Intelligent Uses of Engineering and the Legitimacy of State Power

Technology and Culture

Volumn 44, Issue 4, 2003, Pages 655-676

  Mukerji, Chandra ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0347544122     PISSN: 0040165X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/tech.2003.0175     Document Type: Review

References (38)

1. Stephen Krasner, Sovereignty (Princeton, N.J., 1999).
2. Max Weber, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, trans. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York, 1946).
3. Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, trans. Catherine Porter (Cambridge, Mass., 1993); Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York, 1989); Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump (Princeton, N.J., 1985).
4. Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, trans. Catherine Porter (Cambridge, Mass., 1993); Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York, 1989); Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump (Princeton, N.J., 1985).
5. Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, trans. Catherine Porter (Cambridge, Mass., 1993); Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York, 1989); Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump (Princeton, N.J., 1985).
6. Michel Serres, Rome: Le livre des fondations (Paris, 1983).
7. Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot, Justesse et justice dans le travail (Paris, 1989) and De la justification (Paris, 1991).
8. Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot, Justesse et justice dans le travail (Paris, 1989) and De la justification (Paris, 1991).
9. Chandra Mukerji, Territorial Ambitions and the Gardens of Versailles (Cambridge, 1997). Although it is considered illegitimate by historians, I (being a true historical sociologist) often compare seventeenth-century France to twentieth-century America to consider what enduring features of state power are present in both. If there are such things as social forms (as Georg Simmel suggests) and the modern state constitutes one such form, then the political order in early modern France should still bear a family resemblance to its twentieth-century U.S. counterpart. See Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, ed. and trans. Kurt Wolff (Glencoe, Ill., 1950). States, in this analytic approach, are not ahistorical features of Western life but rather slow-moving parts of a history of the longue durée. Of course, Braudel specifically argues that politics constitutes the rapidly changing surface of history, not the cultural habits that link peoples over centuries to landscapes. The material relations between inhabitants of the mountains and shores of the Mediterranean, whose worlds of stone towns, olive trees, fish, and timber transformed only slowly over extended periods of time, were precisely the kind of unpremeditated action essential in Serres's theory of politics. They were also important sources of the techniques of territorial control that helped give the French state its form. See Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (New York, 1966) and Afterthoughts on Material Civilization and Capitalism (Baltimore, 1976).
10. Chandra Mukerji, Territorial Ambitions and the Gardens of Versailles (Cambridge, 1997). Although it is considered illegitimate by historians, I (being a true historical sociologist) often compare seventeenth-century France to twentieth-century America to consider what enduring features of state power are present in both. If there are such things as social forms (as Georg Simmel suggests) and the modern state constitutes one such form, then the political order in early modern France should still bear a family resemblance to its twentieth-century U.S. counterpart. See Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, ed. and trans. Kurt Wolff (Glencoe, Ill., 1950). States, in this analytic approach, are not ahistorical features of Western life but rather slow-moving parts of a history of the longue durée. Of course, Braudel specifically argues that politics constitutes the rapidly changing surface of history, not the cultural habits that link peoples over centuries to landscapes. The material relations between inhabitants of the mountains and shores of the Mediterranean, whose worlds of stone towns, olive trees, fish, and timber transformed only slowly over extended periods of time, were precisely the kind of unpremeditated action essential in Serres's theory of politics. They were also important sources of the techniques of territorial control that helped give the French state its form. See Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (New York, 1966) and Afterthoughts on Material Civilization and Capitalism (Baltimore, 1976).
11. Chandra Mukerji, Territorial Ambitions and the Gardens of Versailles (Cambridge, 1997). Although it is considered illegitimate by historians, I (being a true historical sociologist) often compare seventeenth-century France to twentieth-century America to consider what enduring features of state power are present in both. If there are such things as social forms (as Georg Simmel suggests) and the modern state constitutes one such form, then the political order in early modern France should still bear a family resemblance to its twentieth-century U.S. counterpart. See Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, ed. and trans. Kurt Wolff (Glencoe, Ill., 1950). States, in this analytic approach, are not ahistorical features of Western life but rather slow-moving parts of a history of the longue durée. Of course, Braudel specifically argues that politics constitutes the rapidly changing surface of history, not the cultural habits that link peoples over centuries to landscapes. The material relations between inhabitants of the mountains and shores of the Mediterranean, whose worlds of stone towns, olive trees, fish, and timber transformed only slowly over extended periods of time, were precisely the kind of unpremeditated action essential in Serres's theory of politics. They were also important sources of the techniques of territorial control that helped give the French state its form. See Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (New York, 1966) and Afterthoughts on Material Civilization and Capitalism (Baltimore, 1976).
