A History of the World in 12 Maps

by Jerry Brotton

  We should also remain alive to the limitations of these geospatial applications. Technical problems remain. Google still has some way to go to provide standard high-resolution data of the entire planet – although it officially relishes the challenge of improving its coverage. In a survey of the four main online mapping sites (Google Earth, MSN Maps, MapQuest and Multimap), the Finnish Information Technology Consultant Annu-Maaria Nivala and her colleagues carried out a series of controlled tests with a group of users, who identified 403 problems, from difficulties with search operations to issues with the user interface, map visualization and map tools. The online maps were often ‘messy, confusing, restless and awful to look at on screen’. Projections often looked ‘weird’, imagery was ‘overloaded with information’, panning and zooming was erratic, layout was poor, and data was inconsistent, leading participants to ask the age-old question, ‘Who decides what is included or not in the map?’77 Some of these problems could be remedied if standardized maps were adopted across all the competing commercial sites, but the chances of this happening in the near future are extremely unlikely.

  Notwithstanding the ongoing technical challenges facing geospatial applications, an enduring problem is the so-called ‘digital divide’. Although Google Earth has been downloaded by over half a billion people, far eclipsing the estimated 80 million copies of the Peters projection circulated since the 1970s, that figure should be set against a global population of 7 billion people, many of them not only unable to access the Internet, but unaware of its existence. By 2011, out of a world population of nearly 7 billion people and an estimated 2 billion online users, only North America, Australasia and Europe could boast an Internet penetration rate of over 50 per cent. With a world average of 30 per cent, Asia’s rate was 23.8 per cent and Africa’s just 11.4 per cent or 110 million Internet users.78 This is a problem not just of access to technology, but of access to information (or what’s known in development studies as A2K).79 These figures make the meaningful usage of applications like Google Earth largely limited to predominantly Western, educated elites. This also means that such applications are mapping parts of the world where the population has little or no knowledge of what is happening.

  Nevertheless, Google Earth is a remarkable piece of technology with enormous potential, which probably signals the death, or at least in time the eclipse, of paper maps, as users increasingly favour online GPS technology over traditional maps and atlases of countries, cities and towns. At the moment, it allows anyone using the Internet unprecedented access to geographical information, and has been used for individuals and non-governmental organizations in a variety of progressive environmental and political situations. Google has created a personalized way of using maps, and of allowing them to be discarded, which is unprecedented, and promises future innovations which will take us further than ever from traditional perceptions of maps, with what Parsons calls ‘augmented reality applications [which use computer-generated input such as sound and graphics to modify real-world environments] that overlay information onto an image of the world that may once have been represented by a map’.80

  Despite these developments, Google Earth retains continuities with more traditional methods of cartographic presentation. The layout that invites you to view the whole earth and then descend to view continents, countries and discrete regions draws on the atlas format popularized by Mercator and Blaeu. The belief that its technology somehow ‘mirrors’ the earth in a transparent act of representation has been central to global mapping practices since at least the Renaissance, as is the abiding belief in the power of mathematics to project the globe onto a flat surface. The whole earth on Google Earth’s home page may look like photo-real satellite imagery, but it still represents a three-dimensional object projected onto a plane surface, or a screen. As with all such images, it selects a particular projection, in this case the General Perspective Projection.81 In choosing this projection, Google Earth brings this book full circle, as its inventor was none other than Ptolemy. In his Geography, Ptolemy described this projection of the ‘globe in a plane’ which ‘is assumed to occupy the position of the meridian through the tropic points’.82 On this projection the globe is viewed from a finite point in space, from either a vertical perspective (as described in Ptolemy), or a tilted one. Initially the projection had little practical value, as it was unable to represent the earth in any detail. However, photography and space travel revived the projection, because photographs of the earth like the Apollo 17 example have a tilted vertical perspective which mimics how the eye would see the globe from a distance. For applications like Google Earth, the General Perspective Projection is an ideal way of representing the three-dimensional globe in two dimensions, because it shows a pictorially satisfying image of the earth, while also allowing the viewer to then zoom down and fly across its surface to ‘see’ enhanced surface details, thanks to clip-mapping and ray tracing. Nevertheless, Google Earth still makes decisions about how it represents the globe in this way at the expense of geographical features such as the accurate representation of the polar regions. Geospatial applications convert the earth into strings of Claude Shannon’s ones and zeros, which are then rendered by algorithms into a recognizable image of the world around us. So in these ways, Google Earth’s methods are as old as Ptolemy, with his rudimentary geometry of seeing the globe from above, and his digital representation of the world according to the numerical calculation of latitude and longitude.83

  • • •

  The anxieties created by the rise and evolution of geospatial applications like Google Earth are nothing new. Similar fears have accompanied major shifts in the mediums of mapmaking at various points in history, from stone through parchment and paper, to manuscript illumination, woodcut printing, copperplate engraving, lithography and computer graphics. At each point mapmakers and map users have managed to exploit the religious, political or commercial pressures that shape maps according to their own particular interests. Current debates surrounding Google and its geospatial applications, which question whether its free dissemination of information and clashes with governmental authority are the result of a long-term monopolistic business model or of an inherently democratic belief in the power of the Internet, in some respects simply reflect an intensification of these historical trends.

