When Maps Become the World

eastern Europe. The section ends with a fascinating discussion of the role of maps in the hardening of borders during the recent refugee crises. Chapters 3–5 focus, in order, on drawings and photograph of ethnic dress (and other cultural artefacts, places), satirical cartoons, and dust jackets of academic books. While not maps these chapters remind us of the inter-textual nature of any meaningful examination of cartography – for example the use of photos in atlases – which often define the ‘other’ as specimens for the Western gaze – including the ‘savage’ or ‘quaint’ peoples of eastern Europe. Chapter 4 on cartoons has surprisingly few examples containing maps as powerful visual metaphors for geopolitical issues – only one shows a detailed regional map with Czechoslovakia at its centre, concerned with the German threat to that state and others in the region (another cartoon is presented in the chapter on maps showing a torn map of Europe in which the east has been ‘lost’). Two examples show undesirable elements being swept from a globe, this is a long-standing satirical motif and goes back to at least the early nineteenth century; in one entitled ‘Peace Will Win!... ’, (from the cover of Szpilki, 1950) a dove of peace is shown sweeping warmongers from the globe, while a second shows a crocodile (representing the journal of that name – Krokodil) in the same act. Only one of the dust jackets displays a map! Despite this, these chapters still provide a fascinating insight into how imagery creates place and political space. This is certainly a book to awaken an interest in the power of images as a whole well as a fresh look at much that had already been written on maps but through the lens of eastern Europe.