Colonialism and Space

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Colonialism and Space

• Lecture 1

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Aims of Lecture

• Look at re-emergence of abstract, mathematical
  representations of space in Europe from 15th
  century ?
• Examine how they were used to make claims to
  territory and manage populations
• Explore alternative understandings of space that
  unsettle hegemonic worldviews

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Medieval World maps

• Medieval world maps showed Jerusalem in the
  center. The maps were always embellished with
  lots of religious imagery

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Chorographic maps
Maps of towns and regions were drawn by artists
and did not strive toward scientific precision
Information about land parcels was written down
but not mapped
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Renaissance Geography

• In 15th century, Europeans rediscovered the work
  of Claudius Ptolemy (85-165AD)
• He produced a piece of work, The Geography
  (2AD), that provided the principles for a new way
  of seeing the world from a detached perspective
• He had assigned coordinates, based on longitude
  and latitude, to all known places so that they
  could be plotted on a world map

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Ptolemaic Geography

• Inspired by Ptolemy, Renaissance geographers
  sought to represent the world as a structured
  whole, using precise geometrical methods

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The Age of Discovery

• New instruments for navigation and mapping
  enabled the discovery of new worlds
• Rounding of Cape of Good Hope, 1488
• The Columbian Encounter, 1492
• Magellans crew circumnavigates the world, 1522
• Development of maps which allow Europeans to
  transcend the spatial limits of everyday life and
  scientifically see the world as a structured
  whole
• But did these maps did not innocently re-present
  an already existing world, they actively produced
  particular spaces, bodies and subjectivities.

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The Territorial State

• The proliferation of maps and mapmaking was
  co-constitutive of the emergence of capitalism
  and a new regime of private property and the
  territorial state in the 16th century.

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Re-territorializing Space
The world beyond the horizon was depicted in
large, empty spaces, waiting to be ordered and
rationalized by enlightened Europeans to make
those spaces visible, knowable, and available for
use.
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Civilizing the new world

• The allure of the unknown world is captured by
  Marlow in Conrads Heart of Darkness,
• Now when I was a little chap I had a passion
  for maps. I would look for hours at South
  America, or Africa, or Australia, and lose myself
  in all the glories of exploration. At that time
  there were many blank spaces on the earth, and
  when I saw one that looked particularly inviting
  on a map (but they all look that) I would put my
  finger on it and say, "When I grow up I will go
  there."

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Turning Space into Time

• Over time, maps and atlases allowed (some)
  people to see themselves as part of a nation of
  people, inextricably bound to a particular
  territory
• These territories came to be understood and
  organized hierarchically in terms of certain
  essential attributes and totalizing differences

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Cartographic silences

• In the process, scientific cartography abstracts
  away the particularities of different people and
  places, which come to be represented through
  standardized symbols
• It writes over the geographies of
  heterogeneous histories of contending peoples,
  antagonistic authorities, and tense locations of
  cultural difference.
• Homi Bhabha, DissemiNation

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Projecting and centering the map
Mercators projection, 1569
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The Gall-Peters projection, 1973
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Colonial cities
Cecil Rhodes as depicted in a cartoon in Punch
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Circulation
In the 18th century, growing concern with the
need to develop capital cities, which would
have both an ornamental and political function
within the state.   The city was seen as a
living organism, dependent on the circulation of
goods, capital, people for its survival.   The
native city seemed chaotic to the colonialists.
Urban life seemed congested the layout of the
city was confusing, comprising of winding streets
and cluttered housing the temporal rhythms of
the city were different
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Abstract Space

• Abstract maps also recoded social life and
  reworked the spaces of the everyday life in the
  city
• The controlling the masses was achieved in
  part by the rationalizing of domestic space
  according to European norms

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Conclusions

• Scientific maps were intrinsic to the formation
  of territorial states and building of empires
  during 15th-19th centuries
• They became a legal benchmark for establishing
  claims to land and property, and a means to more
  effectively tax and control populations
• European powers could now seek to impose
  boundaries and strategize politically on the
  world stage