U.S. HISTORY THROUGH MAPS AND MAPMAKING
Maps are key documents that tell us important stories. They are a form of communication that speaks across the centuries. We have to listen with a careful ear because their messages are rarely simple or clear. They have been described as the "slippery witnesses" of history.
Maps are often unwitting witnesses because they tell two stories: the story in the map and the story of the map. The story in the map is the physical and social depictions it contains. The story of the map is the history of its production and consumption. A map meant for one purpose, such as a French map of the eighteenth century intended to advance an imperial agenda, is now a revealing document of imperial rivalry over contested territory. Maps tell us more than one story.
Maps reveal much about imagined worlds, past worlds, and contemporary worlds. They tell us of the worlds we have lost and the worlds in which we now live. Maps indicate much about the history as well as the geography of a land and its peoples. A series of maps of the same territory at different times provide us with a transect through time and space. The geographic representation of the United States, as in other countries, is concerned not only with the depiction of place but also the understanding of the physical world and the social hierarchy. Maps reflect physical space and embody social order.
Maps are neither mirrors of nature nor neutral transmitters of universal truths. They are social constructions, narratives with a purpose, stories with an agenda. They contain silences as well as articulations, secrets as well as knowledge, lies as well as truth. They are biased, partial and selective. Traditional histories of maps and mapmaking tended to focus on the accuracy of maps. The driving narrative was the movement to increasing accuracy through time; it was a triumphalist view of cartographic evolution. In recent years the history of mapmaking has been enlivened and enlarged by scholars who view maps as texts to be decoded. Maps are no longer seen as value-free, socially neutral depictions, links in a chain of increasing accuracy, but rather as social constructions that bear the marks of power and legitimation, conflict and compromise. Maps are not just technical products, they are social products, and mapping is not only a technical exercise, but also a social and political act.
Maps are rhetorical devices that do not only neutrally describe territory, but also make arguments, advance claims, justify and legitimize. To look at a map is to view a complex argument, a sophisticated rhetorical device.
Maps are complex. A map is not just an inscription to be decoded. It is also a theory, a story, a claim, a hope, a scientific document, an emotional statement, an act of imagination, a technical document, a lie, a truth, an artifact, an image, an itinerary. A map, like a speech and musical event, can also be performed. The drawing of boundary lines, for example, creates the context for very different experiences either side of the cartographic line.
Understanding maps is not an easy task. The meaning of it is never fixed. Even if the makers of the map had a simple message, creative readers can produce complex readings: A map of national boundaries reveals to us now the extent of national power and political compromise; a map of landholdings indicates to a contemporary audience the dispossession and commodification of what used to be Native American land. Maps are capable of multiple readings. We need to use maps with much care and attention.
Although each map in this volume tells its own story in a distinctive voice, there are seven general running narratives that distinguish this series of maps. The first is the story of discovery and appropriation. The vast bulk of the maps were drawn by and for those moving East to West, those moving in rather than already here. We will be looking at the maps made by the invaders.
The New World was coveted and desired as well as mapped and traversed. The New World was claimed by European powers, and these claims were represented in maps. These maps were an integral part of European rivalry for they contained imperial claims and challenges. The colonial maps are not so much simple descriptions of territory as claims to ownership, acts of domination, a cartographic legitimization of control. The mapping of the New World was never innocent of political agendas. The New World was both appropriated and understood through mapping. The maps became the documents of scientific understanding as well as political control. To map was to incorporate scientific understanding and political ambitions. The British and the French struggled for dominance, and we will see in the plethora of colonial mappings maps embodying imperial claims in a changing geopolitical order. The colonial maps were acts of military surveillance, claims to land ownership, and representations of the native other.
It is important to bear in mind, however, that the maps did not result solely from the gaze of the Western observer. In fact, the maps of early North America bear witness to a major native contribution. Despite the traditional view that Europeans created maps of the continent on their own, Native Americans helped in the mapping of North America. It is more accurate to consider the notion of cartographic encounters involving Europeans and Native Americans, rather than a simple cartographic appropriation by only Europeans. The mapping of the continent was underpinned by native knowledge. There are hidden strata of Native American geographical knowledge that are only now being uncovered. The European depiction of the lay of the land was the product of a series of cartographic encounters between two peoples: the indigenous people with detailed spatial knowledge of the land and the colonialists seeking to obtain this land.
