Constructing Imperial Spaces: Habsburg Cartography in the Age of Enlightenment
Summary and Table of Contents
In the second half of the eighteenth century, military engineers working for the Austrian
Habsburg monarchs mapped in detail for the first time the provinces and borders of their
empire. Despite this development, there is a disjunction in the literature between scholars
who examine the Habsburg monarchy’s evolution under Maria Theresa (1740–1780) and
Joseph II (1765–1790), and those who investigate maps and mapping in the period. This
historiographical divide prevents scholars from considering the part maps may have played
in the efforts of the Habsburg monarchs to construct a centralized “territorial nation” as a
serious contender to nation-states premised on ethnic homogeneity. Maria Theresa’s and
Joseph II’s military, social, religious and economic reforms, and their attempts to increase
uniformity within their dominions – which intensified practices, such as mapping and the
making of geographic descriptions, and surveys of demographic and natural resources –
suggest a modernising entity whose rulers sought to adapt it to the contemporary world.
My thesis analyses the production, circulation, and use of large-scale topographic
provincial and border Habsburg maps for three provinces: the Austrian Netherlands,
Lombardy, and Transylvania. Based on archival sources located in Vienna, Brussels, ClujNapoca, Milan, Paris and Sibiu, I show how Maria Theresa’s and Joseph II’s desire to map
their dominions led to the establishment of imperial corps of military engineers and the
development of a network of scientific centers promoting the study of astronomy and
geography. Once they had established a number of mapmaking institutions and recruited
or educated a new generation of military engineers, the Habsburg rulers commissioned the
first detailed topographic survey of their lands and prepared cartographic material to be
used in border regulations with their neighbors.
Maps offer a new angle to interpret and assess the efficiency of early modern governments
to construct centralized empires, such as the Habsburg monarchy. Maria Theresa’s and
Joseph II’s determination to obtain a detailed image of their domains and imperial borders
illustrates the reliance of Enlightenment rulers on emergent sciences, such as cartography,
to further the defence and expansion of their empires.
The first chapter functioning as an introduction, “Habsburg Cartography in the Age of
Enlightenment,” situates the development of Habsburg cartography in the global context
of eighteenth-century imperial mapmaking enterprises. Moreover, I discuss the impact of
the Habsburg fiscal-military state on mapmaking practices within the Monarchy.
Influenced by cameralist economic theories and political practices that scholars call
Enlightened Absolutism, Maria Theresa (1740-1780), Joseph II (1780-1792) and
Chancellor Kaunitz (1753-1793) relied on cartography as a preliminary step in preparing
the defense and reform of the empire.