Google Earth was established in 2005, and a year later, it underwent a groundbreaking shift. In 2006, the Nakba map sparked controversy and outrage among some Israelis, who reported it to the local police as an “assault on true geography.”
But what is true geography? Do the maps we see every day accurately represent borders and spaces? Do maps deceive?
According to cartographer Mark Monmoneir in his book, “How to Lie with Maps,” it is not only easy but essential to lie with maps. He argued that condensing complex, three-dimensional spaces onto a two-dimensional sheet of paper is inherently reductive. Historical maps have been made by people in power, resulting in a projection of their views that is full of preconceived notions and biases.
Monmoneir also suggested that maps are often deliberately manipulated to shape people’s perceptions of spaces and issues. Propaganda maps were popular during and before the 20th century, used by warring nations to further their wartime agendas and depict opposing nations as negative caricatures.
The Mercator projection, created by European cartographer Geert de Kremer in 1569, is a common template for world maps today. However, it has been criticized for significantly distorting proportions and providing an inaccurate representation of landmasses. Despite the introduction of the Gall-Peters Projection in the 1800s, which aimed to subvert the Eurocentric proportions of the Mercator Projection, the Mercator Projection is still widely used for teaching geography in classrooms.
In recent years, maps have been used to convey political messages, such as former US President Donald Trump’s indication on a map of Israel that the occupied Golan Heights belong to Israel, and the Russian parliament’s announcement that Apple Maps would display Crimea as part of Russia when viewed from Russia. China also uses maritime maps to claim all of the South China Sea, and India and Pakistan have each released maps to lay claim to Kashmir.
However, there are counter-maps, such as the Nakba map, that challenge dominant mapping by offering an alternative perspective. These maps, also known as bottom-up or resistance maps, provide a different representation of spaces and issues, challenging the historically influenced dominant mapping. The advent of the internet has given local communities and individuals a platform to share their own maps, making it more challenging for the dominant world to hide its contradictions.