Saturday, August 9, 2014

French cities of the Dark Ages

Roman cities.... only existed in name in the sixth century; their space was infinitely shrunk, and they became what they had formerly been, villages. To well understand the life of the first part of the Middle Ages, one must only see in these cities large boroughs. Little or no industry, or else the latter had become an appendix of the rural economy, large monasteries, large landowners. the Church with its great wealth, had to in their own interest be self-sufficient. Life in this time became more and more monotonous. The borough took on a dark and sad aspect, agriculture was exploited inside what formerly had been the location of its temples and its capitols. Great antique monuments became the home of the poor, served as defense; livestock lived with the laborers. Such was the aspect of these cities which had formerly been the center of Hellenism like Marseilles, the center of Roman culture like Narbonne and Bordeaux, cities like Nimes and Autun.
The nineteenth century writer Marignan provides an image of early medieval French cities which is based on something more than Dark Age caricatures; he cites cartularies, charters and some archeology as his sources. Still, had French cities indeed become mere auxiliaries to rural life, shells used to shelter the poor and their livestock?

Certainly there is some basic evidence that cities remained exceptional spaces, not simple boroughs with no special role separate from the agricultural bulk of the country. The most obvious evidence of this is that bishops invariably had their seats in cities, and typically cities which had existed under the Romans and still exist today. Church councils too were held in cities. Finally, cities remained both prizes and refuges during conflicts. Marauding armies may well have captured the isolated enclaves into which power is sometimes believed to have devolved in this period; but their conquests and defeats continued to focus on cities.

For food history, the survival of cities has a particular importance. Gallo-Roman cities, for instance, had sometimes had corporations (collegia) of bakers, butchers and other trades. Did anything similar survive into the Middle Ages or did such public trades disappear with the urban infrastructure to support them? Realistically, it is very unlikely that specific direct evidence will ever appear that they did. But a first step in trying to at least determine how likely that was is simply to see what state cities were in before the tenth or eleventh centuries, when they are generally thought to have been “reborn”: “The beginning of the second millennium of the Christian era, with the rebirth of cities, was a real watershed in the history of Europe” (Cavagna/Cian); “The revival of trade in Europe in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries is thus a central cause of the rebirth of cities.” (Esler). 

Archeology is of some help here, but as always, the prime source for the earliest centuries is Gregory of Tours (c. 538–594).


For more about the early Middle Ages
Feasting with the Franks

The First French Medieval Food


Merovingian cities

Gregory's History of the Franks is in fact so rich in references to cities that Loseby has drawn a whole study from it: “Gregory's Cities: Urban Functions in Sixth-century Gaul”. Before looking at some specific passages, consider this general note from Loseby: "The writings of Gregory of Tours convey little, if any, overt sense of urban decline. The one feature of Gregory's urban anecdotes which can almost always be guaranteed is a crowded scene."

Gregory gives only glimpses of cities, but they are telling ones. He shows Leudast (c. 579) in Paris "going about the merchants' houses, inspecting various merchandise, weighing silverwork and examining different precious objects;" basically, a rich man shopping in a big city. Certainly, one of Marignan's “boroughs” would not have had dealers in silverwork and other precious objects available for a visitor to stroll.

In another tale, he tells of a woman of Paris being accused of infidelity and the bloody conflict which followed between her and her husband's relatives. Only some way into the tale does he write “these were men of the highest birth, and the first beside king Chilperic" (reigned 561–584). The fact that such people lived in Paris and not on some country estate or in castles gives some idea of its continuing importance.

He makes various tantalizing remarks about Marseilles. He shows the bishop Theodore being siezed in the middle of the city. Childebert (reigned 575-595) wanted to take half of Marseilles from Gontran (reigned 561-592) – hardly something one would do with a “village”. When a duke went to arrest someone there, he took the bishop and the most distinguished citizens (seniores civium) with him. After which "the gates of the city and the doors of the churches opened; and both, the duke and the bishop, entered Marseilles, with signs and various honorary banners praising them." Later, when Gontran wanted to arrest the bishop, he had to lure him out of the city. When the bishop had been captured and was being taken through Aix, another bishop gave him aid. Again, this was done in a city, not just anywhere along the countryside. In one humorous passage, Gregory, enraged against a fellow bishop, writes "If Marseilles had had you for bishop, its vessels would have brought you not oil and other precious items ["spices"], but only paper so that you could write at your ease against the reputation of good people." This incidentally reflects the thriving trade which continued in the city.

The idea that people were identified with their city – rather than fortuitously taking refuge there, as in Marignan's picture – occurs more than once. Gregory tells of men from Orleans and Blois coming to take turns to guard a man in Tours, and then carrying off livestock and other things belonging to St. Martin (the patron saint of Tours). In another case, men from Orleans and Bourges joined to oblige those of Poitiers to submit. When the latter did, it was collectively, as a city, just as cities would in later centuries. Shortly after, he tells how Gondovald required cities to swear allegiance either to Childebert or (where appropriate) to himself. Again, these oaths were collective municipal acts. When Gondovald then marched towards Toulouse, the bishop there spoke to the citizens, urging them to resist him. (Seeing the size of Gondovald's army, they later opened the gates to him.)

Loseby gives some similar examples in which people from neighboring cities were summoned by kings taking action against a city: "it is sufficient here to note that kings could call on their subjects for services as well as taxes, and that once again Gregory's narrative shows how the basic administrative unit through which those services were organized was the civitas."

A similar impression comes from a canon of the 567 council at Tours which ordered cities to take care of their poor (and priests in the country to take care of theirs). The explicit intention of this canon was to prevent beggars from roaming cities and regions, a concern which would recur all through French history. But of course this also shows that, as Loseby writes, “Cities even had their own poor.”

In another famous passage, Gregory tells how "a merchant named Christopher left for the city of Orleans; because he learned that a great deal of wine had arrived there. He went there then, bought wine, which he had transported on boats" and left, carrying a large sum of money from his father-in-law. Note that trade was not only active enough in Orleans for it to be worth going there to buy wine, enough infrastructure existed for him to arrange for the wine to be shipped. Such commercial activity would also seem to imply the existence of at least basic inns (as one would also expect at Marseilles), but unfortunately Gregory has no reason to enter into such details.

Perhaps his most vivid and complete description of what was essentially a city concerns Dijon. First he describes its setting:
It is a stronghold, surrounded by very solid walls. It is built in the middle of a laughing plain, whose earth is so fertile and productive that the fields, labored only once before sowing, nonetheless give very rich harvests. To the south flows the Ouche river, which is filled with fish; in the north is another small river which enters by one of the gates, passes under a bridge, exits by another gate, and surrounds the ramparts with its rapid water. Before this last gate, it turns mills with an astonishing speed.
before describing its walls:
Dijon has four entrances, turned towards the four parts of the sky; its walls are adorned with thirty-three towers. Up to twenty feet high, they are made of dressed stone, above that in smaller stone. Overall they are thirty feet high and fifteen feet thick.
(Archeology has confirmed these dimensions (Dutour).)

He then adds, "This place does not bear, I do not know why, the title of city." That is, civitas. The Latins had several words for various urban agglomerations, but only some were considered "cities". As the example of Dijon shows, other important urban centers existed, however. (In later centuries, a city would be defined by having a bishop.) Still, writes Loseby:
in Gregory's mind, at least, alternative administrative units, whether larger dukedoms, or smaller pagi, were still nascent, and of secondary importance. The civitates remain the basic building-blocks of which the various regna were composed. Like many urban monuments, the city-based institutions were in a state of decay; but they had not collapsed entirely by the late sixth century.
When cities were walled, they also served another familiar purpose: refuge. “In times of crisis or invasion Gregory's cities became refuges, places to hole up while invading forces pitilessly ravage the surrounding countryside, as well as the suburbs.”

