附註:Includes bibliographical references (pages 409-436) and index.
""Contents""; ""List of Illustrations and Maps""; ""List of Tables""; ""Preface""; ""Note on East India Company Coinage""; ""Places Mentioned in the Text: Southern India and Northern India""; ""Chronology of Events and the Expansion of the East India Company""; ""Chapter One. The Ideologies and Practices of Mapping and Imperialism""; ""Part One: The Enlightenment Construction of Geographical Knowledge""; ""Chapter Two. Observation and Representation""; ""Chapter Three. Surveying and Mapmaking""; ""Part Two: Institutional Structures Andcartographic Anarchy""
""Chapter Four. Structural Constraints of the East India Company's Administration""""Chapter Five. Cartographic Anarchy and System in Madras, 1790-1810""; ""Part Three: The Great Trigonometrical Survey and Cartographic System""; ""Chapter Six. Institutions for Mapping All of British India, 1814-23""; ""Chapter Seven. Triangulation, the Cartographic Panacea, 1825-32""; ""Chapter Eight. The Final Compromise: Triangulation and Archive, 1831-43""; ""Part Four: Cartography, Science, and there Representation of Empire""; ""Chapter Nine. Scientific Practice: Incorporating the Rationality of Empire""
""Chapter Ten. Cartographic Practice: Inscribing an Imperial Space""""Biographical Notes""; ""Notes""; ""Archival Sources and Bibliography""; ""Unpublished Primary Sources, by Archive""; ""Published Primary Sources""; ""Secondary Sources Relating to the British Surveys in India""; ""Principal Secondary Sources""; ""Index""
摘要: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 the British East India Company's territorial and intellectual conquest of South Asia. In this history of the British surveys of India, focusing especially on the Great Trigonometrical Survey (GTS) undertaken by the Company, Matthew H. Edney relates how imperial Britain employed modern scientific survey techniques not only to create and define the spatial image of its Indian empire but also to legitimate its colonialist activities as triumphs of liberal, rational science bringing "civilization" to irrational, mystical, and despotic Indians. , The reshaping of cartographic technologies in Europe into their modern form, including the adoption of the technique of triangulation (known at the time as "trigonometrical survey") at the beginning of the nineteenth century, played a key role in the use of the GTS as an instrument of British cartographic control over India. In analyzing this reconfiguration, Edney undertakes the first detailed, critical analysis of the foundations of modern cartography. , The success of these new techniques in mapping British India depended on the character of the East India Company as a gatherer and controller of information, on its patronage system, and on the working conditions of surveyors in the field. Drawing on a wealth of data from the Company's vast archives, Edney shows how these institutional constraints undermined the GTS and destabilized this high point of Victorian science to the point of reducing it to "cartographic anarchy." Thus, although the GTS served at the time to legitimate British rule in India, its failure can now be seen as a metaphor for British India itself: an outward veneer of imperial potency covering an uncertain and ultimately weak core.
