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Roads to Power: Britain Invents the Infrastructure State. By Jo Guldi. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011. Pp. vi+297. $39.95.
As the title suggests, this book is about political power and the infrastructure of roads. It discusses England, Scotland, andWales in detail, and makes occasional reference to Ireland. It covers the period from the early eighteenth century to the mid-nineteenth century.
In recent years a new field has emerged under the label of "infrastructure studies." Its source is primarily communications and is focused on the internet. This book is important because it reminds us that infrastructure studies, if it is to go by this name, must broaden its definition of the field. Infrastructure studies should include sanitary, water, electrical, inland navigation, and other telecommunications infrastructure, and without doubt roads.
The book is exactingly researched and extremely well written. It documents in detail the politics of road building and demonstrates the centrality of roads in the development of the modern state. The first of three parts documents the role of the military in building roads from the early eighteenth to the late nineteenth century, including the techniques developed. Scotland is central to this story, as roads were basic to securing the conquest of that country by the English. The second part is the transition to what the author terms "parliamentary roads" around the turn of the nineteenth century. This...