CARTOGRAPHY AS A TOOL OF IMPERIAL POLICY IN CENTRAL ASIA
DOI: 10.23951/2312-7899-2020-2-151-181
There are, at least, two difficulties of principle that we face trying to figure out the role of maps in any historical process. The first one is that the maps are generally understood as a product of strict empirical procedure free of perception gaps and idealizations. We are told that maps reflect objective realities. Consequently, if one suggests that they can be prejudiced, he insults the very scientific Method. The second difficulty relates to the supposed utilitarian attitude of cartography. It is customary for us to consider maps as primarily a supporting means not influencing the process but assisting it. The map is a useful and effective facilitator, rather than mentor imposing predefined positions. Both these beliefs are in fact myths, but extremely persistent myths. The talisman of precision protected the topographic methods against charges of complicity in imperial expansion for a long time. Fine scales of graduated circles, vernier scales, scrupulous procedures of error recovery, diminution of aberration and quantifying uncertainties – a whole range of positivist epistemologies allowed to speak that maps were nothing but scaled-down representations of real world. Still, the very existing of reduction, which is an integral part of map-making, obliges the topographers to resort to selection. What deserves to be depicted on the map and what not? Maps do not mirror the space, but re-encode it, and it is quite natural that this procedure operates as instrument of a particular political system with the underlying ideology and consequent social interests. Maps are both instruments and representations of power. The article shows how this particular feature of European cartography allowed to depict the Kazakh Steppe as vast uninhabited areas and helped to render Kazakh peoples invisible in their own land. The other indispensable function of cartography is delineation of phenomena. Cartographers draw lines, bridge them into particular totalities and thereby inscribe into the landscape new spatialized identities. The steppe did not contain boundaries, but surveying and mapping techniques allowed to establish “frontiers” by imaginary lines that connected rarely scattered Russian fortifications in the steppe. The article traces how these topographical lines formed a particular way of thinking among Russian top bureaucracy and military leaders, who eventually began to perceive them as gradual extension of imperial “frontiers” in the Central Asia. In spite of the fact that “frontiers” in question were no more than techniques of representation, military and civil functionaries granted them the status of firm state boundary. Since it was a primitive description of previously unexplored territory, political and cartographic discourses tightly intertwined each other. The article demonstrates how the objects produced by military topographers in the “no-man’s lands” obtained their own existence on maps and have been used as a platform for further imperial expansion.
Keywords: cartography, imperial policy, Russian empire, Central Asia, military topography, Kazakh Steppe, empire’s border
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Issue: 2, 2020
Series of issue: Issue 2
Rubric: ARTICLES
Pages: 151 — 181
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