A New and Accurate Map of the Southern Province of Hindoostan

Plate date and atlas state

The map is dated 1800, while the catalogue record belongs to an 1808 issue of Wilkinson’s General Atlas. The atlas circulated in several closely related editions, and the survival of the earlier plate date within a later volume is typical of commercial map publishing.

Survey knowledge in compact form

Unlike Faden’s expansive two-sheet work, Wilkinson condenses the southern peninsula into a single hand-coloured atlas plate. The claim to be ‘new and accurate’ signals the new expectation created by survey: even a general atlas must present itself as current, measured and authoritative.

The gaze

This is survey geography domesticated for ordinary reference. The routes, divisions and revised outline of the south move from specialist and military maps into the library and drawing room, where the political conditions of their production recede behind a clean cartographic surface.