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Cartography As an Expession of Empire: Mapping Colonial North

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Cartography As an Expession of Empire: Mapping Colonial North CARTOGRAPHY AS AN EXPESSION OF EMPIRE: MAPPING COLONIAL NORTH AMERICA AND THE YOUNG AMERICAN REPUBLIC by William Karl Martin A dissertation submitted to the faculty of The University of Utah in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of History The University of Utah December 2014 Copyright © William Karl Martin 2014 All Rights Reserved The University of Utah Graduate School STATEMENT OF DISSERTATION APPROVAL The dissertation of William Karl Martin has been approved by the following supervisory committee members: Eric A. Hinderaker Chair 4/11/2014 Date Approved L. Ray Gunn Member 4/11/2014 Date Approved Edward J. Davies II Member 4/11/2014 Date Approved Winthrop L. Adams Member 4/11/2014 Date Approved Mark Button Member 4/11/2014 Date Approved and by Isabel Moreira Chair/Dean of the Department/College/School o f ____________________ History and by David B. Kieda, Dean of The Graduate School. ABSTRACT During the last third of the twentieth century, the history of cartography caught the interest of more than a few historians who would have otherwise viewed maps as interesting, but not entirely essential to the focus of their chosen research. Since the pioneering work of J. B. Harley, David Woodward, and others, it has become more apparent that a closer inspection of the nature of maps, and cartography’s part in any historical narrative, will offer information that the historian might otherwise overlook. This is especially true regarding the role that cartography plays in building and sustaining early modern empires. This dissertation explores and defines the elements of the cartographical representations in the North American imperial experience from its early colonial period to the middle of the nineteenth century. The work proceeds chronologically from the early English, French, Dutch, and Spanish territorial claims and acquisitions, to the United States’ expansion of its continental holdings at the close of the Mexican War. TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT................................................................................................................................ Ill ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.........................................................................................................v INTRODUCTION: IDEOLOGY AND OVERVIEW............................................................ 1 Chapter I. CLAIMS ON NORTH AMERICA IN THE FIRST IMPERIAL CENTURY.......14 II. BRITISH AND FRENCH IMPERIAL MAPPING: 1700-1763..............................62 III. THE BRITISH IMPERIAL FAILURE AND THE EARLY AMERICAN REPUBLIC............................................................................................................115 IV. GREAT BRITAIN, THE UNITED STATES, AND THE OREGON QUESTION........................................................................................................... 165 V. THE TEXAS QUESTION AND AMERICA’S CONTINENTAL ENDGAME........................................................................................................... 234 EPILOGUE: EMORY AND THE U.S. BOUNDARY COMMISSION..........................279 CONCLUSION: SOME FINAL COMMENTS.................................................................. 286 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY.............................................................................................292 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This has been an interesting experience. I turned to the study of American history late in my education. I mention this simply to stress my thanks and debt to the members of my PhD committee: Eric Hinderaker, L. Ray Gunn, Ed Davies, Mark Button, and W. Lindsay Adams. That they agreed to supervise my doctoral work given my limited background in the subject is quite amazing. The five of them basically have taken me through a typical undergraduate and graduate course of study, assigned the critical readings, and then have very patiently attended to my progress. It has been about five years since we first started. The result of this wonderful experience is, in part, the work that follows. I have very much appreciated their forbearance and their association. As I have looked over the map images used in this work, I am especially indebted to those libraries and repositories for collecting, preserving, and publishing this great material. My trips to the Library of Congress were a real pleasure - a special nod to Ed Redmond in the Geography and Map Division. Another notable contributor is David Rumsey. His fine collection, soon to be donated to Stanford University, took me into areas that I would not have before considered. I would also like to thank James L. Hall, II, my former business partner, who