Formal Essay 1 – Final

When we think of maps, our minds leap to Google Maps, MapQuest, travel brochures, atlases, encyclopedias, textbooks, museums: collections of images we unquestioningly trust to display a faultless portrayal of the world. Little do we realize that this perspective is warped by the carefully-molded lens of the mapmaker, and the powerful entities behind them. As visual representations influenced by intention, belief, and medium, how can we expect maps to be objective? John Brian Harley states in chapter 2, “Maps, Knowledge, and Power”, of his essay compilation The New Nature of Maps, that “in any iconological study it is only through context that meaning and influence can properly be unraveled. Such contexts may be defined as the circumstances in which maps were made and used… Such details can tell us not only about the motives behind cartographic events but also what effect maps may have had and the significance of the information they communicate in human terms” (56). The context of a map matters more than we ever realize, from its purpose to historical background. We not only need to consider where a map can take us, but who, what, when, where, and why it came from. Considering their significant influence on society at large, Harley argues that maps are not scientific communications that can be taken at face value, but representations of a mapmaker’s message that have the potential to change history. 

In their basest essence, maps are knowledge. But it is crucial to differentiate between knowledge and fact, for knowledge has the capacity to be warped, spread, and concealed. This leads us to consider the age-old adage: knowledge is power. It makes sense that “storage of authoritative resources involves above all the retention and control of information or knowledge” (Harley 55). The creation and selective sharing or withholding of maps is essentially the control of knowledge. This perspective is a lot more meaningful when we note that “knowledge [of mapmaking] was concentrated in relatively few hands and maps were associated with the religious elite…intellectual elite…and with the mercantile elite” (Harley 56). By acknowledging that mapmaking has historically been a privilege limited to the elite, we realize it is but an extension of the will of the powers in control. This gives the mapmaker, and particularly the people that commissioned them, substantial power over the education, views, and beliefs of map readers, especially if they are ignorant or impressionable. We begin to see the vast potential of maps to act as an arm of political power, to influence peoples of entire nations and beyond. As vessels of knowledge — that fickle, malleable abstraction — it is inherently impossible for maps to be completely value-free.

Unsurprisingly, ruling classes throughout history have exploited this rich potential of maps. Maps have political, religious, and propaganda applications. They establish and validate land and political boundaries, carry out religious intentions by erasing some and elevating others, and spread specific ideas. Maps have been used to carry out the aims of leaders, which range anywhere from putting down rebellions to ethnic cleansing. When lofty intentions receive a means of actualization, this lethal cocktail results in the blood-spattered pages of history: wars, conquests, and more. After all, why deplete the treasury stocking up on munitions when the intellect of cartographers and ambition of conquerors can achieve the same end goal? When wars are fought over landmarks and national boundaries, maps become formidable weapons with which the ruling class seeks to assert their agenda. As Harley notes on page 56, “even a cursory inspection of the history of mapping will reveal the extent to which political, religious, or social power produce the context of cartography.” He goes on to present evidence from throughout history: “This has become clear, for example, from a detailed study of cartography and prehistoric, ancient and medieval Europe, and the Mediterranean. Throughout the period, ‘mapmaking was one of the specialized intellectual weapons by which power could be gained, administered, given legitimacy, and codified’”. From the earliest civilizations, no matter the time or space, the ruling class has discovered and applied the power of maps. In other words, maps have been weaponized by man for their ability to manipulate power, to tangibly facilitate man’s deepest desires to claim and control. 

A map that exemplifies cartography’s potential in the political ring is A General Map of the Middle British Colonies by Lewis Evans. Around the late eighteenth century, when this map was created, British maps dominated the Western world. However, Martin Brückner reveals the bias behind these maps in his book The Social Life of Maps in America, 1750-1860: “Guild politics, government tariffs, and, above all, the vicissitudes of a patronage system that stretched from royalty to interested individuals defined the formative years in the material biography of European com-mercial maps” (Bruckner 28). Bruckner exposes the sets of power relations behind them, essentially guaranteeing that conflicting biases and agendas were present. While Evans was able to create the map solely in America, he could not entirely escape political influence when “official sponsorship and partisan patronage quickly moved Evans and his yet-unfinished map into the dual arena of imperial politics and the marketplace” (Bruckner 32). At home, military and civilian authorities looked to legitimize colonial boundaries, while abroad, the monarchy sought to expand imperialist land claims. While Evans’s initial intentions may have been scientific and objective, the context and implications of such a map resulted in power plays and political meddling on an international stage. At the end of the day,  A General Map of the Middle British Colonies legitimized British land claims and promoted colonial unity, killing two birds with one stone. This map reinforces the idea that there is something about seeing a display on paper that legitimizes, in a way that abstract ideas cannot. 

Overall, Harley argues that maps are not neutral sources when considering the context — political, social, economic, and historical — behind them. After all, maps are graphical depictions, representations, images — works that all have artists. The mapmaker as artist is biased, just like any other human being, considering different messages and mediums. This property of maps has been exploited by the elite for propaganda and imperialism throughout history, and will continue to be so as long as common citizens blindly trust them. Maps are so much more than we realize: predictors of empire, records of history, and weapons in the advancement of civilization.