By Mathew H. Edney
Oxford University Press
Price – Rs. 595 / $ 35.00
Mathew H. Edney, the author of the book describes the fascinating his-tory of the British Surveys in India and relates how British East India Company used modern survey techniques to create and define the spatial image of its territorial conquest in India. He also emphasises on the variety of historical, cultural, political and scientific issues. As his opening sentence states, “Imperialism and mapmaking intersect in the most basic manner”; in order to “possess” or even comprehend a territory, one must map it.
During the reign of the British East India Company from James Rennell’s Survey of Bengal (1765-71) to George Everest’s retirement in 1843 as Surveyor General of India, geography served in the front lines of its territorial and intellectual conquest of South Asia. As Edney investigates the century long British effort to “transform a land of incomprehensible spectacle into an empire of knowledge”, focussing especially on the Great Trigonometrical Survey (GTS) undertaken by the East India Company , that relates how the modern scientific survey techniques led to legitimate its colonialist activities as triumphs of liberal, rational science bringing “civilization” to irrational, mystic and despotic Indians. The maps of the Mughal Era and pre-Mughal Era were based on the territorial delineations for e.g. the location of cities, rivers and other physical entities that were derived from the astronomical observations and calculations. These maps were not precise untill the East India Company deployed the cartographic technologies used in Europe into their modern form and including the technique of triangulation (also known as “trigonometrical survey”) at the beginning of the 19th century, where GTS played a key role as an instrument of the British cartographic control over India. This led Edney to undertake the first critical analysis of the foundation of the modern cartography. The success of these new techniques in mapping the British India depended on the great trigonometric surveys that led to the birth of a new geopolitical unit on the world map: the British Indian Empire. Though with the demise of the British Empire in 1947, the importance of these cartographic techniques such as GTS used at that times highlights a span of huge geographical entities such as Himalayan mountains in the north-northeast and the coast lines, giving rise to the new geopolitical concepts of the Indian sub-continent and South Asia. At the same time, failure of “cartographic anarchy” can be seen as a metaphor potency covering an uncertain and ultimately weak core.
This book gives exhaustive and encyclopaedic account of the efforts made by the British Administration to map its real vast empire in the context of exploiting and flourishing its imperial power. It is beautifully illustrated with beautifully executed maps, charts and tables, and is annotated with extensive source notes, a bibliography and an excellent index. Layman may find parts of Mapping an Empire dense going, but their perseverance will be rewarded by an illuminating cross-disciplinary study; students of geography, cartography, earth science and history will likely find this book invaluable.
