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The Road

Chapter 4: A PREFACE
By Hilaire Belloc
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Engineering & TechnologyHistory - BritishHistory - Early Modern (c. 1450-1750)History - Modern (1750+)

About This Book

An essay examines roads as fundamental institutions, tracing their origins, the physical constraints (marshes, water crossings, soils, gradients, vegetation), and the economic and political forces that shape their routes and maintenance. It analyzes how roads produce settlements, influence military strategy, and alter commerce, and outlines five historical stages from primitive trackways through Roman engineering, medieval local networks, turnpikes, to a contemporary moment demanding new methods. Numerous case studies, maps, and diagrams illustrate specific trajectories and obstructions, and the author concludes with a practical argument that technical and organizational reform can modernize highways to meet increased traffic and heavier vehicles.

A PREFACE

The British Reinforced Concrete Engineering Co. Ltd. recently became acquainted with the fact that Mr. Hilaire Belloc was engaged in the production of an essay on the history of British Roads. In numerous writings Mr. Belloc has treated various aspects of Road history, and his learning on the subject and his method of communicating it are in high repute among wide circles of readers. He is, in fact, an outstanding literary authority on the topic. It therefore seemed to the Company that if they could acquire the copyright of the work, in which Mr. Belloc was treating the whole subject not indirectly, but directly and systematically, and if they could issue this work to people who are professionally engaged in the construction of roads, a very considerable service would be done to the cause of road development in the country. The future always becomes a little clearer if we thoroughly understand the past, and the Company feel that everybody who is giving much of his mind and life to road problems will be glad to have in his possession a book which brings out the historical and social, not to say the romantic, interest which lies beneath the surface of the English highway. Mr. Belloc was accordingly approached on the subject and agreed to sell the publishing rights of his work to the British Reinforced Concrete Engineering Co. Ltd., who now have great pleasure in issuing it to the surveying and civil engineering profession, believing that it will at once assist and beguile the work of those to whose hands the future of the English Roads, and with it much of the economic and social prosperity of the country, is largely entrusted.