Rhumb Lines and Map Wars: A Social History of the Mercator Projection [Hardcover]

Mark Monmonier (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2004 | ISBN-10: 0226534316 | ISBN-13: 978-0226534312 | Edition: 1

In Rhumb Lines and Map Wars, Mark Monmonier offers an insightful, richly illustrated account of the controversies surrounding Flemish cartographer Gerard Mercator's legacy. He takes us back to 1569, when Mercator announced a clever method of portraying the earth on a flat surface, creating the first projection to take into account the earth's roundness. As Monmonier shows, mariners benefited most from Mercator's projection, which allowed for easy navigation of the high seas with rhumb lines—clear-cut routes with a constant compass bearing—for true direction. But the projection's popularity among nineteenth-century sailors led to its overuse—often in inappropriate, non-navigational ways—for wall maps, world atlases, and geopolitical propaganda.

Because it distorts the proportionate size of countries, the Mercator map was criticized for inflating Europe and North America in a promotion of colonialism. In 1974, German historian Arno Peters proffered his own map, on which countries were ostensibly drawn in true proportion to one another. In the ensuing "map wars" of the 1970s and 1980s, these dueling projections vied for public support—with varying degrees of success.

Widely acclaimed for his accessible, intelligent books on maps and mapping, Monmonier here examines the uses and limitations of one of cartography's most significant innovations. With informed skepticism, he offers insightful interpretations of why well-intentioned clerics and development advocates rallied around the Peters projection, which flagrantly distorted the shape of Third World nations; why journalists covering the controversy ignored alternative world maps and other key issues; and how a few postmodern writers defended the Peters worldview with a self-serving overstatement of the power of maps. Rhumb Lines and Map Wars is vintage Monmonier: historically rich, beautifully written, and fully engaged with the issues of our time.

(20041106)

Editorial Reviews

From Scientific American

"Any attempt to show how map projections work must include their rhetorical role, which involves goals markedly different from traditional cartographic tasks like describing boundaries, exploring patterns, and getting around. This rhetorical prowess, rooted as much in the map's symbols and generalizations as in its projection, makes the map vulnerable to diverse ideological interpretations. Thus the Mercator map can be viewed as an icon of Western imperialism while the [Arno] Peters map can connote fairness and support for Third World concerns." Monmonier, professor of geography at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, builds on this foundation a rewarding study of mapmaking and the uses of maps. His prime example of the rhetorical role of maps is the "map war" of 30 years ago over whether the familiar Mercator projection, with its inescapable distortion of the size of countries, is Eurocentric and diminishes the significance of Third World nations. "Although a potential for bias [in maps] exists," Monmonier writes, "broad assumptions of conscious or subliminal malevolence trivialize commonsense notions of bias and agenda. In my experience, the bias of ignorance, the bias of sloppiness, and the bias of tradition, individually or collectively, are far more prevalent than the bias of political ideology."

Editors of Scientific American (209)

Review

"In Rhumb Lines and Map Wars, Mark Monmonier shows that controversies that have ignited as soon as different projections--and there have been many--emerge, each attempting to make a flat map of a ball''s surface more like reality. Some of these show the globe distorted into the shapes of lampshades, inverted triangles, hearts, half-eaten doughnuts and rounded zigzags, as weird as dreams. Politics, nationalism and international prestige caused these wars. Monmonier thinks that such arguments overrate the power of maps. He writes well and simply."—Roy Herbert, New Scientist

(Roy Herbert New Scientist 20050104)

"A rewarding study of mapmaking and the uses of maps."—Scientific American

(Scientific American 20050204)

"[Monmonier] offers yet another first-rate contribution to the literature on cartography. . . . An excellent book that deserves widespread attention."

(Jeremy Black H-Net 20051103)

"Monmonier succinctly describes the methods developed over 400 years to delineate a round earth on a flat piece of paper, ever since Mercator''s portrayal was a boon to 16th-century sailors. Clear diagrams show every stage of man''s attempts to solve this problem, why it was posed, and how theorists tried to make it more suitable, as means of travel changed.  Thus, a projection suited to a sailor seeking to discover what lay across the Atlantic Ocean was unserviceable for airline pilots choosing the shortest route over the North Pole."—Susan Gote, Times Higher Education Supplement

(Susan Gote Times Higher Education Supplement 20061101)

"This little book exhibits a rare . . . combination of elements: scholarship, readability, and usefulness. . . . Although not a textbook on map projection, the book is a handy introduction to the subject and contains as much information as the nonspecialist is likely to need."

(Richard Ring Fine Books and Collections )

“This very readable book should be studied by anyone interested in correcting much public ignorance about the importance of map projections and their manipulation (sometimes deliberately) to distort our perception of the world. . . . A major contribution to cartography.”

