Law and the Emergence of Modern Dublin by W. N. Osborough

technology and culture Book Reviews 321 at that university. He is the immediate past president ofICOHTEC, the International Committee for the History of Technology. Law and theEmergence ofModem Dublin. By W. N. Osborough. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1996. Pp. xxii+225; illustrations, notes, bib­ liography, index. $39.95 (hardcover). One purpose of a book review is to help readers understand what larger significance a book they might never read has for their field. The importance of this book for historians of technology lies in its exploration of legal history for a better understanding of how the modern city has been shaped. Legal disputes have long been familiar in the history of technology in the form of suits concerning patents. Given the fundamental role oflaw in modern society, it is not surpris­ ing that the growth of the modern city generated plans for monu­ ments and parks, for housing and public structures, and for civil engineering works (sewers, waterworks, ports and harbors, railroads, etc.) that provoked disputes about private property and community needs, about the regulatory power ofgovernment, and about liability for damages. These disputes are part of the historical record that historians of technology should exploit more often. As this book shows, many questions now in fashion, such as the private use of public space, the rights of the minority and the majority, and the conflict between traditional customs and change in response to in­ novation, can all be pursued through the legal record. W. N. Osborough quotes liberally from judicial opinions. This only enhances the pleasure the book gives. The Irish judiciary ap­ pears as a cultivated, articulate elite, and Osborough writes no less well than the most elegant ofjudges. A book that could have been full ofjargon is instead a graceful introduction to a topic that re­ mains unknown and inaccessible to the nonspecialist. This is a style more in keeping with the eighteenth than with the late twentieth century: a classical education, a shared public culture, and a profes­ sional responsibility to make an argument clear. Osborough, a professor of law at University College, Dublin, un­ dertook this study as a way of teaching basic principles of law by associating them for his students with disputes related to familiar places. He found, however, that the history of legal disputes was an integral part of the history of the city’s development, and one that urban historians have neglected. Whether, on balance, recourse to the courts produces decisions in the community’s interest is a ques­ tion posed but not answered at the end of the book. The development of contemporary Dublin is never far from the author’s mind or the reader’s attention. The city’s character, as shaped and expressed by the quality and disposition of its buildings 322 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE and open spaces, is a constant theme. That this character is not the product of a conscious, comprehensive design goes without saying. The legacy of Irish political and economic fortunes, Dublin has sur­ vived until the late twentieth century with much of its nineteenthcentury environment intact, not all of it attractive but much of it meaningful nonetheless. Dublin is now one of the most dynamic European cities, with considerable investment that translates into rising property values, especially in the older parts of the city. In the process, some of old Dublin can survive better, but other parts will disappear. Clearly Osborough is concerned that change in the city will, on balance, weaken the strong sense of place that is familiar to every reader of Ulysses. The adaptation of the Irish economy to high technology, includ­ ing an emphasis on higher education, is largely responsible for the city’s prosperity and growth in the 1990s. In other words, even when technology is not an obvious factor in the city’s transformation, as in the form of new civil engineering works, public utilities, and so forth, it is a major factor affecting not only the city’s rate of growth but also the social and economic composition of investment. Jobs in technology and the value added by the technology sector are shap­ ing Dublin today by creating demand for space, by generating higher

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