Book

The imagined empire : balloon enlightenments in revolutionary Europe

Kim, Mi Gyung, author

Overview

\"The hot-air balloon, invented by the Montgolfier brothers in 1783, launched for the second time just days before the Treaty of Paris would end the American Revolutionary War. The ascent in Paris--a technological marvel witnessed by a diverse crowd that included Benjamin Franklin--highlighted celebrations of French military victory against Britain and ignited a balloon mania that swept across Europe at the end of the Enlightenment. This popular frenzy for balloon experiments, which attracted hundreds of thousands of spectators, fundamentally altered the once elite audience for science by bringing aristocrats and commoners together. The Imagined Empire explores how this material artifact, the flying machine, not only expanded the public for science and spectacle but inspired utopian dreams of a republican monarchy that would obliterate social boundaries. The balloon, Mi Gyung Kim argues, was a people-machine, a cultural performance that unified and mobilized the people of France, who imagined an aerial empire that would bring glory to the French nation. This critical history of ballooning considers how a relatively simple mechanical gadget became an explosive cultural and political phenomenon on the eve of the French Revolution\"-- Provided by publisher.

• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Subject: Hot air balloons Social aspects Europe History 18th century. / Ballooning Social aspects Europe History 18th century. / Revolutions Europe History 18th century. / Enlightenment, / SCIENCE / History. / HISTORY / Europe / General. / TRANSPORTATION / Aviation / History.
• ISBN: 9780822944652

Item info:

1 item available

1 item total in all locations

Holdings :

Call Number	Copies	Material	Location
TL618.K56 2016	1	BOOK	AUTOSTORE