The Map on the Scale 1/1,000,000, Compiled at the Royal Geographical Society under the Direction of the General Staff, 1914-1915

Abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. This content downloaded from 139.80.123.36 on Mon, THE outbreak of a war reaching from Flanders to the Carpathians, and rapidly extending to the Caucasus and the Persian Gulf, found Europe unprovided with an adequate map. Ordinary wall maps of the Continent on a scale of about 1 in 4 million (1/4 M) are, of course, altogether insufficiently provided with names and with detail, while not one of the five or six existing series of maps on a relatively small, yet sufficient, scale, let us say, between 1/M and 1/500,000, covers more than a part of the whole area; nor are the better atlases, such as that of Andree, by any means conveniently arranged for a study of the larger questions of politics, strategy, and supply raised by the present war. The principal extensive seriest of small-scale European maps were (1) the Austrian map on the scale of 1/750,000 ; (2) the French 1/500,000; 29 31 6s 32 z2-33 '

Cartographic ideals and geopolitical realities: international maps of the world from the 1890s to the present

“…This was primarily a matter of expediency as the RGS cartographers had neither the time nor the resources to undertake the fine drawing and engraving envisaged for the IMW. Nor were they able to produce layered colouring (Hinks 1939). These compromises did not unduly concern Hinks whose hostility to the internationalism underpinning the IMW was a matter of record.…”

“…The impossibility of ensuring consistency in the depiction of relief across all parts of the world had already been acknowledged, but it was nevertheless expected that this problem could be avoided in the more precisely mapped areas such as Europe. Unfortunately, the IMW regulations were not properly enforced even in the European arena, a fact seized upon by Hinks in a characteristically waspish review of what he saw as foreign incompetence (Hinks 1939). The sequences of contours and colouring adopted by different European agencies were confusing and inconsistent, Hinks revealed, with the result that the sheets depicting the gentle undulating landscapes of England boasted only four contour lines up to 1,000 m (what Hinks called 'les, courbes maı ˆtresses') whereas the sheets showing the steeper slopes of Norway used ten contour lines to cover the same range.…”

“…The RGS maps used the agreed IMW sheet lines, but Hinks made no further attempts to conform to the other conventions laid down in 1909 and 1913 (Hinks 1915). This was primarily a matter of expediency as the RGS cartographers had neither the time nor the resources to undertake the fine drawing and engraving envisaged for the IMW.…”

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only an offspring from it … a useful adjunct … The International Map is a more authoritative production and differs from this [RGS] effort in form and intention, in character and detail. The [RGS] map … has a National and not an International character (quoted in Hinks 1915, 142–143; see also MacLeod 1926).

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