num_pages: 398
description: For most of the twentieth century maps were indispensable. They were how governments understood managed and defended their territory and during the two world wars they were produced by the hundreds of millions. Cartographers and journalists predicted the dawning of a map-minded age where increasingly state-of-the-art maps would become everyday tools. By the centurys end however there had been decisive shift in mapping practices as the dominant methods of land surveying and print publication were increasingly displaced by electronic navigation systems. In After the Map  William Rankin argues that although this shift did not render traditional maps obsolete it did radically change our experience of geographic knowledge from the Gods-eye view of the map to the embedded subjectivity of GPS. Likewise older concerns with geographic truth and objectivity have been upstaged by a new emphasis on simplicity reliability and convenience. After the Map shows how this change in geographic perspective is ultimately a transformation of the nature of territory both social and political.
language: English
title: After the Map: Cartography, Navigation, and the Transformation of Territory in the Twentieth Century
publisher: University of Chicago Press