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Mapping India: Geographic Agnosticism in a Cartographic Context

in From Frontier Policy to Foreign Policy: The Question of India and the Transformation of Geopolitics in Qing China

This chapter hypothesizes the sources of information and cartographic methods that allowed a rendering of northern India. It also considers the neglected question of how the elements of a Qianlong ... More

This chapter hypothesizes the sources of information and cartographic methods that allowed a rendering of northern India. It also considers the neglected question of how the elements of a Qianlong court survey map were woven together into a single cartographic tapestry. It seems that Qianlong had left the goal of keeping updated court survey maps in constant preparation by the mid-1770s. It then turns to how India is represented on the finished court survey map. The survey map's depiction of India was a unique and distinctive medley of information, and one that no European cartographer could endorse. Furthermore, it reviews the reception of a world map presented to the throne in 1760 by the Jesuit Michel Benoist. It is noted that Qianlong was apparently content that the court survey and Benoist's world map contradicted each other on key points of Indian geography.Less

States Map Their Borders

Catherine Tatiana Dunlop

in Cartophilia: Maps and the Search for Identity in the French-German Borderland

This chapter begins the book’s exploration of Alsace-Lorraine’s cartographic archive with a discussion of scientific survey maps. Scientific mapmaking constituted an important first step in the ... More

This chapter begins the book’s exploration of Alsace-Lorraine’s cartographic archive with a discussion of scientific survey maps. Scientific mapmaking constituted an important first step in the visualization of modern European boundaries. In order to draw and demarcate their territorial borders, European states created new mapping institutions that trained professional corps of surveyors in the use of scientific instruments and triangulation techniques. Modern French and German governments both desired maps of Alsace-Lorraine that were mathematically precise, ordered, and void of any references to local cultural particularities. As a result, French and German surveyors—though they worked for rival states—produced nearly identical maps of Alsace-Lorraine and collaborated closely on joint border commissions. The French and German states’ gridded, homogenous maps of their disputed border territory were so similar, in fact, that they became objects of frequent transnational exchange, particularly in times of war.Less

The Early Modern Period, 1530–1650

Stephen Mileson and Stuart Brookes

in Peasant Perceptions of Landscape: Ewelme Hundred, South Oxfordshire, 500-1650

The final main chapter looks at the early modern period, assessing how far it saw a ‘Reformation of the landscape’ and a secularization and commodification of the way land was valued as a resource. ... More

The final main chapter looks at the early modern period, assessing how far it saw a ‘Reformation of the landscape’ and a secularization and commodification of the way land was valued as a resource. It is argued that, as earlier, a group sense of attachment to place was strongest in vibrant, socially ‘open’ settlements with considerable shared spaces, the kind of settlements found mainly in the vale part of the hundred. Village social space is examined in detail through an archaeological analysis of standing buildings and their relationship to the wider streetscape. Court depositions supply data about inhabitants’ attitudes to different social spaces and the ways in which they were used.Less