Putting maps in their place

The demise of the Falkland Islands Dependency Survey and the mapping of Antarctica, 1945-1962

Datos Bibliográficos

ID7759263
AutoresKlaus Dodds (0000-0001-5074-0662, autor de correspondencia)
Año2000
Volumen7
Número2
Páginas176-210
Fecha de publicación2000-04-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaEcumene (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0967-4608 • E-ISSN: 2058-3435
EditorialSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1191/096746000701556699
OpenAlexW4250396831
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas14

This paper explores the political and scientific justification for the mapping of Antarctica by the Falkland Islands Dependency Survey (FIDS). As with the ‘Great Game’ of the nineteenth century, cartography was politics by another means. Thereafter, consideration is given to how the maps and surveys of Antarctica reflected British anxieties concerning Argentina in the immediate postwar world. As a rival claimant state in the South Atlantic, Argentine surveyors and administrators were a source of considerable concern to the FIDS. In the field, however, the FIDS surveyors were expected to concentrate on surveying while at the same time plotting these foreign incursions in Antarctica. The methods and processes involved in collating information into map form are considered. Ironically, the greatest geopolitical challenge to these aspirations came from the United States rather than Argentina or even Chile. Finally, the paper concludes with the changing political and cartographic remit of the FIDS in the era of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty

Antarctic treaty · Archaeology · Cartography · Demise · Geography · Geopolitics · Physical geography · Political geography · Political science · Politics · Tourism · Treaty · Engineering · Geology and Paleoclimatology Research · Historical Geography and Geographical Thought · History of Science and Natural History · Law · Polar Research and Ecology · Geology