

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to keep poor herring or poorly cured herring off the market. Its legislation prevented Dutch producers from doing damage to their markets through either overproduction or gaining a poor reputation.'6 Restrcting supplies meant indirectly raising prices, but the market for herring was less sensi- tive to increases in price than it was to decreases in quality. The College on many occasions made rulings about ventjagers, fast ships sent out with the fleet to rush back the first catch which was loaded directly on board from herring busses. Such regulation affected only a very small percent- age of the total herring catch; however, the concern over the dates when herring for the vent~agers was taken is another illustration of the regulat- ors' consuming interest in quality control.'7

The technical changes in equipment, methods, and institutions over the fifteenth and sixteenth centures were the basis for the strong commercial position and the relatively sizable output of the Dutch herring fishery at the beginning of the Republican period. The change in technology con- tributed to and in part induced the long-term rise in output and the long- term rise in exports, which culminated in the record catches and sales of the first half of the seventeenth century.

II

The peak of Dutch herring output and of exports coincided with the peak in Dutch trade to the Baltic. It is difficult to estimate the maximum level of the herring catch. Various contemporary guesses, usually made in the context of polemics, are highly suspect, and official returns are few. All data, however, point to a rise in the number of herring busses and a rise in total production of cured herring from the sixteenth through the early seventeenth century.'8 In the 1630s and 1640s, the fleet of some 500 busses annually caught an average of about 50 lasts of herring each, that is, in their two or, more commonly, three voyages. Total output was then

16 The same goal of quality control to satisfy export markets was recognized in Lubeck regulations of the Scania and other fisheries of 1576. Dietrich Schafer, Das Buch des Lubeckischen Vogts auf Schonen, 2nd ed. (Lubeck, 1927), pp. 132-34.

17 Regulation of ventjagers has certainly been too much emphasized by historians. A. R. Michell, "The European Fisheries in Early Modem History," The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, vol. V (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 152-53. Van Beylen, Schepen, p. 139. Tillema, "Ontwikkeling," 16 (1917), 3-4. Hapke, Niederlandische Akten, vol. II, #1032.

18 The long-term trend was interrupted by the Revolt and the attacks of the Sea Beggars. For a list of overestimates see Hermann Watjen, "Zur Statistik der hollIndischen Heringsfischerei im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert," Hansisches Geschichtsblatter, 28 (1910), 131-32. A 1476 government document in- cludes a figure of 250 for the number of busses in Holland, Zeeland, and Friesland. Kranenburg, "Het Visserijbedrijf," p. 327. An official estimate of 1552 put the buss fleet of Holland at 300 vessels. Hapke, Niederldndische Akten, vol. I, #628. The number was larger when the provinces of Zeeland and Flanders were added, and so the estimate of a fleet of 700 busses for the entire Netherlands in the late sixteenth century seems just possible. Brulez, "De zoutinvoer," pp. 183-84. Also Degryse, "Het tucht- en politiereglement," p. 18. Estimates by contemporaries in the early seventeenth century of a buss fleet of 2000 or more were clearly inflated. The figure of 500 for the province of Holland alone was much nearer the mark. The best modem calculations on herring output are those of Kranenburg, De Zeevisscherij, pp. 25-43. Unfortunately, he limited his estimates to the province of Holland.

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at least 25,000 lasts, or more than 32,500 metric tons. Holland fishermen in good years caught and cured better than 200,000,000 herring, which may well have been about one-half the catch of all European herring fish- eries."9 Output, the number of herring busses, and the average catch per buss all fell after about 1650. In the eighteenth century in general the catch was about 6000 lasts annually.

The ports of the Baltic littoral constituted the largest single market for Dutch cured herring. Exports to Eastern Europe began in the fifteenth century, and about 1500 half the herring imported into the port of Gdansk came from Holland.20 The volume increased over time. Betweeen 1562 and 1657 the average annual import of Dutch herring into the Baltic was 5415 lasts. The best years for exporters were from 1600 to 1629, when an average of 8245 lasts of herring entered the Sound in Dutch ships. The Netherlands produced about 82 percent of all herring shipped into the Baltic from Western Europe in the century ending in 1660. About 75 per- cent of the total went in Dutch ships. Dutch producers reached the maxi- mum in 1602, when they sent more than 12,000 lasts of herring into the Baltic. The herring was consumed in Baltic ports or shipped inland along the rivers of Poland and Russia. On average, some 11 percent of the her- ring that entered the Baltic in the first half of the seventeenth century found its way up the Vistula as far as Warsaw.2'

While Baltic markets took about 40 percent of Dutch herring produc- tion, other export markets absorbed about the same amount. Cologne and the Upper Rhine Valley was long an important market for cured fish. So, too, was the North Sea coast of Germany, which took about 20 percent of the total catch. Despite the competition from local fishermen, Dutch ship- pers were even successful in exporting cured herring to ports in Nor- mandy, whence it presumably went on to Paris. In the eighteenth century, however, production and exports fell. The Baltic declined as a destination for Dutch herring as early as the 1660s.22 The domestic market never took

19 Michell, "The European Fisheries," pp. 148-49, 155. Employment in the herring fishery in North Holland alone at the peak was some 3500. Adriaen M. van der Woude, Het Noordkwartier, een re- gionaal historisch onderzoek in de demografisch en economische geschiedenis van westelijk Nederland van de late middeleeuwen tot het begin van de negentiende eeuw (Wageningen, 1972), p. 408. A figure of 10,000 employees for the entire Republic is probably low. Still the total was less than 2 percent of the labor force.

20 Werner Bohnke, "Der Binnenhandel des Deutschen Ordens in Preussen und seine Beziehung zum Aussenhandel um 1400," Hansische Geschichtsblatter, 80 (1962), 27. Victor Lauffer, "Danzigs Schiffs- und Waarenverkehr am Ende des XV. Jahrhunderts," Zeitschrift des Westpreussischen Ges- chichtsvereins, 38 (1894), p. 44. Klaus Spading, Holland und die Hanse im 15. Jahrhundert. Zur Prob- lematik des uberganges vom Feudalismus zum Kapitalismus (Weimar, 1973), pp. 50-5 . Haak, "Brielle," pp. 40-43. Gottschalk, Fischereigewerbe und Fischhandel, pp. 39-42.

21 Willem S. Unger, "De Sonttabellen," Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 41 (1926), 144. Nina E. Bang and Knud Korst, eds., Tabeller over Skibsfart og Varetransport gennem Oresund, 1498-1783 (Copen- hagen, 1906-1953). Compare Bang with Honorata Obuchowska-Pysiowa, Handel Wislany W Pierws- zej Polowie XVII Wieku (Warsaw, 1964), pp. 16-17, tables 44 45. There are a number of years for which data are missing.

22 Dardel, La Peche Harenguiere, pp. 41, 154-55. While the Dutch may have sent as much as 10,000 lasts of herring to Rouen each year around 1600-and the estimate appears high-that was still only

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a large proportion of the herring: even at the height of the fishery, only about 20 percent of total annual output, or at most 5000 lasts, stayed in Holland. The principal market for Dutch pickled herring both at home and overseas was always individuals of relatively high income.

The records of the tolls levied on ships passing through the Sound, the strait between modern Sweden and Denmark, indicate an increase in the already high level of Dutch exports of herring to the Baltic in the last years of the sixteenth century. Figure 1, giving five-year moving averages, eliminates the short-term fluctuations and shows the tendency toward a high level of herring shipment into the Baltic in Dutch vessels in the first half of the seventeenth century. Equally, it shows the decline after 1650 and then the relative decline and stability at a low level in the eighteenth century. That rise in exports in the late sixteenth century is reflected not only in the Sound dues but in the toll records of ports such as Kalinin- grad, Elbl~g, and Gdansk, and in the records of river tolls charged at Warsaw.23

As much as two-thirds of the Dutch tonnage going into the Baltic was unused, for ships went in ballast to Polish ports to fetch grain. Salt and herring were the two principal goods used to fill entering ships' holds, even if only partly. Because the shipment of grain out of the Baltic could pay for the cost of the entire voyage, as it did in the majority of the cases, the marginal cost of shipping herring to Baltic ports could approach zero on any single voyage. The only costs that had to be covered were loading, unloading, and administration.24

III

The boom in Dutch herring shipments coincided with the entry of Bal- tic grain into Mediterranean markets. The harvest collapses in southern

about one-fifth of total imports by all shippers into that Norman port. Kranenburg, De Zeevisscherij, pp. 35, 53, 133-35. Hamburg in the third and fourth decades of the seventeenth century took 3500 to 5000 lasts of herring each year from Holland. Already by the second half of the seventeenth century (1661-1700) the Baltic took only 12-20 percent of Dutch output. H. A. H. Kranenburg, "De Haring- export naar het Oostzeegebied in de 18e eeuw," Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 72 (1959), 257-58.

23 P. H. Winkelman, Nederlandse Rekeningen in de Tolregisters van Koningsbergen 1588-1602 (The Hague, 1971). Horst Kempas, Seeverkehr und Pfundzoll im Herzogtum Preussen. Ein Beitrag zur Ge- schichte des Seehandels in 16. and 17. Jahrhundert (Bonn, 1964), p. 369. Franciscus B.M. Tangelder, Nederlands Rekeningen in de Pondtolregisters van Elbing, 1585-1602 (The Hague, 1972). In 1594, 16 of 85 Dutch ships entered carrying herring and in 1602 it was 10 of 55, but the average cargo had almost doubled in those years to 21.4 lasts per ship. From 1605 to 1651 the annual average of herring passing Warsaw was 965.3 lasts, or almost twice the annual average of 504.5 lasts which passed the nearby Wloclowek customs house in the previous century. Obuchowska-Pysiowa, Handel, p. 210.

24 Wladyslaw Rusifiski, "The Role of Polish Territories in the European Trade in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries," Studia Historiae Oeconomicae, 3 (1968), 123-25. Aksel E. Christensen, Dutch Trade to the Baltic about 1600 (The Hague, 1941), pp. 369-79. The records of the van Ad- richems of Delft confirm the expectation of low shipping costs for herring going to the Baltic. Dutch shippers even carried bricks and roofing tiles into the Baltic to fill their holds. The decrease in salt shipments from the 1590s to the 1630s is in part explained by the increase in local production near Gdansk.

Dutch Herring, Technology, and International Trade 267

Europe in the 1590s brought Dutch shippers and merchants to Iberia and to Italy carrying cargoes of rye and also of wheat, grain which originally came from the farms of Poland. Landowners there must have noticed an increase in their incomes. And it certainly would appear to be more than a coincidence that Polish merchants and landowners should increase their purchases of herring just at the time when their incomes were rising from growth in their sales of grain.

To test the hypothesis that the level of Baltic herring imports depended on the income from the sale of grain, calculations were made of the grain sales revenue earned by Polish exporters and also of the payments for her- ring made by Polish buyers. The revenue from grain sales was estimated by multiplying the volume of rye shipped out of the Baltic by the price of rye at Gdansk. Rye was by far the biggest earner for Baltic exporters, with wheat in second place. A similar calculation was made to estimate the rev- enue earned from wheat exports. For expenditures on herring, the volume of the fish passing eastward through the Sound was multiplied by deliv- ered prices in Gdansk. Because Gdansk was the most important port in the Baltic for goods brought from the West, its prices give a reliable in- dication of general price movements throughout the region.25 These esti- mates served for making a preliminary test of connections between short- term movements of grain and herring. For all cases tested, prices were converted to quantities of pure silver. Included were all years between 1550 and 1780 for which a complete set of data exists. The dates cover the entire period of growth, stability, and decline in herring exports.

The Polish balance of payments for all goods and services swung into surplus sometime in the second half of the fifteenth century and remained there until the first half of the seventeenth century. At that point sur- pluses not only became the rule but rose dramatically with the rise in grain exports. Moreover, in the seventeenth century it appears that grain sales in part determined Polish demand for luxury goods; for example, cloth from Western Europe. Baltic grain producers did take out their in- creased earnings in cash, in silver and coin, but they also used their greater power to obtain goods, especially foods to diversify their diets.26

25 The data on goods shipped through the Sound are from Bang and Korst, eds., Tabeller over Skibsfart. For Gdansk prices, see Julian Pelc, Ceny W Gddnsku w XVI i XVII Wieku (Lw6w, 1937), pp. 64-65, and Tadeusz Furtak, Ceny W Gddnsku WLatach 1701-1815 (Lw6w, 1935), p. 152. On the importance of Gdansk, see Stanislaw Hoszowski, "The Polish Baltic Trade in the 15th-18th Cen- turies," Poland at the XIth International Congress of Historical Sciences in Stockholm (Warsaw, 1960), pp. 139-40, 148. Rusifiski, "Role of Polish Territories," pp. 120-21; and Unger, "De Sonttabellen," pp. 147-48.

26 Marian Malowist, "The Economic and Social Development of the Baltic Countries from the Fif- teenth to the Seventeenth Centuries," Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 12 (Dec. 1959), 184-87. An- toni M4czak, "The Balance of Polish Sea Trade with the West, 1565-1646," Scandinavian Economic History Review, 18, no. 2 (1970), 118-21. Henryk Samsonowicz, Untersuchungen uber das Danziger Burgerkapital in der Zweiten Halfte des 15. Jahrhunderts (Weimar, 1969), pp. 31-35. Astrid Friis, "The Two Crises in the Netherlands in 1557," Scandinavian Economic History Review, 1, no. 2 (1953), 200- 11. Maria Bogucka, "Die Bedeutung des Ostseehandels fur die Aussenhandelsbilanz Polens in der Er-

268 Unger

The results of comparing grain revenues with herring costs do not in- dicate a strong linear relationship between the two. While results are typi- cally significant, the coefficients of determination are low.27 This suggests that the success of Poles in finding grain markets was not the predominant factor in determining the volume of Dutch herring exports to the Baltic. Balance of payments figures derived from prices declared at the Sound show that the value of herring imported into the Baltic was not a consis- tent proportion of the value of wheat and rye exported from the two ma- jor ports of Gdansk and Elbl4g.8 That evidence supports the same con- clusion: the sharp rise in Dutch herring sales to the Baltic late in the sixteenth century and the high level of production and exports in the first half of the seventeenth cannot be explained by the boom in grain sales in the same period. Further confirmation is offered by a comparison of the profits to be made in the Iberian grain trade with total expenditure on herring in Baltic ports.29 Greater profits in the grain trade did not neces- sarily lead to greater herring purchases by the most likely buyers, the landowners, who appropriated the greater part of those grain profits.

