The Surveyor's Model of the World: The Uses and Abuses of History in Introductory Surveying Textbooks

Abstract

A growing body of geographical literature has examined the importance of power relations in the history of surveying and mapping, yet such studies have been virtually ignored by the engineering establishment and the authors of introductory surveying textbooks, many of whom are professional engineers. The present study seeks to compare the "textbook histories" of surveying with recent analyses of surveying as a mechanism of social control. The study is based on a selection of 15 US surveying textbooks published over the last century and argues that current textbook accounts of the history of surveying are both Eurocentric and nationalistic - legitimizing the state while at the same time denying the significance of power. A number of historiographic changes are proposed as a means of improving the quality of textbook histories of surveying, including (1) a shift away from the search for ancient "origins" and more emphasis on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, (2) an acknowledgement of the imperial legacy of surveying and mapping, and (3) a greater sensitivity to the contested power relations that form the basis of the historical and contemporary practice of surveying and mapping.

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