Decolonizing the Map: Cartography from Colony to Nation

418 Pages·2017·15.173 MB·English

by  James R. Akerman

Decolonizing the Map
THE KENNETH NEBENZAHL, JR., LECTURES IN THE HISTORY OF CARTOGRAPHY
publisheD in association with the herMon Dunlap sMith center
for the history of cartography, the newberry library
Series Editor, James R. Akerman
ALSO IN THE SERIES
Maps: A Historical Survey of Envisioning the City:
Their Study and Collecting Six Studies in Urban Cartography
by R. A. Skelton edited by David Buisseret
Five Centuries of Map Printing Cartographic Encounters: Perspectives on Native
by David Woodward American Mapmaking and Map Use
edited by G. Malcolm Lewis
British Maps of Colonial America
by William Patterson Cumming The Commerce of Cartography:
Making and Marketing Maps in Eighteenth-
Mapping the American Revolutionary War Century France and England
by J. B. Harley, Barbara Bartz Petchenik, by Mary Sponberg Pedley
and Lawrence W. Towner
Cartographies of Travel and Navigation
Art and Cartography: Six Historical Essays edited by James R. Akerman
edited by David Woodward
The Imperial Map: Cartography
Monarchs, Ministers, and Maps: and the Mastery of Empire
The Emergence of Cartography as a Tool of edited by James R. Akerman
Government in Early Modern Europe
edited by David Buisseret Ancient Perspectives: Maps and Their Place in
Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome
Rural Images: Estate Maps in the edited by Richard J. A. Talbert
Old and New Worlds
edited by David Buisseret
cartography froM colony to nation
DECOLONIZING
THE MAP
Edited by
James R. Akerman
the university of chicago press
chicago anD lonDon
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2017 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever
without written permission, except in the case of
brief quotations in critical articles and reviews.
For more information, contact the University of
Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637.
Published 2017.
Printed in the United States of America
26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 1 2 3 4 5
isbn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 42278- 7 (cloth)
isbn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 42281- 7 (e- book)
Doi: 10.7208/chicago/9780226422817.001.0001
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication
Data
Names: Akerman, James R., editor.
Title: Decolonizing the map : cartography from
colony to nation / edited by James R. Akerman.
Other titles: Kenneth Nebenzahl, Jr., lectures in
the history of cartography.
Description: Chicago : The University of Chicago
Press, 2017. | Series: Kenneth Nebenzahl, Jr.,
lectures in the history of cartography | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016030112 | ISBN
9780226422787 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN
9780226422817 (e- book)
Subjects: LCSH: Cartography— Political aspects. |
Decolonization.
Classification: LCC GA108.7 .D44 2017 | DDC
526— dc23 LC record available at https:// lccn
.loc .gov /2016030112
♾ This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso
z39.48– 1992 (Permanence of Paper).
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments · vii
INTRODUCTION
JaMes r. akerMan · 1
CHAPTER ONE
Cartography and Decolonization
rayMonD b. craib · 11
CHAPTER TWO
Entangled Spaces: Mapping Multiple Identities
in Eighteenth- Century New Spain
Magali carrera · 72
CHAPTER THREE
Cartography in the Production (and Silencing)
of Colombian Independence History, 1807– 1827
lina Del castillo · 110
CHAPTER FOUR
Democratizing the Map: The Geo- body and National
Cartography in Guatemala, 1821– 2010
JorDana DyM · 160
CHAPTER FIVE
Uncovering the Roles of African Surveyors and Draftsmen
in Mapping the Gold Coast, 1874–1957
JaMie Mcgowan · 205
v
CHAPTER SIX
Multiscalar Nations: Cartography and Countercartography
of the Egyptian Nation- State
karen culcasi · 252
CHAPTER SEVEN
Art on the Line: Cartography and Creativity in a Divided World
suMathi raMaswaMy · 284
CHAPTER EIGHT
Signs of the Times: Commercial Road Mapping
and National Identity in South Africa
thoMas J. bassett · 339
Contributors · 377 Index · 379
vi · contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The eight chapters in this volume were originally presented as the Seventeenth
Kenneth Nebenzahl, Jr., Lectures in the History of Cartography at the New-
berry Library in late 2010. Throughout the book’s gestation, the authors have
exhibited exemplary forbearance and have responded to repeated editorial
requests both cheerfully and constructively. The editor wishes to acknowledge
in particular the unusual amount of effort the authors expended in obtaining
images and permissions for the book’s complex illustration program. Several
anonymous readers offered invaluable critiques and timely advice on both the
substance and the structure of the volume, while giving us the confidence to
move forward. The University of Chicago Press has been unwavering in their
support for this project, and its staff both collegial and professional at every
turn. The enduring material and moral support of the Newberry Library,
the host of the Nebenzahl Lectures since 1966, is foundational. Without this
extraordinary community of creative librarians, curators, teachers, and readers
dedicated to free inquiry in the humanities, there would be no Nebenzahl Lec-
tures. In the autumn of 2016 the Nebenzahl Lectures celebrated their fiftieth
anniversary. This collection is dedicated to Ken and Jossy Nebenzahl in honor
of their kind and enduring sponsorship of this series and the scholarship it has
promoted.
vii

INTRODUCTION
James R. Akerman
The idea for the Seventeenth Kenneth Nebenzahl, Jr., Lectures in the His-
tory of Cartography (2010), “Mapping the Transition from Colony to Nation,”
the basis for this book, emerged from the Fifteenth Nebenzahl Lectures, “The
Imperial Map” (2004), published under the same name by the University of
Chicago Press in 2009. The Imperial Map’s broad, if episodic, examination of
how modern imperial powers used mapping to conquer and manage their colo-
nies and to promote and affirm their imperial identities, as well as— somewhat
antithetically— its contemplation of the limits of imperial mapping suggested
an obvious counterpoint and successor. This volume publishes the result. At
the simplest (and titular) level it considers the roles mapping has played in the
passage from colony to nation— or, if you will, from dependent to indepen-
dent state. The seven chapters all concern the engagement of mapping in the
long and clearly unfinished process of decolonization and the parallel process
of nation building from the late eighteenth century to the mid- twentieth cen-
tury. A few scholars have addressed this issue. However, the subject has not
been examined systematically or comprehensively. The first chapter, by Ray
Craib, offers a wide-r anging introduction to the subject, identifying salient
1