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Exploration and Encounter: The Early Phase

Deepak Kumar

in Science and the Raj: A Study of British India

The late eighteenth century was an exciting time for the colonizers, who wanted to gather the maximum possible information about India as well as its people and resources. A number of travelogues and ... More

The late eighteenth century was an exciting time for the colonizers, who wanted to gather the maximum possible information about India as well as its people and resources. A number of travelogues and tracts appeared, including those of John Capper, F. Buchanan, Hugh Murray, G. R. Wallace, M. Martin, R. Heber, J.M. Honigberger, and M. Jacquemont. These writers faithfully reported not only what was best in India's natural resources and technological traditions, but also what could be the most advantageous to their employers. This chapter examines how colonial science began in India, and how it gradually matured with the help of surveys, educational bodies, scientific societies, and interlocutors (both indigenous and foreign). The Scots and the Danes formed a substantial body of the early botanists and zoologists, followed by a second group of ‘scientists’ that included the early meteorologists, geologists, and astronomers. The surveyors were the forerunners of scientific exploration.Less

End of Glory

Gwynne Tuell Potts

in George Rogers Clark and William Croghan: A Story of the Revolution, Settlement, and Early Life at Locust Grove

George Rogers Clark’s job as Virginia’s commander came to a close in July 1783, but he and William Croghan were appointed principal and deputy Virginia State Line surveyors at the conclusion of the ... More

George Rogers Clark’s job as Virginia’s commander came to a close in July 1783, but he and William Croghan were appointed principal and deputy Virginia State Line surveyors at the conclusion of the Revolution. Their future brother-in-law, Richard Clough Anderson, became the state’s continental line surveyor. The position required their presence at the Falls of the Ohio, near where the bulk of Virginia’s unclaimed lands would be patented as payment for the state’s soldiers. Clark’s work was interrupted by his assignment as a federal Indian Commissioner, sending him to the capital in New York and on to the Ohio River, where he announced a meeting with territorial native leaders. Throughout it all, local merchants made demands for payments associated with Clark’s western campaigns, and Virginia’s governors refused reimbursement, initiating the general’s long downward spiral.Less

The surveyor and the state

Patrick Chura

in Thoreau the Land Surveyor

Land surveying has long been a tool of empire, linked not coincidentally with the development and hegemony of white European society over Native peoples in the New World. Once land was formally ... More

Land surveying has long been a tool of empire, linked not coincidentally with the development and hegemony of white European society over Native peoples in the New World. Once land was formally located and officially acquired, the multiple purposes of establishing individual ownership, taxable value, and legal jurisdiction were embodied in the person of the land surveyor. The surveyor not only carried considerable state-invested power but swore an oath that affirmed his honesty, the accuracy of his measures, and his loyalty to the state's protocols of property definition and distribution.Less

Material to Mythology

Patrick Chura

in Thoreau the Land Surveyor

This chapter discusses Henry David Thoreau's surveying career. To analyze nineteenth-century land surveying is to study Henry Thoreau's primary nonliterary pursuit, an activity that took up a large ... More

This chapter discusses Henry David Thoreau's surveying career. To analyze nineteenth-century land surveying is to study Henry Thoreau's primary nonliterary pursuit, an activity that took up a large portion of his adult life. Thoreau actually made the Walden survey, a three-dimensional pond map that is now one of the most important images in American literary history. The pond survey was a rare type of work, an experiential episode in Thoreau's life the processes of which are now somewhat hard to imagine.Less

The Concord Surveyor and the Kansas Surveyor

Patrick Chura

in Thoreau the Land Surveyor

In agreeing to survey for the Native Americans, surveyor John Brown no doubt realized that ridding Kansas of illegal settlers was good for both Ottawas and abolitionists. Earlier that spring, Major ... More

