Room 02
By the mid-seventeenth century, India is no longer chiefly a coastline at the edge of classical geography. European mapmakers increasingly organise the subcontinent around the Mughal court, the trading companies and the sea routes that connect them. French geographers impose a restrained political order; Dutch, German and Italian publishers turn that order into an atlas commodity. The gaze remains external, but it has become dynastic, commercial and confident: India as an empire to describe, a market to enter and a route to control.