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Between 1900 and 2000, more than seventy countries produced a national atlas, an official or quasi-official rendering of the nation-state in maps and accompanying text. This book considers the reasons behind and characteristics of this state-sponsored cartographic explosion. These national atlases mirror and embody some of the important themes of this turbulent century, including the complex connections between nation, state and territory, the rise of state-sponsored science; the growth of nation-states; colonialism and postcolonialism; and the geography of biopolitics.
John Rennie Short’s The Rise and Fall of the National Atlas in the Twentieth Century offers a compelling review and analysis of many of the official national atlases that have been published around the world. [...] It is an enlightening read for cartographers, geographers, historians, and anyone interested in maps and geopolitics. —Cartographic Perspectives
John Rennie Short is a professor in the School of Public Policy, University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He has published widely in a range of journals and is the author of fifty books.
List of Figures; List of Tables; Acknowledgments; 1. Introduction, A Century of Nationalism, The Main Arguments, Structure of the Book; 2. The Early National Atlas, A Cartographic Explosion , The Early National Atlas in England and France; 3. Cartographic Anxieties and the Emergence of the Modern National Atlas, The Modern National Atlas in Latin America, From Anxieties to Certainties, Remaining Anxieties; 4. Cartographic Ruptures and the National Atlas, Cartographic Declarations of Independence, Revolutionary Ruptures, A Transect across the Ruptures; 5. National Atlas, Global Discourses, The Global Framing of the National, The Language of the Atlas: Text, The Language of the Atlas: Maps; 6. The Physical World of the National Atlas, Origins, Science, State and the National Atlas, National Imaginaries, Contested Discourses of the National Atlas; 7. The Social World of the National Atlas, Social Statistics, Statistical Atlases, Social Categories; 8. The End of the National Atlas?, Information Overload, New Technologies, National Atlas as Digital Portal, Toward a Polyphonic Participatory Atlas; Notes; Appendix: National Atlas Bibliography; Index