In agreeing to survey for the Native Americans, surveyor John Brown no doubt realized that ridding Kansas of illegal settlers was good for both Ottawas and abolitionists. Earlier that spring, Major Jefferson Buford of Eufaula, Alabama, had arrived in the Territory with four hundred resolute proslavery conscripts recruited from several Southern states. Buford and other bands of militants, assuming that the “official” proslavery territorial government would take no action against them, established their camps on Indian lands and federally owned tracts surrounding the Free State settlements of Topeka, Lawrence, and Osawatomie. Along with them, a large number of claim-jumping Missourians had crossed into the Territory not only in order to vote proslavery, but to suppress their neighbors' votes and seal off the Kansas border, denying entry especially to newcomers from Northern states. They were in effect occupiers, seizing operational bases on already-owned land to carry on a war of intimidation.Less

Market People

Desmond Fitz-Gibbon

in Marketable Values: Inventing the Property Market in Modern Britain

Chapter 2 turns to the people who made the property market function, from surveyors and solicitors to auctioneers and estate agents. These professions, all of which grew and developed over the course ... More

Chapter 2 turns to the people who made the property market function, from surveyors and solicitors to auctioneers and estate agents. These professions, all of which grew and developed over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth century provided the essential work of mediating transactions of property. The chapter pays particular attention to auctioneers and estate agents, and demonstrates how these trades bridged the social worlds of buyers and sellers through such devices as auction advertisements, property registers, and orders to view. George Robins, one of the most well known auctioneers of the century, epitomized both the possibilities and pitfalls of auction practices and the legal frameworks that governed them. House hunting was a familiar task for many Victorian families, and estate agents offered their services for finding suitable properties and for negotiating the economic and social relations that made the transition between homes possible.Less

Introduction

Domenic Vitiello

in Engineering Philadelphia: The Sellers Family and the Industrial Metropolis

This book examines how Philadelphia came to be a prominent place in the economic geography of the nineteenth century and then failed to sustain this position. Focusing on the Sellers family, it ... More

This book examines how Philadelphia came to be a prominent place in the economic geography of the nineteenth century and then failed to sustain this position. Focusing on the Sellers family, it considers the social and spatial dimensions of economic development planning and practice. More specifically, it discusses the broad patterns of industrialization and urbanization that the Sellers helped set in motion in Philadelphia and how they contributed to the city's decline in the twentieth century. It also shows how the Sellers purposefully cultivated overlapping networks that influenced economic development as well as the evolving structure and focus of economic development institutions. Through the Sellers's experiences, the book charts the rise and fall of Philadelphia as an industrial metropolis. It also highlights the power struggles and social tensions that enabled mechanics, surveyors, and engineers to produce lasting and sometimes seminal technologies, institutions, and paradigms of economic and urban development.Less

To a Rocky Moon

James Lawrence Powell

in Four Revolutions in the Earth Sciences: From Heresy to Truth

This chapter looks at space exploration initiatives, mainly by Russia and the United States, that opened up new discoveries about the Moon. On October 4, 1957, the Russians launched Sputnik, the ... More

This chapter looks at space exploration initiatives, mainly by Russia and the United States, that opened up new discoveries about the Moon. On October 4, 1957, the Russians launched Sputnik, the first man-made object to orbit the Earth. Nearly everyone in America was unprepared for this development. The United States had no space program and no reliable rockets with which to launch anything into space. A month later, Russia successfully launched another satellite, this one carrying the ill-fated dog Laika. America responded by accelerating the existing work on rocketry that had begun at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and by creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Then on May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy challenged his nation to send men to the Moon and return them safely “before this decade is out.” It all began on July 28, 1964, when Ranger 7 struck only a few kilometers from its intended landing site on a ray of the bright crater Copernicus. This was followed by Surveyor and Lunar Orbiter missions.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 History of the Dividing Line betwixt Virginia and North Carolina Run in the Year of Our Lord 1728.