  As with most multinational companies, there are undoubted tensions within Google as to its future direction, but it seems increasingly unlikely that it can balance its aspirations for enormous profitability alongside its ostensibly democratic ideals. Like Claude Shannon’s theories of electronic communication, the initial impulses that drove Google were predicated on the communication of quantifiable, noise-free information that can be circulated on a hitherto unimaginable scale. But Google has gone a step further in developing a method for not only quantifying geographical information, but also giving it a monetary value. The history of maps has never previously known the possibility of a monopoly of valuable geographical information falling into the hands of one company, and, as Google’s share of the global online search market reaches 70 per cent, those working in the Internet industry are worried. Simon Greenman believes that although Google ‘have done a wonderful job with Earth, they also have the potential to dominate world mapping on a scale that is historically unprecedented. If we fast forward ten to twenty years Google will own global mapping and geospatial applications.’84 The company likes to say that, thanks to the ability of its online maps to pinpoint our location anywhere on the planet, we are the last generation to know what it means to be lost. We may also be the last generation to know what it means to see mapmaking generated by a range of individuals, states and organizations. We are on the brink of a new geography, but it is one that risks being driven as never before by a single imperative: the accumulation of financial profit through the monopolization of quantifiable information.

  Conclusion

  The Eye of History?

  Each map described in this
book is a world unto itself. Nevertheless, as well as providing a unique image of its time and place, I hope I have shown that certain features are common to all twelve. Each one accepts the reality of an external world, whatever its shape and dimensions. Such a belief is shared by virtually all cultures, as is the desire to reproduce it graphically in the form of a map. But the perception of that terrestrial world and the graphic methods used to express it differ enormously, from Greek circles to Chinese squares and Enlightnment triangles. Each one also accepts (either implicitly or explicitly) that the earth cannot be comprehensively mapped onto a flat surface. Ptolemy conceded that his projections were unsatisfactory responses to the problem; acknowledged the dilemma, but elided it in favour of sectional maps; Mercator believed that he offered the best available compromise; and Peters simply underlined the problem, in the process anticipating the current proliferation of geospatial applications, which offer a range of whole earth images across a variety of cartographic imperfections.

  I hope the book has also shown that no world map is, or can be, a definitive, transparent depiction of its subject that offers a disembodied eye onto the world. Each one is a continual negotiation between its makers and users, as their understanding of the world changes. World maps are in a perpetual state of becoming, ongoing processes that navigate between the competing interests of patrons, makers, consumers and the worlds from which they arise. For the same reason, it is impossible to ever define a map as finished: the Cassini survey is the most obvious example of an endlessly unfolding map, but Ribeiro’s series of world maps from the 1520s provide a similar example, and Blaeu completed only the first volume of an atlas that could have gone on indefinitely. Much as maps might try to encompass the world according to a defining principle, it is a continuously evolving space, and one which does not stop and wait for the completion of the mapmaker’s labour – a fact that Google has now grasped and turned to its advantage better than any of its competitors.

  Maps offer a proposal about the world, rather than just a reflection of it, and every proposal emerges from a particular culture’s prevailing assumptions and preoccupations. The relationship between a map and these assumptions and preoccuptions is always reciprocal, but not necessarily fixed or stable. The Hereford mappamundi proposes a Christian understanding of the creation and anticipated ending of the world; the Kangnido map offers an image of the world with an imperial power at its centre and in which the belief in geomantic ‘shapes and forces’ are central to earthly existence. Both are logically consistent with the cultures from which they emerge, but they also extrapolate from systems of belief to aspire to a comprehensive view of the whole world. This reciprocal relationship is characteristic of all of my twelve maps. Each one is not just about the world, but also of it. For the historian, they all create the conditions for understanding a prevalent idea – religion, politics, equality, toleration – through which we make sense of ourselves, at the same moment as we come to understand the world around us.

  Despite attempts by cartographers like Arthur Robinson to explain the cognitive processes by which maps transform people’s beliefs and imaginative geography, it remains difficult to establish how people internalize the ways in which a map represents spatial information about the world around them. In their multi-volume History of Cartography, J. B. Harley and David Woodward (the latter one of Robinson’s students) admitted that ‘[e]vidence for the level of map consciousness in early societies’ is ‘virtually nonexistent’.1 A map can successfully innovate, but still apparently fail to affect people’s perception of the world. maps proposed an ideal of the world born of cultural exchange between Islam and Christianity, but the collapse of the syncretic culture that produced then in twelfth-century Sicily meant that very few people probably saw them, and even fewer had the opportunity to accept their view of the world. In contrast, surveys of how professionals used Arno Peters’s world map revealed little grasp of its flawed detail, but widespread acceptance of its demands for geographical equality. At other times individuals may suddenly disclose how a map corresponds to a prevalent concern or anxiety, as when twelfth-century Chinese poets describe maps as representing a lost, mythic empire, or the moment at which Napoleon’s soldiers explain the magical ability of Cassini’s maps to show an astonished priest the extent of the French nation. A map can draw assumptions from its culture which are either accepted or rejected by its users, because such assumptions are constantly being tested and renegotiated.

