Putting maps in their place: the demise of the Falkland Islands Dependency Survey and the mapping of Antarctica, 1945-1962

• Published in: Ecumene
• Main Author: Dodds, Klaus
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: SAGE Publications 2000
• Subjects: Political Science and International Relations; Antarctic; Argentina; Argentine; Antarc*; Antarctica
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/096746080000700203; http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/096746080000700203

This paper explores the political and scientific justification for the mapping of Antarctica by the Falkland Islands Dependency Survey (FIDS). As with the ‘Great Game’ of the nineteenth century, cartography was politics by another means. Thereafter, consideration is given to how the maps and surveys of Antarctica reflected British anxieties concerning Argentina in the immediate postwar world. As a rival claimant state in the South Atlantic, Argentine surveyors and administrators were a source of considerable concern to the FIDS. In the field, however, the FIDS surveyors were expected to concentrate on surveying while at the same time plotting these foreign incursions in Antarctica. The methods and processes involved in collating information into map form are considered. Ironically, the greatest geopolitical challenge to these aspirations came from the United States rather than Argentina or even Chile. Finally, the paper concludes with the changing political and cartographic remit of the FIDS in the era of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty.