Eighteenth-century French agriculture is often portrayed by historians as shackled by institutional and technological constraints. The countryside was littered with the remains of the feudal regime, and these institutional encumbrances stood in the way of modern market-oriented production techniques. In 1789 the high winds of revolution swept through rural France and shook it violently. For some scholars the tempest of 1789 blew the remains of the feudal regime into oblivion and created a new economic and social order. Others have argued that by 1820 few traces of the storm remained: The French rural world was still hopelessly backward compared with its modern British counterpart. The turmoil of the Revolution had been for naught; only the slow process of urbanization and technological change could relieve the problems of the French countryside.

This book investigates specific sectors of agriculture in France – irrigation and drainage – to document both the costs of Old Regime institutions and the consequences of reforms carried out during the Revolution. In an effort to clarify the connection between institutional reform and economic change, the study uses the methodologies of social science both in its treatment of quantitative evidence and in its explicit use of formal economic models.

In order to make both historians and economists comfortable, I begin in Part I not only by summarizing the relevant historical debates, but also by presenting the economic models that will be used in the analysis. Part II of the book comprises four chapters. First, I provide evidence about the extent of drainage and irrigation efforts between 1700 and 1860 at the national level.