A historical atlas shows a 1700 empire as a solid block of colour with a crisp edge. What is the map asserting that the period would not have recognised?

B. That authority was uniform up to a line and absent beyond

Flat colour imports the modern assumption of a bounded sovereign state onto societies where authority thinned outward through frontier zones. The convention is not neutral, it makes the past legible by making it anachronistic, which is a trade every historical atlas quietly makes.