The results can in part be explained by difficulties with the data. Smug- gling renders the official returns of volume inaccurate, and probably in- consistently so. For the sake of simplicity the assumption is that all trade between Eastern and Western Europe went on through the Sound, which

sten Halfte des 17. Jahrhunderts," Der Aussenhandel Ostmitteleuropeas 1450-1650, Ingomar Bog, ed. (Cologne, 1971), pp. 47-50. In the first half of the seventeenth century contemporaries complained about a flight of money from Poland to buy foreign luxuries. The conclusion made then was that there was a balance of payments deficit rather than a surplus, which seems the more likely ex- planation. The Netherlands ran an overall balance of payments deficit in the late sixteenth century. W. Brulez, "The Balance of Trade in the Netherlands in the Middle of the 16th Century," Acta His- toriae Neerlandica, IV (1970), pp. 45-48. One writer claims that the Netherlands bought twice as much in value from the Baltic as it sold. Christensen, Dutch Trade, p. 367.

27 V is volume and P is price. The commodities are herring (H), rye (Y), and wheat (W). D in- dicates shipments in Dutch bottoms, T total shipments. N indicates price in the Netherlands, G price in Gdansk. For VHD PHG = f(VyD PyGc), N = 163 R @ .05 = .15 R2 = .31. That is, for a sample = 163, the absolute value of R should exceed R @ .05 - .15 in order to reject the hypothesis at the 5 percent level of significance. The results are not as good using data for all herring shipped into the Baltic and all rye shipped out.

VHT PHG = f (VYT PYG) N = 166 R @ .05 = .15 R2 = .20.

The addition of wheat shipments also does nothing to improve results.

VHT PHG = fl(VYT PYC,) + (VWT PWG)J N = 46 R @ .05 = .29 R2 = .01.

28 Mgczak, "Polish Sea Trade," pp. 135-36. Using his figures for prices of goods declared at the Sound and the volume of goods going in each direction the following ratios of the value of herring imports to the value of rye and wheat exports are derived:1565 .040; 1575 .012; 1585 .072; 1595 .105; 1605 .195; 1615 .154; 1625 .233; 1635 .074; 1646 .185. The figures for those representative years show no consistency. The values for grain exports are for the two ports of Gdansk and Elbl4g.

29 N= 31 R @ .05 = .36 R2 = .03. The data are for proifts in the Iberia wheat trade including those made from agio or disagio of the ducat generated by Maria Bogucka, "Merchants' Profits in Gdansk Foreign Trade in the First Half of the 17th Century," Acta Poloniae Historica, 23 (1971), 79- 82. Idem, "Amsterdam and the Baltic in the First Half of the Seventeenth Century," Economic His- tory Review, 2nd ser., 26 (Aug. 1973), 439-47.

Dutch Herring, Technology, and International Trade 269

of course was not true. Poland carried on an extensive trade through Moldavia with the Black Sea and Turkey; its deficit in that trade affected the power to buy goods, like herring, from the West. Consumption pat- terns changed in Poland over time. It may be true that up to about 1660 Baltic buyers had to pay cash, usually silver coins, for goods brought from the West, but by that date they certainly could use a more complex sys- tem. The ability to negotiate bills of exchange and to settle international debts multilaterally would have tended to undermine any direct relation- ship between exports and imports, and especially on any single trade route.30

The sale of grain surpluses by Polish landowners in the short run ex- plains only a small proportion of the performance of Dutch exporters in finding a market in the Baltic for domestically produced herring. Addi- tional explanation is provided by the volume rather than the value of Pol- ish exports. The proportion of Dutch ships entering the Baltic in ballast fell from two thirds to less than one half by the end of the 1620s. Herring exports certainly made an important contribution to that shift. The corre- lation between the volume of herring shipped into the Baltic and the vol- ume of grain shipped out is as strong as any of the relationships between revenues.3' Not surprisingly, the relationship for all herring going into the Baltic and all rye being exported was not as highly correlated.32 Figure 1 seems to confirm that some long-run connection did exist between the tonnage available going to the Baltic and herring exports from Western Europe. While the results leave a great deal unexplained, they nonetheless indicate that volume was as significant a determinant of Dutch herring ex- ports as the value of Baltic grain sales.

IV

The price of herring or, more specifically, the profit which could be made in the herring trade seems to offer a fuller explanation for the vol-

30Antoni M4czak, "Der Polnische Getreideexport und das Problem der Handelsbilanz (1557- 1647)," Der Aussenhandel Ostmitteleuropas 1450-1650, Ingomar Bog, ed. (Cologne, 1971), pp. 35-45. Bogucka, "Die Bedeutung," pp. 52-55. Hoszowski, "The Polish Baltic Trade," pp. 123-27. Jacob M. Price, "Multilateralism and/or Bilateralism: The Settlement of British Trade Balances with 'The North', c. 1700," Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 14 (Dec., 1961), 254-74. John Sperling, "The In- ternational Payments Mechanism in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries," Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 14 (April 1962), 446-68.

3' N = 207 R @ .05 = .14 R2 = .31 for the volume of rye shipped out of the Baltic in Dutch vessels with the volume of herring shipped into the Baltic in Dutch ships. Limited to the period 1600- 1780, the result is slightly better. N = 173 R @ .05 = .15 R2 = .34. It was the rye shipped out of the Baltic in any given year that was correlated with herring shipments into the Baltic, not rye exports for the previous year. Herring shipments depended more on tonnage available at a given point in time. For herring shipments compared with rye shipments out of the Baltic for the previous year, where data for both were available and using only 1600-1780, N = 169 R @ .05 = .15 R2 = .24.

32 For all cases, N = 210 R @ .05 = .14 R2 = .14. For 1600-1780, N = 175 R @ .05 = .15 R2 = .18. The addition of wheat to the quantity of grain sent out of the Baltic not only does not im- prove the correlation but it actually decreases the coefficient of determination. For all cases, that is 1550-1780, VTH = f(VTY + VTW), N = 210 R @ .02 = .16 R' = .16.

270 Unger

ume of Dutch herring exports. Presumably, Dutch merchants sent herring overseas because they expected to make money. Profit figures are even more difficult to generate than those for revenue. One estimate for the early fifteenth century suggests that profits for Dutch merchants deliv- ering herring in Prussia were about 60 percent of the sale price. A more sophisticated set of estimates for the first half of the seventeenth century shows consistent profits from selling Dutch-produced herring in Gdansk.33

TABLE I PRICES OF HERRING IN AMSTERDAM AND GDANSK AND PROFITS IN HERRING

TRADE ON THAT ROUTE (in grams of silver/last)

Profit A verage A verage price in Other price in in grams as %

Year Amsterdam Freight costs Gdansk silver total cost

1631 1226 92.52 211 2025 495 + 32 1632 1169 92.52 228 2268 778 + 52 1634 1645 61.68 249 2293 337 + 17 1638 1624 66.82 253 2349 405 + 21 1640 1157 102.80 234 2349 855 + 57 1641 1473 102.80 214 1944 219 + 12 1643 1408 102.80 218 2025 296 + 17 1645 1134 113.08 207 2025 571 + 39 1646 1097 113.08 167 1539 162 + 12 1648 853 77.10 125 1134 79 + 7

Average: 420 + 27

a Charges in Amsterdam about 1.5 percent; Sound toll about 2.5 percent; customs and charges at Gdansk about 8 percent; total of 4 percent of the purchase price + 8 percent of the selling price. Source: Bogucka, "Merchants' Profits," pp. 84-85.

For other commodities the level of profits seems to have affected the volume of goods shipped. For example, there is some indication that the quantity of rye shipped out of the Baltic was related to the difference be- tween the price paid by merchants for rye in Gdansk and what they could sell it for in Amsterdam. In whaling a similar situation prevailed, with the number of ships sent out being closely related to the price of whale oil.34

Apparently the same was the case in the herring fishery, whose structure

33 Bogucka found herring to be the most profitable commodity shipped from West to East, and she probably underestimated profitability. She used Amsterdam prices for full herring which is of higher quality and produced later in the year than matie (matjesharing), for which prices are also available. The revised table here uses prices for matie on the Amsterdam bourse from Posthumus, Inquiry, vol. I, pp. 88-90. Duties and taxes are adjusted to reflect the different herring prices. Bogucka's estimates of freight charges are probably too high as well since she assumes that herring was charged the same as grain going in the other direction, which was not true. For problems with using Posthumus' Am- sterdam herring prices see Kranenburg, De Zeevisscherij, pp. 193-95. He suggests that full herring prices are even suspect, and that they may not reflect the true cost of herring when it left Dutch ports. It is possible that the errors are consistent, however. Bohnke, "Der Binnenhandel," pp. 55-56.

3" Maczak, "Polish Sea Trade," pp. 115-16. Jacobus R. Bruijn and C. A. Davids, "Jonas Vrij De Nederlandse Walvisvaart, in het Bijzonder de Amsterdamse, in de Jaren 1640-1664," Economisch- en Sociaal-Historisch Jaarboek, 38 (1975), 150-52.

Dutch Herring, Technology, and International Trade 271

resembled the whaling industry's. The difference between the price of her- ring in Gdansk and the price of matie on the Amsterdam bourse when compared with the shipments of herring in Dutch vessels into the Baltic shows a coefficient of determination of .43.35 Charges that Dutch herring exporters were dumping, that is, using profits from the grain trade to off- set losses in herring sales, do not appear to have been valid, and certainly not for the seventeenth century.36 It seems that Dutch traders sent herring to the Baltic, and in the quantities selected, because of the profit to be made. Since the sample is small and there are data problems, one cannot place great confidence in the correlation; however, the trend in herring prices from the sixteenth through the eighteenth century is clear.

03500

-3000

-2500

-2000

500

FIGURE 2

HERRING PRICES IN GDANSK IN GRAMS OF SILVER, 1550-1780

Source: Peic, Ceny W Gdahsku, and Furtak, Ceny W Gdahsku.

The price of herring in Gdansk rose in the 1590s to well above the level for the previous two decades. This was followed by yet another rise in the 1620s and 1630s. Prices remained at the same relatively high level until the 1670s, when a long-term decline set in. Presumably herring prices in

35 For VHD = f(PHOG-PHA) where the subscript A refers to the price in Amsterdam, N - 61 R @ .05 - .25. As expected, there is no significant correlation between the Gdansk-Amsterdam price dif- ferential and the total quantity of herring shipped into the Baltic; that is, VTH f(PH-PHA), N -

63 R @ .05 =.25 R2 = .03. 36 Michell, "The European Fisheries," p. 177. Little correlation was found between the rye price

difference in the Netherlands and Gdansk and the quantity of herring entering the Baltic in Dutch bottoms, which also contradicts the suggestion that Dutch traders were dumping herring; that is, VHD - f(PYN-PYG), N = 203 R @ .05 = .14 R2 _ .08.

272 Unger

Amsterdam rose in the years around 1600 but, unfortunately, no data from the Bourse exist for those years. Amsterdam prices did fall in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, though not as far or as fast as did Gdansk prices. That squeezed profits in the trade and moreover made selling herring at home more attractive. The success of Dutch exporters, it seems, depended on the absence of any alternate lower-cost suppliers. The rise in prices at the end of the sixteenth century coincides with a decline in the Swedish and Norwegian coastal fisheries and, in the third decade of the seventeenth century, with the final collapse of the Scania fishery. With no alternate supplies, Dutch traders seem to have been able to reap the benefits of higher prices, enjoying almost a monopoly. In the eighteenth century prices went down at the same time as the Norwegian and then the Swedish coastal fisheries revived.37 The shipments of herring through the Sound reflect the change: while in the period 1661-1720 the Dutch share of herring imports to the Baltic was still about 60 percent, for the entire period 1661-1783 the figure was only 31 percent; by the 1760s Dutch ships carried less than 10 percent of herring going into the Baltic. Scots and Scandinavians replaced the Dutch as suppliers of herring, albeit in much reduced quantities. Coastal fisheries always enjoyed the advantage of lower capital costs than the deep-sea fishery, which used large seagoing vessels. It was the greater reliability of the deep-sea fishery combined with falling costs due to technical innovation which allowed Dutch producers to overtake Scandinavian competitors and then surpass them in the fif- teenth and sixteenth centuries. The greater efficiency of the Dutch, for ex- ample, had been the cause for the shrinking of the Scania fishery from the mid-fifteenth century on. The expansion of the coastal fisheries after the 1670s was in part due to the high prices which they could get for their product, and in part to the fact that those fisheries had been neglected for so long that fish populations had been able to increase. Their competitive position was improved in the eighteenth century as Dutch herring busses became less productive, making two voyages annually instead of three, and bringing back fewer fish each year.38

The correlation of profits with herring sales in the Baltic is more appar- ent than real, however. First, the relationship between the two changed at the time of the wars of William III, that is, around 1700. To that date the price of fish delivered in Gdansk had always been greater-and by a large

37 The fall in herring prices in Gdansk in the late seventeenth century coincided with wars and po- litical crises in Poland which served to dampen demand. Hoszowski, "The Polish," pp. 119-22. Paul Simson, Geschichte der Stadt Danzig bis 1626 (Danzig, 1918-1924), vol. II, p. 500. Schafer, Das Buch, pp. xlii-ix.

38 Willem S. Unger, "Trade through the Sound in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries," Eco- nomic History Review, 2nd ser., 12 (Dec. 1959), 208-09. Kranenburg, De Zeevisscherij, pp. 204-05. Kranenburg, "De Haringexport," pp. 252-57. At least not all Dutch ports suffered from falling her- ring production. Vlaardingen and to a lesser degree Maassluis noted significant growth even if the catch per buss was falling. Witjen, "Zur Statistik," pp. 173-77. Unger, "The Netherlands Herring Fishery," pp. 350-53.

Dutch Herring, Technology, and International Trade 273

100/.

70/.

] 50~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~o/.

30 'I.

.206.

10*/.

FIGURE 3 PERCENTAGE OF HERRING SHIPPED THROUGH THE SOUND IN DUTCH SHIPS,

1562- 1780

Source: Bang and Korst, Tabeller over Skibsfart.

amount-than the price in Amsterdam. In the eighteenth century the Gdansk price was typically slightly lower than Amsterdam's. Second, the export of herring rose as Gdansk prices rose relative to Amsterdam prices, but once a great difference was reached, exports varied widely. The two patterns suggest not one but two relationships, one for the seventeenth and one for the eighteenth century. Tests revealed that in fact there is no significant correlation in those two time periods between the price differ- ential and Dutch herring shipments.39 Moreover, the distribution of obser- vations contradicts the presumption of a linear relationship. Added to that, changes in herring prices from year to year showed little correlation with changes in the shipment of herring.' Herring prices were much lower in Gdansk than in Amsterdam in the 1760s and still herring went from the Netherlands to Baltic ports. In the 1670s, on the other hand, the price difference was the opposite and the volume of herring exported in

39 For 1624-1694, N = 29 R @ .05 = .37 R2 = .1 1, and for 1718-1780, N = 32 R @ .05 = .35 R2 = .20.

4 (VTH)t+ I - (VTH)t = I(PHG)t+I - (PHG)tJ where, for example, (VTH)t is the total volume of her- ring shipped out of the Baltic in year t. N = 147 R @ .05 = .16 R2 = .01.