It is a truism of this era that bishops largely ran cities: “Christianity was a 'city-friendly' religion... Its structure was grafted unto that of the Roman state, and so replicated its cellular organization, with a bishop for every civitas. As is well known, bishops came to assume responsibility for a wide range of ostensibly secular functions...” But, Loseby points out, "Gregory repeatedly shows how this could bring them in to conflict with the secular authorities, and in particular with the leading city-based officials, the counts." The most important point here is that there were city-based – that is, secular – officials; cities at this point had not been reduced to extensions of the Church.

Still, writes Loseby: “The apparent dominance of the Church in urban life can be used negatively to argue that cities in this period were nothing more than ecclesiastical centres and... not proper towns at all.” But:
this dismissive reaction runs the risk firstly of neglecting the role of the Church and its personnel as a motor of urban life in a broader sense, and, secondly, of uncritically reproducing the bias of writers such as Gregory towards churches rather than markets, and towards bishops and saints rather than merchants and artisans. The growth of early medieval urban archaeology has nevertheless tended to encourage these more pessimistic interpretations. The ramshackle Tours excavated (to a limited extent) by archaelogists.., dominated by its churches and seemingly full of open spaces despite its small area, bears little superficial relation to the bustling impression of a dynamic centre which it is most natural to draw from the writings of its bishop...
This discrepancy between the archaeological evidence and the written sources deserves to be debated further.
Yet:
difficult though it is to derive a rounded analytical picture of urban life in late sixth-century Francia from Gregory's works, they nonetheless offer a range of suggestive and, for the most part, positive indications. It is clear that, alongside their role as Christian centres, Gregory's cities continued to perform a range of administrative, social, economic and military functions which could not (or not all) be found elsewhere.
They were, in a word, something more than the villages or boroughs envisioned by Marignan.



Carolingian cities

Moving beyond Gregory's time, there is no such rich literary source, but rather a suggestive variety of data from a variety of sources (both written and archaeological). The interpretations of these have varied over the centuries and rather than citing this or that period source, one is obliged here, in a brief account, to explore the different conclusions reached by modern historians.

Before looking at these, consider that the revival of trade, and with it the revival or birth of cities, is typically said to have occurred around the eleventh century: "they saw the demographic and economic turnaround as coming only towards the year 1000." (McCormick, introduction to Pirenne); "After the invasions of the ninth and tenth centuries subsided, the towns and cities of Europe experienced a revival." (Hall);
the surge of urban growth ... that began a little before the year 1000...As early as the eleventh century, and even more during the twelfth, rapid urban growth unquestionably took place. All available studies and contemporary records testify to the expansion of those cities already in existence and to the creation of a great many new urban centers...
(Bairoch)
In other words, the period in question here is somewhere between the seventh and the tenth century. This is not short – three to four hundred years, depending on the key dates – but nor is it anything like the full Middle Ages, which went from about the fifth century to the fifteenth. It is important to note this because often the most extreme observations made based on this period are applied at the least to all of the “Dark Ages” (roughly, the medieval centuries before the Crusades) or even most of the Middle Ages, when in fact they only apply to part of the period.

The few major narrative accounts after Gregory come in Charlemagne's biographers, Einhard and Knotker the Stammerer. Neither gives anything like Gregory's mentions of cities, but scattered mentions still show that these had importance in Charles' time (king 768-814; emperor 800-814). In Charlemagne's will (appended to Einhard's biography), he parcels out alms to be given to a number of cities: “Rome, Ravenna, Milan, Frejus, Grado, Cologne, Mainz, Juvavum which is also called Salsburg, Treves, Sens, Besançon, Lyons, Rouen, Rheims, Aries, Vienne, Darantasia, Embrun, Bordeaux, Tours, Bourges.” The list of French cities included here is intriguing. It does not for instance include Metz, which had been a royal capital and retained some importance at this point. But aside from the thorny question of why certain cities were considered more worthy of alms than others, the most salient question here is the fact that the Emperor thought in such urban terms in the middle of the early Middle Ages.

Knotker mentions Charles celebrating Christmas and Advent at Trevi and Metz and then the following year at Paris or Tours. Again, if the selection is quirky, the fact that he chose major cities for these feasts hints at their continuing importance. He also mentions Charles being “detained” at Aix, probably because of those who wanted to see him there.

Otherwise, the great figure in considering French medieval cities is the Belgian scholar Henri Pirenne (1862–1935). If you are unfamiliar with his work, one thing to know is that even those who challenge or disagree with him acknowledge the value of his methods and insights. It is also true that it is difficult to find any serious work on French medieval cities today which does not build on his own, even if to contradict it.

Pirenne's great thesis can simplistically be resumed as saying that the rise of Islam led to the decline of the West, as trade with the East via the Mediterranean was blocked and commercial activity, much reduced, moved to the north. This also, by his account, made Charlemagne possible: "Without Islam, the Frankish Empire would probably never have existed and Charlemagne, without Mahomet, would be inconceivable." (The idea of blaming Islam for an earlier decline of the West of course attracts some writers today and Pirenne has been posthumously recruited, even where discredited, for some very modern arguments; is it necessary to point out that a broad attack on Islam in general was never part of his own agenda?)

Since trade and cities were intimately linked, Pirenne has a great deal to say about cities in this period. Notably, in asking if cities survived in this period, he makes this useful distinction:
If by [city] is meant a locality the population of which, instead of living by cultivating the soil, devotes itself to commercial activity, the answer will have to be "No". The answer will also be in the negative if we understand by "city" a community endowed with legal entity and possessing laws and institution peculiar to itself. On the other hand, if we think of a city as a center of administration and as a fortress, it is clear that the Carolingian period knew nearly as many cities as the centuries which followed it must have known.
...the thrust of Islam in the Mediterranean, in making impossible the commerce which up to name had still sustained a certain activity in the cities, condemned them to an inevitable decline. But it did not condemn them to death. Curtailed and weakened though they were, they survived.
This is an important distinction for many (if not all) purposes; there is ample evidence that many key cities survived in some form from Roman times until the present day. Still, says Pirenne,
In ceasing to be commercial centers they must have lost, quite evidently, the greatest part of their population. The merchants who once frequented them, or dwelt there, disappeared and with them disappeared the urban character which they had still preserved during the Merovingian era....
It is quite characteristic, and quite illuminating, that the palaces (palatia) of the Carolingian princes were not located in the towns. They were, without exception, in the country, in the demesnes of the dynasty.
Even Aix-la-Chapelle, says Pirenne, was only important because it was Charlemagne's favorite residence; it would not become a city for centuries. 

Pirenne does not factor in, however, such mentions as those in Charlemagne's will, which seem to indicate more interest in traditional cities than the Emperor's choice of residence might suggest. Still, his note is striking when one considers that the Merovingian kings often had cities such as Soissons, Paris, or Metz as capitals.

