Imagination and Imperialism: Pathos in Imperial Cartography

Liam Cummins

Here is your map. Unfold it, follow it, then throw it away, if you will. It is only paper. It is only paper and ink, but if you think a little, if you pause a moment, you will see that these two things have seldom joined to make a document so modest and yet so full with histories of hope or sagas of conquest.

– Beryl Markham, West With The Night (pg. 246)

Abstract

Imperialism and cartography have long been considered as going hand-in-hand. The crux of 19th century European Imperialism was the domination of geographically distant territories that, in order to be utilized or subjugated, necessitated detailed cartography. But the influence of Imperial cartography transcended purely technological or geographical purposes. Maps, intrinsically documents of the concrete and measurable – of logos – tapped into a much more abstract, psychological curiosity, an age old infatuation with the unknown, the foreign or the universal other. In this way, maps were documents of great emotional power – of pathos.

This appeal was widely evident in the European media in the late 19th century and early 20th century, when the broad dissemination of cartography in journalistic media became commonplace. More people than ever before were exposed to the potent psychological influence of maps. Representations of the most remote corners of foreign lands were available to hundreds of thousands of citizens who, if not necessarily involved in the mechanics of imperial expansion, certainly contributed to ongoing dialogue about its motives, practices, benefits and problems. Even within the most sheltered domestic spheres of Europe one could now revel at the seeming wildness of countries still covered in large (albeit quickly-shrinking) swaths of terra incognita; view the military progress of their empire’s army against opposing colonial or native forces; or admire the geographical richness or military potential of distant terrain. These desires to glimpse the unknown or acquaint oneself with exotic or perilous lands fostered a sense of identification with or possession of the colonies – maps made faraway places tangible, bringing colonies directly into the hands of anyone with access to a newspaper. These feelings easily dovetailed into the motives so frequently associated with Imperialist ideology – subjugation, utilization, dominion, or even genocide.

This paper examines the influence of imperial cartography on the public, focusing primarily on the journalistic maps in Great Britain’s most widely distributed news source, The London Times, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These records and other primary source material help explore the ways in which maps associated with Imperialism played a role in informing the public’s perception of Africa, intercontinental expansion, and their growing empire. It further considers cartography’s historical intertwinement with vast systems of control and subjugation, touches on the fundamental subjectivity of cartographic representations, and then examines the styles of cartography clearly linked to factors motivating imperialism. Together, these considerations of the cartography of imperialism probe the fundamental question of the link between the seemingly benign fascination that maps incited and the mechanics of imperialist ideology itself.

1. CARTOGRAPHY AND CURIOSITY

In the first pages of Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novella Heart of Darkness, the protagonist, a seaman named Charles Marlow, details his lifelong infatuation with maps. Their appeal was irresistible to him in his youth – he would “look for hours at South America, or Africa, or Australia,” losing himself in the “glories” of exploration (Conrad 9). His greatest fascinations were the “many blank spaces on the earth,” the terra incognita, for these unmarked places awakened in him a sense of sheer excitement and possibility. “When I saw a place that looked particularly inviting,” Marlow says, “I would put my finger on it and say, ‘When I grow up I will go there’” (Conrad 9).

Marlow’s reminiscences of his childhood fascination with maps may be Conrad’s most-quoted writing on cartography, but Conrad often elaborated on the influence of maps in a non-fictional context. Specifically, the publication of his “Geography and Some Explorers” in National Geographic Magazine in 1924 emphasizes the universal emotional significance of maps. Conrad cogently articulates the deep – almost primal – enthrallment that gazing at a map can spark. The documents provide, he details, a tactile platform for curiosity and imagination, bringing the “great spaces of the earth into stimulating and directive contact with sane curiosity,” and giving “an honest precision to one’s imaginative faculty.” Of his own experiences looking at nineteenth-century maps of Africa, he writes:

