TY - CPAPER
KW - Local conditions
KW - mapping
KW - Maps
KW - Material cultures
KW - Surveys
KW - West Bengal
AU - Keith Lilley
AB - This paper demonstrates the important contribution material culture makes to histories of cartography. Focusing on the tangible and intangible heritage of the Great Trigonometrical Survey (GTS) of India, and West Bengal in particular, the material landscape legacies of the GTS are analysed and interpreted. This reveals new insights into how surveys of the GTS were undertaken in the nineteenth century, under George Everest, and the infrastructure that was created to underpin the British mapping of India. The trigonometrical stations built by the GTS were of different designs and construction, adapted in response to local conditions and circumstances. Today, this ‘survey heritage’ is at risk, yet provides a basis for understanding more deeply the materiality of mapping and survey practices used in mapping empires. The paper connects the three-dimensional ‘spaces of survey’ with the two-dimensional ‘space of the map’, and concludes by arguing for greater consideration of the verticality of mapping. © 2020, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
C1 - 7th International Symposium of the ICA Commission on the History of Cartography, 2018
DO - 10.1007/978-3-030-23447-8_6
N1 - Journal Abbreviation: Lect. Notes Geoinformation Cartogr. Pages: 120 Publication Title: Lect. Notes Geoinformation Cartogr.
N2 - This paper demonstrates the important contribution material culture makes to histories of cartography. Focusing on the tangible and intangible heritage of the Great Trigonometrical Survey (GTS) of India, and West Bengal in particular, the material landscape legacies of the GTS are analysed and interpreted. This reveals new insights into how surveys of the GTS were undertaken in the nineteenth century, under George Everest, and the infrastructure that was created to underpin the British mapping of India. The trigonometrical stations built by the GTS were of different designs and construction, adapted in response to local conditions and circumstances. Today, this ‘survey heritage’ is at risk, yet provides a basis for understanding more deeply the materiality of mapping and survey practices used in mapping empires. The paper connects the three-dimensional ‘spaces of survey’ with the two-dimensional ‘space of the map’, and concludes by arguing for greater consideration of the verticality of mapping. © 2020, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
PB - Springer Berlin Heidelberg
SN - 18632246 (ISSN); 9783030234461 (ISBN)
SP - 101
EP - 120
TI - Surveying Empires: Archaeologies of Colonial Cartography and the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India
UR - https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85072855126&doi=10.1007%2f978-3-030-23447-8_6&partnerID=40&md5=9406492d9833d0545bfe3fe729330444
ER -