French scientists, engineers, and public officials were responsible for the most important and distinctive innovations in cartography in eighteenth-century Europe. By expanding the analytical uses of maps, by establishing unprecedented standards of accuracy, and by nurturing institutional frameworks to sustain mapping projects over many years, the French contributed to one of the central concepts of modern times: that man, through direct observation and accumulated information can better understand and manage his affairs. Concentrating on how and why new concepts and techniques of making and using maps were introduced, Josef Konvitz skillfully traces the modernization of cartography during the French Enlightenment. The story he unfolds is not merely a narrative of who did what, but an analysis of how the map itself influenced attitudes toward the land and the consequent effects on planning and the development of resources. Throughout, Konvitz demonstrates the significant relationship between cartography and political, economic, and military life. He emphasizes efforts to enlarge the practical applications of maps in government and the impact of government policy on the evolution of cartography.

Geographical works, as socially constructed texts, provide a rich source for historians and historians of science investigating patronage, the governmental initiatives and support for science, and the governmental involvement in early modern commerce. Over the course of nearly two centuries (1594-1789), in adopting and adapting maps as tools of statecraft, the Bourbon Dynasty both developed patron-client relations with mapmakers and corporations and created scientific institutions with fundamental geographical goals. Concurrently, France—particularly, Paris—emerged as the dominant center of map production. Individual producers tapped the traditional avenues of patronage, touted the authority of science in their works, and sought both protection and legitimation for their commercial endeavors within the printing industry. Under the reign of the Sun King, these producers of geographical works enjoyed preeminence in the sphere of cartography and employed the familiar rhetoric of image to glorify the reign of Louis XIV. Later, as scientists and scholars embraced Enlightenment empiricism, geographical works adopted the rhetoric of scientific authority and championed the concept that rational thought would lead to progress. When France Was King of Cartography investigates over a thousand maps and nearly two dozen map producers, analyzes the map as a cultural artifact, map producers as a group, and the array of map viewers over the course of two centuries in France. The book focuses on situated knowledge or 'localized' interests reflected in these geographical productions. Through the lens of mapmaking, When France Was King of Cartography examines the relationship between power and the practice of patronage, geography, and commerce in early modern France.

This book describes the emergence of the territorial state and examines the role that cartography has played in shaping its linear boundaries.

Mapping has been one of the most fertile areas of exploration for architecture and landscape in the past few decades. While documenting this shift in representation from the material and physical description toward the depiction of the unseen and often immaterial, Cartographic Grounds takes a critical view toward the current use of data mapping and visualization and calls for a return to traditional cartographic techniques to reimagine the manifestation and manipulation of the ground itself. Each of the ten chapters focuses on a single cartographic technique—sounding/spot elevation, isobath/contour, hachure/hatch, shaded relief, land classification, figure-ground, stratigraphic column, cross-section, line symbol, conventional sign—and illustrates it through beautiful maps and plans from notable designers and cartographers throughout history, from Leonardo da Vinci to James Corner Field Operations. Mohsen Mostafavi, dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Design, introduces the book.

Mapping and Charting for the Lion and the Lily: Map and Atlas Production in Early Modern England and France is a comparative study of the production and role of maps, charts, and atlases in early modern England and France, with a particular focus on Paris, the cartographic center of production from the late seventeenth century to the late eighteenth century, and London, which began to emerge (in the late eighteenth century) to eclipse the once favored Bourbon center. The themes that carry through the work address the role of government in map and chart making. In France, in particular, it is the importance of the centralized government and its support for geographic works and their makers through a broad and deep institutional infrastructure. Prior to the late eighteenth century in England, there was no central controlling agency or institution for map, chart, or atlas production, and any official power was imposed through the market rather than through the establishment of institutions. There was no centralized support for the cartographic enterprise and any effort by the crown was often challenged by the power of Parliament which saw little value in fostering or supporting scholar-geographers or a national survey. This book begins with an investigation of the imagery of power on map and atlas frontispieces from the late sixteenth century to the seventeenth century. In the succeeding chapters the focus moves from county and regional mapping efforts in England and France to the “paper wars” over encroachment in their respective colonial interests. The final study looks at charting efforts and highlights the role of government support and the commercial trade in the development of maritime charts not only for the home waters of the English Channel, but the distant and dangerous seas of the East Indies.

These diverse essays investigate political factors behind the rapid development of cartography in Renaissance Europe and its impact on emerging European nations. By 1500 a few rulers had already discovered that better knowledge of their lands would strengthen their control over them; by 1550, the cartographer's art had become an important instrument for bringing territories under the control of centralized government. Throughout the following century increasing governmental reliance on maps demanded greater accuracy and more sophisticated techniques. This volume, a detailed survey of the political uses of cartography between 1400 and 1700 in Europe, answers these questions: When did monarchs and ministers begin to perceive that maps could be useful in government? For what purposes were maps commissioned? How accurate and useful were they? How did cartographic knowledge strengthen the hand of government? By focusing on particular places and periods in early modern Europe, the chapters offer new insights into the growth of cartography as a science, the impetus behind these developments - often rulers attempting to expand their power - and the role of mapmaking in European history. The essay on Poland reveals that cartographic progress came only under the impetus of powerful rulers; another explores the French monarchy's role in the burst of scientific cartography that marked the opening of the "splendid century". Additional chapters discuss the profound influence of cartographic ideas on the English aristocracy during the sixteenth century, the relation of progress in mapmaking to imperialistic goals of the Spanish and Austrian Habsburgs, and the supposed primacy of Italian mapmakingfollowing the Renaissance. Contributors to this volume are Peter Barber, David Buisseret, John Marino, Michael J. Mikos, Geoffrey Parker, and James Vann. These essays were originally presented as the Kenneth Nebenzahl, Jr., Lectures in the History of Cartography at the Newberry Library.

Napoleon’s campaigns were the most complex military undertakings in history before the nineteenth century. But the defining battles of Austerlitz, Borodino, and Waterloo changed more than the nature of warfare. Concepts of chance, contingency, and probability became permanent fixtures in the West’s understanding of how the world works. Empire of Chance examines anew the place of war in the history of Western thought, showing how the Napoleonic Wars inspired a new discourse on knowledge. Soldiers returning from the battlefields were forced to reconsider basic questions about what it is possible to know and how decisions are made in a fog of imperfect knowledge. Artists and intellectuals came to see war as embodying modernity itself. The theory of war espoused in Carl von Clausewitz’s classic treatise responded to contemporary developments in mathematics and philosophy, and the tools for solving military problems—maps, games, and simulations—became models for how to manage chance. On the other hand, the realist novels of Balzac, Stendhal, and Tolstoy questioned whether chance and contingency could ever be described or controlled. As Anders Engberg-Pedersen makes clear, after Napoleon the state of war no longer appeared exceptional but normative. It became a prism that revealed the underlying operative logic determining the way society is ordered and unfolds.