274 Unger

Dutch ships to the Baltic was also relatively low. The confused relation- ships tends to be confirmed when other, more complete Dutch price series are used.4' Despite the evidence that there were other and more powerful factors at work, extant data show that the herring price differential be- tween Gdansk and Amsterdam was positive up to 1690 and then often negative from 1691 to 1780. The former period coincides with years of a high level of exports, while the latter period coincides with years of de- pressed production and a low level of exports.42 It cannot be shown con- clusively that price differentials were important to output or exports, but it can be shown that both were affected by production history.

V

Unquestionably the most important factor in determining herring ship- ments to the Baltic in any given year was the quantity of herring shipped in the previous year. For herring carried into the Baltic in Dutch ships, the coefficient of determination was higher than for any other relationship examined.43 The pattern is consistent and clear. Dutch traders had at their disposal extensive information about the state of the Polish market. The regular sailings, the large numbers of ships involved, the correspondence between merchants and their resident factors living in Baltic ports all created a massive supply of market intelligence for herring exporters." It was not from ignorance that exporters chose to follow the pattern of the previous year. Rather, what fixed the scope of their trading was the limita- tions of productive capacity set by the state of the industry. Capacity was in turn fixed by the weather and the availability of fish, but especially by supplies of capital, both physical and human, and the state of the art, the knowledge of techniques for the best exploitation of that capital.

By the late sixteenth century Dutch fishermen could produce pickled herring, which was generally recognized to be of the highest quality, and deliver that product to Baltic markets, in the process turning a handsome profit. The long apprenticeship of the herring fishery, the process of learn- ing-by-doing, yielded the high levels of output, the high level of exports, and the high prices and profits. Prices of inputs were under downward pressure as well, since the Dutch trading network-in part a result of the ability to produce high quality herring at competitive prices-supplied the salt, ships, cordage, nets, and so on at or below the prices paid by com- petitors. Moreover, Dutch fishermen knew how to get most from that

4' Posthumus, Inquiry, vol. II, pp. 245-52, 274-82. 42 For 1624-1690, N = 29. For 1691-1780, N = 34 and the differential was negative in 26 of the 34

cases. 43

(VHD)t = l(VHD)t-11, N = 201 R @ .05 = .14 R2 = .65. As expected, the results were not as good using all herring shipments. (VHT)t = fl(VHT)t-1], N = 205 R @ .05 = .14 R2 = 59.

" Dutch traders had factors in Baltic ports by the second half of the sixteenth century, by which time their correspondence was already extensive and regular. H. Enno van Gelder, "Zestiende- eeuwsche Koopmansbrieven," Economisch-Historisch Jaarboek, 5 (1919), 136-91. Christensen, Dutch Trade, pp. 215-16, 431-40.

Dutch Herring, Technology, and International Trade 275

equipment. Certainly the level of capital investment in the herring fishery, both fixed capital in ships and warehouses and working capital in barrels and salted and cured fish, contributed to the comparative advantage of Dutch producers. Capital came largely from the retained earnings of past voyages. It was true despite or perhaps because of the highly flexible fi- nancial arrangements in the fishery. Success in any one year was a signifi- cant determinant of production potential in the following year.

Capital investment, knowledge of markets, internal organization, and institutional arrangements all contributed to Dutch success. The com- petitive superiority of Dutch producers and exporters was a highly fragile one, however. Others could and indeed did copy Dutch curing methods and vessel types like the herring buss. Other producers could and did de- velop the necessary skills in manufacturing pickled herring of high qual- ity. That took time, as did the accumulation of profits needed to capitalize a deep-sea herring fishery. Yet the slow process of accumulation could be sped up by temporary high prices, government protection of domestic markets for domestic producers, direct government subsidies, or by the short-term collapse of Dutch production.

In France, Colbert pursued a policy of supporting domestic production. He established a company to promote technical improvement in the fish- ery and used the company as a conduit for government subsidies. A high tariff was placed on herring imports in 1664 but that was changed to a general prohibition in 1687. The latter never fully worked, and after the Peace of Utrecht in 1713 the tariff of 1664 went back into effect. The re- sult of those vain efforts to keep out Dutch herring was to raise French domestic prices and thus allow French fishermen higher earnings which facilitated a long-term rise in domestic production. By 1786 the value of the French herring catch was greater than that of the Dutch, and France imported only about 18 percent of herring consumed in the country.

England's policy was long devoted to protection and direct and indirect support of the fishing industry. The Elizabethans legislated extensively to aid the fisheries and the laws were, if anything, strengthened in the seven- teenth century. English claims to sovereignty of the seas in the reign of James I appear to have had little effect on Dutch fishing. The Navigation Acts, the first dating from 1651, placed stricter limitations on the Dutch selling herring in England. From 1726 direct subsidies, or bounties, were paid by the British government to the herring fishery.

Elsewhere, Sweden offered protection of domestic markets and subsi- dies to its herring fishermen. A company was set up to produce herring in the Dutch manner in 1745, and Frederick the Great of Prussia did the same at Emden in 1769. In each case the goal was to promote a domestic herring fishery.45 The potential for net gains in foreign exchange, amply

4 Dardel, La Peche Harenguiere, pp. 138-40, 152-58. Lawrence A. Harper, The English Navigation Laws (New York, 1939), pp. 28-31. Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, ed. Edwin Cannan (New York,

276 Unger

demonstrated by the Dutch for the better part of two centuries, were enough to convince Frederick and other monarchs of the value of a her- ring fishery. Different states had varied success with protectionist legisla- tion. Overall the policies were effective because there was a technology which could be borrowed; general prohibitions of imports, though not to- tally enforceable, raised prices for new domestic producers; and govern- ments were typically consistent in their policies toward the herring fish- ery. With all those expanding fisheries in the eighteenth century, just as with the Dutch earlier, past experience played a significant role in the growth, or decline, of total production.

In the seventeenth century Dutch herring fishermen held a virtual mo- nopoly. They could and did maximize the rent to be earned from that unique position by limiting fishing effort, and therefore production, through extensive government regulation. As with all fisheries, as indeed with all common property resources, they faced declining average product with an increase in fishing effort, the latter denoted by the number of ves- sels (Figure 4). The relationship between the two is assumed to be linear, which does not distort the results. The curves AP and MP represent aver- age product and marginal product respectively. Furthermore, it is as- sumed that the amount of fishing effort does not affect marginal and aver- age cost, which are identical and constant. This curve also subsumes the opportunity cost, that is, the income which the fishermen could earn in al- ternate employment. With a level of costs of OC, production takes place at the point where economic yield is maximized, that is, where marginal cost equals marginal product. OVd boats are then used, and a rent is earned equal to the rectangle ABCD. If the fishery is truly common prop- erty and open to all, new resources, boats, and fishermen will be attracted until the rent is eliminated. The number of boats would rise to OV, with MC equated to AP.' Through regulation the Dutch government limited domestic producers' efforts, presumably trying to maximize rent or at least to keep the number of vessels in the fishery at or below OVm. At that point marginal product would be zero and thus give what is called the maxi- mum sustained physical yield.

Producers from other countries could enter the fishery, moving fishing effort closer to OVt, but the Dutch industry could drive them out by a short-term reduction in price. The cost curve is the average for the entire herring fishery; so Dutch marginal and average costs were at or below

1937), pp. 484-88, 901-03. Smith was distressed about the net loss in gross income from the subsidy, but it seems to have been effective, directed as it was at increasing the production of herring to com- pete with the Dutch product. Staffan Hogberg, Utrikeshandel och sjofart pa 1700-talet (Stockholm, 1969), pp. 168-71. Reinhold Koser, Geschichte Friedrich des Grossens (Darmstadt, 1964), vol. III, p. 257.

4 H. Scott Gordon, "The Economic Theory of a Common Property Resource: The Fishery," Jour- nal of Political Economy, 62 (1954), 129-32. For a summary of the common property equilibrium ap- plied to a fishery see Donald G. Paterson and James Wilen, "Depletion and Diplomacy: The North Pacific Seal Hunt, 1886-1910," Research in Economic History, 2 (1977), 83-86, 118-27.

Dutch Herring, Technology, and International Trade 277

Marginal Product

Average Product

A \B

c E LID E

MC.AC

, MP jAP

0 Vd Vm Vt Number of Vessels

FIGURE 4

OC. The position of the Dutch, then, was secured not by ownership of the resource-common property is open to all-but rather by technical supe- riority, that is, lower costs, and by continuous and strict regulation of the fishery. So long as Dutch costs were lower than their competitors', they could maintain a virtual monopoly by careful marketing strategy. And so long as consumers understood the Dutch brand to indicate herring of con- sistently high quality, Dutch producers could and did command a rent.

While the potential Dutch supply curve, given their relatively lower costs, was Sd (Figure 5) they supplied herring along the curve S. Z, the quantity of herring supplied by the Dutch, corresponds to Vd (Figure 4). While all other herring suppliers suffered with a supply curve to the left of S, Dutch producers earned a rent, here equal to the rectangle VWXY. OW was the market price of the herring and OV the production cost to Dutch fishermen. But as other producers developed the necessary capital, equipment, and skills, their costs fell. Their supply curve shifted to the right, leading to a decrease in price, from OW to OU, and to an increase in output, from OZ to OT. The Dutch government and Dutch herring fishermen at that point chose not to change the old strategy of trying to maximize their rent. They might be perfectly willing to drop prices in the short run to drive competitors out of their markets, but Dutch producers were not willing to make a long-term commitment to greater fishing effort and larger volume sales at lower prices, that is, below OU. Instead they chose to maintain prices for their product at W, or even raise them above old levels. For example, in the 1670s there were complaints about the

278 Unger

quality of Dutch herring delivered in Gdansk. In response the Dutch gov- ernment made regulation of the domestic fishery even more restrictive. That move raised costs, and so the Dutch supply curve Sd tended to shift to the left. With prices going down, rents were squeezed and profits for Dutch fishermen along with their share of the market decreased. Oddly enough, continuing with a strategy that was initially designed to maximize rents not only served to decrease rents but also led to the long-run decline of the industry in the face of increasingly aggressive foreign competitors. A fall in the demand for herring in the eighteenth century-a shift in the demand curve D down and to the left-penalized Dutch producers more than others since they were trying to keep prices up. The changes in the cost position of competitors, the change in demand, and the market strat- egy of the Dutch herring fishery all contributed to the observed pattern of a sharp fall in absolute production and an even more dramatic drop in market share.

Price So So

d

II ~~~~~~~~D

0 Z T Quantity

FIGURE 5

With the entry of other producers, the fishery, taken altogether, tended to move to equate the average costs of all producers with average product, shown by E (Figure 4). Average product fell. The average return from fishing effort, that is, the catch per boat, went down. That was true espe- cially for Dutch fishermen, even though they were decreasing the number

Dutch Hering, Technology, and International Trade 279

of their boats. While Holland had about 500 herring busses in 1630, there were only a little over 200 by 1730 and 150 by 1780.47

The advantage enjoyed by the Dutch herrng fishery was destroyed by the simultaneous fall in costs for other producers and nrse in costs for Dutch fishermen. The difficulties for Dutch producers in fact started long before the eighteenth century, and well before foreign governments began protecting their own herring fishermen. Wars fought in the North Sea meant an increased danger to the highly vulnerable busses. As early as 1625 Spanish forces began extensive and determined attacks on Dutch herrng boats. From 1652 and the start of the First English War, Dutch fishermen had to face an almost constant threat of violence; at times, for their safety the government would not even let them leave port. In some years the province of Holland alone lost as many as 100 busses to pirates and privateers. The worst Dutch losses came during the wars of William III. In 1703 French warships burned the Enkhuizen herring fishing fleet in the Shetland Islands, a loss of about 100 busses in one day.48 It was that disaster and other sizable if not comparable losses that appear to have de- stroyed the fragile Dutch competitive advantage. After the restoration of peace in 1713, Dutch production and exports did rise again, but the long- term competitive edge that technology and investment in that technology had given Dutch producers was gone. With the foundation built up through the sixteenth century having been badly damaged by war losses, other Western European producers found ways to supplant Dutch pickled herring in their own and in other markets. The decline, like the rise of Dutch herring exports and output, was self-reinforcing.

4 Dardel, La Peche Harenguiere, pp. 138-58, on French attempts to replace Dutch imports with domestically produced herring. Johannes DeVries, De Economische Achteruitgang der Republiek in de Achttiende Eeuw, 2nd ed. (Leiden, 1968), pp. 137-41. Anthony Beaujon, The History of Dutch Sea Fisheries: Their Progress, Decline and Revival ... (London, 1884), p. 286. Kranenburg, De Zeevissche- rij, pp. 169-7 1, on the development of competing fisheries. On evidence for a shift in demand for her- ring in the eighteenth century, see Michell, "The European Fisheries," pp. 182-83.

48 Watjen, "Zur Statistik," pp. 142-5 1. Kranenburg, De Zeevisscherij, p. 204. Production per vessel was also subject to greater variation in war years (ibid., pp. 42-43). Jonathan I. Israel, "A Conflict of Empires: Spain and the Netherlands, 1618-1648," Past and Present, 76 (Aug. 1977), 44 48.

280

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  • Issue Table of Contents
    • The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Jun., 1980), pp. 229-456
      • Front Matter
      • The Returns to U.S. Imperialism, 1890-1929 [pp. 229 - 252]
      • Dutch Herring, Technology, and International Trade in the Seventeenth Century [pp. 253 - 280]
      • The Regional Diffusion and Adoption of the Steam Engine in American Manufacturing [pp. 281 - 308]
      • Tariffs, Cartels, Technology, and Growth in the German Steel Industry, 1879 to 1914 [pp. 309 - 330]
      • Antebellum Southern White Fertility: A Demographic and Economic Analysis [pp. 331 - 350]
      • Inflation or Deflation in Nineteenth-Century Syria and Palestine [pp. 351 - 358]
      • Jewish American Entrepreneurs [pp. 359 - 372]
      • Varieties of Economic Determinism [pp. 373 - 376]
      • Book Notes [pp. 377 - 380]
      • Reviews of Books
      • Ancient and Medieval
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      • Modern Europe
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      • Asia, Africa, Latin America
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      • United States and Canada
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      • Economic Thought and Doctrine
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      • General and Miscellaneous
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        • untitled [p. 456]
      • Back Matter

__MACOSX/Hist Reading and class lectures/._Unger_1980-2.pdf

Hist Reading and class lectures/Unger_1980.pdf

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Dutch Herring, Technology, and International Trade in the Seventeenth Century Author(s): Richard W. Unger Reviewed work(s): Source: The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Jun., 1980), pp. 253-280 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Economic History Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2120179 . Accessed: 05/04/2012 15:15

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Dutch Herring, Technology, and International Trade in the Seventeenth Century

RICHARD W. UNGER

Herring exports to the Baltic from the Netherlands in the seventeenth and eigh- teenth centuries were closely related to exports of the previous year rather than to aggregate levels of trade. Dutch domination of the European market for salted her- ring in the seventeenth century thus cannot be explained by some external factor but rather by the internal nature of the Dutch fishery: by technology, organization, and the institutions which administered it. Regulation was designed to maximize rents but, as other fishermen gained the skills of their Dutch competitors, that strat- egy turned into one which at first limited sales and then returns to the Dutch indus- try.