12. Chandra Mukerji, Territorial Ambitions and the Gardens of Versailles (Cambridge, 1997). Although it is considered illegitimate by historians, I (being a true historical sociologist) often compare seventeenth-century France to twentieth-century America to consider what enduring features of state power are present in both. If there are such things as social forms (as Georg Simmel suggests) and the modern state constitutes one such form, then the political order in early modern France should still bear a family resemblance to its twentieth-century U.S. counterpart. See Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, ed. and trans. Kurt Wolff (Glencoe, Ill., 1950). States, in this analytic approach, are not ahistorical features of Western life but rather slow-moving parts of a history of the longue durée. Of course, Braudel specifically argues that politics constitutes the rapidly changing surface of history, not the cultural habits that link peoples over centuries to landscapes. The material relations between inhabitants of the mountains and shores of the Mediterranean, whose worlds of stone towns, olive trees, fish, and timber transformed only slowly over extended periods of time, were precisely the kind of unpremeditated action essential in Serres's theory of politics. They were also important sources of the techniques of territorial control that helped give the French state its form. See Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (New York, 1966) and Afterthoughts on Material Civilization and Capitalism (Baltimore, 1976).
13. For the importance of the concept of the New Rome, see Mukerji, Territorial Ambitions; Chandra Mukerji, "Engineering and French Formal Gardens in the Reign of Louis XIV," in New Directions in Garden History, ed. J. D. Hunt and M. Conan (Philadelphia, 2002), 22-43; and J. P. Neraudau, L'Olympe du Roi-Soleil (Paris, 1986). Military engineering had been a hallmark of ancient Rome. "Monuments to the greatness of Rome" were celebrated by Louis XIV and his contemporaries, and stirred them to use French soldiers for comparable work. The army engineers were first employed for the obvious jobs of building of ports, garrisons, and arsenals, but they were also used to improve the water supplies for Versailles and Paris, and in setting out drainage and flood-control ditches around rivers and swamps, and laying out canals that flowed where rivers did not. See John A. Lynn, Giant of the Grand Siècle: The French Army, 1610-1715 (Cambridge, 1997); Joseph Konvitz, Cartography in France, 1660-1848 (Chicago, 1987); Anne Blanchard, Les Ingénieurs du Roy de Louis XIV à Louis XVI (Montpellier, 1979).
14. For the importance of the concept of the New Rome, see Mukerji, Territorial Ambitions; Chandra Mukerji, "Engineering and French Formal Gardens in the Reign of Louis XIV," in New Directions in Garden History, ed. J. D. Hunt and M. Conan (Philadelphia, 2002), 22-43; and J. P. Neraudau, L'Olympe du Roi-Soleil (Paris, 1986). Military engineering had been a hallmark of ancient Rome. "Monuments to the greatness of Rome" were celebrated by Louis XIV and his contemporaries, and stirred them to use French soldiers for comparable work. The army engineers were first employed for the obvious jobs of building of ports, garrisons, and arsenals, but they were also used to improve the water supplies for Versailles and Paris, and in setting out drainage and flood-control ditches around rivers and swamps, and laying out canals that flowed where rivers did not. See John A. Lynn, Giant of the Grand Siècle: The French Army, 1610-1715 (Cambridge, 1997); Joseph Konvitz, Cartography in France, 1660-1848 (Chicago, 1987); Anne Blanchard, Les Ingénieurs du Roy de Louis XIV à Louis XVI (Montpellier, 1979).
