Mathieu Arnoux Laboratoire interdisciplinaire des Énergies de Demain UMR 8236, CNRS-Université Paris-Diderot

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1 Mathieu Arnoux Laboratoire interdisciplinaire des Énergies de Demain UMR 8236, CNRS-Université Paris-Diderot http://www.lied-pieri.univ-paris-diderot.fr/ Systèmes renouvelables du passé : intermittences et problèmes de ressources Renewable Systems from pre-modern periods: intermittency issues and ressources management Les Houches, March 7th 2016

2 The issue of resources The availability of resources has become a matter of obsession in our world. It is implicit in many comments that pre-industrial system had no such concern: scarce population and weak energy system need little supply. The problems of the past were extraction and distribution of the resources. (Implicit) conclusion: there would be no lesson to draw from History for the understanding of a completely new situation

3 Hypothesis for per-capita energy consumption in early modern and modern European development (Kander, Malanima, Warde, Power to the People

4 The energy-mix for pre-industrial systems

5 An estimate for the power of animals NB: Horse-power is a fiscal unit. 1 Horse Power = 1 cheval vapeur= 735,5 Watt

6 Resources are not only a critical issue of the current debate. It is also a debatable notion and not a must passage obligé in every energy debate The seemingly common-sense statement that material world can supply economic systems with a free and inexhaustible quantity of primary natural-goods is a very recent conquest of the economic thought. The category of resources does not appear before industrial period.

7 Ressources: some lessons from an old word Medieval French ressource (Italian risorse, Engl. resource, resort), is linked etymologically to the latin resurgere, and the idea of resurrection (hence help, escape) In the classical French « homme de ressources » means outstanding capacities for resurgence. Technically, it is the ascending part of the flight of a falcon (bird), after its dive. Before 1800, ressource is not something material but a reaction to a situation. What about the notion of resources?

8 For hit is symonye to sull that sent is of Grace, And that is wit, and water and wynde and fuyre the ferthe ; Thise foure sholde be fre to alle folk that hit nedeth. For it is simony to sell what is sent by Grace That is wit and water and wind and fire the fourth These four should be free to all people who needs it. John Langland, Piers Plowman, C-Text, Passus 9, v. 54-56 (circa 1380) A first try, looking towards the idea of the Creation

9 The idea that there are means available for material purposes in the environment (of in the surroundings) is not found in medieval and early modern sources (i.e. before 1800) The pre-modern notions are more oriented towards the issues of creation (or Nature), need or necessity, or wealth ; for the Middle Ages, they would by addressed from a moral point of view. For example in the Christian Works of mercy (French: oeuvres de miséricorde)

10 Works of mercy To feed the hungry. To give drink to the thirsty. To clothe the naked. To harbor the harborless (shelter the homeless) To visit the sick. To ransom the captive To bury the dead. A list of duties which is a common basis for most of the pre-industrial complex societies (not only the Christian ones). It requires an anthropological more than a religious analysis.

11 For the early modern period, wealth and fiscality are the main issues What can be measured, can be taxed. Taxation makes the King powerful. Censuses, estimates and statistical surveys are made to assess the basis of taxation The idea that taxes may be levied not only on wealth and commodities but also on the producing capacities is one of the origins of the measure of work and power, in the beginning of the 19th century.

12 The Traité d’économie politique of J.-B. Say (1767-1832) as turning point for the economic concept of resources Édition de 1803: Introduction « Parmi les choses qui satisfont aux besoins de l’homme, ou qui contribuent à l’agrément de sa vie, il en est que la nature lui fournit gratuitement et avec une abondance qui surpasse ordinairement ses désirs ; tels sont l’eau, l’air, la lumière. Ce qu’on peut se procurer sans frais n’a point de valeur ; ce qui n’a point de valeur ne saurait être une richesse. Ces choses ne sont pas du domaine de l’Économie politique. »

13 L’homme force la nature à travailler de concert avec lui à la création des produits. Quand je dis la nature, j’entends tous les êtres matériels qui composent le monde. Chacun a ses propriétés: tous ou presque tous ont la faculté de pouvoir concourir à créer des produits utiles à l’homme. Jean-Baptiste Say, Traité d’économie politique (édition de 1803, L. 1, chap. 8)

14 C’est ainsi que le feu amollit les métaux, que le vent fait tourner nos moulins, que l’eau, l’air et la terre forment les plantes, les bois qui nous sont utiles. L’élasticité de l’acier nous permet de faire des ressorts qui font marcher les horloges; la pesanteur des corps nous sert au même usage; nous tournons à notre profit toutes les lois du monde physique; nous sommes presque toujours en communauté de travail avec la nature. Are we speaking of modern science?

15 « [L’industrie] emploie le service et la puissance de divers agents qu’elle n’a point créés, que lui offre la nature, et tire de l’action de ces agents naturels une portion de l’utilité qu’elle donne aux choses. Ainsi, lorsqu’on laboure et qu’on ensemence un champ, outre les connaissances et le travail qu’on met dans cette opération, outre les valeurs déjà formées dont on fait usage […] il y a un travail exécuté par le sol, par l’air, par l’eau, par le soleil, auquel l’homme n’a aucune part, et qui pourtant concourt à la création d’un nouveau produit qu’on recueillera au moment de la récolte. Or are the four classical elements at the basis of classical economy? Final version of the Traité (1826)

16 C’est ce travail que je nomme le service productif des agents naturels. Cette expression, agents naturels, est prise ici dans un sens fort étendu ; car elle comprend non seulement les corps inanimés dont l’action travaille à créer des valeurs, mais encore les lois du monde physique, comme la gravitation qui fait descendre le poids d’une horloge, le magnétisme qui dirige l’aiguille d’une boussole, l’élasticité de l’acier, la pesanteur de l’atmosphère, la chaleur qui se dégage par la combustion, etc.

17 What are actually resources in pre- industrial societies ? The whole economy relies on renewable energy production. Wood for timber, axes, shafts and charcoal Wind for sailing and milling Water-stream for every kind of mill. Horses and oxen as draught animals Sheep for wool

18 Looking towards old facts A case-study on a medieval record about a water-mill build in 1153 in the village of L’Haÿ (now L’Haÿ-les- Roses, Val-de-Marne), near Paris. A nice parchment original indentured charter preserved in the archive of the Dean and Chapter of the cathedral Notre-Dame de Paris. Agreement between the Chapter and Gilbert, the miller, about a new mill to be built under the already existing mill of the Chapter.

19

20 Carte des chasses du roi, 1764 Moulin de L’Haÿ

21 What is a mill, according to the 1153 record Commenting on the document to highlight the different conditions, natural or social, which made it possible to work: – Water – Water-wheel – Customers – Measures and market – Legal guarantees – Money

22 Water The 1153 agreement grants to Gilbert the miller the right to build a new mill, on the Bièvre river, in the place « les mares de Lai »: the only French words in the text. It refers to a place of pools or ponds, downstream the upper mill of the Chapter. The resource stream will have to be created by the miller, in such condition that the level of water for the upper mill will not be changed by the creation of a reserved pond or by the creation of a higher millstream (bief)

23 Herrade de Lansberg Hortus Deliciarum (12th century) The mill.

24 Water-mill, drawing from the Supplément à l’Encyclopédie, by Panckouke (1776):

25 Mill-boats under a bridge on the Seine in Paris (mid- 13th cy): how to run mills on a great river, with unsteady water level.

26 Water-wheel and grindstone The work to be done by Gilbert is not addressed in the charter. The miller is not only the person who runs the mill and produces the flour. He has to build it. He must know and work wood (boards for the wheel and long timber for shafts) iron (with the help of the iron- smith) masonry and stone. None of these can be found on the place and have to be bought. From middle ages to modern times, with the growth of the rotation speed, iron becomes critical. Iron circles keep together the thin grindstone and the quant and the top spindle (petit et grand fer) transfer the motion from the wood axis to the stone.

27 « Mauvaises meules » et meules « à moudre par économie » Fers de moulins à eau et à vent

28 E. Bouticourt et F. Guibal, Les Origines médiévales d’une technique de charpente: la poutre armée, Archéologie du midi médiéval, 2008 (26), p. 145-165 Iron as a substitute for the a critical commodity : very long trees for roof timbers

29 Customers Wheat and rye have to be milled. For a family, the average daily time of use of an hand-mill shoul be 3 hours. The new mill will satisfy a local demand. It cannot be a concurrent for the prior mill present on the same place, which will keep his customers, who cannot be forced to go to the new mill (I do not interpret it, for this period as a matter of social domination). The whole agreement deals with the issue of the growth of the demand and against the hypothesis of concurrence. A complicated clause give the canons the right to gather the two mills and give Gilbert the obligation of running the whole site, for a greater rent.

30 Intermittence, connexion and insurance The agreement makes both mill a back up for the other one. From this point of view, our contract considers “justified” that customers of the chapter mill may go to Gilbert’s mill. Grinding grain is a common resource which have to be provided to all members of the community, at a fixed customary price. From the 12 th century on, many charters guarantee to the users of a particular mill the right to go to another mill in case of default. Around Paris, some very important and constant mills may provide this service for whole districts in the countryside. This link between mills is not only caused by the necessity to protect the stream, but also by a notion of commons (bonum commune).

31 What is the return of a mill? Its purpose: to produce flour for bread and pastry: people give grain and takes flour, less the emolumentum (for the wage of the miller and the manutention of the mill). It also yields other outcome, which can also be used for the rent paid to the lord. – Pigs, fed with the bran (son) – Fishes (not the salmons), taken from the ponds – Grain, from the emolumentum paid by the costumers: here wheat and meslin (wheat+rye); in Orly (1124): wheat and barley – Money

32 Measures and market The perpetual enforcement of the contract needs specific institutional conditions. Accepted measures for grain (the King’s muid for Paris), and the actual definition of wheat and meslin (méteil) refer to market institution. The last clause, which asks for present good pledges in case of change in the contract, is borrowed to credit regulation. There is no monetary exchange stipulated in the agreement but every clause relies on a highly monetized economy.

33 Legal institutions The formal drafting and writing of the contract refers to a world of guarantees and legal constraints. The issue is not about lordship and the concurrence of another lord, but about the better way to develop a local cluster of resources: – growing grain production and population – a river not yet dammed, – Gilbert, a dynamic and clever local craftsman, – a territory with strong legal features and good economics structures.

34 Records are to be gathered in series: Same diplomatic feature: a charter by the Dean and Chapter of Notre-Dame for the mills of Orly (1123)

35 Same place, same problem: a leasing agreement for the moulin de L’Haÿ (1326)

36 Conclusion: intermittence Pre-modern, renewable economies as worlds of more or less locally controlled intermittences. The strangely efficient process of building the river as energy-system can be seen as a reaction against intermittence, by different technical, territorial and institutional disposition, which can be observed in each local case. The diffusion of windmills (from 1190 on) is a further chapter of the story. The building of an industrial water-based system especially after the plague shows another aspect of the system.

37 Conclusion: common-wealth A crucial difference between medieval and early modern or modern times: the enforcement of property rights is never deduced from these rights, as the ultima ratio. Since every innovation may endanger some previous right, its legitimacy has to be compared to the benefit for the commonwealth or to the damage for it (by de commodo et incommodo inquiries). An institution which has prove to be useful has to be preserved against the risk created by a alleged benefit (which can be a disguise for greed)