The Cartographic Factory of Modern States

Abstract

States have played a major role in the cartographic production for centuries. This text gives an account of this, but also goes beyond, building on two ideas: from the 16 th century, European cartography has become truly constitutive of the state as conceptually reframed in the late Renaissance; and more recently, the evolving practice of cartography has gone hand in hand with the transformations of the way statehood and state missions have been thought about.