William Jessop and the River Trent: mobility, engineering and the landscape of eighteenth-century 'improvement'

Revill, George (2007). William Jessop and the River Trent: mobility, engineering and the landscape of eighteenth-century 'improvement'. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 32(2) pp. 201–216.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-5661.2007.00249.x

Abstract

This paper considers relationships between landscape, transport technology and mobility in order to explore how the making of landscape, engineering practice and geographical knowledge are mutually constituted in landscapes of improvement. It examines work by the engineer William Jessop (1745 – 1814) and focuses specifically on his plans to make the River Trent navigable in the period 1781-91. The paper adopts metaphors of region, fluid and network from the sociology of mobility. It argues that these metaphors usefully inform study of transport technologies, their related practices and knowledges, in the context of landscape as a mode of governance.

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