Engineering 'Modern' Scotland: The Stevenson Maps and Plans and Scotland's Built Infrastructure, c. 1800-1900

我打算解决的主要问题是，无论是物质上还是思想上，“现代”苏格兰是如何构建的。是什么权力关系和意识形态惯例使得苏格兰的某些愿景变成了有形的形式，而另一些则完全停留在理论上？工程师或工程公司在塑造人们对空间和基础设施的理解方面扮演了什么角色？随着时间的推移，不同的工程师之间或不同的地理位置，这一点是否有所不同？是经济因素单独影响了建筑项目，还是其他理想、优先事项和偏好在苏格兰建筑环境的最终决策中发挥了作用？不同类型的项目是否需要援引不同的假设和原则来证明其合理性？苏格兰的不同愿景是在不同的计划中表达出来的，还是所有参与创造苏格兰建筑环境的人之间都有一个连贯的、共同的愿景？这个项目还将密切关注地理和时间的特殊性，特别是考虑工程师是否对某些地方应用了不同的结构，如果是这样的话，这意味着什么，关于民族认同的问题，以及这个时代苏格兰民族概念的一致性。苏格兰国家图书馆拥有来自史蒂文森工程公司的3000多份地图和平面图，此外还有大量书面材料。关于这个集合的工作相对较少，特别是很少有研究结合书面和视觉来源来连贯地使用这个集合。在我的项目中，我的目标是仔细检查这些文件，利用为不同受众制作的视觉和文本来源的组合，对公司提出和传播的苏格兰愿景进行详细和细致入微的理解。史蒂文森工程公司在19世纪和20世纪参与了苏格兰各地各种基础设施项目的设计、施工和维护。作为英国不断变化的版图的重要贡献者，对该公司论文的详细调查应该会提供有趣的洞察，让我们了解现代苏格兰是如何被概念化的，以及哪些权力、意识形态和群体最有能力在物质和想象力方面塑造苏格兰的版图。我将参考其他地图、图表、平面图和书面文件来补充史蒂文森工程公司的文件，将史蒂文森工程公司产生的愿景与不同团体为不同目的创造的同一空间的表现进行比较。我希望这将使我能够将史蒂文森工程公司置于19世纪关于基础设施、空间和景观的更广泛的背景下，并解决与物理空间有关的权力和机构问题。通过使用这项对一家公司的研究来解决有关塑造苏格兰景观所涉及的假设、意识形态和权力的更广泛的问题，该项目将提供对塑造19世纪现代苏格兰愿景的力量的重要洞察。它将有助于围绕现代性的本质以及人们采用或抵制理性主义、秩序、科学和技术思想的方式展开辩论。此外，由于国家景观在国家认同的形成中扮演着重要的角色，我希望了解关于国家景观的想法是如何被制定、调整和强加于物理空间的，这将为关于苏格兰国家认同的问题提供重要的见解。因此，这项研究将把知识和理解扩展到十九世纪的身份、民族、科学技术的作用和现代性概念等关键问题上。

The major question I intend to address will be how 'modern' Scotland was constructed, both physically and ideologically. What power relations and ideological conventions enabled certain visions of Scotland to take physical form but consigned others to the purely theoretical? What role did the engineer or engineering company take in shaping how space and infrastructure was understood? Did this differ over time, between individual engineers or across geographical locations? Did economic factors alone shape building projects or did other ideals, priorities and preferences play a part in eventual decisions about Scotland's built environment? Did different types of project require different assumptions and principles to be invoked in their justification? Were different visions of Scotland expressed in different plans, or was there a coherent, shared vision between all involved in the creation of the Scottish built environment? This project will also pay close attention to geographical and temporal specificity, in particular considering whether engineers applied different constructs to certain places and, if so, what this indicates about questions of national identity and the coherency of the concept of a Scottish nation in this era. The National Library of Scotland holds an archive of over 3,000 maps and plans from the Stevenson Engineering Company, in addition to an extensive archive of written material. Relatively little work has been done on this collection, in particular very little research has used the collection cohesively, combining written and visual sources. During my project, I aim to carefully examine these documents, utilising a combination of visual and textual sources produced for different audiences to develop a detailed and nuanced understanding of the vision of Scotland proposed and disseminated by the company. The Stevenson Engineering Company was involved in the design, construction and maintenance of a variety of infrastructure projects across Scotland in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As a significant contributor to the changing landscape of the nation, a detailed investigation into the papers of this company should provide interesting insight into how modern Scotland was conceptualised and what powers, ideologies and groups were the most able to shape the landscape in both physical and imaginative terms. I will supplement the Stevenson Engineering Company documents by considering other maps, charts, plans and written documents to compare the vision generated by the Stevenson Engineering Company with the representations of the same space created by different groups for different purposes. I hope that this will enable me to place the Stevenson Engineering Company within the wider context of nineteenth century ideas about infrastructure, space and landscape and to address questions of power and agency with regards to physical space. By using this study of a single company to address wider questions about the assumptions, ideologies and powers involved in shaping Scotland's landscape, this project will provide significant insight into the forces that shaped a vision of modern Scotland in the nineteenth century. It will contribute to debates surrounding the nature of modernity and the ways in which people adopted or resisted ideas of rationalism, order, science and technology. Furthermore, because of the important role played by the national landscape in the formation of a national identity, I hope that knowing how ideas about the national landscape were formulated, modulated and imposed on physical space will provide significant insight into questions about Scottish national identity. This research will therefore extend knowledge and understanding into key questions of identity, the nation, the role of science and technology and the concept of modernity in the nineteenth century.