State Imperatives: Military Mapping in Scotland, 1689–1770

Abstract

In the eighteenth century, military engineers and surveyors played a major role in representing and in constructing military landscapes. They designed and built fortifications, roads and bridges; depicted towns and countryside as militarised spaces; artistically recorded battles; and surveyed for military purposes. This paper looks at aspects of these activities in Scotland. Visual representations of mapped military activities, specifically those produced by the engineers of the Board of Ordnance, are examined not as objective ‘mirrors of the world’, but as expressions and symbols of political power. With reference to two distinct genres of military mapping – fortification plans and route surveys – this paper emphasises the purpose of the maps, not just their content, as key to their understanding.