Maps as instruments of power

The International Cartographic Association defined this in a rather highbrow manner in 2023: “A map is a symbolised representation of geographical reality, representing selected features or characteristics, resulting from the creative effort of its author’s execution of choices (…).”¹ In practice this means that there will always be a discrepancy between the real world and what is shown on a map. My predecessor but one and founder of today’s ETH Institute of Cartography and Geoinformation², Eduard Imhof, put his finger on it: “…Maps are newly constructed worlds.”³

Maps construct reality

All maps therefore represent nothing more than man-made model concepts – which incidentally also holds true of other sciences. They are thus governed by a certain degree of subjectivity and frequently also serve a very specific purpose. This makes them “powerful actors in the social construction of reality”.⁴

This recent criticism thus also shifts the perception of maps from an objective depiction of the real world to a construction. In other words, it is not just a question of the quality of the raw data, but also of the environment and intentions of the cartographer. Or to put it bluntly, “Maps are the products of power and they produce power.”⁵

Intentions behind renaming

There may very well be laudable intentions behind this. For instance, the Dufour Map published in the mid-nineteenth century as the first standardised high-quality map of Switzerland helped to cement the cohesion and thus the ‘nation-building’ of the young federal state.⁶

However, good intentions and misuse lie close to each other: Goethe’s quotation “What with black on write is written, we carry it home a sure possession”⁷ also needs to be challenged critically here. The parts of Ukraine occupied and claimed by Russia are already shown as Russian territory on Russian and Belarussian maps and in school atlases in an attempt to create facts on paper.

And the unilateral renaming of the Gulf of Mexico as “Gulf of America” by President Trump reflects the ambition to expand the territorial sphere of influence of the USA.

The “United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names”⁸ encourages member states to draw up naming guidelines and indexes of geographical names. However, it is telling that a binding international index still remains “under construction”. So what is to be done in order to create maps that are effectively politically neutral?

Drawing borders at their own discretion

In our work on the Swiss World Atlas we fall back on databases of non-governmental organisations and voluntary initiatives such as Geonames⁹ where the “Gulf of America” has not yet caught on. Such organisations have the advantage of not having to represent the interests of individual players as much as they work in a multilateral kind of manner with open databases.

Private providers of online map services such as Google like opting for a “more opportunistic” solution. Depending on both the country and country domain, users are displayed the names favoured by the current government. This is even taken so far as to depict frontiers according to the respective national preference.

The editors of the Swiss World Atlas were approached a few years ago by the embassies of Japan and South Korea regarding the name of the sea between the two countries. Japan advocated the “Sea of Japan” and Korea the “(Korean) East Sea”. And disagreements can also arise in Switzerland regarding how an area is named and hence to whom it belongs.

To take one example, the official maps of Canton Bern contain the field name “Uf der tote Äbeni” where “Glacier de la Plaine Morte” is to be found on those of Canton Valais. There was even a territorial dispute between the two cantons in which the Swiss Federal Supreme Court ruled in favour of Canton Bern in 1993.¹⁰

While the aforementioned territorial disputes may on the surface originate from spheres of influence and national pride, in most cases there are much more tangible interests behind them such as raw material reserves. The case of the Plaine Morte is likely to have centred primarily around the possible expansion of a ski resort and use of the water reserves in the glacier.

I think it is important not to lose the sense of proportion when deciding which name to use in an atlas. This will prevent us from renaming unlawfully acquired territories and regions with already established names without further ado simply because a party demands this.

Because in the case of the Sea of Japan and the (Korean) East Sea we consider both viewpoints to be justified, we have included both names in the school atlas in the interests of an ideal Swiss compromise. We have justified this by pointing out that we also wish to stimulate the discourse about outstanding territorial issues. I hope that this article does so too.