Regions unknown! My imagination could depict to itself [in Africa] worthy, adventurous, and devoted men nibbling at the edges, attacking from the north and south and east and west, conquering a bit of truth there and a bit of truth there, and sometimes swallowed up by the mystery their hearts were so persistently set on unveiling. (National Geographic XLV 3/1924, pg. 254)

Conrad’s sentiment concisely yet powerfully highlights the link, potent if indirect, between imagination and imperialism. All at once he shows the desire to experience the unknown, the ability of cartography to stimulate fascination and curiosity, and, through his militaristic and coercive language, the ease with which apparent curiosity can be transformed into much more militaristic sentiments. Truth will be “conquered;” geographers will “attack” from all sides, chipping away bit by bit at the great unknown. Replace the word “truth” with “land” and one finds an unsettlingly literal description of European imperialism’s progression – a systemic conquering of native Africa by the “nibbling of edges;” an attack on African people and culture from all sides. These are far from impartial analytical sentiments – they are emphatic, impassioned viewpoints that emphasize the most central ideals of imperialism, all incited by a mere glimpse at a map.

Accounts like these – written by first-hand witnesses to such documents – make clear the sheer emotional power of so-called “imperial cartography”. Maps brought the seemingly wild world to countries viewed as civilized, exciting viewers with the dangers and fascinations of colonies and creating connections of intense psychological potency. Historian Matthew Edney, in his lecture The Irony of Imperial Mapping, writes that maps “establish a relationship between their readers and the territory they represent,” relationships that “contain a pronounced emotional component,” generating feelings of “pride, gratification, belonging, affection, and pleasure, but also perhaps fear and anxiety” (Akerman 32). These emotions, often considered a peripheral topic to a discipline that is necessarily logical, are paramount to a comprehension of the mechanics of imperial cartography. The ideologies of Imperialism were impassioned, and thus the technologies and instruments associated with its advancement warrant consideration for their deep emotional components. It is through an understanding of this emotion that the inextricable link between imperialism and cartography may be grasped.

II. IMPERIALISM AND THE “IMPERIAL MAP”

If a broad, vague definition of “imperial cartography” is easily summarized, a more detailed examination of imperialism is anything but. Imperialism, like many other words in the lexicon of European expansion, is a fundamentally ambiguous term. Its contemporary use invokes a multitude of (sometimes explicitly contradictory) definitions and implications (Wright 2). In different contexts the word can bring strikingly disparate connotations (in its historical use, for instance, the word referred to nothing more than “rule by an emperor.”); moreover, the broad similarities between imperialism and other discrete concepts mean that several terms – specifically imperialism and colonialism – are often confused or conflated. Historian Harrison Wright recognizes these ambiguities in Imperialism: The Word and its Meaning, writing that “…historians have no generally accepted definition of the term imperialism” (Wright 1). Frequent misinterpretations and misunderstandings, he continues, have generated a kind of “semantic chaos” in which any broadly accepted definition is unreachable (Wright 1). Other scholars, notably Australian historian Keith Hancock, have even stronger sentiments – Hancock writes that imperialism itself is a “pseudo-concept that sets out to make everything clear and ends by making everything muddled… a word for the illiterates of social science.” (Hancock 17).

This raises the question: If imperialism itself cannot be clearly defined, how can the implications of “imperial cartography” possibly be clarified? Edney addresses this problem in The Irony of Imperial Mapping, highlighting the highly discursive nature of the terms empire and mapping. “Neither phenomenon possesses innate characteristics that permit us to delineate it unambiguously, but both are rather defined in opposition to nonempires and nonmaps,” he writes (Akerman 11).

Though an indisputable definition of imperialism is non-existent, general definitions of the term as employed in a contemporary analytical context can be distilled. A synthesis of several widely circulated definitions of imperialism reveals the following: predominantly, that imperialism always entails some measure of inequality, subjugation, and cultural segregation. It necessitates an imbalance of power between two geographically distinct states[1] , a larger force exerting its influence on a smaller one. (This geographical polarization is crucial to an understanding of imperial cartography, since maps made tangible the fascinations of distant territories.) More specifically, imperialism most often involves the practice of political and economic dominion over people not within one’s established sovereignty – for the benefit of the imperialist power but also for the supposed benefit of the dominated territory (Landes 1).