15. For the importance of the concept of the New Rome, see Mukerji, Territorial Ambitions; Chandra Mukerji, "Engineering and French Formal Gardens in the Reign of Louis XIV," in New Directions in Garden History, ed. J. D. Hunt and M. Conan (Philadelphia, 2002), 22-43; and J. P. Neraudau, L'Olympe du Roi-Soleil (Paris, 1986). Military engineering had been a hallmark of ancient Rome. "Monuments to the greatness of Rome" were celebrated by Louis XIV and his contemporaries, and stirred them to use French soldiers for comparable work. The army engineers were first employed for the obvious jobs of building of ports, garrisons, and arsenals, but they were also used to improve the water supplies for Versailles and Paris, and in setting out drainage and flood-control ditches around rivers and swamps, and laying out canals that flowed where rivers did not. See John A. Lynn, Giant of the Grand Siècle: The French Army, 1610-1715 (Cambridge, 1997); Joseph Konvitz, Cartography in France, 1660-1848 (Chicago, 1987); Anne Blanchard, Les Ingénieurs du Roy de Louis XIV à Louis XVI (Montpellier, 1979).
16. For the importance of the concept of the New Rome, see Mukerji, Territorial Ambitions; Chandra Mukerji, "Engineering and French Formal Gardens in the Reign of Louis XIV," in New Directions in Garden History, ed. J. D. Hunt and M. Conan (Philadelphia, 2002), 22-43; and J. P. Neraudau, L'Olympe du Roi-Soleil (Paris, 1986). Military engineering had been a hallmark of ancient Rome. "Monuments to the greatness of Rome" were celebrated by Louis XIV and his contemporaries, and stirred them to use French soldiers for comparable work. The army engineers were first employed for the obvious jobs of building of ports, garrisons, and arsenals, but they were also used to improve the water supplies for Versailles and Paris, and in setting out drainage and flood-control ditches around rivers and swamps, and laying out canals that flowed where rivers did not. See John A. Lynn, Giant of the Grand Siècle: The French Army, 1610-1715 (Cambridge, 1997); Joseph Konvitz, Cartography in France, 1660-1848 (Chicago, 1987); Anne Blanchard, Les Ingénieurs du Roy de Louis XIV à Louis XVI (Montpellier, 1979).
17. For the importance of the concept of the New Rome, see Mukerji, Territorial Ambitions; Chandra Mukerji, "Engineering and French Formal Gardens in the Reign of Louis XIV," in New Directions in Garden History, ed. J. D. Hunt and M. Conan (Philadelphia, 2002), 22-43; and J. P. Neraudau, L'Olympe du Roi-Soleil (Paris, 1986). Military engineering had been a hallmark of ancient Rome. "Monuments to the greatness of Rome" were celebrated by Louis XIV and his contemporaries, and stirred them to use French soldiers for comparable work. The army engineers were first employed for the obvious jobs of building of ports, garrisons, and arsenals, but they were also used to improve the water supplies for Versailles and Paris, and in setting out drainage and flood-control ditches around rivers and swamps, and laying out canals that flowed where rivers did not. See John A. Lynn, Giant of the Grand Siècle: The French Army, 1610-1715 (Cambridge, 1997); Joseph Konvitz, Cartography in France, 1660-1848 (Chicago, 1987); Anne Blanchard, Les Ingénieurs du Roy de Louis XIV à Louis XVI (Montpellier, 1979).
18. For the importance of the concept of the New Rome, see Mukerji, Territorial Ambitions; Chandra Mukerji, "Engineering and French Formal Gardens in the Reign of Louis XIV," in New Directions in Garden History, ed. J. D. Hunt and M. Conan (Philadelphia, 2002), 22-43; and J. P. Neraudau, L'Olympe du Roi-Soleil (Paris, 1986). Military engineering had been a hallmark of ancient Rome. "Monuments to the greatness of Rome" were celebrated by Louis XIV and his contemporaries, and stirred them to use French soldiers for comparable work. The army engineers were first employed for the obvious jobs of building of ports, garrisons, and arsenals, but they were also used to improve the water supplies for Versailles and Paris, and in setting out drainage and flood-control ditches around rivers and swamps, and laying out canals that flowed where rivers did not. See John A. Lynn, Giant of the Grand Siècle: The French Army, 1610-1715 (Cambridge, 1997); Joseph Konvitz, Cartography in France, 1660-1848 (Chicago, 1987); Anne Blanchard, Les Ingénieurs du Roy de Louis XIV à Louis XVI (Montpellier, 1979).
