Conflicts – The Map Room

Antietam Battlefield Map Shows Burial Locations

Map of the Battlefield of Antietam (1864) — S. G. Elliott, “Map of the Battlefield of Antietam,” 1864. Map, 87 × 66 cm. New York Public Library.

A map of the battlefield of Antietam held by the New York Public Library that shows the location of graves of soldiers killed in the 1862 U.S. Civil War battle is the subject of a piece in today’s Washington Post.

Civil War historians are hailing it as an important new way to visualize the toll of the huge battle outside Sharpsburg, Md., in 1862.

“Every one of us who’s looked at this absolutely flips out,” said Garry Adelman, chief historian for the Washington-based American Battlefield Trust, which works to preserve historic battlefields. “This will reverberate for decades.”

The map is the only one of its kind known to exist. It was digitized by the New York Public Library, which owns it, and was spotted online by local historians a few weeks ago.

The map doesn’t just mark graveyards, it notes the burial locations of specific regiments and brigades—and in 45 cases, individual soldiers.

‘The Monsters of Maps’: A Video About Caricature Maps

“The Monsters of Maps,” a 10-minute video by Richard Tilney-Bassett, explores the late-19th- and early-20th-century phenomenon of “serio-comic” or caricature maps, which are no stranger to us here. In the video Richard wonders what a modern-day caricature map would look like; I’d point him to the work of Andy Davey (see here and here).

How ‘1917’ Found Its Map

CBC News explores how the production team for the First World War epic 1917 consulted McMaster University’s collection of trench maps and aerial photography to produce an authentic replica of a situation map for the movie. The map they used, incidentally, is this one, a situation map showing British and German troop positions around Monchy-le-Preux on 24 April 1917:

McMaster University Library Research Collections

George III’s Collection of Military Maps Now Online

George Louis Le Rouge, *Plan de l’Armée de Cornwallis attaquée et faitte Prisoniere dans York Town, le 19 8bre, par l’Armée Combinée Francaise et Americaine*, 1781. Map, 34.9 x 43.5 cm. Royal Collection Trust.

More than 2,000 military maps and related items collected by George III have been posted online by the Royal Collection Trust to commemorate the 200th anniversary of his death. As the Guardian reports, the collection “features material from the 16th to 18th centuries, from highly finished presentation maps of sieges, battles and marcheso rough sketches drawn in the field, depictions of uniforms and fortification plans, providing a vivid contemporary account of important theatres of war in Britain, Europe and America.”

George III was apparently an avid map collector. At his death his collection numbered some 55,000 maps: the maritime and topographic maps were given to the British Library; the military maps were kept by George IV for his own use. “Not all of them were collected by George III in the first instance: like most collectors, he not only purchased individual items but also acquired the collections of others.” [Tony Campbell]

Update, 22 Apr 2020: From February, Smithsonian Magazine’s coverage.

New Exhibition of Wartime Mapping Activities at Hughenden

Opening today at Hughenden Manor: a permanent exhibition on the secret wartime mapping activities that took place at the Buckinghamshire mansion during the Second World War.

In rooms never before opened to the public, the installation features original photographs, records and memories of personnel involved at the time.

In newly accessible spaces used by the mapmakers themselves, the interactive exhibits shed light on how Hillside played such a significant role in shaping the outcome of the war. […]

Codenamed ‘Hillside’, Hughenden played such a critical role supporting the pilots of nearby Bomber Command that it was on Hitler’s list of top targets.

Around 100 personnel were based here, drawing up the maps used for bombing missions during the war, including the ‘Dambusters’ raid and for targeting Hitler’s mountain retreat Eagle’s Nest. Skilled cartographers produced leading-edge maps from aerial photographs delivered by the RAF’s reconnaissance missions.

The BBC News story provides more detail: some 3,500 hand-drawn target maps were produced at Hughenden Manor during the War.

D-Day

Map from The Neptune Monograph — Map from the Neptune Monograph

To commemorate the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings, the Bodleian Map Room Blog (no relation) has a post showing some of the Bodleian’s map holdings that deal with Operation Overlord. (The Bodleian has posted about D-Day before: see this post from June 2014 marking the 70th anniversary, and this post from September 2015.)

Maps Mania marks the occasion with links to the Library of Congress’s collection of World War II military situation maps and the Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection’s D-Day map holdings.

Meanwhile, a copy of the Neptune Monograph, a top-secret intelligence report distributed to Allied commanders before the D-Day landings that contains maps of the landing zones, can be yours for a mere $45,000. Alternatively, thanks to a Kickstarter last year, you can get a reproduction for one-tenth of one percent of that price. [Military History Now]

Update: I forgot to mention this Library of Congress blog post about a fascinating model of Utah Beach used during the invasion.

Restoring a 150-Foot Map of Australia in the English Countryside

During World War I, Australian troops staying at nearby Hurdcott Camp carved a gigantic map of Australia into a Wiltshire hillside. Chalk gravel was used to fill shallow trenches to create an outline map some 150 feet wide with 18-foot-tall letters. Since then, despite a restoration in the 1950s and its designation as a Scheduled Ancient Monument, the map has faded, but for the past four years the Map of Australia Trust has been working on restoring the map. It was finished in time for Armistice Day. More from BBC News (video) and Historic England. [Jonathan Potter]

Office of Strategic Services Maps at Stanford

U.S. Office of Strategic Services, “Southwest Japan (Kyūshū, Shikoku, and southwest Honshū) industrial concentration, 1943.” Map, 30×48 cm. Washington, 1944. Stanford Libraries.

