360 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE
that cartographic forms of expression became While Newton based his prediction on the
ever more precise, ever more transparent, hypothetical forces exerted by the sun and the
even as they [became] more abstract and less
mimetic, less like the topography they
recorded, also reflected a preference for an
abstract scientific, state-driven and mascu-
line vision over everyday and local experi-
ence. This observation finds echoes in the
writings of feminist critics of modern GIS. It
would be fair to say that, from the Renaissance
rediscovery of the geographic knowledge of
the ancients (thanks primarily to Islamic
sources) to the end of the eighteenth century,
the language of geographers acquired refine-
ment and especially precision, even though it
remained focused on the surface of the earth,
not delving into it, only slowly climbing its
mountains and not yet exploring the nature
of human societies. Indeed, by the beginning
of the eighteenth century, the emerging
precision of earth measurement seemed to
promise a major role for geography.
Geographers drawing on the observations
of explorers, missionaries, statesmen and mil-
itary officers had, by the eighteenth century,
developed unprecedented knowledge of the
configuration of the earth. The depth and qual-
ity of this knowledge would only grow through
subsequent centuries. This line of inquiry,
however, did not explain how the earth and its
inhabitants functioned and, increasingly, it
was such explanation that was sought by sci-
entists. Geographers were amongst the first to
demonstrate the limitations of description and
direct measurement during the great eight-
eenth century debate over the size and shape
of the earth. There was much interest in the
shape of the earth at this time, both for accu-
rate navigation and, for Newton, as the key to
understanding how the place of the earth in the
solar system influenced both the earth and the
solar system. There was every reason to think
that geographers as earth measurers and
describers, and especially French geographers
who stood at the pinnacle of astronomical
geography, could contribute to the debate. In a
sense they did, by demonstrating that accurate
measurement was not necessarily the most
direct path to enlightenment.
Chapter_26.indd 360
moon on the rotating earth, he and others,
particularly geographers, sought to confirm
or refute his proposed shape of the earth with
direct measurement of its surface. From 1700
to 1744 a series of measurements were under-
taken in France, Italy, Spain and England that
were used to try to determine the length of a
degree of latitude in different locations. Some
of these measurements confirmed Newtons
prediction that the earth was an oblate sphe-
roid (pumpkin-shaped) and some, in particu-
lar those of the Cassinis (the scientific family
synonymous with mapping and geography in
France), confirmed that the earth was a pro-
late spheroid (egg-shaped). Meanwhile,
Richers 1672 observations of the force of
gravity acting on the surface of the earth
through the swing of a pendulum at Cayenne
as opposed to Paris confirmed Newtons
hypothesis by means having nothing to do
with the measurement of the earth. Ultimately,
the French Academy of Sciences resolved to
send a mission to Lapland and one to Peru to
measure a degree of latitude as close to the
Arctic Circle and one as close to the Equator
as possible to resolve the issue once and for
all. Both sets of measurements confirmed
Newtons hypothesis but the techniques of
earth measurement available to eighteenth
century scientists had proven too laborious
and unreliable to determine the shape of the
planet. In the subsequent century direct meas-
urement would prove equally difficult for
tracking and understanding disease, poverty
and dynamic change on the surface of the
earth. As a consequence, social scientists and,
a little reluctantly, geographers would develop
hypothesis-driven maps that sought to explain
using partial probabilistic data rather than
exhaustive measurement.
A Map for All Disciplines:
The Thematic Map
Although definitional purists might justifiably
argue that there is no fundamental distinction
1/20/2011 3:09:32 PM
 MAP
between a thematic map and a general
purpose map, historically, thematic maps
represented a break with large-scale and
small-scale geographic mapping in three
ways. First, the impulse behind them was not
the collection and presentation of informa-
tion that might be useful for a variety of
activities concerning the area mapped but the
collection of enough information to form a
particular argument. Thus, they were argu-
ment-driven constructions less closely linked
to an ongoing process of data collection than
to the development of theories and data
manipulation and analysis. Second, and as a
consequence, their increased sophistication
was more closely tied to the sciences from
which the argument emerged than to the geo-
graphical tradition of mapmaking. Though,
arguably, geographers ultimately came to
conceive of their terrain not so much as the
space of the earth as the spaces of relations
between particular phenomena in part through
the thematic map. Finally, that thematic map-
ping became so influential in scientific cir-
cles has much to do with both the general
availability of reliable maps and new tech-
nologies that allowed non-specialists to com-
pose and disseminate such maps. Thematic
maps, then, heralded a new relationship
between geography and the map in which the
map led and geographers followed.
