This chapter examines imperial initiatives in mapping space, registering people, and ordering knowledge. The author draws a distinction between the mapping practices of pre-modern or tributary empires and those of early modern and modern imperial formations. In the latter case, authority was increasingly derived from the production and accumulation of knowledge via scientific techniques that relied on abstraction and quantification, whether at home or abroad. The author shows that modern imperial practices based on measurement were not limited to the West, but were also employed in the Ottoman Empire, Qing China, and parts of Mughal India. The chapter’s focus is the emergence of coordinate mapping as a tool of imperial expansion and control from the Renaissance through the mid-twentieth century. Similar techniques of legibility and quantification were applied to registering people and ordering knowledge. James C. Scott’s work on legibility in modern state building is foundational to this chapter.
