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Click to enlargeIndia III Bombay
The Bombay sheet from the Atlas of India of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge — a cheap, accurate educational map engraved by the Walkers. The Bombay Presidency as a subject of popular British self-improvement.
Authorship and object
Published under the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, revised by John Walker and engraved by J. & C. Walker, sold by Edward Stanford (London, c.1856). One of the regional sheets in the Society's Atlas of India; hand-coloured, relief by hachures.
Useful knowledge
The SDUK existed to put reliable, inexpensive information into the hands of the British public, and its atlas of India broke the country into clear regional sheets for the general reader and the schoolroom. This sheet covers the Bombay Presidency at a working regional scale.
The gaze
Here India is an object of instruction for the Briton at home — accurate, plainly drawn, administratively divided. Knowing one's empire was becoming part of an educated person's furniture of mind, and the Bombay Presidency takes its place among the things such a reader was expected to be able to locate.