Technological change has done much
to shape the map and determine its impact
over the centuries. More important than
trigonometry and its associated optical and
observational instrumentation but perhaps as
important as the development of differential
calculus and probability (the mathematics of
change and uncertainty), the technical inno-
vation with the greatest impact was the print-
ing press. As with books and illustrations, the
printing press made the rapid and reliable
dissemination of cartographic information
possible and created a body of knowledge
largely shared by scholars, statesmen, church
officials, merchants and the relatively well
off. The invention of pulp paper and litho-
graphic (stone writing) reproduction in the
nineteenth century were additional steps on
Chapter_26.indd 361
361
the path to wider access and dissemination
initiated by the printing press. Lithography
was vitally important in the world of nine-
teenth century science because, in contrast to
copperplate reproduction, it permitted multi-
ple coloured maps and graphs to be drawn by
hand using elementary materials wielded
with less skill and at low cost. As a conse-
quence non-cartographers drew maps that
were widely disseminated within the aca-
demic community. Still, lithography did not
create the thematic map.
Scientists and government officials, inter-
ested in spatially significant relations between
particular phenomena and struggling to
understand and express those relations, cre-
ated this new approach to mapping, produc-
ing early thematic maps well before the
invention of lithography. It was the logic of
these inquiries (e.g. the concern to prevent
flooding of inhabited areas, to provide food to
urban citizens, etc.) that drove the impulse to
map selected phenomena. At least from the
time of Stenos suggestion that the earths
rock structure had been formed by horizontal
deposition and vertical superposition (1669),
there were hypothetical arguments about the
origins and formation of the earth and interest
in the spatial distribution of rock forms. The
gradual acceptance of a geologic time scale
and the understanding that the processes of
formation were ongoing led, in the early nine-
teenth century, to the development of a whole
new field of study closely linked to Geography:
Geology. Mapping was particularly important
for geology, as it was only through mapping
that individual and widely distributed obser-
vations could be linked and buried or other-
wise invisible structures could be made
visible. Curiosity was not the only impulse
behind the search for relationships. Concern
to reduce the human and fiscal carnage
resulting from shipwreck inspired people like
Athanasius Kirchner (1641), Edmond Halley
(1701), William Whiston (17181720) and
J. C. Wilcke (1768) to map magnetic declina-
tion. Similarly, the mercantilist conviction
that the wealth of nations was fundamentally
linked to population stimulated early interest
1/20/2011 3:09:32 PM
 362 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE
in the statistical study of population and its
complex dynamics. Mapping of these issues
was only attempted beginning in the late
eighteenth century, with growing apprecia-
tion that the individual behaviour of large
numbers of people shaped cities, the country-
side and the economy of competing states. In
all these lines of inquiry, whether academic or
practical, the development of a mathematical
and measurement-based approach to the phe-
nomena under examination was fundamental
to the introduction of thematic mapping:
mapping demanded systematic quantifica-
tion, but fruitful quantification required a
quite highly developed body of theory (Kuhn
[1961] 1977, 201).
It is, then, unsurprising that the innovators
in the development of the new language of
thematic mapping were either interdiscipli-
nary empirical scholars who had embraced
mathematics or government administrators
trained in statistics and working to resolve
the practical problems of government.
