A New and Accurate Map of the Southern Province of Hindoostan

Authorship and object

From Wilkinson's General Atlas of the World (London; this state with an 1809 title-page, the contents dated 1805), in full hand-colour.

A commercial digest

Wilkinson's map is a synthesis rather than a survey — the southern peninsula presented for the atlas-buying public, drawn from the better British maps then circulating. Its claim to be "new and accurate" reflects how quickly the survey-based image was becoming the expected standard even in popular atlases.

The gaze

This is the surveyed south domesticated for the drawing-room — India's newly mapped southern provinces offered to British readers as established, accurate knowledge, the frontier of the survey already behind it.