Jordan Branch. 2011

242 Pages·2011·1.39 MB·English

UC Berkeley
UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Title
Mapping the Sovereign State: Cartographic Technology, Political Authority, and Systemic
Change
Permalink
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2tt0p94m
Author
Branch, Jordan Nathaniel
Publication Date
2011

Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation
eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library
University of California
Mapping the Sovereign State: Cartographic Technology, Political Authority, and
Systemic Change

By

Jordan Nathaniel Branch

A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the

requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

in

Political Science

in the

Graduate Division

of the

University of California, Berkeley

Committee in charge:

Professor Steven Weber, Chair
Professor Christopher Ansell
Professor Ron E. Hassner
Professor Kate O’Neill

Spring 2011
Mapping the Sovereign State:
Cartographic Technology, Political Authority, and Systemic Change

© 2011

by Jordan Nathaniel Branch
Abstract

Mapping the Sovereign State: Cartographic Technology, Political Authority, and
Systemic Change

by

Jordan Nathaniel Branch

Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science

University of California, Berkeley

Professor Steven Weber, Chair

How did modern territorial states come to replace earlier forms of organization, defined
by a wide variety of territorial and non-territorial forms of authority? Answering this
question can help to explain both where our international political system came from and
where it might be going.

In this dissertation, I argue that the use of new mapping technologies in early modern
Europe was a fundamental driver of these monumental political developments. New
cartographic tools altered how political actors understood political space, authority, and
organization, reducing the wide variety of medieval political forms down to the unique
territorial form of the sovereign state. Mapping and its use was necessary—though not
sufficient—to drive the complex process leading to our world of territorial states.

Using evidence from the history of cartography, peace treaties, and political practices, I
argue that early modern mapping changed the fundamental framework of political
interaction. Authority structures not depicted on maps were ignored or actively renounced
in favor of those that were, leading to the implementation of linear boundaries between
states and centralized territorial rule within them. These fundamental characteristics of
modern statehood appeared first in the representational space of maps and only
subsequently in political practices on the ground. My exploration of this relationship
reveals that maps and their depictions were causal, not epiphenomenal, to the
transformation of politics.

The role of cartography in the formation of modern states is made evident when
depictions in maps are compared against actual boundary practices and the language of
peace treaties. Clear linear divisions between territorial political units, while pervading
maps since the sixteenth century, did not become common in practice until late in the
eighteenth century. For their part, mapmakers never intended to reshape political ideas
and structures. Rather, their choice to depict the world as composed of homogenous
political territories was independent of politics. It was driven by the dual incentives of a
commercial market for aesthetically pleasing printed maps and the underlying geometric
1
structure of early-modern cartography that is provided by the globe-spanning grid of
latitude and longitude. Thus, by linking developments in cartography to political ideas
and outcomes, my dissertation yields an analysis of the complex relation between
technological and political change that acknowledges the importance of both material and
ideational factors to the constitution of political institutions such as the state and the
international system. My historical case also yields implications for how we might better
understand transformative political change, particularly in today’s globalizing
international system.

2
For my parents,

Eren and Watson Branch
i
Table of Contents

Acknowledgements iii
1. Introduction 1
2. Systemic Change, Sovereignty, and International Relations 6
3. The Transformation of International Politics: Medieval to Modern 28
4. The “Cartographic Revolution” 67
5. Ideational Effects of Cartography I: Mapping and the View of Space 89
6. Ideational Effects of Cartography II: Mapping, Territory, and Sovereignty 116
7. The Implementation of Territorial Exclusivity 155
8. Conclusion: Implications for Contemporary Change 188
References 209

