← Administered Empire and Victorian Atlas
Click to enlargeMap of the Northern Part of the Punjab and of Kashmir
John Walker's large case map of the northern Punjab, Kashmir and the frontiers of Ladakh and "Little Tibet," compiled for the East India Company from explorers' surveys. A frontier-intelligence map made in the very year Kashmir changed hands — the administered empire reaching toward its mountain edge.
Authorship and object
Compiled by John Walker for the East India Company and engraved as a large dissected case map (folding into covers titled "Kashmir Punjab &c."), it draws on the surveys of the explorer G. T. Vigne, Captain C. Wade and others. Centred on the Vale of Kashmir; relief by hachures; scale about 1:850,000.
Frontier knowledge
The map gathers the reports of individual travellers and officers into a single picture of a barely-known mountain frontier, labelling roads, trails, passes, forts and river sources, and carrying explorers' annotations on terrain, vegetation and geology. It reaches beyond British territory into Ladakh and the approaches to Tibet.
The gaze
1846 was the year the First Anglo-Sikh War ended and the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir was created under British paramountcy. The map is the cartography of that moment — the administered empire pushing its knowledge into the Himalayan borderland, where mapping the passes was the first step in watching a frontier. This is the gaze of the Great Game.