The second narrative, in fact woven throughout the first, is the story of national expansion as the country became the United States of America and expanded its territorial control to its continental limits. Many of the maps record the territorial expansion of the United States and its extension of control and power over most of the continent. Maps were the embodiment of imperial power. Manifest Destiny was both imagined and realized on maps as well as on the ground. The struggle for dominance was neither easy nor predetermined. Clashes with other imperial powers and local resistances led to a series of clashes and wars, again all recorded in maps. The changing boundaries of the United States, so clearly visible in many of the maps, record the limits of territorial expansion and the resultant compromises shaped after war and negotiation.
The mapping of the national territory, especially of its westward expansion, was replete with both political significance and scientific inquiry. The maps of westward expansion described and celebrated the drive to the Pacific, the intensification of settlement, and ultimately the closing of the frontier.
From its inception in the late eighteenth century to the close of the nineteenth century, the United States went through enormous changes: the expansion of the railway system, the industrialization of the economy, massive immigration from overseas, enormous urban growth, the creation of a national market, the growth of big business, the closing of the frontier, the increased settlement of the West, the enlargement of the federal government, and the creation of an overseas empire. In the last third of the nineteenth century the United States became a more industrial urban society, a more densely settled nation, and a more important power in world politics. These changes were recorded, embodied, and reflected in maps. Cartographic representations gave shape and form to the expanding and evolving nation. A rich variety of maps were produced and consumed: county maps, state maps, survey maps, maps of the country and of the city, maps produced by public and private agencies, maps made by small firms, maps made by large companies, maps made by local, state, and central governments. These maps were sold, read, displayed, presented, distributed, and consumed throughout the country.
The United States was created in war and its shape owes much to military engagements. To conduct war it is essential to have accurate maps. Good maps allow commanders to move their forces efficiently, to have some idea of the location of enemy forces, and to plan marches, sieges, and military maneuvers. Maps also record and commemorate historic battles and military encounters. The third narrative concerns the importance of war and individual battles in shaping the geography and history of the nation. There are numerous maps that record military campaigns: the colonial wars, the War of Independence, the War of 1812, the war with Mexico, and the Civil War. The maps of significant battles enhance our understanding of these conflicts and military campaigns. Maps also serve as a form of historic commemoration.
The fourth narrative, again running throughout the first two, is the creation of a state. Maps allowed the state to imagine the people under its dominance and the geographic territory under its control. The cartographic representation of territory has great political significance and social meaning. By mapping a territory the state reinforces its claim to power and dominance. Its claim to sovereignty is partly vindicated by its ability to map and represent the territory. The cartographic representation reinforces its claim to legitimacy. Maps of the state's territory suggest a permanence, the unfolding on paper of a "natural" organism, the picturing of a "natural" object beyond the winds of arbitrary adjustment or historical contingency. Maps record the creation of the state.
The fifth narrative involves the creation of a national community. Nations are not so much facts of race or ethnicity. Rather, they are what one commentator referred to as "imagined communities." A national identity is fostered, encouraged, and created by a shared cartographic depiction, a common cartographic understanding of the nation, its outline, and its boundaries.
In the cartographic representations of the new Republic an emphasis was placed on the construction of a national geography, a description and representation of the territory of the fledgling nation. In the last two decades of the eighteenth century and the first two of the nineteenth century, some of the most important and best-selling books were geography texts and maps that created, advanced, and codified a national geography. Such projects had a number of objectives. Nationalist concerns were bound to more purely "scientific" endeavors, such as the accurate location and description of unknown territory. Geography was part of a scientific project that sought universal truths. However, there was a special American desire to create and describe a particular American geography. Tension existed between the search for scientific universals, but also the perceived need to create a national geographic discourse. There was an ambiguity between the depiction of space and the construction of a national place: space and place, global debates and local concerns, an international language of science and the vernacular concerns of a particular nation. Although geographical matters had a connection with the general language of science, they also had a direct connection with national identity. This ambiguity was most obvious in the use of a prime meridian. There is no natural starting point establishing the 0 degree of longitude, the prime meridian. Before the end of the nineteenth century it was an arbitrary designation that varied between countries. The British established theirs at Greenwich. As we will see, the early American geographies used Greenwich, then Philadelphia, and later Washington as the prime meridian; some maps even had a dual system, with both the British and American prime meridians appearing on the same map, one at the top, the other at the bottom. The early maps of the fledgling Republic not only described national space, they also sought to promote spatial unification. The early maps and atlases, for example, by bringing the individual states onto one sheet or under one cover promoted national cohesion and national consciousness, and the many geography texts that listed all the states helped construct a national market and a national polity.
