The book analyses from a comparative perspective the exploration of territories, the histories of their inhabitants, and local natural environments during the long eighteenth century. The eleven chapters look at European science at home and abroad as well as at global scientific practices and the involvement of a great variety of local actors in the… Read More Simona Boscani Leoni, Sarah Baumgartner, and Meike Knittel, (eds.) (2022) Connecting Territories: Exploring People and Nature, 1700–1850. Brill: Leiden.

When, how, and why did the Himalaya become the highest mountains in the world? In 1800, Chimborazo in South America was believed to be the world’s highest mountain, only succeeded by Mount Everest in 1856. Science on the Roof of the World tells the story of this shift, and the scientific, imaginative, and political remaking… Read More Lachlan Fleetwood (2022): Science on the Roof of the World: Empire and the Remaking of the Himalaya. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.

This book brings together ten empirically rich and theoretically informed contributions that aim to clarify both geo-historical specificities and common transnational and global features of the cultures and practices of boundary making that shaped modern statehood. Written by scholars from Spain, France, Italy, Argentina, Brazil and Mexico, the essays included in this volume provide a… Read More Jacobo García Álvarez and Paloma Puente Lozano (eds.) (2023): Beneath the Lines: Borders and Boundary-Making from the 18th to the 20th Century. Springer: Cham:

Kyle J. Gardner reveals the transformation of the historical Himalayan entrepôt of Ladakh into a modern, disputed borderland through an examination of rare British, Indian, Ladakhi, and Kashmiri archival sources. In so doing, he provides both a history of the rise of geopolitics and the first comprehensive history of Ladakh’s encounter with the British Empire.… Read More Kyle J. Gardner (2021): The Frontier Complex: Geopolitics and the Making of the India–China Border, 1846–1962. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.

he publication of the National Atlas of Finland in 1899 marks the beginning of the era of the modern national atlas. It is a period that coincides neatly with the twentieth century. The modern national atlas mirrors and embodies some of the important themes of this turbulent century, including the complex connections between nation, state… Read More John Rennie Short (2022): The Rise and Fall of the National Atlas in the Twentieth Century: Power, State and Territory. Anthem: London.