Alvaro Santana-Acuna, Paris IAS Fellow, presents his research project Big spatial data, cadastral mapping, and the invention of modern France at the weekly internal seminar.

How are nation-states created? Researchers have studied numerous factors, especially wars. Only in recent years, new explanatory factors have gained more importance, particularly the intersection between science and the state. The making of the French nation-state owes a great deal to one of its most remarkable and yet lesser known achievements, the national cadastre : the purpose of this research.

The communication will be discussed by the historian Angelo Torre, current Paris IAS Fellow.