[1] Wright, in Imperialism: The Word and its Meaning, argues that the most specific term that can be applied to imperialist entities is state. Referring to an imperialist entity as merely a people lacks necessary specificity, Wright claims, but more importantly, it fails to associate imperialism with a distinct geographical territory. This geographical physicality must necessarily be included in the definition without improperly including vast human migrations (like the Germanic invasions of the Roman Empire) in its definition. The power imbalance of Imperialism is intrinsically linked to the imperialist state’s territory; it (that is, the state as a whole – migrations or “pilgrimages” on a more localized level are often a core part of the exercise of imperialist power) is not migrating or exchanging its old territory for a new one. Nation, on the other hand, is too restrictive to encompass a plethora of historical groups that have commonly been accepted as imperialist but have not necessarily been defined as nations. Consider, for example, King Leopold’s acquisition of the Congo and the formation of the fallaciously named “Congo Free State” – this conquest is overwhelmingly viewed by historians as imperialist, but nothing about the acquisition was explicitly “national.”

A deeper exploration of nineteenth century European imperialism in Africa, the primary concern of this paper, contextualizes these findings. The central contradictions in nineteenth century expansionist rhetoric can be found in the tension between the various factors seen as justifying imperialism. Of these, three stand out as irreducible: political, economic, and ideological. Fascinatingly, these three strains of imperialism are recognized not only by contemporary historians but also by nineteenth century European politicians themselves. French statesman Jules Ferry provides an efficient explanation of the three imperial motivators in an 1884 speech before the French Chamber of Deputies:

The policy of colonial expansion…can be connected to three sets of ideas: economic ideas; the most far-reaching ideas of civilization; and ideas of a political and patriotic sort. In the area of economics…the law of supply and demand, freedom of trade, the effects of speculation, all radiate in a circle that reaches to the ends of the earth…That is a great complication, a great economic difficulty…an extremely serious problem…Gentlemen, we must speak more loudly and more honestly! We must say openly that indeed the higher races have a right over the lower races…because they have a duty…in our time, I maintain that European nations acquit themselves with generosity, with grandeur, and with sincerity of this superior civilizing duty… Gentlemen, in Europe such as it is today, in this competition of the many rivals we see rising up around us, some by military or naval improvements, others by the prodigious development of a constantly growing population; in a Europe, or rather in a universe thus constituted, a policy of withdrawal or abstention is simply the high road to decadence! In our time nations are great only through the activity they deploy… (Ferry Speech, 1884)

Ferry asserts that imperialism is justified because it: 1) promotes financial growth and secures economic dominance, protecting against trade barriers and economic rivals; 2) maintains political power, fueling patriotic sentiment and national pride; and 3) serves to civilize “lower races,” enlightening the subjugated to the cultures and customs of European “higher races.”

By this definition, imperialism can be tentatively summarized as the domination and/or subjugation of a geographically distant territory by a more powerful empire or state for political, economic and ideological reasons – for the empire’s benefit or even for the supposed benefit of the dominated territory. An imperial map, then, can be viewed as a cartographic document that somehow emphasizes, enforces, displays or diffuses these values. But crucial to a grasp of an imperial map is an understanding of how the independent factors motivating imperialism coalesced into one all-encompassing – and often rampant – rhetoric of dominance and superiority. Though the mechanics of imperialism may have been actualized independently on a practical level, the same is not true of overarching socio-political imperialist sentiments – sentiments to which journalistic cartography contributed. An average citizen of late nineteenth century Europe, perhaps moved by a combination of patriotism, curiosity, fear of national inferiority, and (likely) an instilled, systemic racism, would have experienced the rhetoric of expansion not in its isolated motivators but in its sum. The Imperial Map can be seen as representing this wholeness; as a seamless, potent amalgamation of many of the factors motivating imperial expansion. Maps, perhaps more than any other single document available to the public, had the power to imply or display political motives, economic concerns and ideological beliefs through a single enticing medium. They possessed a versatility that few other means of communication could. Behind their seeming empirical, technological purpose, components of all these motivators could be communicated to the public in a subtle, often unavowed, but nonetheless powerful way.