By Pirenne's account, even the counts charged with the secular administration of counties were always traveling around their domains, rather than being established in cities. He contrasts this with the bishops:
On the contrary, the immobility which ecclesiastical discipline enforced upon a bishop permanently held him to the city where was established the see of his particular diocese. Though they had lost their function in civil administration, the cities therefore continued to serve as the key points in religious administration.
..the word civitas from the beginning of the ninth century... became synonymous with the bishopric and the episcopal city. The phrase civitas Parisiensis was used to designate the diocese of Paris as well as the city of Paris itself, where the bishop had his residence.
But he sees the cities after Merovingian times as losing their secular vocation: “the disappearance of trade, in the ninth century, annihilated the last vestiges of city life and put an end to what still remained of a municipal population..." (Whether trade actually disappeared at that point is another question.) Based on his idea of a French city at this point, he conjectures that a city's population was
composed of the clerics of the cathedral church and of the other churches grouped nearby; of the monks of the monasteries... in the see of the diocese; of the teachers and the students of the ecclesiastical schools; and finally, of servitors and artisans, free or serf, who were indispensable to the needs of the religious group and to the daily existence of the clerical agglomeration.
Almost always there was to be found in the town a weekly market whither the peasants from roundabout brought their produce.
Note that, if this does not imply anything like a municipal administration or organized trades groups, it still resembles a more general idea of a city in several ways, not least in being the site of a market where people from surrounding areas could meet, communicate, etc. The “servitors and artisans” might have been attached to individual institutions, as they would have been to monasteries and great households, but if the population was large enough, one can imagine, for instance, public bakers or inn keepers serving anyone in the city. In other words, even a city dominated by the Church might have resembled what the Romans had and later French people would think of as a city.

Even so, the populations of these cities might have been minimal. Russell, studying the demographics of the feudal system, writes:
We have been taught that the feudal system could only be born into a very primitive society. From a demographic point of view, a primitive society is a society in which the cities are small... From this point of view, the Carolingian period, and that which succeeded it, appear as very primitive. ... supposing that a quarter of the Frankish Country had a million inhabitants, where is the city of 15,000 inhabitants? Aix-la-Chapelle and Ingelheim, which Charlemagne appreciated for their waters, were small agglomerations, and Paris only had a few parishes. Tours, Toulouse, Lyon and even Marseilles were centers of several thousand people. Cologne and Trevi did not fill their Roman walls, Mainz was still so close to a village that the names of neighbors were used to indicate certain localizations. Demographic study shows once more what other sources have already revealed: the economic life of the first feudal period was very weak.
Russell then points out that the population started to grow in Western Europe in the tenth century, and that one can see the growth of cities in the traces of expanding walls.

Still, even if cities were smaller, their particular role in this period continues to be debated, often with regard to Pirenne's ideas specifically:
Pirenne argues that there was an economic rupture that separated the Roman towns and cities of the antique world from their medieval descendants.... but much more continuity between Roman and medieval towns can be shown than Pirenne claimed....
The strongest attack came against Pirenne's chronology, especially his suggestion that the economy of Western Europe performed poorly in the ninth and tenth centuries, and then began to improve rapidly and dramatically in the eleventh century... Guillaume Des Marez..., Robert Lopez, and David Herlihy later insisted on an economic revival that began in the tenth century, and Michael McCormick has recently situated its origins in the late eighth and early ninth centuries.
(Daileader/Whalen)
McCormick, in his introduction to one edition of Pirenne's work on cities, writes:
The delicate remains of the organically-built early trading towns, or emporia,... have now emerged around Europe's northern seas. The new little towns are more numerous and started earlier than might have been thought. These settlements' primary vocation was manifestly commerce and craft production. And they have now begun to appear in the Mediterranean as well.
At the same time, surveys and excavations in the northwestern European countryside are uncovering considerable numbers of visibly multiplying and growing settlements, water mills, rural churches, and cemeteries, starting in the seventh or even late sixth centuries.... Instead of limiting their vision to the rare individuals explicitly identified as merchants, historians began counting travelers such as pilgrims, ambassadors, and slaves and reconstructing their trips across the Mediterranean... or detecting networks in the northern seas...
One major writer to revisit Pirenne's views is Verhulst. Here he is on the emporia mentioned above:
As of the last quarter and perhaps even the middle of the seventh century there was a considerable amount of traffic – and seemingly increasing commercial traffic – between the coasts of southern and south-east England and of the Continent from the mouth of the Seine to the mouth of the Scheldt, Meuse and Rhine. On the Continent that traffic emanated from several ports often located some distance from the coast in the estuaries of large or smaller streams: from south to north those ports were Rouen on the Seine, Amiens on the Somme, Quentovic on the Canche, Domburg... and Dorestat at the bifurcation of Rhine and Lek.
Amiens and Rouen were Roman cities and of course survive today. Quentovic and Dorestat have been called "mushroom cities", having held sway for a brief period. But Quentovic in particular is often mentioned in regard to early medieval trade. One readily imagines it as being as lively as any port city in any period.

How much does the vigor of such a coastal city tell us about that of inland cities in the same period? Such questions are exactly those that continue to be examined, largely with the help of archeology. This is just a hint of the sort of reexaminations which continue to revise ideas of French cities in the early Middle Ages.



Conclusions


It should be clear from the above that a great deal remains to discover, and is being discovered, about French cities in the period so long known as the "Dark Ages". But it should be clear as well that cities did not simply collapse or become irrelevant; to the contrary, all through this period, they played a special role even if that role is sometimes hard to define.

Very roughly, it seems that for several centuries after the Franks took over Gaul, cities remained active, important centers which still had a strong secular, as well as ecclesiastic, vocation. This no doubt varied city by city, but overall Gregory's accounts show a world where cities were entities with a distinct character and often centers of trade and commercial life.

This seems to have begun to fade in the seventh century, but how much is difficult to make out. Certainly, by Charlemagne's time, cities remained important enough for him to spend major holidays in the bigger ones and to allocate alms through them. Yet he himself seems not to have resided in any of them, unlike his Merovingian predecessors. Certain cities stand out distinctly as centers of trade, such as Rouen and Quentovic, and probably maintained some form of infrastructure to welcome all the visitors that implies.

When did cities not only survive from Roman times, but begin to claim the identity most had by the end of the Middle Ages? That remains a complex and uncertain question; but scattered data suggests the process began, however fitfully, before the standard eleventh century date that has long been accepted. Any substantial decline of cities, then, only lasted for a few centuries in a period of almost a thousand years.

From the point of view of food history, all this is preliminary work. It may never be possible to know, for instance, if Carolingian cities had town bakers and butchers, or inns and taverns to receive travelers. But however unsatisfactorily, these expanding and uncertain glimpses of early medieval cities are necessarily where one must start to even try to answer such questions.



FOR FURTHER READING:








Loseby, S. T., “Gregory's Cities: Urban Functions in Sixth-century Gaul”, Franks and Alamanni in the Merovingian Period: An Ethnographic Perspective, ed. Ian Wood 2003

























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Friday, August 1, 2014

In defense of the Franks (and other “barbarian hordes”)

How long did the Romans remain in undisturbed possession of Gaul?
About 800 years, when various "Barbarian hordes" successively over-ran the country, and drove back the Roman armies.
Who were the principal of these barbarian hordes?
The Burgundians, the West-Goths, and the Franks.
(Brewer)
The above statement is from a nineteenth century primer on French history. This one however:
During the second half of the fifth century the mighty Roman Empire in Western Europe collapsed. This was due to a long period of internal decay and the invasions by barbarian hordes.
(Andradi)
is from 2014.

The idea that the Middle Ages began with “barbarian hordes” sweeping down out of the north to destroy what had been Western (i.e., Roman) civilization is an enduring one. Along with this comes an idea of these invaders as forest-dwelling primitives who brought on “Dark Ages” of chaos and destruction. This image is all the more persistent for being useful; writers who want to foretell the next decline and fall of Western civilization regularly invoke it to suggest what awaits us:
Djuvara believes that these “barbarian hordes” will transform “civilized and prosperous Christian Europe of today into Euro-Indo-Arabia of tomorrow.”
(Paugh)
Unfortunately, anyone unfamiliar with this era may well, however unconsciously, envision it in these terms, seeing early France as a lawless place where cities had essentially disappeared, where people lived in isolated enclaves straight out of numerous TV shows and films set in some uncertain “Dark Age” where only lone heroes like Conan or Xena could fend off marauding bands and isolated petty tyrants. Of the food, one blogger recently wrote: "The entirety of the Roman Europe became taken over by Barbarians, that is, a variety of Germanic tribes. These northern invaders relied on subsistence agriculture and foraging for wild plants." 

