Engineering the Revolution

Arms and Enlightenment in France, 1763-1815

Alder Ken

"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.

About the Author

Ken Alder is the Milton H. Wilson Professor of the Humanities and professor of history at Northwestern University. He is the author of "The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error that Transformed the World" and "The Lie Detectors: The History of an American Obsession".

Reviews

1997 Dexter Prize from the Society for the History of Technology

"This is a fine work, grounded in research in French archives and a plethora of other sources. Alder has forcefully demonstrated the role of engineers in fostering social change in the eighteenth-century and revolutionary eras" – Owen Connelly, American Historical Review

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