@article{872126,
      recid = {872126},
      title = {British Library : Ministry of Defense maps.},
      pages = {1 online resource (272 manuscripts, 1,278 maps) :},
      note = {Date range of documents: 1840-1935.},
      abstract = {In 1853, Basil Jackson, a graduate of the British Royal  Military College who had served twenty years as a field  engineer and taught military surveying at the East India  Company's Military Seminary at Addiscombe, published the  fourth edition of his Treatise on Military Surveying.  "Military surveying," he said, is the "art of describing  the face of country with reference to its capacity for  warlike operations." In general, he argued, "it should  abound in details, and be extremely minute and particular  respecting mountains and their passes; points at which a  river or morass may be crossed; localities offering  military positions; nature of forests, " (p. 1). The  sections of his book summarize the instruments and methods  available to mid-century military mapping: "On Military  Sketching with the Prismatic Compass," "On Surveying with  the Theodolite," "On Levelling," "Military Reconnoissance  [sic]," and "Tables for Computing Altitudes, from  Observations with the Mountain Barometer." Reflecting the  already extensive global responsibilities of the British  military, he noted that it mattered not whether the war was  to be fought in a "semi-barbarous country" or in Europe,  where there were to be found authoritative maps and  statistical reports: in either case, a particular knowledge  would have to be acquired on the ground through military  reconnaissance. Such reconnaissance necessarily included  places where combatants could ford rivers, move artillery  over bridges, avoid unsurpassable obstacles, anticipate  fortifications, commandeer the heights, secure food and  water, find lumber for construction, and so on. The maps  accumulated by the Ministry of Defence and selected for  this cartographic survey of the long nineteenth century  include maps and plans created by the most sophisticated  cartographers with the greatest corporate and governmental  institutional support and hand-drawn sketches rapidly  drafted in secret in preparation for combat. They will be  of great interest to scholars tracing the development of  skills in the accuracy and conventions of topographical  mapmaking, to students of the major conflicts in which  Britain was engaged between 1780 and the end of the First  World War, and to those mainly interested in the  relationship of mapmaking to national and ethnic identity  formation.},
      url = {http://library.usi.edu/record/872126},
}