The Dictionary of Human Geography

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propaganda maps, which probably convinced

few people who were not already Nazi sympa-

thizers, to a post-First World War collaboration

between scholars and activist politicians eager

for a ‘Greater Germany’. Similarly, Cosgrove

and della Dora (2005) offer a perceptive inter-

pretation of the vivid pictorial Second World

War maps ofLos Angeles Timescartographer

Charles Owens, a self-trained newspaper artist

fascinated with aviation, cinema and photo-

journalism. Cloud (2002), whose work is

similarly grounded in archives and interviews,

studied the ‘military–industrial–academic com-

plex’ during the Cold War and provides

numerous insights on the intelligence com-

munity’s contributions to private-sector GIS

and remote sensing, including the use of

classified satellite imagery to update domestic

topographic mapsand the paradox of con-

ceptual details of top-secret research and

development efforts ‘hidden in plain sight’

in readily available cartographic and photo-

grammetric journals.

Research on the societal impacts of map-

ping is also concerned with public access to

geographical information, including the role of

government and other institutions in produ-

cing and distributing maps, influencing their

content, and restraining or promoting their

use. In this context, the map becomes not

only an artefact or tool, but also a piece of

intellectual property or an opportunity for

international collaboration (Rhind, 2000).

Moreover, growing use of theinternetas a

medium for delivering and integrating geo-

graphical information has not only altered the

appearance and usability of maps but substan-

tially altered relationships between public and

private sectors as well as between map author

and map viewer (Taylor, 2006a). The increas-

ingly eclectic nature of maps and mapping

promises to make map study a fascinating

and challenging geographical endeavour,

whatever one calls it. mm

Suggested reading

Harley (2001a); MacEachren (1995); Monmonier

(2004); Montello (2002); Pickles (2004); Taylor

(2006).

cartography, history of The study of the

processes whereby people in all cultures and

in all periods have variously made and used

mapsto comprehend, organize and act in

space and place, together with their motives

for and effects of doing so. A primary element

ofhuman geographyand thehistory of

geography, the history ofcartography is

also widely recognized across thehumanities

and social sciences as an intellectually vibrant

and exemplary interdisciplinary field of study

that draws on and makes significant contribu-

tions to many historical fields. Note that ‘his-

torical cartography’per seis the practice of

representing past distributions or events in

maps; as such, it constitutes a particular topic

for historians of cartography (Skelton, 1972).

Librarians, professors, lawyers and lay

scholars (notably collectors and their dealers)

have studied maps as historical phenomena

since the 1700s. Traditionally, such studies

have elucidated the content of old maps in

order to generate locational and morpho-

logical data for use by other historians, notably

those of geography, exploration andcolo-

nialism, but also historical geographers, geo-

morphologists, lawyers, archaeologists and

students of cities and landscapes. Even so,

there was little disciplinary identity for such

‘map history’ before the twentieth century:

map historians were few in number, widely

dispersed and they were constrained within

national schools by differential physical and

linguistic access to primary sources. The

viscount de Santare ́m’s 1839 neologism of

‘cartography’, to mean the study of old maps,

accordingly could not take root; it was instead

quickly appropriated by professional map-

makers. A more coherent scholarly commu-

nity coalesced aroundImago Mundi, founded

in 1935 by Leo Bagrow; this is still the leading

journal in the field and has since 1967 given

rise to biennial international conferences

(Skelton, 1972; Harley, 1986, 1987; Edney,

2005a).

The successful promotion after 1945 of

cartography as an academic subject entailed

the expansion and consolidation of a previ-

ously minor, sporadic and internalist history

of cartographic techniques. The new concern

for such a ‘history of cartography’ was truly

innovative in that it focused on map form

rather than on map content, and on archival

and contextual research rather than on carto-

bibliography and map analysis. It generated

significant studies, for example of the histories

of map printing and thematic mapping. From

this perspective, academic cartography pro-

vided historians of cartography – however

briefly – with both an intellectual framework

(Woodward, 1974) and an institutional home

(Harley and Woodward, 1989; Edney, 2005b).

Both ‘map history’ and the ‘history of car-

tography’ were thoroughly intertwined with

the modern ideology of cartography. Indeed,

that ideology has in large part depended upon

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CARTOGRAPHY, HISTORY OF