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In summarizing the various mapping activities by the American, British, French, and German combatants during the Revolutionary War, we must reconcile two seemingly opposing factors.


On the one hand, military mapping did not comprise a mass of unrelated, isolated cartographic episodes:  "The study of maps and plans of the military engineers of the eighteenth century . . . reveals a cartographic genre which is truly international: in France or in Britain, in India or in North America, the plans exhibit sufficient common traits of technique and design to be logically intelligible in the light of diffusion of a basic style by a highly mobile and professional group of map makers." (Harley 1968, 65-66)  Most mapping was undertaken by the military engineers, who were in general the most educated of eighteenth-century soldiers and who specialized in large-scale surveys for fortification. Regardless of their nationality, military engineers were trained from the same, or at least similar, textbooks.  The shift of European warfare, increasingly evident after 1700, from the old strategic emphasis on static fortresses to a new strategic emphasis on mobile armies, steadily increased the need for regional geographical information and led to the training of non-engineer officers in the techniques of map making. As with the education of military engineers, the new military academies pursued remarkably similar curricula.  It is important to stress that only a portion of officers were trained in the new academies. Most junior infantry and cavalry officers were concerned primarily with drilling their troops in order to be able to carry out the tactical requirements of the battlefield. Throughout the eighteenth century, strategy remained the preserve of senior regimental and staff officers. A few of the more able junior officers did however take an interest in larger strategic issues and had sufficient education (often self-taught) to make maps and surveys. By and large, we should not exaggerate the spread of cartographic literacy among the army at large (Edney 1994c).


On the other hand, there was no single phenomenon of "military mapping" in the eighteenth century. The engineers made, and general officers used, a wide array of maps. The variety of mapping is clear from the collections by Nebenzahl (1974) and Marshall & Peckham (1976), and from the explorations of Harley (1978). The following categorization is based on the divisions of warfare that were widely acknowledged during the eighteenth century. [note]Rather idiosyncratic classifications were made by Guthorn (1972, 6) and Cumming (1974, 57). The classification presented here is an extension of Harley's (1978, 1-44) more rigorous, three-part categorization of fortification cartography, battle maps, and the "cartography of military movement."[NOTE_9230_0]
			 However, those divisions were not themselves distinct, and so overlapping map categories are inevitable:

            [view] => 
In summarizing the various mapping activities by the American, British, French, and German combatants during the Revolutionary War, we must reconcile two seemingly opposing factors.


On the one hand, military mapping did not comprise a mass of unrelated, isolated cartographic episodes:  "The study of maps and plans of the military engineers of the eighteenth century . . . reveals a cartographic genre which is truly international: in France or in Britain, in India or in North America, the plans exhibit sufficient common traits of technique and design to be logically intelligible in the light of diffusion of a basic style by a highly mobile and professional group of map makers." (Harley 1968, 65-66)  Most mapping was undertaken by the military engineers, who were in general the most educated of eighteenth-century soldiers and who specialized in large-scale surveys for fortification. Regardless of their nationality, military engineers were trained from the same, or at least similar, textbooks.  The shift of European warfare, increasingly evident after 1700, from the old strategic emphasis on static fortresses to a new strategic emphasis on mobile armies, steadily increased the need for regional geographical information and led to the training of non-engineer officers in the techniques of map making. As with the education of military engineers, the new military academies pursued remarkably similar curricula.  It is important to stress that only a portion of officers were trained in the new academies. Most junior infantry and cavalry officers were concerned primarily with drilling their troops in order to be able to carry out the tactical requirements of the battlefield. Throughout the eighteenth century, strategy remained the preserve of senior regimental and staff officers. A few of the more able junior officers did however take an interest in larger strategic issues and had sufficient education (often self-taught) to make maps and surveys. By and large, we should not exaggerate the spread of cartographic literacy among the army at large (Edney 1994c).


On the other hand, there was no single phenomenon of "military mapping" in the eighteenth century. The engineers made, and general officers used, a wide array of maps. The variety of mapping is clear from the collections by Nebenzahl (1974) and Marshall & Peckham (1976), and from the explorations of Harley (1978). The following categorization is based on the divisions of warfare that were widely acknowledged during the eighteenth century. [note]Rather idiosyncratic classifications were made by Guthorn (1972, 6) and Cumming (1974, 57). The classification presented here is an extension of Harley's (1978, 1-44) more rigorous, three-part categorization of fortification cartography, battle maps, and the "cartography of military movement."[NOTE_9230_0]
			 However, those divisions were not themselves distinct, and so overlapping map categories are inevitable:

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