... 0, wat een gulden Neeringh en voedsel brengt ons toe de Conincklijke Heringh; hoe menig duysend ziel bij dezen handel leeft en winnende sin brood God dank en eere gheeft.'

THOSE were the words of Joost van den Vondel, the greatest Dutch poet of the seventeenth century, mi adulation of the "royal herring."

As he suggested, the herring was an important commodity in the inter- national trading network of the Dutch Republic. The herring fishery was a transforming industry, a trafiek. Netherlanders caught the fish at sea, treated them using imported salt, and packed them in casks of imported wood. They exported the final product. Herring played an integral part in the "mother trade," the shipping of corn and forest products from Baltic ports to the west coast of France and Iberia to be exchanged for salt, wine, and other goods which in turn were brought back to the Netherlands. Those goods were shipped on to the Baltic in their original form or in some processed form or, in the case of some of the salt, transformed by combination with herring. It was that and related exchanges that made the Dutch Republic unquestionably the leading trading state per person in seventeenth-century Europe. Though it is true that Dutch herring ex- ports were only possible because of the existence of the trading network, the quantity of fish sent overseas was not a function of the quantity of any

The Journal of Economic History. Vol. XL, No. 2 (June 1980). ? The Economic History Associa- tion. All rights reserved. ISSN 0022-0507.

The author is Associate Professor of History at the University of British Columbia. The analysis and preparation of this paper depended on the assistance of Virginia Green. The University of British Columbia supplied computer time. The author is indebted to Piet van der Veen for his personal help and to Robert Allen, Don Paterson, Jan de Vries, and especially John Norris for reading and com- menting on an earlier draft.

'Joost van den Vondel, "Lofsangh op den Scheepsvaart," De vernieuwde Gulden Winckel (Amster- dam, 1622), lines 197-200. "O what a golden industry is created for us by that food, the royal herring. How many thousand souls, thank God, live by this trade and earn their living from it."

253

25 4gUnger

or all of the other goods exchanged in the "mother trade." Rather, herring exports depended on factors internal to the Dutch herring fishery and the herring fisheries of other northern European states.

An examination of the short-run relationship between Polish export earnings and Polish expenditure on herring imports shows little causal connection. Grain exports fluctuated widely, depending on the weather, levels of violence, and other exogenous factors. Moreover, Polish land- owners had many things to spend their earnings on other than herring. While over the long term Dutch herring sales in the Baltic showed some connection with Polish exports, year on year the relation was very weak. The principal reason for Dutch success in exporting herring to the Baltic has to be found elsewhere.

Price differentials and profits offer a more complete explanation. Above all, however, it was certain specific technical changes and the develop- ment of certain political institutions in the course of the fifteenth and six- teenth centuries that allowed the Dutch herring fishery to gain a dominant position in European markets. Over time, Dutch technical superiority was eroded as competitors developed the same skills. As alternate sources of supply emerged, the Dutch chose to limit production in order to maintain the premium prices their herring commanded. This led first to a decline in the volume of fish exported and then to a decline in value. In these new circumstances, the strategy that had previously led to market dominance and high rents became a contributor to falling total output and falling re- turns. The contraction of the Dutch herring fishery developed into just an- other part of the relative stagnation of the Dutch economy in the eigh- teenth century.

Vondel was not the only writer who was impressed with the value of the herring as a source of food, as a popular medicine, and as the product of a major industry. Commentators both in the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe remarked on the size of the Dutch herring catch and its contribu- tion to the economic growth of Holland in the years after 1600.2 By the eighteenth century the Dutch herring fishery had taken on something of a

2 H. Blink, "De Geschiedenis en Beteekenis der Nederlandsche Haringvisscherij," Vragen van den Dag, 45 (1930), 985-86. Adriaen Coenen Zn., Visboeck, Handschriftkamer, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, begun 1577, fol. 15r-16v. In this lavishly illustrated short manuscript on the fishery the author twice pictures the herring with a crown on its head and calls the fish, "our noble herring, the king above all other fish." John R. McCulloch, ed., A Select Collection of Scarce and Valuable Tracts on Commerce (London, 1859), pp. 21-22. Sir Walter Raleigh estimated for his king, James 1, the employment which grew directly and indirectly out of the Dutch herring fishery. Pieter de la Court, The True Interest and Political Maxims of the Republick of Holland and West-Friesland... Written by John DeWitt and other Great Men in Holland (originally published in Dutch in 1662; London, 1702), pp. 37-42, added recognition of the secondary jobs created in shipping and manufacturing, the value of the fishery as a school for seamen, and the value of herring as an exportable good. His estimate of 19 percent of the population earning their living from the fisheries is too high. Raleigh was also much too extravagant: his claim that the net gain to the Dutch Republic from the herring fishery was 21,500,000 guilders was well above the actual figure of about 2,500,000 guilders. See H. A. H. Kranenburg, De Zeevisscherij van Holland in den Tijd der Republiek (Amsterdam, 1946), pp. 39, 212. The contribution of the herring fishery to total Dutch output had been stated officially as early as 1476.

Dutch Herring, Technology, and International Trade 255

mythical quality for writers-Voltaire, for example-and it is through that myth that historians in later years have come to write about the in- dustry. The claims in some cases go to the extreme of explaining the Dutch navy, the trade of the Netherlands, and the overseas colonies all as children of the North Sea fisheries.3 Even less extreme writers point to the herring fishery as one of the bases of seventeenth-century Dutch prosper- ity, noting the fishery's chief contribution as a commodity-return in multi- lateral trade, as well as its being a direct source of income. Certainly, it was already an important contributor to gross output in the sixteenth cen- tury, when Charles V's personal physician said that the Dutch got more gold and silver by catching and selling fish than other countries did by digging the metal out of the ground. The Dutch government in 1624 called the fishery the gold mine of the republic. The estimates perhaps better embody the moral the authors wanted to draw than they do actual output figures, and so they should not be taken seriously.4 The history of the herring fishery-especially the internal history of the whole range of activities associated with it-has then been typically obscured, the contri- bution of the industry being seen in gross terms and never examined as a result of what went on in the fishery itself.

The method for curing or pickling herring was well known during the Middle Ages. Soon after the herring were caught, the packer eviscerated the fish, mixed them with salt to form a brine, and then packed them into casks with more salt. The contribution of Low Countries fishermen was to adapt this method for use on board ship, which meant that the herring had to be repacked when it was brought to port. By doing the work of pre- serving at sea, Dutch fishermen could stay away from shore longer. That in turn enabled them to seek out and exploit new deepwater fishing grounds off the coast of Scotland, off the Shetland Islands, and off Ice- land. Netherlanders cured herring on board ship before 1400, and in the second third of the fifteenth century market phenomena and government policy combined to allow a sharp nse in the production of salted herring in the Low Countries.' Salt importing began in the fifteenth century. The

I For Voltaire see Gerard Doorman, "Nogmaals: de middeleeuwse haringvisserij," Bijdragen voor de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden, 14 (1960), 104. Nels A. Bengston and William Van Royen, Funda- mentals of Economic Georgraphy (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1956), pp. 314-15, made the most lavish claims for the importance of the herring fishery. The extreme statement appeared in the first (1935) through the fourth (1956) editions, but was dropped in the fifth (1964) and subsequent editions.

4Robert Fruin, Tien Jaren uit den Tachtigjarigen Oorlog, 1588-1598, 5th ed. (The Hague, 1899), p. 185. McCulloch, Tracts on Commerce, p. 97. The implied comparison was presumably with mines in the New World. In the first half of the seventeenth century, even in the best years for the fishery, spe- cie of a value almost four times that of the Dutch herring catch arrived annually in Spain from Amer- ica. Compare Earl J. Hamilton, American Treasure and the Price Revolution in Spain, 1501-1650 (Cambridge, Mass., 1934), pp. 32-35, and Kranenburg, De Zeevisscherij, pp. 133, 212. Nicolaas W. Posthumus, Inquiry into the History of Prices in Holland (Leiden, 1946-1964), vol. I, pp. cxv-xvi. The value of the herring catch in the 1630s, one of the best decades for the fishery, was annually about 30 metric tons of silver. Incidentally, in the same decade Spain received an annual average of 140.5 met- ric tons of silver.

'Richard W. Unger, "The Netherlands Herring Fishery in the Late Middle Ages: The False Leg- end of Willem Beukels of Biervliet," Viator, 9 (1978), 335-56.

256 Unger

herring fishery was the chief consumer of that salt brought from France, Spain, and Portugal. The sea salt, becasue of its relatively high magne- sium sulphate and magnesium chloride content, was well-suited for pre- serving the herring. It was also cheaper than domestic salt which was sup- plied by burning peat from coastal bogs, impregnated over the centuries with sea salt.6 Despite the fact that the transfer to curing on board had been made by 1400, and that supplies of sea salt from the Atlantic coast were available well before 1500, it was not until the seventeenth century that Dutch herring production reached its peak. The explanation for the long delay lies in the history of the fishery itself, in developments in both the economics and the technology of the fishery. Those two factors also help to explain the decline in output after about 1650 and then the col- lapse in the eighteenth century.

The development of technology in the herring fishery extended from the fourteenth to the mid-sixteenth century and took many forms. The wide range of new techniques and new equipment laid the basis for the long-term growth in output. By the time of the Dutch Revolt against Spanish rule beginning in 1568, the Netherlands fishery enjoyed a marked superiority in Europe. There was little improvement in techniques during the period of the Republic down to 1795. The technical changes in the fif- teenth and sixteenth centuries included, first, improvements in the tech- niques of curing on board ship; second, changes in the organization of the herring fishery; third, improvements in the equipment, in the capital goods; and fourth, the development of political institutions which pro- tected fishing boats and regulated production to maintain quality. Changes in method often set up compulsive sequences whereby one tech- nical development leads to the use of others. In the herring fishery, such a sequence occurred, for example, with the design of ships. Moreover, the long-term process of learning-by-doing gave the Netherlands a large pool of experienced and knowledgeable personnel at all steps in the prepara- tion of herring. The greatest impetus to the use of all the superior methods

6W. Brulez, "De Zoutinvoer in de Nederlanden in de 16e eeuw," Tiydschrift voor Geschiedenis, 68 (1955), 181-84. Johannes van Dijk, "The Technology of Herring Utilization," Report of the FAO Meeting (Bergen, 1950), pp. 224-25. H. de Jager, De Middeleeuwse Keuren der Stad Brielle (The Hague, 1901), pp. 161-62, 190-91. Herman van der Wee, "De groei van de Nederlandse haringin- dustrie en het raadsel van het Zeeuwse Zout, 14e-16e eeuw," De Vier Ambachten (1964-1965), pp. 18-23.

Production in the Zeeland coastal salines seems to have fallen off in the fifteenth century, making the importation of salt from the Atlantic coast of Europe even more advisable. The cause was prob- ably the frequent and disastrous floods. Herman van der Wee, The Growth of the Antwerp Market and the European Economy (The Hague, 1963), vol. I, pp. 287-91. The advantages of imported sea salt were partly offset by its higher level of impurities, which meant that it had to be extensively refined. Moreover, it took only four casks of Zeeland salt to treat fourteen lasts of herring whereas it took five and one-half casks of refined sea salt.

Dutch Herring, Technology, and International Trade 257

was the presence of a market for the preserved herring and a market that had potential for growth.7

When Dutch fishermen first began to cure herring on board ship in the fourteenth century, the product was of lower quality than fish treated on shore. By the end of the sixteenth century, however, that was no longer the case.8 In fact, in the seventeenth century Dutch herring sold at a pre- mium over herring pickled in France or England. The experience gained over time in gutting and treating the herring at sea may help to explain the improvement in quality. The same may be true for the job of repack- ing the fish in port. Dutch fishermen may have accidentally stumbled on the advantages of leaving part of the stomach, the pyloric caecae, in the fish to promote curing. Those appendices of the stomach contain trypsin, which speeds the curing process and also improves the aroma of the final product. There is some indication that seventeenth-century Dutch fish- ermen did not remove all of the stomach and pancreas simply because the work was done so rapidly. Typical Dutch practice was to gut the fish the morning after they were caught, which minimized deterioration. This made the gutters work quickly, handling up to 2000 fish per hour, and so they may have often failed to remove all of the stomach. An illustration dated 1652 shows gutted herring with parts of the viscera left behind. A modern survey shows that from 10 to 50 percent of herring gutted using the same process still had the entire stomach; therefore, an even higher proportion had at least the pylonrc caecae.9 While Dutch producers may have taken advantage of higher concentrations of trypsin without under- standing their value, it is probable that they did learn by experiment the optimal salt concentrations both for packing on board ship and for the re- packing done on shore.

The shift of the Dutch from coastal to deep-sea fishing for herring also increased the complexity of investment and marketing in the fishery. The increase in the duration of voyages-from overnight to from five to eight weeks-increased the turnover capital requirements of fishing ventures. They required larger and more expensive boats and crews. Under local sea law, the men on board had to be fed at the expense of the investors for the entire trip. More casks and salt were needed for curing. All this was very different from the modest capital demands in the early fifteenth cen- tury when the herring fishery was pursued by small boat owners who re-

I The pattern is similar to that noticed in general for the adoption and widespread use of any tech- nical change. Nathan Rosenberg, "The Direction of Technological Change: Inducement Mechanisms and Focusing Devices," Economic Development and Cultural Change, 17, no. 1 (1969), 1-24; idem, "Factors Affecting the Diffusion of Technology," Explorations in Economic History, 10 (Fall 1972), 7- 28.

8Eric Dardel, La Peche Harenguiere en France: Etude d'historie &onomique et sociale (Paris, 1941), p. 153. Ysbrand N' Ypma, Geschiedenis van de Zuiderzeevisserij (Amsterdam, 1962), p. 40. Van der Wee, Growth of the Antwerp Market, vol. I, p. 278.

9Gerard Doorman, "Het Haringkaken en Willem Beukels," Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 69 (1956), 373. Luijpen, De Invloed, pp. 37-39, 61-73.

