Mapping Abundance for a Planetary Future: Kanaka Maoli and Critical Settler Cartographies in Hawai’i

Abstract

Mapping America: The Incredible Story opens with a prologue followed by ten chapters, an epilogue, further reading and a notes’ section. There is no index. The chapters are organized in a mix of chronological order spliced with topical interludes, starting with ‘The Dawn of the Renaissance’ and continuing with ‘The Discovery [sic] of the Americas’, ‘The First European Settlements’, ‘The Golden Age of Cartography’, ‘The Eighteenth-Century Colonization of America’, ‘Daily Life in the English Colonies’, ‘Mapping the Prelude to War’, ‘The Outbreak of Rebellion’, ‘The Battle for Independence’, and ‘The Road to Victory’. The authors have an ambitious goal claiming that ‘this book will tell the full story of America, from the Age of Discovery through the Revolutionary War... through the art of mapmaking’. There is a disconnect, though, between the stated aim and what is delivered, especially visually. One would reasonably expect a story about stunning maps to have many detailed close-ups of maps, or at least enough information to find out more about them. Yet few of the maps state where they are located or who supplied the images. Most such information is missing, including size and the version presented. While each of the 147 images (just over half are maps) is labelled as ‘Fig. 1, Fig. 2’ etc., none is directly referred to within the text, and the reader is left to hunt them down. Usually the figures are on the same page or within a page of where they are discussed, but sometimes a map is brought up in the narrative without a corresponding image. At other times the caption of an image tells a mini story about its relevance but will not otherwise be mentioned in the body of the text. For a book with the word ‘maps’ in the title, they are treated as if an afterthought. Certain aspects of the writing are disappointingly and cringingly dated, such as the use of the word ‘discovery’ without irony more than a dozen times, including as chapter and section headings. When telling a history of the process of the United States becoming a nation, the story is relayed with an openly biased perspective. The text refers to ‘we’ when addressing the presumed reader, who is clearly white, male, Christian and of European ancestry. For example, ‘North America before the arrival of Europeans was not the untamed land that we often believe it to be’. It would be a challenge to find an educated, indigenous or aware person who believes this today. There are gaps in the survey of historical mapping of the era purported to be covered thoroughly. For example, not a single Des Barres map is mentioned, which anyone studying this time period would expect to see. And there are false claims. For example, a map said to be never-before-published (Henri Soules [sic], Plan of the Battle of Yorktown, 1787) is easily found digitized and online. Examples of inconsistent captions, missing information and lack of credit abound. The Incredible Story is an attempt at a history of the early United States, not a history of cartography. Suffice it to say that this book is neither a contribution to the history of cartography nor a thorough survey. It can safely be skipped by map enthusiasts, researchers and teachers in favour of the many more comprehensive and well-researched books available on the same topic.