III. SUBJECTIVITY AND THE IMPERIAL MAP

In this respect, a consideration of a map’s subjectivity is necessary. A map conveys an implicit yet potent assurance of objectivity; in theory, a geographical map’s purpose is simple and singular: to represent physical, observable realities. Edney notes a modern certainty of maps as empirical documents, displaying “value-free statements of spatial facts” (Akerman 12). Countless historians, authors, and geographers have enforced this seeming concreteness, almost to the point to which the representations of geographical reality become blurred with reality itself. British aviation pioneer and author Beryl Markham remarked in her memoir, West With The Night, on this perceived objectivity: “[A map] is not like a printed page that bears mere words, ambiguous and artful, and whose most believing reader – even whose author, perhaps – must allow in his mind a recess for doubt” (Markham 245). Carrying a map, she continues, is like holding “the earth in the palm of your hand” (Markham 245). This assurance of reliability – of objectivity – is (perhaps obviously) misleading. First, cartographic practices have been flawed since the beginning of modern mapmaking – in fact, “the technological and scientific rigor on which [maps] depend has been revealed as an ideal that relatively few maps actually attain” (Akerman 12). But even if this technological rigor were hypothetically attained – even if a map seemed to, so to speak, get everything right – such a document’s purported objectivity would still require further examination. For as scientifically impartial as a map may appear, its fixed lines connoting a seeming irrefutability, cartography is a human discipline, and maps are crafted by individuals or groups with inherent human biases. This is the crux of cartographer Brian Harley’s argument in Maps, Knowledge and Power. “Except in the narrowest Euclidian sense,” Harley writes, “maps are never valuefree images.…both in the selectivity of their content and in their signs and styles of representation maps are a way of conceiving, articulating, and structuring the human world which is biased towards, promoted by, and exerts influence upon particular sets of social relation” (Harley 53). Even the most rigorously, carefully constructed map can never be perfectly objective, for it – like any other human method of diffusing information – is a “refracted image” of a “socially constructed world” (Harley 53).

The intentional distortion of information through maps has often been remarked. The power of cartography to manipulate the seemingly objective has been famously exploited since the emergence of the first maps in classical antiquity. One of the earliest “world maps,” created by the Babylonians in 600 BCE, deliberately omitted peoples and territories well-known to the map’s creators. (Moulton 1). Thousands of years later, propaganda maps were widely diffused in religious wars of the 17th century; in more recent memory similar documents were widely distributed to influence the public during the Cold War (Harley 63).

But these examples of intentional manipulation and deceit provide only a partial understanding of cartographic subjectivity. Just as significant as intentional distortions in maps are unconscious distortions – the “subtle [processes] by which the content of maps are influenced by the values of the map producing society” (Harley 65). One example of this unconscious distortion is the reflexively ethnocentric tendency to locate one’s home as the center of the map; another is the unconscious misrepresentation of land-masses so that certain countries or continents appear much more prominent than others. Yet another involves the process of omission, for the information excluded from a map can influence a viewer just as potently as the information included. Such distortions, though less evident than the propagation of blatant misinformation, are widespread in cartographic practices throughout recorded history and are equally important to an understanding of nineteenth century imperial cartography. Maps cannot be examined through binary criteria like “true and false” or “objective and subjective” – no map is truly unbiased, and maps created without any propagandizing intention still bear the marks of implicit prejudice (Harley 53).

