Alternate history transport

[(E)]

After the reading the threads on Airships and Ekranoplanes the thought occurs "What about Canals for transport?"

So two questions
Is there any reason a central European nation couldn't invest heavily in a canal based transport system several centuries earlier than did historically?

What would be the effects of a nation developing a canal system earlier?

[Phil Masters]

The French actually started with canals surprisingly early; look up the Canal du Midi. But note that even that was a very old dream that didn't happen until the 17th century. I suspect that you need a degree of central government authority that just isn't the norm until around that time, and access to a healthy lump of investment capital. Plus, you ideally want large-scale pumping technology and some other developments.

[weby]

As Phil says large scale channels require a lot of money to be built.

That being said: channels in right places are HUGE game changers in economy before motorized transport. The ease of transporting goods by water compared to land is overwhelming at that point. Basically with large channel networks any country with such would see a large economic boom as transportation costs are slashed.

If you want to see a later example that has been studied quite a lot google the impact of Erie canal.

[AlexanderHowl]

Canals are ancient business. The Egyptians built canals along the Nile four thousand years ago to avoid the cataracts. The Greeks created an ancient version of the Suez Canal over two thousand years ago to connect the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea, using the Nile as an intermediary body of water. The Chinese finished the Grand Canal, the largest canal in history, around fourteen centuries ago to connect their major rivers together.

Nowadays, we mostly build canals for safety reasons rather than to facilitate trade, as we have relatively cheap transportation options, though there are notable exceptions. Some of the interesting options under consideration are the Med-to-Dead and Red-to-Dead canals, which would create an alternative to the Suez Canal and refresh the Dead Sea (though many people have decided that they want tunnels instead of canals). In addition, there have been plans in the works for the Columbia and Nicaraguan Canals as alternatives to the Panama Canal, though they have yet to receive the necessary financial support.

[The Colonel]

As I understand it, capital requirements are a significant barrier to canal construction - which would explain why various despotisms were better placed to build them than medieval Europe. Other barriers include dredging technology (quite a lot of pre-modern canals seem to have died of silting) and the development of lock-gate technology.

Of course, besides transport, canals can also serve as drainage/irrigation, general water supply and defensive barriers. Presumably an early industrial civilisation might even construct a canal that served as a macro-scale millrace and power a group of factories. Actually, come to think of it, a modern civilisation with the right hydrodynamics might do something very similar with hydroelectric power ... perhaps a pair of parallel canals with a fixed height difference and turbines linking the two at intervals?

[RogerBW]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

The French actually started with canals surprisingly early; look up the Canal du Midi. But note that even that was a very old dream that didn't happen until the 17th century. I suspect that you need a degree of central government authority that just isn't the norm until around that time, and access to a healthy lump of investment capital. Plus, you ideally want large-scale pumping technology and some other developments.

And historically, once you have all those things, you have just enough time to build a canal network before railways come along and give you cheaper and faster cargo haulage. As with the airships thread, there's a successor technology that you have to avoid.

[Kelly Pedersen]

Originally Posted by RogerBW

And historically, once you have all those things, you have just enough time to build a canal network before railways come along and give you cheaper and faster cargo haulage.

There were quite a few pre-modern canals, though. The Chinese Grand Canal, for example, as already mentioned. To build a significant canal network in Europe, I'd think you just need one of the existing states with significant manpower and resources to get into it in a big way. The Romans already built several canals, for example, and there were apparently at least plans for more, such as a canal connecting the Saône and Moselle rivers, which would have connected the North Sea to the Mediterranean. I could see a Roman Empire that got even more into canal-building.

[Derrick_rp]

This seems like an extremely logical development for the world of Qabala from GURPS Steampunk.

If you’re not familiar, it’s a world where the construction of golems has become widespread in Europe, and conventional technology has slowed in development due to each nation having grown a large golem labor force that are much stronger than humans and never tire.

In a world with golems but no steam engines, golem dug canals seem like they would very likely criss cross Europe as railroads did in our timeline.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen

There were quite a few pre-modern canals, though. The Chinese Grand Canal, for example, as already mentioned. To build a significant canal network in Europe, I'd think you just need one of the existing states with significant manpower and resources to get into it in a big way. The Romans already built several canals, for example, and there were apparently at least plans for more, such as a canal connecting the Saône and Moselle rivers, which would have connected the North Sea to the Mediterranean. I could see a Roman Empire that got even more into canal-building.

Yes, while the complicated rights to land in the Holy Roman Empire prevented canal building before the 19th century, other kingdoms and republics had other arrangements. There were major canal works around Mantua as well (and don't forget the Draining of the Fens which got Oliver Cromwell interested in politics).

There is some question whether the Romans had invented the canal lock. That is necessary if you want a canal whose highest point is somewhere in the middle, like the Panama or the Rhine-Danube or the Grand Canal.

Canals work best when there is a long stretch of relatively flat land between two centres of trade, simple land rights, and lots of capital or forced labour available.

One reason why canals work so well in Mesopotamia is that most of Mesopotamia below the rain-grow-barley clime is pretty worthless without irrigation. It is relatively easy to push a few shepherds off land which they only visited once a year and put in a canal and some date plantations, compared to making several villages of angry farmers give up everything. Another is that the rivers in Mesopotamia are always moving, so it is not so hard to persuade people to have them move somewhere specific.

[Polydamas]

Also, just to spell it out, the reason that canal building was slow in Mitteleuropa is that every few miles was a new polity with different rights, arranged according to no logical framework and often disputed between gangs of squabbling relatives with expensive lawyers. If someone had rights to collect tolls and responsibility to keep the river navigable (bitter laugh), why would they give those up just so that someone else could make a profit with a canal? (The later books in Eric Flint's 1632 series touch on this- some of his fans are into early modern history).

Further east you have the Hapsburg-Ottoman-horde-of-the-week wars and challenging geography like the Iron Gates: in the low countries you had free cities, counties, bishoprics, and the Eighty Years War/Warres of the Lowe Countries. I seem to recall that canal builders and drainers of fens often imported a gang of Dutch engineers, but getting the rights for a long canal was a challenge.