Les prémices de la mécanisation agricole entre Seine et Rhin de l'Antiquité au XIIIe siècle

The Roots of Agricultural Mechanization between the Seine and the Rhine from Antiquity to the 13th Century. Multiple innovations mark the history of pre-industrial technology which bears witness to the use of simple or associated mechanical elements. One can enumerate the improvements in work, harvest and transportation tools from Antiquity to the Middle Ages which, in framework of growth and with the same pragmatism, have ceaselessly with only discontinuities in utilization, played an important role in productivity. Vallus, plaumoratum, harrows,carts and various types of harnessing are analyzed from the viewpoint of the technological structure and their application or success over period of thousand years. The perfecting of tools can be felt particularly between the Seine and the Rhine area during the Haut Empire and the Middle Ages. However, the notion of the technological leap as an explanatory model of important economic transformations or of periodization criteria must be used with utmost discretion. Such an analysis of the history of rural technology also leads us to eliminate the dichotomy primitivism vs. modernity as pertinent operational concept.Raepsaet Georges. Les prémices de la mécanisation agricole entre Seine et Rhin de l'Antiquité au XIIIe siècle. In: Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales. 50ᵉ année, N. 4, 1995. pp. 911-942