In one of my previous blog posts, I explored the concept of order and how we as human beings create it to keep ourselves sane. While that post mainly focused on the categorization of people, that is only one way that human beings impose order on the world around them. This week’s reading in Interdisciplinarity by Joe Moran touched on a different way that human beings try to impose order; the categorization of land.
Moran touches on this topic in the following passage:
“The early maps of uncharted territories like South America, Africa and Australia were often works of imagination rather than science, with speculative drawings of monsters and pygmies substituting for lack of topographical knowledge.”
It is easy to understand why early cartographers might have assumed the world looked the way it does in old maps. Science was not as developed as it is in nowadays, so maps were subject to the biases and misunderstanding of the creators. The colonial world was a new and exciting place full of discovery and adventure to these early cartographers. These monsters, pygmies, and others reflected the excitement of this time in history.
That brings me to Moran’s mention of explorers and travel writers. These individuals were typically white men who ventured into these uncharted lands in search of adventure. This is a cultural image that permeates Western media. I for one vividly remember learning about explorers such as Vasco de Gama and Samuel de Champlain in elementary school. Furthermore, many pop culture heroes ranging from John Wayne’s cowboy to Indiana Jones, are people who venture into the strange and exotic wilderness and survive through their strength of will and physical ability.
These maps were a form of projecting order on the land, only doing so had negative side effects. Monsters and pygmies did not inhabit strange corners of the earth, waiting to be defeated or discovered by bold European explorers. Instead, they were inhabited by people, people who suffered immensely from exposure to Europeans. While we might be aware that monsters do not inhabit Australia or South America, the false images created of by cartographers helped contribute to the exotification and otherization of these peoples. These are things that would help justify colonization by Europeans and justify the horrific actions taken by colonial powers.
Early modern maps are a cautionary tale about the projection of order on to the land. When we portray other cultures and regions as strange, alien and bizarre it creates a layer separation between ourselves and the people who live there. In our attempt to rationalize and understand the things we do not, people are disproportionately harmed. We need to be conscious of the order we create because heavy consequences can follow if we do not.