Indien and Inner-Asien

1880

Original hand-coloured lithograph on paper

Print size: 13.5 x 16 in (34.5 x 40.5 cm)
Sheet size: 15.25 x 18.5 in (39 x 47 cm)

India and Inner Asia—A Detailed Mid-19th-Century Map from Stieler’s Hand-Atlas, with Insets of Bombay, Calcutta and Madras

This finely produced German atlas map of India, issued for Stieler’s Hand-Atlas by the Gotha publishing house of Justus Perthes, represents one of the most authoritative mid-nineteenth-century European cartographic syntheses of the subcontinent. Compiled within the rigorous German scientific cartographic tradition, the map reflects the growing precision with which British India was surveyed, administered, and conceptualised following the consolidation of Crown rule.

Covering the full extent of the Indian subcontinent, the map integrates dense topographical detail—river systems, mountain ranges, transport routes, and settlements—rendered with exceptional clarity. Administrative divisions are carefully distinguished through hand-colour, reflecting the evolving political geography of British India and its neighbouring regions. Particularly notable are the inset maps of Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras, which emphasise the primacy of these port cities as imperial, commercial, and administrative centres within the nineteenth-century colonial system.

Produced during a period when European atlas cartography increasingly relied upon official surveys and statistical data, the map exemplifies the pedagogical and scientific ambitions of Stieler’s Hand-Atlas, long regarded as the most accurate and influential general atlas of its time. Its clean lithographic execution, disciplined typography, and absence of decorative excess place clarity and information above ornament. Today, maps from Stieler’s Hand-Atlas are sought after for their precision, visual coherence, and their role in shaping European geographic understanding of India at the height of empire.

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