Geographies of an Imperial Power

Jeremy Black

Description

From explorers tracing rivers to navigators hunting for longitude, spatial awareness and the need for empirical understanding were linked to British strategy in the 1700s. This strategy, in turn, aided in the assertion of British power and authority on a global scale. In this sweeping consideration of Britain in the 18th century, Jeremy Black explores the interconnected roles of power and geography in the creation of a global empire. Geography was at the heart of Britain's expansion into India, its response to uprisings in Scotland and America, and its revolutionary development of railways. Geographical dominance was reinforced as newspapers stoked the fires of xenophobia and defined the limits of cosmopolitan Europe as compared to the "barbarism" beyond. Geography provided a system of analysis and classification which gave Britain political, cultural, and scientific sovereignty. Black considers geographical knowledge not just as a tool for creating a shared cultural identity but also as a key mechanism in the formation of one of the most powerful and far-reaching empires the world has ever known.

Preface
List of Abbreviations
1. Accumulating Knowledge
2. The Spatial Matrix of Military and Political Power
3. Territorialization and the Mapping of Authority
4. The Public Sphere
5. The Debate on Tourism, Religion, and Culture
6. Responding to Novelty
7. Responding to the Transoceanic World
8. Responding to Coal and Commerce
9. Geographies in Retrospect
10. Conclusions
Selected Further Reading
Index

Sujets

• Historical Geography
• 18th Century
• Modern
• HISTORY
• Histoire
• Reino Unido
• Modern history
• General officer
• United Kingdom
• Imperialism
• History of science
• History of Europe
• English Civil War
• Great Britain
• Impérialisme (jeu vidéo)
• General
• Britain
• UK
• Obermodern-Zutzendorf
• Enlightenment
• Royaume-Uni
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 06 janvier 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253033505
• Langue: English

