Friday, February 19, 2010

Revolutionary Administrative Rationality



Jacques-Guillaume Thouret (1746-1794), a French député for the Third Estate for Rouen for the Estates-General (les Etats Généraux) of 1789, had a plan for rationalizing the Ancien Regime administrative structure and replacing the age-old provinces by geometrical new districts, the rectangular départements, as represented on the map.

Note however that according to von Thünen, the rational shape for states was not a rectangle but an hexagon.

Anyway, further rationalization is still on the government's agenda today.

Read the complete paper in the blog Strange Maps.

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