Between 1660 and 1720 the British American empire expanded to incorporate new settlements, new trade routes, and it occupied a growing place in the British export economy. This expansion created challenges in transoceanic navigation and understanding of local geography, particularly as ambitions to trade in new markets in Spanish America gained traction. Mariners, merchants, scientists and policymakers required useful knowledge to enable their voyages and imperial activities. To meet this growing demand, print artisans in London produced an increasing amount of printed geographical information in the form of maps, charts and geographical texts. Draftsmen, engravers and printers applied their skill and labour to produce 179 maps and charts of the British Americas, and these artisans in turn benefitted from the income supplied by consumers. The increasing valorisation of empiricism and eyewitness knowledge resulting from the 'scientific revolution' also informed the inclusion of useful and practical information on maps and charts, and publishers asserted their credentials in claims to accuracy and novelty. Crown-sponsored voyages, buccaneers and chartered companies supplied eyewitness information from the Spanish Pacific and Caribbean, although the quality of information varied depending on the voyage itineraries and priorities. The growth of this market for maps and charts of the Americas highlights how the economic and territorial exploitation inherent to British empire was partly enabled by artisans living thousands of miles from colonial spaces. It further demonstrates the pivotal role of empire in Britain's long-term economic growth, and highlights that useful knowledge was central not peripheral to early modern socio-economic development.

The goal of this work is to navigate through an office environmentsusing only visual information gathered from four cameras placed onboard a mobile robot. The method is insensitive to physical changes within the room it is inspecting, such as moving objects. Forward and rotational motion vision are used to find doors and rooms, and these can be used to build topological maps. The map is built without the use of odometry or trajectory integration. The long term goal of the project described here is for the robot to build simple maps of its environment and to localize itself within this framework.

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Today, there are only a limited number of surveys of the sky at 1 to 20 GHz. These frequencies lie below the all-sky surveys of WMAP and Planck, but are critical in constraining the spectral slope of Galactic synchrotron emission. Knowledge of the large-scale spectral morphology of Galactic synchrotron emission is critical in the understanding of the interstellar medium and the weak signal from the polarised cosmic microwave background. Recently, ground based observations from S-PASS, C-BASS and the QUIJOTE Multifrequency Instrument (MFI) have been populating these missing frequencies. This thesis presents the first QUIJOTE MFI maps of the Northern sky in total intensity at 11, 13, 17 and 19 GHz, and the first single-dish mapping observations of Lynds dark cloud, LDN1622 at 5 and 13.7GHz. The observations from both instruments are used to probe the nature of spinning dust emission on degree and arcminute scales within the Galaxy. A full data reduction and calibration pipeline for QUIJOTE MFI time-ordered-data is described. The absolute flux density scale uncertainty of the MFI data is between 2 and 3 per cent. The pipeline characterises key properties of the MFI, such as the RFI sources, beams, bandpasses, 1/f noise and more. A key part of the pipeline was the development of an MPI ready Destriping map-maker and a maximum-likelihood map-maker. The map-making code can be applied to a range of different single-dish instruments and is used to reduce both the QUIJOTE MFI wide-survey maps of the Northern sky, and the GBT arcminute resolution raster observations of LDN 1622. A detailed discussion is given on the simulations used to test the integrity of the map-making implementation. Parametric model fitting to the SEDs of four spinning dust emission regions is performed. The MFI wide-survey maps are used in conjunction with existing multifrequency 1degree survey data. The addition of MFI maps is used to confirm the previously tentative spinning dust emission source LDN 1582/84. The mean peak frequency of spinning dust emission over the four spinning dust sources is found to be ⟨νsp⟩ = 27.2 +/- 0.7 GHz, and the mean ratio of the peak spinning dust brightness over the dust optical depth is ⟨Asp/τ250⟩ = 1.24 +/- 0.18 × 104 Jy/τ250. Spectral index maps are derived from the MFI wide-survey data in combination with 408 MHz and WMAP 23 GHz data. These maps are used to further quantify the ubiquity of spinning dust emission throughout the Galaxy. The results show that the median flux density spectral index within the inner Galactic disk for |b| < 2° is 0.24 +/- 0.07. This implies that at 23 GHz, spinning dust emission contributes 25 +/- 5 per cent of the total integrated emission within the inner disk of the Galaxy.

This thesis is about British disengagement from the southern coast of the Persian Gulf. Britain never had colonies in the region, but had held significant imperial sway over nine Protected States since the nineteenth century. The informal empire remained intact until the Labour government (1964-70) announced its intention to leave, in consequence of which Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates became independent in 1971. This thesis attempts three things. First, it draws on extensive archival research to provide the fullest possible account of British withdrawal: why it had to leave, how it did and what followed. The Gulf rulers wanted to maintain British protection for their own security, but Britain decided nonetheless on military retreat, because it needed to placate the domestic constituency in order to push forward the reversal of social reforms due to economic retrenchment. The Gulf rulers responded quickly, yet unsuccessfully, in deciding how many states would be formed as they achieve independence. It was only after the Gulf rulers and the British diplomats on the ground made late and mutually acceptable compromises about coming together that the nine Protected States became three new independent sovereign states. In the end, Britain was able to leave the Gulf peacefully, and the new states retained close relations with Britain. Second, the study of an informal empire illuminates the enduring collaborative relationship between Britain and the Gulf rulers, characterised by the nominal sovereignty given to the Protected States. This relationship not only helped Britain maintain its imperial sway at little cost, but also made possible a peaceful withdrawal and the orderly emergence of the new states. Third, this informal empire characterised by collaboration and nominal sovereignty laid the structural foundations for the later international society in the region – a point more generally telling for the study of international relations.

