Feature: Exhibition - Magnificent Maps: Power, Propaganda and Art at the British Library

Published: 22 April 2010
by DAN CARRIER

IN the age of satellite navigation systems in cars, you may think the days of the humble A to Z are numbered. But as a new exhibition at the British Library illustrates, maps and atlases have always played a much wider role than simply being a means of travelling without getting lost. 

The library’s head of maps, Dr Peter Barber, who lives in Dartmouth Park, has curated the exhibition and says they do not simply fulfil the role it is normally assumed a map is for. “Most people imagine maps are useful and geographically accurate things,” he says. “It is difficult to realise they were intended for display in the same way as paintings and posh furniture. In fact, that is just what they were made for. They were display objects, often boasting great detail. You have to ask ‘Why?’ Many of them would have been too big – you could not use them practically. It was simply spin: in the 16, 17, and 18th-century worlds, many of these maps were the equivalent of Saatchi and Saatchi election posters. They were owned by states­men and landowners who wanted to project an image of themselves.”

Some come from civic groups wanting to celebrate their achievements. The oldest in the show dates from 200ad and is a section of a giant marble map of Rome.

“It would have been on the wall of the Roman version of a town planning department,” says Dr Barber.

The height of three storeys, it laid out in intricate detail the map of the city – but it was for show, explains Dr Barber.

“It is the kind of map you will find on walls of an estate agent today,” he says. “They may have no practical use, stretching up a wall and therefore impossible to really read, but it says, ‘we know all about this area. This is our world’.”

Curating the exhibition requires Dr Barber and his team to pore over 26,000 of the 4.5 million maps held by the British Library. 

One featured is reputedly the largest book in the world, the Klencke Atlas made in 1660, and Turner Prize-winning artist Grayson Perry’s Map of Nowhere.  

Their role in political propaganda and indoctrination cannot be underestimated. Dr Barber cites the use of maps on classroom walls – many British schools in Victorian times would have a world map, with the dominions shaded pink to show the might of the Empire.

And then there are more modern maps which had sinister undertones. One shows Winston Churchill straddling Britain, looking like an octopus. His tentacles are stretching out across the world – though some have been slashed back. It was a map created by Nazis and displayed in Vichy France.

German nationalist and a leading cartographer Rudolp Koch produced a map in a German Renaissance style. It was a graphic description of Hitler’s plan for the Third Reich. Drawn in 1933, it was banned for some time – because of an unlikely complaint.

“Mussolini kicked up a fuss about it,” says Dr Barber. “He said it proved they wanted to invade the world. It meant the Germans suppressed it.” 

It was then re-issued in 1937 with a new title, Germany and Neighbouring Areas, when Hitler’s plans were well advanced and Mussolini wanted to grab a slice of the spoils of war.

• Magnificent Maps: Power, Propaganda and Art is at the British Library, Euston Road, NW1, from April 30 to September 19

• A local history exhibition at the Irish Centre in Camden Square, NW1, on Sunday April 25, 12-5pm, includes maps showing the trans­formation of the neighbourhood; films of people’s memories; a record of who lived in each house in Camden Square between 1851 (when first occupied) and 1901. Go to: www. camdennewtown.info