Trigonometrical Juridism in British India: Unificatory Images and Jurisdictional Rationality

Abstract

Abstract This article engages with two aspects of how cartography enabled law and jurisdictional ordering in a specific historical context. First, by interrogating the ways in which the great trigonometrical surveys of the British colonial enterprise and the Atlas of India entrenched “India” as a distinct, coherent, and contiguous geographical entity, this article will demonstrate how an epistemology rooted in a civilising impulse produced the perception of India as a thoroughly refined British legal territory. Second, by engaging with the maps and records of colonial cadastral and revenue surveys, this article will show how maps played a critical role in the visualisation of British Indian territory in terms of police networks. Such a visualisation paved the way for the rationalisation and systematisation of horizontal jurisdictions, with vertically aligned hierarchies, across the territory.