ii
Acknowledgements

Although this project has involved a lot of time working alone, with piles and
piles of books, there is absolutely no way I could have completed it without the help of a
large number of people.
First is my dissertation committee: Steve Weber, Chris Ansell, Ron Hassner, and
Kate O’Neill. Nick Ziegler also served as a member of my prospectus committee, helping
to get this project off the ground. Chris Ansell has been instrumental, from the very
beginning of this project, in helping me negotiate the back-and-forth between extreme
breadth and complexity and making a coherent and defensible argument. Our many
conversations have helped me find that happy middle ground. Ron Hassner I only
managed to bring on board a bit later in the process, but his enthusiasm and help have
been amazing. Who else, after all, combines such a depth of knowledge about our field, a
seemingly limitless willingness to help, and an impressive collection of antique maps?
Kate O’Neill has been the best possible “outside” committee member one could ask for:
always willing to meet, even after my extended periods AWOL, and providing extremely
useful feedback in spite of facing the monumental task of reading this entire dissertation
in one go, rather than in a more civilized piecemeal fashion.
I could not have asked for a better dissertation chair than Steve Weber. From the
very beginning, Steve has provided me with exactly the type of guidance I need: allowing
me the freedom to pursue whatever wild ideas come up, but keeping my historical study
grounded in the key issues of International Relations and helping me to find the
implications for global political issues today. Steve has been the type of advisor I could
call to ask, literally, about how to phrase specific parts of a response letter for an article
revision. This kind of support is priceless. I cannot express how excited I am that our
discussions and work together will not end with the filing of this dissertation.
Second, one simply cannot get through this experience without the support,
feedback, and companionship of the graduate student community. So many members of
my entering cohort deserve my thanks, for making classes, exam preparations, and
everything else that could make graduate school a burden into nothing but positive
experiences. Jessica Rich and Naomi Choi deserve special mention, as my close friends
who have always put up with me and as colleagues who have always given me honest
and supportive feedback on my work. In addition, the broader International Relations
community at Berkeley, including the numerous students and faculty affiliated with the
Institute for International Studies, has always provided a stimulating environment for
exchanging ideas and papers—even for someone like me, who has often been at the
peripheries of traditional IR.
Additionally, this project has benefited from the extensive pushing, prodding, and
questioning that I have faced at a number of venues outside of Berkeley, when I have
presented different pieces of this dissertation at conferences and at other universities.
When you start talking about maps, people tend to get interested, and I have always
benefited from these extraordinarily helpful comments, questions, and suggestions. This
also includes the extensive and valuable feedback from both reviewers and editors at
International Organization and the European Journal of International Relations, where
some of this dissertation’s arguments have now been published. These processes have
made this final version significantly stronger.
iii
Finally, I have to thank the people who have truly made it possible for me to
make it this far. Helen Lee, whom I had the unbelievable fortune to meet in a graduate
seminar on research methods (of all places!), gives me the kind of support and
encouragement that one can only dream of. I cannot imagine a better teammate or partner
in crime. My brother Adam Branch—a big brother in every way possible—has played
such an instrumental role in this that it is hard to describe. Leading by example, Adam
first showed me that graduate studies in political science could be fun; then, right before I
began at Berkeley he gave me a copy of Hendrik Spruyt’s The Sovereign State and Its
Competitors—guiding me toward questions that I continue to find fascinating.
Throughout my time at Berkeley, Adam has read and helped improve everything I have
sent him, and his visits here over the years have always been a highlight of my time in the
Berkeley “sky boat.”
My parents, of course, deserve more gratitude than I can offer. Their support—of
every type one can imagine—has always been beyond measure. Who else gets to have a
crack editing team on call, anytime and for any piece of work, from cover letters to five-
hundred pages of raw dissertation? Their example and love continues to keep me going,
every day. This dissertation is dedicated to them.

iv
Chapter 1
Introduction

Then sent he [King William] his men over all England into each shire;
commissioning them to find out “How many hundreds of hides were in the shire,
what land the king himself had, and what stock upon the land; or, what dues he
ought to have by the year from the shire.” Also he commissioned them to record
in writing, “How much land his archbishops had, and his diocesan bishops, and
his abbots, and his earls;” and though I may be prolix and tedious, “What, or
how much, each man had, who was an occupier of land in England, either in land
or in stock, and how much money it were worth.” . . . And all the recorded
particulars were afterwards brought to him.
– Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, late eleventh century1

Give me a map; then let me see how much
Is left for me to conquer all the world,
– Tamburlaine the Great, Christopher Marlowe, c.1588

These two passages illustrate contrasting ways of conceptualizing political rule: as a
claim over diverse persons, resources, and locations, or as a claim to space as represented
on a map. The first is a description by a contemporary Anglo-Saxon Chronicle of the
creation of the Domesday Book by William the Conqueror in 1086, revealing how
medieval rulers understood political authority in the textual form of a survey. The second,
from a 1588 Christopher Marlowe play about Tamburlaine, the Turco-Mongol conqueror
of Central Asia, illustrates the shift toward using maps to picture the extent of territorial
authority—in the case of the fictionalized Tamburlaine, to lament all that remained
unconquered at his death. This comparison points toward the complex transformation that
this dissertation examines: the shift from complex political authorities of the European
Middle Ages to the territorial exclusivity of the modern state system, and the way that the
development of cartography drove and shaped this transformation. Maps did not just
provide new tools for rulers to gather and organize information about their realms;
cartography also restructured the very nature of rule, leading to modern territorial states
as we know them today. The impact of mapping on political ideas, practices, and
structures is the subject of this dissertation.
The fundamental question to be answered, then, is the following: What were the
origins of modern states and the international system? Specifically, I examine how and
why modern states took on a historically unique form: territorial jurisdictions defined
exclusively by linear boundaries and homogenous within those lines. Due to the
prevalence of anachronistic readings of the past in International Relations, answering
these questions requires detailing the unique character of modern territorial states,
establishing the historical timing of the process that constituted them, and then explaining
the origins of this particular form of political organization. Studying these origins is
important, both in itself—as we should understand how our current political structures

1 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Everyman Press, London, 1912), accessed online at
<http://omacl.org/Anglo/> on 4/09/08.
1