CARTOPHAGE THAT TERRITORY

Map historian Brian Harley has said “…cartography [is] primarily a form of political discourse concerned with the acquisition and maintenance of power.” Dennis Wood, in The Power of Maps (1992) quotes Joseph Conrad in The Heart of Darkness about blank spaces on a map being of interest to colonial powers. This leads Wood to quote Harley, that the “thirst for the blank spaces” is “a symptom of a deeply ingrained colonial mentality….In this view the world is full of empty spaces ready for taking....” Wood then states that mapmaking “…is not a disinterested cartographic activity, but the result of the…intertwining of polity and mapmaking….” Next, he says, “Mapmaking societies…reach out, not of course to make maps more comprehensive (much less more truthful), but in the unfolding of the dynamic that their growth and development have helped to set in motion (and in which the cartographic enterprise is an essential and committed partner). In so doing they subsume whatever they can….”

In an act of cartophage (my term) the colonial society and its cartography “devour” the colonized. An instructive example is the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885--part of the “Scramble for Africa”--in which a map of Africa, and thus the actual territory, was divided up. African territory was eaten up--cartophaged--by the colonial powers.

In an interesting article in Early Modern Literary Studies (“Partial Views: Shakespeare and the Map of Ireland,” Sept. 1998), Bernard Klein traces the development of English views vis-à-vis Ireland in plays of Shakespeare, in the 1590s, and English cartography of the same general period. Klein finds that in these two types of social production the Irish moved, in English eyes and maps, from a menacing presence of “wild men and women” living in a shadowy periphery, to forced absence, to visible inclusion in the spatial unit of England, i.e., the subjugated Irish became “English,” at least on contemporary maps.

To conclude: Maps do not only contain knowledge made palatable on cartographic representations, they help to ensnare, dominate, digest, and control.

CARTOGRAPHIC SUBTERFUGES ON THE MINESCAPE

When I worked as Inspector of surface (strip) coal mines for the Kentucky Dept. of Natural Resources, in the Appalachia part of eastern Kentucky, in (bloody) Harlan and Leslie counties, the job consisted largely of interpreting maps. The Operators (mining companies) submitted plans on large-scale maps and my job was to determine how the plans fit reality, as depicted on 7.5x7.5 USGS quad maps and the existing landscape, which was rugged in the extreme. As the actual mining progressed, I was responsible for determining whether the operation stayed within the parameters of their plans and Kentucky surface mine laws. (Generally, the legacy of mining in Appalachia is one of severe environmental destruction. I, in my environmentalist idealism, went there to “save the hills” and the Kentucky River which flows through my beloved Inner Bluegrass.)

There were map details galore to observe, such as property lines, contour lines, placement of access roads, placement of overburden and its angle of repose, and construction of dams and catch basins (I was a certified dam inspector). I was responsible, also, for watching out for “wildcat” mines in my area. (I was “the Law;” it’s a wonder I didn’t get shot!) I spent hundreds of hours tromping the hills, many times with U.S. Forest Service Rangers, cautious for rattlesnakes and avoiding “hollers” that had empty corn bags lying at their entrances, indicating that moonshiners were at work up-holler. (Leslie County [county seat: Hyden, population 600] got its first road to the outside world in the early 1960s. The federal highway through parts of the county measured 30 feet wide and was unpaved in parts.)

Back to maps: the mining Inspector’s relation to the Operator was adversarial (even though I amiably sipped coffee with them in their trucks) in that I was trying to catch them at their cartographic subterfuges. I interpreted maps in the office (in Hazard), standing on the mountainous minescape, in my vehicle, and even in the Operator’s trucks. It was a contest--worth a whole heap of expense to the Operator--between the State (represented by me) and the Operator, of who could best interpret cartographic truth and fiction.

CARTOGASM

Today (July 2007), at the Newberry Library, in Chicago, where I am on a National Endowment for the Humanities three-week fellowship, I saw a beautiful, breathtaking and nearly perfect copy (meaning original specimen) of a Ptolemy Geographia, printed 1486 (only 521 years old!), about 34x24x6 in., with a Ptolemy world map inside.

Allow me to explain the significance of the Ptolemy. Old friend Cristoforo would have had a copy of this same atlas. Actually, there were many editions printed throughout the 15th century, beginning ca. A.D. 1400, when it reappeared after a thousand years, brought from Byzantium. The problem was that Ptolemy, working ca. A.D. 150, underestimated the circumference of the Earth by 1/6 and overestimated Asia by 1/3, stretching it eastward way too far. Columbus used this to justify sailing west to find the Spice Islands (and riches). Anyway, even though the leather-bound book was printed (remember, this was just approx. 40 years after the invention of printing), it was beautifully hand-tinted.

The procedures to "page" and view items are complex and a bit daunting. Sometimes patrons must wear gloves--I don't know when, but they'll certainly tell you. What's neat is that they bring you an item (we, under no circumstances, can ever see the "stacks") and place it, if a book, on whatever size padded cloth book-holder is required. And, you also get padded cloth page holders and de-acidified book-markers. If Homeland Security were run like the Newberry, we could go to bed assured of total safety, with only dreams of cartographic missteps, like Columbus', to disturb our dreams.

The second item I paged just for me. It was a small (about 8x5x1") leather-bound manuscript book (ca. 1600) from Turkey, in Arabic, with EACH PAGE exquisitely hand-written and hand-tinted, in, particularly, medium blue, red, and gold. Besides about 12 paintings, it contains three maps: a world map, Asia, and the New World (which is incomplete, of course). Now here is the kicker: Turkish/Arab/Persian maps placed south at the top! (I coined the neologism--australocentrism--to call this practice.) That's why I especially wanted to see this book and its three maps.

I also paged an Albrecht Durer world map (1515), which attempts to show the globality of Earth in two dimensions. You recall Durer; his early self-portrait etching was the envy and model for every hippie male during the 1960s.