After the Map

For most of the twentieth century, maps were indispensable. They were how governments understood, managed, and defended their territory, and during the two world wars they were produced by the hundreds of millions. Cartographers and journalists predicted the dawning of a “map-minded age,” where increasingly state-of-the-art maps would become everyday tools. By the century’s end...

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For most of the twentieth century, maps were indispensable. They were how governments understood, managed, and defended their territory, and during the two world wars they were produced by the hundreds of millions. Cartographers and journalists predicted the dawning of a “map-minded age,” where increasingly state-of-the-art maps would become everyday tools. By the century’s end, however, there had been decisive shift in mapping practices, as the dominant methods of land surveying and print publication were increasingly displaced by electronic navigation systems.

In After the Map, William Rankin argues that although this shift did not render traditional maps obsolete, it did radically change our experience of geographic knowledge, from the God’s-eye view of the map to the embedded subjectivity of GPS. Likewise, older concerns with geographic truth and objectivity have been upstaged by a new emphasis on simplicity, reliability, and convenience. After the Map shows how this change in geographic perspective is ultimately a transformation of the nature of territory, both social and political.

Possibly Ambiguous Terms
IntroductionTerritory and the Mapping Sciences
Part IThe International Map of the World and the Logic of Representation
Chapter 1The Authority of Representation
A Single Map for All Countries, 1891–1939
Chapter 2Maps as Tools
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Possibly Ambiguous Terms
IntroductionTerritory and the Mapping Sciences
Part IThe International Map of the World and the Logic of Representation
Chapter 1The Authority of Representation
A Single Map for All Countries, 1891–1939
Chapter 2Maps as Tools
Globalism, Regionalism, and the Erosion of Universal Cartography, 1940–1965
Part II: Cartographic Grids and New Territories of Calculation
Chapter 3Aiming Guns, Recording Land, and Stitching Map to Territory
The Invention of Cartographic Grid Systems, 1914–1939
Chapter 4Territoriality without Borders
Global Grids and the Universal Transverse Mercator, 1940–1965
Part III: Electronic Navigation and Territorial Pointillism
Chapter 5Inhabiting the Grid
Radionavigation and Electronic Coordinates, 1920–1965
Chapter 6The Politics of Global Coverage
The Navy, NASA, and GPS, 1960–2010
ConclusionThe Politics in My Pocket
Acknowledgments
Acronyms and Codenames
Notes
Index
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