Download e-book for kindle: The Draining of the Fens (Johns Hopkins Studies in the by Eric H. Ash

The draining of the Fens in jap England was once one of many biggest engineering tasks in seventeenth-century Europe. a sequence of Dutch and English "projectors," operating over a number of many years and with the entire aid of the Crown, reworked millions of acres of putatively barren wetlands into dry, arable farmland. The drainage venture used to be additionally alleged to reform the sickly, backward fenlanders into civilized, fit farmers, to the advantage of the complete commonwealth. As projectors reconstructed complete river structures, those new, man made channels profoundly altered either the panorama and the lives of these who lived on it.

In this definitive account, historian Eric H. Ash offers a close heritage of this bold project. Ash lines the activity from the 1570s, while draining the complete of the Fens turned an possible aim for the Crown, via a number of failed efforts within the early 1600s. The ebook closes within the 1650s, while, inspite of the project's huge, immense trouble and rate, the draining of the good point of the Fens used to be eventually accomplished. Ash eventually concludes that the transformation of the Fens into fertile farmland had unintentional ecological effects that created not less than as many difficulties because it solved.

Drawing on painstaking archival examine, Ash explores the drainage from the views of political, social, and environmental historical past. He argues that the effective administration and exploitation of fenland normal assets within the emerging countryside of early sleek England used to be a very important challenge for the Crown, one who provoked violent confrontations with fenland population, who seen the drainage (and accompanying land seizure) as a grave probability to their neighborhood panorama, financial system, and lifestyle. The drainage additionally unearths a lot concerning the political flashpoints that roiled England throughout the mid–seventeenth century major as much as the violence of the English Civil conflict. this is often compelling interpreting for British historians, environmental students, historians of expertise, and someone drawn to kingdom formation in early sleek Europe.