Territorial Ambitions and the Gardens of Versailles

Cultural/historical sociologist links design and engineering at Versailles to displays of state power.

Chandra Mukerji (Author)

9780521496759, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 25 September 1997

418 pages, 150 b/w illus.
25.4 x 17.9 x 3.2 cm, 0.965 kg

"Territorial Ambitions is probably the most ambitious and original study of seventeenth-century France in the service of a sociological argument to be published since Norbert Elias's book on the court society." Peter Burke, Journal of Modern History

In 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.

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.

Subject Areas: Cultural studies [JFC]