Manchester University Press
1 Colonial enclosure
Abstract
This chapter focuses on the French military engineer and architect François Blondel, known for the construction of several monumental structures in metropolitan France. Blondel devised several plans and accounts on the feasibility of developing existing strongholds in modern fortresses or choosing completely new sites for a rayon of fortified towns, forts, and batteries. Blondel’s maps represented the islands as seemingly homogenous entities, where local differences between French and Carib settlements were blurred. This spatial construction of the islands of French territory on representations such as maps or plans was preceded by the so-called seigneurial period on the islands, including next to Guadeloupe and Martinique also Saint-Christophe (Saint-Kitts and Nevis) and Tortuga Island. It was then that French feudal proprietors tried to enclose land with a combination of manorial economy with a kind of baroque representation practice resulting in the creation of several more or less magnificent ‘castles’ on the islands. It is important to consider this ‘feudal’ period in order to understand how it prefigured the effort in the later seventeenth and in the eighteenth century to form a territory from only a few individual and scattered settlements and strongholds that could be regarded as a coherent empire.
Abstract
This chapter focuses on the French military engineer and architect François Blondel, known for the construction of several monumental structures in metropolitan France. Blondel devised several plans and accounts on the feasibility of developing existing strongholds in modern fortresses or choosing completely new sites for a rayon of fortified towns, forts, and batteries. Blondel’s maps represented the islands as seemingly homogenous entities, where local differences between French and Carib settlements were blurred. This spatial construction of the islands of French territory on representations such as maps or plans was preceded by the so-called seigneurial period on the islands, including next to Guadeloupe and Martinique also Saint-Christophe (Saint-Kitts and Nevis) and Tortuga Island. It was then that French feudal proprietors tried to enclose land with a combination of manorial economy with a kind of baroque representation practice resulting in the creation of several more or less magnificent ‘castles’ on the islands. It is important to consider this ‘feudal’ period in order to understand how it prefigured the effort in the later seventeenth and in the eighteenth century to form a territory from only a few individual and scattered settlements and strongholds that could be regarded as a coherent empire.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Front matter i
- Dedication v
- Contents vii
- List of illustrations viii
- Acknowledgements xiv
- Introduction 1
- 1 Colonial enclosure 20
- 2 Ambitions to empire in India 48
- 3 Decay and repair 66
- 4 Mixed society and African ‘Rococo’ 85
- 5 Variegated engineering 100
- 6 Community and segregation in Louisbourg 120
- 7 Motley style 137
- Conclusion 172
- Bibliography 179
- Index 203
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Front matter i
- Dedication v
- Contents vii
- List of illustrations viii
- Acknowledgements xiv
- Introduction 1
- 1 Colonial enclosure 20
- 2 Ambitions to empire in India 48
- 3 Decay and repair 66
- 4 Mixed society and African ‘Rococo’ 85
- 5 Variegated engineering 100
- 6 Community and segregation in Louisbourg 120
- 7 Motley style 137
- Conclusion 172
- Bibliography 179
- Index 203
