From peninsular war to coordinated cadastre: William light’s route maps of Portugal and Spain, and his founding of Adelaide, the ‘grand experiment in the art of colonization’

Abstract

William Light’s appointment as Leader of the South Australian Colonization Commissioners’ ‘First Expedition’, as first Surveyor-General of the new British Province of South Australia, and his founding of the City of Adelaide in 1837, owes much to his military experiences in the British Royal Navy, and in the British Army where he served as a cavalry reconnaissance officer and Deputy Assistant Quarter Master General during the Peninsular War (1809–1814). In 1813, Light’s mapping and assessment of routes through northern Portugal and Spain assisted in planning of the Vitória campaign and thereafter. For the advance of infantry, cavalry and artillery, he reported on inaccuracies and details omitted in Lopez’s maps, on the condition and practicability of routes through Portugal’s Tras os Montes, Spain’s Castilla y León, and crossings of the Esla and Ebro rivers. This paper examines Light’s unpublished Peninsular War diary, route maps, sketch maps and topographical watercolour paintings of Portugal, Spain and South Australia. It also discusses the links between the surveying and route mapping he undertook during his military service and the work he did in peacetime, as well as his original coordinated cadastre for ‘the Adelaide Plain, exemplified by the beautiful 1838 watercolour’ manuscript map Plan of the Preliminary Country Sections in the District of Adelaide, and design of a transport network for the Adelaide Plain which is still largely intact to this day.