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28b3248f36bd38af0f4a74dea3fc27d8
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Tourism, Proximity and British Perceptions of France and Germany Before the First World War
Description
An account of the resource
This collection explores British perceptions of France and Germany before the First World War, and how they were influenced by proximity, both in terms of simple distance and in terms of how easy it was to travel there. There are four elements (one of which isn't a historical map). <br />The first is a graphical representation of the quickest routes from London to different places in Europe, as advised by Thomas Cook and Son travel agents in 1913, and how long it would take to travel to each destination. These graphs give us a sense of how far places in Europe actually were from London in 1913 (admittedly a limited sense given I haven’t found useful information on the prices of these journeys, or how many times a day they ran). They also show which places routes ran through, thus showing which places travelllers would be familiar with simply by having to frequently pass through.<br />The second map is a cartoon map of Europe made in 1900. It supposedly shows the different countries responding to Britain’s war in South Africa. It is interesting for how France—at the time far from an ally—is shown as far less threatening than Germany, which in turn is less threatening than Russia. It is interesting to apply information from the previous element to this one (if we assume that travel patterns in Europe had not radically changed between 1900 and 1913). The relative proximity of France, and number of routes through Paris, perhaps meant that more people had been there, and did not find it excessively foreign or sinister, while the distantness of Russia (Moscow is 102 hours from London) arguably result in it being depicted as a terrifying, autocratic octopus (a depiction surely grounded in common British stereotypes and attitudes). <br />The third element seeks to answer a question posed by the comparison of the first and second. The first element shows that Germany was not very distant, and that many routes passed through it, especially through Cologne. Yet the second shows that Germany seemed to be more foreign and threatening than France. The third element is a map of Europe made in 1880. It labels western Germany—the Rhineland that accounts for so many nodes in the first element—“Germany,” and the rest of the German Empire “Prussia.” While it was probably the result of parsimonious atlas makers reusing pre-unification plates, the existence of such a map (and of other examples, which are hyperlinked), suggests that the British maintained a mental distinction between the Germany they encountered and the threatening, militaristic Prussia they did not. Either that map echoes a distinction that was already salient, or it and others helped to create or maintain such a distinction. It is no accident that Germany is represented in element two by the Kaiser eagerly stockpiling battleships, echoing a pre-unification cartoon map of <a href="http://maps.bpl.org/id/16826">Prussia</a>, in which that state is embodied by the Kaiser and an armed and dangerous Bismark.<br />The last element is a fragment of a map of Paris from an English language guidebook published in 1878. It gives us a loose sense of what sort of places would have grounded British perceptions of the French capital. Specifically, government buildings feature prominently, suggesting that visiting Paris in some way entailed visiting the French state, and perhaps coming to understand it as similar to the British state. One might wonder whether visitors to Berlin would have had the same response to the German state, had many people visited Berlin.
Historical Map
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Cartographer
W. Williams
Engraver
W. Williams
Type
individual map, atlas sheet, book figure, part of bound collection, born-digital
atlas sheet
Format notes
hand coloured, 28 x 35cm
Collection
Name of collection of which the map is a part
David Rumsey Historical Map Collection
URL or Unique Identifier
<a href="http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~30529~1140056:Europe-?">http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~30529~1140056:Europe-?</a>
Date Published
"Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1879 by S. Augustus Mitchell in the Office of the Librarian of Congress in Washington," officially published in an atlas in 1880
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Map of Europe, Showing its Gt. Political Divisions
Description
An account of the resource
This atlas map of Europe is included as it is an excellent example of a persistent problem that cartographers of Europe faced after German unification: how to label the quasi-federal German Empire. Interestingly, the label for Prussia -- the dominant German state -- is bigger than that of Germany. While the label for Germany runs vertically through the Rhineland -- a major British tourist destination -- the Prussian label runs horizontally. One might wonder whether British tourists to Germany connected the country they visited with the rising German state, or whether they sustained a similar dichotomy between Germany and Prussia. <br />A possible explanation for why this map labels Germany so is that it uses plates made before German unification -- a version of the map made in <a href="http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~30423~1140462:Europe-?sort=Pub_Date%2CPub_List_No_InitialSort&qvq=q:List_No%3D%272483.046%27%22%2B;sort:Pub_Date%2CPub_List_No_InitialSort;lc:RUMSEY~8~1&mi=0&trs=1">1870</a> has the same label, with the horizontal "Prussia" indicating Prussian territory and the vertical "Germany" indicating the smaller German states. <br />Pre-unification maps did distinguish between (militaristic) <a href="http://maps.bpl.org/id/16826">Prussia</a> and the rest of <a href="http://maps.bpl.org/id/16827">Germany</a>, and through inertia that distinction persisted long into unification, for example in <a href="http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~237967~5511315:Chart-of-the-World-Shows-the-Forms-?sort=Pub_List_No_InitialSort%2CPub_Date%2CPub_List_No%2CSeries_No&qvq=w4s:/when%2F1906;q:%3DEurope%2BAND%2Bpublisher_location%3DLondon%2B;sort:Pub_List_No_InitialSort%2CPub_Date%2CPub_List_No%2CSeries_No;lc:RUMSEY~8~1&mi=0&trs=3">these</a> <a href="http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~31364~1150311?qvq=w4s%3A%2Fwho%2FLetts%25252C%2BSon%2B%252526%2BCo.%3Bq%3Aletts%2C%2Bson%2Band%2Bco%3Bsort%3Apub_list_no_initialsort%2Cpub_list_no_initialsort%2Cpub_date%2Cpub_date%3Blc%3ARUMSEY~8~1&mi=8&trs=158">maps</a>. It is of itself interesting that the term "Germany" was used, and given the same stylistic treatment as the name of a country, before the creation of a single German state, suggesting that British and American people thought of the German states -- excluding Prussia -- as a country, even before unification.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Samuel Augustus Mitchell and W. Williams
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
S.A. Mitchell, Philadelphia
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1880
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Atlas Map
Language
A language of the resource
English
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Continental
1880
1880s
atlas
Germany
labelling
names
naming
nationalism
visual hierarchy