Transportation and Revolt

Transportation and Revolt
Author: Jacob Shell
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 207
Release: 2015-07-10
Genre: Transportation
ISBN: 0262330415

How political regimes have responded when certain modes of transportation—from carrier pigeons to canal boats—have been associated with politically subversive activities. During World War I, German soldiers shot down carrier pigeons for fear the birds were carrying enemy communiqués; in Mexico, the United States, and other countries, mules were used for smuggling and secret travel in mountainous areas; in the British Empire in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the British feared that supplies for anti-imperialist rebellion were being transported by canal. In this book, Jacob Shell argues that many political regimes have historically associated certain modes of transportation with revolt or with subversive activities—and have responded by acting to destroy or curtail those modes of transportation. Constructing a conceptual framework linking physical geography with the politics of mobility, Shell presents historical examples of the secret, subversive mobilization of people and cargo across watery spaces and harsh terrain, carried by watercraft and transport animals including pigeons, mules, camels, elephants, and sled dogs. Efforts to suppress such clandestine mobilities ranged from the violent (the shooting of pigeons) to the indirect—curtailing financial support, certain kinds of social knowledge, or schemes for infrastructural development. To show how such efforts at immobilization could affect cities and urban transportation, Shell looks at the Port of New York in the early twentieth century, where potentially transformative plans for inner-city freight transportation were rejected—likely, Shell argues, due to fears of anarchist activities. The innovative argument advanced by Shell in Transportation and Revolt challenges conventional wisdom about the supposed obsolescence of transport methods that have become marginalized in the modern era.

Mobility First

Mobility First
Author: Sam Staley
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2009
Genre: Political Science
ISBN:

Mobility First considers domestic transportation through the intersection of four crucial and timely elements: global, economic, and cultural competitiveness; urban development and trends; demographics; and transportation engineering and design. The book proposes solutions that will mitigate the troubling consequences of congestion, spiraling road costs, bad roads, and political inertia.

The Revolt of The Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium

The Revolt of The Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium
Author: Martin Gurri
Publisher: Stripe Press
Total Pages: 465
Release: 2018-12-04
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1953953344

How insurgencies—enabled by digital devices and a vast information sphere—have mobilized millions of ordinary people around the world. In the words of economist and scholar Arnold Kling, Martin Gurri saw it coming. Technology has categorically reversed the information balance of power between the public and the elites who manage the great hierarchical institutions of the industrial age: government, political parties, the media. The Revolt of the Public tells the story of how insurgencies, enabled by digital devices and a vast information sphere, have mobilized millions of ordinary people around the world. Originally published in 2014, The Revolt of the Public is now available in an updated edition, which includes an extensive analysis of Donald Trump’s improbable rise to the presidency and the electoral triumphs of Brexit. The book concludes with a speculative look forward, pondering whether the current elite class can bring about a reformation of the democratic process and whether new organizing principles, adapted to a digital world, can arise out of the present political turbulence.

Waves Across the South

Waves Across the South
Author: Sujit Sivasundaram
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 497
Release: 2021-05-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 022679055X

This is a story of tides and coastlines, winds and waves, islands and beaches. It is also a retelling of indigenous creativity, agency, and resistance in the face of unprecedented globalization and violence. Waves Across the South shifts the narrative of the Age of Revolutions and the origins of the British Empire; it foregrounds a vast southern zone that ranges from the Arabian Sea and southwest Indian Ocean across to the Bay of Bengal, and onward to the South Pacific and the Tasman Sea. As the empires of the Dutch, French, and especially the British reached across these regions, they faced a surge of revolutionary sentiment. Long-standing venerable Eurasian empires, established patterns of trade and commerce, and indigenous practice also served as a context for this transformative era. In addition to bringing long-ignored people and events to the fore, Sujit Sivasundaram opens the door to new and necessary conversations about environmental history, the consequences of historical violence, the legacies of empire, the extraction of resources, and the indigenous futures that Western imperialism cut short. The result is nothing less than a bold new way of understanding our global past, one that also helps us think afresh about our shared future.

Transportation and Revolt

Transportation and Revolt
Author: Jacob Shell
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 207
Release: 2015-08-07
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0262029332

"Modes of transportation understood, by political regimes in different times and places, as intrinsically useful for clandestine movement, subversive mobility, and smuggling for revolt. Contents: Chapters look at canal transportation, several types of animal transportation (mules, elephants, camels and sled-dogs are all treated at some length), and inner-city freight-carrying infrastructure"--Provided by publisher.

Roads to Power

Roads to Power
Author: Jo Guldi
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 285
Release: 2012-01-01
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 0674264134

Roads to Power tells the story of how Britain built the first nation connected by infrastructure, how a libertarian revolution destroyed a national economy, and how technology caused strangers to stop speaking. In early eighteenth-century Britain, nothing but dirt track ran between most towns. By 1848 the primitive roads were transformed into a network of highways connecting every village and island in the nation—and also dividing them in unforeseen ways. The highway network led to contests for control over everything from road management to market access. Peripheries like the Highlands demanded that centralized government pay for roads they could not afford, while English counties wanted to be spared the cost of underwriting roads to Scotland. The new network also transformed social relationships. Although travelers moved along the same routes, they occupied increasingly isolated spheres. The roads were the product of a new form of government, the infrastructure state, marked by the unprecedented control bureaucrats wielded over decisions relating to everyday life. Does information really work to unite strangers? Do markets unite nations and peoples in common interests? There are lessons here for all who would end poverty or design their markets around the principle of participation. Guldi draws direct connections between traditional infrastructure and the contemporary collapse of the American Rust Belt, the decline of American infrastructure, the digital divide, and net neutrality. In the modern world, infrastructure is our principal tool for forging new communities, but it cannot outlast the control of governance by visionaries.

The Indian Uprising of 1857-8

The Indian Uprising of 1857-8
Author: Clare Anderson
Publisher: Anthem Press
Total Pages: 221
Release: 2007
Genre: History
ISBN: 1843312956

An in-depth study of the 1857 Indian mutiny-rebellion, exploring the political and social themes of this remarkable phenomenon.