From Mercator to Google: Maps as Instruments of Power and Diplomacy

From Mercator to Google: Maps as Instruments of Power and Diplomacy

Have you ever gotten lost on Google Maps, wondering what’s going on on the other side of the planet? Did you check if they mentioned “Palestine” anywhere, or which borders they chose to display? Did you look up what name they chose for the sea where Taiwan is? Maps appear as innocent tools of orientation, simple representations of physical reality. Yet they are never neutral. As the French geographer Yves Lacoste famously remarked in 1972, “Geog…