Putting America’s First Empire on the Map: American Early Efforts to Map the Philippine Islands

Abstract

In December 1884, John W Powell, second director of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), addressed the U.S. Congress seeking authorization to begin systematic topographic mapping of the United States. Alaska had just become an official district of the country, extending its territory to the most westerly point of the continent. The Westward Expansion (which officially ended 1912 when Arizona was admitted to the Union) therefore came to an end, and with it the subsequent contiguous mapping of US territory became the final act of nation-building. Cartographically, this was undermined by the publication of the Atlas of the Philippine Islands by the US Coastal and Geodetic Survey in 1899. As defined by Edney (2009), there is a difference between imperial cartography (maps used to create an image of the empire as a legitimate entity and to articulate a claim for territory) and colonial cartography (maps of varying sorts used for the immediate administration within a dependency); the former preceding the latter by defining the territory claimed. This chapter focusses on the development, processes and framework of the US survey and topographic cartography of the Philippines to suggest that US colonial topographic mapping, although connecting cartography with the exercise of imperial power, was more pragmatic and considerably different to the colonial and imperial cartographies of Europe, and reflects America’s struggle to define itself as a colonial power.