This thesis examines the mapping of eighteenth-century Scotland in relation to the British
state’s imperatives to know the spaces of the nation. It examines the idea of the ‘military
landscape’—that conjunction of forts, roads, and barracks—represented and constructed by
the military engineers, surveyors, and draughtsmen of the Board of Ordnance between 1689
and 1815. In total, 940 maps constitute the Board of Ordnance ‘archive’ housed mainly in
the National Library of Scotland, the British Library, the National Archives (Kew), and the
Royal Library at Windsor.
The study of the Board of Ordnance military maps of Scotland is considered in
relation to the epistemological foundations of map making in the Enlightenment, particular
focus being paid to the relations between government institutions and military cartography.
The thesis considers how political and military power was embodied in the engineers’ maps
and plans. It explores the extent to which the Scottish landscape—especially the
Highlands—was an unknown territory demanding intellectual and material civilisation in
cartographic form.
In its main chapters on forts, movement, and battles, the thesis is organised to reflect
the purpose behind the creation of military maps. It includes representations of military
activities that consistently had recourse to mapping—fortifying, intelligence, reconnaissance,
marching, encamping, and battle—and explains why military maps were conceived thus and
how they were used. Fortification cartography dominates the representation of Scottish
military landscapes: 73% of the archive constitutes maps, plans, sections, and views of forts,
barracks, and coastal batteries; 22% maps associated with military movement; and 5% battle
maps. By examining the different genres of military mapping, the thesis offers an evaluation
of the Board’s endeavours to rationalise and to codify military cartography in order to bring
it in line with wider European practices. This review of the nature and extent of military
mapping of eighteenth-century Scotland reveals the practice to be a result of institutional
imperatives to assert territorial control rather than simply a cartographic enterprise. In
(re)constructing the military landscape, the thesis extends current knowledge of military
mapping in eighteenth-century Scotland and provides for the first time a substantive
examination of the Board of Ordnance as an agency of state and cartographic authority
