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Roads and canals do fine for knitting together a nation in the cultural and political sense of the word, and for enforcing/dispensing all the fruits of central
by geenew 5y ago
Roads and canals do fine for knitting together a nation in the cultural and political sense of the word, and for enforcing/dispensing all the fruits of central government. Europe in the early 1800s was less homogeneous than today, perhaps, but it's strange to claim that areas without nearby rail service were a 'patchwork of sovereign micro-ethnic groups'.
- sandworm101 5y agoAnd in places like BC, the water network linked everyone.
- geenew 5y agoIt didn't link everyone into centrally run sovereign nation states, though, which I thought was what we were talking about.