If these subtle distortions are inherent in maps throughout history it is reasonable to assume that the magnitude of these distortions reflects the magnitude of the biases and prejudices at large in society – more biased societies create more biased maps. Understanding this it is not difficult to comprehend how intensely subjective nineteenth century European cartography could be. British society overflowed with deep-seated, systemic biases and impassioned nationalist sentiments. These influenced cartographic creation and distribution: Maps were frequently and sometimes profoundly distorted even without any conscious attempt at propagandizing. Consider, for example, cartographic distribution in the London Times during the Second South African (Boer) War. As the British military’s advance slowed, newspapers produced increasingly magnified war maps to “excessively” dramatize exceptionally small territorial gains. This was, according to Heffernan’s chapter in Akerman’s The Imperial Map, an issue of “public morale” (Akerman 279). Had Britons viewed a more conventionally scaled map, they would have understood the stubborn and unchanging reality of the war. Instead, the maps showed them the situation almost as if through a metaphorical microscope, leading them to incorrectly believe that their empire was gaining relatively vast swaths of African territory from the Boers.

Ironically, the past of cartographic distortion was well understood and often discussed by nineteenth-century European news sources like the London Times. They merely overlooked its present. In hindsight, media sources had no trouble recognizing unreliable maps of previous decades or centuries.An 1895 London Times article condemning the practice of cartographic manipulation reads: “when medieval map-makers fringed the shore of the encircling river of ocean with men whose heads grew beneath their shoulders, or who took shade under their uplifted feet, there must already have been some rationalistic minds to which the inclusion of an accurate scale of miles would have been preferable.” It continues, “Within the memory of men still living, atlases have been changed out of all proportion to the vicissitudes of sovereign power” (London Times 11/26/1919, pg. 11). Much more rarely however, were the shortcomings or subjectivities of the cartographic practices of the time identified or articulated. Yet late nineteenth-century cartographic practices, if they did not portray foreign continents as places, where heads grew beneath shoulders or natives, shaded themselves with their feet, certainly bent to sovereign powers and imperial motives – most often without any intentional or organized efforts to do so.

IV. CARTOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION AND MILITARY EVENTS

Widespread public access to maps, perhaps unsurprisingly, is a relatively recent phenomenon. For the vast majority of human history the diffusion of geographical information (in maps or in any other form, for that matter) was tightly restricted. This was first and foremost due to technological limitations: To efficiently reproduce the finely printed lines, symbols, and shadings that accurate cartography necessitates required great time and effort. Because of this, maps were primarily utilized in diplomatic or military proceedings, or in the highest echelons of aristocracy. Beyond this, well-produced, accurate maps were scarce.

The true democratization of cartographic distribution and consumption (that is, the propagation of maps through widespread sources that allowed almost anyone to interpret them directly) emerged relatively recently, inextricably linked to another significant development: the presence of a free press operating beyond the most direct auspices of government. The founding of the London Times (then the Universal Register) in 1785 represented a remarkable step in the democratization of knowledge, providing a platform for the direct distribution of detailed information to a then-unparalleled quantity of people.

The emergence of cartography in the press, however, was not immediately forthcoming. Map printing required an advancement in technical capabilities: the development of efficient, cost-effective printing processes. Until the mid-1870s, the printing of most newspaper imagery – cartographic or otherwise – necessitated the laborious and time-consuming process of woodblock engraving (De Beaumont, 68-71). The skilled manual labor required for this task made the procedure prohibitively costly for most newspapers to disseminate; thus, almost no maps could be found in newspapers prior to the 1870s. (Monmonmier 2). The development of photoelectric printing practices in the mid 1870s changed this: soon, newspapers had the technical capacity to efficiently and cost-effectively reproduce visual depictions. The emergence of journalistic cartography required more than a technological advance, though: It required a political impetus (Akerman 265). Newspaper illustrations were frowned upon by many as mere “flippant pen and pencil drawings” that distracted the viewer from written information (Harris 193). Maps could become widespread and recognized as an important supplement to the written word only when political events requiring detailed cartography made this necessary.