Alexander von Humboldt is probably the best
example of the former. He has been described
as a geologist, a mining engineer, a naturalist,
a botanist, a natural historian, an empirical
scientist, an explorer, an imperialist and a
geographer. In a sense he was all of these, as
he was looking for knowledge of the laws of
nature (Humboldt, 1823, vi.) which played a
fundamental (but not necessarily determina-
tive) role in all realms. What fascinated him
were the relationships between phenomena:
plants, rocks, landforms, climates, soil,
human activity and especially the geography,
the total picture, of these relationships. Not
satisfied with a descriptive geography, he
wanted to understand how external form was
shaped by structure and function or, expressed
another way, what patterns phenomena exhib-
ited and why they did so. Such patterns were
generalizations that would only be instructive
if based on careful empirical observation.
One had to be careful in averaging phenom-
ena that depend by their nature on locality,
the constitution of the soil, the disposition
vis--vis the suns rays of the surface of the
globe (Humboldt, 1817 [1813], 469). What
Chapter_26.indd 362
was needed was a new language, a more
analytical spatial language, that would allow
the almost intuitive transfer of understanding
from one graphic genre to another and from
one specialist body of knowledge to another.
He sought a language capable of expressing
his vision of the unity of nature with the
newly found rigor of the systematic sciences.
He experimented with isolines (lines drawn
between measures of equal values of a par-
ticular phenomena [height, temperature,
degrees of cloud cover, etc.]), which proved
to be such a simple yet rigorous form of
graphic representation that great volumes of
data could be managed, compared and taken
back into the field to influence further data
gathering. He experimented with the graphic
representation of the flow of metals between
North America and Europe (one of the many
consequences of European imperialism to
which geography and mapping substantially
contributed), taking the first tentative steps
toward the representation later adopted by
C. J. Minard, showing volume by thickness
of arrow. He produced a map of error to dem-
onstrate the inadequacy of the published
maps of Mexico and to suggest that the geog-
raphy practiced by some of his contemporar-
ies was overly imaginative. Following
William Playfair, he embraced the political
potential of thematic maps when he used
proportional squares in a depiction of the ter-
ritory of the colonies and their European
metropoles to suggest the injustice of coloni-
alism. He tried to develop something he
called pasigraphy, a notational language
that he hoped would allow the easy jux-
taposition of information on the relative posi-
tion, alternation and the suppression of
particular rock series across space. But his
most influential, best remembered and most
reproduced graphic was the remarkable mul-
tidimensional pictorial graph reproduced in
his Essai sur la gographie des plantes. This
graphic presented a view of three peaks of a
mountain chain carrying the names and
appearance of vegetation found at different
altitudes. On the sides of the scaled illustration
there were columns that provided a wealth of
1/20/2011 3:09:32 PM
 MAP
information for different elevations: mini-
mum and maximum temperatures; the chem-
ical composition of the air (oxygen, hydrogen,
carbon); the lower limits of perpetual snow;
typical animals; the temperature at which
water boils; the possibility of depicting geo-
logic formations for any given region; the
intensity of light; the humidity level; the
blueness of the sky; the gravitational force;
possible types of agriculture; the incidence of
electrical phenomena; and more. These elo-
quent graphic arguments about distributions,
interactions and dynamic relationships in
space which often revealed patterns not vis-
ible to the naked eye and created a new sys-
tematic, rather than geographic, time/space
seemed to Humboldt to suggest that his
intuition about the unity of nature was sound.
The unity of nature was his theory and the-
matic maps and multi-dimensional pictorial
graphs were capable of expressing that unity.
Many of those who contributed to the
development of thematic mapping were not
scientists but state officials, civil engineers,
mining engineers and public health doctors
concerned with the management of territorial
space, including the introduction and man-
agement of transportation networks (espe-
cially railroads), controlling disease (human,
plant and animal), strengthening the national
economy and improving public education.