258 Unger

lied on brokers for financing and marketing, all for about 5 percent of gross income. By the mid-fifteenth century the brokers were becoming owners and operators of ships as well. They were merchants with an inter- est in more assured supplies of preserved fish. They usually divided the functions in a partnership, one partner acting as broker-merchant and an- other as skipper. Other merchants, ship chandlers, and even individuals with no direct connection with fishing could and did invest in the boats and their supplies. The status of the fishermen changed, too, from being owner-operators of boats to being wage laborers. The trend toward con- centration of capital and of marketing in the hands of a smaller number of men continued in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Ownership was vested increasingly in the hands of greater merchants in the large ports on rivers and inland seas with international trading connections.10 After about 1600, financing was subjected to even greater specialization. In- creasingly, single fish merchants replaced partnerships supplying all of the capital as impersonal investors lost interest in the herring fishery. At the same time the international herring traders became more interested in gaining control over supplies." The seventeenth-century Dutch fish mer- chant pressed vertical integration to the point where he supplied all the capital and owned the product from the time it was caught, through proc- essing and shipment, until it was sold to the final consumer.

Such concentration was not common in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It occurred in the Duch herring fishery for a number of reasons. Falling capital costs-the average herring boat cost less over time-and rising merchant incomes combined to put ownership of the vessels within reach. By owning the boats and paying a wage to fishermen, merchants took the risk of failure into their own hands. But with the catch rising, risks were falling. The merchants effectively appropriated any rent which the fishermen might have earned. There were advantages to extending in- vestment into production and also good reasons for merchants to extend their interest in the other direction, into marketing. As the final consumer became more distant from the producer, access to knowledge of markets and prices became more critical. A well-informed merchant was in the best position to sell the catch and to get the highest possible price. The

'?Coenen Zn., Visboeck, fol. 20v. Renee Doehaerd, "La Genese d'une entreprise maritime: les pecheurs de Wenduine au XVe siecle," Contributions a l'Histoire Economique et Sociale, 1 (1962), 9- 25. Dardel, La Peche Harenguiere, pp. 55-56, 86-92. H. A. H. Kranenburg, "Het Visserijbedrijf van de Zijdenaars in de 15e en 16e Eeuw," Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 62 (1949), 328-32. Towns estab- lished rules to protect investors from unscrupulous skippers who might not pay them what they de- served. For example, Klaas Heeringa, Rechtsbronnen der stad Schiedam (The Hague, 1904), p. 245. Also, H. de Jager, De Middeleeuwse Keuren der Stad Brielle, p. 162, paragraphs 6, 7.

" The van Adrichems, a prominent Delft business family of the late sixteenth century, is a good example of these structural changes. Algemeen Rijksarchief, The Hague, Archief van Adrichem, 12, 13, 126, 127. H. Enno van Gelder, "Gegevens Betreffende de Haringvisscherij op het einde der 16de Eeuw," Bijdragen en Mededeelingen van het Historisch Genootschap, 32 (1911), 1-62, publishes 3 of the 29 surviving accounts of the van Adrichems' herring fishery ventures. Kranenburg, De Zeevissche- rij, pp. 61-71, 117-25.

Dutch Herring, Technology, and International Trade 259

work on land, the repacking of the herring, was important to the quality of the final product. Having a resident merchant who was in a position to organize and oversee that work was necessary for the success of the entire operation, from catching to selling the fish. Above all, though, the herring industry was subject to integration because it was a transforming industry relying on imported raw materials and on overseas markets. Greater mer- chants dominated the industry because they had access to information about and control over the prices and supply of inputs and of output.

Improvements in equipment for the herring fishery were made mainly in the principal capital good, the boat. Low Countries shipbuilders around 1400 developed the herring buss, a vessel specifically suited for use in the deep-sea fishery. Herring busses were much more efficient than the small, flat-bottomed, keelless boats of the coastal fishery. Busses, pur- pose-built for the herring fishery, were certainly in widespread use in Hol- land in the 1440s. They were large enough to survive North Sea storms and to carry all the necessary gear including the big nets and the casks. There was space on board for men to work at gutting and packing the fish. Over time, builders modifed the buss so that by the early sixteenth century it was a three-masted vessel with sharply curved bows. There was a full deck with cover for the crew and for the empty and full casks. A ship with a relatively high ratio of length to breadth is better able to keep pressure on a long drag net when fishing, so busses were designed with higher ratios-usually about 4.5:1-than other seagoing ships.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the buss underwent signifi- cant changes, making it even more efficient. The flat stern was replaced with a rounded one which increased the ships' manageability. The three sails, one on each mast, were orignally square and remained so until early in the eighteenth century when rigging changed completely. The three masts were reduced to two, and one of those carried a fore-and-aft sail which needed fewer men to handle it. In general, herring busses were highly durable, lasting on average more than twice as long as cargo ships of similar size. A cross-section of the hull near the center would give the impression of an oblong rectangle with the corners not quite square. That shape and the high ratio of length to width gave the buss sizable carrying capacity for its length compared to similar boats. Carrying capacity grew over time as well. In the early fifteenth century busses were probably about the same size as coastal craft, but by the sixteenth century busses of 60 tons were not uncommon. The maximum feasible size was about 200 tons, and in the late sixteenth century busses of about 140 tons were typi- cal. In the seventeenth century, however, builders and fishermen found that 60 tons and lengths of less than 20 meters overall were optimal. The smaller vessel cost less to build and much less to operate since the crew was only about 13 men instead of between 18 and 30. The change to smaller busses may have also been a result of increased specialization in shipping, with busses used exclusively for fishing and not carrying cargo

260 Unger

in the off-season. While the ability to earn in alternative employment may have eased the adoption of the buss at the outset, by about 1600 the type was fully job-specific. The increasing efficiency of the buss contributed to the greater effectiveness of Dutch fishermen going after North Sea her- ring. The Dutch government demonstrated its recognition of the contribu- tion of the buss design by consistently prohibiting the export of busses.'2

Political institutions emerged to provide protection for herring fish- ermen because the busses, being equipped solely as fishing boats, were highly vulnerable to attack. In the fifteenth century herring fishermen or- ganized convoys for mutual protection, and they fitted out vessels to de- fend the convoys. By the 1440s town governments were cooperating in the convoying of fishing vessels from the coastal provinces of the Low Coun- tries. By the mid-sixteenth century the government of the Low Countries had assumed responsibility for supplying protection for the herring fleet, assessing taxes, and administering and paying for warships doing convoy duty.'3 Convoying continued under the Dutch Republic and became much better organized. The attacks of Dunkirk privateers and the increas- ing capabilities of defending warships broke down residual opposition to convoys and convoy charges. In the seventeenth century Dutch convoys were effective against most privateers and enemy warships, except in cer- tain wars and at certain times. Convoys served a valuable purpose: they allowed Dutch fishermen to range widely without as much fear of attack and they allowed shipbuilders to construct even more job-specific fishing vessels.

Government in the Low Countries also developed an elaborate set of regulations governing all phases of the production of herring. The legisla- tion was directed largely at maintaining the quality of the domestic prod- uct. The body of rules first began to develop in certain port towns, and in

I2Jan van Beylen, Schepen van de Nederlanden Van de late middeleeuwen tot het einde van de 1 7e eeuw (Amsterdam, 1970), pp. 135-41. The earliest trustworthy illustration of a herring buss dates from 1504 or 1540. The change from a flat to a rounded stern on larger busses has been dated to be- tween 1600 and 1650. Nicholaes Witsen, Architectura Navalis et Regimen nauticum ... 2nd ed. (Am- sterdam, 1690), pp. 186-87. Johannes E. Tillema, "Ontwikkeling van de Nederlandsche Haring- visscherij in den Loop der Eeuwen," Het Nederlandsche Zeewezen, 16 (1917), 66-67. Kranenburg, De Zeevisscherij, pp. 15-18, 56-58, 200-01. J. Ploeg, "Speurtocht naar Haringbuizen," Mededeelingen van de Nederlandse Vereniging voor Zeegeschiedenis, 25 (1972), 25-31. Two-masted busses apparently ex- isted as early as the sixteenth century but did not dominate the three-masted type until after 1700. Coenen Zn., Visboeck, said that busses of his day could land 30-36 lasts of herring, a last being made up of fourteen casks each containing about 900 fish.

13 Roger Degryse, "De Omvang van Vlaanderens haring- en zoutevisbedrijf op het einde van het Frans-Bourgondisch conflict (1482)," Acadimie de Marine de Belgique, Communications, 15 (1963), 37-38. Rudolf HApke, Niederlandische Akten und Urkunden zur Geschichte der Hanse und zur Deuts- chen Seegeschichte (Munich, 1913-1923), vol. 1, #14, #115, #628. Algemeen Rijksarchief, The Hague, Archief van de Rekenkamer der Domeinen van Holland, 4990, is an account, dated 1523, for the fitting out of 11 warships for protection of herring boats. Roger Degryse, "De Konvooieering van de Vlaamsche visschersvloot in de l5de en de l6de eeuw," Bijdragen voor de Geschiedenis der Neder- landen, 2 (1948), 1-24. Roger Degryse, "Het tucht- en politiereglement voor de Hollands-Vlaamse krijgsvloot van buiskonvooiers van 1547," Acadimie de Marine de Belgique, Communications, 15 (1963), 17-30.

Dutch Herring, Technology, and International Trade 261

1424 the province of Holland started its regulation of the herring catch, salting, packing, and the size of casks. Apparently, governments were of- ten inspired to greater regulation by complaints from overseas;'4 thus the rise in regulation after 1424 was partly attributable to the growth of her- ring exports. In 1519 Charles V issued the first general law dealing with the entire Low Countries herring fishery. The law, which continued in force with minor changes into the nineteenth century, subjected the fish- ery for the first time to one undivided authority.

After the Revolt the States of Holland carried on the policy, leaving in- tact a standing committee, first set up in 1567, of representatives from the major producing towns. The committee, the College Van Commissarissen van de Groote Visscheriy, was originally intended by the States to advise lawmakers on the best legislation for the herring fishery. By 1600, though, the committee had acquired the power to lay down laws limiting the oper- ation of the deep-sea fishery, and it used that power to systematize the va- riety of existing rules. The frequently expanded legislation dealt largely with fixing precise dates for the fishing season and preventing the use of inferior materials in packing. The committee was also responsible for or- ganizing convoys, paid for by a tax on salt imports. Although producers were independent, each of the many individual firms was subject to the precise rules of the College. Moreover, each producing town took on the job of enforcing those regulations, and so surveillance was close. Size of casks and the minimum weight of fish per cask were fixed, as was the vol- ume of salt used in packing. Casks had to be branded by inspectors, the brand serving to differentiate Dutch from other herring. The College met annually at Delft at the start of the herring season and issued licenses to busses. A boat could not go out for herring without this license; thus, reg- ulation effectively controlled production. The College combined rules to dominate European markets and manipulate production and price, as best it could, to the advantage of all Dutch producers. To do that it forced the producers to act in consort, like one producer."5 Regulation certainly lim- ited the scope of activity for Dutch fishermen but it enabled them to com- mand a higher price for their herring than could competitors.

Essentially a federation of producers' representatives, the College tried

'4Rijksarchief in Noord-Holland, Verzamling aanwinsten, L. 504, fols. 99r-lOOr, is a set of rules established by Duke Philip for the herring fishery, both deep-sea and in inland waters. J. A. Fruin, De Oudste Rechten der Stad Dordrecht en van het Baljuwschap van Zuidholland (The Hague, 1882), vol. II, #229, is a town ordinance on herring selling and packing dating from 1494. Heeringa, Rechtsbron- nen, pp. 232-50, is a town ordinance on the proper practice of commanders of herring boats and on packing and salting the herring dating from 1434. S. Haak, "Brielle als vrije en bloeinde Handelsstad in de l5de eeuw," Bijdragen voor Vaderlandsche Geschiedenis en Oudheidkunde, 4th ser., 6 (1907), 36- 37.

1s The government of the Netherlands began its first tentative regulation of the herring fishery in 1509. Nelly Gottschalk, Fischereigewerbe und Fischhandel der niederlandischen Gebiete im mittelalter (Bad W6rishofen, 1927), pp. 16-19. J. Travis Jenkins, The Herring and the Herring Fisheries (London, 1927), pp. 68-75. Kranenburg, De Zeevisscherij, pp. 73-79, 151-57. Tillema, "Ontwikkeling," 15 (1916), pp. 348-49, 360-63, 371-72; and 16 (1917), 19-20.

262 Unger

to keep poor herring or poorly cured herring off the market. Its legislation prevented Dutch producers from doing damage to their markets through either overproduction or gaining a poor reputation.'6 Restrcting supplies meant indirectly raising prices, but the market for herring was less sensi- tive to increases in price than it was to decreases in quality. The College on many occasions made rulings about ventjagers, fast ships sent out with the fleet to rush back the first catch which was loaded directly on board from herring busses. Such regulation affected only a very small percent- age of the total herring catch; however, the concern over the dates when herring for the vent~agers was taken is another illustration of the regulat- ors' consuming interest in quality control.'7

The technical changes in equipment, methods, and institutions over the fifteenth and sixteenth centures were the basis for the strong commercial position and the relatively sizable output of the Dutch herring fishery at the beginning of the Republican period. The change in technology con- tributed to and in part induced the long-term rise in output and the long- term rise in exports, which culminated in the record catches and sales of the first half of the seventeenth century.

II

The peak of Dutch herring output and of exports coincided with the peak in Dutch trade to the Baltic. It is difficult to estimate the maximum level of the herring catch. Various contemporary guesses, usually made in the context of polemics, are highly suspect, and official returns are few. All data, however, point to a rise in the number of herring busses and a rise in total production of cured herring from the sixteenth through the early seventeenth century.'8 In the 1630s and 1640s, the fleet of some 500 busses annually caught an average of about 50 lasts of herring each, that is, in their two or, more commonly, three voyages. Total output was then

16 The same goal of quality control to satisfy export markets was recognized in Lubeck regulations of the Scania and other fisheries of 1576. Dietrich Schafer, Das Buch des Lubeckischen Vogts auf Schonen, 2nd ed. (Lubeck, 1927), pp. 132-34.

17 Regulation of ventjagers has certainly been too much emphasized by historians. A. R. Michell, "The European Fisheries in Early Modem History," The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, vol. V (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 152-53. Van Beylen, Schepen, p. 139. Tillema, "Ontwikkeling," 16 (1917), 3-4. Hapke, Niederlandische Akten, vol. II, #1032.

