In the 1770s Paris faced a series of collapses of stone and plaster quarries beneath the city. Although the various accidents killed only about twenty people, the resultant warnings and risk assessments that circulated in the public sphere generated an administrative reform of great importance. Within a few years quarries risk management moved from the Bureau des Finances to the Lieutenance Générale de Police. This transfer had several major consequences: judicial proceedings faded in favor of more expeditious administrative procedures, financial management of the quarries business became more clearly connected to emergency and risk policies, scientific expertise and media coverage integrated the police practices of disaster regulation, and finally a victim relief policy was implemented. All of these developments allow us to read this reform as the modernization of the state at a time of high tension in the art of governance.
...MoreDescription On administrative reforms due to collapses of stone and plaster quarries beneath the city.
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