Such work demanded the integration of a
variety of dynamic data, including topog-
raphy; the location, quality and capacity of
mines, ports, waterways, canals and roads;
the location and quality of resources, as well
as the industrial and commercial establish-
ments that depended on them; the movement
of finished goods; the location of agricultural
activities, and the location, wealth and
movement of human populations. These
highly educated state officials elaborated
theories to predict the impact of human
behaviour in the context of the physical and
social structures they were engineering and
they developed a graphic vocabulary capable
of expressing those theories. The most
famous of these graphic innovators was
C. J. Minard, an engineer and civil servant
Chapter_26.indd 363
363
in nineteenth-century France, whose maps
have drawn admiration for their semiotic
sophistication. The theories and graphic lan-
guage developed by Minard and other offi-
cials influenced the work and thinking of
numerous geographers, including Alexander
von Humboldt, Adrien Balbi, Heinrich
Berghaus, August Petermann, Walter
Christaller, Elise Reclus and Paul Vidal de
la Blache, the latter if only negatively.
GIS: Maps for Everyone?
If, in the nineteenth century, the thematic
map and geographys cognate disciplines led
while geography followed, in the 20th and
21st centuries the relationship has been much
more complex. Since the end of the 20th
century geographers have embraced a whole
series of spatial problems, from the historic
to the numeric and much else besides. They
have approach these problems with a diver-
sity of theories and methodologies (some
numeric and some not but all shared with
other disciplines) that were unimaginable in
the nineteenth century. The map too has
undergone major transformation. Traditional
maps of a variety of scales and types are still
important in geography, other disciplines,
and the larger society, but the excitement lies
in Geographic Information Systems (GIS):
analytical mapping using mixed data, huge
databases (which, in a sense, is allowing a
combination of thematic argument-driven
mapping and the ongoing and informed col-
lection of data) and, most recently, the trans-
mission capabilities of the internet. GIS does
not belong to geography. Other disciplines
have been as important in the identification
of problems, the development of infrastruc-
ture, the writing of code, the discernment,
creation and management of data, and the
generation of meaningful maps and interac-
tive mapping systems. Neither is geography a
slave to GIS. There are many questions posed
by geographers that cannot be mapped.
Perhaps the Newtonian lesson has been
well learned: mapping is not always the
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 364 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE
best path to enlightenment. Paradoxically,
geography is larger than the map and the map
is larger than geography but the relationship
remains a healthy and productive one.
Geography is stimulated by the capacity of a
combination of GIS and Remote Sensing
(RS) to cast light on the immensely complex
infrastructural conundrums involved in
regional- or national-scale government, or in
multi-scalar environmental issues. GIS has
been well served by the questions and tech-
niques of environmental and quantitative
geographers, cartographers, remote sensors
and many social scientists in human geogra-
phy, including feminist geographers and
others concerned with issues of exclusion
and privacy though, arguably, the market
has driven the GIS industry further down that
road than have the writings of academics.
Conceiving of GIS as a new technology
with a focus on the computer, digital data-
bases, digital imaging and the internet,
obscures the conceptual continuity between
GIS and the history of mapping and under-
values the revolution taking place in geo-
graphic imagination. Of course, each element
of what many consider GIS technology has
its own complex conceptual and social his-
tory and it is possible to retrace those histo-
ries. If instead of focusing on multi-media
technologies, we imagine GIS as part of the
history of the map, then GIS no longer
emerges fully formed from the head of Zeus
in the last half of the twenteeth century: con-
ceptually GIS was alive and already thriving
in the thematic maps of the nineteenth cen-
tury. Nick Chrismans definition of GIS,
which focuses on the on-going measurement
and transformation of data in the context of
social interaction, describes the nineteenth
century mapping activities of C.J. Minard
and many others (Chrisman 1999). The facility
to transform geographic representations has
been enhanced by computerization, digital
databases have increased the volume of data
manipulated and the speed of analysis, the
media integrated into mapping is more varied
and sophisticated, and, through the internet,
the potential for expanding the delivery and
Chapter_26.indd 364
reception of dynamic and interactive mapping
is vastly increased. Nevertheless, conceptu-
ally, the thematic map and GIS are very
similar; that is, the kinds of questions asked
through thematic mapping and GIS are much
the same. Unsurprisingly, then, GIS has a
relationship with geography not unlike that
of the thematic map: geographers who are
now focused on exploring a wide array of
spatial relationships and are engaged in the
use and development of innovative mapping
technologies are only one component of a
broader GIS research community that
includes computing scientists, urban planners,
businesses, medical researchers, biologists,
geologists, archeologists, anthropologists
and many others. The most important change
brought by the new twenteeth-century tech-
nologies is the increased accessibility of
mapping and its enhanced potential to play a
powerful role in social transformation.