18 The long-term trend was interrupted by the Revolt and the attacks of the Sea Beggars. For a list of overestimates see Hermann Watjen, "Zur Statistik der hollIndischen Heringsfischerei im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert," Hansisches Geschichtsblatter, 28 (1910), 131-32. A 1476 government document in- cludes a figure of 250 for the number of busses in Holland, Zeeland, and Friesland. Kranenburg, "Het Visserijbedrijf," p. 327. An official estimate of 1552 put the buss fleet of Holland at 300 vessels. Hapke, Niederldndische Akten, vol. I, #628. The number was larger when the provinces of Zeeland and Flanders were added, and so the estimate of a fleet of 700 busses for the entire Netherlands in the late sixteenth century seems just possible. Brulez, "De zoutinvoer," pp. 183-84. Also Degryse, "Het tucht- en politiereglement," p. 18. Estimates by contemporaries in the early seventeenth century of a buss fleet of 2000 or more were clearly inflated. The figure of 500 for the province of Holland alone was much nearer the mark. The best modem calculations on herring output are those of Kranenburg, De Zeevisscherij, pp. 25-43. Unfortunately, he limited his estimates to the province of Holland.

Dutch Herring, Technology, and International Trade 263

at least 25,000 lasts, or more than 32,500 metric tons. Holland fishermen in good years caught and cured better than 200,000,000 herring, which may well have been about one-half the catch of all European herring fish- eries."9 Output, the number of herring busses, and the average catch per buss all fell after about 1650. In the eighteenth century in general the catch was about 6000 lasts annually.

The ports of the Baltic littoral constituted the largest single market for Dutch cured herring. Exports to Eastern Europe began in the fifteenth century, and about 1500 half the herring imported into the port of Gdansk came from Holland.20 The volume increased over time. Betweeen 1562 and 1657 the average annual import of Dutch herring into the Baltic was 5415 lasts. The best years for exporters were from 1600 to 1629, when an average of 8245 lasts of herring entered the Sound in Dutch ships. The Netherlands produced about 82 percent of all herring shipped into the Baltic from Western Europe in the century ending in 1660. About 75 per- cent of the total went in Dutch ships. Dutch producers reached the maxi- mum in 1602, when they sent more than 12,000 lasts of herring into the Baltic. The herring was consumed in Baltic ports or shipped inland along the rivers of Poland and Russia. On average, some 11 percent of the her- ring that entered the Baltic in the first half of the seventeenth century found its way up the Vistula as far as Warsaw.2'

While Baltic markets took about 40 percent of Dutch herring produc- tion, other export markets absorbed about the same amount. Cologne and the Upper Rhine Valley was long an important market for cured fish. So, too, was the North Sea coast of Germany, which took about 20 percent of the total catch. Despite the competition from local fishermen, Dutch ship- pers were even successful in exporting cured herring to ports in Nor- mandy, whence it presumably went on to Paris. In the eighteenth century, however, production and exports fell. The Baltic declined as a destination for Dutch herring as early as the 1660s.22 The domestic market never took

19 Michell, "The European Fisheries," pp. 148-49, 155. Employment in the herring fishery in North Holland alone at the peak was some 3500. Adriaen M. van der Woude, Het Noordkwartier, een re- gionaal historisch onderzoek in de demografisch en economische geschiedenis van westelijk Nederland van de late middeleeuwen tot het begin van de negentiende eeuw (Wageningen, 1972), p. 408. A figure of 10,000 employees for the entire Republic is probably low. Still the total was less than 2 percent of the labor force.

20 Werner Bohnke, "Der Binnenhandel des Deutschen Ordens in Preussen und seine Beziehung zum Aussenhandel um 1400," Hansische Geschichtsblatter, 80 (1962), 27. Victor Lauffer, "Danzigs Schiffs- und Waarenverkehr am Ende des XV. Jahrhunderts," Zeitschrift des Westpreussischen Ges- chichtsvereins, 38 (1894), p. 44. Klaus Spading, Holland und die Hanse im 15. Jahrhundert. Zur Prob- lematik des uberganges vom Feudalismus zum Kapitalismus (Weimar, 1973), pp. 50-5 . Haak, "Brielle," pp. 40-43. Gottschalk, Fischereigewerbe und Fischhandel, pp. 39-42.

21 Willem S. Unger, "De Sonttabellen," Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 41 (1926), 144. Nina E. Bang and Knud Korst, eds., Tabeller over Skibsfart og Varetransport gennem Oresund, 1498-1783 (Copen- hagen, 1906-1953). Compare Bang with Honorata Obuchowska-Pysiowa, Handel Wislany W Pierws- zej Polowie XVII Wieku (Warsaw, 1964), pp. 16-17, tables 44 45. There are a number of years for which data are missing.

22 Dardel, La Peche Harenguiere, pp. 41, 154-55. While the Dutch may have sent as much as 10,000 lasts of herring to Rouen each year around 1600-and the estimate appears high-that was still only

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a large proportion of the herring: even at the height of the fishery, only about 20 percent of total annual output, or at most 5000 lasts, stayed in Holland. The principal market for Dutch pickled herring both at home and overseas was always individuals of relatively high income.

The records of the tolls levied on ships passing through the Sound, the strait between modern Sweden and Denmark, indicate an increase in the already high level of Dutch exports of herring to the Baltic in the last years of the sixteenth century. Figure 1, giving five-year moving averages, eliminates the short-term fluctuations and shows the tendency toward a high level of herring shipment into the Baltic in Dutch vessels in the first half of the seventeenth century. Equally, it shows the decline after 1650 and then the relative decline and stability at a low level in the eighteenth century. That rise in exports in the late sixteenth century is reflected not only in the Sound dues but in the toll records of ports such as Kalinin- grad, Elbl~g, and Gdansk, and in the records of river tolls charged at Warsaw.23

As much as two-thirds of the Dutch tonnage going into the Baltic was unused, for ships went in ballast to Polish ports to fetch grain. Salt and herring were the two principal goods used to fill entering ships' holds, even if only partly. Because the shipment of grain out of the Baltic could pay for the cost of the entire voyage, as it did in the majority of the cases, the marginal cost of shipping herring to Baltic ports could approach zero on any single voyage. The only costs that had to be covered were loading, unloading, and administration.24

III

The boom in Dutch herring shipments coincided with the entry of Bal- tic grain into Mediterranean markets. The harvest collapses in southern

about one-fifth of total imports by all shippers into that Norman port. Kranenburg, De Zeevisscherij, pp. 35, 53, 133-35. Hamburg in the third and fourth decades of the seventeenth century took 3500 to 5000 lasts of herring each year from Holland. Already by the second half of the seventeenth century (1661-1700) the Baltic took only 12-20 percent of Dutch output. H. A. H. Kranenburg, "De Haring- export naar het Oostzeegebied in de 18e eeuw," Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 72 (1959), 257-58.

23 P. H. Winkelman, Nederlandse Rekeningen in de Tolregisters van Koningsbergen 1588-1602 (The Hague, 1971). Horst Kempas, Seeverkehr und Pfundzoll im Herzogtum Preussen. Ein Beitrag zur Ge- schichte des Seehandels in 16. and 17. Jahrhundert (Bonn, 1964), p. 369. Franciscus B.M. Tangelder, Nederlands Rekeningen in de Pondtolregisters van Elbing, 1585-1602 (The Hague, 1972). In 1594, 16 of 85 Dutch ships entered carrying herring and in 1602 it was 10 of 55, but the average cargo had almost doubled in those years to 21.4 lasts per ship. From 1605 to 1651 the annual average of herring passing Warsaw was 965.3 lasts, or almost twice the annual average of 504.5 lasts which passed the nearby Wloclowek customs house in the previous century. Obuchowska-Pysiowa, Handel, p. 210.

24 Wladyslaw Rusifiski, "The Role of Polish Territories in the European Trade in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries," Studia Historiae Oeconomicae, 3 (1968), 123-25. Aksel E. Christensen, Dutch Trade to the Baltic about 1600 (The Hague, 1941), pp. 369-79. The records of the van Ad- richems of Delft confirm the expectation of low shipping costs for herring going to the Baltic. Dutch shippers even carried bricks and roofing tiles into the Baltic to fill their holds. The decrease in salt shipments from the 1590s to the 1630s is in part explained by the increase in local production near Gdansk.

Dutch Herring, Technology, and International Trade 267

Europe in the 1590s brought Dutch shippers and merchants to Iberia and to Italy carrying cargoes of rye and also of wheat, grain which originally came from the farms of Poland. Landowners there must have noticed an increase in their incomes. And it certainly would appear to be more than a coincidence that Polish merchants and landowners should increase their purchases of herring just at the time when their incomes were rising from growth in their sales of grain.

To test the hypothesis that the level of Baltic herring imports depended on the income from the sale of grain, calculations were made of the grain sales revenue earned by Polish exporters and also of the payments for her- ring made by Polish buyers. The revenue from grain sales was estimated by multiplying the volume of rye shipped out of the Baltic by the price of rye at Gdansk. Rye was by far the biggest earner for Baltic exporters, with wheat in second place. A similar calculation was made to estimate the rev- enue earned from wheat exports. For expenditures on herring, the volume of the fish passing eastward through the Sound was multiplied by deliv- ered prices in Gdansk. Because Gdansk was the most important port in the Baltic for goods brought from the West, its prices give a reliable in- dication of general price movements throughout the region.25 These esti- mates served for making a preliminary test of connections between short- term movements of grain and herring. For all cases tested, prices were converted to quantities of pure silver. Included were all years between 1550 and 1780 for which a complete set of data exists. The dates cover the entire period of growth, stability, and decline in herring exports.

The Polish balance of payments for all goods and services swung into surplus sometime in the second half of the fifteenth century and remained there until the first half of the seventeenth century. At that point sur- pluses not only became the rule but rose dramatically with the rise in grain exports. Moreover, in the seventeenth century it appears that grain sales in part determined Polish demand for luxury goods; for example, cloth from Western Europe. Baltic grain producers did take out their in- creased earnings in cash, in silver and coin, but they also used their greater power to obtain goods, especially foods to diversify their diets.26

25 The data on goods shipped through the Sound are from Bang and Korst, eds., Tabeller over Skibsfart. For Gdansk prices, see Julian Pelc, Ceny W Gddnsku w XVI i XVII Wieku (Lw6w, 1937), pp. 64-65, and Tadeusz Furtak, Ceny W Gddnsku WLatach 1701-1815 (Lw6w, 1935), p. 152. On the importance of Gdansk, see Stanislaw Hoszowski, "The Polish Baltic Trade in the 15th-18th Cen- turies," Poland at the XIth International Congress of Historical Sciences in Stockholm (Warsaw, 1960), pp. 139-40, 148. Rusifiski, "Role of Polish Territories," pp. 120-21; and Unger, "De Sonttabellen," pp. 147-48.

26 Marian Malowist, "The Economic and Social Development of the Baltic Countries from the Fif- teenth to the Seventeenth Centuries," Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 12 (Dec. 1959), 184-87. An- toni M4czak, "The Balance of Polish Sea Trade with the West, 1565-1646," Scandinavian Economic History Review, 18, no. 2 (1970), 118-21. Henryk Samsonowicz, Untersuchungen uber das Danziger Burgerkapital in der Zweiten Halfte des 15. Jahrhunderts (Weimar, 1969), pp. 31-35. Astrid Friis, "The Two Crises in the Netherlands in 1557," Scandinavian Economic History Review, 1, no. 2 (1953), 200- 11. Maria Bogucka, "Die Bedeutung des Ostseehandels fur die Aussenhandelsbilanz Polens in der Er-

268 Unger

The results of comparing grain revenues with herring costs do not in- dicate a strong linear relationship between the two. While results are typi- cally significant, the coefficients of determination are low.27 This suggests that the success of Poles in finding grain markets was not the predominant factor in determining the volume of Dutch herring exports to the Baltic. Balance of payments figures derived from prices declared at the Sound show that the value of herring imported into the Baltic was not a consis- tent proportion of the value of wheat and rye exported from the two ma- jor ports of Gdansk and Elbl4g.8 That evidence supports the same con- clusion: the sharp rise in Dutch herring sales to the Baltic late in the sixteenth century and the high level of production and exports in the first half of the seventeenth cannot be explained by the boom in grain sales in the same period. Further confirmation is offered by a comparison of the profits to be made in the Iberian grain trade with total expenditure on herring in Baltic ports.29 Greater profits in the grain trade did not neces- sarily lead to greater herring purchases by the most likely buyers, the landowners, who appropriated the greater part of those grain profits.

The results can in part be explained by difficulties with the data. Smug- gling renders the official returns of volume inaccurate, and probably in- consistently so. For the sake of simplicity the assumption is that all trade between Eastern and Western Europe went on through the Sound, which

sten Halfte des 17. Jahrhunderts," Der Aussenhandel Ostmitteleuropeas 1450-1650, Ingomar Bog, ed. (Cologne, 1971), pp. 47-50. In the first half of the seventeenth century contemporaries complained about a flight of money from Poland to buy foreign luxuries. The conclusion made then was that there was a balance of payments deficit rather than a surplus, which seems the more likely ex- planation. The Netherlands ran an overall balance of payments deficit in the late sixteenth century. W. Brulez, "The Balance of Trade in the Netherlands in the Middle of the 16th Century," Acta His- toriae Neerlandica, IV (1970), pp. 45-48. One writer claims that the Netherlands bought twice as much in value from the Baltic as it sold. Christensen, Dutch Trade, p. 367.

27 V is volume and P is price. The commodities are herring (H), rye (Y), and wheat (W). D in- dicates shipments in Dutch bottoms, T total shipments. N indicates price in the Netherlands, G price in Gdansk. For VHD PHG = f(VyD PyGc), N = 163 R @ .05 = .15 R2 = .31. That is, for a sample = 163, the absolute value of R should exceed R @ .05 - .15 in order to reject the hypothesis at the 5 percent level of significance. The results are not as good using data for all herring shipped into the Baltic and all rye shipped out.

VHT PHG = f (VYT PYG) N = 166 R @ .05 = .15 R2 = .20.

The addition of wheat shipments also does nothing to improve results.

VHT PHG = fl(VYT PYC,) + (VWT PWG)J N = 46 R @ .05 = .29 R2 = .01.

28 Mgczak, "Polish Sea Trade," pp. 135-36. Using his figures for prices of goods declared at the Sound and the volume of goods going in each direction the following ratios of the value of herring imports to the value of rye and wheat exports are derived:1565 .040; 1575 .012; 1585 .072; 1595 .105; 1605 .195; 1615 .154; 1625 .233; 1635 .074; 1646 .185. The figures for those representative years show no consistency. The values for grain exports are for the two ports of Gdansk and Elbl4g.

29 N= 31 R @ .05 = .36 R2 = .03. The data are for proifts in the Iberia wheat trade including those made from agio or disagio of the ducat generated by Maria Bogucka, "Merchants' Profits in Gdansk Foreign Trade in the First Half of the 17th Century," Acta Poloniae Historica, 23 (1971), 79- 82. Idem, "Amsterdam and the Baltic in the First Half of the Seventeenth Century," Economic His- tory Review, 2nd ser., 26 (Aug. 1973), 439-47.

