'North Sea or German Ocean'?: The Anglo-German Cartographic Freemasonry, 1842-1914

Abstract

From 1842, British and German commercial cartographers established a profitable relationship based on mutual cooperation and the exchange of expertise. The links between the mapmakers of Edinburgh and Gotha, so strong that they amounted to a form of 'freemasonry', underpinned the production of many of the key British atlases of the period. The relationship fitted broader patterns of Anglo-German cultural affinity that were broken only by the outbreak of the First World War, after which cartography ceased to be a means for international cooperation and became instead a tool of nationalist politics and a weapon of war. The war occasioned significant changes in the way Germany was represented on British maps. Long-standing notions of ethnic and cultural affinity were replaced by demonstrations of Germany's 'otherness'. In this article, I explore the key personal and professional relationships that sustained this cartographic 'freemasonry' (in politically favourable and unfavourable times) and the adjustments cartographers made to some of the maps as political circumstances changed.