The Social Life of Maps in America, 1750-1860 by Martin Brückner (review)

In The Social Life of Maps in America, Martin Brückner argues that to examine "the social life of American maps" from the mideighteenth century to the Civil War we can "comprehend more fully the expressed faith in the usability of maps as a prominent and pervasive medium that had shaped the lives of the American people to its core" (3). Brückner locates early maps, ranging from spectacular wall maps to ambulatory pocket atlases, "inside larger social and economic networks," concentrating on their materialities, specifically how their "messages were interwoven with the physical formats that supported them" (10-11). Framing maps as "sensory agents," Brückner's archive of maps, estate inventories, newspaper advertisements, correspondence, wills, and account books reveals the "ways in which maps came alive for American citizens" (11). Beautifully written and extensively researched, The Social Life of Maps in America is lavishly illustrated with nearly 160 images, including 10 remarkable color plates. These many illustrations—not to mention four graphs and data lists in two appendixes—augment Brucker's provocative argument that between 1750 and 1860, American-made maps shaped a "matrix of cultural expression" and "emerged as a meaningful media platform and popular print genre" that enabled Americans to develop what he calls a "cartographic literacy" (3).

Brückner divides The Social Life of Maps in America into three parts: "American Mapworks," "The Spectacle of Maps," and "The Mobilization of Maps." In part 1, Brückner traces how in the mid-eighteenth century "the social standing of printed maps" evolved "from rarefied artifacts available to special interest groups to household objects sought out by the general public" (25). Beginning with the publication of maps like Lewis Evans's 1755 A General Map of the Middle British Colonies, shopkeepers classified maps as visual art in newspaper advertisements. In chapter 1, "The Artisanal Map," Brückner reveals that Evans's map entered into a vast Atlantic distribution network and helped establish a domestic mapmaking market in North America. "By selling out his American-made map within the colonies before shipping it to the metropolis," Brückner argues, "Evans not only pitted Philadelphia against London as a center of calculation but inadvertently decentered the imperial model of mapmaking" (40). Mapmaking experienced a renaissance in the early years of the Republic after a downturn during the American War for Independence. But success was fleeting and many ambitious mapmakers struggled to make ends meet, often personally raising capital in order to finance production. And while many early Republic mapmakers only produced one or two maps given the financial constraints they faced, mapmakers took advantage of "the social and economic dynamics of the Philadelphia labor market" and cultivated what Brückner calls a "production triangle" made up of mapmakers, engravers, and printers (45).

In chapter 2, "The Manufactured Map," Brückner focuses on how Mathew Carey and John Melish changed American mapmaking by taking on greater financial responsibility for map production by assuming the role of "full-time map publisher" (22). Both Carey and Melish coordinated communication about and production of their maps but, ultimately, struggled to make ends meet in a challenging and still-emerging trade. Carey's ambitious enterprise was a "radical departure from the traditional artisanal model of mapmaking to a more integrated manufacturing model" as he shifted "labor arrangements and financial responsibilities from the mapmaker to the map publisher" (51). Carey operated what Brückner calls a "highly localized cottage industry" that involved "a broad spectrum of skilled and unskilled labor" (62). Despite the logistical and fiscal challenges that map publishers faced—Carey streamlined production but did not experience much success publishing maps—John Melish "went against the common commercial wisdom and revived Carey's business model with the explicit goal of making a living and a career in map publishing" (65). Formerly an itinerant salesman who tried his hand at a...