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drier and milder climate: Gimpel, 29–30, 205–206. The advance and retreat of the Fernau glacier over 3,000 years suggested that the first millennium BC was a cold period, followed by a warming trend in late Roman times. The medieval warm period lasted from about AD 750 to 1215, followed by a brief cold spell until 1350, and may have contributed to the conditions that produced the Black Death. The Little Ice Age in Europe from 1550 to 1850 was followed by a century-long warming trend.
south of the Loire River and Alps: Ibid., 44.
new cog: The cogs were clinker-built, meaning that the planks overlapped, like tiles on a roof. Originally, the cogs had been flat-bottomed for easy landing on natural shorelines, but as they grew larger they became harder to control and inadequate for use in the growing number of improved ports.
Cologne, situated at the juncture: Braudel, Structures of Everyday Life, 51.
85 percent of commercial traffic: Gies and Gies, 221. Weirs are small obstructions that block part of a waterway, often for multiple purposes such as to maintain current flow speed for waterwheels and sufficient depth for navigation.
“Commerce between”: Lopez, 86–87.
built by monastic orders: Interestingly, the relationship of monks with bridges had an Eastern parallel with Buddhist monks, who built and maintained many of the suspension bridges across Himalayan passes as part of their duties.
several times more powerful: Estimates of waterwheel power vary greatly. Wheel size, the construction material, the angle and timing of water entry to its blade, and streamflow rate all affect output. Gies and Gies, 34–36, 115; Braudel, Structures of Everyday Life, 371; Smith, Man and Water, 143, 145; Williams, 54–55.
Leonardo da Vinci: Smith, Man and Water, 147; Gies and Gies, 258, 265. Da Vinci rejected the popular and incorrect view of contemporaries that water-power offered a key to perpetual motion, and understood the basic physics that water’s work potential depended much upon its fall minus the wheel’s frictional resistance and that of the machinery it powered. He understood that efficiency depended upon the angle of the water’s impact with the wheel’s blades. His theory that the overshot wheel was the most efficient form was not supported by any mathematical quantifications; that was left to John Smeaton, the father of modern civil engineering, in his experiments in the mid-eighteenth century. Leonardo’s drawings offered one of the earliest models of the highly efficient breast wheel, in which the water strikes blades positioned at ten o’clock and two o’clock.
ocean-tide-powered mills: White, Medieval Technology, 84, 85. In the eleventh century, there were tide-powered mills near Venice on the Adriatic and at the mouth of the port of Dover in England.
king hastened the surrender: The king was Philip Augustus; the town, Gournay (near Beauvais); and the author, William the Breton. Smith, History of Dams, 144.
half a million water mills: Braudel, Structures of Everyday Life, 358.
description of a contemporary: Mumford, 258–259; see also Gies and Gies, 114–116, and Gimpel, 66–68.
one silk mill: Gies and Gies, 178–179; Lopez, 133–135; White, Medieval Technology, 44. The earliest referenced water-powered fulling mills in Europe date to 983 in Tuscany, 1108 in a Milan monastery, 1010 in Germany, between 1040 and 1050 in Grenoble, and 1080 in Rouen.
huge iron church bells: Lopez, 145. On casting, Gimpel, 66–68.
on parity with: Pacey, 44, White, Medieval Technology, 82.
“where there is no Nile or Indus”: Harris, 167, 169.
Benedetto Zaccaria: Lopez, 139–141; see also Norwich, History of Venice, 202. For the history of the control of Gibraltar, see Casson, 65; Cary and Warmington, 45–47, 60.
Genoese republic: To give an idea of Genoa’s power, by 1293 its sea trade alone was three times greater than all the revenue of the French kingdom. Lopez, 94.
Dante Alighieri’s special embassy: Norwich, History of Venice, 204.
naval help: McNeill, Rise of the West, 514, 515.
sack Constantinople: Villehardouin, in Joinville and Villehardouin, Chronicles of the Crusades; Norwich, History of Venice, 122–143.
three-eighths of Constantinople: Norwich, History of Venice, 141.
1280 to 1330: McNeill, Pursuit of Power, 70.
until after 1480: Ibid., 70.
Chapter Eight: The Voyages of Discovery and the Launch of the Oceanic Era
“the two greatest”: Smith, Wealth of Nations, 281.
