Engineering the Revolution
Subtitle: arms and Enlightenment in France, 1763-1815
By: Ken Alder.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 1997
Place of publication: Princeton, N.J
Language: eng
Number of pages: 476
Subjects: Artillery -- Technological innovations -- France -- History -- 18th century; Military engineers -- France -- Political activity -- History -- 18th century; Enlightenment -- France -- Influence; Technology and civilization -- Political aspects -- France; France -- History -- Revolution, 1789-1799 -- Influence; France -- Politics and government -- 1789-1815; France -- History, Military -- 1789-1815
Description: The French Revolution and Industrial Revolution together inaugurated the modern era. But recent historical "revisionists" have divorced eighteenth-century material conditions from concurrent political struggles. This book's anti-teleological approach repudiates technological determinism to document the forging of a new relationship between technology and politics in Revolutionary France. It does so through the history of a particular artifact - the gun. Expanding the "political" to include conflict over material objects, Ken Alder rethinks the nature of engineering rationality, the origins of mass production, and our interpretation of the French Revolution.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.