- Salt Road
A Salt Road ( _fr. Route du Sel) is any of the prehistoric and historical
trade route s by which essentialsalt has been transported to regions that lacked it (seeHistory of salt ).From the
Bronze Age (in the2nd millennium BC ) fixedtranshumance routes appeared, like theLiguria n "drailles" that linked the maritime Liguria with the "alpages", long before any purposely-constructed roadways formed the overland routes by which salt-rich provinces supplied salt-starved ones.The salt highways were the navigable rivers of
Europe , where by medieval times shipments of salt coming upstream passed rafts and log-trains of timber, which could only be shipped downstream. [In the tenth century along an established salt road mule trains brought firewood from theRouergue to the deforested Mediterranean ports and returned laden with salt.] And even along Europe's coasts, once long-distance trade was revived in the11th century , the hot and sunny south naturally outproduced the wet north. By theLate Middle Ages the expandingfishing fleets of theLow Countries required more salt than could be produced locally; the balance was made up with salt from theIberian Peninsula : "The United Provinces could have been brought to their knees if their supplies of salt had been blocked at the end of the sixteenth century.Spain did no more than dream of this," Fernand Braudel has written. [Fernand Braudel, "The Wheels of Commerce", vol. II of "Civilisation and Capitalism 15th-18th Century" (New York: Harper & Row) 1982:178.] In MingChina , salt as well as rice was shipped from south to north, along the Imperial Canal as far asBeijing .Ports were not necessarily supplied with local salt. The
Old Salt Route , about 100 km long (62 miles), linkedLüneburg with the port ofLübeck (both inGermany ), which required more salt than it could produce; Lüneburg, first mentioned in the10th century , grew rich on thesaltern s surrounding the town. ViaLauenburg the salt was shipped to Lübeck and from there supplied all the coasts of theBaltic Sea , least salty of the world's seas. Lüneburg and its salt were major factors of power and wealth of theHanseatic League . After a long period of prosperity, its importance declined after1600 . The last of thesalt mine s was closed in1980 , ending the thousand-year tradition.The vast interior of
Poland was salt-starved, its maritime districts lying under rainy skies and fronting the Baltic Sea. By medieval times the process of mining for fossil salt supplemented the age-old techniques of evaporatingsea salt in tidal pans. By the14th century , at Wieliczka nearKraków , Braudel reports that peasant extraction of salt from brine evaporated in large shallow iron pans had been eliminated by the early industrialisation of salt mining. "Galleries and shafts were now dug to a depth of 300 metres, and enormous winches powered by teams of horses brought blocks of salt to the surface. At its peak, production stood at 40,000 tons a yearand the mines employed 3000 workers. By 1368, the cooperation of the Polish state had been obtained." [Fernand Braudel, "op. cit.", p 322.]Of the early modern period in Europe,
Fernand Braudel remarked that in spite of the flux and reflux of economics,"no salt mine was ever abandoned and the scale of the equipment needed put these mines in the hands of merchants from very early days. Salt-marshes on the other hand, were exploited by artisanal methods: the merchants took control only of transport and marketing, both in
A major source of marine salt with access to expansive hinterlands in need of it was the wetlands region in Languedoc called theSetúbal inPortugal and in Peccais inLanguedoc . Salt marketing was probably quite big business along the Atlantic seabord [Brouage andBourgneuf were specialised in the mass production of sea salt, according to Braudel, "The Perspective of the world", vol. III of "Civilization and Capitalism" 1984:208.] or the Rhône valley." [Braudel 1982:327f.]Camargue ; from thesalt pan s called "salines", convoys of boatloads of salt could be carried up theRhone toSeyssel where it had to be off-loaded and carried bymule train inland to the little village of Regonfle near Geneva, where it rejoined a waterway. [Braudel p. 353.]In other parts, the salt route was longer than a
portage between navigable streams. Salt unloaded at the ports ofNice andVentimiglia could travel by two salt roads leading away from the coastal area, from Nice up theVésubie valley, viaSaint-Martin-Vésubie at the head of the valley, or from Ventimiglia inland through the Roya valley, over theCol de Tende pass and intoPiedmont .In
France , from1984 to2006 a hiking group called "La Route du Sel" [ [http://www.laroutedusel.fr/ Official website of Route du sel] ] gathered each July to travel various salt roads in theHérault ,Gard andAveyron départements ofSouthern France .ee also
*
Via Salaria Notes
External links
* [http://www.beyond.fr/themes/routesel.html Russ Collins, "Route de Sel"]
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