ABSTRACT
The distorted borders on Boswell's map were the result of a process of state power as translated through the competing discourses of rival institutions within the state, a process that political historians have conceptualized as "governmentality," after Michel Foucault. Far from being the mute vehicle of power, the map was an agent with a mind of its own, capable of diverging from the desires of its designers and reconceptualizing British identity in unintended ways. Modern maps were bound up with nation-building and the nation-state. New map objects proliferated to suit the desires of the common commercial traveler. Scotland and Ireland were missing from the catalogues, however, as the maps of the British nation used in schools typically ended with England. England continued to rely upon outdated information about Scotland's geography. Defying the pedagogy of assimilation and the marginalization of Scotland, the cheap printed map had engraved a sense of difference into understandings of British identity.
