The Dictionary of Human Geography

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spatial discourses. For example, Carter (1987)

exposed the ‘spatial history’ of the shifting

configuration of Australia in texts, graphics

and cartographics, and Helgerson (1992)

explored the early modern construction of

‘England’’ as a site of national desire.

Today, the history of cartography features

several potentially conflicting elements. Its

practitioners are distributed across several dis-

ciplines and its institutional situation suffers

accordingly. But it has a strong intellectual

core in the rejection of traditional map history

and the concomitant recognition that maps

are cultural documents: maps are not theter-

ritory, in that they do not represent the land

and its essential characteristics in an unprob-

lematic manner, yet maps emphatically are the

territory, in that they are intellectual construc-

tions through which humans have organized,

comprehended and manipulated spaces and

places. Critical histories of cartography have

tended to examine the functioning of maps

as texts within specific spatialdiscourses,

especially those ofnationalismand Western

rationalism, to elucidate how cartographic

expression has contributed, often crucially, to

associating particular meanings and configu-

rations of identity with certain territorial

entities (especially state andempire) and

peoples (especiallynations). Such studies fea-

ture a renewed emphasis onmap reading,

now with the goal of elucidating the discursive

meanings that would likely have been read

into maps by their readers; particular success

in this respect has attended the study of map

forms previously deemed marginal or ephem-

eral, such as maps inart, modern road maps

or maps in educational texts. These studies

have approached,inter alia, British and mod-

ern India, early modern Europe and Japan, the

modern USA and Turkey, and nineteenth-

century Mexico and Thailand; classical histo-

rians currently debate the extent to which

Greek and Roman conceptions of territory

were cartographically constructed. Critical

histories of cartography have also addressed:

the instrumental deployment of maps to create

and maintain states and empires, overtly

underpinning the application of juridical

power, with recent explorations of thematic

cartography’s contributions to moderngov-

ernmentality in Europe and North

America; the articulations of spatial discourses

with cartographic practices, whereby distinct-

ive cartographic modes can be discerned; the

intersections of Western and indigenous

peoples, which tend to break down the neat

boundaries with which ‘text’ and ‘graphic’

have been habitually circumscribed; and the

patterns of map consumption, particularly

in terms of ‘print culture’, in order to delimit

the social limits of specific discourses in

which maps figured and to explore the inter-

connections between maps and other repre-

sentational strategies (Edney, 2006). All told,

critical histories of cartography have promoted

cartographic studies into a significant com-

ponent of research in the humanities and

social sciences.

Yet there is need for caution. Modern carto-

graphic ideologies continue to infect much

supposedly critical work. Whereas the very

concept of ‘map’ is itself culturally determined

(Jacob, 2006) and the making of maps is

distributed across several modes that are not

necessarily connected (Edney, 1993), there

remains a tendency to treat ‘map’ as a self-

evident category that is constant across

cultures and to understand ‘cartography’ as a

singular endeavour; discourse analysis based

on such misconceptions inevitably fails.

Again, a reading of Harley’s essays without

consideration of the larger stream of post-

structuralist thought has led many scholars to

continue to understand map meaning as being

determined solely by mapmakers working for

socially privileged patrons: in this arrange-

ment, a map’s meaning is bifurcated into

a culturally insensitive ‘factual’ layer and a

‘symbolic’ layer that is manipulated by the

map’s maker to achieve some kind of effect

on its readers. Such an approach denies the

agency of the map-reader and so fails to realize

fully the conventions of cartographic dis-

courses and their constructions of spatial

meaning. In this respect, the transition to a

coherent critical paradigm of cartographic

history remains incomplete.

Furthermore, critical theory does not pro-

vide by itself a sufficient basis for the history of

cartography. Rigorous analysis of a spatial dis-

course requires a clear grasp of the forms of

maps involved in the discourse, of the social

and geographical patterns of that discourse,

and of the relevant political and economic

contexts. That is, critical studies must be

competently grounded in an empirical archive.

Much scope accordingly remains for carto-

bibliographies to elucidate the patterns of

map availability (e.g. Krogt, 1997– ), although

the carto-bibliographies need to be carefully

designed and implemented.

The history of cartography might thus at

present be described as a three-layer intellec-

tual palimpsest. Traditional approaches have

not been completely erased: they are still quite

Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_C Final Proof page 71 31.3.2009 9:45pm

CARTOGRAPHY, HISTORY OF