Morality in Cartography

Ubinam gentium sumus? Cicero cried: “Where among the nations are we?” The question on his mind was moral rather than cartographic, and a more colloquial translation might be “What kind of country is this?” There are moments, however, when a cartographic question can become a moral one.

The National Geographic Society has just published a lavishly illustrated and richly informative “Historical Atlas of the United States, 1888-1988.” The society has spared no expense in this outsized (12.5 in. x 20.5 in.) $60 volume published to honor its own centennial anniversary. Or rather, it has spared no expense but one.

The map of the United States enclosed with the book reduces Alaska, apparently for convenience, to one-third the scale used for the contiguous 48 states, boxes it and slides it in atop western Mexico, while it relocates a boxed Hawaii, at the same triple reduction, to the Gulf of Mexico. An animated version of this geographical absurdity has, alas, been standard on the MacNeil-Lehrer Report for some time now. But what we may excuse in a television program we should not excuse in an organization with the word geographic in its title.

To be sure, it would not be possible in a map drawn to a single scale to present the real United States without also showing much of Canada and Mexico and a good stretch of the Pacific. But then Canada, Mexico and the Pacific are part of the simple geographic truth of our location. Canadians and Mexicans accuse us of forgetting this truth. Would that at least the National Geographic Society could remember it.