Getting soaked:

The surprising social context
of medieval water and wind power

To begin with, two basic kinds of water mills were known in medieval Europe.   One was simple and portable, but inefficient.  The other was complex, not portable, but far more efficient.  And the mystery is that the two were rarely found together.

The simple mill had a paddle wheel turned on its side, horizontally, to catch a stream of water. This was directly linked to round mill stones grinding grain only a few feet above the water.

A more complex type of mill is the one we usually imagine. The complex mill had a paddle wheel turned upright, or vertically, to a stream, and it could capture both the flowing energy and also the weight of the water falling down the front of the wheel.  

This complex vertical mill dominated England, northern France and Germany, completely displacing the simple horizontal mills by the time of the Domesday Book in  1086. It continued to dominate northern Europe until the industrial revolution of the 19th century.  

Meanwhile, the simple horizontal type of water mill was used for a millennium in southern Europe and the Mediterranean, and very few complex vertical mills are to be found in the region. 

How do we account for this discrepancy:  complex technology in the feudal north, simple technology in the south and more remote regions of the north?   For many years, historians believed that the discrepancy reflected the backward nature of southern Europe. The idea conveniently fit patterns of prejudice, but it did not square with other evidence of technological capabilities. In fact, Roman engineers described vertical water mills in the first century AD.  

Looking at the problem within a social context, the discrepancy is more easily explained.  Complex milling technology had a well-known purpose in the feudal society of northern Europe. Farmers of all kinds had a duty to seek out the lord’s grain mill.  This “duty to seek” was the root of the concept of legal  jurisdiction, called, in old English, the “soke.” 

The great advantage of the complex technology was that taxes could be easily collected by taking a portion of grain right there at the mill. Theoretically, this “soke” tax was one part in 15, but farmers were often cheated, judging from the complaints we read in the literature of the day. (For example, Chaucer depicted a miller with a golden thumb on the scales).  A modern reminder of the soke tax is found in the phrase “to get soaked,” which to this day, means to be cheated. That it survives indicates the depth of the resentment. 

Although it was possible in some areas to grind grain for one’s own family using a quern (a large mortar and pestle), in feudal regions these devices were illegal and often confiscated or broken when discovered by the lord’s agents. Harsh punishment could follow. And no one in northern Europe, laboring under a feudal lord, could have set up a simple mill for a family group, as farmers did in Mediterranean regions.  

Resentment over unfair taxes built up into the Peasants Revolt of 1381 in England and a many others. The soke taxes were only one of many issues between the lords and their farmers, but they were among the most serious.
Over time, feudal laws controlling peasants faded out, but  the soke rights of the nobility remained in some of the more backwards corners of Europe until the early 19th century.  

Windmill technology shows a similar pattern of simple versus complex differentiation between lower and upper classes, although the geographic differences were not so pronounced in the later Middle Ages, when windmills became common. Low-tech “post” windmills could be disassembled and moved at will. However, high-tech stone windmills built on hilltops with rotating upper turrets were far more efficient, and usually, owned by the upper class. 

It is interesting that writer Miguel de Cervantes envisioned Don Quixote attacking a windmill, and that the style of windmill he attacked  was one of the large high-tech mills such as those found at the Castle of Consuegra, on the plains of Toledo province in central Spain. 

While Don Quixote’s enemies were entirely imaginary, the social implications underlying the battle were not entirely quixotic. Quixote’s fight against the windmills might be seen as a protest against an unjust social structure that used complex technology to force peasants to pay a food tax. Quixote’s madness was a pretext for social commentary at a time when it would be dangerously bold coming from a sane person.      

And so, wind and water milling technology presents us with historical questions.  If we look at technology through the lens of progress,  a complex vertical milling technology looks like a triumph, while the simple mills of the Mediterranean and Norse regions appear backwards.  On the other hand, if we want to understand the social context of technology, it’s clear that complex mills existed to centralize political and economic power at the expense of ordinary people, whose surplus food was simply “soked up” by the feudal lords. Complex technology may not have provided a short-term social benefit, but an unanswered question is the extent to which the feudal structure may have provided a longer term benefit.   

Left to their own devices, people preferred using a system that was simple enough to control rather then the technology made for them by the political elite.

This is as true in medieval times as it is today.  For example, even though  statistics prove that it is safer to live next to a nuclear power plant than it is to drive to the grocery store, most people would prefer the risk of driving, since it is a simple technology that they can control to some extent. 

In fact, public opinion polls show a clear and very strong preference for simpler types of power systems, such as solar and wind.

Technological feudalism remains in the 21st century as a force that clings to the past and uses complexity to centralize public power in private hands.

