Defining Lines: Cartography in the Age of Empire

From the 16th to the 20th centuries, Western colonial powers parceled up the globe both on paper and in practice. Colonial cartography catered to governments with a vested interest in controlling land, people, and resources, yet maps were rarely, if ever, simple tools used simply for getting from place to place. They came in various shapes and sizes, from atlases and wall maps to manuscripts and administrative documents. Many were the work of commercial firms as interested in profit as in politics. Such maps were intended not only for colonial officials abroad but also for domestic audiences and consumers, and served many different purposes: decorative art, educational tools, political propaganda, and expressions of scholarly curiosity. Regardless of how, why, for whom, and in what form it is produced, no map is purely objective or accurate. Each one is a visual text that makes arguments as integral to the shaping of politics, culture, economy and ideology as any philosophical treatise or political speech.

Defining Lines: Cartography in the Age of Empire was co-organized by guest curators and Duke history professors Philip Stern, co-director, and Sumathi Ramaswamy, core affiliated faculty, BorderWork(s) Humanities Lab at the Franklin Humanities Institute, with student co-curators. The installation was drawn exclusively from the holdings of Duke University’s David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Defining Lines explored the mutual relationships between maps and empires. As imperial colonial structures rose, consolidated and ultimately collapsed, the legacy of how their maps delineated colonial holdings, visualized spaces and reinforced control remains with us. As varied and conflicted as their purposes and perspectives may be, maps continue to function as a powerful and popular medium through which we understand the world and the man-made lines that define and ultimately control it. Student co-curators: Elizabeth Blackwood, Mary Kate Cash, Katie Contess, Rachel Fleder, Lauren Jackson, Jordan Noyes, and Jeremy Tripp in the BorderWork(s) Humanities Lab at the Franklin Humanities Institute.

Support was provided by the BorderWork(s) Humanities Lab at the Franklin Humanities Institute, Duke University, supported by the Humanities Writ Large grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.