In the early 19th century the civilian market for maps expanded in Sweden. During previous centuries geographical maps had been confidential, accessible only to those in government office. Circulation of geographical knowledge among civilians was transmitted mainly through written parish descriptions. From 1797, when the first royal privilege for the production of maps was issued, the secrecy laws relaxed: private actors could now publish maps for civilian use. In order for the potential that the producers saw in the civilian map market to be realised, consumers had to want cartographic depictions of geographical information. The demand is evident through the expansion of the civilian market. However, the development raises questions of how and why cartographical depictions of information became prominent.  Through theories of circulation of knowledge, visual culture and consumer practices, this thesis shows in what ways the civilian map market was an arena for the circulation of knowledge. The market was supported by institutions subscribing to different ideals of how knowledge was transmitted, sought to further them by supporting the market. Trust for maps as a medium was built upon claims regarding the scientific methods used in their production, and producers sought to make maps understandable to consumers by adjusting the way cartographic information was presented, based on who the intended users were. Increasingly producers also adjusted to consumer demands, and took over the effort of making practical adjustments to the maps for use, of the kind that consumers previously had done themselves.

Le rayonnement du Fond Diffus Cosmologique est une source riche et propre d’informations cosmologiques. L’étude du CMB au cours des dernières décennies a conduit à la mise en place d’un modèle standard pour la cosmologie et a permis de mesurer précisément ses principaux paramètres. Il a également transformé le domaine, en le basant davantage sur les données observationnelles et les approches numériques et statistiques.A l’heure actuelle, l’inflation est le principal paradigme décrivant les premiers moments de notre Univers. Elle prédit la génération de fluctuations de la densité de matière primordiale et des ondes gravitationnelles. Le signal de polarisation du CMB porte la signature de ces ondes gravitationnelles sous la forme de modes-B primordiaux. Une future génération de missions spatiale d’observation de la polarisation du CMB est bien adaptée à l’observation de cette signature de l’inflation.Cette thèse se concentre sur l’optimisation d’une future mission spatiale CMB qui observera le signal en modes-B pour atteindre une sensibilité de r = 0,001. Plus précisément, j’étudie la stratégie d’observation et l’impact des effets systématiques sur la qualité de la mesure de polarisation / The Cosmic Microwave Background radiation is a rich and clean source of Cosmological information. Study of the CMB over the past few decades has led to the establishment of a “Standard Model” for Cosmology and constrained many of its principal parameters. It hasalso transformed the field into a highly data-driven domain.Currently, Inflation is the leading paradigm describing the earliest moments of our Universe. It predicts the generation of primordial matter density fluctuations and gravitational waves. The CMB polarisation carries the signature of these gravitational waves in the form of primordial “B-modes”. A future generation of CMB polarisation space mission is well suited to observe this signature of Inflation.This thesis focuses on optimising a future CMB space mission that will observe the B-modesignal for reaching a sensitivity of r = 0.001. Specifically, I study the optimisation of the scanning strategy and the impact of systematics on the quality of polarisation measurement

In geography, maps are a tool of placement which locate both the cartographer and the territory made cartographic. In order to place objects in space, the cartographer inserts his own judgment into the scheme of his design. During the Early Modern period, maps were no longer suspicious icons as they were in the Middle Ages and not yet products of science, but subjects of discourse and works of art. The image of a cartographer’s territory depended on his vision—both the nature and placement of his gaze—and the product reflected that author’s judgment. This is not a study of maps as such but of Early Modern literature, cartographic by nature—the observations of the author were the motif of its design. However, rather than concretize observational judgment through art, the Early Modern literature discussed asserts a reverse relation—the generation of the material which may be observed, the reality, by the views of authors. Spatiality is now an emerging philosophical field of study, taking root in the philosophy of Deleuze & Guattari. Using the notion prevalent in both Postmodern and Early Modern spatiality, which makes of perception a collective delusion with its roots in the critique of Kant, this thesis draws a through-line across time, as texts such as Robert Burton’s An Anatomy of Melancholy, Thomas More’s Utopia, and selections from William Shakespeare display a tendency to remove value from the standard of representation, to replace meaning with cognition and prioritize a view of views over an observable world. Only John Milton approaches perception as possibly referential to objective reality, by re-inserting his ability to observe and exist in that reality, in a corpus which becomes less generative simulations of material than concrete signposts to his judgment in the world.