Abstract Around 1700, the French administration had few tools for understanding its domain. Expenses from constant war incited the regime to develop new representational means of conveying knowledge about state contents and extents across geographic distances, in order to assess available resources and productivity. This article argues that administrators formulated the state based on technologies for enumerating the land and subjects it comprised. Two documents exhibit this consolidation by collecting information: Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban’s taxation proposal, which included a comprehensive census; and a series of physical models of towns, or plan-reliefs, which amalgamated skills of builders, engineers, geographers, geologists, surveyors, and craftspeople to create material visualizations of territorial possession. Both relied on recursive processes: diffusion to gather information, collation, then returning to the field. In combination, these two artifacts demonstrate the ways in which a still-inchoate state developed spatial instruments for government according to incipient theories of political economy.

中文翻译：

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收集国家内容：法国的领土和价值 c.1700–1850

摘要 大约在 1700 年左右，法国政府几乎没有了解其领域的工具。持续战争的费用促使该政权开发新的代表性手段，以跨地理距离传达有关国家内容和范围的知识，以评估可用资源和生产力。本文认为，管理人员根据列举土地及其所包含的主体的技术来制定国家。两份文件通过收集信息展示了这种整合：Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban 的税收提案，其中包括全面的人口普查；以及一系列城镇物理模型或平面浮雕，它们融合了建筑商、工程师、地理学家、地质学家、测量师和工匠的技能，以创建领土占有的物质可视化。两者都依赖于递归过程：传播以收集信息，整理，然后返回现场。结合起来，这两个人工制品展示了一个仍处于起步阶段的国家根据早期的政治经济学理论为政府开发空间工具的方式。