Research Catalog

Title

Decolonizing the map : cartography from colony to nation / edited by James R. Akerman.

Publication

• Chicago, IL : The University of Chicago Press, 2017.
• ©2017

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Additional Authors

Akerman, James R.

Description

vii, 409 pages : illustrations, maps; 27 cm.

Summary

Almost universally, newly independent states seek to affirm their independence and identity by making the production of new maps and atlases a top priority. For formerly colonized peoples, however, this process neither begins nor ends with independence, and it is rarely straightforward. Mapping their own land is fraught with a fresh set of issues: how to define and administer their territories, develop their national identity, establish their role in the community of nations, and more. The contributors explore this complicated relationship between mapping and decolonization while engaging with recent theoretical debates about the nature of decolonization itself. These essays, originally delivered as the 2010 'Kenneth Nebenzahl Jr. Lectures in the History of Cartography' at the Newberry Library, encompass more than two centuries and three continents - Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Ranging from the late eighteenth century through the mid-twentieth, contributors study topics from mapping and national identity in late colonial Mexico to the enduring complications created by the partition of British India and the racialized organization of space in apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa. A vital contribution to studies of both colonization and cartography, this is the first book to systematically and comprehensively examine the engagement of mapping in the long and clearly unfinished parallel processes of decolonization and nation building in the modern world.

Series Statement

The Kenneth Nebenzahl, Jr., lectures in the history of cartography

Uniform Title

Kenneth Nebenzahl, Jr., lectures in the history of cartography.

Subject

• Cartography > Political aspects
• Decolonization

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Introduction / James R. Akerman -- Cartography and decolonization / Raymond B. Craib -- Entangled spaces : mapping multiple identities in eighteenth-century new Spain / Magali Carrera -- Cartography in the production (and silencing) of Colombian independence history, 1807-1827 / Lina del Castillo -- Democratizing the map : the geo-body and national cartography in Guatemala, 1821-2010 / Jordana Dym -- Uncovering the roles of African surveyors and draftsmen in mapping the Gold Coast, 1874-1957 / Jamie McGowan -- Multiscalar nations : cartography and countercartography of the Egyptian nation-state / Karen Culcasi -- Art on the line : cartography and creativity in a divided world / Sumathi Ramaswamy -- Signs of the times : commercial road mapping and national identity in South Africa / Thomas J. Bassett.

ISBN

• 9780226422787
• 022642278X
• 9780226422817 (canceled/invalid)

LCCN

• 2016030112
• 99972778625

OCLC

• ocn956583812
• 956583812
• SCSB-8418656

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries