Roads to Power: Britain Invents the Infrastructure State

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Overview

Roads to Power tells the story of how Britain built the first nation connected by infrastructure, how a libertarian revolution destroyed a national economy, and how technology caused strangers to stop speaking.

In early eighteenth-century Britain, nothing but dirt track ran between most towns. By 1848 the primitive roads were transformed into a network of highways connecting every village and island in the nation—and also dividing them in unforeseen ways. The highway network led...

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Roads to Power: Britain Invents the Infrastructure State

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Overview

Roads to Power tells the story of how Britain built the first nation connected by infrastructure, how a libertarian revolution destroyed a national economy, and how technology caused strangers to stop speaking.

In early eighteenth-century Britain, nothing but dirt track ran between most towns. By 1848 the primitive roads were transformed into a network of highways connecting every village and island in the nation—and also dividing them in unforeseen ways. The highway network led to contests for control over everything from road management to market access. Peripheries like the Highlands demanded that centralized government pay for roads they could not afford, while English counties wanted to be spared the cost of underwriting roads to Scotland. The new network also transformed social relationships. Although travelers moved along the same routes, they occupied increasingly isolated spheres. The roads were the product of a new form of government, the infrastructure state, marked by the unprecedented control bureaucrats wielded over decisions relating to everyday life.

Does information really work to unite strangers? Do markets unite nations and peoples in common interests? There are lessons here for all who would end poverty or design their markets around the principle of participation. Guldi draws direct connections between traditional infrastructure and the contemporary collapse of the American Rust Belt, the decline of American infrastructure, the digital divide, and net neutrality. In the modern world, infrastructure is our principal tool for forging new communities, but it cannot outlast the control of governance by visionaries.

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Editorial Reviews

Wall Street Journal

The story of British roads is more interesting than you might expect, and Jo Guldi tells it well in Roads to Power: Britain Invents the Infrastructure State.
— Daniel Hannan

Library Journal
In modern society, roads are often taken for granted. Guldi (junior fellow, Harvard Univ. Society of Fellows) examines the history of Britain's road-building enterprises in the 18th and 19th centuries. During this period, Britain developed roads first for its military, then for trade and social purposes. One might think, logically, that better roads would help unite the country through the increased access to remote (and not-so-remote) corners of the island, and, on various levels, they did. However, when money and politics are involved, logic doesn't always follow. Guldi points out many ways that this uniting technology greatly divided Britain. This period also provides an interesting case study in the history of technology as civil engineering emerges as its own discipline. Guldi also shows that, from its infancy, engineering has been about more than just developing new technologies and applying them to solve problems—it has required a certain level of salesmanship. VERDICT Recommended for all interested in city planning and the history of civil engineering.—William Baer, Georgia Inst. of Technology Lib., Atlanta
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780674057593
  • Publisher: Harvard University Press
  • Publication date: 1/2/2012
  • Pages: 320
  • Sales rank: 1,352,925
  • Product dimensions: 6.50 (w) x 9.30 (h) x 1.10 (d)

Meet the Author

Jo Guldi is Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Digital History, University of Chicago, and a Junior Fellow at the Society of Fellows, Harvard University. She also runs the Landscape Studies Podcast.

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Table of Contents

Introduction: The Road to Rule 1

1 Military Craft and Parliamentary Expertise: The Institutional Evolution of Road Making 25

2 Colonizing at Home: The Political Lobby for Centralizing Highways 79

3 Paying to Walk: The National Movement against Centralized Roads 128

4 Wayfaring Strangers: Mobile Communities and the Death of Contact 153

Conclusion: The Necessity for Infrastructure 198

Notes 215

Acknowledgments 289

Index 291

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