Essai sur le temps long des transports avant la motorisation

Résumé Fr En

Cet essai propose de remplacer la présence ou l’absence d’institutions de poste comme premier critère d’étude des communications à distance, par les invariants mécaniques et physiologiques propres aux déplacements humains. Sur la base de ces invariants, il devient possible d’engager des comparaisons fructueuses dans l’espace et le temps des transports non motorisés. Cette approche confirme qu’avant l’invention du moteur à vapeur, l’histoire du mouvement est déterminée par des invariants physiologiques et techniques. Elle montre que lorsqu’il est question de vitesse de déplacement, l’histoire est immobile, ou presque, tant que l’homme dépend du cheval, de la voile ou de ses propres jambes. Ainsi, le haut Moyen Âge n’était pas plus « lent » que l’Antiquité romaine ou le bas Moyen Âge. De fait, les études portant sur des périodes et des espaces spécifiques devraient considérer que les variations dans la vitesse des déplacements se produisent dans les limites d’un ambitus beaucoup plus restreint et plus stable dans le temps que ce que suggère une histoire des institutions, dont le biais évolutionniste pose parfois problème.

Traditionally, historical research on travels and transports has been focused on their infrastructures and institutions, especially when speed is the main topic of discussion. This is certainly the case for works on the premodern centuries, where roads and postal services have received most attention. This historical essay tries to move away from these matters — however important they may be — to focus on the mechanical and physiological invariants that pertained before the advent of the steam engine. This approach makes it possible to compare historical situations that have rarely been placed side by side, and to realize that they share common traits determined by these invariants. In the end, this short essay suggests that before the advent of motorized vehicles, before the geography was adapted to their use, the history of human movements has been mostly determined by physiological and technological invariants that pertains throughout the centuries. It shows that when it comes to the speed of travels, history is immobile, or nearly so, as long as it depends on animals, sail boats, or human legs. And so, in that context, it appears that the Early Middle Ages was not slower than Roman Antiquity or the Late Middle Ages. Studies on specific periods and locations should take into account that variations in the speed of travels were happening on a much smaller scale than we generally consider, and so that speed has been much more stable through time than what the history of institutions suggests, with its frequent evolutionist bias.