History of Cartography

La noticia de Vicente G. Olaya en la sección de Cultura de EL PAÍS recoge la edición de la Cartografía utilizada por Cipriano Mera en el Frente de Guadalajara, Cuenca y Teruel. Un documento excepcional para el conocimientos de estos Paisajes Culturales gravemente amenazados.

The publication Czech Historical Atlas. Chapters on the History of the 20th Century freely follows the long-lasting cooperation between experts from the Institute of History CAS, the Department of Geomatics of the Faculty of Civil Engineering of the Czech Technical University in Prague and the Department of Social Geography and Regional Development of the Faculty of Sciences, Charles University. The main joint outputs of their cooperation include the Academic Atlas of the Czech History (2014, 2016) and the atlas monograph Frontiers, massacres and replacement of populations in cartographic representation: case studies (15th–20th centuries) (2015).
The Academic Atlas of the Czech History is the second scientific atlas of the Czech and Czechoslovak history, created half a century after the Atlas of the Czechoslovak History from 1965. The conditions for its creation and publication were provided by a research programme under the Institute of History, Czech Academy of Sciences together with the Academia Publishers. The content of the atlas was based on the latest findings of historical research and covered the period from prehistory until the early 21st century. The individual sections captured the basic themes of historical development in the Czech Lands with links to the European development, but mainly the central European space on maps, cartographic models, illustrations, charts and choropleth maps.
The publication Frontiers, massacres and replacement of populations in cartographic representation captured selected examples of violent relocations of the populations including forced exile and border changes on maps and in texts. The team of authors presented this theme at the 22nd International Congress of Historical Sciences, which was held in Chinese Jinan in 2015, thus evaluating the results of the existing historical research and experience by means of cartographic elaboration. The work was published with support from the Czech Academy of Sciences.
The publication Czech Historical Atlas. Chapters on the History of the 20th Century is the result of the project National and Cultural identity II No. DG16P02H010 where some authors of the mentioned atlases, but also other experts met again over joint objectives and assignments. The title illustrates the selective nature of the themes, which were given by several important motives: The 20th century was a period filled with actions, which in many cases still mingle with the present. It is perceived as a part of the historical and collective memory, touching on the living persons or recalling experience passed by the eyewitnesses across the generations. The broad spectrum of processes and events of modern history cannot be fully captured in a single atlas to an extent given by potentialities of the project. Therefore, the concept of the atlas was adapted to the authors’ specializations, thus emphasising certain stages of modern history for the historical awareness of the society. Yet it was not possible to process certain important findings using a cartographic method. In many cases, a map of the
selected territory would not be evenly covered by the thematic contents, i. e. the historical phenomena and processes, not only because of the lack of relatively accurate topographical information based on research into the historical resources, but also because of their fragmentation, disparity or concentration on just certain areas. There were also the issues of hierarchisation (the degree of importance, superiority and inferiority), categorization and generalisation of the information for the needs of small-scale maps. Borders of the territories and their transformations within the particular chronological milestones depicted together on a  single synthesising map also presented a serious problem.
In terms of cartographic processing, the authors were also limited by the dimensions of a printed atlas and the related scales of the individual maps. Where necessary, the
main maps were supplemented with detail maps or overview maps. The thematic content of the maps was always processed with regard to user friendliness and legibility.
Therefore, the choice of themes for the printed Czech Historical Atlas mostly followed the mentioned criteria. At the same time, however, the authors knew that some themes could not be missed out in the selection of maps on the history of the 20th century. In addition to the completely new maps and texts, important themes from the mentioned works were included, but the texts and the cartography were updated and modified.
The atlas has three basic sections: Space, Time and Society. Deliberately, no chronological aspect was chosen that would suppress the uniqueness, specificity and lasting topicality of themes distinctive to the 20th century. The individual sections are preceded by Jitka Močičková’s analytic views, which focus on historical atlases of the Czech Lands from the mid-19th century until the present day with historical reflections on the birth of the European historical cartographic creation.
The Space is clearly connected with delimitation of the territories and incorporation of the Czech Lands, Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic within the central European and international structures. The Space also means division of the territories into smaller units motivated by the political and economic developments. And the Space is
also the landscape where transformations provoked by various causes took place in the development of the society. Despite the fact that other atlases have already explored the landscape in its relation to the society, the authors have processed at least several map examples.
The Time mostly covers themes of the military and political history such as the POW camps in the First World War, the Second World War events and selected historical
milestones of the second half of the 20th century. In this area, the problems of cartographic depiction were the deepest – extensive descriptions of political, economical and cultural developments in the historical resources at the
expense of topographical data, concentration of events into several repetitive locations, rapid transformations of the historical developments in short periods, etc. These facts greatly limited the themes of the second half of the 20th century into just a few examples of their cartographic depiction.
The Society strongly reflects on the still hot issue of migrations, both as a historical process and a demonstration of violence of the ruling powers and regimes. It pays attention to the ethnic, religious and educational diversities and monitors perception of the Czech State in the world through various forms of representation of the individuals as well as the whole entirety. It comments on the demographic development of the Czech Lands and the migrational and religious issues throughout the 20th century.
Although the atlas is a printed publication, the most advanced methods of digital cartography were applied. The creation of all maps in the geographical information system is based on a spatial database, which contains topographic (underlying) layers and a thematic content based on the authors’ manuscripts. The cartographic elaboration respects the unifying elements of the atlas (joint basis of map symbols key, the scale levels, cartographic projections), but each map is processed individually with accent on clear elaboration of the theme. Importantly, the creation of the maps was always accompanied by a cartographer and an expert on the theme (historian, geographer) and their discussion resulted in the final form of the map. The team was
very functional in this respect. The database will be partly used in the upcoming electronic portal “Czech Historical Atlas” where some chronological and spatial aspects can be visualized by means of modern methods of interactive cartography.
The Czech Historical Atlas. Chapters on the History of the 20th Century is yet another feat of the Czech historical cartography from the first decades of the 21st century. It
presents cartographically depicted historical events, which still appeal to the professionals and amateurs, but also issues that have not been processed so far. It offers a view of the historical developments in the time and space as it is provided by printed (analogue) and synthetic maps with a certain degree of stationariness, but at the same time with the benefit of stability of printed media over the internet.