Petto's Mapping and Charting in Early Modern England and France brings together several emerging trends in the fields of history of science, cartography and patronage, and presents much detail that will be of interest to urban historians. While on one level it explicitly engages with the cultural and symbolic tradition of cartographic history established by J.B. Harley and Denis Wood, and revolves around a comparison between English and French cartographic developments, its story is rooted in a comparative history of commercial, scientific and intellectual networks in London and Paris. In this sense, it is relevant to the recent historiographical trend to focus on cities, and the networks they contain and generate, as key to numerous areas of intellectual and scientific history (see for example, the work of Deborah Harkness and Alexi Baker on science, and scientific instruments, in early modern London).

The book is divided into five chapters; the first focusing on the imagery and iconography of maps, and the remaining four on different genres of map, from local county maps to nautical charts of the East Indies. Chapter 1, ‘Cartographic imagery and representations of power’, sets up the most explicit comparison between London and Paris. Petto highlights the way in which Benedit de Vassallieu's 1604 map of Paris both symbolically and explicitly celebrated the Bourbon monarchy and specifically Henri IV: one of the frames of the map included the line ‘Paris is as Rome was under Augustus’ (p. 15). By comparison, John Norden's 1593 plan of London carried the visual message that through its combination and arrangement of heraldry ‘suggests a parity of the City and the Crown’. This contrast between the courtly patronage of the French state and the diffuse marketplace of London runs through most of the remainder of the book.

The second chapter, ‘Mapping the land’, which begins with a discussion of Ogilby's famous county maps of England, maintains the contrast between the paths of cartographic development taken in France and England, but complicates the picture in an interesting and nuanced way. While many assume that the Cassini project was supported by patronage, and that English mapping was entirely dependent on the whim of all too scarce subscribers and purchasers, Petto shows that cartographers in both realms had to balance both sources of funding, and consequently priorities. Great detail is offered on the networks of publishers and booksellers who supported the respective schemes, which will be of interest to historians of the book and urban networks as well as to historians of cartography.

The remaining chapters address maps made for altogether different purposes. While maps of cities and regions could draw upon the funds released by flattering local pride, maps of the oceans and the New World had altogether more strategic aims. The third chapter addresses the making of nautical charts in the two nations, and the sometimes-belaboured attempts to create local products with greater appeal than those produced in the Netherlands. The final two chapters move beyond Europe to consider English and French mapping of the New World, and the East Indies, respectively. The discussion of conflicts spurred by Guillaume Delisle's map of Louisiana (1718) and the cartographic expression of the persistent disputes over the Acadian peninsula (Nova Scotia) are particularly intriguing. In this context, the comparison between the two nations becomes an explicit competition, and cartographic information became a tool of statecraft. Similarly, the final chapter explores the production of charts of the East Indies. In this context, the commercial priorities of London played an especially important role, but yet again both English and French cartographers were in the wake of the Dutch.

While the metropolitan contexts of Paris and London feature prominently in the earlier chapters, the focus on geopolitical matters in the later chapters does tend to steer the book back toward a more traditional interpretation of the history of cartography. Nonetheless, Mapping and Charting in Early Modern England and France provides a fascinating survey of the development of English and French cartography in the early modern period, and some useful insights into the intellectual and commercial cultures of Paris and London.