By Jacob Soll
How do you build an effective police state? Louis XIV’s famous minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619-1683) knew that well-paid scholars potentially make effective and sometimes brutal intelligence agents.
He also knew they had the requisite skills to make state surveillance systems. With their knowledge of law, feudal history and archival practices, Colbert trained a number of [...]
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History has often been marked contrasts, “before’s,” and “after’s.” BC/AD, Medieval/Renaissance, pre-industrial/post-industrial, post-9/11…
The 17th and 18th centuries are linked, of course, to a big break: the Scientific Revolution. Big S, big R. Of course, some Very Big changes–big V, big B–took place in the early-modern era. Copernicus’s heliocentrism (image above) for [...]
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