Because discerning the importance of geog-
raphy and spatial relations to virtually every-
thing took time, as did the development of
the concepts and technology to allow explo-
ration of that importance, the innovative
power of GIS is only just beginning.
If for the last half century we have been
living in an increasingly map-saturated world,
in which maps of some sort are available to
almost everyone and almost everyone is
mapped, what is important is that today the
means of making maps is becoming more
accessible. There is no doubt that since the
Second World War in the affluent countries
of the world, access to maps has exploded.
From printed or electronic route maps to mall
and airport plans, it would be rare to find an
individual who has not seen a map of some
sort within the last week. Mark Monmonier
(2008; 2006; 2002; 2001; 1999) has traced
the proliferation and insinuation of the map
deep into the fabric of modern Western soci-
ety, where nautical charts, weather maps,
topographic sheets, satellite images, electoral
district maps and a myriad of other taken-for-
granted cartographies have fundamentally
framed how we perceive and engage with the
wider world. Now, thanks to centuries of
1/20/2011 3:09:32 PM
 MAP
work by geographers, cartographers and
others, and with the increasing availability of
cheap GPS units and satellite imagery through
venues like GoogleEarth, almost anyone can
readily combine base map data and other
spatial data to make simple maps. And map-
ping is increasingly relevant to our daily
lives, as almost everyone is tracked on a daily
basis by satellite and GPS addressing sys-
tems, through bank cards, cookies or CCTV
systems, in ways that place us on the map: if
we conceive of the electronic world as a large
multi-faceted virtual map, it is increasingly
difficult (and perhaps increasingly undesira-
ble) to be off-grid, so to speak. The commer-
cial value of the voluminous geographical
data being collected daily is considerable. To
date, however, access to that data and to sys-
tems that allow multi-dimensional spatial
analysis has been available only to those
with the means to purchase the hardware, the
software, the databases, and the education to
know how to use them. Brian Harley was pes-
simistic about the possibility that this could
ever be otherwise: Though we have entered
the age of mass communication by maps, the
means of cartographic production, whether
commercial or official, is still largely con-
trolled by dominant groups. Cartography
remains a teleological discourse, reifying
power, reinforcing the status quo, and freez-
ing social interaction within charted lines.
(1988: 301303) Harley has been criticized
for problematically (mis)deploying post-
structuralist analyses of power (Godlewska
1989; Belyea 1992; Wood 1993) but he
might also be challenged for presenting an
all-together too bleak prognosis on the
possibility for a grassroots cartography.
Experiments by those concerned to democra-
tize mapping (e.g. Public Participation GIS),
combined with the market potential of GIS
delivered through the internet, have enticed
some of the large software companies to
experiment with open platform GIS, but
effective analytical use of GIS still requires a
high level of specialist education. Still, just
as once only a few could extract much of
value from computers, it is possible to
Chapter_26.indd 365
365
imagine a day, not so far in the future, when
average citizens will have the means to create
maps, or interactive mapping systems, based
on geographically and spatially sophisticated
queries of readily available (and ideally
restructurable) databases. A physiotherapist,
for instance, could map income, education,
occupation, foot traffic and age profile to
decide where to locate a clinic, or a planner
could map the sense of belonging in place
against ethnic origin, income, education,
occupation, social networks and a fluid con-
ception of neighbourhoods in the city. Getting
there will require continued technological
innovation, further hard thinking about place
and space and their relationship to database
structure, and effective and critical geo-
graphic education.
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