African slaves: Boorstin, 167–168. After 1445, some 25 caravels per year voyaged to West Africa to carry out commercial trade in slaves, gold, and ivory.
circumnavigation and coastal exploration of Africa: Cason, 118, 120-123; Cary and Warmington, 62, 128, 131, 229-230.
“Considered as a whole”: Fernández-Armesto, 406. There were various exceptions to the Atlantic wind system. For instance, inside the Gulf of Guinea was a wind system that blew straight into Africa’s large bulge, creating, in effect, a treacherous lee shore and helping explain why West African civilizations in that region were so disadvantaged at seafaring. In the far north, the Vikings, in their explorations of Iceland, Greenland, and North America, were able to take advantage of a clockwise current system that moved west from Scandinavia.
European diseases: Europeans, having been exposed to many diseases through Old World trade, had an overwhelming immunity advantage in the contest with the “virgin” Amerindians.
“Get gold”: Timothy Green, The World of Gold: The Inside Story of Who Mines, Who Markets, Who Buys Gold (London: Rosendale Press, 1993), 11, quoted in Bernstein, 121.
Water-powered mills: Pacey, 70.
Treaty of Tordesillas: The new line gave Portugal claim to Brazil when it was discovered in 1500 by Pedro Cabral in his southwesterly arc through the Atlantic to catch the winds for Portugal’s second Indian Ocean expedition.
out of sight of land: McNeill, Rise of the West, 570.
“Christians and spices”: Quoted in Lewis, Muslim Discovery of Europe, 33.
cost of his voyage sixtyfold: Clough, 188.
use of crossbows: McNeill, Pursuit of Power, 100.
sea artillery: Braudel, Structures of Everyday Life, 388–389.
“There is no doubt”: Kennedy, Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, 26.
price of pepper: Boorstin, 178.
reopen Pharaoh Neko’s old “Suez”: Lewis, What Went Wrong? 13.
Venice’s desperate offer: Cameron, 121.
boiled hot drinks: Braudel, Structures of Everyday Life, 227. Chocolate and coffee were both considered medicinal when introduced to Europe, most probably because they were served hot. Boiled water was commonly sold on the streets in China.
yellow and putrid: Cited in Boorstin, 265.
Spanish Main: The Spanish Main was an area in the Caribbean enclosed by ports from Cartagena, Colombia, to Nombre de Dios, Panama, to Trujillo, Honduras, to Veracruz, Mexico.
interdicting the pay: Trevelyan, 238.
“difference of social character”: Ibid., 233.
more than 10 tons: Bernstein, Power of Gold, 138.
Spanish Armada: Howarth, 24–33; Davis, 100 Decisive Battles, 199–204.
shift of European power: Braudel, Afterthoughts, 84–86, 98. Historian Fernand Braudel reckons that the center of gravity of the European economy was anchored in Italy for several centuries until 1500, when it moved to Antwerp, then from 1550 to 1600 back to the Mediterranean in favor of Genoa (due to the wars in the north), and then definitively back north between 1590 and 1610 to Amsterdam, where it remained until the late eighteenth century, when it moved to London. In 1914 the center of the world economy crossed the Atlantic to New York.
contracted dysentery and died: Bernstein, Power of Gold, 138.
continued to be a leader: Smith, Man and Water, 28–33; Kolbert, 123–127.
half of the shipping: Cameron, 121–122.
closed Lisbon harbor: Spain had taken control of Portugal in 1580.
sea passages to the Spice Islands: Braudel, History of C
ivilizations, 263–264.
superiority at sea: French fleets, whose sailors were weakened by food and water shortages and disease caused by the insanitary conditions aboard ship at Brest, were slow to press their advantage.
Britain’s navy reigned supreme: Lambert, 104.
had kept their powder dry: Davis, 100 Decisive Battles, 241; Lambert, 122; Keay, 381–393.
winning command of the sea: Kennedy, Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, 124.
low water supplies: Davis, 100 Decisive Battles, 275.
Nelson himself, shot: Howarth, 75.
Chapter Nine: Steam Power, Industry, and the Age of the British Empire
King George III: George III ascended to the throne when his grandfather died suddenly of a burst blood vessel while in the royal water closet.