Dutch Herring, Technology, and International Trade 269

of course was not true. Poland carried on an extensive trade through Moldavia with the Black Sea and Turkey; its deficit in that trade affected the power to buy goods, like herring, from the West. Consumption pat- terns changed in Poland over time. It may be true that up to about 1660 Baltic buyers had to pay cash, usually silver coins, for goods brought from the West, but by that date they certainly could use a more complex sys- tem. The ability to negotiate bills of exchange and to settle international debts multilaterally would have tended to undermine any direct relation- ship between exports and imports, and especially on any single trade route.30

The sale of grain surpluses by Polish landowners in the short run ex- plains only a small proportion of the performance of Dutch exporters in finding a market in the Baltic for domestically produced herring. Addi- tional explanation is provided by the volume rather than the value of Pol- ish exports. The proportion of Dutch ships entering the Baltic in ballast fell from two thirds to less than one half by the end of the 1620s. Herring exports certainly made an important contribution to that shift. The corre- lation between the volume of herring shipped into the Baltic and the vol- ume of grain shipped out is as strong as any of the relationships between revenues.3' Not surprisingly, the relationship for all herring going into the Baltic and all rye being exported was not as highly correlated.32 Figure 1 seems to confirm that some long-run connection did exist between the tonnage available going to the Baltic and herring exports from Western Europe. While the results leave a great deal unexplained, they nonetheless indicate that volume was as significant a determinant of Dutch herring ex- ports as the value of Baltic grain sales.

IV

The price of herring or, more specifically, the profit which could be made in the herring trade seems to offer a fuller explanation for the vol-

30Antoni M4czak, "Der Polnische Getreideexport und das Problem der Handelsbilanz (1557- 1647)," Der Aussenhandel Ostmitteleuropas 1450-1650, Ingomar Bog, ed. (Cologne, 1971), pp. 35-45. Bogucka, "Die Bedeutung," pp. 52-55. Hoszowski, "The Polish Baltic Trade," pp. 123-27. Jacob M. Price, "Multilateralism and/or Bilateralism: The Settlement of British Trade Balances with 'The North', c. 1700," Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 14 (Dec., 1961), 254-74. John Sperling, "The In- ternational Payments Mechanism in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries," Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 14 (April 1962), 446-68.

3' N = 207 R @ .05 = .14 R2 = .31 for the volume of rye shipped out of the Baltic in Dutch vessels with the volume of herring shipped into the Baltic in Dutch ships. Limited to the period 1600- 1780, the result is slightly better. N = 173 R @ .05 = .15 R2 = .34. It was the rye shipped out of the Baltic in any given year that was correlated with herring shipments into the Baltic, not rye exports for the previous year. Herring shipments depended more on tonnage available at a given point in time. For herring shipments compared with rye shipments out of the Baltic for the previous year, where data for both were available and using only 1600-1780, N = 169 R @ .05 = .15 R2 = .24.

32 For all cases, N = 210 R @ .05 = .14 R2 = .14. For 1600-1780, N = 175 R @ .05 = .15 R2 = .18. The addition of wheat to the quantity of grain sent out of the Baltic not only does not im- prove the correlation but it actually decreases the coefficient of determination. For all cases, that is 1550-1780, VTH = f(VTY + VTW), N = 210 R @ .02 = .16 R' = .16.

270 Unger

ume of Dutch herring exports. Presumably, Dutch merchants sent herring overseas because they expected to make money. Profit figures are even more difficult to generate than those for revenue. One estimate for the early fifteenth century suggests that profits for Dutch merchants deliv- ering herring in Prussia were about 60 percent of the sale price. A more sophisticated set of estimates for the first half of the seventeenth century shows consistent profits from selling Dutch-produced herring in Gdansk.33

TABLE I PRICES OF HERRING IN AMSTERDAM AND GDANSK AND PROFITS IN HERRING

TRADE ON THAT ROUTE (in grams of silver/last)

Profit A verage A verage price in Other price in in grams as %

Year Amsterdam Freight costs Gdansk silver total cost

1631 1226 92.52 211 2025 495 + 32 1632 1169 92.52 228 2268 778 + 52 1634 1645 61.68 249 2293 337 + 17 1638 1624 66.82 253 2349 405 + 21 1640 1157 102.80 234 2349 855 + 57 1641 1473 102.80 214 1944 219 + 12 1643 1408 102.80 218 2025 296 + 17 1645 1134 113.08 207 2025 571 + 39 1646 1097 113.08 167 1539 162 + 12 1648 853 77.10 125 1134 79 + 7

Average: 420 + 27

a Charges in Amsterdam about 1.5 percent; Sound toll about 2.5 percent; customs and charges at Gdansk about 8 percent; total of 4 percent of the purchase price + 8 percent of the selling price. Source: Bogucka, "Merchants' Profits," pp. 84-85.

For other commodities the level of profits seems to have affected the volume of goods shipped. For example, there is some indication that the quantity of rye shipped out of the Baltic was related to the difference be- tween the price paid by merchants for rye in Gdansk and what they could sell it for in Amsterdam. In whaling a similar situation prevailed, with the number of ships sent out being closely related to the price of whale oil.34

Apparently the same was the case in the herring fishery, whose structure

33 Bogucka found herring to be the most profitable commodity shipped from West to East, and she probably underestimated profitability. She used Amsterdam prices for full herring which is of higher quality and produced later in the year than matie (matjesharing), for which prices are also available. The revised table here uses prices for matie on the Amsterdam bourse from Posthumus, Inquiry, vol. I, pp. 88-90. Duties and taxes are adjusted to reflect the different herring prices. Bogucka's estimates of freight charges are probably too high as well since she assumes that herring was charged the same as grain going in the other direction, which was not true. For problems with using Posthumus' Am- sterdam herring prices see Kranenburg, De Zeevisscherij, pp. 193-95. He suggests that full herring prices are even suspect, and that they may not reflect the true cost of herring when it left Dutch ports. It is possible that the errors are consistent, however. Bohnke, "Der Binnenhandel," pp. 55-56.

3" Maczak, "Polish Sea Trade," pp. 115-16. Jacobus R. Bruijn and C. A. Davids, "Jonas Vrij De Nederlandse Walvisvaart, in het Bijzonder de Amsterdamse, in de Jaren 1640-1664," Economisch- en Sociaal-Historisch Jaarboek, 38 (1975), 150-52.

Dutch Herring, Technology, and International Trade 271

resembled the whaling industry's. The difference between the price of her- ring in Gdansk and the price of matie on the Amsterdam bourse when compared with the shipments of herring in Dutch vessels into the Baltic shows a coefficient of determination of .43.35 Charges that Dutch herring exporters were dumping, that is, using profits from the grain trade to off- set losses in herring sales, do not appear to have been valid, and certainly not for the seventeenth century.36 It seems that Dutch traders sent herring to the Baltic, and in the quantities selected, because of the profit to be made. Since the sample is small and there are data problems, one cannot place great confidence in the correlation; however, the trend in herring prices from the sixteenth through the eighteenth century is clear.

03500

-3000

-2500

-2000

500

FIGURE 2

HERRING PRICES IN GDANSK IN GRAMS OF SILVER, 1550-1780

Source: Peic, Ceny W Gdahsku, and Furtak, Ceny W Gdahsku.

The price of herring in Gdansk rose in the 1590s to well above the level for the previous two decades. This was followed by yet another rise in the 1620s and 1630s. Prices remained at the same relatively high level until the 1670s, when a long-term decline set in. Presumably herring prices in

35 For VHD = f(PHOG-PHA) where the subscript A refers to the price in Amsterdam, N - 61 R @ .05 - .25. As expected, there is no significant correlation between the Gdansk-Amsterdam price dif- ferential and the total quantity of herring shipped into the Baltic; that is, VTH f(PH-PHA), N -

63 R @ .05 =.25 R2 = .03. 36 Michell, "The European Fisheries," p. 177. Little correlation was found between the rye price

difference in the Netherlands and Gdansk and the quantity of herring entering the Baltic in Dutch bottoms, which also contradicts the suggestion that Dutch traders were dumping herring; that is, VHD - f(PYN-PYG), N = 203 R @ .05 = .14 R2 _ .08.

272 Unger

Amsterdam rose in the years around 1600 but, unfortunately, no data from the Bourse exist for those years. Amsterdam prices did fall in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, though not as far or as fast as did Gdansk prices. That squeezed profits in the trade and moreover made selling herring at home more attractive. The success of Dutch exporters, it seems, depended on the absence of any alternate lower-cost suppliers. The rise in prices at the end of the sixteenth century coincides with a decline in the Swedish and Norwegian coastal fisheries and, in the third decade of the seventeenth century, with the final collapse of the Scania fishery. With no alternate supplies, Dutch traders seem to have been able to reap the benefits of higher prices, enjoying almost a monopoly. In the eighteenth century prices went down at the same time as the Norwegian and then the Swedish coastal fisheries revived.37 The shipments of herring through the Sound reflect the change: while in the period 1661-1720 the Dutch share of herring imports to the Baltic was still about 60 percent, for the entire period 1661-1783 the figure was only 31 percent; by the 1760s Dutch ships carried less than 10 percent of herring going into the Baltic. Scots and Scandinavians replaced the Dutch as suppliers of herring, albeit in much reduced quantities. Coastal fisheries always enjoyed the advantage of lower capital costs than the deep-sea fishery, which used large seagoing vessels. It was the greater reliability of the deep-sea fishery combined with falling costs due to technical innovation which allowed Dutch producers to overtake Scandinavian competitors and then surpass them in the fif- teenth and sixteenth centuries. The greater efficiency of the Dutch, for ex- ample, had been the cause for the shrinking of the Scania fishery from the mid-fifteenth century on. The expansion of the coastal fisheries after the 1670s was in part due to the high prices which they could get for their product, and in part to the fact that those fisheries had been neglected for so long that fish populations had been able to increase. Their competitive position was improved in the eighteenth century as Dutch herring busses became less productive, making two voyages annually instead of three, and bringing back fewer fish each year.38

The correlation of profits with herring sales in the Baltic is more appar- ent than real, however. First, the relationship between the two changed at the time of the wars of William III, that is, around 1700. To that date the price of fish delivered in Gdansk had always been greater-and by a large

37 The fall in herring prices in Gdansk in the late seventeenth century coincided with wars and po- litical crises in Poland which served to dampen demand. Hoszowski, "The Polish," pp. 119-22. Paul Simson, Geschichte der Stadt Danzig bis 1626 (Danzig, 1918-1924), vol. II, p. 500. Schafer, Das Buch, pp. xlii-ix.

38 Willem S. Unger, "Trade through the Sound in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries," Eco- nomic History Review, 2nd ser., 12 (Dec. 1959), 208-09. Kranenburg, De Zeevisscherij, pp. 204-05. Kranenburg, "De Haringexport," pp. 252-57. At least not all Dutch ports suffered from falling her- ring production. Vlaardingen and to a lesser degree Maassluis noted significant growth even if the catch per buss was falling. Witjen, "Zur Statistik," pp. 173-77. Unger, "The Netherlands Herring Fishery," pp. 350-53.

Dutch Herring, Technology, and International Trade 273

100/.

70/.

] 50~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~o/.

30 'I.

.206.

10*/.

FIGURE 3 PERCENTAGE OF HERRING SHIPPED THROUGH THE SOUND IN DUTCH SHIPS,

1562- 1780

Source: Bang and Korst, Tabeller over Skibsfart.

amount-than the price in Amsterdam. In the eighteenth century the Gdansk price was typically slightly lower than Amsterdam's. Second, the export of herring rose as Gdansk prices rose relative to Amsterdam prices, but once a great difference was reached, exports varied widely. The two patterns suggest not one but two relationships, one for the seventeenth and one for the eighteenth century. Tests revealed that in fact there is no significant correlation in those two time periods between the price differ- ential and Dutch herring shipments.39 Moreover, the distribution of obser- vations contradicts the presumption of a linear relationship. Added to that, changes in herring prices from year to year showed little correlation with changes in the shipment of herring.' Herring prices were much lower in Gdansk than in Amsterdam in the 1760s and still herring went from the Netherlands to Baltic ports. In the 1670s, on the other hand, the price difference was the opposite and the volume of herring exported in

39 For 1624-1694, N = 29 R @ .05 = .37 R2 = .1 1, and for 1718-1780, N = 32 R @ .05 = .35 R2 = .20.

4 (VTH)t+ I - (VTH)t = I(PHG)t+I - (PHG)tJ where, for example, (VTH)t is the total volume of her- ring shipped out of the Baltic in year t. N = 147 R @ .05 = .16 R2 = .01.

274 Unger

Dutch ships to the Baltic was also relatively low. The confused relation- ships tends to be confirmed when other, more complete Dutch price series are used.4' Despite the evidence that there were other and more powerful factors at work, extant data show that the herring price differential be- tween Gdansk and Amsterdam was positive up to 1690 and then often negative from 1691 to 1780. The former period coincides with years of a high level of exports, while the latter period coincides with years of de- pressed production and a low level of exports.42 It cannot be shown con- clusively that price differentials were important to output or exports, but it can be shown that both were affected by production history.

V

Unquestionably the most important factor in determining herring ship- ments to the Baltic in any given year was the quantity of herring shipped in the previous year. For herring carried into the Baltic in Dutch ships, the coefficient of determination was higher than for any other relationship examined.43 The pattern is consistent and clear. Dutch traders had at their disposal extensive information about the state of the Polish market. The regular sailings, the large numbers of ships involved, the correspondence between merchants and their resident factors living in Baltic ports all created a massive supply of market intelligence for herring exporters." It was not from ignorance that exporters chose to follow the pattern of the previous year. Rather, what fixed the scope of their trading was the limita- tions of productive capacity set by the state of the industry. Capacity was in turn fixed by the weather and the availability of fish, but especially by supplies of capital, both physical and human, and the state of the art, the knowledge of techniques for the best exploitation of that capital.

By the late sixteenth century Dutch fishermen could produce pickled herring, which was generally recognized to be of the highest quality, and deliver that product to Baltic markets, in the process turning a handsome profit. The long apprenticeship of the herring fishery, the process of learn- ing-by-doing, yielded the high levels of output, the high level of exports, and the high prices and profits. Prices of inputs were under downward pressure as well, since the Dutch trading network-in part a result of the ability to produce high quality herring at competitive prices-supplied the salt, ships, cordage, nets, and so on at or below the prices paid by com- petitors. Moreover, Dutch fishermen knew how to get most from that

4' Posthumus, Inquiry, vol. II, pp. 245-52, 274-82. 42 For 1624-1690, N = 29. For 1691-1780, N = 34 and the differential was negative in 26 of the 34

cases. 43

(VHD)t = l(VHD)t-11, N = 201 R @ .05 = .14 R2 = .65. As expected, the results were not as good using all herring shipments. (VHT)t = fl(VHT)t-1], N = 205 R @ .05 = .14 R2 = 59.

