The goal of this research project is to investigate one of the largest and most important engineering works undertaken in seventeenth-century England: the drainage of the English fens. The research focuses primarily upon the career of one of the principal engineers responsible for the drainage, Cornelius Vermuyden, and his relationships with the English investors who employed him. The construction of such large-scale drainage works (spanning parts of five counties in eastern England) required a great deal of hydraulic expertise, a rare and valuable commodity in early modern England. Vermuyden's expertise made him an indispensable asset to his employers, and a key agent of London's increasingly centralized economic and social control of the realm. Over the course of nearly five decades, Vermuyden assisted various land speculators in London (including the king and his advisors) in acquiring thousands of acres of what had up until then been commonly-held fenland. He then oversaw the drastic alteration of the lands' ecology, in return for a share of the profits resulting from the speculation over the drained lands' increased agricultural value. In overseeing the drainage works, Vermuyden played an important role in bringing the fens under the more direct (and profitable) control of London administrators and investors.
This award supports full-time archival research in the Harvard University Libraries, with its microfilm copies of English manuscript collections, including the State Papers Domestic and the Lansdowne Manuscripts, as well as printed primary sources, during the summers of 2002 and 2003. The award also supports travel to the United Kingdom to enable the PI to examine manuscript collections at the British Library not available on microfilm. Other research includes visits to Cambridge, East Anglia, and the Wash, the location of a number of important seventeenth-century drainage works, in order to examine relevant archival manuscript collections and to make a personal survey of the former fenlands that are to be the focus of project.
The evolution of the idea of technical expertise during the early modern period and the rise of powerful, centralized administrations in early modern European states are both issues that have received considerable attention in recent historiography. This project will seek to shed greater light on both stories by uniting them through the activities of a single individual, Cornelius Vermuyden, in whose life and career they were inextricably linked.