Little Ice Age: Ponting, 99–101. The Thames froze over 20 times between 1564 and 1814. France’s Rhone froze three times in the thirteen years between 1590 and 1603, and even the Guadalquiver at Seville in Spain froze in the winter of 1602–1603. By contrast, in a dramatic illustration of the large effects small temperature changes can have, the warm climatic period that ended about 1200 had fostered vineyards in England to the Severn in the north, arable farmland over large parts of southern Scotland’s uplands, and even habitable climates on the southern coast of Greenland.
converting coal into coke: Coke, an almost pure form of carbon, was produced from coal in a method similar to the way wood was converted into charcoal—it was heated in a closed vessel to burn off impurities, leaving behind a residue that was coke.
new shipbuilding was being outsourced: Pacey, 114.
“many domestic hearths cold”: Trevelyan, 430.
price of his coal: Bernstein, Wedding of the Waters, 40–45.
Canal du Midi: Ibid., 38–40. The driving force behind the Canal du Midi was a self-made tax collector of King Louis XIV’s, Baron Pierre-Paul de Riquet de Bonrepos, who was close to the king’s influential finance minister, Colbert, and spent his entire fortune in building it.
canal frenzy added 3,000 miles: Cameron, 174.
growing financial markets: The Glorious Revolution (1688–1689) played a critical role in creating the political and economic atmosphere favorable to private capital accumulation and investment, which was so essential to stirring the entrepreneurship and innovations of the Industrial Revolution.
Thomas Savery: Bronowski and Mazlish, 314; Cameron, 177–178; White, Medieval Technology, 89–93.
less than a hundred: Pacey, 113.
pumping water from a coal mine: Lira.
the watt: One watt is equal to 1/746 horsepower. Ironically, Watt invented the term horsepower by imagining the amount of coal a horse could lift from a mine in a defined period of time. He calculated that one horse could lift 33,000 pounds one foot in one minute.
“I sell here, Sir”: Matthew Boulton, quoted in English Merchants, by H. R. Fox Bourne (London: R. Bentley, 1866), cited in Heilbroner, Making of Economic Society, 119.
“The people in London”: Matthew Boulton, “Document 14, 21 June 1781: Matthew Boulton to James Watt,” in Tann, 54–55.
Darby silk-stocking factory: Pacey, 103, 107. The original silk-stocking factory was opened in 1702, but failed. Subsequent owners made a success of it after secretly copying the designs of an Italian silk-stocking plant.
spinning mule: The mule got its name by merging aspects of Arkwright’s water frame with James Hargreaves’s non-water-powered spinning jenny (1764). Crompton never earned the fruits of his invention; although mules were in use everywhere, he himself remained indigent.
had 52 two decades later: Cameron, 181.
produce goods less expensively: McNeill, World History, 368.
accelerated twelvefold: Heilbroner, Making of Economic Society, 81.
1 percent to 4 percent per year: Simmons, 201.
generated about 25 horsepower: Tann, 6–7. The British government, trying to preserve the country’s industrial leadership, limited the sale of larger Watt engines abroad.
nearly 500: Ibid., 6–7.
fountains and gardens at Versailles: The three-level waterworks was known as the Marly machine. Smith, Man and Water, 100–106. See also Braudel, Structures of Everyday Life, 227–231.
Paris’s 20,000 omnipresent water carriers: Braudel, Structures of Everyday Life, 230.
nearly 1.4 million tons: Heilbroner, Making of Economic Society, 81.
Mastodon Mill: Ponting, 276.
1.7 percent per century: Per capita economic growth figures are derived from McNeill, Something New Under the Sun, 6–7.
freshwater use grew: Ibid., 120–121.
400 miles per day: McNeill, Rise of the West, 766–767.
communications cable: Gordon, 212.
age of the ocean steamer: Cameron, 208.
traumatic, long-term challenges: Of the pattern of asserting of Western hegemony in the age of steam and iron, historian Fernand Braudel observes, “It is only a step from market to colony. The exploited have only to cheat, or to protest, and conquest immediately follows…. When civilizations clash the consequences are dramatic.” Braudel, Structures of Everyday Life, 102.
invention of the torpedo: Williams, 136.
Torpedo ranges multiplied: McNeill, Pursuit of Power, 284.
cut Germany’s five transatlantic cables: Gordon, 212–213.
one-fourth of world commerce: Cameron, 224.
travel time to India: Karsh and Karsh, 43.
ruler, Muhammad Ali: Ibid., 27–29.
