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Barrow Ian J.. Making History, Drawing Territory: British Mapping in India, c. 1756–1905. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xiv+212. $39.95.
For many years, the history of cartography slumbered in historiographical obscurity, less source of Clio's muse than cause of Clio's snooze. The history of mapmaking led, so it seemed, to the ultimate reality effect—the inexorably and progressively more accurate reproduction of geographical space in two dimensions. After J. B. Harley, Thongchai Winichaikal, and others called such simplistic views into question, the critique of cartography has extended in many directions in the multivolume History of Cartography and to fruitful reconsideration of mapping and empire in works by Matthew Edney on India, D. Graham Burnett on British Guiana, and Laura Hostetler on China.
Ian Barrow focuses on the British histories embedded in colonial maps of India. His central claim is that histories of territorial possession in British colonial maps provided legitimacy for British rule of India and reinforced British national identity. Barrow ventures beyond the maps to recover thematic histories of possession. James Rennell's map of Bengal associated the British with improving landlords and generalized the East India Company's acquisitions...