Running all through the “Dark Ages” image is that old theme of the “barbarian hordes”. As Brewer notes, the main such groups in France were the Burgundians and the “West-Goths” (Visigoths), but above all the Franks. What then were the Franks like? Did they sweep into Gaul, destroying everything in their path? Were they indeed primitives, living on “subsistence agriculture and foraging for wild plants”? And did they reduce Gaul to a similar state?



For more about the early Middle Ages
Feasting with the Franks

The First French Medieval Food


Destructive?

How destructive was the Frankish invasion (if that's what it was) of Gaul?

Consider this overview of the conquest of Gaul by the “civilized” Romans:
The death toll over these eight years likely rose into the hundreds of thousands... and tens if not hundreds of thousands more were enslaved. Some entire communities were largely wiped out – the Veneti and Eburones for example, and the inhabitants of Cenabum.
(Billows)
The (necessarily estimated) figures vary: “In the course of seven years, Caesar had... killed perhaps a million people;” (Nardo); “The casualty figures for the Gauls, Germans and Britons combined ran into the hundreds of thousands;” “Caesar's Gallic War must have dealt a major blow to the size and balance of Gaul's population.” (Gilliver/Whitby)

No such figures exist for the Frankish take-over of Gaul, in part because it was far more rapid but also (as will be seen) the Franks, however violent they were in specific raids or battles, did not overall seek to displace or even especially change their subject populations.

Compare this too to the behavior of a far more “civilized” group in later centuries: the Spanish, who found two flourishing, sophisticated cultures in South America and... eradicated them. Nor was it the Franks who forced their fellow human beings to fight to the death for the entertainment of bloodthirsty crowds.

Viewed under these lights, the Franks (like some of their fellow “barbarians”) come out looking pretty good.

This said, one cannot deny the Franks' reputation for ferocity. There are indeed cases where they massacred at least small groups of people and they did take some time to lose their old habit of living by pillage. In one famous incident, one of Clovis' sons, Theuderic (reigned 511-533/534), silenced rumbling from his followers by allowing them to loot and pillage Auvergne (but in part, it seems, because he thought the people there had betrayed him). While civil wars would later cause much suffering, such profit-minded raids would largely end until the advent of the Vikings centuries later.

When Clovis' last Roman opponent fled to the Goths, the Franks threatened them with war if he was not handed over. The Goths' role in the fall of Rome has left them with an enduring reputation for ferocity, but these Goths (Visigoths) chose to hand their guest over, in chains – because, Gregory of Tours notes unkindly, “fear is natural to the Goths”. Certainly, the latter too were not the bloodthirsty primitives some might imagine, but it is also true they were Arians – that is, to Gregory's mind, heretics (though Christians) and so objects of his contempt.

In another famous case, the Thuringian king Hermenfroi made the mistake of betraying Theuderic. Theuderic and his brother Clothar (reigned 511-561) invaded and devastated Thuringia (and took Hermenfroi's niece Radegund, then a child, to later make her Clothar's wife). But this was hardly the impulsive violence of untutored barbarians; to the contrary, it was a reminder not to betray the Franks.

This is ironic because, if the Franks were not randomly and crudely violent, they were one thing: treacherous. Not least to each other. In fact, the long litany of murders, cruelties and wars which makes up much of Gregory de Tours' History of the Franks is above all between them. A ringing example comes from that very invasion of Thuringia. Theuderic, having enlisted his brother Clothar's help in that effort, then planned to kill him. Rather comically, Clothar spotted the feet of the intended killers under a curtain, thwarting the plot. Still more amusingly, Theuderic, to lull his suspicions, gave him a great silver platter as a gift, then, regretting it, sent his son after Clothar to ask for it back. And got it. (“Theuderic,” writes Gregory, “was very clever at such tricks.”)

Not all such family quarrels ended so humorously; the Frankish monarchs (and their relatives) seem to have been more dangerous to themselves than anyone else. Unfortunately, when this led to civil war or war with other Germanic allies, it was often civil populations that suffered. But the same would be true through much of French history, no matter how “civilized” the government.

As for the murderous quarrels themselves, anyone who considers these proof of the Franks' barbaric nature might compare them to the incidents in I, Claudius, which, though fiction, is based on actual Roman history. If the Franks come off poorly in the comparison, it is only because their cruelties were less refined.


Invaders or saviors?

Whatever the Franks' true nature, were they indeed unwelcome outsiders, come to conquer Gaul; or were they familiar allies of the Gallo-Romans, and their saviors?

The latter, some historians argue. Trends in history change, and this one may be contradicted in its turn, but an increasing number of modern historians see Clovis' triumph in a far more benign light. Before even citing such positions, however, it may be necessary to clear away some demonstrable misconceptions.

One is any idea that the Franks “came out” of any place, dark forest or otherwise. Arguably, this may have been the case when they first appeared in Roman Gaul, but by the time Clovis (430 – 486/487) became the first French king (c. 486), the Franks had not only been settled in much of what is now Belgium, they had been interacting with the Romans for some time. In fact, they had been their allies, or at least their clients. (Much of the Roman army in fact was dominated by Germanic soldiers by then.) Childeric (c. 440 – 481/482), Clovis' father, had fought alongside the Romans against the Visigoths and the Saxons. The two cultures were in regular contact. Russell: “Geary has demonstrated the existence of a long tradition of Frankish exposure to Roman material culture and Roman military tradition.”

Lorren draws this picture, largely based on archaeological evidence:
In a general way, there was not in the Vth century a substitution of one civilization for another: German migrations did not brusquely put two peoples in contact who did not know each other. The reality is certainly nuanced but, without reducing so complex a phenomenon to a simple slow and peaceful penetration, without taking into account combats and attacks, one can admit that this epoch marks the completion of a long period of permanent contacts and of interpenetrations.... It is not a question – which would be unthinkable – of the substitution of one population for another but of the progressive copenetration of two civilizations. Already before the Vth century, a mixed civilization was created which pursued and solidified itself in its originality after it.
(Lorren)
One would expect an “invasion” to lead to the replacement of the defeated by the victors, at least in many places. But instead, writes Lorren, one sees a new civilization emerge:
This new civilization, based on compromise and synthesis of diverse elements leads to the rebirth also of multiple indigenous influences which had preceded the Roman epoch, such as already Germanic or Celtic influences for example. Cemeteries common to Germans and the local population, agrarian life, the anthroponyms and toponyms, vestimentary or familial habits attest not to a competition or a struggle but a fusion.
Another misconception is that Clovis defeated any substantial portion of the Roman power. In fact, there was very little Roman power in the north by then, so little in fact that a Roman official named Syagrius (430 – 486/487) was able to run a kind of rump state centered on Soissons (and so somewhat optimistically called “the kingdom of Soissons” by Gregory de Tours). This was the Roman that Clovis defeated to become ruler of Gaul (albeit, initially, a small part of it). The fact that such a minor character (or, more precisely, his father) had been able to establish such a power base gives some idea of how little influence the Empire exercised at this point.

