Territorial Ambitions and the Gardens of Versailles
Territorial Ambitions and the Gardens of Versailles
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inc GSTIn seventeenth-century France, land took on new importance for the practice of politics and rituals of court life. In her major new book, Chandra Mukerji highlights the connections between the two seemingly disparate activities of engineering and garden design. She shows how, at Versailles in particular, the royal park showcased French skills in using nature and art to design a distinctively French landscape and create a naturalized political territoriality. She challenges the association of state power with social and legal structures alone and demonstrates the importance for Louis XIV and his state of a controlled physical site, a demarcated French territory within the wider European geo-political continent.
- Unique combination of cultural studies, political sociology and history of science and technology by leading scholar
- Highlights distinctiveness of seventeenth-century French design and engineering and its importance for political power
- Includes 150 contemporary and historical illustrations of gardens at Versailles
Product details
November 1997Hardback
9780521496759
418 pages
254 × 179 × 32 mm
0.965kg
150 b/w illus.
Available
Table of Contents
- List of illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Glossary of French terms
- 1. The culture of land and the territorial state
- 2. Military ambitions and territorial gardens
- 3. Material innovation and cultural identity
- 4. Techniques of material mobilization
- 5. Social choreography and the politics of place
- 6. Naturalizing power in the new state
- 7. A history of material power
- Notes
- References
- Index.
