Territorial Imaginaries

Beyond the Sovereign Map

Kären Wigen

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Hardback

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English

University of Chicago Press
16 April 2025

Historical geography; Cartography, map-making & projections

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 Kären 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 Mundy's cartographic history of Indigenous dispossession in the Americas, Peter Bol's examination of two Chinese maps created five hundred years apart, and Ali Yaycıoğlu's exploration of tensions between top-down and bottom-up mapping of Habsburg and Ottoman border claims.

Edited by: Kären Wigen
Imprint: University of Chicago Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 254mm, Width: 210mm, Spine: 28mm
Weight: 1.247kg
ISBN: 9780226839004
ISBN 10: 0226839001
Pages: 280
Publication Date: 16 April 2025
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Foreword Introduction Kären Wigen Part I. Mapping Practices before the Nation-State 1. Ambiguous Territories: Mapping Siberia in the Era of Peter the Great Valerie Kivelson 2. From People to Territory: (The Chinggisid) Sovereignty Transformed? Lhamsuren Munkh-Erdene 3. Maps for Failed States Peter K. Bol 4. On the Ottoman Arguments during the Congress of Karlowitz (1699) Ali Yaycıoğlu Part II. Pushing Back against the Sovereign Map 5. Territorial Challenges at Interstate Borders: Where and How History Matters Alexander B. Murphy and Cy Abbott 6. Reconceptualizing the State and Its Alternatives: Ideas, Infrastructures, Representations Jordan Branch 7. Voluminous, Scattered, Distorted: On the Limits of Cartographic Representations Franck Billé Part III. From Critique to Counter-Cartography 8. Indigenous Sovereignty Out of Time Barbara E. Mundy 9. Erasing the Other: Maps, Bordering, and Political Power Guntram Herb 10. Visualizing Shared Dominion in the Holy Roman Empire: Dilution, Orientation, Oscillation Luca Scholz Notes List of Contributors Index

Kären Wigen is the Frances and Charles Field Professor in History at Stanford University.

Reviews for Territorial Imaginaries: Beyond the Sovereign Map

""What is sovereignty? And what should we do with it? Territorial Imaginaries brilliantly exposes the myths of jigsaw-puzzle territoriality and tears apart the familiar pastel-colored map. With essays that span almost a thousand years and reach across Asia, Europe, and the Americas, this volume offers a remarkable conversation between history, critique, and productive alternatives for understanding political geography and spatial imagination in new ways. The result not only showcases the diversity and malleability of territory over time, space, and culture but also asks us to rethink how maps and other visual material can stabilize—or destabilize—the relationship between peoples, states, and space. Every contribution is packed with insight and speaks convincingly across fields."" -- Bill Rankin,Yale University ""Ranging across disciplines, the authors in this edited volume ask how claims to territorial sovereignty been both made and challenged by maps. The answers—offered by scholars of political science, history, geography, art history, and anthropology—illuminate the varied roles that maps have had across human history. Even more intriguing is the way each essay widens the very definition of a map, and connects the past to current problems of political sovereignty."" -- Susan Schulten, University of Denver