Maps

Maps invite us to think about their materiality, genre, and authorship, as well as the context of their creation. Most importantly, they invite us to investigate the visual arguments they advance – by means of spatial homogenization, thematic selection, colour-coding, naming, and ‘silencing’. This chapter analyzes the Atlas statystyczny Polski i kraiów okolicznych (‘Statistical atlas of Poland and neighbouring countries’), published anonymously in 1827. This atlas is interpreted as an act of counter-mapping: It made the case for an independent Poland on par with its ‘neighbouring countries’. The atlas’s key method for accomplishing this was through the interlacing of various temporal layers. These were, mainly, the pre-1772 Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, visualized primarily in the form of a base map, alongside potential futures for a Polish nation and a sovereign state.