  One assumption of the objective, scientific mapmaking that emerged in eighteenth-century Europe and which motivated the Cassinis and their followers was that at some point it would be possible to propose a universally accepted, standardized map of the world. Even today, no such map exists, even among the profusion of online geospatial applications, evidence that we must always make compromises when we choose our partial maps of the world, and accept that they are ‘never fully formed and their work is never complete’.2 I therefore end with the story of one final initiative that tried, but inevitably failed, to map the whole world.

  In 1891, the internationally respected German geomorphologist Albrecht Penck proposed a new cartographic initiative at the Fifth International Geographical Congress in Berne. Anticipating Halford Mackinder’s views on the state of geography at the end of the nineteenth century, Penck argued that enough information regarding the mapping of the earth’s surface was now available to justify the creation of an international map of the world. Penck’s scheme involved what he called ‘the execution of a map of the world on the scale of 1:1,000,000 (15.78 miles to 1 inch [10 km to 1 cm]).’ Penck pointed out that current world maps ‘are not uniform in either scale, projection or style of execution; they are published at different places all over the world, and are often difficult to obtain’.3 His solution was the International Map of the World (IMW).

  Based on international collaboration between the world’s leading mapmaking agencies, the IMW would involve the creation of 2,500 maps covering the entire earth. Each one would cover four degrees of latitude and six degrees of longitude, using a single projection – the modified conic – as well as standard conventions and symbols. The projection did not need to represent the entire globe accurately because, in an argument reminiscent of method, Penck emphasized that it would be impractical to ever join all 2,500 maps together: the maps of Asia alone would cover a space of 2.8 square metres. In an echo of the great cosmographies of Mercator and Blaeu, Penck suggested that his idea ‘might be rather described as an “Atlas of the World”’.4 The prime meridian would run through Greenwich and the Latin alphabet would be used for all place names. The representation of physical and human geography would be strictly uniform, down to the width of lines used to represent political boundaries, and the colours chosen to depict natural features such as forests and rivers.

  Penck estimated that ‘the cost of production may be set at about £9 per square foot for an edition of 1,000 copies’. He admitted that if ‘the whole edition were sold at 2s. a sheet, there would be a deficit of over £100,000’, but pointed out that governments had spent far greater sums on scientific and colonial expeditions, such as ‘the expenditure on Arctic exploration in the forties and fifties and on African exploration more recently’. The great imperial powers – Britain, Russia, the United States, France and China – would be responsible for the creation of over half the maps. In a plea for international cooperation regardless of cultural and ideological differences, Penck believed that if ‘these countries give their approval to the scheme, its success will be assured, even if in some cases the work has to be done by private individuals or at the expense of geographical societies instead of by Government’.5

  It was an idealistic plan, a summation of the Enlightenment belief in scientifically accurate standardized realism, and a global fulfilment of the national method of mapping represented by the Carte de Cassini. But there were two particular problems. It was not at all clear how countries with little experience of surv
eying would complete such a task, especially if they lacked the necessary financial resources, and Penck was unable to provide a sufficiently compelling account of the map’s potential benefits. He claimed that the ‘circumstances and interests of our civilised life make good maps almost a necessity. Maps of our own country are absolutely indispensable; commercial interests, missionary undertakings, and colonial enterprise create a demand for maps of foreign countries, while of the maps required for educational purposes and as illustrations of contemporary history, the name is legion.’6 This was not good enough for many of the project’s critics, one of whom wrote in 1913, ‘I do not know that any very definite statement has ever been made of the precise purpose of this map . . . We may think of it, perhaps, as meant for the use of the systematic geographer, whenever it shall have been determined what is the function of that person.’7 Penck’s conviction in the utility of the map fell back into the prevailing values of his day: it would define the modern nation state, facilitate global capitalism, enable the spread of Christianity, and justify the colonial expansion of Europe’s empires. If, as Penck claimed, a ‘uniform map of the world would be at the same time a uniform map of the British Empire’, that might benefit the British, but not necessarily anyone else.

  The Berne Congress agreed to investigate the implementation of the IMW, and subsequent congresses continued to support the idea, but with little practical consequence. It was not until 1909 that an International Map Committee (including Penck) met in London’s Foreign Office. The committee was convened by the British Government, which grasped the advantages of shaping the project according to its own interests. The committee agreed on the form of the map’s detail, including an indexed diagram of the whole project, and plans to produce its first maps. But by 1913 only six sheets of Europe had been drafted, and most of the countries represented rejected them for their own national and political reasons. A second meeting was convened in Paris in 1913 to establish uniformity across each map, but its deliberations received a setback with the news that the United States had chosen to implement its own independent 1:1,000,000 maps of South America.