Putting the State on the Map: Cartography, Territory, and European State Formation

摘要: Looking at any wall map or atlas, we see a world composed of states. The earth's surface is divided into distinct state territories. Each demarcated by linear boundary, an edge dividing one sovereignty from the next. division accentuated when each territory blocked out in separate color neighboring states, implying that its interior homogeneous space, traversed evenly sovereignty. Our jigsaw territorial and take this picture for granted. Thus our historical atlases show medieval Christendom also territories, though perhaps less neatly (see, example, McEvedy 1992). Only configuration different. Familiar to us, such depiction would have been utterly unknown people time, who rarely used maps represent geographical information did not imagine states (or rather realms) as enclosed spaces. transformation their ours—the way was put on map—is subject essay.