These events, initially, were military conflicts – fascinations with war in foreign countries catalyzed exponential increases in the distribution of journalistic maps. The power of cartography to crafta connection – a sense of identification with – the geographically distant was harnessed to satisfy the seemingly endless public interest in the military events of the British Empire and other global powers. Conflicts, including the Russo-Turkish War (1877), the Spanish-American War (1898), the Russo-Japanese War (1904-5), and the Balkan Wars of the first decade of the twentieth century, provided reason for cartography to be reproduced in newspapers. It was this outbreak of distant warfare, rather than “the onset of new printing technology,” that “determined when and how maps were used by the more prominent European newspapers” (Akerman 269).

One prominent example of this early military cartography can be viewed in maps related to the Second South African (Boer) War. The introduction of cartography in this South African conflict became quickly intertwined with the intense emotions of military conflicts, specifically for those in England following the progress of their family members at war. “The familiar cartography image of the snaking line of the trenches proved surprisingly popular with a reading public who were understandably anxious to establish the precise location of their loved ones fighting, and dying at the front,” writes Michael Heffernan in Cartography of the Fourth Estate, a chapter in Akerman’s The Imperial Map. (Akerman 280). In this way, pathos and maps were inextricably intertwined from their introduction into newspapers.

With the introduction of journalistic war maps, imaginative powers relegated for centuries to the eyes of a privileged few became available to almost anyone with the ability to read and access to a newspaper. These military maps of colonies now had the platform to influence the general public, making subtle yet potent statements that could range from the objective to the subjective, the actual to the dangerously misleading – all within the framework of widespread country-and-continent-wide conversations and debates about the nature about Europe’s imperial goals.

V. CARTOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION AND COLONIAL EXPLORATION

War maps remained a significant presence in newspapers through the first half of the twentieth century, but after late nineteenth-century military events catalyzed an increase in the distribution of journalistic cartography, other strains of imperial maps emerged in newspapers like The London Times. At first, these maps piqued public interest by depicting the “wide-open spaces of Africa” as “lands of adventure,” and “masculine playground[s] for military adventurers and explorers struggling against challenging environments and hostile natives” (Akerman 298). In other words, they provided the perfect setting for the “worthy, adventurous, and devoted men” of Conrad’s writing to prove their valor and devotion (National Geographic XLV 3/1924, pg. 254). Just like the maps that Conrad admired, they showed the progress of exploration or advancement into the unknown, often in connection with patriotic sentiments such as the desire to explore or claim the unknown before other countries could do so.

Such colonial exploration in Africa provoked apparently limitless public interest, which newspapers rushed to capitalize upon (Akerman 272). The London Times and other news sources skilfully “cultivate[d] the mythologies that developed” around such exploration and explorers, Heffernan writes, exploiting a seemingly ever-intensifying public interest in colonial expeditions (Akerman 272.) A central figure in this culture of exploration was Welsh-American explorer Henry Morton Stanley, acclaimed in the London Times as “one of the greatest pioneer explorers and one of the most striking figures of the 19th century” (London Times 6/11/1904 pg.10). Stanley’s expeditions were applauded – even idolized – by nineteenth century news sources; the London Times was among his staunchest publicity and financial supporters. His pursuits in Africa, those so frequently reported on by British news sources, exemplified imperial motivation: Under the guise of scientific advancement, Stanley was responsible for aiding Belgium’s King Leopold II in the bloody subjugation of the Belgian Congo. “To him almost directly is due that scramble for Africa which has led to its subdivision, almost to the acre, by European powers” reads his London Times obituary, which then praises his imperial ambitions (London Times 6/11/1904, pg. 10).

[2] Yet again, Marlow’s fascination with maps in Heart of Darkness contextualizes this variety of imperial cartography: Marlow views a map of Africa, decorated with a palette of colors representing the colonies of different nations, and is glad to see the prevalence of the color red (representing Great Britain) because “real work is being done in there” (Conrad, 14).

