Presentations by Streams

Cartography, and in particular ethnic mapping, has been one of the most important propaganda tools since the beginning of the Napoleonic Wars, to put pressure on different social strata and political and economic interest groups by political actors. By producing (pseudo)knowledge and (pseudo)information the main aim of this pressure is to mobilise the institutions of the state through various social groups for the purposes of nation state- or empire-building or simply maintaining power by "gerrymandering". A vivid example of this today is the way the Russian state authorities are removing the name of Ukraine from historical maps and retroactively declaring the former inhabitants of Ukrainian territories as Russian.
However, the purpose of these maps is not always misinformation; there are many examples how the institutionalisation of modern geography made it possible to produce the first ethnic maps that allowed the state or the outside world to learn about the actual ethnic characteristics of a given area. The aim of this panel is to illustrate, through concrete examples, the development of ethnic cartography in Eastern Europe from the early 19th century to the present day (including its declared and secret goals – „How to lie with maps”), and how, step by step, this originally scientific discipline has become an important tool of state (war) propaganda.