The New Nature of Maps

Citation

Harley, J. B. (2002). The New Nature of Maps: Essays in the History of Cartography (P. Laxton, Ed.; Introduction by J. H. Andrews). Johns Hopkins University Press.

Chapter Summary

The book gathers seven essays by Brian Harley (1932–1991) that were first published separately between the late 1980s and the early 1990s. They were assembled after his death by his former student Paul Laxton, who adds a preface and a consolidated bibliography. J. H. Andrews contributes a long critical introduction, and Matthew Edney compiled the list of Harley's works at the back. The cloth edition (2001) runs to xviii + 334 pages with 36 illustrations; the 2002 paperback is a later issue of the same book.

Introduction by J. H. Andrews

Andrews, a friend and frequent correspondent of Harley's, assesses his ideas and scholarship from the outside. Mark Monmonier's review in Cartographic Perspectives describes it as a lengthy and insightful critique: it asks whether Harley applies to himself the doubts he directs at map makers, questions his reading of "silences" as motivated omissions, and points to generalisations that rest more on context than on the maps themselves. It also credits Harley's philosophical writing as a stimulus to readers who might otherwise have stayed empirical.

Chapter 1: Text and Contexts in the Interpretation of Early Maps

The opening essay argues that historians have been reluctant to treat maps as social constructions that reflect the interests and ideology of those in power. Harley urges readers to look at what a map leaves out as well as what it shows, and draws on the art historian Erwin Panofsky's iconology to read symbolic meaning in maps. His examples range from topographic maps to bird's-eye views of North American cities.

Chapter 2: Maps, Knowledge, and Power

The most theoretical of the early essays treats maps as a form of discourse and of surveillance, tools for a state that wants to declare nationhood, claim territory or fix property rights. It leans on Michel Foucault's links between knowledge and power and discusses how the geometry of a map, for example a Mercator chart centred on Europe, can carry a worldview.

Chapter 3: Silences and Secrecy

Originally published in Imago Mundi in 1988 under the full title "Silences and Secrecy: The Hidden Agenda of Cartography in Early Modern Europe", this is described by Monmonier as perhaps Harley's most famous essay. It replaces the older notion of "blank spaces" with "silences", omissions that deserve interpretation as active human choices, and discusses censorship, military strategy and commercial advantage in early modern European mapping.

Chapter 4: Power and Legitimation in the English Geographical Atlases of the Eighteenth Century

A more concrete case study: eighteenth-century English atlases depended on powerful patrons, and their maps, title pages, cartouches and subscriber lists present the existing social and political order, with its landed elite, as natural. The contents list reproductions from John Senex's A New General Atlas (1721) and from atlases by Bowen, Cary and others. Monmonier counts it among the least contentious essays because the evidence is so direct.

Chapters 5–6: Deconstructing the Map; New England Cartography and the Native Americans

Chapter 5 applies the idea of deconstruction to maps, arguing that they are often not what cartographers assume them to be, and attacks the myth of progressive scientific objectivity in cartography. Chapter 6, published posthumously in 1994, turns to colonial maps of New England, where indigenous settlements were omitted and lands were renamed and subdivided; the contents list maps by John Smith, William Wood and John Foster. Monmonier regards it as Harley at his best.

Chapter 7: Can There Be a Cartographic Ethics?

The closing essay asks what "ethics" could mean for professional cartography. Harley rejects ethics built on a profession's internal standards, and names positivism, the "cartographer knows best" assumption and uncritical enthusiasm for technology as targets. Notes, a list of Harley's works and a consolidated reference list follow.

Key Concepts

Chapters 1–3: Reading maps as texts

• Maps as social constructions: maps reflect the interests and ideology of the people who commission and make them, so they cannot be taken at face value.
• Silences: features that are left off a map are treated as meaningful, whether the omission is deliberate or unconscious.
• Knowledge and power: following Foucault, mapping is bound up with the aims of states, from claiming territory to recording property.

Chapters 4–7: Case studies, deconstruction and ethics

• Legitimation: atlases and their decoration present an existing social order as normal.
• Deconstruction: reading a map against the assumptions of its makers rather than for the information it is supposed to deliver.
• Colonial naming and omission: maps as instruments for acquiring and disposing of land.
• Cartographic ethics: the question of moral responsibility for what maps do, as distinct from professional standards.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• A founding statement of critical cartography. The essays set out the argument that representation is never neutral, in prose that Monmonier calls fluent, witty and often elegant. They remain the usual starting point for anyone working on the politics of mapping.
• Evidence in the case studies. Chapters 4 and 6 argue from specific atlases and colonial maps reproduced in the book, which makes the thesis testable rather than only asserted.
• Built-in counterweight. Andrews's introduction and Edney's bibliography let a reader see Harley's claims challenged and place them in his wider output. Monmonier suggests this invites the skeptical reading that Harley's own argument would call for.
• Reach beyond history. Because the final essays address modern professional cartography, the collection speaks to people who make maps today as well as to historians of early ones.

Limitations

• Contested theory. Monmonier finds the notion of deconstruction muddled and the postmodern rhetoric of Chapter 5 needlessly complex, and by 2001 considered the attack on cartographic objectivity somewhat dated.
• Weak evidence for some claims. He notes that the suggestion that Europe-centred projections fostered a sense of European superiority is not backed by convincing evidence, and Andrews questions whether "silences" can be inferred from blank space alone.
• Little practical guidance. The ethics essay stays general about which policies and practices Harley found objectionable.
• A collection rather than a single argument. The seven essays first appeared separately, between the late 1980s and the mid-1990s, and the unity of the volume comes largely from the editorial apparatus.

Where It Fits in the Course

Within the course's reading list, this is the theoretical and historical counterpart to the practical books. Mark Monmonier's How to Lie with Maps is a short illustrated introduction to how scale, projection and symbolisation mislead; it makes a good first step toward Harley's more philosophical claims, and its author is the same reviewer who gives a measured assessment of this volume. Krygier and Wood's Making Maps is a design guide for people producing maps with GIS, and Harley's essays supply the reasons to ask who a design choice serves.

The GIS texts, such as Longley and colleagues' Geographic Information Science and Systems and O'Sullivan and Unwin's Geographic Information Analysis, treat spatial data technically. Harley's arguments are the standard critical background to them, and are best read after at least one of these, when the reader already knows what a data model or a classification choice involves.

How to Use This Book

The book suits upper-level undergraduates and graduate students in geography, cartography, history of science or visual culture. No technical cartography is needed, though some familiarity with the history of maps and with terms such as iconology or discourse helps.

A workable plan:

• Start with Chapters 1 and 2, the programmatic essays, then read Chapter 3, which Monmonier calls perhaps Harley's most famous essay.
• Read Andrews's introduction after two or three essays rather than first, so that his objections can be tested against Harley's own words.
• Choose between Chapters 4 and 6 as the case study that fits your interest, early modern Britain or colonial North America; read both for a course on the politics of mapping.
• Finish with Chapters 5 and 7 for the theory and the ethical question, and use Edney's list of Harley's works and the consolidated references for further reading.

An effective exercise is to pick a single map, a topographic sheet or a web map, and list what it omits and whom that serves, then ask whether the claim holds up or whether Andrews's caution about reading motives into blank space is the better guide.