The Imperial Archive: Knowledge and the Fantasy of Empire

ISBN-13: 9780860916055 / Angielski / Miękka / 1993 / 188 str.

Thomas Richards

Opis

Nineteenth-century Britain could be seen as the first information society in history - for the simple reason that it accumulated knowledge from the far-flung corners of its empire much faster than it could easily digest it. The British Empire presented a vast administrative challenge: by meeting that challenge though maps and surveys, censuses and statistics, Victorian administrators developed a new symbiosis of knowledge and power. The narratives of the late 19th century are full of fantasies about an empire united not by force or civil control but by information.