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Cartography’s “Scientific Reformation” and the Study of Topographical Mapping in the Modern Era

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History of Cartography

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Geoinformation and Cartography ((ICA))

Abstract

This paper uses a historiographical paradox to explore the conviction that cartography “became a science” during the Enlightenment, when its primary locus moved from the office into the field. The systematic topographical surveys pursued by Western states since the mid-1700s lie at the heart of this conviction yet they remain little studied by most map historians. How have map historians studied topographical surveys and placed them in the larger narrative of cartographic history? Two sets of historians were interested before 1940 in systematic topographical surveys and their products. First, social historians and historical geographers were variously interested in the evidentiary worth of topographical maps for reconstructing past societies and landscapes. Second, leading members of official surveys wrote historical accounts of their institutions, in the process creating a larger narrative sense of mapping history. These narratives merged with those of general map historians to create the modern myth. Significantly, the new, idealized narrative collapsed the several revolutions previously identified by map historians into a single moment of reform, which helps explain the persistent confusion of just when cartography became a science.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Much of the “new” scientificness of eighteenth-century “cartography” (itself a nineteenth-century concept: Edney 2009b) stemmed from several significant trends – cosmology’s realignment as astronomy; the new (but inconsistently applied) rhetoric of plain description; the “Enlightenment Project” to promote the disenchantment of the world (Horkheimer and Adorno 1994); the increasing precision of high-end instruments; and the new endeavor to measure the earth’s shape – that together contributed to the Enlightenment ideal of “mathematical cosmography” (Edney 1993, 1994). It also depended on the bureaucratic reforms in both civil and military administration engendered by the so-called military revolution and the economic growth of Europe after 30 Years’ War. That is, my rejection of “cartography’s scientific reformation” is not a rejection of the increasingly scientific character of certain aspects of mapping endeavors, but the ineptness of the concept for historical investigation: it is just too underdetermined to be meaningful.

  2. 2.

    Andrews (2009, 26–30) provides an interesting twist: his overview of the history of cartography recasts the structure of Sandler’s reformation with empirical honesty: contemporaries and successors to the academicians were not exactly appreciative of the new scientificness.

  3. 3.

    See also Comstock’s (1876) a historical review of the various European surveys then under way, undertaken to ensure that the U.S. Lake Survey followed the established best practices.

  4. 4.

    Stavenhagen promised that a parallel study on surveys within Germany was in preparation; I would be pleased to know if he or another scholar ever published it.

  5. 5.

    Some early texts referred to Mercator’s work as comprising the “reformation” of cartography, in turning the older artistic practices into a science. See Gelcich et al. (1909, 75–89).

  6. 6.

    Bagrow (1951, 7) thus contrasted early cartography, the subject of his Geschichte der Kartographie, with technologically distinct modern cartography. The reference to “specialized science” in the much-expanded foreword to the English edition was presumably added by the editor, R.A. Skelton (Bagrow 1964, 22).

  7. 7.

    Stavenhagen’s work apparently influenced only one other scholar. It inspired in J.K. Wright a (fleeting) interest in the history of the modern surveys as a crucial component of modern cartography. Wright (1924, 14–36) outlined a research agenda for a detailed, internal history of modern topographical mapping. Unfortunately, Wright’s statement was unnoticed by other map historians and Wright did not sustain his interest and his work had no discernible effect. Stavenhagen’s and Wright’s work might therefore be dismissed as historiographically insignificant, except that together they suggest that there was a broader interest in the early twentieth century for extending the history of cartography to encompass modern topographical surveys.

  8. 8.

    Buczek (1982, 7), writing originally in 1963, presented an abnormal sequence of cartographic development, in which socio-economic factors prevented the eighteenth-century mapping of Poland from living up to the ideals of reformed (as per Sandler) cartography.

  9. 9.

    Reviewers (Imago Mundi 2 [1937]: 98; Gerald Crone [“G.R.C.”] in Geographical Journal 90, no.1 [1937]: 85–86) noted Jervis’s idiosyncrasies, e.g., by starting his chapters on “great map-makers” and “modern map production” in the modern era before working backwards in time to the Renaissance.

  10. 10.

    It is perhaps possible that both authors might have been influenced by a common source, specifically Jervis’s (1936) World in Maps which Brown cited and which Crone had reviewed. Jervis’s work certainly guided at least one subsequent interpretation of the artistic qualities of cartography before “science claimed” it (Rees 1980).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. History of Cartography Project, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, 53706, USA

    Matthew H. Edney (Osher Professor)

  2. History of Cartography, University of Southern Maine, Portland, ME, USA

    Matthew H. Edney (Osher Professor)

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  1. Matthew H. Edney
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Correspondence to Matthew H. Edney .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. of Cartography, ICA Commission on the History, Menlo Park, Pretoria, 0102, South Africa

    Elri Liebenberg

  2. , Department of History, University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, 76011, USA

    Imre Josef Demhardt

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Edney, M.H. (2012). Cartography’s “Scientific Reformation” and the Study of Topographical Mapping in the Modern Era. In: Liebenberg, E., Demhardt, I. (eds) History of Cartography. Lecture Notes in Geoinformation and Cartography(). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-19088-9_18

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