Accounts of Stanley’s explorations – by himself and others – were widely distributed by the London Times, other newspapers and journals, and his own books. Newspaper articles on Stanley’s travels are often rich in cartography, but some of the most noteworthy examples of imperial cartography are found in Stanley’s own writings. His books enforce notions of Africa as a primal, savage continent, an otherworldly place to be tamed by Europeans, notions that maps complement and enhance. Especially prominent in this respect is his Through The Dark Continent, an autobiographical narrative on Stanley’s African expeditions. A map in the first chapter conveys the exploitative potential of imperial cartography especially dramatically: It depicts Stanley Falls (named, of course, after Stanley himself) on the Livingstone river (named for another prominent European explorer) and is accompanied by depictions of Africans as primitive and cannibalistic. Describing events that occurred on the map Stanley writes:

But louder than the noise of the falls rose the piercing yells of the savage Mwana Ntaba from both sides of the great river. We now found ourselves confronted by the inevitable necessity of putting into practice the resolution which we had formed before setting out on the wild voyage — to conquer or die. What should we do? Shall we turn and face the fierce cannibals, who with hideous noise drown the solemn roar of the cataract… (Stanley 221)

Here a map’s power to convey ownership or represent dominance is evident: In a country filled with “savages,” white explorers perceived as intrepid, brave, and militaristic are already at work civilizing and expanding their moral Empire. The mere proximity of dehumanizing language to colonial cartography is alone enough to influence one’s perception of a map, but Stanley goes a step further, relating specific events to locations pictured on the chart. Moreover, the document is marked with one of the tell-tale signs of Imperial expansion: the renaming of geological features for figures of the dominating power.

Even if maps such as these appeared in books rather than newspapers, their influence is undoubtedly connected to the rise of journalistic cartography – sources like the London Times played an implicit but powerful role in disseminating such cartography through the popularization of Stanley’s writings and accounts of his expeditions. (One newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, went so far as to subsidize one of Stanley’s 1874 African expedition) (Akerman 272). Though coverage of Stanley’s expeditions provides a potent framing device through which to examine exploration-related maps, Stanley’s maps represent only a small fraction of the Imperial cartography of the time.

VI. CARTOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION AND COLONIAL ADVANCEMENT

If a fascination with explorers and exploration can be seen as the second phase in the diffusion of journalistic imperial cartography, an obsession with colonial advancement, economic gain, and political power can be viewed as the ultimate goal. This lust for power and control is certainly suggested in Imperial maps highlighting exploration and the wilderness – recall Conrad’s desire for men to “conquer” the blank spaces on the map – but it was magnified with a new explicitness in economically centered journalistic maps of the early twentieth century. In these maps, the lines between curiosity and control blurred; “savage” lands became spaces for development that would, as Heffernan writes in Cartography of the Fourth Estate, a chapter in Akerman’s The Imperial Map “benefit the colonizers and the colonized alike” (Akerman 298). If exploration-related maps supported the notion of an untamed, wild continent ready for European colonization and control, the economically centered maps that followed detailed the process of administering this control.

Some maps showed the progress of white settlement in African colonies. One example in the London Times in 1912 showcases the advance of European “civilization” into the colony of Rhodesia (Named after English statesman Cecil Rhodes, now territory comprising independent Zambia and Zimbabwe). Settled areas are shaded, unsettled “native” areas are left blank. Alongside the map are messages highlighting the territory’s agricultural and mining-related potential – statistics showing the more than eight million pounds of diamonds extracted from the land in the last year and the affordable prices of land suitable for cultivation. The stress is on the incentive to capitalize on the “exceptional” value of the territory – the article emphasizes the importance of acting swiftly, of course. Intertwined with these economic concerns are components of a civilizing mission: There is an attraction, the article reads, to “building up another branch of the Empire” in this “strange” land. (London Times 6/24/1912 pg. 22).

