Mapping the Sovereign State: Technology, Authority, and Systemic Change
@article{Branch2011MappingTS, title={Mapping the Sovereign State: Technology, Authority, and Systemic Change}, author={Jordan Branch}, journal={International Organization}, year={2011}, volume={65}, pages={1 - 36} }
Abstract This article examines the effect of cartography on the development of the modern state system. I argue that new mapping technologies in early modern Europe changed how actors thought about political space, organization, and authority, thus shaping the creation of sovereign states and international relations. In particular, mapping was fundamental to three key characteristics of the medieval-to-modern shift: the homogenization of territorial authority, the linearization of political…
77 Citations
‘Colonial reflection’ and territoriality: The peripheral origins of sovereign statehood
- History
- 2012
The modern international system is commonly argued to have originated within Western Europe and spread globally during centuries of colonialism. This article argues, instead, that the character of…
The Global Politics of Science and Technology: An Introduction
- Art
- 2014
The reality of international politics has rapidly grown in complexity. This complexity has been pressuring the discipline of International Relations (IR) to engage with new phenomena, concerns, and…
‘Conquest from barbarism’: The Danube Commission, international order and the control of nature as a Standard of Civilization
- Political Science
- 2019
In recent years, International Relations scholarship has looked back to the 19th century as a watershed epoch for the formation of the current international order and the development of ‘Standards of…
Territory in the Law of Jurisdiction: Imagining Alternatives
- Law, Political Science
- 2017
Territory is central to the doctrine of international jurisdiction. However, the use of territory as the jurisdictional linchpin is a political choice, the result of a confluence of historically…
Title : Structured Sovereign Inequalities and the Global South : how hierarchical positionality can inform conditions of agency for peripheral states of the international politics
- Sociology
- 2017
What is the Global South and what does it tell us about the states that fall in that category? Structural approaches to international relations shed little light on possibilities of agency for…
Before Hegemony: Adam Smith, American Independence, and the Origins of the First Era of Globalization
- Economics, HistoryInternational Organization
- 2012
Abstract While extensive scholarship has shown that it is possible to maintain global economic openness after hegemony, economic liberalization is still thought to be unlikely prior to hegemonic…
Built on Borders: Tensions with the Institution Liberalism (Thought It) Left Behind
- Political ScienceInternational Organization
- 2021
Abstract The Liberal International Order is in crisis. While the symptoms are clear to many, the deep roots of this crisis remain obscured. We propose that the Liberal International Order is in…
Nationalism and war for territory: from ‘divisible’ territories to inviolable homelands
- Sociology
- 2017
Abstract How did the rise of nationalism affect patterns of interstate wars? The conventional wisdom in mainstream security studies tends to treat the rise of nationalism as a ‘force amplifier’ that…
Cartography and Territory in International Relations
- Political Science
- 2020
Disputes over resources, citizenship and jurisdictions are everyday occurrences in international relations. Essentially they are questions of sovereignty, borders and, as such, territory.…
References
SHOWING 1-10 OF 157 REFERENCES
The Cartographic Production of Territorial Space: Mapping and State Formation in Early Modern Denmark
- Sociology
- 2008
Contemporary transformations in global politics have called into question the spatiality of the sovereign territorial state. In light of such claims to change, this article argues that in order to…
Beyond state-centrism? Space, territoriality, and geographical scale in globalization studies
- Sociology
- 1999
Since the early 1970s, debates have raged throughout the social sciences concerning the process of ‘‘globalization’’ ^ an essentially contested term whose meaning is as much a source of controversy…
Insularity, sovereignty and statehood: the representation of islands on portolan charts and the construction of the territorial state
- History
- 2005
Abstract This article investigates the cartographic origins of the idea that the territorial state is a unified, bounded, homogeneous and naturally occurring entity, in a world of equivalent but…
Monarchs, Ministers, and Maps: The Emergence of Cartography as a Tool of Government in Early Modern Europe
- History
- 1994
In the sixteenth century, European rulers attempting to consolidate their power realized that better knowledge of their lands would strengthen their control over them. By 1550, the cartographer's art…
The New Sovereignty in International Relations1
- Law
- 2003
The academic study of sovereignty is undergoing a mini-renaissance. Stimulated by criticisms of classical conceptions of sovereignty in systemic theories of politics, scholars returned to sovereignty…
Geopolitical Relations in the European Middle Ages: History and Theory
- EconomicsInternational Organization
- 1998
The European Middle Ages have recently attracted the attention of international relations (IR) scholars as a “testing-ground” for established IR theories. Neorealists, historicizing neorealists, and…
The Moral Purpose of the State: Culture, Social Identity, and Institutional Rationality in International Relations
- Economics
- 1999
This book seeks to explain why different systems of sovereign states have built different types of fundamental institutions to govern interstate relations. Why, for example, did the ancient Greeks…
Cartography in France 1660-1848: Science, Engineering, and Statecraft
- History
- 1987
French scientists, engineers, and public officials were responsible for the most important and distinctive innovations in cartography in eighteenth-century Europe. By expanding the analytical uses of…
Maps and Politics
- Sociology
- 1997
The question of whether the power and purpose of maps are inherently political is addressed by this book, which seeks to emphasize that the apparent "objectivity" of the map-making and map-using…