Selling Space, Controlling Land: A Political Economy of Cartography in Early Modern England

My project examines the English map trade during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries alongside political developments to explore the production, circulation, and use of maps by the state and wider society. The research will use both traditional, empirical methods (documentary evidence) and geospatial analysis (on the maps themselves), to assess maps' impact on perceptions among the ruling classes regarding political space, and emergent ideas of territory, sovereignty, and scale. By examining the interaction between the 'cartographic knowledge economy' (my phrase) and new forms of contemporary statecraft, the project will do the following: contribute to new understandings of the origins of modern territorial politics; inform present-day debates concerning scale in governance (e.g., devolution in the UK, subsidiarity in the EU); and develop new conceptual insights into information exchange and territorial policy.

In addressing the relationship between the economics of cartography and the politics of statecraft, my project also draws on scholarship on early modern political theory and practice. The traditional perspective is that central governments desired a centralised nation state (Wilson 2006); my analysis of how rulers used the cartographic markets in their pursuit of centralisation will expose whether this interpretation still holds. I shall employ Winichakul's geo-body concept (1994) to examine the role of maps through two centuries that perhaps defined modern English national identity more than any others, as well as the form and scope of state authority. Among other issues, I shall examine how the commodification of early modern English maps created national identity through the construction of difference, and, by extension, I shall consider the extent to which xenophobia underpins nationalism in modern territorial politics (Bhambra 2017).

I have developed the concept of a 'cartographic knowledge economy' to provide a framework within which the trade of maps can be linked to the formation of normative discourses of English space and territory (at all scales and in relation to other territories), drawing on scholarship on the sociology of knowledge (Powell and Snellman 2004) and the economics of information (Stigler 1961).

Archival research at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC is crucial for the successful completion of my project. It holds a number of maps constructed by Robert Morden, John Speed, and Edward Wright, as well as records pertaining to the production of these same maps. These sources (only available in manuscript) are, as noted in my proposal, indispensable for understanding how the English ruling classes perceived their political space, both at home and abroad. Without using these resources, my project would not be able to comprehensively reconstruct the nature of England's pseudo-official state cartography during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a fundamental aspect of my research. The Library of Congress further holds maps by non-English cartographers (e.g., Blaeu), which will allow for comparison work to be carried out, another component of my proposed project.

The manuscripts available at the Folger Shakespeare Library are similarly important for providing an insight into the political and economic landscape of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Newdigate newsletters and the Clayton-Morris collection, for example, would transform my understanding of (in particular) seventeenth-century politics, commerce, and social affairs, all of which are integral to my thesis.