Extrait

GEOGRAPHIES OF AN IMPERIAL POWER
JEREMY BLACK
GEOGRAPHIES OF AN IMPERIAL POWER

T HE B RITISH W ORLD , 1688-1815
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2018 by Jeremy Black
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-0-253-03157-0 (cloth)
ISBN 978-0-253-03158-7 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-253-03159-4 (ebook)
1 2 3 4 5 23 22 21 20 19 18
For David Starkey
CONTENTS
Preface
List of Abbreviations
1. Accumulating Knowledge
2. The Spatial Matrix of Military and Political Power
3. Territorialization and the Mapping of Authority
4. The Public Sphere
5. The Debate on Tourism, Religion, and Culture
6. Responding to Novelty
7. Responding to the Transoceanic World
8. Responding to Coal and Commerce
9. Geographies in Retrospect
10. Conclusions
Selected Further Reading
Index
PREFACE
GEOGRAPHY, POWER, WORLD -each is a potent word. What they represented were closely related in the eighteenth century and should be linked in order to offer an account of key developments then. These developments, moreover, are still relevant today, as modern states struggle to understand the contemporary world and to reconcile ideologies, interests, and geopolitics in a world that is globalized. Similarly, as the eighteenth-century world had to adjust to its own possibilities and tensions of globalization, albeit a very different globalization to that of the twenty-first century. Interest in eighteenth-century Britain in developments across the world reflected an awareness of the globalization of that period, and an attempt to adapt to, and mold, this world was central to the geographical awareness of the period. Furthermore, as both experience and perception, geography in the eighteenth century meant even more than it does today, as subsequent technologies of travel that have helped overcome distance, both in reality and in symbolic terms, notably air travel, were still in the future and an aspect of fantasy. In practice, however, geography and geopolitics remain highly significant today, and there has been a recent revival in writing about geopolitics. 1
This book will probe power in the eighteenth-century British world, its understanding and use, by looking at the spatial character and understanding of this power and of the related power relationships. To adopt a useful modern distinction, this will be done both for hard power, in the shape of the forces of the state, notably the world s strongest navy, Britain s Royal Navy, and soft power, for example, information and perception as monitored in the coverage of foreign states by the British press. Again, Britain is the key state for soft power as the rapidly growing London press was the most dynamic and most free in the world. It was only rivaled by the Dutch, but, outside Europe, the British press was greater in scope than that of the Dutch. Partly as a result, the London press drew on an unrivaled international network of news that comprehended the trans-Atlantic world as well as Europe.
There are also aspects of spatial power that, while important, are harder to classify. In domestic terms, these range from the enclosure of fields, and associated changes in land use and ownership, to the dynamic character of English cultural influence in the British Isles. The latter was different to the hard power, of military force, that established and maintained the cohesion of the British Isles, but cultural, economic, political, and social influences were all significant in cementing and enhancing this cohesion.
We will be looking at a range of approaches and topics, including strategic culture and the geography of government on the one hand, and the public context of geographical understanding and concerns on the other, with attention devoted in particular to maps and the press. How was the world presented in these, and other, contexts and formats? A society s mental geography is linked to its cultural and national identities. A focus will be on the understanding and use of geographical knowledge and on its transformation into power; and the emphasis will be on the political usage of information, with politics understood in a broad fashion. Of course, contrary to some theoretical reflection, not all knowledge was/is political or can best be presented in that fashion. However, this book will emphasize that dimension, thereby offering a political reading of the Enlightenment period and project, or, rather, projects.
Moreover, the Enlightenment will be presented as dynamic in that the eighteenth-century world, as known by the West, was expanding, indeed continuously and self-consciously expanding, with knowledge in particular being acquired about the Pacific and North America. As discussed in chapter 1 , this is the age of Banks, Cook, Mackenzie, Vancouver, and many others. New Western settlements, notably by the British in Australia in 1788, expand the area that was, and is, subject to interest and concern by contemporaries. In Britain, which became the major maritime global economic power in this period, and maintained that position despite a series of challenges, geography offered a form of science as a tool for understanding and controlling the world, and for shaping the processes of discovering and using new information.
The service of the state also encouraged an interest in geography. There was an important and persistent relationship between this interest and the development of ideas about imperial expansion, as with the circle centering on Herman Moll (ca. 1654-1732), a German-born London mapmaker discussed in chapter 1 . 2 Alongside the concern with the wider world will come one with the British Isles as a geographical space. This will bring up both the contemporary view of geography and the realities of geographical relationships. Moreover, this issue invites discussion as how best to assess these relationships at this scale and, notably, the questions of agency and assessment at the regional level. Indeed, regionalism, and the problems it poses, emerge as a significant issue in this book and especially so in chapter 9 .
The book will be organized as follows, while, at the same time accepting that because not all the book may be read, it will be necessary for each of the chapters to stand on its own. In addition, there is no necessary organization of the chapters in terms of their order or the intellectual approach. That is not simply some postmodernist point that draws attention to the role of the author and/or the reader. Instead, it is appropriate to underline the extent to which there is no necessary sequence in the discussion, while, in addition, different disciplines come into play in the book. To put the standard academic approach first is to emphasize definitions and to stress intellectual strategies. However, to put a cultural studies approach first is to consider how geographical information was used and to appreciate the ad hoc nature of much of the use of geography. In choosing the topics for individual chapters, and in researching and writing the latter, I have deliberately chosen to handle more than one topic per chapter, as well as to range widely in the treatment of the topics. This approach is designed to capture the simultaneity of circumstance and experiences facing contemporaries, which is an element that can be readily lost if a rigid classification and firm typology are adopted in the coverage. The theme of geography and power plays out both internationally and in terms of the domestic resonances of geographical knowledge.
Chapter 1 focuses on the accumulation of knowledge and covers the quest for geographical information as an aspect of statecraft and of public identity, both within the state and with regard to foreign states. Empirical information was a key theme in eighteenth-century thought and can be seen in the eager assimilation of material from explorers. Geography will be assessed as an aspect of the information society, including with reference to maps.
Chapter 2 , on the spatial matrix of military power, considers how spatial issues were assessed and addressed in this context and relates this to mapping and to the nature of strategy. For example, there was greater British spatial knowledge of, and concern about, Scotland in response to the Jacobite risings of 1715 and 1745. Moreover, the naval drive for information on currents and coastlines was in large part in order to enhance operational and tactical possibilities. Similarly, the search for longitude was an aspect of understanding the world but also very much of using it for maritime and naval advantage. The close relationship between the military and geography was particularly pronounced in the case of the navy but was also present for the army and notably for the ordnance. Spatial factors were linked to strategy and as a military and a political practice.
Chapter 3 , on territorialization and the mapping of authority, assesses frontiers, maps, and the understanding of international power as a territorial c