books
the information master jean baptiste colberts secret state intelligence system
p colbert has long been celebrated as louis xivs minister of finance trade and industry . more recently he has been viewed as his minister of culture and propaganda . in this lively and persuasive book jake soll has given us a third colbert the information manager . br peter burke university of cambridge p jacob soll gives us a road map drawn from the french state under colbert . with a stunning attention to detail colbert used knowledge in the service of enhancing br royal power . jacob solls scholarship is impeccable and his story long br overdue and compelling . br margaret jacob university of california los angeles p nowadays we all know that information is the key to power and that the masters of information rule the world . jacob soll teaches us that jean baptiste colbert had grasped this principle three and a half centuries ago and used it to construct a new kind of state . this imaginative erudite and powerfully written book re creates the history of libraries and archives in early modern europe and ties them in a novel and convincing way to the new statecraft of europes absolute monarchs . br anthony grafton princeton university p brilliantly researched superbly told and timely solls story is crucial for the history of the modern state . br keith baker stanford university p when louis xiv asked his minister jean baptiste colbert the man who was to oversee the building of versailles and the royal academy of sciences as well as the navy the paris police force and french industry to build a large scale administrative government colbert created an unprecedented information system for political power . in the information master jacob soll shows how the legacy of colberts encyclopedic tradition lies at the very center of the rise of the modern state and was a precursor to industrial intelligence and internet search engines . p solls innovative look at colberts rise to power argues that his practice of collecting knowledge originated from techniques of church scholarship and from renaissance italy where merchants recognized the power to be gained from merging scholarship finance and library science . with his connection of interdisciplinary approaches regarding accounting state administration archives libraries merchant techniques ecclesiastical culture policing and humanist pedagogy soll has written an innovative book that will redefine not only the history of the reign of louis xiv and information science but also the study of political and economic history . p jacob soll is associate professor of history at rutgers university and the author of publishing the prince history reading and the birth of political criticism university of michigan press 2005 and winner of the 2005 jacques barzun prize from the american philosophical society and a 2009 guggenheim fellowship . soll edited a special issue of journal of the history of ideas titled the uses of historical evidence in early modern europe ; has cofounded the online journal republics of letters ; and is editor along with anthony grafton and ann blair of the series cultures of knowledge in the early modern world.jacket illustration jean baptiste colbert 1619 1683 philippe de champaigne 1655 the metropolitan museum of art gift of the wildenstein foundation inc. 1951 51.34 . photograph c 2003 the metropolitan museum of art .
hardcover university of michigan press 2009 isbn13 9780472116904 isbn10 0472116908
abridged n isbn 13 9780472116904 number in series 1 number of pages 277 publisher univ of michigan pr release date 62135769600000 series title cultures of knowledge in the early modern world