The Medieval Roots of Colonial Iron Manufacture Technology

Introduction | Medieval Iron | Medieval Blacksmith | Colonial Iron | Colonial Blacksmith | Conclusion

Iron Manufacture in Colonial America

The technology of colonial iron manufacture differed very little from that of medieval Europe. Mining, smelting and smithing techniques remained virtually unchanged, due to the strikingly similar conditions that existed in our two paralleled times and locations. As an example, one period text describes the appearance of a colonial furnace, in particular Colebrook Furnace, located in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania. This poem by George H. Boker greatly reminds us of the sow and pigs of the furnace of medieval Europe, illustrating the appearance of the molten iron on the casting floor:

Although techniques differed very little, laws surrounding iron manufacture in the colonies were a defining characteristic contrary to the Middle Ages. The predominant theory in England at the time was mercantilism, which judged the mother country more important than its parts, and strove to sell abroad, but not buy there. The colonies were expected to supply their mother country with raw materials, particularly timber and pig iron. In 1737, the London Daily Post, distressed over the fact that England was annually consuming more bar iron than the 18,000 tons she produced, predicted that the future lay in production in the colonies: "In our American colonies are now erected several Forges and Bloomeries for making Bar-Iron." [19] By 1751, Maryland and Virginia alone furnished England with 2,950 tons of iron, one-sixth of the mother country's own production. [20] No longer would England have to so heavily depend on imported iron from Sweden and Russia, coming full circle in its mercantilist principles. [21] Finished goods such as pots, pans, hinges and tools were not to be made in the colonies, however, but bought and shipped from England. Beginning in 1660 and lasting until the Revolutionary War, a list of "enumerated articles" was published by the British government under the heading of the Navigation Acts. These articles, including cast pig iron, wrought bar iron, among others, were to be produced in the colonies, but shipped only to British ports. [22] Later, the Iron Act of 1750 reiterated those sentiments and prohibited all export of iron from the colonies to other countries. It did, however, remit all duties on exports to England, increasing the tonnage of iron exported from 3,000 in 1750 to 8,000 in 1770. [23] Understandably, complying with these laws would have eventually led to the undermining of all colonial iron manufacture efforts, and later led in part to the ensuing revolution. Harold Livesay, summed it up in his statement, "The English passed laws to protect their market; the colonists developed iron works to ensure their iron supply." [24]

As similar as colonial iron manufacture was to that of medieval Europe, it differed greatly from the type of iron manufacture that was its contemporary in eighteenth century early modern Europe. Existing conditions of natural resources greatly affected the development of technical innovation in the field of iron manufacture. Differences between these conditions in the colonies and Europe was the primary cause of their striking dissimilarity.

As has been stated, the colonies utilized the iron manufacture technology of the Middle Ages. One reason for this, obviously, is that the Middle Ages were the chronological period directly preceding the colonization of the New World. But, in addition to this, the Middle Ages were also a period of particularly intense technological advancement. The centuries up until the age of Leonardo da Vinci witnessed a continuously rising level of technological improvement, but afterward, according to Frances and Joseph Gies, the succeeding age experienced a "relaxation of the pace of technical change." [25] These groundbreaking medieval innovations included a switch from slave labor to free labor, human power to animal, water and wind power, a few handwritten manuscripts to widely-distributed printed material, a surge of metal tools, and the invention of canal locks, gunpowder weapons and clocks. [26]

The Middle Ages also possessed a previously unheard-of spirit of progress, allowing innovators to make use of their "God-given" right to succeed financially, their intellectual curiosity to tinker and finally their technical ability to create. A sense of progress was impossible, however, without a concept of history and improvement throughout the ages. Unlike the societies of classical antiquity, the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, medieval man no longer looked back to a "golden age," but employed a noncyclical view of history, enabling them to conceptualize technology in a broader scope. Christianity also brought about the disappearance of animism and the advent of the use of natural resources. Animism was a belief that had long hindered the Romans from developing technology that utilized nature to the benefit of man. [27]

The continual search for a superior way of doing things also led to the recognition of the usefulness of machines. Francesco di Girgio Martini of the fifteenth century explained: "Without mechanical ingenuity the strength of man is of small avail." [28] This realization led to a number of inventions, most importantly the waterwheel, which affected almost all handcrafts in some form, from the production of lumber to leather, flour to textiles, paper to iron. In particular, the manufacture of iron by waterpower led to the invention of the hugely significant blast furnace.

The combined result of this incredibly successful series of centuries obviously had its appeal for the colonists attempting to settle the wild territory of the New World. This was almost entirely due to the fact that conditions in the colonies were naturally identical. Need begets change, and where there is no necessity for change, new technology is rarely invented. The equipment in the heads of the colonists was that of their medieval forebears. An unfortunate occurrence in medievalism today is, in part, due to our nineteenth-century Romantic influences. Because of this, often forgotten are the nine-tenths of the medieval population, not the clergy, not the scholars, not the nobility, but the working peasantry. These were the plowmen and craftsmen that colonized the New World, and who brought with them the only heritage of innovation they had, a heritage of medieval innovation. [29]

