Polder drainage system with windmill chains
Pólder con diques, molinos de drenaje en cadena y esclusas
- Date
- 1533-1612 · confidence high
- Place
- Beemster, North Holland, Netherlands
- Credited to
- Jan Adriaanszoon Leeghwater and Jan Adriaenszoon; Amsterdam investors
- People
- 👤 Jan Adriaanszoon1575–1650
- Field
- Tools
What it is
A system of perimeter dikes, a ring canal and stepped batteries of windmills that drained whole lakes, such as the Beemster (1612, 7,000 ha). Hydraulic engineering that manufactured land and created Dutch rural capitalist society.
Medieval drainage came earlier; the novelty lay in the scale, the share-based financing, and the chain of stepped mills.
What it led to
- The gain of farmland financed by urban capital
- Water boards (waterschappen) as local technical government
- Exported hydraulic engineering (the English Fens, Vermuyden)
- A rational landscape and intensive agriculture
Built on
- Drainage windmill (wipmolen, 15th century)
- Earthen dyke and sluice
- Bucket wheel (noria)
Made possible
- Archimedean screw drainage windmill1634
- Drainage of the Fens
- Steam drainage pump (19th century)