De Lesseps finally got his chance: Ibid., 42–44.
no technical background: McCullough, 49.
funding from the Rothschild banking family: Ferguson, 231.
Fashoda Incident: Collins, 57–59.
1,300 liters of claret, 50 bottles of Pernod: Barnes, n.p.
Nasser himself likened it to a modern pyramid: “In antiquity we built pyramids for the dead,” Nasser said in 1964. “Now we build pyramids for the living.” Gamal Abdel Nasser, speech, May 14, 1964, quoted in Waterbury, 98.
“Well, as you have the money”: Fineman, 46–47, 48.
prearranged code word: “An Affair to Remember,” Economist, July 29, 2006, 23; Fineman, 40. Dulles should not have been so shocked by the canal nationalization because he had been warned of that potential consequence by the French ambassador.
“have his thumb on our windpipe”: Anthony Eden, quoted in Fineman, 62.
colluding to seize back the canal: Some 70 percent of the traffic in the canal was British; France was perturbed because it was at war in Algeria to put down a rebellion that Nasser was supporting.
“Anthony, have you gone out”: Dwight D. Eisenhower, quoted in Urquhart, 33. The Americans’ sense of betrayal was, in part, based on poor communication—from both sides. The Americans were not totally explicit about their unwillingness to support any military action in the Suez Affair, while the allies, knowing the Americans’ predilections, were not eager to ask for permission before acting, and miscalculated the Americans’ readiness to back them up once they had acted.
hydroelectric power station: The first hydroelectric plant was in Appleton, Wisconsin, on the Fox River in 1882.
pay up to eight times: McNeill, Something New Under the Sun, 175.
Chapter Ten: The Sanitary Revolution
infant mortality that claimed some 15 of every 100 children: Pacey, 187.
“What a pity”: Times (London), June, 18, 1858, cited in Halliday, ix.
clean freshwater daily: Peter H. Gleick, Elizabeth L. Chalecki, and Arlene K. Wong, “Measuring Water Well-Being: Water Indicators and Indices” in Gleick, World’s Water, 2002–2003, 101.
early spring rainwater: Braudel, Structures of Everyday Life, 230.
artesian wells: One famous artesian well gave a much-needed boost to Paris’s water supply in 1841 when a large water deposit was struck at a depth of about 1,800 feet after eight laborious years of boring. The well, to public fascination, jetted 100 feet abo
ve the ground and was soon enclosed in a tall tower. Smith, Man and Water, 108.
distilled spirits: Braudel, Structures of Everyday Life, 241–242, 248.
fleet of water boats ferried freshwater: Ibid., 228. The boatmen, much like ubiquitous water carriers throughout European cities, even formed their own trade guild.
three times each week when dyers dumped: Ibid., 229.
“Whole quarters were sometimes without water”: Mumford, 463.
254–255. 30 gallons of wholesome springwater: Smith, Man and Water, 111.
private water carriers: The water supply expanded significantly in the thirteenth century, especially after a wealthy individual gave a grant to the city in 1237 of all the springs on his estate issuing from the Tyburn, a tributary of the Thames, near today’s Marble Arch.
three times per week: Chelsea Waterworks used water piped from Hertfordshire into Islington in north-central London through the 36-mile artificial New River to deliver its pledge. At the time of the Great Stink, the New River still supplied the largest volume of London’s water. Halliday, 21.
“charged with the contents”: John Wright, “The Dolphin or Grand Junction Nuisance,” published March 15, 1827, quoted in Smith, Man and Water, 112–113.
“Going down to my cellar”: Pepys, “Entry: Saturday 20 October 1660.”
guano: Halliday, 41.
“a certain flush with every pull”: Ibid., 42.
created a central board of health: McNeill, Plagues and Peoples, 240.
Death came from collapse: Biddle, 41.
first pandemic spread in Asia: McNeill, Plagues and Peoples, 232–233.
murdering victims in order to dissect: Karlen, 133–139.
three river embankments were constructed: The narrowing of the river caused by the embankments speeded the Thames’s flow, with the salutary benefit of helping whisk away the waste that had eluded the intercepting sewers.
Typhoid fever: Milk pasteurization and vaccines against tetanus, diphtheria, and tuberculosis bacilli were among the other major antibacterial successes that inspired the medical conquest of many viruses.