Kevin Joel Berland

in The Dividing Line Histories of William Byrd II of Westover

This is a reproduction of William Byrd II' account of the surveying of the border between the U.S. states of North Carolina and Virginia in 1728. This account of the journey to survey the contentious ... More

This is a reproduction of William Byrd II' account of the surveying of the border between the U.S. states of North Carolina and Virginia in 1728. This account of the journey to survey the contentious border with chief surveyor William Mayo include details such as the origin of the name of “Matrimony Creek,” a name coined because of its observed choppy constitution. Surveyors and technicians for the team came from both colonies. William Byrd was the chief representative from Virginia, and Edward Moseley was the chief representative from North Carolina.Less

Communication and Interpretation

Paul W. Mapp

in The Elusive West and the Contest for Empire, 1713-1763

This chapter shows how eighteenth-century French surveyors triangulated their way across France and China. A French geographer trod the forests of Siberia and sailed the waters of the North Pacific. ... More

This chapter shows how eighteenth-century French surveyors triangulated their way across France and China. A French geographer trod the forests of Siberia and sailed the waters of the North Pacific. His brother collected in Saint Petersburg and dispatched to Paris maps of an empire spanning the world's largest continent. French cartographers produced maps of stunning clarity and precision revealing not only the heart of Gaul but also the reaches of “Tartary.” In North America, in contrast, travel-weary explorers found their westward progress checked short of the South Sea; and, in France, bewigged cartographers pondered western rivers and inland seas whose existence they suspected and imagined but could not confirm. French achievements in one hemisphere called for an explanation of French disappointments in the other.Less

“On the Spot”: Traveling Artists and the Iconographic Inventory of the World, 1769–1859

Claudio Greppi

in Tropical Visions in an Age of Empire

This chapter deals with the work of a succession of traveling artists, from William Hodges, who accompanied James Cook on his second voyage and subsequently worked in India, to Thomas Ender, who ... More

This chapter deals with the work of a succession of traveling artists, from William Hodges, who accompanied James Cook on his second voyage and subsequently worked in India, to Thomas Ender, who traveled extensively in South America. This body of work had a significant impact on European visions of the tropics, mediated as it was through the figure of Alexander von Humboldt, who was inspired by Hodges's representations of tropical nature. Humboldt's keen reflections on landscape painting and the aesthetics of landscape observation were in turn appropriated by a new generation of traveling artists, just as his observations on tropical landscape inspired naturalists such as Charles Darwin. The result was a way of seeing, and knowing, in which the tradition of landscape art was fused with a new spirit of observation informed by the experience of voyaging around the world in the company of naval surveyors, meteorologists, and astronomers. This emergent epistemology of landscape is also evident in contemporary views and visions of European landscape itself.Less

The Bounded Thames

in Tides of History: Ocean Science and Her Majesty's Navy

Set against the backdrop of Britain's expanding coastal trade, this chapter describes the environmental changes that led to a renewed interest in tidal theory. While geological changes can raise the ... More

Set against the backdrop of Britain's expanding coastal trade, this chapter describes the environmental changes that led to a renewed interest in tidal theory. While geological changes can raise the level of the sea and increase its tides a few centimeters each century, man-made changes can be much more dramatic, contributing several feet in a matter of decades. Beginning in the late eighteenth century and continuing unabated through the first third of the nineteenth, the Thames was radically transformed. Civil engineers straightened, dredged, and banked the river and otherwise modified its course to control the depth of the water, the rise and fall of the tide, and the silting of the channel. This chapter traces the initial study of the tides as a local and practical problem, taking into account both the changes to the natural environment of the river and the myriad of almanac publishers, surveyors, and tide table makers who attempted to calculate those changes for the safety of mariners.Less

Constructing Israel’s Borders

Christine Leuenberger and Izhak Schnell

in The Politics of Maps: Cartographic Constructions of Israel/Palestine

Border Studies scholars have increasingly focused attention on borders as sites of investigation. Borders are particularly significant in the case of Israel/Palestine, as many of these boundaries are ... More

