Surveyors of Empire: Samuel Holland, J.W.F. Des Barres, and the Making of the Atlantic Neptune by Stephen J. Hornsby (review)

Writing a book and making a map are similar undertakings. The task is to collect information (primary and secondary), assemble an argument or point of view, and present the audience with a convincing narrative of the subject. Cartographers can be understood as scholars of space, just as historians are experts in the past. When good history meets influential mapmaking, as it does in Stephen Hornsby’s Surveyors of Empire, the result is a fascinating account of the men, methods, and meaning behind measuring territory and representing it visually.

Samuel Holland and J.F.W. Des Barres were presented with a monumental task at the conclusion of the Seven Years’ War: survey, map, and report on the territory under British control. Holland and Des Barres both arrived in North America as part of the Royal American Regiment, both served as engineers, and both became central figures in the British survey of North America: Holland led the Survey of the Northern District, and Des Barres was charged with the Survey of Nova Scotia. As Hornsby argues, territory must be known before it can be governed. Hornsby deftly follows the careers of these two men over seven thematic chapters, and his analysis moves from the specific (the instruments and methods used to measure land) to the general (the imperial implications of surveying and mapmaking) and the personal (the efforts required to traverse territory, record information, produce charts, and sell The Atlantic Neptune). Looming in the background are the imperial developments leading to the American Revolution, a rupture that ended the Great Survey just as the need for accurate maps became more pressing than ever.

In many ways, Hornsby is responding to the growing interest in maps, geographic knowledge, and critical cartography. He reminds historians that maps did not simply appear; they were expensive to finance and required significant time and specific skills to produce. Unlike those who suggest that all maps are political, that biases were inevitable and at times intentional, or that cartography is just another form of cultural text that can be read in myriad ways, Hornsby works to swing the pendulum of analysis back toward the practical and even institutional history of cartography. Surveyors of Empire is light on theory (with only occasional references to Bruno Latour, Paul Carter, and J.B. Harley) in favour of an empirical explanation of how The Atlantic Neptune was made and why it mattered. Drawing on a vast array of archival holdings and demonstrating a clear understanding of the relevant literature, Hornsby clearly and convincingly argues for a more tempered interpretation of spatial evidence.

Though Hornsby is providing a history of maps, Surveyors of Empire is also history on maps. Hope Stege’s cartography is an essential contribution to the work, offering readers visual depictions of areas surveyed, the movements of Holland and Des Barres during the course of the survey, and the lands held by the surveyors themselves. These maps are not simply illustrative; rather, they inform the work’s arguments and represent ideas and arguments in dynamic ways. Perhaps most importantly, Stege’s maps complement and complicate the dozens of stunning eighteenth-century maps reproduced in the book. Hornsby argues that the complementary geographic reports were essential to understanding the maps created by Holland and Des Barres, and his own work follows that methodology. Analysis and visual representations are intertwined to enable the reader to understand and visualize the mapping process.

Missing from Hornsby’s account is any sustained investigation into the groups that might have opposed surveys. While Natives and Acadians appear sporadically, their understanding of the surveys and competing visions of the land being measured does not play a major role in Surveyors of Empire. Given the territorial strength of the Mi’kmaq and Wulstukwiuk (even after the Seven Years’ War), more...