The primary reason for the differences between early modern European and colonial iron manufacture technology was the variation in natural resource availability. Medieval Europe utilized timber, particularly for the production of charcoal, to a dizzying extent. By the High Middle Ages, forest resources had all but disappeared. In the winter of 1623-1624, before embarking for the colonies, John Winthrop noted "the Common scarcitie of woods and Tymber in most places of this Realme." [30] In order to heat their homes in a predominantly wood-fueled, but increasingly expensive, society, the poor were chopping down young trees, hedges, gates and bridges. [31] Although there were early attempts at conservation, these were made virtually impracticable, due to the intense need for fuel. Additionally, as a nation's power at sea was increasingly necessary, the desire for ships made the demand for wood reach its peak. The reign of Charles I saw only a few tracts of woodland in England that still covered more than twenty square miles. All others had been completely chopped down, save for some hedgerows necessary to break wind gusts. [32] Carlo Cipolla has stated that "throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance, the Europeans behaved toward the trees in an eminently parasitic and extremely wasteful way." [33] However, one must also keep in mind their dependence on wood for the forge, blast furnace, cooking, baking and heating, in addition to other crafts, including pottery, tile and brick making, glassmaking and distilling, a dependence whose scope can be equated to ours today on petroleum products. Furthermore, deforestation was done in the clearing of land, necessary for the planting of crops that were indispensable to the growing population. [34]

This image of medieval dependence on wood was mirrored in that of the colonists. [35] Here the colonists diverged sharply from their European contemporaries. They were using the seemingly endless supply of wood for every purpose to which they could apply it, including houses, canals, road surfaces (the plank roads), railroad ties, bridges, compasses and even mathematical instruments. [36] On a positive note, this excessive use also led to American leadership in wood-working tools, such as the muley saw and the American axe. While their European counterparts were struggling with iron production due to deforestation issues, the colonists were using their abundance of forest to readily produce more, and superior, iron than their mother countries. Until Europe eventually developed the puddling technique, a method of purifying pig iron in an oxidizing atmosphere, charcoal-produced iron was significantly superior to that produced using coal. In the great tradition of American entrepreneurship, the availability of natural resources, namely water privileges for power, limestone for flux and several square miles of timber for charcoal, allowed practically any man with merely modest means to start his own industrial enterprise. [37] The colonists', as their medieval forebears', reliance on wood would eventually lead to the same outcome as that in Europe: vast deforestation. The destruction of virgin forests was by far the work of charcoal colliers over any other industry, including lumbermen and farmers. [38] Although at the time of the colonists' arrival, hundreds of millions of acres of virgin forests sprawled across the United States, today only five percent of those remain, much of the deforestation of the east coast done during the first two centuries after colonization. [39]

Despite the fact that charcoal-produced iron was for a time superior to that produced by coal, there were also numerous other reasons for the colonists' decision to continue using it. These revolve around the difficulty surrounding the utilization of coal in almost every aspect of iron production, a conundrum needed to be overcome by the Europeans. These difficulties were evident in mining, transportation and use, impediments that also led to a greater expense, even though the sale of coal fetched only a small price. Only after a lengthy series of innovations and adaptations was the use of coal a financially rewarding one. After the initial exhaustion of surface seams of coal in Europe, miners were forced to delve to considerable depths. Flooded coal-pits were a constant problem and a costly one. Early sources of draining power, wind, water and animals, proved to be inadequate, and the costs to maintain the numerous teams of horses needed to drive the drainage machines were high. Diverting streams and rivers from their courses or damming up water so that it could drive the engines was also expensive. [40] This difficulty would in the ages to come be solved by the advent of technology to generate power by a jet of steam.

Once the hard-earned coal was finally ready to transport, even more difficulties arose. Coal needed to be increasingly mined at further distances from harbors and navigable rivers. [41] Unlike charcoal, it was extremely bulky and an unpleasant material to handle. This problem would not fully be solved until the eighteenth century, by vast systems of canals. [42]

By far the greatest technological problems posed by the substitution of coal for charcoal, though, stemmed from its use at the furnace. During the period of the colonization of the New World, production of wrought iron by the indirect process, pig-iron that would be hammered out into wrought iron at the forge, was coming into increasing popularity, particularly in northern Europe, the Low Countries, Sweden and Britain. [43] Substitution of coal for charcoal in this process required many stages where the ore and iron came into contact, and each of those presented its own particular challenges. Simply replacing charcoal with raw coal damaged the iron, making it brittle and useless. The earliest stages of a solution to this dilemma actually came about in 1603 through the beer industry, by an innovative promoter, Sir Hugh Platt. The same properties of raw coal that damaged the iron also transmitted a foul taste to beer when it was used to dry malt. The idea to coke the coal, similar to charring wood for charcoal, in order to remove some of its impurities, ultimately solved the problem. The first efforts to coke coal, however, were unsuccessful and the first successful coking did not occur until the middle of the seventeenth century. For some unknown reason, this technology further lagged in the iron industry for an additional fifty years. [44] Essentially, from the time in which the first serious demands for the substitution of coal for charcoal came about, it required almost 200 years before it was used effectively in the iron production process. For all of these reasons and the obvious ease of access to the preferable virgin timber, the colonists fell back on their medieval predecessors' example, not only in use of resources, but also in technique, instruction and importance.