54
CARTOGRAPHY WITHOUT PROGRESS':
REINTERPRETING THE NATURE AND
HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF
MAPMAKING
Abstract This paper extends the current critique of cartogra­
phy's empiricist presuppositions to the nature of cartography
as a practice. After exploring the relevant aspects of empiricist
cartography - the manner in which geographic data are treated
as constituting a single, monolithic database and the reliance
upon a linear and progressive view of cartographic history -
a new interpretation of cartography's nature and of its history
are presented. Cartography should be seen as a complex amalgam
of cartographic modes rather than as a monolithic enterprise.
Each mode comprises a set of cultural, social, and technological
relations which determine cartographic practices. This concep­
tion is applied to modern European cartography in the period
between 1500 and 1850, when mapmaking appeared to progress
from being an art to being a science (the 'cartographic refor­
mation'). Approaching this period without prior assumptions
of progress reveals that cartography's reformation is a myth cre­
ated by our misunderstanding of the unified mode of Enlight­
enment cartography, 'mathematical cosmography.' Considering
the history of cartography to be the history of the internal changes
and external interactions of several modes would appear to be
consistent with the complexity of both the historical record and
the character of mapmaking as an intellectual, technological,
social, and cultural process.
The recent literature of cartographic theory constitutes an
extended critique of the supposition that modern cartog­
raphy is an empiricist practice. Modern western culture
has established a direct association between real-world phe­
nomena and their cartographic representations and has
then privileged those representations with a correctness de­
rived from the act of observation rather than from the
social and cultural conditions within which the represen­
tations are grounded (cf. Gregory 1986). Harley (1988a,
1988b, 1989a, 1989b, 1990, 1991), Wood (1992a, 1992b;
Wood and Fels 1986), and others (e.g., Belyea 1992; Pickles
1992; Rundstrom 1991; Woodward 1992) have argued from
a variety of philosophical positions that mapmaking is
inherently ideological and its 'facts' are not as value free
as our culture has supposed. All maps - whatever their
MATTHEW H. EDNEY is Assistant Professor in the Department of Ge­
ography, State University of New York at Binghamton, Binghamton,
NY 13902-6000. MS submitted May 1993; revised MS submitted August
1993
CARTOGRAPHICA Vol 30 Numbers 2 & 3 SUMMER/AUTUMN 1993 pp 54-68
MATTHEW H EDNEY
State University of New York at Binghamton,
United States
claims to the contrary - serve a larger purpose; mapmak­
ing is not a neutral activity divorced from the power re­
lations of any human society, past or present; there is no
single nor necessarily best way in which to represent either
the social or physical worlds.
One issue that has yet to be addressed in detail by this
critique is the constitution of cartography as a practice.
We generally conceive of cartography as a singular and
monolithic enterprise and we derive that conception from
the history of cartography in a recursive manner. That
is, the modern discipline of cartography justifies and leg­
itimates its empiricist claims to objectivity and neutrality
by pointing to its past progress (which it also extrapolates
into the future); conversely, historians of cartography have
defined their subject in terms of their a priori assumptions
of mapmaking's objectivity, neutrality, and progressiveness
(Harley 1989c). This paper extends the ideological con­
struction of cartography to redefine the nature of cartog­
raphy as a practice without the empiricist emphasis upon
observation and the sense of progress that it entails. In
doing so, it also extends Rundstrom's (1991) idea of 'pro­
cess cartography.' It first lays out the basic presuppositions
of empiricist cartography and of its history. It then argues
that cartography is composed of a number of modes, or
sets of cultural, social, and technological relations which
define cartographic practices and which determine the
character of cartographic information. The modes them­
selves are historically contingent, as demonstrated in the
final section which examines the broad outline of western
European cartography between the sixteenth and nine­
teenth centuries, an outline constructed without the aid
of the historiographic crutches which are required by an
empiricist and progressive cartography.
I should stress at the outset that I conceive of 'cartog­
raphy' in the most general sense possible: as the practice
of constructing map artifacts, no matter how ephemeral
(Wood 1993; see Harley and Woodward 1987, xvi, for a
broad definition of 'map'). Having stated that, the follow­
ing discussion is directed only towards the mainstream
of modern cartography. More precisely, this paper con­
siders only the 'formal' cartography which is prosecuted
within the commercial and governmental confines of the
modern capitalist state. I recognize the significance of non-