Cartographic Commentaries and Map Descriptions of the 19th Century as Historical Sources

Abstract

Drawing upon Claude Lévi-Strauss, historian Peter Burke has described as ‘information’ “what is relatively ‘raw’ …, while ‘knowledge’ denotes what has been ‘cooked’, processed or systematized by thought.” This essay argues that cartographic commentaries provide an important link between ‘raw’ information as collected by geographers, cartographers or travellers, and its condensed form provided in maps. Since the early modern era, most maps were accompanied by commentaries, explications, or descriptions. In the 19th century map descriptions became increasingly valuable, in particular because maps gained a wider audience among scholars and the broader public. These descriptive texts have long been neglected by historians and geographers alike. Based on the numerous commentaries printed in Petermann’s Geographische Mitteilungen, the most renowned German-speaking geographic periodical of the 19th century, the essay argues that commentaries illustrate the contemporary meanings of a map as well as the decision-making process behind its production. They not only offer insights into the cartographer’s choice of scholarly information, but also include rhetorical strategies and aesthetic categories in order to familiarize readers with a map and with more or less exotic regions. Furthermore, they provide information on expectations and strategies of publishing a specific map at a particular time. Cartographic commentaries include hopes of how a map should be used in the future, illuminating geographical and environmental world views and imperial strategies, ethnocentrist concepts as well as economic aspirations. Not only do they link text and image, but they also connect maps with the history of global knowledge and expansion.