Mapping Kashmir: Cartography, Routes, and the Colonial Production of Geographical Knowledge in 19th-Century Travel Accounts

The nineteenth century witnessed a major shift in the spatial understandings and representations of Kashmir. This was largely induced by the European colonial expansion and the strategic imperatives of the British Empire. This paper is an attempt to explore the complex relationship between cartography, travel accounts and the production of geographical knowledge within the framework of colonial Kashmir. Drawing on a wide range of travel accounts, survey reports and early nineteenth-century maps, it illustrates how Kashmir was measured, ordered and classified in imperial administrative and geopolitical terms. The importance of well-travelled routes of commerce and travel in the construction of geographical narratives. It is argued that these routes offered a way of gaining knowledge and demonstrating power. It also delves into the colonial gaze that picked and chose how to see and depict the landscapes, the mountains and cultural spaces of Kashmir, turning a complex, lived environment into a legible, standardised cartographic territory. In the end, this work argues that the cartography of Kashmir was not merely an objective scientific exercise but a deeply political act of colonial knowledge production, solidifying British authority and reconfiguring the geographical imagination of the region for decades to come.