In other words, there was a power vacuum at this point, one no more advantageous to the Gallo-Romans than the Franks. Werner, looking at these events, writes:
Nothing... allows us to speak of "conquest": Clovis' Franks were the allies, if not the saviors, of the Gallo-Romans, and the enemies – better, the rivals – of other Barbarians.
It is Remy of Reims, a key contemporary witness, who with a single word converts our conjecture into certainty. To members of the high clergy who dared criticize Clovis' memory, the old bishop evokes the merits of the great king, who was "custos patriae" [“protector of the country”].
(Some readers might object, reasonably enough, that the Franks did loot and pillage along the way, especially at the start, making them strange “saviors” by modern standards. But consider that as late as 1639, the citizens of Abbeville still suffered depredations from the very soldiers sent to protect them. (Louandre) It would remain the case long after the medieval era that armies were dangerous to civil populations, no matter what side they were nominally on.)

 Far from being driven out or killed by the Franks, the Gallo-Romans remained the main occupants of Gaul:
My research... has led to the conclusion that it is not the "Frankish people" who "conquered and occupied" a country, but a king, or rather a dynasty, who took power in a regnum which already existed. In declaring himself, after the fact, chief of all the Francs (rex Francorum), he gave the name of this people to the regnum which from then one was his: regnum Francorum. The elite itself of this kingdom was not exclusively Frank. The king's subjects were, if one may say, multinational, but in the majority Gallo-Roman; they nonetheless made of the qualification for their king, rex Francorum, a sort of manifesto, or tool, of their political identity. In fusing with the Frankish elites, the Gallo-Roman elites helped the king guarantee the continuity of social life.
“If the Franks were barbaric brutes,” Werner asks, “why did they not brutally let the subject populations know that they must accept their defeat and submit to the victor's law, which modern historians, they, know so well how to describe?” He goes on:
Well, the Frankish kings never make the legitimacy of their power repose on conquest, but, to the contrary, on a peaceful legitimacy. In their clementia principalis (an imperial formula), they display their desire to be the protectors of their subjects. In the acts of nomination of high functionaries..., they exhort the latter to respect the law of all the gentes: Franci, Romanis (named immediately after the Franks), Burgundiones and all the others. Roman law was never abolished; it continued to apply for the Romani and, of course, for the Church.
And in fact, as numerous writers have pointed out, the “conquered” influenced the “conquerors” as much, if not more, than the other way around:
In the mass of Romanized populations of Gaul, the "intruders" were Romanized rather rapidly (with the exception of the north-east and a few enclaves)... As for the Roman elites in Gaul, the bishops who came out of them would be richer and more powerful  than before under the Merovingians, who would make the number of abbeys rise from a few units to several hundreds.... It is privileged classes, Roman and barbarian, who will direct Frankish Gaul.
No doubt opinions differ on this complex subject. But certainly a number of modern scholars view the Franks, not as destructive conquerors, but as a force for order at a moment when Rome had largely abandoned that role.
Civilization

Perhaps the strangest accusation against the Franks is that they destroyed what civilization they found. It is probably far fairer to say that they failed to restore it to what it had been. Roman cities in Gaul, for instance, were already in decline before their rule: "Most late Roman fortifications in Gaul... enclosed a much smaller area than had been inhabited previously." "most Roman centres in Gaul suffered during the disasters of the third century." (Nicholas); “Archaeology shows that the cities of northern and central Gaul suffered general, gradual, but very real decline in the late empire and post-Roman periods” (MacGeorge).

The Franks were poorly placed to restore the technologically and bureaucratically advanced culture that had preceded them. But they hardly set out to destroy it. If anything, many showed an almost childlike eagerness to imitate it. Written law, for instance, was unknown to the Germans. Yet all the Germanic groups, not only the Franks, but the Burgundians and the Visigoths, were quick to have their laws set down in writing (necessarily in Latin). Clovis issued edicts in Latin almost from the start. Fortunatus mentions thermes (hot baths) in Clothar's palace and Anthimus records various Roman delicacies – sow's womb, peacock – and seasonings served at Theuderic's table. Gregory of Tours tells how Chilperic (reigned 561-584) had circuses built at Soissons and Paris "where he gave shows to the people" (Chilperic also wrote Latin verse, though Gregory claims it was execrable). He also describes two dissolute bishops who regularly went to the baths before dining, just like any decadent Roman.

Once Clovis had converted, he and subsequent Merovingian kings financed various religious institutions, thereby reinforcing the wealth and authority of what remained an essentially Roman church.

If cities remained weak, they hardly disappeared or lost their importance. Metz, Soissons and Paris would all house royal residences. Bishops were established, as a matter of course, in major cities and church councils were held in them.

The Franks had excellent reasons to adopt two Roman institutions: taxes and tolls. After all, why burn and pillage a city when you could simply collect revenue from it on a regular basis? This did not always go smoothly; after two of her children died, the otherwise sulfurous (in Gregory's view) Fredegund told her husband to burn the tax rolls. But basically the whole Roman system of wills, contracts, donations, and all the financial apparatus such documents supported became, in whatever form, standard in France.

France was not always well-governed, not least because of in-fighting among the Franks, and key aspects of Roman infrastructure, such as good roads and public education, declined or disappeared. But none of this was due to any willful destruction by the Franks or any other Germanic groups. Roman culture was unique and represented centuries of development. The Franks simply were not equipped to revive its almost mechanical structure and efficiency. Still, their fundamental embrace of their subjects' culture can be summed up in one very simple fact: France for centuries has been a Latin, not a Germanic, country.


Other barbarians

Of all the Germanic groups, few have as ugly a reputation as the Goths, whose name has lingered on as a threat by rebellious adolescents in the form of a movement meant to be frightening. Much of this reputation rests on their role in the fall of Rome (410).

First, note that the Goths were divided into two groups: the Visigoths (the “West” Goths) and the Ostrogoths. The simplest thing to say about the latter is that they produced one of the greatest and most admired rulers of this period, Theodoric the Great (reigned 475–526), who established a kingdom at Ravenna which was one of the glories of its time. Otherwise, it was the Visigoths who sacked Rome.

This event occurred under Honorius (384-423), who was then emperor in the West (already a weak position at that point). Stilicho, a Vandal-Roman general (showing in itself how integrated Germanic groups were with Romans), was Honorius' guardian in his youth and the best defender against the Visigoth Alaric (reigned 395–410). Ultimately however Honorius distrusted Silicho and had him executed, two years before the sack of Rome. 

People suspected of favoring Stilicho had already been slaughtered mercilessly within Rome. Once he was executed, says Greenwood,
the Roman soldiery... could find no more appropriate mode of testifying their joy than by murdering the wives and children, and pillaging the property of the barbarian auxiliaries entrusted to their protection.... The kindred and relatives of the slain flocked together from every quarter, and simultaneously threw themselves into the arms of Alaric for redress and retribution.
Even then Alaric restrained himself and sought only monetary compensation and an exchange of hostages. "The proposals of Alaric were rejected, and the only chance of safety to Italy and Rome was wantonly thrown away."

Yet even then Alaric only blockaded the city, ultimately winning concessions and promises of further ones. The story for a long time after this is of near-concessions by the Romans, last minute refusals, a moment when Alaric was actually welcomed by the Romans, still further dithering until:
the Gothic king saw himself duped by the imperial government, his warnings derided, and his menaces met by defiance; no course remained but to convince his adversaries of their error by woeful experience; and he resolved reluctantly, but firmly, that Rome should pay the penalty of the willful folly of her vain and capricious ruler."
Greenwood goes on:
It is impossible to withhold our praise from the temper in which Alaric approached Rome. Every precaution was taken to restrict, as much as possible, the bloodshed and destruction, which, in case of capture by storm, could not be wholly prevented. It was strictly enjoined that the lives of all who took refuge within the churches... should be spared; and that in the pursuit of plunder the warriors should abstain from needless outrage or vengeful slaughter.
(Note that the Goths themselves were Christians, though Arians.) Greenwood allows that events were probably bloody nonetheless, but adds "if the proper allowance be made for the impression the event itself was calculated to produce, and for the character of the assailants, we think the amount of suffering inflicted and endured will be reduced far below what might have been expected."

