Gateway Essay: Colonial America and Medieval Technology

II. From Medieval Europe to Colonial America I: Mill

The mill in colonial America grew out of three developments in medieval Europe: technological change or improvements in design, demographic expansion or increased population, and cultural concerns leading to individual freedom. The improvement in design can be called more accurately competing designs. The windmill provides the best demonstration of this competition. Unlike the water-powered mill, the windmill is completely medieval. There appear at the same time two competing designs. One was the German or post mill, which first appears in twelfth-century, while the other was the Dutch or stationary mill. The German model had the entire mill built on a central post, hence its name of "post mill". As the direction of the wind shifted, the miller simply turned the mill to best advantage. The Dutch mill is more familiar. The mill building is stationary (hence the name) while the top with the sails moves on a pivot; so the sails turn with the prevailing wind, but not the entire building. By the beginning of the sixteenth century, just before European settlement in North America, the weight of the milling equipment became so heavy that the stationary mill largely replaced the post design.

Technological change occurred at the same time as demographic change. There was a tremendous increase in population in Europe during the period from 1100 to 1300. For example: in 1100, Florence had about 6,000 inhabitants; by 1300, there were almost 100,000. These people needed food, and the main staple of the medieval diet was bread. More bread needed greater quantities of flour. So, mills became larger and more efficient. Their efficiency extended to new sources of power. The power source of classical antiquity was human. Slave labor powered the mighty Roman Empire. Even though the Romans understood the principle of the waterwheel, and made some waterpower grain mills, especially in Gaul (modern France), the most common source of power was the much cheaper slave labor. The conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity, a religion that taught the dignity and value of each person, gave the European Middle Ages its religious basis. That led to numerous prohibitions against trafficking in humans during the early Middle Ages. Individual kingdoms outlawed slavery. In 1102, for example, the Council of London made slavery illegal in England. Slavery was virtually extinct throughout Europe by the twelfth century.

Searches for a new motor source looked to two principal energies: wind and water. These natural resources were inexpensive to harness, inexhaustible, and powerful. Water wheeled mills are powered by swift moving water. The water turned paddles that moved the grinding stones within the mill building. In regions with little rapid water, such as Flanders, wind was the alternate. The picturesque Dutch windmills used the energy available, as was also done on the American plains. The windmills used sails attached to axles that moved the millstones. Medieval engineers had to overcome various problems, of which one was their variable rate. Winds could be too still to turn the mill sails or so wild that they pulled the sails from the building. Gently flowing streams could dry up in hot summers and become raging floods in the spring thaw. Therefore, medieval engineers built more efficient sails, placed brakes on the axles, constructed reservoirs for holding water, more commonly known as millponds, or made artificial channels alongside rivers to protect the expensive machinery from devastating floods.

When emigrants left their European homes for North America, they brought with them the technology that they had used. North America had water and wind in abundance. Of the two, water was preferred because it generated more power, was more reliable, and more easily controlled. Settlers preferred to build mills by streams rather than the more powerful rivers. Millponds provided a steady supply of water for the mill, and they were convenient sources of protein when stocked with fish. Names such as Francis Mill in Virginia reveal both the owner of the establishment as well as the type of service provided. In colonial America, there was more freedom to own a mill. European literature has many stories of corrupt millers, while American literature has fewer because more Americans owned the mills; the increased competition ensured that dishonest millers lost customers.