Synopses & Reviews
A book centring on late Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman canals may come as a surprise; it is generally assumed that no such things existed. Persuasive evidence has, however, been unearthed independently by several scholars, and has stimulated this first serious study of improved waterways in England between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries. England is naturally well-endowed with a network of navigable rivers, especially the easterly systems draining into the Thames, Wash, and Humber. The central middle ages saw innovative and extensive development of this network, including the digging of canals bypassing difficult stretches of rivers, or linking rivers to important production centres. The eleventh and twelfth centuries seem to have been the high point for this dynamic approach to water-transport: after 1200, the improvement of roads and bridges increasingly diverted resources away from the canals, many of which stagnated with the reassertion of natural drainage patterns.
This new perspective has an important bearing on the economy, landscape, settlement patterns, and inter-regional contacts of medieval England. In this volume, economic historians, geographers, geomorphologists, archaeologists, and place-name scholars bring their various skills to bear on a neglected but important aspect of medieval engineering and economic growth.
Review
"A stimulating collection, adding knowledge of an entire region to the economic history of England and reminding us that long-distance commerce is composed of dense networks of local commerce often organized around waterways."--James M. Murray, History: Reviews of New Books
"A truly interdisciplinary project.... These essays succeed very well in demonstrating how strong human agency could be both in the formation of waterways and in transcending natural hindrances between them."--Petra J.E.M. van Dam, Technology and Culture
About the Author
John Blair,
Lecturer in Modern History, Professor of Medieval History and Archaeology, Queen's College, Oxford