19. Carlo Cipolla, Guns, Sails and Empires: Technological Innovation and the Early Phases of European Expansion, 1400-1700 (New York, 1965), ch. 1.
20. Helen Roseneau, The Ideal City: Its Architectural Evolution (Boston, 1959); A. E. J. Morris, History of Urban Form (London, 1979).
21. Helen Roseneau, The Ideal City: Its Architectural Evolution (Boston, 1959); A. E. J. Morris, History of Urban Form (London, 1979).
22. See Vauban's work for the obvious connections to this tradition. Eugene Carrias, La Pensée militaire français (Paris, 1960).
23. Mukerji, "Engineering and French Formal Gardens." Mesnagement writing that associated agricultural and gardening methods with moral uplift was derived in part from the Roman past as well. Books in the mesnagement tradition were modeled on Columella's De re rustica, a compendium of techniques of rural land reform that was published in late-fifteenth-century Venice. While the genre of writing and its moral passion were derived from this classical work, mesnagement writings were much less concerned with making wine and much more concerned with market gardening, associating the virtue of this type of work not only with the physical discipline of agriculture but with the re-creation of Eden through gardening. See Clusius Columella, On Agriculture, ed. H. B. Ash (Cambridge, Mass., 1968).
24. Mukerji, "Engineering and French Formal Gardens." Mesnagement writing that associated agricultural and gardening methods with moral uplift was derived in part from the Roman past as well. Books in the mesnagement tradition were modeled on Columella's De re rustica, a compendium of techniques of rural land reform that was published in late-fifteenth-century Venice. While the genre of writing and its moral passion were derived from this classical work, mesnagement writings were much less concerned with making wine and much more concerned with market gardening, associating the virtue of this type of work not only with the physical discipline of agriculture but with the re-creation of Eden through gardening. See Clusius Columella, On Agriculture, ed. H. B. Ash (Cambridge, Mass., 1968).
25. Henry Morely, Palissy the Potter: The Life of Bernard Palissy, of Saintes, His Labours and Discoveries in Art and Science, vol. 2 (London, 1852), 241-42.
26. Charles Estienne, Maison Rustique, or The Country Farme, Compiled in the French Tongue by Charles Stevens and John Liebault, Doctors of Physicke, and Translated into English by Richard Surflet, Practioner in Physicke (London, 1606). Olivier de Serres, Le théâtre d'agriculture et mesnages des champs (Geneva, 1611), particularly bk. 1. See also Serres, The Perfect Use of Silk-Wormes (London, 1607; reprint, Amsterdam and New York, 1971). Serres addressed many of the same requirements for a well-managed estate as Estienne and Liebault, but he wrote a much more elaborate and detailed guide to estate management. Serres experimented with horticultural techniques on his own property, becoming particularly successful with the use of microclimates - created with hothouses and glass bell jars - that would permit northern French estate owners to grow produce from more temperate climates. He advocated the practice of burying manure under a foot or so of soil, where the decomposing material would warm the earth above, stimulating seeds into early germination or protecting delicate seedlings from late frosts. Before him, Palissy had written about manures as a source of necessary salts for plants. Serres simply explored the use of manuring for heat regulation as well as fertilizing the soil - practices apparently used in the Netherlands about the same period. In both cases, the point was the same. Those who understood the natural processes underneath the soil, governing the warmth and fertility of a garden, were in a position to profit most from their lands. Study of natural processes (as pure forms) served the constitution of hybridized landscapes.