Border Studies scholars have increasingly focused attention on borders as sites of investigation. Borders are particularly significant in the case of Israel/Palestine, as many of these boundaries are contested. The mapping of Israel’s borders are where top-down mappings by colonial powers or clueless politicians intersect with complex regional realities. The history of border-making between Israel and Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and the West Bank all speak to what makes for “good” borders and better neighbors. The infamous Green Line exemplifies how a thoughtless delineation of the boundary by a bad map-reader with a thick pencil can reverberate across time and space for decades. Generally, delineations without regard for local conditions only fuel disputes over territory and can, in conjunction with ineffective national and bi-nation policies, negatively impact cross-border regions, economic development, and social interconnectivity across the border region. With many of Israel’s boundaries in flux over the years, the Survey of Israel tends to emphasize not only the temporary status of boundaries but also favors the representation of Israeli territorial claims. The stories of Israel’s many boundaries reveal that there is no technocratic solution to boundary-making. Instead, stable boundaries were based on delineating them with the local in mind, bi-national negotiations between policymakers and politicians, and bi-national teams of surveyors and experts for whom science could become a tool for establishing trust and engage in better diplomacy.Less

The property lobby

Bob Colenutt

in The Property Lobby: The Hidden Reality behind the Housing Crisis

The focus of this chapter is the major organised lobby groups in the property market and their influence on Government policy. The objectives and activities of the Country Land and Business ... More

The focus of this chapter is the major organised lobby groups in the property market and their influence on Government policy. The objectives and activities of the Country Land and Business Association (CLA), the Home Builders Federation, UK Finance, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and others are examined. The chapter also covers the close relationship of the Conservative Party to the land and property market and the impact of the lobbying of local councillors by developers and the revolving door between council officers and developers and property consultants. Property lobby organisations have become have become the first port of call for Government and civil servants in housing and planning policy development and as such are as a major obstacle to change.Less

Triangles of Life

Paul Carter

in The Road to Botany Bay: An Exploration of Landscape and History

This chapter examines the historical significance of Major Mitchell, Surveyor-General of New South Wales between 1827 and 1855, who led four expeditions during that period. While Mitchell is ... More

This chapter examines the historical significance of Major Mitchell, Surveyor-General of New South Wales between 1827 and 1855, who led four expeditions during that period. While Mitchell is acknowledged as a highly competent surveyor and artist, his personal arrogance and the inflated claims he made for himself as an explorer indicate an all too human weakness hardly compatible with a hero’s life. The tendency has been to divide Mitchell into two parts, to judge his professional achievements favourably, his personality unfavourably. As a result, historical geographers have paid his surveys of New South Wales handsome tribute, but the biographers have largely ignored him. The paradox of Mitchell’s character and career results from a historical and biographical tradition that ignores the historical claims of spatial experience. Mitchell’s personality, however, cannot be dissociated from his spatial experience: he did not just become a surveyor, he made himself one. In the process, he came to recognize that the survey did not simply imitate physical space: it translated it into a symbolic object whose properties were as much historical as geographical. Similarly, to be a surveyor was inevitably to annex oneself to a future history. For Mitchell, biography and history emerged dialectically from the survey.Less

The Dream of an Unmappable Nation: Faerie Queene

Chris Barrett

in Early Modern English Literature and the Poetics of Cartographic Anxiety

The Faerie Queene frequently meditates on how representing space—imagistically or narratively—involves distortion. This chapter proposes that allegory as an expressive mode allows the poem to ... More

The Faerie Queene frequently meditates on how representing space—imagistically or narratively—involves distortion. This chapter proposes that allegory as an expressive mode allows the poem to interrogate the workings of mapping and poetry in particular, and of representation more broadly. Noting that some of the poem’s most vexing encounters with allegory’s limits come at moments in which the representation of space is at stake, the chapter considers several moments in the poem (e.g. Book V’s Giant with the Scales) when cartographic anxiety reveals a tension between the map’s and poem’s literary and literal ambitions. If mapping depends on an enabling metaphoricity that conceals its artifice, then allegory, which trumpets its metaphoricity to problematize its artifice, emerges as the poetic mode best able to supply an alternative model for how the literal and the literary interact in the making of poetry.Less