The sack of Rome then followed craven, indecisive and even murderous behavior by a weak Roman administration and was, if not restrained, intentionally limited by its leaders; nothing like the savage, unrestrained orgy of impulsive destruction a brief resume might suggest. 

Alaric died shortly after. The Visigoths then ended up in the south of France, where they established a kingdom that lasted for several generations, “the first barbarian state to be firmly established on imperial soil, the state traditionally known as 'the kingdom of Toulouse'” (Musset). At this point (418) they become feodorati of... Rome. That is, less, than a decade after the sack of Rome, the Visigoths were back in the Romans' good graces. Though the Visigothic occupation in Gaul was hardly pacific – some of the most searing descriptions of barbarian atrocities come from this period – they soon established a state whose later legal codes would show remarkable balance and care for the rights of both barbarians and Romans.

The other main Germanic group in early France was the Burgundians. These Burgundians, who probably came down from Scandinavia, were very unlike the refined aristocrats who would later create the reknowned Burgundian court. The history of the Burgundians is harder to reduce to broad lines. They became Catholics early on, which distinguished them from the Arian Goths, for instance. They also served as feodorati, apparently faithful feodorati, of the Romans. Very little about them, in fact, suggests the violence or conquest often associated with the word “barbarian”. They too would establish a moderate and balanced legal code; ultimately they would end up being assimilated by the Franks.


Final thoughts

The individual stories of the Germanic groups in Gaul are complex and too extensive to more than outline here. But hopefully one thing that is clear from the above is that none of these were crude, forest-dwelling savages living by destructive impulse. By the time these groups made inroads into Gaul, all had had enough contact with Rome to be influenced by, even attracted to, its values. These groups, too, showed nuanced and strategic thinking. If all were capable of violence, all too lived in violent times. By the time they were established in Gaul, they showed signs of looking beyond looting and pillaging as they, more or less consciously, moved towards settled lifestyles. What is more, quite far from trying to destroy what remained of Roman civilization, they attempted, however clumsily, to embrace and revive it.

The most important point here is that the very phrase “barbarian hordes” is of dubious use in serious history. These were individual groups, with individual histories, and not undifferentiated masses of wild-eyed primitives. Anyone seeking to understand this period will want to start by looking beyond such stock phrases.



FOR FURTHER READING













  



Claude Lorren, Luc Buchet,“Dans quelle mesure la nécropole du haut Moyen Âge offre-t-elleune image fidèle de la société des vivants ?”, Actes des congrès de la Société des historiens médiévistes del'enseignement supérieur public, V6 1975 













Musset, Lucien, The Germanic Invasions: The Making of Europe, AD 400-600 1975  

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Friday, July 25, 2014

The later water myths: early America

One would think that as the modern era approached, claims that people drank alcohol to avoid bad water would fall away. But in fact the same claim that is made about the medieval period can be found for colonial America and even for the nineteenth century. Why? One reason might, very speculatively, be a general sense that the past, however distant or near, was, in a general, indefinable way, dirty. And so, by extension, the water must have been too. As has already been seen for the Middle Ages, this is a dubious assumption. But it is a persistent one and perhaps all the more persistent for being unexamined.

In discussing this issue, it is always important to emphasize two points. One is that knowing that people drank a great deal of alcohol tells us nothing about why they did so, anymore than knowing that today's drinkers drink sodas, caffeine drinks, etc. tells us in itself why so many prefer these to water. This is especially important for early America because there is indeed evidence that many Americans drank alcoholic drinks to a noticeable extent. The other is that saying that bad water existed does not in the least suggest that all water was bad. While there are somewhat less mentions of bad water in early American accounts than one might expect, it was certainly a problem in some times or areas. But there are also ample mentions of water that was at the least acceptable to those who drank it and in many cases good, even excellent.

Otherwise, it does not help that, for the colonial period at least, two authors have done their best to suggest that early Americans distrusted water.


Dubious pleadings

More than one person on line, in trying to show that early Americans thought their water unsafe, cites Sharon Salinger and/or W. J. Rorabaugh. Salinger for instance writes: "Alcoholic beverages appealed in part because water was considered an unsafe beverage; it was popularly believed that drinking water endangered one's health." Rorabaugh: “many people believed water unfit for human consumption."

Note that both these writers are writing, principally, not about water, but about alcohol: Taverns and Drinking in Early America (Salinger) and The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition (Rorabaugh). To one with a hammer, everything is a nail.

The hitch is that both selectively cite evidence to defend the idea that colonial drinkers avoided water.

Salinger, for instance, writes: “Governor William Bradford of Plymouth Colony enumerated the enemies to health and the causes of disease as 'chaing of aeir, famine, or unholsome foode, much drinking of water'..." Which is perfectly accurate. But Bradford also wrote of new arrivals in New England: "at length they found water and refreshed them selves, being the first New England water they drunke of, and was now in thir great thirste as pleasante unto them as wine had been in for-times." In addressing reservations some had about coming to America, he cited the claim that "the water is not wholsome.” and wrote: “if they mean, not so wholsome as the good beere and wine in London (which they so dearly love), we will not dispute with them; but els, for water, it is as good as any in the world, (for ought we know), and it is wholesome enough to us that can be contente therwith." This certainly shows that the English preferred to drink alcoholic drinks (many still do), but it also shows they could be content with water, so long as it was wholesome (which Bradford positively stated it was).

She also writes: “Colonists regarded water as 'lowly and common,' a drink better suited to barnyard animals than humans. As a result, colonists avoided water as much as possible.” (Her statement is also quoted in the Encyclopedia of American History: Colonization and Settlement, 1608 to 1760, Revised Edition, vol. II.) The phrase is a surprising one, given that America then was not an aristocratic society and certainly not overall a snobbish one. Who then pronounced the water “lowly and common”?

As it turns out, Rorabaugh. This is not a period quote at all; it is a quote from another secondary source. And in fact it is hard to detect any such attitude in the various period diaries and traveler's journals which mention water. If water was less desirable than various flavored drinks (as, for many people, it still is today), it was not viewed as any sort of social marker.

As evidence for the unpopularity of water, Rorabaugh cites a quip from Benjamin Franklin: "Or, as Benjamin Franklin put it, if God had intended man to drink water, He would not have made him with an elbow capable of raising wine glass." But he omits Franklin's more matter-of-fact reference to “my light repast (which was often no more than a biscuit, or a slice of bread, an handful of raisins, or a tart from the pastry cook's, and a glass of water)" or his mention of how he "went for a draught of the river water" (in Philadelphia). Franklin also famously tells how, as a journeyman in London, he drank water, so much that his fellow workers, who mainly drank beer, called him “the Water-American”.

Franklin is a strange example indeed to give of someone who avoided water; he may even have favored the drink. What is more, in a codicil to his will, he showed great concern for the water of Philadelphia:
The water of the wells must gradually grow worse, and in time be unfit for use, as I find has happened in all old cities, I recommend that at the end of the first hundred years, if not done before, the corporation of the city employ a part of the hundred thousand pounds in bringing by pipes the water of Wissahickon Creek into the town, so as to supply the inhabitants, which I apprehend may be done without great difficulty, the level of that creek being much above that of the city, and may be made higher by a dam;
Both Salinger and Rorabaugh demonstrate, accurately, that early Americans drank a great deal of alcohol. What they fail to do is demonstrate that they did so to avoid drinking water.


