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Organizing Expertise: Engineering and Public Works under Jean-Baptiste Colbert, 1662–83

This essay explores the expertise of the seventeenth-century tax farmer Pierre-Paul Riquet in the design and construction of the Canal de Languedoc across southern France, linking the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. It also examines the efforts of the crown’s chief minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to effectively oversee Riquet’s efforts; lacking the requisite expertise himself, Colbert struggled to find project managers with the right combination of skills, knowledge, and experience to ensure that Riquet was performing the work as he claimed. Colbert’s difficulty is all the more striking when compared with Riquet’s confidence and success, especially given the fact that he apparently had no prior experience in canal building. The case study provides a picture of the state of engineering and its development as a community and profession in seventeenth-century France.