without his actions I doubt I would have had the desire or motivation to focus so well and so consistently on the task. Finally, thanks to my children: Brigham, Bryce, Alexis, Douglas, Sara, and Abigail, who were, seeming with great interest, always checking to see how my latest draft was progressing. INTRODUCTION: IDEOLOGY AND OVERVIEW Before we present the matters of fact, it is fit to offer to your view the Stage whereon they were acted, for as Geography without History seemeth a carcass without motion, so History without Geography wandreth as a Vagrant without a certain habitation. John Smith (1624) In 2012, the question of sovereignty over eight small islands located in the East China Sea threatened a diplomatic crisis between contending claimants. The total area of the islands, named Senkaku or Diaoyu/Tiaoyu, is less than three square miles and they were claimed by Japan and China. After six months of posturing and debate over their ownership, China presented what it considered incontrovertible evidence of possession. According to the state-owned China Radio International (CRI), Zheng Hailin, a Chinese scholar studying in Japan acquired an 1876 map that “doesn’t have the Diaoyu Islands on it.”1 Zheng stated that the map was published by Japan’s Army Staff Bureau; thus, the account says, “According to international law, a country’s official map has legal effect over its territorial claims, and Zheng’s map clearly denies all claims that the Diaoyu Islands are Japan’s territory.” Whether or not this is a correct interpretation of official maps and international law, it is doubtful that the introduction of this map will end the Japan-China dispute over the sovereignty of these islands. This event illustrates one ideological function of cartographical representations in the activities of the state functions that have been evident from history’s early modern period to the present day. 1 Beijing International, the Official Website o f the Beijing Government, www.ebeijing.gov.cn/Beijing Information/BeijingNewsUpdate/t1238135.html (January 10, 2013). CRI is the propaganda radio station for the People’s Republic of China. Founded in 1941, it is quite similar in service and function to another cold war version, Radio Free Europe; both are still active though the latter is now named Radio Liberty. 2 Imperial maps empower their makers, users, and readers to construct a space that suits their real or imagined world by defining two-dimensional space. In this manner, maps point the way; legitimize authority; justify governmental or nongovernmental actions or ambitions; control population and territories; normalize governing force; and absorb, in the abstract, peripheral and ethnic communities. Maps and empires to this end are mutually dependent, even mutually constitutive. By studying the relationship between maps (as two-dimensional demonstrations of geography) and the activities of empire building, we can visualize the way they lay out a course of action or at least the possibility of action, toward a desired outcome. The word itself, i.e., to map and its synonyms, underscores the connection between maps and imperial desires: to plot, to plan, to chart.2 Jean Baudrillard, French sociologist, philosopher, and cultural theorist, put it well when he wrote, “The territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it. Henceforth, it is the map that precedes the territory.”3 It follows that one of the first acts in communicating an empire’s desired authority, control, influence, and supremacy is to map. Without such focus, these imperial goals would be not only ephemeral but also perhaps unachievable. J.B. Harley was the pioneer in looking at maps as something more than an effort 2 Matthew H. Edney, “The Irony of Imperial Mapping,” The Imperial Map: Cartography and the Mastery o f Empire, ed. James R. Akerman (Chicago, 2009), 48. 3 Jean Baudrillard, “Simulacra and Simulations,” Selected Writings, ed. Mark Poster (Stanford, 1988), 166-184. Alfred Korzybski first offered the phrase “the map is not the territory” in a paper delivered in 1931, “A Non-Aristotelian System and its Necessity for Rigour in Mathematics and Physics,” Science and Sanity (1933), 747-761. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (1991), 173, quotes Thongchai Winichakul, “Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-Body of Siam,” Ph.D. thesis, University of Sidney (1988), 310: “A map anticipated spatial reality, not vice versa. In other words, a map was a model for, rather than a model of, what it purported to represent.. .A map was now necessary for the new administrative mechanism and for the troops to back up their claims.. ..The discourse of mapping was the paradigm which both administrative and military operations worked within and served.” 3 to offer accurate representations of geography. Since his seminal article in 1968, “The Evaluation of Early Maps: Toward a Methodology,”
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