Between Myth and Empirical Knowledge: Map-Making and Statecraft in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Burma

• In Event: 326. Mediating Contrasting Views of the World: Institutional Agents, Map-Making, and the Development of Geographical Thought in Burma

Abstract

J. Schwartzberg’s seminal study of Burmese cartography published in 1994 ended with an invitation to further investigate the extant corpus of traditional maps. The categorization of the maps he studied followed an epistemological divide influenced by a Western approach to science, a methodological approach that had clarification purposes. In pre-colonial Burma, however, the line separating ‘traditional’ and ‘empirical’ knowledge and the goals pursued by Burma’s institutional agents in using these two types of knowledge for map-making were not as clear-cut as has been generally acknowledged: what ultimately mattered was the perpetuation of a mandala-type pattern of royal power based on the notion of Buddhist kingship.

Building on an extensive survey of maps, charts, and diagrams, the contribution discusses the role of map-making in the pursuit of statecraft from early Konbaung times when territorial integration was consolidated by the monarchy’s centralizing efforts to the mid-Konbaung period when it began to crack under British pressure.

The contribution will argue that, in its association to the mandala polity, map-making assumed two main functions: (1) one that helped to create potent landscapes enhancing the symbolic stature of the ruler, like maps of royal cities or sacred diagrams that were turned into tangible form; and (2) one that helped to locate and record the placement of things, people, and lesser principalities across the territory, like cadastral surveys, land allocation, or delimitation of boundaries of other centers of power.

Author

• Francois Tainturier, Inya Institute