Mapping Europe's Borderlands: Russian Cartography in the Age of Empire - Hardcover

Seegel, Steven

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0226744256 ISBN 13: 9780226744254

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2012

Synopsis

The simplest purpose of a map is a rational one: to educate, to solve a problem, to point someone in the right direction. Maps shape and communicate information, for the sake of improved orientation. But maps exist for states as well as individuals, and they need to be interpreted as expressions of power and knowledge, as Steven Seegel makes clear in his impressive and important new book.

Mapping Europe’s Borderlands takes the familiar problems of state and nation building in eastern Europe and presents them through an entirely new prism, that of cartography and cartographers. Drawing from sources in eleven languages, including military, historical-pedagogical, and ethnographic maps, as well as geographic texts and related cartographic literature, Seegel explores the role of maps and mapmakers in the East Central European borderlands from the Enlightenment to the Treaty of Versailles. For example, Seegel explains how Russia used cartography in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars and, later, formed its geography society as a cover for gathering intelligence. He also explains the importance of maps to the formation of identities and institutions in Poland, Ukraine, and Lithuania, as well as in Russia. Seegel concludes with a consideration of the impact of cartographers’ regional and socioeconomic backgrounds, educations, families, career options, and available language choices. 

About this title

About the Author

Steven Seegel is assistant professor of history at the University of Northern Colorado. He is the author of Ukraine under Western Eyes.

 

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226744256
• ISBN 13: 9780226744254
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 384