Herder-Institut für historische Ostmitteleuropaforschung - Institut der Leibniz-Gemeinschaft
Refine
Year of publication
- 2017 (1)
Document Type
- Working Paper (1) (remove)
Language
- English (1)
Has Fulltext
- yes (1)
Is part of the Bibliography
- no (1)
Keywords
- Kartografie (1)
- Ost-West-Konflikt (1)
- Osteuropa (1)
Since the late 19th century, the idea of producing a map series that depicts the entire world in a uniform style and at a standardised scale has been a fascinating one. After the Second World War, when the prospects of the International Map of the World at a scale of 1:1,000,000 continued to face severe problems, cartographers from socialist countries in Europe produced the Karta Mira, a world map at a scale of 1:2,500,000. In our work, we examined the content of selected Karta Mira sheets, particularly the depiction of settlements, competing territorial claims, and place names. Avoiding the ongoing debate about so-called ‘map falsification’ in socialist countries, we shifted our methodological approach by conceiving the Karta Mira as a representation of Cold War rivalry in geography and cartography. From that perspective, the production of the Karta Mira appears as an attempt to achieve two opposing aims at once. On the one hand, in fear of nuclear war, cartographers hid strategic and relevant cities and shifted various other Soviet cities to an extent that map reviewers might have criticised the accuracy of the map. On the other, questioning territorial claims of Western colonial powers on Karta Mira sheets, as well as the fact of realising the long-cherished plan of a standardised world map, the Karta Mira challenged Western geographical discourses and, from the perspective of its makers, proved the superiority and technical efficiency of socialist geography.