Room 03

The Survey Turn

After Plassey the gaze changes hands and character. With Rennell and the surveyors, India stops being chiefly a thing reported and becomes a thing measured — drawn from within the country by chains, instruments and calculated networks in the service of a Company that means to govern. The finished maps present European scientific authority, but the work also depended on extensive Indian labour, local knowledge and subordinate survey establishments. Decoration retreats; the grid advances. To map becomes one means of possession.