Conquest, Cartography and the Development of Linear Frontiers during Henry VIII's Invasion of France in 1544-1546

When Henry VIII captured Boulogne in 1544, he did not seek to rule the Boulonnais territory as the rightful king of France but instead annexed these lands to the English crown. His move to justify his actions by right of conquest rather than through dynastic succession led to the development of precisely mapped linear borders. The geometric maps of the Boulonnais produced in the mid-1540s visually represented the ideology of the right of conquest. Henry’s efforts to obtain a geometrically measured border of his lands in the Boulonnais facilitated the development of linear boundaries by moving away from the less precise ‘feudal’ definitions of sovereignty, whereby different rulers could have settlements in the same territory, towards one based around precisely mapped linear borders.