The New Nature of Maps: Essays in the History of Cartography (review)

"There is no such thing as empty space on a map." This declaration, though exaggerated, indicates Harley's view that the "silences" on maps, as he distinctively termed them, could be as meaningful as the geographical and other data actually drawn or written on them. "Assuming the world to be a place where human choice is exercised," Harley contended, "the absence of something must be seen to be as worthy of historical investigation as is its presence. So it is with cartography" (106).

Harley's interest was in the stories that maps do not tell. His interest grew out of his encyclopedic knowledge of cartographic history and his extensive and eclectic reading in subjects outside the field, including postmodernist literary criticism and social theory. He believed that a careful study of "the cartographic unconscious and its social foundations" could reveal the "hidden agenda" of maps. The objects of his program of discovery were the motivations of both mapmakers and those who sponsored and utilized their cartography, mainly government officials and other patrons. Such revelation was essential, he was convinced, to a full understanding of "how maps have been—and still are—a force in society" (106).

According to Harley, the profession of cartography has lacked a broad awareness of its role, in part owing to sheer fascination with the techniques of mapmaking. Although maps have long been central to the discourse of geography, they seldom have been read as "thick" texts or as socially constructed forms of knowledge (52). Harley did not accept the notion of a purely "scientific," or "positivist," cartography— intellectually autonomous, technologically advanced, and politically neutral—that saw itself as merely the production of "ever more precise representations of reality." He questioned the premises behind this professional aim, including the assumption of the inevitable progress of cartography and the implicit ideal of the map as only "a mirror of nature" (a phrase borrowed from the philosopher Rorty).¹ "This mimetic bondage," he cautioned, "has led to a tendency not only to look down on the maps of the past (with a dismissive scientific chauvinism) but also to regard the maps of other non-Western or early cultures (where the rules of map making were different) as inferior to European maps" (154-155).

Although not a Marxist, Harley had an almost doctrinaire receptivity to radical ideas—in John Andrews' words, a reflexive and strong "hostility towards authoritarianism, militarism, colonialism, and corporatism, as well as various forms of 'centrism,' especially the ethno- and Euro-varieties" (2-3). Harley asserted, for example, that cartography was "as much" a weapon of imperialism as artillery (23, 57). Such rhetorical overstatements, unfortunately, tend to obscure the empirical issues that have to be examined closely in deciding whether, and to what extent, particular mapmakers, map users, and maps actually inspired, guided, and otherwise determined the course of imperialist expansion.

Harley's reactions do suggest new hypotheses, and even new ways of looking at maps. He came to see maps as power-knowledge (pouvoir savoir). Derived from the writings of Foucault, this concept of the map as "impregnated with power" (147) enabled Harley to interpret the productions of cartography not just as abstract replications of "environment" but "equally" as reflections of political systems' territorial imperatives (54): "Maps worked principally through legitimation. By representing territorial power relations as a normal part of the world, they enabled the status quo to be more easily accepted." Thereby, especially in societies where even the upper classes lacked firsthand experience of other places, "the map could become the only reality" (147).²

Harley demonstrated this credo through various methods of analysis. One was to stress the influence of the hierarchies that are built into the very structure of maps, not just by the selection of the map's center and choice of scale, which determines the...