Revolution and the Ministry Map Room: Elements of a Sociology of Translation

For eighteenth-century historical geographers, the French Revolution did not bode well, and not just because of its emphasis on a radical break from the past.  Mapmaker Jean-Denis Barbié du Bocage lost his patron, an émigré in 1792. In 1793, Barbié himself spent time in prison as a suspect. These setbacks do not tell the full story, however. Barbié embraced new career opportunities. In 1797, he entered government service in the Ministry of Interior’s bureau du cadastre. He went on to work in the Ministry of War (where he was commissioned to produce a map of modern Greece) and Foreign Affairs.  Outside government, he began to produce map illustrations for modern—as well as ancient—works.

 

This paper investigates the network of interests through which Barbié du Bocage reconstructed his professional life. It uses the idea of a ‘sociology of translation’, as described in Michel Callon’s actor-network theory, to investigate a shifting alliance of actors and actants. At the start of the Revolution, politicians favored mathematical surveys, remapping territory from scratch.  When politicians fell out of love with Gaspard de Prony’s plan for a metric cadastre, however, historical geographers became useful once again.  The fact that Revolutionary commissioners had seized large collections of geographic materials from aristocrats in 1792 and 1793 also played an important part.  The most significant alliance, however, was one of expertise, forged within the ‘place’ of the ministry map room.  Enlightenment empiricist Barbié du Bocage, trained to navigate the differences between ancient measurements, worked directly alongside an expert on mineral resources and under the authority of a Ponts-et-Chaussées-trained engineer. Their collaboration (and that of others working in similar circumstances) helped create a new ‘mixed’ geography. Specialist mapmakers were no longer the only geographers.  As a result, mapmakers in the nineteenth century invented a new profession—‘cartography’.

See more of: Geography in Practice: Making Place, Space, and Nation in the Eighteenth Century
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