Examining the historical creation of international borders reveals that in the eighteenth century Eurasian polities signed treaties that implemented linear, clearly demarcated borderlines, enforced by state agents. This new desire to regulate the situation of frontiers partially emerged as a result of changes in the technology of mapmaking. At the time, cartography became an ally of enlightened governments and military engineers surveyed territories and their borders. From 1750 until 1790, Habsburg rulers Maria Theresa (r. 1740-1780) and Joseph II (r. 1765-1790) pursued a consistent policy of signing border treaties with their neighbors. For the eighteenth century cases of Austrian Netherlands, Lombardy and Transylvania, maps transformed them from mere optional appendixes to international treaties into a key documentary base used in the negotiation and the border demarcation process. Cartographic products of the second half of the eighteenth century were not only mirroring political developments but were even conditioning diplomatic negotiations regarding the trajectory of state borders.
Madalina Veres is an historian of the Habsburg Monarchy in a global context and is interested in the history of science in the early-modern period with a focus on cartography. She is currently working on her book manuscript entitled “Foot Soldiers of Empire. Habsburg Cartographers in the Age of Enlightened Reform” based on her PhD dissertation defended at the University of Pittsburgh in 2015. Madalina’s work has appeared in journals, such as the Austrian History Yearbook and Itinerario, International Journal on the History of European Expansion and Global Interaction, and in collective volumes dedicated to the history of cartography.