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    Engineering the Revolution: Arms and Enlightenment in France, 1763-1815
    Engineering the Revolution: Arms and Enlightenment in France, 1763-1815
    Engineering the Revolution: Arms and Enlightenment in France, 1763-1815
    Ebook472 pages13 hours

    Engineering the Revolution: Arms and Enlightenment in France, 1763-1815

    By Ken Alder

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    About this ebook

    Engineering the Revolution documents the forging of a new relationship between technology and politics in Revolutionary France, and the inauguration of a distinctively modern form of the “technological life.”  Here, Ken Alder rewrites the history of the eighteenth century as the total history of one particular artifact—the gun—by offering a novel and historical account of how material artifacts emerge as the outcome of political struggle. By expanding the “political” to include conflict over material objects, this volume rethinks the nature of engineering rationality, the origins of mass production, the rise of meritocracy, and our interpretation of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press
    Release dateApr 15, 2010
    ISBN9780226012650
    Engineering the Revolution: Arms and Enlightenment in France, 1763-1815
    Author

    Ken Alder

    Ken Alder is a professor of history and Milton H. Wilson Professor of the Humanities at Northwestern University. He is the author of The Measure of All Things, published to worldwide acclaim in fourteen languages. He lives in Evanston, Illinois.

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    • 5/5
      Although this is a book about the struggles for and against the implementation of interchangeable parts manufacturing for guns in the pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary era, it’s also a great book for anyone interested in the history of technology generally, because it’s a closely observed and theoretically rich study of the ways in which technology always has and helps make meaning. Even whether something “works,” it turns out, is hotly contested, especially when it’s human beings doing the measuring. Technological progress is not a phenomenon independent of political and cultural organization, as the workers who resisted the measurements and deskilling that came along with interchangeable parts knew quite well; Alder also points out that Japan was able to reject the gun entirely for a long period, because it didn’t fit with the kinds of fights the rulers wanted to have. In France, what it meant for a gun to “work” within a context of particular strategies for organizing men and fighting tactics was itself up for grabsons. And lest you think that’s all over and done now that we have really advanced tech, consider how well the iPhone “works” despite needing a case to limit dropped calls and frequent replacement of the gorgeous but easily cracked glass front and back.

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