(Terry Birtles Journal of Spatial Science )

"Rhumb Lines and Map Wars is both a primer in the history and geometry of map projections and a complaint against those who tread Mercator under foot. . . . Monmonier has much to say about the ''power of maps,'' and covers a great deal of interesting ground, from the spider''s web of medieval portolan charts to the mathematical armature of satellite cartography."—D. Graham Burnett, London Review of Books

(D. Graham Burnett London Review of Books )

"The book works at several levels and is successful in each. . . . It is engagingly written and well illustrated, as one would expect from Monmonier, arguably the world''s foremost popular map historian. And it is an appeal for us all to be more aware of the importance of different map projections, their flexibility and their limitations."

(Charles W.J. Withers History )

"Geographers and cartographers once again owe Mark Monmonier their thanks....This insightful and interesting book further adds to Monmonier’s reputation as an author capable of enlightening students, technicians, professionals, and anyone who enjoys maps and mapping."—

Dennis Fitzsimons, Professional Geographer

(Dennis Fitzsimons, Professional Geographer )

"This book makes a major contribution to the debate through its presentation of an intellectual and social history of the Mercator projection. . . . An excellent book, interesting and accessible to both cartographic professionals and the educated general public."

(Brooks C. Pearson Geographical Review )

"There is a story to be told here, and Mark Mo (Rienk Vermu ISIS )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (October 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226534316
• ISBN-13: 978-0226534312
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #697,674 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #95 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Earth Sciences > Cartography

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good history, but more polemically anti-Peters than balanced, March 24, 2005

By 

Julian Elson "Jules" (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Rhumb Lines and Map Wars: A Social History of the Mercator Projection (Hardcover)

I understand the rage that the professional cartographer class feel for the waning advocates of Gall-Peters projection. I really do: Cartographers have, over the centuries, developed probably more equal-area maps than any other sort of map projection (after all, the mathematics of equivalence are simpler than the mathematics of conformality or equidistance), producing myriad equivalent maps from the pseudocylindrical sinusoidal map (possibly invented by Mercator himself) to the more comely elliptical Mollweide projection and its superficially similar but mathematically distant pseudoazimuthal cousin, the Hammer-Aitoff projection to Lambert's equal-area conic projection. When Mercator's conformal cylindrical projection acquires widespread, inappropriate use, the cartographic professionals quietly fight for less distorting projections. Then, in waltzes Arno Peters, with an accidental copy of a map-projection invented in the mid-19th century by James Gall, calling the establishment cartographers exploiters of the developing world and apologists for Western imperialism. Adding insult to injury, Peters at times seemed to claim to be the first area-equivalent map, although he admitted that there had been earlier ones when pressed upon the point. If that weren't enough, Peters' projection displayed a Eurocentric bias in some ways more pronounced and deliberate than Mercator projection: after all, Mercator projection has no standard parallels to choose, but Peter projection requires a choice of standard parallels: Lambert, in originally formulating the cylindrical equal-area projection, chose the equator by default. Walter Behrmann moved the standard parallels to 30 degrees North/South of the equator, after some mathematical analysis trying to minimize distortion. Peters decided on 45 degrees as the standard parallels to minimize the distortion of Europe and other prosperous, temperate climes, at the expense of massive stretching and distortion of impoverished tropical regions. Some advocate for those oppressed by Western cartography!

It is thus not out of sympathy for the cause of Peters-enthusiasts or antipathy to the cause of the professional cartographers that I report that Rhumb Lines and Map Wars is too driven by anti-Peters zeal to offer a fully useful history of the contreversies. The title "Rhumb Lines and Map Wars: A Social History of the Mercator Projection" suggests a neutral, arms-length, critical portrait of all involved. A better title might have been, "Why Robinson, Snyder, et al Were Right and Peters Was Wrong." This book is a polemic. It is a polemic in favor of "my side" of this debate, but that does not make it an unbiased history.

Nonetheless, with this caveat, the book is an enjoyable read. The book traces a fascinating history, beginning with the Portalan charts that predated the Mercator projection and the Plate Caree maps that converted lattitude and longitutde into x and y coordinates without any mathematical transformation to the modern controversies over scholastic wall maps and the attempts to create acceptable compromise maps such as Robinson's "orthophanic" projection and the blended Winkel Tripel projection. While the central story of the book is the war between the entrenched, habitual use of Mercator projection, the misguided attempts to replace it with Peters projection, and the earnest efforts of cartographers to steer through the reefs of these rectangular projections be creating compromise alternatives, many other stories are told along the way, such as Ferdinand Hassler's tempermental service as the U.S.'s cartographer and inventor of polyconic projection and John Parr Snyder's rise from chemical engineer and amateur map projection enthusiast to the foremost authority on map projections with his invention of Space Oblique Mercator for NASA.

Overall, this is a good book: it is full of fascinating history and information about maps. No mathematical background is needed to understand this book's discussion of map projection. At the same time, be aware that the author is not an objective viewer of the conflict between established cartography and Peters, but an active polemicist for established cartography. This is, on balance, not such a bad thing, because established cartography is factually correct in general, but one must be aware of his intent.