Stanford University Libraries’ collection of Office of Strategic Services Maps: The OSS Map Division, directed by Arthur H. Robinson, produced nearly 6,000 maps before the OSS was disbanded in 1945. Stanford has digitized and posted around 700. These maps focus on wartime theatres of operation and deal with subjects like industrial capacity, ports, railroads and other strategic interests. [Open Geography]

Previously: FDR’s Globe.

Forgotten Wrecks of the First World War

Forgotten Wrecks of the First World War is an interactive map of more than 1,000 wartime wrecks along England’s south coast. Like much of the material and personal history of that war, the wreck sites—”which include merchant and naval ships, passenger, troop and hospital ships, ports, wharfs, buildings and foreshore hulks”—are degrading; this is a project designed both to raise awareness and preserve information. Selecting a wreck site brings up a wealth of detail about the ship, its current state, and the circumstances of its loss. More at the project page and from BBC News. The map itself is a basic Mapbox affair, with a layer that only looks vintage (there are motorways). [Kenneth Field]

Scotland: Defending the Nation

In Scotland: Defending the Nation (Birlinn, 4 October), Carolyn Anderson and Christopher Fleet “explore the extraordinarily rich legacy of Scottish military mapping, including fortification plans, reconnaissance mapping, battle plans, plans of military roads and routeways, tactical maps, plans of mines, enemy maps showing targets, as well as plans showing the construction of defences. In addition to plans, elevations and views, they also discuss unrealised proposals and projected schemes. Most of the maps—some of them reproduced in book form for the first time—are visually striking and attractive, and all have been selected for the particular stories they tell about both attacking and defending the country.”

For more on the book, Chris Fleet has a post on the National Library of Scotland’s blog that focuses on maps made by military aggressors; and there’s a page on the NLS website with a sample chapter and images. [WMS]

Along with Manchester: Mapping the City (see previous entry), which came out at the same time, this is the latest in a series of map books from Birlinn, many of which focus on Scotland: see, for example, Scotland: Mapping the Nation (2012), Scotland: Mapping the Islands (2016), The Railway Atlas of Scotland (2015), and books about maps of Edinburgh (2014), Glasgow (2015) and the Clyde River (2017). There’s also a Scottish maps calendar for 2019.

Maps of the Battle of the Plains of Abraham at the Canadian War Museum

CBC Ottawa looks at four hand-drawn maps of the Battle of the Plains of Abraham of 1759, in which British forces captured the city of Québec. The maps are held in the vaults of the Canadian War Museum and are too delicate to put on display; I have not as yet been able to find online versions of these maps there or at Library and Archives Canada.

A Refugee Camp Mapped by Refugees

Brian Tomaszewski writes about his project to train Syrian refugees in the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan to map the camp. “They have intimate knowledge of the camp’s layout, understand where important resources are located and benefit most from camp maps.” Over 18 months his team trained 10 refugees basic concepts, field collection techniques, and how to map with mobile phones. “Within a relatively short amount of time, they were able to create professional maps that now serve camp management staff and refugees themselves.” His team is now working on obtaining GIS certifications for some of them. [Leventhal]

See also “GIS for Refugees, by Refugees,” an article Tomaszewski wrote for the Summer 2017 issue of ArcNews.

JFK’s Cuban Missile Crisis Map Sells for Nearly $140,000

A map of potential Soviet targets in Cuba used by President John F. Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis has sold at auction for $138,798. Both buyer and seller were anonymous; the seller says the map had been given to them 20 years ago by former defense secretary Robert McNamara. CBS Boston, CNN, Fine Books and Collections. [Tony Campbell]

Mapping the Rohingya Refugee Camps

There are 671,000 Rohingya refugees living in refugee camps in Bangladesh. The UN Refugee Agency has produced a story map, Rohingya Refugee Emergency at a Glance, that maps in detail the dire situation in those camps: overcrowding; risk of natural disaster (landslides, monsoon season); access to health services, food, clean water and sanitation.

Six months into the crisis, the priority in Bangladesh is to prevent an emergency within an emergency. The single greatest challenge to refugee protection is the physical environment of the settlements themselves, notably the congestion, access challenges due to a lack of roads and pathways, the high rates of water contamination and the significant risk of epidemics. These risks disproportionately affect the most vulnerable, notably children, pregnant women, single-headed households and people with disabilities. This already dire situation could further deteriorate during the upcoming monsoon season, as large parts of the refugee sites could be devastated by flash floods or landslides and become inaccessible.

Be advised: it’s a big, graphics-heavy page.

Previously: A Humanitarian Crisis, Observed from Orbit.

Indiana University Is Digitizing Its Collection of Russian Topo Maps

Indiana University’s collection of some 4,000 Russian military topographic maps is being digitized, thanks to a grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources.

“The world-changing differences documented by maps in the Eastern Bloc Borderlands project cannot be overstated,” says Michelle Dalmau, head of Digital Collections Services for IU Libraries, and the project’s principal investigator. “In some cases we see villages and settlements depicted that no longer exist.”

Created by the Russian Military from 1883 to 1947, the maps traveled widely through their tactical use in the field. In the years surrounding World War II, many were captured by opposing forces, including German and American troops. As a result, myriad stamps from institutions they passed through—such as the University of Berlin, the U.S. Army Map Service, and the CIA Map Library—mark the maps with a unique and visual history.

More than 1,000 have already been digitized. These maps are similar to the maps chronicled by John Davies and Alex Kent in The Red Atlas (see my review), but date from before the Cold War. [Osher]