The story of one of the most important inventions of the sixteenth century that nobody has ever heard of, and the multi-national syndicate that promoted it
It's wild that salt and the fuel needed to refine it shaped the balance of power between the Dutch, the French, and the Habsburgs. Impressive archival work to pull this all together, looking forward to Part II!
What struck me most is how modern the logic feels. As early as the 1560s, states weren’t simply interested in acquiring new technology. They were trying to control who could use it, where it could be deployed and who captured the profits. Patents became tools of industrial policy, fiscal policy and geopolitical leverage at the same time.
Five centuries later, the technologies have changed. The logic hasn’t all that much. The fight over chips, AI models and compute looks less like a new era than a new version of a very old game.
You might be interested in Blackthorn Salt, a new company making 20% brine from seawater in Scotland. The process uses evaporative cooling by passing seawater over bundles of twigs exposed to the wind in a tower structure. I know that industrial versions of this process have been used in Germany to concentrate dilute brines prior to thermal evaporation. You still need to remove the remaining water to crystallise the salt (less the purged bitterns of course). Blackthorn are rather coy about how they do this, so I suspect it is rather less 'sustainable' than the rest of the process. I'm a chemical engineer & have designed modern salt plants, so I have an interest in the history of salt making. I have never seen any information on the process you describe, but it would make production of salt from seawater in Northern climates less energy intensive- the principle is certainly sound.
Yup! The Holzschuher-Seeler process is the direct ancestor of the blackthorn process. I've saved this for Part II, as it was hard to explain its development without going back and forth a bit too confusingly, but by the summer of 1566 they had adapted it to be a process involving canvas sails, presumably by using them to raise a thin sheet of brine at a time to have the wind pass over it, and soon after they seem to have developed it into the more familiar "graduation houses" - vast open frames filled with straw, through which the brine was trickled. In the early 1600s it was then discovered that blackthorn lasted much longer than straw, which had a tendency to rot and need replacing sooner.
Any idea where in Dover the first operations were started in England? Elisabeth and Dudley was a fascinating relationship which is described well at Kenilworth Castle, where he built her a special wing for her 'state' visits.
Sadly not! We only have a few rough locations in England: near Southampton, Dover, on the Essex coast, near Ipswich, in western Wales somewhere between Aberdyfi and Aberystwyth, and at Blyth.
An absolutely fascinating and apparently, (because I don't know if it is all true) well researched piece of work. It shows how, for all the various human factors in relationships between countries it is hard science, thermodynamics and facts that are really important.
There are lessons to be learnt from this for some of the climate change/nett zero arguments at present.
If you're interested in Gradation Works facilities, many still stand and are maintained in working order by local associations in several cities in Germany, mostly in the central region around Frankfurt. They are now used for walking around by thermal bathers who want to breathe healthy salt-saturated air. The Gradation Works in Bad Orb and Bad Dürkheim, in particular, look very impressive, and add a lot to those towns' cityscapes. Bad Orb has a yearly festival around the facility, taking place on Saturday, October 3 this year( this week!).
Yup! These are the descendants of Seeler’s and Holzschuher’s process. Though I’m still trying to work out exactly when the first appeared. The invention developed over a period of about a decade, but I suspect they had arrived at using straw in frames by around 1567. The main description we have of their latest improvement, from 1566, has them using canvas sails!
The syndicate is the invention that lasted. A technical advantage decays the moment a rival sees it. Simultaneous grants across every jurisdiction that mattered do not. What reads as parallel national improvement was one filing calendar, and the coordination cost less than the thing it protected. Firms still build patent estates exactly this way. The device changed. The reason for the syndicate did not.
Well researched and highly interesting. Can you explain the reference to 1913? “but the brief description of the new contract is from 1913”, is this book or something ?
Aha, it seems I accidentally deleted the footnote there when editing. Have added it back. The reference is: Essen, L. van der. ‘De “Groote En Generale Staatsloterij” Der Nederlanden (1556-1578)’. Bijdragen Voor Vaderlandsche Geschiedenis En Oudheidkunde, 5, vol. 1 (1913): 287-9
I had no clue that Germans played such a large role in the “proto” industrial revolution in the 16th century. Sectarianism ruined centuries of German history.
Part I is the clearest version of the syndicate pattern I have read. The bit I am waiting for is Part II's coal turn, because the Forth looks like where it actually happened on the ground: the Prestonpans and Cockenzie pans burned local coal to boil seawater, and Scotland's salt and coal trades were legally bound together, colliers and salters staying unfree until the 1775 Act and not really free until 1799. Did the 1560s salt invention ever get tried on the Forth through the same kind of syndicate, or did the coal-fired version arrive separately and later? The Scottish pans read like the hinge between the Dutch salt trade and the British coal you are heading toward.
Great question. Coal had already been burned for saltmaking in Scotland for over a century, if not more. But the syndicate did trial its invention there too. I mentioned Mannelli being sent there by them; his early version did not work. But the syndicate did try again, as I’ll discuss in Part II. Although the records are sparse, I think the timing is striking…
The syndicate is the finding, not the oven or the salt pan. Filing the same claim in a dozen jurisdictions is not distribution. It is building a position no single ruler can revoke, which is the only position worth holding when your grant is a favor. Note also why this went unseen. The records are kept by jurisdiction. The thing being documented was organized specifically to be larger than any one archive.
I think this comment may have been intended for Works in Progress rather than me
Sorry about that -- you are correct. I thought I had deleted it here.
