As I wrote recently, the Second World War prompted cartographers to embrace map projections that looked down on earth from (typically) the North Pole, rather than the more common “side view” of cylindrical projections.

This shift in perspective was prompted by the “Air Age” realisation that, by flying over the Arctic, distances between the USA and much of the rest of the Northern Hemisphere were a good deal shorter than the maps created for travelling the world by ship might have suggested.

I’m fascinated by how maps were used to educate a broader public about this change in perspective, not the least kids who would have been drawn to the excitement of this new age and how this informed their worldview as adults.

I was particularly intrigued when I saw this “Children of the Air Age” map pamphlet published by “J. C. Penney Company Inc” (a chain of US department stores). Published in 1943, it’s cover is illustrated with two kids leaning over a map of the Arctic.

It begins:

You young people are living in stirring times! The war is paving the way for a new world — the world of the Air Age.

It’s not the most eye-catching or best designed set of maps from the time but it features a compelling essay reprinted from the June 1943 issue of Harpers Magazine. It’s author was George T. Renner, Professor of Geography at Columbia University.

Mercator

Renner, like many geography professors around the time of the Second World War, wrote a lot about geopolitics and the USA’s need to become the major global superpower.

Much of his writing is about maps and they ways that they created a perception that the USA was isolated from – and not interconnected to – global events: a perception that was shattered at Pearl Harbour (18 months before the article was published).

Fascinatingly, in his essay he takes aim at the Mercator Projection, suggesting that it created a false sense of security amongst Amaricans. He writes that:

Our slowness in learning the new geography opened the way to the Axis powers. If you will examine an ordinary Mercator map of the world, you will see that a ship cannot go from one ocean to another without passing one of twelve points—Gibraltar, Suez, Falkland Islands, Singapore, Panama, and so forth. The British Empire controlled and fortified all of these except our own Panama. From these points the British Navy enforced peace for the whole world. We Americans were so ignorant of that world that even many of our leaders thought our peace and security were created by the width of our two oceans.

The Germans and Japanese however looked at the new map and saw that if they had sufficient air power, they could march and fly around the edges of the oceans and take these naval fortresses from the rear. Their whole strategy in this war has been a plan to do just that. It is a perfectly workable plan too…

…At first Britain and the United States tried to meet aerial war with naval strategy alone and it didn’t work…We are not yet as successful as we might be however because we are still fighting the war from the psychology of the old map instead of the new [my emphasis].

A Common Refrain Today

In recent years the choice of the Mercator projection, repopularised by web mapping, has again been criticised for its distortions. Today’s complaint is not one Renner touches on, which is that it distorts the relative areas of countries on the global maps that use it.

For example, the African Union has joined calls to discontinue the use of Mercator for World maps due to the relative enlargement of territories closer to the poles, whilst the more equatorial African continent becomes smaller. And the size of Greenland as it appears on a the Mercator map has led some to speculate that this has fuelled Trump’s obsession with gaining the territory.

What’s more, the narratives in this essay were common in Trump’s childhood and still permeate his rhetoric today. He was, after all, a child of the air age.

The essay says that the “British Navy enforced peace for the whole world”, and Trump has expressed disappointment in its capabilities in the context of the Iran crisis. His interest in Greenland is also foreshadowed in the essay which lists it first amongst key strategic “spots” in the air age era.

Renner’s article is the first time I’ve seen the Mercator projection cited as not merely charting but driving geopolitical events, and he offers us a lasting reminder that the power of maps has long been a consideration in some of the most consequential moments (and people) in history.

The Rest of the Pamphlet…

Hypocritically the map that is printed on the reverse of the article uses the Mercator projection…and focuses on shipping supply lines in the “Pacific Theater of War”!

And after inviting kids to consider a future world, and chart the horrors of war, there is one final map…advertising the products on sale across the 1610 Penney stores!

If you enjoyed this post then you might also enjoy The Library of Lost Maps. Pick up your copy here.