Vauban, architecte de la modernité? (review)

Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban (1633–1707) is most often remembered as Louis XIV's great military engineer whose name was indissolubly linked with classical artillery fortifications and siegecraft, not only in France but throughout Europe and France's colonial possessions. His interests in fiscal reform and in the description and compilation of the economic and human resources of his country have attracted respectful but lesser interest from historians. This began to change with Michèle Virol's Vauban: De la gloire du roi au service de l'état (2003), based on many unpublished documents now in the Archives Nationales of France. A more balanced view of Vauban's activity and accomplishments has emerged.

The volume reviewed here is a continuation of this trend and is the result of a conference in Besançon in 2007. It is divided into two parts. The first consists of essays analyzing the efforts of pioneers attempting to rationalize state-building action by using the methodologies and results of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. European monarchs were attempting to centralize power and to coordinate resources to augment that power, while thinkers imbued with a modern scientific mentality were attempting to articulate the technical with political action. Vauban was not alone here, and there is some debate in the book as to what extent if any Vauban was influenced by William Petty, founder of "political arithmetic" and member of the Royal Society. Both were close to scientific societies, both were enamored of quantification, and both believed in the rationalization of politics and administration. But in spite of their similarities, there is no identity between Vauban and Petty in their interest in censuses, economics, and taxation. Vauban was a soldier who was carried forward by his bent for efficiency and quantification to move outward from the fortress to the country as whole. Like the governor of the fortress, the king was the manager of his realm for the benefit of his power and the wealth of his subjects. This required inventories and information that was organized in an easy and accessible form.

In addition to the lead essays by the editors, the first part contains essays on Petty and his influence in France (Sabine Reungoat), on the development of various kinds of state "statistics" in Germany in the second half of the eighteenth century (Guillaume Garnier), on the technical rationality of engineers in Vauban's time (Hélène Vérin), and on Vauban's ideas on more equitable taxation (André Ferrer).

The second part of the book includes six essays illustrating Vauban's quantitative and organizing thinking in the domain of architecture and space. With the aid of numerous examples, Christian Corvisier and Isabelle Warmo effectively debunk the perennial view among many historians that Vauban had three rigid "systems" of military architecture. On the contrary, he was always attentive to the specific nature of terrain, existing structures, and financial constraints of building. Philippe Bragard provides an overview of European fortifiers and argues that neither Vauban nor his great Dutch counterpart Menno van Coehoorn was a major innovator; rather, they were talented borrowers and modifiers of established traditions that had developed during the last half of the seventeenth century. André Charbonneau looks at the work of French military engineers in colonial fortifications in Canada. Spain's engineers in its Latin American colonies were also aware of the methods of fortification attributed to Vauban, and Francisco Muñoz Espejo and Benjamin Blaisot provide a look at Vauban's possible influence in Latin America, more particularly at the fortress in San Juan de Ulúa in Mexico. Somewhat isolated here is the contribution of Marino Vigano on the work of Micheli du Crest on the fortifications of Geneva in the decades after Vauban's death.

Concluding the collection are two interesting essays with new insights about Vauban's oeuvre. David Bitterling suggests that Vauban's idea of a neatly hexagonal France to be measured, arithmetized, and...