1824 Smith Map of India (Compiled and Engraved in Calcutta)

First lithograph map printed in India.

This is an 1824 Samuel Smith and Company map of India and Burma, compiled and engraved in Calcutta during the first years of lithographic printing in India. It is the earliest known lithographed map printed in India, following the introduction of lithographic presses in 1822. Published for the firm's annual Bengal Directory, the map translated the directory's world of appointments, establishments, and official business into visible form. Its extensive coverage of Burma is also significant, as the map's publication coincided with the opening of the First Anglo-Burmese War (1824 - 1826).

A Closer Look

The map extends from Cutch and the Sutlej frontier across northern India to Assam, Burma, and southwestern China, continuing south through the Indian peninsula and Ceylon to the northern Malay Peninsula. The Bay of Bengal occupies the center, bringing the Company's Indian establishments and the Burmese Empire into a single geographical frame. An oval title cartouche identifies the three presidencies through their principal seats: Fort William, Fort St. George, and Bombay.

Color-shading distinguishes military divisions, including those centered on Meerut, Dinapore, Saugor, Nagpur, and Madras. The Nizam's Dominions occupy a substantial area of the Deccan, interrupting any impression of a uniformly administered British territory. Roads connect coastal headquarters with inland stations, while rivers and hachured mountain chains establish the physical framework through which those connections operated. Rather than concentrating on a single campaign, the map makes the dispersed structure of military occupation and civil government legible.

A note at lower left explains the hierarchy of establishments. Military stations containing more than five companies have names in ordinary print, while smaller stations receive a four-petalled symbol. Solid dots identify civil stations in Bengal. These distinctions let the reader separate administrative centers from garrisons and recognize differences in the size of military establishments without consulting a separate list.

The eastern portion follows the river corridors and settlements of the Burmese Empire through Amerapura, Prome, Pegu, and Rangoon, continuing along the Tenasserim coast. Chittagong, Cox's Bazar, Ramu, and the Arakan littoral appear along the contested approaches from Bengal. These places gained immediate significance in 1824: Britain declared war on March 5, and Burmese troops defeated a Bengal Army force at Ramu in May, alarming both Chittagong and Calcutta.

An Early Calcutta Lithographic Map

The map belongs to the opening phase of lithography in India. James Nathaniel Rind (1793 - 1840) brought lithography to Calcutta in August 1822 with a press and printing materials, proposing an official establishment in January 1823. His work coincided with experiments by the French artists Philippe Savignhac and Jean Jacques Belnos, whose lithographic illustrations are documented from at least 1821. Smith's map thus appeared within a few years of the medium's earliest local practice. Its visual style remains that of an engraved map: fine linework, closely spaced hachures, and elaborate lettering within the cartouche. The imprint describes the work as compiled and 'engraved' by the publishers, reflecting the transitional moment captured in this map.

Expanding British Control in India and the First Anglo-Burmese War

By the early 1820s, the British East India Company (EIC) had established undisputed paramountcy across the Indian subcontinent following the decisive defeat of the Maratha Confederacy in 1818. Under Governor-General Lord Hastings, the Company completed its transformation from a commercial trading venture into an imperial sovereign power, binding surviving princely states into subordinate subsidiary alliances and directly governing vast territories through new land-revenue frameworks like the Ryotwari and Mahalwari systems. With internal resistance largely subdued and French regional influence extinguished, the British administrative apparatus shifted toward domestic consolidation and border security, turning its strategic focus toward the volatile, ill-defined northeastern frontier of Bengal.

This stability was quickly disrupted under Hastings's successor, Lord Amherst, whose administration ran directly into the westward expansion of Burma's Konbaung Dynasty. Burmese forces under King Bagyidaw had conquered Assam, Manipur, and Arakan, creating sharp border friction over contested zones like Shapuri Island and prompting Amherst to declare war in March 1824. The ensuing First Anglo-Burmese War (1824 - 1826) proved to be the longest and costliest war in British Indian history; while the British successfully captured Rangoon and pushed up the Irrawaddy River, they suffered roughly 15,000 casualties (the vast majority from dysentery and malaria rather than combat) and incurred staggering expenditures exceeding £13 million. Although the 1826 Treaty of Yandabo ultimately secured substantial territorial gains for the Company, including Assam, Manipur, Arakan, and Tenasserim, the campaign's ruinous financial toll triggered severe fiscal strain across British India and accelerated parliamentary pressure in London for administrative retrenchment.

Publication History

The map was published in Calcutta in 1824 by Samuel Smith and Company for the The New Annual Bengal Directory and Calcutta Kalendar, printed at the Bengal Hurkaru Press. The directory is known to be held by two institutions, one of which lacks the map, itself is uncataloged with limited market history.

Cartographer

Samuel Smith and Co. (fl. 1824 - 1860) was a British printing, bookselling, and publishing firm based at the Bengal Hurkaru Press in Calcutta, active during the early and mid-19th century. Its origins lay in the newspaper, library, stationery, and printing business of Samuel Greenway and Co., which admitted Samuel Smith as a partner in May 1821 and thereafter traded as Greenway and Smith. Subsequently operating under Smith's name, the concern became an important commercial publisher whose output included maps, geographical reference works, directories, almanacs, newspapers, and literary periodicals. Maps also accompanied its travel publications, such as The Darjeeling Guide (1845), which combined geographical description with traveling directions, maps, and route tables. The firm's Bengal Directory, issued under changing titles, supplied administrative, military, commercial, and personal information about the colonial establishment. An advertisement dated March 6, 1826, records a reorganization of the business: Smith and Co. transferred its stationery stock and its copperplate-engraving and card-printing orders to Pengelly, Mortimer and Co. while continuing its other publishing activities. Central to the enterprise was the Bengal Hurkaru, an English-language newspaper established in 1795 whose publication history extended through 1866; under Smith, it became associated with free discussion and support for Indian education. During the 1820s and 1830s, Smith's publications also occupied a prominent position in Calcutta's literary marketplace. The company remained engaged in government printing in the late 1850s, and correspondence extending into February 1860 identifies it as a contractor responsible for printing Acts of the Legislative Council.   Further Details...

Source

Samuel Smith and Co., The New Annual Bengal Directory and Calcutta Kalendar for the Year 1824, (Calcutta: Bengal Harkuru Press, 1824).    

Condition

Good. Lithograph with original wash hand color, printed on two joined sheets. Repaired loss of upper right corner, abrasion to upper left corner, otherwise some small stains and areas of toning, a few minor old repairs on verso.

References

Young, Tom, 'Colesworthy Grant's Portraits of Colonial Society in India: Lithography, Liberalism, and the Global Making of Middle-Class Culture, c. 1833 - 1857', Art History, vol. 45, no. 4 (2022), pp. 712 - 743, note 46. Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, 'The Introduction of Lithography and its Impact on Book Design in India', report of a lecture by Graham Shaw.