" Dutch traders had factors in Baltic ports by the second half of the sixteenth century, by which time their correspondence was already extensive and regular. H. Enno van Gelder, "Zestiende- eeuwsche Koopmansbrieven," Economisch-Historisch Jaarboek, 5 (1919), 136-91. Christensen, Dutch Trade, pp. 215-16, 431-40.

Dutch Herring, Technology, and International Trade 275

equipment. Certainly the level of capital investment in the herring fishery, both fixed capital in ships and warehouses and working capital in barrels and salted and cured fish, contributed to the comparative advantage of Dutch producers. Capital came largely from the retained earnings of past voyages. It was true despite or perhaps because of the highly flexible fi- nancial arrangements in the fishery. Success in any one year was a signifi- cant determinant of production potential in the following year.

Capital investment, knowledge of markets, internal organization, and institutional arrangements all contributed to Dutch success. The com- petitive superiority of Dutch producers and exporters was a highly fragile one, however. Others could and indeed did copy Dutch curing methods and vessel types like the herring buss. Other producers could and did de- velop the necessary skills in manufacturing pickled herring of high qual- ity. That took time, as did the accumulation of profits needed to capitalize a deep-sea herring fishery. Yet the slow process of accumulation could be sped up by temporary high prices, government protection of domestic markets for domestic producers, direct government subsidies, or by the short-term collapse of Dutch production.

In France, Colbert pursued a policy of supporting domestic production. He established a company to promote technical improvement in the fish- ery and used the company as a conduit for government subsidies. A high tariff was placed on herring imports in 1664 but that was changed to a general prohibition in 1687. The latter never fully worked, and after the Peace of Utrecht in 1713 the tariff of 1664 went back into effect. The re- sult of those vain efforts to keep out Dutch herring was to raise French domestic prices and thus allow French fishermen higher earnings which facilitated a long-term rise in domestic production. By 1786 the value of the French herring catch was greater than that of the Dutch, and France imported only about 18 percent of herring consumed in the country.

England's policy was long devoted to protection and direct and indirect support of the fishing industry. The Elizabethans legislated extensively to aid the fisheries and the laws were, if anything, strengthened in the seven- teenth century. English claims to sovereignty of the seas in the reign of James I appear to have had little effect on Dutch fishing. The Navigation Acts, the first dating from 1651, placed stricter limitations on the Dutch selling herring in England. From 1726 direct subsidies, or bounties, were paid by the British government to the herring fishery.

Elsewhere, Sweden offered protection of domestic markets and subsi- dies to its herring fishermen. A company was set up to produce herring in the Dutch manner in 1745, and Frederick the Great of Prussia did the same at Emden in 1769. In each case the goal was to promote a domestic herring fishery.45 The potential for net gains in foreign exchange, amply

4 Dardel, La Peche Harenguiere, pp. 138-40, 152-58. Lawrence A. Harper, The English Navigation Laws (New York, 1939), pp. 28-31. Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, ed. Edwin Cannan (New York,

276 Unger

demonstrated by the Dutch for the better part of two centuries, were enough to convince Frederick and other monarchs of the value of a her- ring fishery. Different states had varied success with protectionist legisla- tion. Overall the policies were effective because there was a technology which could be borrowed; general prohibitions of imports, though not to- tally enforceable, raised prices for new domestic producers; and govern- ments were typically consistent in their policies toward the herring fish- ery. With all those expanding fisheries in the eighteenth century, just as with the Dutch earlier, past experience played a significant role in the growth, or decline, of total production.

In the seventeenth century Dutch herring fishermen held a virtual mo- nopoly. They could and did maximize the rent to be earned from that unique position by limiting fishing effort, and therefore production, through extensive government regulation. As with all fisheries, as indeed with all common property resources, they faced declining average product with an increase in fishing effort, the latter denoted by the number of ves- sels (Figure 4). The relationship between the two is assumed to be linear, which does not distort the results. The curves AP and MP represent aver- age product and marginal product respectively. Furthermore, it is as- sumed that the amount of fishing effort does not affect marginal and aver- age cost, which are identical and constant. This curve also subsumes the opportunity cost, that is, the income which the fishermen could earn in al- ternate employment. With a level of costs of OC, production takes place at the point where economic yield is maximized, that is, where marginal cost equals marginal product. OVd boats are then used, and a rent is earned equal to the rectangle ABCD. If the fishery is truly common prop- erty and open to all, new resources, boats, and fishermen will be attracted until the rent is eliminated. The number of boats would rise to OV, with MC equated to AP.' Through regulation the Dutch government limited domestic producers' efforts, presumably trying to maximize rent or at least to keep the number of vessels in the fishery at or below OVm. At that point marginal product would be zero and thus give what is called the maxi- mum sustained physical yield.

Producers from other countries could enter the fishery, moving fishing effort closer to OVt, but the Dutch industry could drive them out by a short-term reduction in price. The cost curve is the average for the entire herring fishery; so Dutch marginal and average costs were at or below

1937), pp. 484-88, 901-03. Smith was distressed about the net loss in gross income from the subsidy, but it seems to have been effective, directed as it was at increasing the production of herring to com- pete with the Dutch product. Staffan Hogberg, Utrikeshandel och sjofart pa 1700-talet (Stockholm, 1969), pp. 168-71. Reinhold Koser, Geschichte Friedrich des Grossens (Darmstadt, 1964), vol. III, p. 257.

4 H. Scott Gordon, "The Economic Theory of a Common Property Resource: The Fishery," Jour- nal of Political Economy, 62 (1954), 129-32. For a summary of the common property equilibrium ap- plied to a fishery see Donald G. Paterson and James Wilen, "Depletion and Diplomacy: The North Pacific Seal Hunt, 1886-1910," Research in Economic History, 2 (1977), 83-86, 118-27.

Dutch Herring, Technology, and International Trade 277

Marginal Product

Average Product

A \B

c E LID E

MC.AC

, MP jAP

0 Vd Vm Vt Number of Vessels

FIGURE 4

OC. The position of the Dutch, then, was secured not by ownership of the resource-common property is open to all-but rather by technical supe- riority, that is, lower costs, and by continuous and strict regulation of the fishery. So long as Dutch costs were lower than their competitors', they could maintain a virtual monopoly by careful marketing strategy. And so long as consumers understood the Dutch brand to indicate herring of con- sistently high quality, Dutch producers could and did command a rent.

While the potential Dutch supply curve, given their relatively lower costs, was Sd (Figure 5) they supplied herring along the curve S. Z, the quantity of herring supplied by the Dutch, corresponds to Vd (Figure 4). While all other herring suppliers suffered with a supply curve to the left of S, Dutch producers earned a rent, here equal to the rectangle VWXY. OW was the market price of the herring and OV the production cost to Dutch fishermen. But as other producers developed the necessary capital, equipment, and skills, their costs fell. Their supply curve shifted to the right, leading to a decrease in price, from OW to OU, and to an increase in output, from OZ to OT. The Dutch government and Dutch herring fishermen at that point chose not to change the old strategy of trying to maximize their rent. They might be perfectly willing to drop prices in the short run to drive competitors out of their markets, but Dutch producers were not willing to make a long-term commitment to greater fishing effort and larger volume sales at lower prices, that is, below OU. Instead they chose to maintain prices for their product at W, or even raise them above old levels. For example, in the 1670s there were complaints about the

278 Unger

quality of Dutch herring delivered in Gdansk. In response the Dutch gov- ernment made regulation of the domestic fishery even more restrictive. That move raised costs, and so the Dutch supply curve Sd tended to shift to the left. With prices going down, rents were squeezed and profits for Dutch fishermen along with their share of the market decreased. Oddly enough, continuing with a strategy that was initially designed to maximize rents not only served to decrease rents but also led to the long-run decline of the industry in the face of increasingly aggressive foreign competitors. A fall in the demand for herring in the eighteenth century-a shift in the demand curve D down and to the left-penalized Dutch producers more than others since they were trying to keep prices up. The changes in the cost position of competitors, the change in demand, and the market strat- egy of the Dutch herring fishery all contributed to the observed pattern of a sharp fall in absolute production and an even more dramatic drop in market share.

Price So So

d

II ~~~~~~~~D

0 Z T Quantity

FIGURE 5

With the entry of other producers, the fishery, taken altogether, tended to move to equate the average costs of all producers with average product, shown by E (Figure 4). Average product fell. The average return from fishing effort, that is, the catch per boat, went down. That was true espe- cially for Dutch fishermen, even though they were decreasing the number

Dutch Hering, Technology, and International Trade 279

of their boats. While Holland had about 500 herring busses in 1630, there were only a little over 200 by 1730 and 150 by 1780.47

The advantage enjoyed by the Dutch herrng fishery was destroyed by the simultaneous fall in costs for other producers and nrse in costs for Dutch fishermen. The difficulties for Dutch producers in fact started long before the eighteenth century, and well before foreign governments began protecting their own herring fishermen. Wars fought in the North Sea meant an increased danger to the highly vulnerable busses. As early as 1625 Spanish forces began extensive and determined attacks on Dutch herrng boats. From 1652 and the start of the First English War, Dutch fishermen had to face an almost constant threat of violence; at times, for their safety the government would not even let them leave port. In some years the province of Holland alone lost as many as 100 busses to pirates and privateers. The worst Dutch losses came during the wars of William III. In 1703 French warships burned the Enkhuizen herring fishing fleet in the Shetland Islands, a loss of about 100 busses in one day.48 It was that disaster and other sizable if not comparable losses that appear to have de- stroyed the fragile Dutch competitive advantage. After the restoration of peace in 1713, Dutch production and exports did rise again, but the long- term competitive edge that technology and investment in that technology had given Dutch producers was gone. With the foundation built up through the sixteenth century having been badly damaged by war losses, other Western European producers found ways to supplant Dutch pickled herring in their own and in other markets. The decline, like the rise of Dutch herring exports and output, was self-reinforcing.

4 Dardel, La Peche Harenguiere, pp. 138-58, on French attempts to replace Dutch imports with domestically produced herring. Johannes DeVries, De Economische Achteruitgang der Republiek in de Achttiende Eeuw, 2nd ed. (Leiden, 1968), pp. 137-41. Anthony Beaujon, The History of Dutch Sea Fisheries: Their Progress, Decline and Revival ... (London, 1884), p. 286. Kranenburg, De Zeevissche- rij, pp. 169-7 1, on the development of competing fisheries. On evidence for a shift in demand for her- ring in the eighteenth century, see Michell, "The European Fisheries," pp. 182-83.

48 Watjen, "Zur Statistik," pp. 142-5 1. Kranenburg, De Zeevisscherij, p. 204. Production per vessel was also subject to greater variation in war years (ibid., pp. 42-43). Jonathan I. Israel, "A Conflict of Empires: Spain and the Netherlands, 1618-1648," Past and Present, 76 (Aug. 1977), 44 48.

280

DICTIONARY OF BRITISH BUSINESS BIOGRAPHY

The Business History Unit of the London School of Economics is undertaking a six-vol- ume Dictionary of Business Biography under the editorship of Leslie Hannah and David J. Jeremy. In addition to presenting the biographies in literary form, the work will provide the basis for a data bank for a more standardized collective biography that may yield an- swers to some of the questions about entrepreneurship in Britain, such as the performance of business leaders in the creation of wealth and society's utilization of business talent. The raw data files will eventually be made available to researchers visiting the Business History Unit.

The editors invite the cooperation, in the form of contributions of raw data or finished biographies, from business, economic, and technological historians. Normal editorial practices and standards of academic journals will apply to the dictionary. Readers wishing to contribute, or who wish to obtain further information, should address Dr. D. J. Jeremy, Business History Unit, Lionel Robbins Building, 10 Portugal Street, London WC2A 2HD.

ECONOMIC HISTORY OF LEISURE AND RECREATION

At the Eighth International Economic History Congress, to be held in Budapest, Hun- gary, August 16-22, 1982, there will be a session on the Economic History of Leisure and Recreation. Papers are invited on economic and relevant social aspects. Authors should indicate whether they might be attending the Congress, but papers will be considered for presentation in absentia. For further information please contact Dr. Wray Vamplew, Eco- nomic History Discipline, The Flinders University of South Australia, Bedford Park, South Australia 5042.

FELLOWSHIPS FOR THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE

The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies at Villa I Tatti will award upward of seven stipendiary fellowships for independent study on any aspect of the Italian Renaissance for the academic year 1981-82, to scholars of any nationality, nor- mally post-doctoral and in the earlier stages of their careers. Before November 1, 1980, ap- plicants should send their curriculum vitae and a description of their project to the Direc- tor of the Center at Villa I Tatti, Via di Vincigliata 26, 50135 Florence, Italy; duplicates should also be sent to Professor Walter Kaiser, 401 Boylston Hall, Harvard University, Cambridge 02138. Candidates should ask three senior scholars familiar with their work to send confidential letters of recommendation to the Director by the same date, with dupli- cates to Professor Kaiser.

I Tatti also offers a limited number of non-stipendiary fellowships for scholars working in Florence on Renaissance subjects with support from other sources. Scholars interested in these fellowships should apply as described above by November 1, 1980.

Stipends will be given in accord with the individual needs of the approved applicants and the availability of funds. The maximum grant will be no higher than $18,000; most are considerably less.

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  • Issue Table of Contents
    • The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Jun., 1980), pp. 229-456
      • Front Matter
      • The Returns to U.S. Imperialism, 1890-1929 [pp. 229 - 252]
      • Dutch Herring, Technology, and International Trade in the Seventeenth Century [pp. 253 - 280]
      • The Regional Diffusion and Adoption of the Steam Engine in American Manufacturing [pp. 281 - 308]
      • Tariffs, Cartels, Technology, and Growth in the German Steel Industry, 1879 to 1914 [pp. 309 - 330]
      • Antebellum Southern White Fertility: A Demographic and Economic Analysis [pp. 331 - 350]
      • Inflation or Deflation in Nineteenth-Century Syria and Palestine [pp. 351 - 358]
      • Jewish American Entrepreneurs [pp. 359 - 372]
      • Varieties of Economic Determinism [pp. 373 - 376]
      • Book Notes [pp. 377 - 380]
      • Reviews of Books
      • Ancient and Medieval
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      • Modern Europe
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      • Asia, Africa, Latin America
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      • United States and Canada
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      • Economic Thought and Doctrine
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      • General and Miscellaneous
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      • Back Matter

__MACOSX/Hist Reading and class lectures/._Unger_1980.pdf