Mapping Europe's Borderlands
Russian Cartography in the Age of Empire
384 pages
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17 color plates, 60 halftones, 2 line drawings, 4 tables
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7 x 10
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© 2012
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.
Association for the Study of Nationalities and the Harriman Institute: Joseph Rothschild Prize in Nationalism and Ethnic Studies
Finalist
E. Edson, Piedmont Virginia Community College | Choice
“[A] fascinating topic. . . . Recommended.”
Robert Legvold | Foreign Affairs
“Seegel intricately analyzes the cartography of imperial Russia and Poland-Lithuania as the science evolved and historical demands were placed on it. This is a rich and fascinating angle on history enhanced by a bounty of beautiful reproductions. Rare is a book this aesthetically pleasing and intellectually original. Seegel should be congratulated for creating it, and the University of Chicago Press, for producing it.”
Adam Zamoyski | Times Literary Supplement
“[R]emarkable and compelling. . . . Mapping Europe’s Borderlands is an important book, . . . providing the basis for a fundamental reappraisal of the history of this hugely important area over the past few centuries.”
H-Net
“[T]his work is underpinned by impressive scholarship. The author has evidently examined hundreds of original maps and associated materials in many libraries and archives across Europe and the United States, has consulted numerous scholars, and appears to have command of several languages.”
Willard Sunderland, University of Cincinnati | American Historical Review
“[B]eautifully illustrated. . . . The book is awash in maps of all sorts, some in brilliant color. The sheer number of them cited or explained is remarkable, proving Seegel’s wide-ranging research. He . . . never fails to tell us about the story behind the pictures, giving us a sense of the men who plotted the maps and, in some cases, paid for them with broken lives and careers. . . . Anyone interested in the problems of nationality and geography in the Russian-ruled borderlands of Eastern Europe should read this book.”
Dennis Reinhartz, University of Texas at Arlington | Imago Mundi
“Mapping Europe’s Borderlands makes a valuable contribution and offers directions for future research. It is painstakingly researched, bringing together information from sources not only in English, but also in Russian, German, Polish, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, and other languages. It is extensively illustrated. This book should appeal to a broader range of readers of the history of cartography because much of what it reveals about the mapping of Russia, East, and East Central Europe easily is applicable elsewhere in the modern world of empire.”
Michael D. Gordin | Isis
“Seegel offers a thoughtful framework by which historians can read maps against the grain, uncovering ideologies related to anthropology, geology, statistics, and numerous other domains of natural knowledge.”
Kitty Lam, Michigan State University | Slavonica
“A rich study of East European and Russian cartography from the Enlightenment to the end of the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. Steven Seegel scrutinizes the scientific and pedagogical value of military, historical, and ethnographic maps, geography textbooks, and cartographic literature in eleven different languages. The result is a detailed work that illuminates how Russia adopted the Enlightenment’s instruments of scientific progress and adapted them into tools of modern governance. . . . By inviting readers to view East European lands through the prism of geographers, Steven Seegel has made a noteworthy contribution to the study of territory and space in Russian and East European history.”
Andrzej Nowak, Jagiellonian University, Poland | Journal of Historical Geography
“The book is not only a real showpiece of the author‘s erudition and brilliant orientation in a vast multilingual literature of the subject, but it is first and foremost a critical contribution to our understanding of the ‘situated messiness’ of east central European borderlands and the place contested cartographies and constructed geographies have played in this region’s historical formation between 1772 and 1919.”
Larry Wolff, New York University
“Steven Seegel has written a fascinating and important work on the significance of maps and cartography for understanding the history of Eastern Europe. He demonstrates with detailed erudition the social and political implications of mapping, challenges us to rethink basic preconceptions about European space, and illuminates the complexities of the terrain in Europe’s borderlands. This is essential reading for scholars working on Russia and Eastern Europe.”
Theodore R. Weeks, Southern Illinois University
“Knowledge is power and maps project a vision of ‘objective knowledge’ over a territory. Steven Seegel’s Mapping Europe’s Borderlands applies this dictum to the ethnically and religiously diverse lands once forming part of the early modern Polish Commonwealth. Seegel’s book, combining insights from geography, cartography, critical theory, and history, provides us with a means of seeing this territory through the lens of nineteenth-century mapmakers.”
Roman Szporluk, Harvard University
“Mapping Europe’s Borderlands examines the critical role of maps in the making of Eastern Europe. In this highly innovative study, Steven Seegel uses maps to offer a new, complex, and highly convincing view of the wars, revolutions, diplomatic relations, and political ideas in this part of the world. A strikingly original story.”
Timothy Snyder, Yale University
“No one has approached the history of East European cartography with greater dedication, energy, and scholarly objectivity than Steven Seegel. This imposing work will prove indispensable in years and decades to come for anyone who wishes to understand the historical relationship between constructions of place and power.”
Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface
Introduction
1 Early Modern Cartography and Power in European Russia and Poland-Lithuania
2 Enlightenment to Romantic Historical Claims between Imperial Russia and East Central Europe
3 Purposes of Early 19th-Century Russian Imperial Cartography
4 Purposes of Early 19th-Century Polish National Cartography
5 Mid-19th-Century Cartography and the Idea of Progress in Russian Empirecraft
6 Modern European Ethnoschematization and the Vienna–St. Petersburg Axis
7 Late 19th-Century Russian Imperial Schemes and Habsburg-Polish Cartographic Borrowings in Galicia
8 Borderlands as Modern Homelands? Mapping Ukraine and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania
9 Nationalizing Cartography in the Borderlands before World War I
10 Political Cartography in East Central Europe during World War I
Preface
Introduction
1 Early Modern Cartography and Power in European Russia and Poland-Lithuania
2 Enlightenment to Romantic Historical Claims between Imperial Russia and East Central Europe
3 Purposes of Early 19th-Century Russian Imperial Cartography
4 Purposes of Early 19th-Century Polish National Cartography
5 Mid-19th-Century Cartography and the Idea of Progress in Russian Empirecraft
6 Modern European Ethnoschematization and the Vienna–St. Petersburg Axis
7 Late 19th-Century Russian Imperial Schemes and Habsburg-Polish Cartographic Borrowings in Galicia
8 Borderlands as Modern Homelands? Mapping Ukraine and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania
9 Nationalizing Cartography in the Borderlands before World War I
10 Political Cartography in East Central Europe during World War I
Conclusion: Purposes of Maps in the Borderlands of 1919
Notes
Bibliography
Index
For more information, or to order this book, please visit http://www.press.uchicago.edu
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Geography: Cartography | Social and Political Geography
History: European History
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