Cartography in the Twentieth Century

 

 

Volume 4: Cartography in the European Enlightenment

Matthew Edney and Mary Sponberg Pedley, Editors
Robert Karrow, Dennis Reinhartz, and Sarah Tyacke, Associate Editors

The European Enlightenment, treated in Volume Four, might be called the era of the map, and it was characterized by several key themes. As a form of knowledge, “map” proliferated as a metaphor exemplifying the construction of knowledge in general; in just one example, Denis Diderot and Jean Le Rond d’Alembert famously described their Encyclopédie as “a kind of world map” (une espèce de mappemonde). The concept of the geographical map was dynamic and exciting to contemporaries, embodying as it did the complex and intellectually fruitful discipline of “mathematical cosmography” that integrated the study of the heavens and the earth. The intersections between maps and scientific inquiry reflected that integration in the work of the newly created, state-sponsored scientific institutions such as the Royal Society (London) and the Académie royale des sciences (Paris) to support cartographic endeavors, which provided necessary data to test and refine hypotheses about the shape of the earth and its place in the solar system. Government and administrative institutions increasingly relied on maps in order to regulate and control their territories, undertaking many surveys to provide civil and military authorities at home and in colonial settings with spatial information, although this remained very much an ad hoc process until about 1800. Expanded map consumption resulted from increasing economic stability and growth after 1650; this in turned spurred increased literacy, allowing the middling sort to engage in cultural and political criticism within the “public sphere.” A burgeoning widespread print and visual culture produced maps in both manuscript and print that adhered to a common aesthetic of layout and design. This aesthetic leaned initially toward the vocabulary of the rococo and trompe-l’oeil and veered to the neo-classical by the end of the period, sometimes eschewing decoration completely. Calls for a “plain” aesthetic, with decorative and pictorial features concentrated in the map periphery, were part of general Enlightenment rhetoric. By emphasizing the long eighteenth century as a period in which makers and users of maps struggled with issues of truth, exactitude, and authority, Volume Four breaks with the traditional understanding of the eighteenth century as the period when cartography became “scientific.”

The exponential increase in cartographic activity after 1650 (the approximate end date of Volume Three), which gave rise to many more artifacts, archives, agencies, techniques, uses, and users, has not generated a comparable increase in historical interest and study. In addition, the narrow and primarily national scope of many potential authors’ interests does not provide sufficient foundation for the broad, cross-national syntheses required for the increasingly international character of modern mapmaking. Volumes Four, Five, and Six, therefore, are structured as large, multi-level, interpretive encyclopedias. Their page size and general appearance will be the same as the first three volumes of the History. They will have the same density of illustrations as earlier volumes, but will be reproduced in full color.

Volume 5: Cartography in the Nineteenth Century

Roger Kain, Editor
Imre Demhardt and Carla Lois, Coeditors
Peter Collier, Associate Editor

The nineteenth century was the era of cartography. Mapmaking was so rapidly institutionalized, specialized, and professionalized that a neologism had been coined for it by the 1820s: “cartography.” From the 1850s, the institutions and practices of this formalized cartography became increasingly international, intersecting across Europe and the Atlantic and being introduced to traditional Asian societies. With Enlightenment debates over observation and measurement rendered moot by ever more efficacious instrumentation and associated statistical modeling, mapping practices became more uniform, and the topographic survey plan, the exemplar of technological certitude, became the prototypical map. Governments and administrations of Europe’s reorganized and industrializing states committed significant resources to establish permanent mapping organizations in order to sustain increasingly intense territorial control both at home and (less successfully) in the overseas empires. The intersections with scientific inquiry were found in new governmental programs to gather data about both society and environment, the better to regulate them; this led to an explosion of thematic mapping to enable a variety of private and public investigators to visualize and understand state territories. Map consumption continued to expand as economic growth, the flourishing of national fervor, increased travel and tourism, mass education with prescribed curricula, introduction of cheaper printing techniques (lithography, stereotyping, etc.), and the wholesale creation of new urban and interurban infrastructures all led to widespread cartographic literacy, map use, the growth of corporate mapmakers. The genteel public sphere was displaced by the mass politics of industrializing societies. The industrialized spirit of the nineteenth century extended to the aesthetics of map design, in part determined by the new print technologies and the eventual introduction of color printing, often exhibiting lush Romantic and Victorian tastes and experimenting with a profusion of typefaces developed by the new foundries.

