Territorial Imaginaries

Fresh offerings on world mapping beyond Western conventions. This strikingly colorful volume contends that modern mapping has never been sufficient to illustrate the complex reality of territory and political sovereignty, whether past or present. For Territorial Imaginaries, editor Kren Wigen has assembled an impressive slate of experts, spanning disciplines from political science to art history, to contribute perspectives and case studies covering three main themes: mapping before the nation-state, rethinking and critiquing mapping practices, and robust traditions of counter-cartography. Each contributor proposes alternative ways to think about mapping, and the essays are supported with rich archival documentation. Among the far-reaching case studies are Barbara Mundys cartographic history of Indigenous dispossession in the Americas, Peter Bols examination of two Chinese maps created five hundred years apart, and Ali Yaycolus exploration of tensions between top-down and bottom-up mapping of Habsburg and Ottoman border claims.