In her paper to the ‘Geographies of Displacement’ conference in Montpellier in June
2014, Isabelle Avila drew attention to the role of maps as lieux de mémoire that
organize not only space but time as well. As the blank heart of African cartography was
gradually filled over the nineteenth century, the successive versions of the map of the
continent, preserved in memory, became testimony to the exploits of the British and the
advance of ‘civilization.’ The maps, displayed in schoolrooms, furnished the ‘mobilier
mental des Britanniques’ over several generations, providing ‘un lieu de mémoire
géographique du progrès de l’exploit humain.’4 Her case study is a potent reminder that
the development of Western cartography is closely associated with the Age of
Discovery and its expansion with the imperialist project. As Toal (1996: 4) writes: ‘The
In her article for this issue Avila argues further, however, that the apparent simplicity
of the story told by the maps, of the passage from the unknown to the known, from
invisibility to transparency, was challenged by literary writers of the late nineteenth
century, and notably by Joseph Conrad. Through his portrayal of the shadows that close
in on Marlow’s voyage into the heart of darkness, the author refuses to reduce thefunction of cartography was to transform seized space into legible, ordered imperial
territory.’ In the employ of the European colonial powers, the cartographers of empire
carved up the ‘blanks’ and ‘empty quarters’ of the globe into easily assimilated
geometrical figures, frequently along lines of longitude and latitude rather than the
ethnic, religious, linguistic, or cultural contours of their indigenous populations, even in
defiance of geographical realities. In this context, the map of empire became an
instrument of ‘Geography Militant,’ serving a dominant epistemology in a polarized
world of civilized Western Self and primitive Indigenous Other.