Commercializing Water in Early Modern Paris: Attempts, Fiascos, and Debates (1760s-1780s)

This presentation explores how drinking water in the second half of the eighteenth century became fully commercialized, like any other good on the Parisian market. After the 1760s, private water companies competed with and tried to replace the municipal water system and the network of water carriers. These companies changed the norms and values that defined the previous water system to ensure their own success, which lasted from the 1760s to 1790s. Yet, in spite of their bold claims, water companies never managed to completely overhaul the municipal system nor to fully replace water carriers. To analyze the companies’ lack of success, this talk is structured around three axes. First, I will trace the companies’ tactics and strategies to commercialize water.

 

Constance de Font-Réaulx will show how water companies sought to create market would not be driven by credit, status, and personal relations but by abstract commercial exchanges, wealth, and consumer appetites. Second, she will analyze why water companies went bankrupt. She will show that companies did not generate enough interest among consumers, many of whom preferred to continue relying on their local water carriers. Third, she will analyze how the possibility of water becoming subject to market forces triggered a new debate about whether humans have a right to water.   

 

Constance de Font-Réaulx is a scholar of early modern France. She is a former student of the École Normale Supérieure (Ulm) and holds her Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University. Her research focuses on the commercialization and commodification of drinking water in early modern Paris. She examines debates over the governance of the supply of water when commercial and financial capitalism had begun transforming nature into a commodity. She is currently working on a manuscript entitled The Power of Water: The Politics of the Parisian Waterworks (1660-1800). Her research has been supported by the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies.