A few days ago I wrote about the struggles I was having with chapter eight of my ‘history of territory’ book.

I have sections on ‘The Politics of the Reformation’ and on the New World which need further work before being slotted in. The former has a discussion of Thomas More, Erasmus, Holbein’s The Ambassadors, and a bit on Henry VIII, but needs more on Luther and possibly Calvin. The latter I’m much less sure about, partly because I think there is little I can say that hasn’t already been said. (While the other things are also widely written on, I think I’m at least asking different questions.) But the discovery, mapping and territorial division of the new world seems too important to the story to leave out, so I’m struggling a bit there. I think I also need to work a reading of Richard Hooker into this chapter somehow, and part of me is wondering if I could use a reading of Shakespeare’s The Tempest (perhaps instead of the one of King Lear) as a way into the colonial questions.

I’m still not sure that I have a good way through these problems, but the more I read the more I realise that on the specifics of new world conquest, cartography and division I will have little to add to work already out there. I’m thinking of works like Jerry Brotton, Trading Territories: Mapping the Early Modern World; and Frank Lestringant, Mapping the Renaissance World: The Geographical Imagination in the Age of Discovery, as well as many others. I reread The Tempest too, but again, not sure that there is much for me to say there.

I’m toying with the idea of beginning the chapter with a discussion of the Treaty of Tordesillas and then quickly moving to the discussions of the European thinkers but with this as a context pre-established. Tordesillas is really interesting because of the calculative nature of the division, abstract space superimposed over unknown seas and lands.

John Allen is giving a talk at UCL this afternoon, talking about topologies of power as better or more adequate ways to think about current political/geographical issues than territory. I’ve read some of his work on this and it should be interesting to hear him. I’m giving a seminar at UCL on the territory project in a couple of weeks time. Maybe John will spark some useful thoughts.