UpDate - Vol. 14, No. 20, Page 7
February 16, 1995
History professor authors book on French canals

     Today most of the canals of France are pastoral, peaceful
waterways that are more of a tourist attraction than a system
originally built to support industrial development before the
railroads.
     Reed G. Geiger, professor of history, has written Planning the
French Canals: Bureaucracy, Politics and Enterprise under the
Restoration, recently published by the University of Delaware Press.
It focuses on the French canal system as a means of examining the
economics and politics of France in the 1820s.
     An economic and business historian, Geiger said his current book
is an outgrowth of his earlier work, The Anzin Coal Co. 1800-1833: Big
Business in the Early Stages of the Industrial Revolution, which won a
Choice Magazine award as an Outstanding Academic Book of 1975.
     Although France had built the famous Midi and Briare watershed
canals in the 17th century, Great Britain was the first country to
develop an effective network of canals and turnpikes in the late 18th
century that helped to industrialize the nation.
     France and the United States did not follow suit until the 1820s
and, consequently, lagged behind Great Britain, Geiger said. Each of
the three countries took a different approach to financing and
building canals.
     In Great Britain, the canals were built by private enterprise. In
the United States, individual states built them, such as the Erie
Canal by New York. In France, the government built, owned and operated
the canals, financed by bank loans.
     During that period, Francois Becquey was appointed director of
the bureau of bridges and roads in France and proposed an ambitious
program of canal building and river improvements. Although much of his
plan did not come to fruition, Geiger calls Becquey an "unlikely
hero," playing "the role of bureaucrat as entrepreneur," marshalling
the forces of engineers, politicians and bankers to carry out his
plan.
     There has been a tendency to compare French and English canal
systems and their contribution to industrialization, with France
coming out a poor second, Geiger said. Sometimes overlooked is the
fact that the topography of France was not as suited to canal building
as that of Great Britain. Fewer rivers are navigable, cuts for canals
had to be deeper, and more locks had to be built, making canals more
expensive to build and operate. Another difference was distance, with
industry and markets not as centrally located as in England.
     Given the tenor of the times, the geography of the country, the
fact that no one could foresee the coming of the railroad and its
effect on transportation and industry, Geiger gives the French system
good marks.
     A graduate of the College of Wooster and with master's and
doctoral degrees from the University of Minnesota, Geiger joined the
University of Delaware faculty in 1961.
                                                   -Sue Swyers Moncure