Phenomenal
Thank you!
It's wild that salt and the fuel needed to refine it shaped the balance of power between the Dutch, the French, and the Habsburgs. Impressive archival work to pull this all together, looking forward to Part II!
What struck me most is how modern the logic feels. As early as the 1560s, states weren’t simply interested in acquiring new technology. They were trying to control who could use it, where it could be deployed and who captured the profits. Patents became tools of industrial policy, fiscal policy and geopolitical leverage at the same time.
Five centuries later, the technologies have changed. The logic hasn’t all that much. The fight over chips, AI models and compute looks less like a new era than a new version of a very old game.
You might be interested in Blackthorn Salt, a new company making 20% brine from seawater in Scotland. The process uses evaporative cooling by passing seawater over bundles of twigs exposed to the wind in a tower structure. I know that industrial versions of this process have been used in Germany to concentrate dilute brines prior to thermal evaporation. You still need to remove the remaining water to crystallise the salt (less the purged bitterns of course). Blackthorn are rather coy about how they do this, so I suspect it is rather less 'sustainable' than the rest of the process. I'm a chemical engineer & have designed modern salt plants, so I have an interest in the history of salt making. I have never seen any information on the process you describe, but it would make production of salt from seawater in Northern climates less energy intensive- the principle is certainly sound.
Yup! The Holzschuher-Seeler process is the direct ancestor of the blackthorn process. I've saved this for Part II, as it was hard to explain its development without going back and forth a bit too confusingly, but by the summer of 1566 they had adapted it to be a process involving canvas sails, presumably by using them to raise a thin sheet of brine at a time to have the wind pass over it, and soon after they seem to have developed it into the more familiar "graduation houses" - vast open frames filled with straw, through which the brine was trickled. In the early 1600s it was then discovered that blackthorn lasted much longer than straw, which had a tendency to rot and need replacing sooner.
Any idea where in Dover the first operations were started in England? Elisabeth and Dudley was a fascinating relationship which is described well at Kenilworth Castle, where he built her a special wing for her 'state' visits.
Sadly not! We only have a few rough locations in England: near Southampton, Dover, on the Essex coast, near Ipswich, in western Wales somewhere between Aberdyfi and Aberystwyth, and at Blyth.
Incredible
Amazing! It was pleasure to read, as always!
Such a good read ! So much information!
Also proves that times never change, just the people and politics change.
An absolutely fascinating and apparently, (because I don't know if it is all true) well researched piece of work. It shows how, for all the various human factors in relationships between countries it is hard science, thermodynamics and facts that are really important.
There are lessons to be learnt from this for some of the climate change/nett zero arguments at present.
If you're interested in Gradation Works facilities, many still stand and are maintained in working order by local associations in several cities in Germany, mostly in the central region around Frankfurt. They are now used for walking around by thermal bathers who want to breathe healthy salt-saturated air. The Gradation Works in Bad Orb and Bad Dürkheim, in particular, look very impressive, and add a lot to those towns' cityscapes. Bad Orb has a yearly festival around the facility, taking place on Saturday, October 3 this year( this week!).
Yup! These are the descendants of Seeler’s and Holzschuher’s process. Though I’m still trying to work out exactly when the first appeared. The invention developed over a period of about a decade, but I suspect they had arrived at using straw in frames by around 1567. The main description we have of their latest improvement, from 1566, has them using canvas sails!
The syndicate is the invention that lasted. A technical advantage decays the moment a rival sees it. Simultaneous grants across every jurisdiction that mattered do not. What reads as parallel national improvement was one filing calendar, and the coordination cost less than the thing it protected. Firms still build patent estates exactly this way. The device changed. The reason for the syndicate did not.
Well researched and highly interesting. Can you explain the reference to 1913? “but the brief description of the new contract is from 1913”, is this book or something ?
Aha, it seems I accidentally deleted the footnote there when editing. Have added it back. The reference is: Essen, L. van der. ‘De “Groote En Generale Staatsloterij” Der Nederlanden (1556-1578)’. Bijdragen Voor Vaderlandsche Geschiedenis En Oudheidkunde, 5, vol. 1 (1913): 287-9
I had no clue that Germans played such a large role in the “proto” industrial revolution in the 16th century. Sectarianism ruined centuries of German history.
Part I is the clearest version of the syndicate pattern I have read. The bit I am waiting for is Part II's coal turn, because the Forth looks like where it actually happened on the ground: the Prestonpans and Cockenzie pans burned local coal to boil seawater, and Scotland's salt and coal trades were legally bound together, colliers and salters staying unfree until the 1775 Act and not really free until 1799. Did the 1560s salt invention ever get tried on the Forth through the same kind of syndicate, or did the coal-fired version arrive separately and later? The Scottish pans read like the hinge between the Dutch salt trade and the British coal you are heading toward.
Great question. Coal had already been burned for saltmaking in Scotland for over a century, if not more. But the syndicate did trial its invention there too. I mentioned Mannelli being sent there by them; his early version did not work. But the syndicate did try again, as I’ll discuss in Part II. Although the records are sparse, I think the timing is striking…
The syndicate is the finding, not the oven or the salt pan. Filing the same claim in a dozen jurisdictions is not distribution. It is building a position no single ruler can revoke, which is the only position worth holding when your grant is a favor. Note also why this went unseen. The records are kept by jurisdiction. The thing being documented was organized specifically to be larger than any one archive.