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This book analyses the development of German territorial states in the nineteenth century through the prism of five Mittelstaaten : Bavaria, Saxony, Hanover, Württemberg, and Baden. It asks how a state becomes a place, and argues that it involves a contested and multi-faceted process, one of slow and uneven progress. The study approaches this question from a new and crucial angle, that of spatiality and public mobility. The issues covered range from the geography of state apparatus, the aesthetics of German cartography and the trajectories of public movement. Challenging the belief that territorial delimitation is primarily a matter of policy and diplomacy, this book reveals that political territories are constructed through daily practices and imagination.
List of contents
1 Introduction.- Part I: Infrastructural Layout and State Construction.-2 Limitations of Movement: The Establishment of Gendarmerie Forces and Customs Controls.- 3 Motivating Movement: Developing a State-oriented Higher Education System.- 4 Routes of Mass Movement: Postal and Railway Infrastructures.- Part II: Cartographic Representations of State Space.- 5 The Cartographic Emergence of Modern Borders and Capital Cities.- 6 Defining a 'National' Territory: Cartography and the Invention of Logos.- 7 Reconstructing and Deconstructing State Borders: German Railway Cartography.- Part III: National, Transnational and International Communication and Movement.- 8 The Delimitation of Transnational Societies: Mass Migration and Foreign Students.- 9 The Territoriality of Railway Travel.- 10 Postal Communication as a Social Network.- 11 Connecting the Dots.-
About the author
Zef M. Segal is a Lecturer of History, Mathematics and Digital Humanities at the Open University of Israel and Tel-Aviv Jaffa College, Israel.
Summary
This book analyses the development of German territorial states in the nineteenth century through the prism of five Mittelstaaten: Bavaria, Saxony, Hanover, Württemberg, and Baden. It asks how a state becomes a place, and argues that it involves a contested and multi-faceted process, one of slow and uneven progress. The study approaches this question from a new and crucial angle, that of spatiality and public mobility. The issues covered range from the geography of state apparatus, the aesthetics of German cartography and the trajectories of public movement. Challenging the belief that territorial delimitation is primarily a matter of policy and diplomacy, this book reveals that political territories are constructed through daily practices and imagination.
