The indigenous map: native information, ethnographic object, artefact of encounter

Slappnig, Joy

The indigenous map: native information, ethnographic object, artefact of encounter

Resource type

Doctoral thesis

Creator (person)

Slappnig, Joy

Date published

2022

Abstract

This thesis examines the significance of Indigenous maps in the collections of the Royal Geographical Society and explores some of the wider questions they raise for histories of empire, mapping and Indigenous agency. During the long nineteenth century, so-called “native maps” were typically acquired, commissioned, or co-produced in the process of European geographical exploration and territorial expansion, preceding or accompanying the imposition of colonial rule. Far from being simply embodiments of Indigenous knowledge, the form and content of such maps often reflected aspects of the process of colonial encounter and exchange. When these maps were accessioned into Western collections, their uses and meanings changed as they became sources of “native information”, ethnographic artefacts, or exotic curiosities. Using examples of maps from the collections of the Royal Geographical Society, the thesis explores the epistemological and historical integrity of the “Indigenous map” as a concept. By re conceptualising maps produced in colonial contexts as artefacts of encounter, the thesis examines themes such as the co-production of geographical knowledge; the circulation of Indigenous maps; and the contribution of Indigenous people to colonial map collections. The first part of the thesis addresses the history of approaches to the definition of the “Indigenous map” and details the methodology, sources, and research strategy. Using the celebrated “stick charts” from the Marshall Islands as an exemplary case, the ways in which such Indigenous maps have been understood within the history of cartography, geography, and anthropology is examined. Situating the idea of the Indigenous map within a longer history of scholarship than has often been acknowledged, wider questions are raised about the relationships between empire, geographical knowledge, and the history of collections. The second part of the thesis consists of three case studies from the collections of the Royal Geographical Society, representing a variety of different kinds of maps originating in South Asia. The first case study concerns a Gujarati chart of the Red Sea, said to have been produced in the seventeenth century and acquired by Alexander Burnes, an East India Company officer, in 1835. This chapter examines the role played by Indigenous maps and charts in the creation of Western hydrographic knowledge of the Red Sea and the development of Orientalist discourses about the Indian and Arabic maritime worlds. Moving from a single manuscript to a collection of maps including manuscripts and copied tracings, the second case study investigates the co-production of maps of Burma between Burmese and Shan traders and a British colonial judge in the 1860s and 1870s. This chapter discusses the mediation and transformation of Indigenous geographical knowledge as it travelled from the colonies to the metropole of the British Empire. The final case study, a printed version of a Tibetan map of Sikkim, originally captured by the British army on a Himalayan battlefield, situates the production and reproduction of Indigenous maps alongside the work of contemporary institutions including the Survey of India, the Asiatic Society of Bengal, and the Royal Geographical Society.