27. Charles Estienne, Maison Rustique, or The Country Farme, Compiled in the French Tongue by Charles Stevens and John Liebault, Doctors of Physicke, and Translated into English by Richard Surflet, Practioner in Physicke (London, 1606). Olivier de Serres, Le théâtre d'agriculture et mesnages des champs (Geneva, 1611), particularly bk. 1. See also Serres, The Perfect Use of Silk-Wormes (London, 1607; reprint, Amsterdam and New York, 1971). Serres addressed many of the same requirements for a well-managed estate as Estienne and Liebault, but he wrote a much more elaborate and detailed guide to estate management. Serres experimented with horticultural techniques on his own property, becoming particularly successful with the use of microclimates - created with hothouses and glass bell jars - that would permit northern French estate owners to grow produce from more temperate climates. He advocated the practice of burying manure under a foot or so of soil, where the decomposing material would warm the earth above, stimulating seeds into early germination or protecting delicate seedlings from late frosts. Before him, Palissy had written about manures as a source of necessary salts for plants. Serres simply explored the use of manuring for heat regulation as well as fertilizing the soil - practices apparently used in the Netherlands about the same period. In both cases, the point was the same. Those who understood the natural processes underneath the soil, governing the warmth and fertility of a garden, were in a position to profit most from their lands. Study of natural processes (as pure forms) served the constitution of hybridized landscapes.
28. Charles Estienne, Maison Rustique, or The Country Farme, Compiled in the French Tongue by Charles Stevens and John Liebault, Doctors of Physicke, and Translated into English by Richard Surflet, Practioner in Physicke (London, 1606). Olivier de Serres, Le théâtre d'agriculture et mesnages des champs (Geneva, 1611), particularly bk. 1. See also Serres, The Perfect Use of Silk-Wormes (London, 1607; reprint, Amsterdam and New York, 1971). Serres addressed many of the same requirements for a well-managed estate as Estienne and Liebault, but he wrote a much more elaborate and detailed guide to estate management. Serres experimented with horticultural techniques on his own property, becoming particularly successful with the use of microclimates - created with hothouses and glass bell jars - that would permit northern French estate owners to grow produce from more temperate climates. He advocated the practice of burying manure under a foot or so of soil, where the decomposing material would warm the earth above, stimulating seeds into early germination or protecting delicate seedlings from late frosts. Before him, Palissy had written about manures as a source of necessary salts for plants. Serres simply explored the use of manuring for heat regulation as well as fertilizing the soil - practices apparently used in the Netherlands about the same period. In both cases, the point was the same. Those who understood the natural processes underneath the soil, governing the warmth and fertility of a garden, were in a position to profit most from their lands. Study of natural processes (as pure forms) served the constitution of hybridized landscapes.
29. Yvette Quenot, "Bernard Palissy et Oliver de Serres," in Bernard Palissy, 15101590: L'écrivain, le réforme, le céramiste, ed. Frank Lestringant (Mont-de-Marsan, 1990), 93-103.
30. "Orné que soit le pere-de-famille des telles qualités, & redu sçauant en tous les termes du Mesnage, commandera hardiment ses gens, lesquels lui obeiront d'autant plus volontiers, que par experience cognoistront ses ordonances estre raisonnables & profitables.... Non seulement au Mesnage telle grande solicitude and vigilance est requise, mais aussi en toutes actions du monde: n'estans mesmes les Rois exempts de s'emploier en personne en leur affaires, qu'ils font d'autant mieux aller, que plus curieusement les voient and entendent; ainsi que ceste maxime se treuuve vtilement verifiee au restablissement de ce Royaume, par la vertueuse conduite de nostre Roi Henri IV." Serres, Le théâtre d'agriculture, 28-29.
