Time Line
1717
Hermann Moll's "The West Part of India, or the Empire of the Great Mogul" is published.
1752
French geographer, Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d’Anville publishes a map of India laying the Indian geographical knowledge on a scientific footing. ‘Atlas Universal’ of Gilles and Didier Robert de Vaugondy is first published with maps of whole Indies.
1767
The East India Company establishes the Survey of India (SOI) for mapping the territories it acquired, for developing them for commercial exploitation. Till now it is responsible for topographic survey related cartography and for the preparation of up-to-date maps, covering the whole country with an area of 32,87,263 km2, on standard scales (1:25,000, 1:50,000 and 1:250,000).
1770
The professional approach in Hydrography starts from the days of "Atlases of parts of India" and "Directory" based on systematic surveys using traditional methods by Rennell and Ritcher Dalymple Horsburg, Ross, Walker, Lloyd etc.
1781
Surveyor General James Rennell’s Bengal Atlas and Bihar Atlas are published.
1784
Lt. Col. Mark Wood prepares plan of Calcutta.
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Cary’s ‘Map of the Great Post-Roads between London and Falmouth’ is prepared.
1785
First Map of ‘Hindoostan’ is prepared by the then Surveyor General of India.
1788
Rennell’s famous Map of India is published and this becomes the starting point in map-making by the Indian Government.
1791
Cassini and William Roy officially establish the Ordnance Survey (first known as the Trigonometrical Survey) as the outcome of survey operations for the connection of England and France in 1787.
1792
Alexander Read uses a Plane Tabling, one of the topographical survey techniques, for the first time to make sketch of Salem and Bara Mahal.
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A. Upjohn prepares a map of Calcutta and its environs in 1792-’93.
1799
Col. W. Lambton initiates trigonometrical and general survey of the South Peninsula at the end of
the year.
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Bourguignon d'Anville
The contributions of renowned French cartographer, J. B. Bourguignon d’Anville (1697-1782), to cartography cannot be disputed. Some of his notable maps include the continents of North America (1746), South America (1748), Africa (1749), Asia (1751), the ‘Indies’ (1752), Europe presented in three sheets (1754-’60) and a general map of the world in two hemispheres (1761). The first map of the ‘Indies’, ‘Carte de l’Inde’ was published in 1752 at the scale of about 1:3,000,000 in four sheets. The map was prepared on paper of almost one sq. mt. area and extended from the Indus to the China Sea, with the subcontinent on the left and Indochina on the right. In 1753, he prepared large-scale maps of ‘Carnate’ and ‘Coromandel’ - the southeast coast of the country. In these large-scale maps, he put down detailed information like "This is the part of India where the settlements that support the trade of the Europeans--." However, the data for most of the areas was so sparse that a major portion of the map was shown as white space. Soon after the Battle of Wandiwash (1760), the purpose and use of maps underwent major changes and they began to be prepared on more scientific grounds.
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James Rennell
The "Father of Indian Geography", James Rennell, as Surveyor General of Bengal, collected together the geographical data acquired by the British Army columns on their campaign and began to map all of India in 1765, subdividing India according to the Mughal provinces (subas) as defined under Emperor Akbar (reigned 1555-1605). The translation of an Islamic geography of the empire, the Ain-e-Akbari (1598) helped him to acquire the knowledge about the old divisions. His ‘Bengal Atlas’ (1781) was the earliest known reference of an atlas which was followed by the ‘Atlas of India’, showing the provinces in the Bengal Presidency and western provinces, published by the then British Government of India in Calcutta. The title of Rennell’s memoirs explicitly equated India with the Mughal Empire - Memoir of a Map of Hindoostan; or the Mogul Empire, although the maps presented the entire subcontinent, usually referred by him as ‘India’.
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