Simple water mills - Quern and the horizonal or Norse mill

A Quern (or matate)is a an arrangement of grindstones used to turn grain into flour by hand. In Latin America they are called matates. In feudal England, people who owned them were called criminals. The Bishop of St. Albans paved his courtyard with the ones he confiscated, which helped set off the peasant's revolt of 1381.

 

Norse mill was widely used in Scandanavian, Irish and Scottish settlements far from feudal centers of power, and also in the Mediterranean. This was simple, low-tech, small and not very efficient mill running at approximately 1/2 hp. But the technology was decentralized, easy to build and maintain, and not useful for collecting grain as a taxes, and therefore preferred by family groups and small farmers.  

Complex vertical water mills

High-tech, efficient, expensive, complex vertical mills had a centralizing tendency, and were the type used to collect “soke” taxes for feudal lords. This vertical is an "overshot" mill, and would have developed about 3 hp. There were over 6,000 in England at the time of Domesday survey 1088, while at the same time, virtually no Norse mills.

Steam engines, and then electricity, made water and wind mills obsolete. Until the turn of the 20th century, most mills powered grain or lumber milling equipment or power take-offs for other kinds of factories. But in 1888, the Appleton Wisconsin dam was the first to produce electricity from hydropower in the US.

 

Hydro dams and
environmental conflict

Some of the most important early environmental conflicts were over dams, such as the Hetch Hetchy dam built in 1914 in Yosemite national park. It was opposed by John Muir and the Sierra Club

"Dam Hetch Hetchy! [You might] as well dam for water tanks the people's cathederals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man." -- Muir, 1909

Even though Hetch Hetchy was built, other park areas were saved by John Muir and the early environmental movement.

 

 

Hundreds of hydroelectric dams and irrigation projects changed the face of the western US in the 20th century, some for the better. But critics argued that an unsustainable style of development, inappropriate to a semi-arid region, has been enabled.

Teleco Dam, the last dinosaur of the Tennessee Valley Authority, built in 1978 -- Not only were 16,000 acres taken from the Cherokee for the lake created by the dam, but another thousands of surrounding acres were given to rich white developers, not to the Cherokees who were displaced. See Selu, by Marylou Awiaka

Tellico Dam was a clear case of government overrunning the people and justice, for they ramrodded cases challenging the dam through the courts,and finally even passed a special law ... to exempt the Tellico Dam from all federal and state laws..."  -- The legend of Roland the Cherokee

India's Narmada River dam system involves a similar controversy.

"The controversy over large dams on the River Narmada in India has come to symbolise the struggle for a just and equitable society (in India). The story is long and complicated ... In brief, the Government's plan is to build 30 large, 135 medium and 3000 small dams to harness the waters of the Narmada and its tributaries." -- Friends of the Narmada

 

 

 

 

China's Three Gorges Dam is the world's largest, most expensive and most controversial hydroelectric project even. Innundation of prime agriculatural lands, technological problems and corruption in construction work are among the allegations against the Chinese government.

See International Rivers Network pages.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Milling technology was so common that craft traditions and phrases ended up in most languages. In English, to "show your mettle" means to show how skilled or brave you are. But it comes from a time when people who sharpened (dressed) grindstones, like the fellow at left, would travel from mill to mill looking for work.

Before he was hired, he would have to actually show how many metal shavings had become embedded in his arms, the idea being that the amount of metal indicated the amount of experience and the quality of the work.

Other phrases like "nose to the grindstone" and "through the mill" also come from this craft tradition. And of course, "getting soaked" (soked) is what the column to the left is all about.

While they provide cheap, clean electricity, dams have never been completely safe.

St. Francis Dam, California was part of the famous 240 mile long Los Angeles aquaduct built by William Mulholland. The dam burst March 12, 1928 killing 511 people.

Other dam disasters include:

Hawks nest tunnel disaster - 1927 - 1932 - from 500 to 1,000 African American workers died of silicosis after working unprotected on a hydro project at Gauley Mountain, W.Va.

Malpasset, France -- Dec. 2, 1959, 420 deaths

Shimantan Dam, China -- Aug. 7, 1975 -- 250,000 deaths

Grand Teton Dam, Idaho, US -- June 5, 1976 -- 14 deaths

Buffalo Creek Dam, W.Va., US -- Feb 26, 1972, 125 deaths Almost five hundred more coal impoundment dams like Buffalo Creek have been built in West Virginia, and tens of thousands of people are at risk, due to increasing rates of mountaintop removal mining. The shame of it is that for only a dollar more per ton of coal, a process could be used that would obsolete the sludge dams.