Crampton - The Cartographic Calculation of Space - Race Mapping and the Balkans at the Paris P

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Social & Cultural Geography

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The cartographic calculation of space: race mappingand the Balkans at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919

Jeremy W. Crampton

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Department of GeoSciences, Georgia State University. Atlanta, GA. USAOnline Publication Date:01 October 2006To cite this Article:Crampton, Jeremy W. , (2006) 'The cartographic calculation ofspace: race mapping and the Balkans at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919',Social & Cultural Geography, 7:5, 731 - 752To link to this article: DOI:10.1080/14649360600974733URL:http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14649360600974733PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLEFull terms and conditions of use:http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdfThisarticlemaybeusedforresearch,teachingandprivatestudypurposes.Anysubstantialorsystematicreproduction,re-distribution,re-selling,loanorsub-licensing,systematicsupplyordistributioninanyformtoanyoneisexpresslyforbidden.Thepublisherdoesnotgiveanywarrantyexpressorimpliedormakeanyrepresentationthatthecontentswillbecompleteoraccurateoruptodate.Theaccuracyofanyinstructions,formulaeanddrugdosesshouldbeindependentlyverifiedwithprimarysources.Thepublishershallnotbeliableforanyloss,actions,claims,proceedings,demandorcostsordamageswhatsoeverorhowsoevercausedarisingdirectlyorindirectlyinconnectionwithorarising out of the use of this material. © Taylor and Francis 2007

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The cartographic calculation of space: race mappingandtheBalkans atthe Paris Peace Conference of 1919

Jeremy W. Crampton

Department of GeoSciences, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA 30303, USA,jcrampton@gsu.edu

Following the armistice of the First World War, the allied powers met in Paris in 1919 toestablish a new political map for Europe and the former German colonies. Thisreterritorialization drew its rationale from cartographic calculations of borders and populations that depended on a process of assessing citizenship, racial identity and territory. In this paper I examine the role of these geographical and cartographical knowledges in geopolitical decision-making. Speciﬁcally, I focus on the Americandelegation’s group of experts known as ‘the Inquiry’. The Inquiry’s maps and reportsframed the problem of contested areas such as the Balkans as one of race and territory. I argue that the Inquiry exercised a unique but little understood geopolitical inﬂuence onthe geopolitics of Europe that echoed down the twentieth century.

Key words:

First World War, the Inquiry, race mapping, Balkans, Jovan Cvijic.

Introduction

On 11 November 1918 precisely at 11 in themorning(theeleventh houroftheeleventhdayof the eleventh month) the Armistice betweenthe Allied and Central Powers came intoeffect. Although the Armistice marked theformal cessation of hostilities, it was by nomeanstheendoftheFirstWorldWar.Thatdidnot come formally until the signing of treaties,of which the Versailles Peace Treaty was theﬁrst.TheWarcausedunprecedenteddeathanddestruction, saw the defeat of three empiresand the creation or recreation of countriessuch as Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia andPoland.In an effort to resolve the competing claimsover territory, the Allies and AssociatedPowers convened a huge peace conference inParis. Germany was pointedly not invited, butwouldberequiredtoshowuptosignwhatevertreaty emerged. The Germans assumed,however, that any peace would be based onWilson’s Fourteen Points of 8 January 1918which, among other things, promised ‘opencovenants of peace, openly arrived at’ (Wilson1966–94: Vol. 45, 536). The Paris PeaceConference was ofﬁcially opened on 18 January 1919 and the Versailles Peace Treatywas signed on 28 June 1919.In order to prepare for the peace conferencethe Americans wasted no time; as early asSeptember 1917 President Woodrow Wilsonestablished a group to collect data, comparecompeting claims to territory and to map outpossible future political boundaries. It was an

Social & Cultural Geography, Vol. 7, No. 5, October 2006

ISSN 1464-9365 print/ISSN 1470-1197 online/06/050731-22

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2006 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/14649360600974733

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explicitlygeopoliticalmandate.Thesemen(anda few women) like Wilson himself were nearlyall drawn from universities and were expertsin their various fields, but had little or nodiplomaticexperience.Thegroupwasknownas‘the Inquiry’ (1917 to December 1918) and the‘American Commission to Negotiate Peace’ inParis (January to December 1919) but involvedmany of the same personnel.In this paper I will examine how it was thatthe Americans carried out their geopoliticalmandate. But I do not just wish to understandhistorical events, but also the forms of rationality that spatial knowledges produced.As such this is both a historical study, and astudyofhowquestionsofterritoryandpoliticswere deployed. The Inquiry was the firstattempt by the USA to put foreign policy on arational and scientific footing; a number of itsmembers (Archibald Coolidge, Isaiah Bow-man, George Beer, Walter Lippmann and James Shotwell) were later part of the Councilon Foreign Relations (Shoup and Minter2004; Smith 2003). The Inquiry’s scientificapproach, I argue, was based on a particularcalculation of space. ‘Calculation’ is definedas

the interrelation of politics and number

.Calculation can mean quantitative numbers,counting or mathematics, but it also includesthe practices of measurement, ordering anddividing more generally. Historically, calcu-lation drew from the statistical sciences thatcame to prominence in the nineteenth century(Porter 1986) and especially their focus onsocial and cultural problems of crime, edu-cation, life expectancy and intelligence.I suggest that one of the key geopoliticaltechniques of calculation was cartography,and in particular statistical cartography. Whatwas new concerning calculation was not somuch that objects, people or spaces could beordered and classiﬁed, but that calculativecartography helped establish an alternativepolitical rule to sovereignty (rule by right orwarfare). This alternative to sovereignty, oftenknown as ‘governmentality’, was the subjectof much of Foucault’s work in the 1970s(Burchell, Gordon and Miller 1991; Foucault2003). Foucault suggested that governmental-ity emerged in the sixteenth century butreached its ﬂorescence during the nineteenthcentury. Governmental political calculationcharacteristically operated at the level of thepopulation, rather than that of the individualas had been the case previously.Cartographic calculation contributed togovernmental rationality through acquisitionof geographical knowledge. In order to dealeffectively with threats, their severity, dis-persion and change over time must be known.To gain such knowledge a number of practiceswere developed at the opening of the moderngovernmental period (the late eighteenthcentury) that allowed government to knowitself in its territory. Among the most powerfulwere statistics and thematic mapping (Harley1987; Konvitz 1987; Porter 1986; Robinson1982) which were widely applied in earlynineteenth century Europe to social problemssuch as education, crime and disease. Hannah(2000)hasconvincinglyshownthatinordertogovern in a rational manner, and at least toavoid the appearance of arbitrariness, a statemust constitute its objects as

manipulable

(arethings in good condition compared to a norm,if not, change them) and

measurable

(so thatthings can be compared from one place toanother, events can be combinable, andassessments made in a consistent manner).Statistical mapping was able to provide theanswers tothese calculative questions: What isthere, where is it, and how much of it is there?By 1919 cartography had a rich toolbox of techniques that could be applied to theproblematic of diverse populations that inte-grated race, politics and territory.

Jeremy W. Crampton

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