Royal Saltworks at Arc-et-Senans - Background

Background

In the 18th century salt was an essential and valuable commodity. At the time, salt was widely used for the preservation of foods such as meat or fish. The ubiquity of salt use caused the French government to impose a tax its consumption, the gabelle. This was a mandatory requirement that all people over the age of 8 years buy an amount of salt per year at a price that the government had set. Collection of the gabelle was the responsibility of the Ferme Générale.

As a region, Franche-Comté was relatively well-endowed with salt springs due to subterranean seams of halite. Consequently, there were a number of small salt works, such as those at Salins-les-Bains and Montmorot, that extracted salt by boiling water over wood fires. The salt works were constructed close to the springs and drew on wood brought from nearby forests. After many years of exploitation, the forests were becoming more and more rapidly denuded, with the result that wood had to be brought from farther and farther away, at greater and greater cost. Furthermore, over time the salt content of the brine was dropping. This led the experts of the Ferme Générale to consider exploiting even small springs, an initiative that the King's council stopped in April 1773. Part of the problem was that it was impossible to build evaporation buildings because Salins-les-Bains sat in a small valley.

The Fermiers Généraux decided to explore a more mechanised and efficient method of extraction. The concept was to construct a purpose-built factory near the forest of Chaux in the Val d'Amour, i.e., with the brine was to be brought to the factory by a newly constructed canal.