The geographical construction of the state is intimately linked to the territorial imagination of the nation. This imagining takes many forms. There was a geographical representation of the national community in such varied mapping exercises as the inscribing of a national landscape and the construction of a national economy. Cartographic images were and still are important elements of national identity. Maps were an important part of this story of territorial expansion and national identity. Many maps showed how the bounded territory was connected and the national community created. The railway maps of the nineteenth century, for example, are maps of the vital arteries of a connected economy and linked society.
A national community can even be defined by the widespread usage of the same cartographic convention. The saturation of cartographic images has created widely accepted semiotics of the country and individual states. Outline maps of the United States or of individual states of the Union, for example, are easily recognizable; they are used as symbols of these places. Maps not so much reflect or represent; they are.
These national geographies communicated many moral injunctions. With their implicit and often explicit dichotomy of nation/nonnation, these maps also had an "otherizing" quality that at times filtered into notions of moral purity, political correctness, and consequent images of spiritual cleansing and political enemies. The "others" were variously identified as Native Americans, foreigners, the Spanish, and Southerners. Women were rarely discussed. The discourse of national geography and identity was racialized, gendered, and moralized. This is most clearly demonstrated in the case of Native Americans and their cartographic representation. The sixth narrative of many of the maps under discussion is the changing depiction of Native Americans. Their presence was shown on many of the early maps; their tribal names and territories figure largely in British, French, and early U.S. maps. The maps cartographically record not only their presence, but also their eradication and dispossession. By the late nineteenth century, Native Americans rarely figured in maps as little more than blocks to westward progress; their eradication and dispossession is one of the hidden themes in many of the maps.
The seventh narrative is the story of place. Maps come in different scales. Small-scale maps may cover an entire territory. Large-scale maps, in contrast, focus on specific areas. The different scales can be seen as lenses on the world; small scales are the wide-angle lens, whereas the large-scale maps are the cartographic equivalent of close-ups. We will consider a number of large-scale maps that individually and collectively provide a series of close-ups of particular places and specific times. These maps allow us to flesh out the broad general story with the "warp and weft" of particularity and uniqueness. These maps are narratives of particular places and show how the national picture is in fact a mosaic of many different local histories and geographies. One of the places we will concentrate on is New York City. Since New York is currently the largest city in the country and one of the most heterogeneous and global of U.S. cities, we will show its cartographic evolution from the seventeenth to the twenty-first century.
Maps have played a varied role in the history of the territory that is now the United States. Our story begins with some of the earliest printed maps. They were rare and expensive items. Most of them were created for specific audiences, often in the imperial centers of Europe. A truly mass market for maps did not surface until the 1840s. In Britain in the eighteenth century a number of magazines published maps to accompany reports of battles, military campaigns, and political hotspots around the world. Many of the maps we will look at derive from this source. They were part of the world view of the educated elite in the imperial center of London.
In the early history of the United States from 1780 to 1840, there were limitations to mass production and consumption. Books and maps were expensive items; they were an important part of the material culture of the political and economic elites, but not cheap enough for mass consumption. There were also limitations on the use of illustrations and especially of maps in books. Most printed maps came from engravings on individual sheets that often were added to printed books by hand, an expensive and cumbersome method that restricted the wide use of maps in books. Of forty-nine geography texts published before 1840, twenty-four had no maps. In contrast, in the period from 1840 to 1890, when map production became much cheaper and easier, only ten of ninety-seven geography texts had no maps. After the Civil War there was a cartographic explosion as many more maps were produced and available to a wider, broader audience. The decreasing cost of cartographic images meant wider availability and maps becoming part of the national debate, the national image, and an integral part of the way the country was represented. Maps are important texts that provide an invaluable and innovative way to illuminate wider social processes. In the following sections we will examine a range of maps or mappings and their relationship to the history of early North America and the United States. Slippery and often unwitting witnesses, maps tell us much about the past.
