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Which choice best states the primary purpose of the text?

In mid-nineteenth-century cartography, the shift from pictorial topographical views to utilitarian contour mapping is often framed as an unmediated triumph of scientific objectivity. Yet early state surveys, such as Thomas Colby’s Ordnance Survey of Ireland, deliberately paired precise triangulation grids with pictorial landscape sketches. Colby understood that provincial officials and rural landowners possessed distinct visual literacies; the sketches were not nostalgic embellishments, but communicative bridges designed to secure local cooperation with imperial measurement. By examining these hybrid maps through the lens of bureaucratic negotiation rather than aesthetic inertia, scholars can discern how cartographic standardization established its authority not by immediately displacing customary forms, but by strategically co-opting them.

Which choice best states the primary purpose of the text?

Answer & explanation

Correct answer: B. It reinterprets a seemingly obsolete feature of nineteenth-century maps as a deliberate method for facilitating administrative standardization.

The text begins by noting the common view that nineteenth-century cartography swiftly replaced pictorial styles with purely scientific, objective measurements. It then presents Thomas Colby's surveys, which combined triangulation with pictorial sketches, explaining that this was not mere 'aesthetic inertia' or nostalgia, but an intentional strategy to secure cooperation across different visual literacies. Finally, the author concludes that this hybridity reveals how cartographic standardization took hold by co-opting familiar conventions rather than immediately abandoning them. Thus, the text's primary purpose is to reinterpret a seemingly backward or obsolete element (pictorial sketches) as a calculated tool that advanced administrative standardization (Choice B).

Choice A is incorrect because the passage does not suggest that the surveys lacked accuracy or that landowners actively resisted triangulation.

Choice C is incorrect because the author does not criticize Colby's methods, but rather analyzes them as an effective administrative strategy.

Choice D is incorrect because the passage does not discuss modern survey techniques or trace the long-term evolution of visual literacy.

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Which choice best states the primary purpose of the text?

Which choice best states the primary purpose of the text?

Answer & explanation

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