Between the XVIe and the XVIIIe century, while monarchical power asserts itself on French territory, the rivers of the Paris Basin remain the subject of negotiations between different actors forced to coordinate.
Historians as geographers have shown how the hydraulic question was a valid and representative entry to understand the organization of a society and its political choices. From the Rhine studied by Lucien Febvre between the two world wars, to Colombia, a river which constitutes the object of The Organic Machineone of the references of the American environmental history, the study of a large river is a classic that unites different historiographies, as Raphaël Morera recalls. But it is to a different exercise that the latter engages itself, by browsing in a clearly defined region-the Île-de-France of the modern era-the multitude of rivers that flock to the Seine, upstream as downstream from Paris.
By cross -checking various archive funds, in particular those of waters and forests, large owners such as religious institutions, or even normative sources which multiply with the creation and strengthening of different institutions, the historian proposes a crossing of the Ile -de -France society for three centuries. We see the heritage of ancient hierarchies, which made a large place for secular lordships as religious, as well as the rise of royal power, capable of generating the establishment of collaborations of local residents around certain rivers. R. Morera also describes this principle as a “ environmental subsidiarity », That is to say a form of delegation of monitoring certain rivers.
Coherence of the field, variety of practices
The Paris Basin is a long -term space by certain specific factors, from the weight of cereal farming to the development of the royal domain around Paris. In this relatively coherent space, the author nevertheless underlines the variety of modes of cooperation which are established around each river. No uniform solution emerges: “ The energy and motor power of water is negotiated on a territory located (P. 218).
Among the potential interlocutors, we find royal power, through different institutions, and in particular through that of waters and forests, whose medieval origin guarantees a certain legitimacy, but which develops particularly to XVIe And XVIIe centuries. However, even waters and forest agents never seek to impose unique legislation, but rather to ensure on each watercourse of good coordination between the different actors to limit conflicts, ensure regular cleaning which allows water flow – essential for navigability as well as the meune -, and obtain residents of the payment of entrepreneurs who are more frequently committed to XVIIIe century to do major works.
Faced with this institution, some equally old actors retain a real weight, which varies from one stream to another. Such as the provost of the Paris merchants, which favors the navigability of rivers to supply the city – a necessity around which the power of the municipality has historically built. Or the secular and ecclesiastical seigneuries, who remain the first owners of mills, who are delegates in lease to millers who then receive both the right of use and the duty of maintenance. The millers are therefore responsible for ensuring the maintenance of the river section corresponding to their machine, by cleaning up the bottom as by the recovery of the banks.
The general chronology is that of a development of royal power, whose increasing capacity for water and forest action is only one aspect. Up to XVIIe century, these are mainly used as a judicial body, responsible for resolving the disputes subject by residents. Then from the XVIIIe A century, the book shows that the institution acts more frequently as an administration, by producing regulations. However, the evolution on certain rivers is different. On the Croult, a small rivers today partly covered which threw itself into the Seine at the level of Saint-Denis, the monks of the powerful Abbey of Saint-Denis remain long capable of defending their millers and dictating the hydraulic work which serves their interests, even if it means making them defend them with men in arms.
Millers and others: disputed waters
However, this dominant actor approach is actually reconstituted only slowly over the book, which gives pride of place to the variety of residents who coexist on the different banks of Ile -de -France rivers. The millers are notably dedicated to a chapter, which looks at the social structure of this very homogeneous group, whose individuals seem subject to a kind of “ Cursus Honorum Starting from the windmills or Charenton mills to finish with a Parisian mill, and the same family network can sometimes distribute the mills from the same river.
Craftsmen, on the other hand, are not a new presence, but rather users whose number increases. From tankers to laundresses, we see them for example in a survey of 1750 occupy very fragmented portions of the Bièvre, also today buried (Table 4 p. 115). They share the shores with brewers, dyers, but also market gardeners, or even baths installed on the river, while on other rivers we will rather find winegrowers, unless the millers who engage in polyactivity take care of certain agricultural activities.
Conflict stories between these actors have the pages of the book: as in urban environment since the development of medieval sources, we find the classic problems of pollution of water by butchers, tanners and other craftsmen who get rid of raw materials in running water where others wash, fish and draw ; Or, as documented since Antiquity, we meet the inevitable rivalries between irrigators and millers. Among the arguments that seem to return to the mouths of certain actors: the anteriority of the presence of some, presented as a source of legitimacy. This is the case of a lord in front of the agents of waters and forests, but also sometimes of a woman of a tanner in front of the miller who observes him, perched on a scale, in the act of rejection of junk in the course of the Bièvre, and is answered “ You are too new to prevent me (P. 211).
It is a society that is transformed, but without major upheaval-if not perhaps the rise of the industry supported by a mercantilist policy (and growing military needs), another sign of royal power. Thus, the scattering of the occupation of the shores highlighted by the example of the Bièvre in 1750 has limits: most of the river was then occupied by the hotel and the factory of the Gobelins. The growth of Paris draws consumption up (the city goes from 200 to 600 thousand inhabitants between the XVIe and the XVIIIe century, and the Paris election has two million inhabitants on the eve of the Revolution). Meanwhile, the commercial office grants privileges and “ good locations To benefit from an increasingly requested hydraulic energy.
Starting from conflicts to understand sharing
Without entering into all the themes addressed by the work, the development of the double version in the meuerie at the weight of the sumptuous water pieces of the elites in the samples, we can try to return to the way in which Raphaël Morera invites us to understand his work in the field of environmental studies.
As he recalls, it is from a constant and documented conflict since the Middle Ages that residents, owners as users, built the conditions for water sharing. This observation would also be valid for many regions: “ Throughout the European continent, the maintenance of hydraulic equipment required the creation of institutions ad hoc in order to coordinate the action of different water users (P. 174). Among a historiography now fairly dense around this question, the author highlights certain points of comparison.
In particular Northern Italy, where very early on the city cities such as Milan or Venice have seized the hydraulic management of their rural territory. Another large well-known pole of this hydraulic management in Europe: the countryside of the Netherlands, which has been very transformed for the last centuries of the Middle Ages. Drains in particular are mainly due to the coordination of owners, including lords and ecclesiastical institutions, in coordination effects that have resulted in the XIIIe century to the formation of hydraulic institutions, which then played a role in the organization of the territory.
In this landscape, the specificity of Île-de-France would then be the involvement of royal power to create the environmental commons that are collectively managed rivers. We follow at length the example of waters and forests asking for a representation of the Bièvre residents, then invited to designate a trustee to which certain tasks may then be delegated. In this case, “ Jurisdictional regulation gives way to another, contractual, which takes the form of environmental subsidiarity (P. 185). Indeed, the representation here studied is not spontaneous, but “ Solicited and institutionalized ».
By comparing among others with the work of Clifford Geertz, or more recently those of Olivia Aubriot on other regions of the world, Raphaël Morera then wonders what kind of society reveals the hydraulic organization of the Modern Island. It highlights several features. On the one hand, “ the growth of the monarchical state and the strengthening of its authority ». And, on the other hand, Ile -de -France companies “ both very hierarchical and very attached to the various deliberation processes (P. 226). The organization of the sharing of the resource is therefore done both with respect for ancient normative systems, and of the weight of the actors already in place that are in particular the king and the lords. Behind the growing anthropization of rivers driven by the growth of demography and consumption of the near capital, then seems to appear a world whose developments are actually slower, progressive and negotiated.