31. While all human communities must engage the natural world for survival, the degree and kind of legitimate intervention into the landscape has varied enormously historically and culturally - even just in the Western tradition. Importantly for our purposes, Christian humanist ideas about and relations to nature in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries fed interest in land reform as a means of social improvement. Land and its proper management for the restoration of Eden provided a conceptual rationale for creating a more perfect built environment and stimulated the search for techniques of land management and improvement that served as practical bases for this mission. The result was cultural justification for engineering the environment and using natural resources more systematically for social and political effect. Among Christian humanists, building a more orderly world was a passion - an effort to see God in his Works and to make works in his service. Doing this well was considered a mark of good leadership, and so territorial management became both a tool and a measure of political legitimacy for the modern state and helped to make state territoriality possible. For those trained in Christian humanism, believing that nature had been distorted by the Fall, the countryside clearly needed active restoration through human effort. There were two natures: the perfect world now lost to man, and the imperfect one in which Adam and Eve had been condemned to live after their expulsion from Eden. Nature had to be changed to reveal its true perfection, and this encouraged, among other things, a reworking of the countryside - through engineering, agriculture, and forestry. Those blessed with gifts of intelligence and artistry could lead the process of restoration through reworking of the environment, and place in this world this way both marks of their intelligence and the moral order desired by God. This point of view was most eloquently presented by Bernard Palissy; see Oeuvres de Bernard Palissy revues sur les exemplaires de la Biblioteque du roi (Paris, 1777), and Helen Morgenthau Fox, ed. and trans., A Delectable Garden, by Bernard Palissy (Peekskill, N.Y., 1931). For the shared importance of these ideas for Catholics as well as Protestants of the period, see Francois de Dainville, La Géographie des Humanistes (Paris, 1940; reprint, Geneva, 1969). For the relationship of this tradition of cartography to the growth of state power, see Konvitz (n. 7 above) and David Buisseret, ed., Monarchs, Ministers and Maps (Chicago, 1992).
32. While all human communities must engage the natural world for survival, the degree and kind of legitimate intervention into the landscape has varied enormously historically and culturally - even just in the Western tradition. Importantly for our purposes, Christian humanist ideas about and relations to nature in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries fed interest in land reform as a means of social improvement. Land and its proper management for the restoration of Eden provided a conceptual rationale for creating a more perfect built environment and stimulated the search for techniques of land management and improvement that served as practical bases for this mission. The result was cultural justification for engineering the environment and using natural resources more systematically for social and political effect. Among Christian humanists, building a more orderly world was a passion - an effort to see God in his Works and to make works in his service. Doing this well was considered a mark of good leadership, and so territorial management became both a tool and a measure of political legitimacy for the modern state and helped to make state territoriality possible. For those trained in Christian humanism, believing that nature had been distorted by the Fall, the countryside clearly needed active restoration through human effort. There were two natures: the perfect world now lost to man, and the imperfect one in which Adam and Eve had been condemned to live after their expulsion from Eden. Nature had to be changed to reveal its true perfection, and this encouraged, among other things, a reworking of the countryside - through engineering, agriculture, and forestry. Those blessed with gifts of intelligence and artistry could lead the process of restoration through reworking of the environment, and place in this world this way both marks of their intelligence and the moral order desired by God. This point of view was most eloquently presented by Bernard Palissy; see Oeuvres de Bernard Palissy revues sur les exemplaires de la Biblioteque du roi (Paris, 1777), and Helen Morgenthau Fox, ed. and trans., A Delectable Garden, by Bernard Palissy (Peekskill, N.Y., 1931). For the shared importance of these ideas for Catholics as well as Protestants of the period, see Francois de Dainville, La Géographie des Humanistes (Paris, 1940; reprint, Geneva, 1969). For the relationship of this tradition of cartography to the growth of state power, see Konvitz (n. 7 above) and David Buisseret, ed., Monarchs, Ministers and Maps (Chicago, 1992).
33. While all human communities must engage the natural world for survival, the degree and kind of legitimate intervention into the landscape has varied enormously historically and culturally - even just in the Western tradition. Importantly for our purposes, Christian humanist ideas about and relations to nature in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries fed interest in land reform as a means of social improvement. Land and its proper management for the restoration of Eden provided a conceptual rationale for creating a more perfect built environment and stimulated the search for techniques of land management and improvement that served as practical bases for this mission. The result was cultural justification for engineering the environment and using natural resources more systematically for social and political effect. Among Christian humanists, building a more orderly world was a passion - an effort to see God in his Works and to make works in his service. Doing this well was considered a mark of good leadership, and so territorial management became both a tool and a measure of political legitimacy for the modern state and helped to make state territoriality possible. For those trained in Christian humanism, believing that nature had been distorted by the Fall, the countryside clearly needed active restoration through human effort. There were two natures: the perfect world now lost to man, and the imperfect one in which Adam and Eve had been condemned to live after their expulsion from Eden. Nature had to be changed to reveal its true perfection, and this encouraged, among other things, a reworking of the countryside - through engineering, agriculture, and forestry. Those blessed with gifts of intelligence and artistry could lead the process of restoration through reworking of the environment, and place in this world this way both marks of their intelligence and the moral order desired by God. This point of view was most eloquently presented by Bernard Palissy; see Oeuvres de Bernard Palissy revues sur les exemplaires de la Biblioteque du roi (Paris, 1777), and Helen Morgenthau Fox, ed. and trans., A Delectable Garden, by Bernard Palissy (Peekskill, N.Y., 1931). For the shared importance of these ideas for Catholics as well as Protestants of the period, see Francois de Dainville, La Géographie des Humanistes (Paris, 1940; reprint, Geneva, 1969). For the relationship of this tradition of cartography to the growth of state power, see Konvitz (n. 7 above) and David Buisseret, ed., Monarchs, Ministers and Maps (Chicago, 1992).
