The construction of a road system in what is now the UK is an xeno-technical system see the last post.

The Boyhood of Raleigh by Sir John Everett Millais, oil on canvas, 1870. A seafarer tells the young Sir Walter Raleigh and his brother the story of what happened out at sea.

John Everett Millais (1829-1896) - The Boyhood of Raleigh - N01691 - National Gallery, Created 1870

A travelling fiddler is playing for a humble country family. Wilkie focuses on the listeners’ different expressions. Only two people seem to respond to the music: the baby and the boy on the right, who is imitating the fiddler by playing the bellows. When this picture was exhibited at the Royal Academy some critics thought the bust on the shelf represented a dissenting minister, and concluded that the family were nonconformists.

The Blind Fiddler by Sir David Wilkie (1785-1841). 1806. Oil on mahogany support, 578 x 794 mm frame: 1065 x 1270 x 200 mm painting. Presented by Sir George Beaumont, 1826. Tate Gallery

The introduction of a road system created divisions by the design and building of connection and flow alteration, reinforcing core-peripheral organisational principles, and enables processes of estrangement for the cargo of the road, whether human or non-human. Connecting elements through design allows the developers of the system the privilege of ignoring particulars that are seen as unattractive to their intentions. Before the logistical road system there were routes, ancient pathways traversed in alternative and maybe even playful ways.

Could the England of 1685 be, by some magical process, set before our eyes, we should not know one landscape in a hundred or one building in ten thousand. The country gentleman would not recognise his own fields. The in- habitant of the town would not recognise his own street

—Thomas Babington Macaulay, The History of England from Accession of James II, 1843

In 1726 the Roads of Britain were mostly mire and muck, the wealthier villages sometimes cobbled. By 1848 there was an extensive road system constructed of forty-foot-wide level gravel that had been built by slave labour. These roads connected every village and town within the nation. By the eventual unification of the transport network spanning the country, it was decided that ‘one language will be spoken’[1] . That language was not just English, it was also a code, the language of routine – the logistical.

Roy Military Survey of Scotland, 1747-1755

Ben Nevis environs

When the Jacobite Rebellion came to an end on 16th April 1746, the Government stifled further uprisings by carrying out an exhaustive military survey of Scotland. The effort was to create “a magnificent military sketch”, known as the Roy Map. This systematic map- ping of a largely rural society brought with it questions of centralised government spending (In London), state-appointed experts, an army of clerks, surveyors, Coordination standards and specific specialist detail- ing of circulatory, construction and dimension requirements under law. It was an experiment in development that came in the form of toll booths, way markers, sidewalks, standards, and centralised management procedures.

The Great Map: The Military Survey of Scotland 1747-1755 Printed edition

A well-preserved section of General Wade’s Military Road near Melgarve, leading to the Corrieyairack Pass © Chaswick Chap 2008

Socialist France pays for its trains, while libertarian Texas prefers toll roads. Journalists and even historians write about road building as a conflict between the state and the free market. Libertarian economists like Edward Glaeser argue for the devolution of roads to private control, regardless of how remote or poor a region is. In reality, the divisions at stake are frequently deeper than political ideology suggests. Poor regions and rich fight not over abstract political ideals, but over the right to participate in the market .[2]

The question is: what was lost by design, pushed into the periphery? A party walking to dinner along muddy roads, Diana Sperling, 1812-23.

It was the route, not the road that also carried religion, the earliest routes extended across the very borders of our current geopolitical and economic divide: The Eurasian Steppes. Pastoral Nomads traded with farmers, and by the first millennium B.C. sporadic trade routes developed into the silk route stretching from China to the Mediterranean. This is not an argument for a return to this mode of organisation, these routes carried alter- native cargo: stories, disease, and political systems.

The Hyde Park Gate in London, erected by the Kensington Turnpike Trust. The first toll point encountered along Bath Road, upon leaving London. © Public Domain

The Great North Road near Highgate on the approach to London before turnpiking. The highway was deeply rutted and spread onto adjoining land. © Public Domain

The shifting, altering and blockage of these pathways led to a less fluid dynamic caused by war. Military occupation set the stones and carved roads out of ancient routes. Examples include military roads built under Henry IV and Louis XIV that carried soldiers across isolated peaks, as well as the Roman Empires ancient road system from Roma to Persia (serving as crucial administration nodes) that carried soldiers and judges. This is in stark contrast to the travellers of the ancient world that met on tracks of animals and merchants that traded along them. Medieval friars and journeymen relied on the directions of others to navigate the route between towns.

With the arrival of the city-state and the collective interest a modern world order organised by experts and statesman, the bureaucrat became judge of where trade should flow, who would partake in decision making processes, and who should cover the cost of cargo.

City streets were crowded and narrow. Thomas Rowlandson. The Miseries of London. 1807. Image @Lewis Walpole Library

The invention of the coach (stagecoach and rail coach) enables the carrying of standardised time, news (in form of paper), funds and other cargo: all organised by the Post Office. Business franchises spawned along the corridors that supported new traffic[3]. This process of packaging and interiorisation also limited contact between different professional and labour classes, as the middle class began to travel increasingly by coach and the wandering poor were violently stigmatised, enslaved, and put to work in workhouses. This is the ar- rival of the narrative of the stranger and the reduction of chance encounter / social cohesion.

A link boy lights the way in the city, 1827.

What is introduced with the road is the construction of an instant frontier (something like a pop-up trial at the scale of a nation, only it remained): the terraforming project of the logistical, of the infrastructure state. It is comprised of body construction, embellished information / goods, and the arrival of state as builder: particularly of ports, sidewalks, lines and trading routes.

These technologies of sorting have become increasing embedded, silent, and powerful. As a medium, it has enabled a space that operates within contemporary cultural and economic intensities as an anticipatory machine, that promise connection to innovation schemes (see the UK innovation corridor), and yet can inflict slow violence upon those that await the delivery of the undeliverable promise.

REFERENCE

Angelo Garvey, Michael, The Silent Revolution, 1852
Guidi, Jo, The Road to Rule, Harvard University press, 2012
ibid
Guidi, Jo, The Road to Rule, Harvard University press, 201