Colonial water drinking

In his Commonplace Book, William Byrd II (1674–1744) says: “Eat of nor more than one thing at a time, and let your drink be only water, or at best but wine and water." While visiting Virginia mines in 1733, he found his hosts short on food or “good drink”, “the Family being reduc'd to the last Bottle of Wine, which was therefore husbanded very carefully. But the Water was excellent.”

Clearly, Byrd, a rich plantation owner, appreciated water. Yet ironically he too is sometimes cited as proof that people found alcohol safer than water, based on his account of a visit where he had nothing to drink but water:
In the morning colonel Bolling, who had been surveying in the neighbourhood, and Mr. Walker, who dwelt not far off, came to visit us; and the last of these worthy gentlemen, fearing that our drinking so much water might incline us to pleurisies, brought us a kind supply both of wine and cider.
Note first of all that Walker was not concerned that the water itself be diseased, only that Byrd had drunk too much of it. Why? Because he was afraid this would lead to “water on the lungs”, or pleurisy. This was a question of excess, not contamination.

But further, how did Byrd himself feel about his drink? He writes “it proved but a Mahometan feast, there being nothing to drink but water...” That is, he considered it a limited choice (despite his advice elsewhere). But he expresses not the least anxiety about drinking it. Nor, for all his wealth, does he even hint that it is “lowly and common”.

The Swedish-Finnish naturalist Pehr Kalm (1716 – 1779) came to America in 1747 and remarked on the water in several spots. In Albany, he says, “They commonly drink very small beer, or pure water.” But he himself found this “pure water” off-putting, and even unhealthy. This illustrates the important point that even when water was less than optimal, people would sometimes become accustomed to it.
The water of several wells in this town was very cool about this time; but had a kind of acid taste, which was not very agreeable. On a nearer examination, I found an abundance of little insects in it, which were probably Monoculi. ... I poured some of this water into a bowl, and put near a fourth part of rum to it. The Monoculi, instead of being affected with it, swam about as briskly as they had done in the water. This shews, that if one makes punch with this water, it must be very strong to kill the Monoculi. I think this water is not very wholesome for people who are not used to it, though the inhabitants of Albany, who drink it every day, say, they do not feel the least inconvenience from it. I have been several times obliged to drink water here, in which I have plainly seen Monoculi swimming; but I generally felt the next day somewhat like a pea in my throat, or as if I had a swelling there; and this continued for above a week... I have always endeavoured, as much as possible, to do without such water as had Monoculi in it. I have found Monoculi in very cold water, taken from the deepest wells, in different parts of this country. Perhaps many of our diseases arise from waters of this kind, which we do not sufficiently examine. I have frequently observed abundance of minute insects in water, which has been remarkable for its clearness.
Note too that he did not find alcohol of much use in correcting what he (but not the locals) regarded as a defect.

In New Jersey, he found people happy to drink from a swamp:
All the inhabitants here were of opinion, that the water in the cedar swamps is wholesomer than any other drink: it created a great appetite, which they endeavoured to prove by several examples. They ascribed this quality to the water itself, which is filled with the resin of the trees, and to the exhalations which came from the trees, and can easily be smelled. The people likewise thought that the yellowish colour of the water, which stands between the cedar trees, was owing to the resin, which comes out of the roots of these trees. They likewise all agreed, that this water is always very cold in the hottest season, which may be partly owing to the continual shade it is in. I knew several people who were resolved to go to these cedar swamps, and use the waters for the recovery of their appetite.
In describing an evangelical trip in 1766, Reverend Charles Woodmason says he “drank not but water”. He presents this as a hardship, but certainly not as a health risk.

Philip Vickers Fithian (1747–1776) provides a comic illustration (from 1774) of alcohol not being a substitute for water. He describes a drunken carpenter, holding a bottle of rum, begging for water: "O sir call in a servant and have me some Water".

In the same year, John Adams (1735–1826) wrote his wife of the hardships to be faced in defying England: "Let us eat potatoes, and drink water. Let us wear canvass, and undressed sheepskins, rather than submit to the unrighteous, and ignominious domination that is prepared for us." This again shows that water was indeed viewed as a limited option. But there is no hint of snobbishness in his tone, and certainly no sense that it is, in general, unhealthy.

Still, Adams does present a rare example of someone explicitly drinking alcohol to avoid bad water. In 1777, he wrote from Philadelphia:
I would give three guineas for a barrel of your cider. Not one drop is to be had here for gold, and wine is not to be had under six or eight dollars a gallon, and that very bad. I would give a guinea for a barrel of your beer. The small beer here is wretchedly bad. In short, I can get nothing that I can drink, and I believe I shall be sick from this cause alone. Rum at forty shillings a gallon, and bad water will never do, in this hot climate, in summer, when acid liquors are necessary against putrefaction.
Truth be told, here he seems unhappy with virtually all the options available. Too, he is mentioning water at a specific moment of the year. But he does indeed seem to prefer alcohol to bad water (not, be it noted, to water in general). If such comments were common in the writers consulted here, this might indeed support the idea that alcohol was regularly used to avoid drinking bad water. But in fact Adams' comment is very unusual.

Adams also describes an early water municipal water supply, here in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania:
They have carried the mechanical arts to greater perfection here than in any place which I have seen. They have a set of pumps which go by water, which force the water up through leaden pipes from the river to the top of the hill, near a hundred feet, and to the top of a little building in the shape of a pyramid or obelisk, which stands upon the top of the hill, and is twenty or thirty feet high. From this fountain, water is conveyed in pipes to every part of the town.
The French Marquis de Chastellux (1734–1788), while serving in the Revolutionary War, noted settlers (apparently in North Carolina) who were “obliged to content themselves with milk and water, until their apple-trees are large enough to bear fruit, or until they have been able to procure themselves stills, to distill their grain.” Clearly these settlers preferred drinking cider or spirits. But there is no hint that they regarded water as dangerous; they were able to “content themselves with it”.

Joseph Plumb Martin (1760–1850) offers a soldier's perspective during the war. In one case, a lieutenant asked an old man “for a vessel to dip some water from a spring near by, which was six or eight feet deep, but the old man refused, saying that he would not let a soldier have a cup to drink from if it were to save his life." In another passage, he shows how important good drinking water was to the soldiers:
The greatest inconvenience we felt, was the want of good water, there being none near our camp but nasty frog ponds.... All the springs about the country, although they looked well, tasted like copperas water, or like water that had been standing in iron or copper vessels. I was one day rambling alone in the woods, when I came across a small brook of very good water, about a mile from our tents; we used this water daily to drink, or we should almost have suffered.
Finally, toward the end of the century, in 1794, Martha Ballard (1734/1735 – 1812). a midwife and healer, noted “I was at Mr. Densmore's to see his daughter Dorcas who has a soar throat. We gave her cold water, root tea and a fue drops viteral." In this case cold water was actually part of a cure.

It should be clear from these examples that water was a standard, if not favored, drink in colonial America. If some water was bad or, at the least distasteful, that was not enough to prevent people from drinking water in general. Clearly, many people would have preferred something stronger or more flavorful, but nothing supports the idea that this was because water was considered “lowly” or dangerous in general. It may be too that some drank alcohol specifically in cases where they distrusted the water, but if so, Adams' remark in this regard is a rare one to note as much.