Other maps were related to sites of communications and infrastructure – they highlighted the unification of the Empire with its colonies through new methods of technology and transportation. A later map in the London Times entitled “From London to the Cape by Air” advertises the efficiency of travel through Africa through the British Air Ministry (London Times 2/4/1920, pg. 9). It simultaneously depicts the wireless communication lines snaking through the country’s eastern half, seeming to advertise a message of civility and technological connectedness to those contemplating African travel. Such imperial communication lines, Heffernan reminds us in Cartography of the Fourth Estate, a chapter in Akerman’s The Imperial Map, were a major theme in the media of the time, not least since news sources like the London Times required the capability to rapidly circulate information more than nearly any other institution. The press itself played a “critical role” in “creating and maintaining the existing imperial communications systems,” and news organizations operated global – and “distinctly imperial” – cartels for disseminating news reports (Akerman 291). In this sense, ironically, the institutions reporting on European imperialism were furthering imperialism by the very act of their reporting.

In all the above examples distinct emotional undertones are undoubtedly at play, apparent in a different way than in the earlier exploration-related maps. Rather than conveying the dangerous wildness of African colonies, these maps instead portrayed the colonies as spaces ripe for development and profit-making. In this they yet again stimulated the imagination, prompting fantasies of riches where their predecessors prompted fantasies of adventure and glory. In a sense, this ultimate phase in British imperial cartography - especially journalistic British imperial cartography – can be seen as the actualization of all the desires, dreams, and schemes aroused in its first two chapters: Here was an empire spanning the most distant reaches of the globe, and the document that most concretely displayed the breath-taking enormity of this imperial success was the map.

Conclusion

Maps can never be viewed as purely logical or technological documents. As much as any other written or illustrative document – and more than many – they elicit profound emotional and psychological responses. Almost nowhere is the connection between maps and pathos more evident than in nineteenth-century Europe, when the zenith of imperialism intersected with the capability of broadly diffusing imperial cartography. With the rapid emergence of the free press and the advent of new printing technologies, cartography’s psychological power could influence hundreds of thousands of “ordinary” citizens, stoking a boundless fascination with the unknown and seeming to bring the far-away closer to home. Combined with racializing views and rampant nationalist sentiment, these fascinations provoked by cartography were harbingers for the darker realities of European Imperialism: subjugation, exploitation, dominion, and enforced labor. Primary source documents from newspapers and journals of the time – especially the London Times – sharply illustrate this reality. Journalistic cartography was introduced in a military context, but it soon became intertwined with a culture of colonial exploration and adventure, and then finally became a supplement to economic and colonial rhetoric. In all their iterations, Imperial maps were much more than “value-free statements of spatial facts” (Akerman 12). Moreover, if the majority of Fourth Estate’s cartography cannot explicitly be considered propaganda, it strikingly embodied and conveyed the biases and messages of imperial rhetoric.

If the emergence of this imperial cartography elicited passionate responses, its slow dissipation throughout the twentieth century provoked equally emotional reactions. In this the pathos of such maps is again visible: The disappearance of the golden age of Imperialism provoked reactions of great wistfulness and nostalgia. One London Times article on map-making laments the disappearance of the “fascinating legend ‘unexplored’” (London Times 11/26/1919, pg. 11). Such imperial maps, it continues, evoke a “strange breath of antiquity and adventure.” Conrad too mourned the end of this era – in this respect his commentary on maps brings this essay full-circle. As early as the end of the nineteenth century, he referred to the finitude of the age of imperial exploration with a marked wistfulness. The unknown lands that so interested him had been “filled since my boyhood with rivers and lakes and names,” and Africa had “ceased to be a blank space of delightful mystery – a white patch for a boy to dream gloriously over.” Often referred to as the “dark continent” for its perceived mystery and primitivism, Africa had become “dark” in a new way, its maps blackened with the ink of European hegemony. Omnipresent in these vast, centuries-long imperial transformations from the untamable to the conquered and from the savage to the “civil” – from the darkness of the unknown to the darkness of the subjugated – was the universal emotional significance of the Imperial map.

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