A Revolution in Mapping Literacy? Land Plans and Ordinary Cartography (France and the Habsburg Monarchy, 18th–first half of the 19th century)
Using mobile mapping apps every day has become second nature. Thanks to these apps, anyone can now find their way around or anywhere in the world. They are a testament to the high level of mapping literacy achieved by today’s society — in other words, the widespread ability to read a map. This is true at all scales, from the representation of small areas to globes. As drawing maps is closer to everyday experience, it is considered an accessible exercise, rightly or wrongly. Conversely, the production of small-scale maps is still considered a specialist task requiring professional training. Cartographic language, from sketching a plan to participatory cartography, is now accessible to everyone – not just surveyors or geomatics engineers. This historical process is still poorly understood. Despite being disseminated in the public sphere and used in diverse social contexts, large-scale maps have remained in the shadow of small-scale maps in the history of cartography. They were considered less valuable, less prestigious and less intellectually and scientifically demanding.
The history of mapping literacy, particularly with regard to large-scale maps, remains to be written. However, several major historical phases and turning points can be identified. These include the rare and costly use of ‘figures’ and ‘views’ drawn by painters to settle land disputes and enhance the reputation of their patrons from the 14th to the 16th century; the advent of measurement-based mapping in the 17th century, supported by the work of engineers and surveyors; and the exponential growth in the use of maps in response to widespread social demand in the mid-18th century. Other turning points include the homogeneous and comprehensive map coverage of national territories thanks to state mapping efforts in the military (Ordnance Survey 1801, Franziszeische Landesaufnahme 1807, Carte d’État Major 1828) and fiscal field (Napoleonic cadastre 1812, Franziszeisches Kataster 1818, Tithe Maps 1836) fields: these were completed in the 1860s. The popularisation of maps produced by state mapping agencies, which relied on mass education and the industrialisation of the printing and distribution process, since the end of the 19th century. The dominance of corporate giants and the spread of their mapping apps at the turn of the 21st century.
The explosion in the number of large-scale maps in the 18th century was a pivotal moment. As diverse and experimental mapping practices spread rapidly, maps became commonplace. They became essential cognitive artefacts in many social fields. Alongside the engineering drawings that heralded the arrival of scientific cartography, a form of ordinary cartography emerged that clumsily drew inspiration from external models while responding to the new need for graphical representations of space. The increase in demand for maps followed an obscure process. The taste for maps in Enlightenment Europe developed in parallel with, and even preceded, state initiatives. This was particularly evident in private land surveying, which reflected heterogeneous and scattered documentary practices.
This conference forms part of a series of scientific meetings that began in 2025. The first workshop focused on ‘Mapping Literacy and Rural Societies in the 18th and 19th Centuries’. It explored a new historiographical field by examining land plans as an emerging tool for spatial administration. The aim was to examine how these maps were used and integrated into a larger body of existing documentation, such as land registers, tables, lists and inventories. Participants also studied the role of maps in transliteracy practices. The second meeting, scheduled for June 2026, will continue these discussions. Taking a pragmatic approach to the use of maps, inspired by medievalists’ research on the Writing Revolution of the 13th and 14th centuries, proved extremely beneficial. However, attention must also be paid to the peculiarities of the maps, such as the role of visual culture and sensitivity, the diversity of spatial practices, and the importance of mathematical and geometric knowledge. Similarly, land administration practitioners did not belong to a closed social circle. Moreover, their maps had relatively little legal value. For these two reasons, they did not constitute a ‘graphic community’ in the strict sense. Therefore, the genesis of the land plan cannot be considered an autonomous field of research. Rather, this history emerges as the perfect observation ground for the mapping literacy revolution of the 18th century.
It is therefore necessary to examine how professional graphic techniques and cultures circulate among engineers and the ways in which they subtly influence, but also discredit, ordinary cartography (panel 1). Without succumbing to geographical determinism, we will also examine the role of natural spatial configurations and how they are used, such as mountains and the societies that form around them, in relation to land mapping practices (panel 2). We will then study the emergence of maps in the notebooks of scholars and travellers (panel 3). We will conduct a review of current research on the proliferation of cartographic experiments with varying degrees of success that accompanied numerous projects to establish state land tax systems at the turn of the 19th century (panel 4). Finally, discussions will be held on the speed, scale and scope of the revolution in mapping literacy in conjunction with the creation of a heuristic database (panel 5).
The conference will also have a comparative dimension. Most of the panels will focus jointly on the Kingdom of France and the Austrian Habsburg Monarchy. These two administrative monarchies are commensurable, as they were similar in size and population in the 18th century. Both underwent cadastral (Bertier de Sauvigny in 1777; Joseph II in 1784) and topographical (Josephinische Landesaufnahme in 1763) experiments following local, heterogeneous mapping projects. Despite these similarities, the two monarchies remained relatively autonomous with regard to the circulation of state knowledge. Their techno-economic and socio-political frameworks differed significantly: French fiscal centralisation had no equivalent in the lands of the Habsburgs. Other differences included academic structures, property law (Roman law and provincial legal customs vs. differentiated state law), land registration (private notary system vs. public registration), intellectual frameworks (physiocracy vs. cameralism), chancery writing and language (the language of the king vs. linguistic diversity), and pictorial influences. This comparison will therefore enable us to evaluate the importance of the various factors of the cognitive revolution in large-scale cartography, such as fiscal, social and land structures, and the respective influence of printed cartography, visual arts and engineering training.
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