Water control, as noted in the preceding chapter, involved both removing excess water from fields (drainage) and supplying water to the land when necessary (irrigation). Throughout France the goal of many projectors was to improve land by increasing either drainage or irrigation. In the well-watered North and West, projectors sought to address primarily problems of drainage. In the more arid South and East, however, they concentrated on irrigation as in the region known as Provence, which is the focus of this chapter and which provides another example of the importance of the Revolution's institutional change. After examining the evolution of technology and relative prices in Provence between 1700 and 1855, I argue that the division of political power blocked all attempts to increase the supply of irrigation under the Old Regime.

As one of France's most arid regions, Provence was an area where the development of an irrigation network should have had the greatest impact before 1789. Years when rainfall is negligible from June to October are frequent, restricting agricultural production to grains, grapes, and olives on dry fields. Both before and after the Revolution, it was argued that the obvious remedy to the arid climate was irrigation. An eighteenth-century historian, Joseph Fornery, wrote: