Collecting State Contents: Territory and Value in France c.1700–1850

Abstract

Abstract Around 1700, the French administration had few tools for understanding its domain. Expenses from constant war incited the regime to develop new representational means of conveying knowledge about state contents and extents across geographic distances, in order to assess available resources and productivity. This article argues that administrators formulated the state based on technologies for enumerating the land and subjects it comprised. Two documents exhibit this consolidation by collecting information: Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban’s taxation proposal, which included a comprehensive census; and a series of physical models of towns, or plan-reliefs, which amalgamated skills of builders, engineers, geographers, geologists, surveyors, and craftspeople to create material visualizations of territorial possession. Both relied on recursive processes: diffusion to gather information, collation, then returning to the field. In combination, these two artifacts demonstrate the ways in which a still-inchoate state developed spatial instruments for government according to incipient theories of political economy.