34. While all human communities must engage the natural world for survival, the degree and kind of legitimate intervention into the landscape has varied enormously historically and culturally - even just in the Western tradition. Importantly for our purposes, Christian humanist ideas about and relations to nature in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries fed interest in land reform as a means of social improvement. Land and its proper management for the restoration of Eden provided a conceptual rationale for creating a more perfect built environment and stimulated the search for techniques of land management and improvement that served as practical bases for this mission. The result was cultural justification for engineering the environment and using natural resources more systematically for social and political effect. Among Christian humanists, building a more orderly world was a passion - an effort to see God in his Works and to make works in his service. Doing this well was considered a mark of good leadership, and so territorial management became both a tool and a measure of political legitimacy for the modern state and helped to make state territoriality possible. For those trained in Christian humanism, believing that nature had been distorted by the Fall, the countryside clearly needed active restoration through human effort. There were two natures: the perfect world now lost to man, and the imperfect one in which Adam and Eve had been condemned to live after their expulsion from Eden. Nature had to be changed to reveal its true perfection, and this encouraged, among other things, a reworking of the countryside - through engineering, agriculture, and forestry. Those blessed with gifts of intelligence and artistry could lead the process of restoration through reworking of the environment, and place in this world this way both marks of their intelligence and the moral order desired by God. This point of view was most eloquently presented by Bernard Palissy; see Oeuvres de Bernard Palissy revues sur les exemplaires de la Biblioteque du roi (Paris, 1777), and Helen Morgenthau Fox, ed. and trans., A Delectable Garden, by Bernard Palissy (Peekskill, N.Y., 1931). For the shared importance of these ideas for Catholics as well as Protestants of the period, see Francois de Dainville, La Géographie des Humanistes (Paris, 1940; reprint, Geneva, 1969). For the relationship of this tradition of cartography to the growth of state power, see Konvitz (n. 7 above) and David Buisseret, ed., Monarchs, Ministers and Maps (Chicago, 1992).
35. For Belon's efforts to acclimatize these trees, see Marguerite Duval, The King's Garden, trans. Annette Tomarken and Claudine Cowen (Charlottesville, Va., 1982), 9-18, particularly 15-17; and Davy de Virviile, Histoire de la Botanique en France (Paris, 1954), 31.
36. For Belon's efforts to acclimatize these trees, see Marguerite Duval, The King's Garden, trans. Annette Tomarken and Claudine Cowen (Charlottesville, Va., 1982), 9-18, particularly 15-17; and Davy de Virviile, Histoire de la Botanique en France (Paris, 1954), 31.
37. See Carrias (n. 10 above).
38. The argument I am making here directly confronts the bravado of many gurus in technology studies who have been contending that technology is going ro free us from our bodies and make modern states outmoded political forms, taking us into a world of pure cognition or financial calculation (alternately, for critics, complete technocratic oppression). Once we enter the world of computers, they suggest, we live among the electrons with their random and immaterial qualities, and we become either like them freed from our material natures - or slaves to their impersonal actions. We are caught in the unspoken assumptions of categories of information being processed (as though these categories had no history), and we live or die according to calculations that define their consequences with algorithms.