The nineteenth century

At the start of the nineteenth century (1807-1809), Fortescue Cuming (1762?-1828?) visited the West. In Natchez (Misssissippi), he wrote, "Water is well supplied by wells about forty feet deep, and about a quarter of a mile from the east end is a delightful spring... I found three or four companies of males and females...enjoying the cool transparent water, either pure or mixed to their taste." As he traveled to Lexington in Kentucky, he took “a glass of milk and water on horseback". While in Beaver, in Pennsylvania, he noted that "the inhabitants not finding water at a convenient depth, have... led it by wooden pipes from a hill near a mile from the town, and have placed publick wooden fountains in the streets at convenient distances."

In several different places, then, water was a standard drink. In Natchez, it seems, they even enjoyed it.

Cuming is also one of the first to describe Philadelphia's waterworks:
This water steam engine, otherwise called the waterworks, is a work of great magnitude. It cost 150 thousand dollars, and is capable of raising about 4,500,000 gallons of water in 24 hours, with which the city is daily supplied through wooden pipes....The first stone of this building was laid on the 2nd May, 1799, and it was completed in 1801-2. The works belong to the city, and the citizens pay a water tax equal to the expence of keeping the engine in motion...
In 1832, Frances Trollope (1779–1863) published an account of a visit to the States. She provides a more vivid account of this municipal effort:
The water-works of Philadelphia have not yet perhaps as wide-extended fame as those of Marly, but they are not less deserving it. At a most beautiful point of the Schuylkill River, the water has been forced up into a magnificent reservoir, ample and elevated enough to send it through the whole city. The vast yet simple machinery by which this is achieved is open to the public, who resort in such numbers to see it, that several evening stages run from Philadelphia to Fair Mount for their accommodation....... The works themselves are enclosed in a simple but very handsome building of freestone, which has an extended front opening upon a terrace, which overhangs the river: behind the building, and divided from it only by a lawn, rises a lofty wall of solid lime-stone rock, which has, at one or two points, been cut into, for the passage of the water into the noble reservoir above. From the crevices of this rock the catalpa was every where pushing forth, covered with its beautiful blossom. Beneath one of these trees an artificial opening in the rock gives passage to a stream of water, clear and bright as crystal, which is received in a stone basin of simple workmanship, having a cup for the service of the thirsty traveller. 
Ten years later, Dickens would also mention this structure in his American Notes:
Philadelphia is most bountifully provided with fresh water, which is showered and jerked about, and turned on, and poured off, everywhere. The Waterworks, which are on a height near the city, are no less ornamental than useful, being tastefully laid out as a public garden, and kept in the best and neatest order.
Again, this not only shows Americans drinking water, but a city going to some effort to provide it.

One of Trollope's remarks only incidentally shows how normal it was to drink water at that point:
A Virginian gentleman told me that ever since he had married, he had been accustomed to have a negro girl sleep in the same chamber with himself and his wife. I asked for what purpose this nocturnal attendance was necessary? "Good heaven!" was the reply, "if I wanted a glass of water during the night, what would become of me?
Note once again that this is clearly someone of at least some means, yet there is no hint here that water is “lowly”.

In New York, she notes, "Ice is in profuse abundance; I do not imagine that there is a house in the city without the luxury of a piece of ice to cool the water, and harden the butter."

Her most telling remark is on America in general: "Almost everyone drinks water at table, and by a strange contradiction, in the country where hard drinking is more prevalent than in any other, there is less wine taken at dinner". It was true, that is, that many Americans drank alcoholic drinks; but this was separate from their use of water. She goes on to say: "the hard drinking, so universally acknowledged, does not take place at jovial diners, but, to speak plain English, in solitary dram-drinking." This is as clear a statement as one can find of the difference between drinking water (for refreshment) and drinking alcohol (apparently, mainly to get drunk).

Dickens, in 1842, provided several notes on American water drinking as well. On a steamboat to Cincinnati, he writes, “At dinner, there is nothing to drink upon the table, but great jugs full of cold water”. While being harried by urchins on a train from Baltimore to Washington, he describes one "refreshing himself with... a draught from the water-jug". Even in the Eastern Penitentiary in Pennsylvania, he writes, "Fresh water is laid on in every cell, and [each prisoner] can draw it at his pleasure."

Still, in Columbus, Ohio, he did encounter bad water – but alcohol here was not an option: "As [the coffee and tea] are both very bad and the water is worse, I ask for brandy; but it is a Temperance Hotel, and spirits are not to be had for love or money." This is now something to consider in American drinking habits; where Temperance reigned, water would have been one of the few options; alcohol was out of the question.

People continued too to drink water about which they had reservations. In 1840, Lydia Bacon (1786-1853) was in Indiana, where she was able to enjoy water despite doubts about its purity: "We drink the river water; it tastes very well, but I do not like to think of the dirt that is thrown into it."

When speaking of the American West, it seems all the more ludicrous to suggest that people avoided water. There was only so much liquid – of any sort – wagon trains or other travelers could carry and so the search for plain water was concern enough, without demanding alcohol in its place. A Forty-Niners' journal captures the pure ecstasy of simply finding drinking water:
We were all weak, as we did not like to eat for fear of increasing our thirst... The men on the lead reached the kanyon a long time ahead of those who were behind. After proceeding up the kanyon a little distance they found running water. As soon as they saw it they shouted "Water, Water" at the top of their voices. The cry was caught up by those behind, and was rapturously repeated the whole length of the line.... they reached it at last. Pure, sparkling, cold water was there, gurgling as it ran over the rocks in the channel. Oh, what music to our ears was in the sound! How ravishing the sight!... Though nearly twenty years have elapsed since then, the impression still remains; I cannot bear now to see water wasted.

The Civil War

This point in history may serve as the end of “Early America”. Soldiers' accounts vividly show the importance of drinking water: "I ran through the open gate and asked if I might fill my canteen with water from the well. And she, the haughty Virginia maiden, refused to notice me." (Wilkeson); "Our haversacks are filled with salt pork and hard bread and our canteens with water."; "One gentleman kindly sent me some iced water by a servant as I passed his house."; "We have moved our camp from near the river to a hill where we get plenty of pure water from a spring. This is a great luxury, for in most of our camps we have been obliged to go long distances for water."; "Yesterday some of my men discovered an ice house full of ice, and we have been having a luxury in the way of iced water." (Rhodes); "We have an excellent well of water in the yard, which is a great thing in this part of the country."; "Many of the commands are sinking wells, so as to get good water for the men." (Wainwright).

Finally, from the same period (1863), here is a note from Frances Trollope's son, Anthony, writing of the public rooms in American hotels: "On a marble table in the middle of the room always stands a large pitcher of iced water". One can be sure that in such hotels spirits were (except where Temperance reigned) readily available. Nonetheless, for pure refreshment, what could replace cool water?


Conclusion

Why is it that so many writers insist on imagining a past where water was suspect, dangerous, avoided by most drinkers? This tendency, first apparent in regard to the Middle Ages, continues to appear for subsequent eras and has established a pre-conception in many people's minds that is hard to shake. Salinger offers a handful of examples which show, one can, just, find illustrations for the idea in early America, but at the cost of ignoring what appears in the wider picture. (One would be hard put, on the other hand, to offer specific examples of Americans finding water "lowly and common" or more ludicrously still "better suited to barnyard animals".)

Anyone who cares to leaf through the various sources (linked below) for the examples given here will find that, if they are sometimes scattered through these works, they are not exceptions contradicted by other unmentioned cases of people, for instance, drinking cider or beer to avoid bad water. Such mentions are in fact very rare. Americans, from the colonial period on, found it natural to drink water, even if they also (and apparently with gusto) drank alcohol. They still do today, even as a host of other options crowd supermarket shelves.



FOR FURTHER READING:










Franklin, Benjamin, William Temple Franklin,Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Benjamin Franklin … 1818


































1998










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