The exponential increase in cartographic activity after 1650 (the approximate end date of Volume Three), which gave rise to many more artifacts, archives, agencies, techniques, uses, and users, has not generated a comparable increase in historical interest and study. In addition, the narrow and primarily national scope of many potential authors’ interests does not provide sufficient foundation for the broad, cross-national syntheses required for the increasingly international character of modern mapmaking. Volumes Four, Five, and Six, therefore, are structured as large, multi-level, interpretive encyclopedias. Their page size and general appearance will be the same as the first three volumes of the History. They will have the same density of illustrations as earlier volumes, but will be reproduced in full color.

 

Volume 6: Cartography in the Twentieth Century
(2015)

Mark Monmonier, Editor
Peter Collier, Karen Cook, Jon Kimerling, Joel Morrison, Associate Editors  

 

The twentieth century was the era of global mapping. With global competition and war among the industrialized and imperial states, mapping practices became more nearly ubiquitous. The need to harness and regulate domestic economies in support of this global competition made mapping a fundamental activity of government administration; the visualization of spatial phenomena became its common currency. At the same time, new technologies, notably aerial photography and later satellite sensing, allowed the industrial world to implement what was only imagined in earlier centuries: the transformation of terrae incognitae into known and mapped spaces. Conversely, as modern mapping practices permeated all corners of the industrial societies and of many of the non-industrial societies as well, they became increasingly specialized, and communities of map consumers became increasingly differentiated. This diffuse process was exacerbated by a proliferation of aesthetic styles, variously deployed by different mapping communities. Digital technologies, such as electronic navigation systems and the internet, were driven initially by defense needs. By the very end of the century, however, they had spawned new dynamic and communal cartographies that further extended and realigned the communities of map producers and consumers.

The exponential increase in cartographic activity after 1650 (the approximate end date of Volume Three), which gave rise to many more artifacts, archives, agencies, techniques, uses, and users, has not generated a comparable increase in historical interest and study. In addition, the narrow and primarily national scope of many potential authors’ interests does not provide sufficient foundation for the broad, cross-national syntheses required for the increasingly international character of modern mapmaking. Volumes Four, Five, and Six, therefore, are structured as large, multi-level, interpretive encyclopedias. Their page size and general appearance will be the same as the first three volumes of the History. They will have the same density of illustrations as earlier volumes, but will be reproduced in full color.

 

Introduction and Historiography

I: Major Technical Developments in Cartography and GIS
   Geodetic triangulation; figure of the earth
   Surveying instrumentation and techniques

     - training, apprenticeship, and textbooks
   Scales and metrication
   Navigation (including longitude determination)
   Changing theory, practice, and training
   Map transformations, coordinate systems
   Cartographic instrumentation
   Map production
   Storage media: paper, film, electronic media, etc.
   New formats

   Division of labor and mass production in cartography
   Cartographic signs:
     • New specialized techniques and symbolism
     • The third dimension in cartography
     • Animation
  Cartographic algorithms
  The interactive map and hypertext
  GIS

 

II:Maps and the Military; Defense and Surveillance Technologies
   World War I
   Geopolitical use of maps in the interwar period
   World War II
  The Cold War
  Civilian applications of military technology

 

III:Maps and the Arts, Sciences, and Humanities
     Maps and the Sciences
      • Earth Sciences: geological mapping and geology, geomorphology, climatology, meteorology, soil science, hydrology, geophysics (including volcanology, seismology, and geomagnetism), and oceanography.
     • The Life Sciences
     • Engineering
     • Medicine and Public Health
   Maps and the Social Sciences
    • Geography
    • Psychology

 

IV:Maps and Public Life
    Legal and Public Policy
     • copyright
     • privacy
     • data standards, accuracy, and uncertainty (and its representation)
     • access
     • pricing strategies, marketing
     • liability
     • land-use legislation
     • boundary issues
     • political redistricting
     • hierarchies of mapping agencies
     • international cooperation
   Public Information and Communications
     • media
     • commercial mapping

     • History
     • Anthropology
     • Archaeology
     • Sociology
     • Economics and Management
  Maps and the Arts and Humanities
     • Maps and Literature
     • Maps and Linguistics
     • Maps and Philosophy and Aesthetics
     • Maps and Design

     • wayfinding
     • advertising
     • growth of map collections and map librarianship and cartobibliography
     • education
     • the Internet/World Wide Web
  Maps and Public Administration
    • basic mapping — a world survey
    • cadastral mapping
    • real property assessment
    • land use and land cover mapping — a world survey
    • statistical mapping — a world survey
    • the national atlas
    • environmental management
    • growth control
    • planning
    • environmental protection and remediation
    • risk management (hazard maps)
    • emergency management
    • demographic analysis

V:Maps in Everyday Life
    Aesthetics
    Recreation
    Humor
    Folk cartography