India, Northern Part / India, Southern Part

1897

Steel engravings with original outline hand-colouring (each)

a) Print size: 10.63 x 15.35 in (27 x 39 cm)
Sheet size: 12.99 x 17.32 in (33 x 44 cm)
Folded: 12.99 x 8.66 in (33 x 22 cm)

b) Print size: 11.02 x 14.96 in (28 x 38 cm)
Sheet size: 12.99 x 17.32 in (33 x 44 cm)
Folded: 12.99 x 9.45 in (33 x 24 cm)

Published by The Century Co., created by Mathews-Northrupp Co., Buffalo, New York (each)

India, Northern and Southern Parts—A Matched Double-Page Pair from Century Atlas, 1897

This matched pair of large-format atlas maps presents British India divided into its northern and southern halves, as issued in Century Atlas of 1897. Produced at the height of late Victorian imperial administration, the maps reflect the culmination of nineteenth-century survey science and colonial cartographic practice, offering a comprehensive and highly structured vision of the subcontinent under British rule.

The Northern India map encompasses the Punjab, the North-West Frontier, the Indo-Gangetic plain, and the Himalayan borderlands, with railways, canals, and district boundaries meticulously delineated. An inset of the Indus region underscores the strategic and hydraulic significance of the northwest. The Southern India map extends from the Deccan Plateau to Cape Comorin, incorporating Bombay, Madras, Mysore, and Ceylon, and is supplemented by inset maps of Bombay and the Malay Peninsula, situating India within a broader Indian Ocean and Southeast Asian commercial sphere.

Both sheets integrate statistical tables and administrative data directly into their cartouches, a defining feature of the Century Atlas, which sought to combine geographic representation with encyclopaedic instruction. This synthesis of map, data, and imperial infrastructure reflects a moment when India was conceived not merely as a territory, but as a fully quantified and governable imperial system.

Offered together, these two 1897 maps form a coherent visual statement of British India at the close of the nineteenth century, representing one of the most complete American atlas portrayals of the subcontinent before the geopolitical transformations of the twentieth century.

The Century Company was an American publishing company, founded in 1881. Benjamin E. Smith was an American lexicographer and editor known for his work at the Century Company, including the Century Dictionary and this comprehensive atlas, which was released in several editions, including 1897 and 1914.

(Set of two)

NON-EXPORTABLE

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