Chandra Mukerji’s Impossible
Engineering
Chandra
Mukerji’s 2009 monograph Impossible
Engineering: Technology and Territoriality on the Canal du Midi[1]
narrates the mid-late seventeenth century construction of the Canal du
Midi, a feat of engineering that connected the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. Exploring
several aspects of its creation ranging from the logistical problems with a
project of that scale to the politics which alternately drove and threatened
its completion, Mukerji addresses how the interaction of technological
knowledge interacted with state affairs to produce an enormous hydraulics
endeavor which soon became a symbol for the power of Louis XIV and France.
Using correspondence of major figures, financial records, maps and even her own
contemporary photographs, Mukerji demonstrates not only how the canal was
completed through the collective knowledge of the many people involved, but
also how its completion exemplified the absolutism that logistical power gave
to leaders.
Mukerji’s
title Impossible Engineering refers
to the “superhuman” accomplishment of the functioning canal which by the
contemporary standards of hydraulics and elevation should never have been
built. Though the standard narrative of the Canal du Midi credits solely the
heroism and lone genius of the tax-farmer Pierre Paul Riquet who knew the
region of Languedoc intimately, she offers much evidence to discredit this
thesis. First, while she acknowledges the importance of Riquet to the project,
especially his financial and political connections, she explains that his
background was not in engineering. In order to show the slow but gradual
progress that allowed for continued support from the monarchy, Riquet depended
on a bevy of expert contributors. Though he did employ the expertise of military
engineers and other formally educated contractors, he also relied on the labor
of artisans and peasants throughout the region. She particularly credits the
role of peasant women from the Midi-Pyrenees who used a complicated system of
canals and locks for their own domestic water supply and who Riquet employed in
large numbers to contribute labor to the canal. Though slightly counterfactual,
her analysis shows that the canal was only built due to the combined knowledge
of a large group of otherwise different individuals and through the trial and
error that such a varied array of knowledge allowed. Related to this idea of
collective knowledge, Mukerji dedicates much of her book to the idea that the
Canal was reminisant of a “New Rome” in France. Not only did the court of Louis
XIV frequently use rhetoric to describe France as a modern Rome, most engineers
were educated with the works of Vitruvious and other Roman engineers when they
went to work on the Canal. Additionally, the hydraulics practices of the
peasants and artisans operating in Languedoc unknowingly consisted of Roman
engineering passed down over generations.
Though
her discussion of collective knowledge was extremely significant, her last chapter
exploring the role that the canal played in the logistical power of the
monarchy was far more interesting. She explains how, though his work
constructing the canal, Riquet actually transferred power from the nobles to
the king. The king, by placing trust in the efforts of an entrepreneur with no
pedigree but the ability to harness the talents of vast amounts of people,
created a pseudo merit based technocrat, loyal only to the crown. Riquet, who
used his authority to commandeer land from the nobles for use in a project of
the king, assisted in undermining the power of the nobles and giving more
absolutist power to the monarchy. Additionally, the canal represented a
significant instance when a monarch was able to wield not only strategic power,
power over people, but also logistical power, power over nature. This is
important pragmatically since it allowed the state better trade routes and in
theory, strategic military advantage. However, this is also important
symbolically since it literally took some of nature’s power and placed it into
the hands of the king. Finally, while the canal took some power away from
nature, Mukerji demonstrates the importance of non-human actors in historical
developments. The nature of the water, stones and terrain of southeast France
actually changed the course of the canal and had large political impacts since
error on the canal resulted in political fallout.
Mukerji’s
book is an extremely interesting and well-written account of a remarkable
episode in history. She successfully argues that an impossible canal was built
only by the collective knowledge of a large community and that such a canal had
important political implications. Additionally, her prolific use of
correspondence within the text humanizes the creation of the Canal du Midi and
reminds readers that major achievements in architecture and engineering were
neither inevitable nor built by superhuman but are instead the result of people
and knowledge interacting together in new ways. It is an important book for French,
technological and environmental historians.
[1] Mukerji, Chandra. 2009. Impossible
engineering: technology and territoriality on the Canal du Midi. Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press
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