‘L’île des bannis’: Jersey,Britain and the French Emigration 1789–1815

ABSTRACT

The case of the Channel Island of Jersey is an important yet understudied part of the British Empire’s response to the French Emigration 1789–1815. During its high point in 1792–3, the émigré population in and around Jersey’s main town of St Helier was as large as that in London and one of the European centres of political migration. This article explores the complicated relationship between Jersey’s political institutions, the British military authorities in London, the British government and the émigré community. It shows how a brewing humanitarian crisis in the island prompted the British government to sanction subsistence payments in Jersey and enlist Royalist émigrés months before these policies were adopted in Britain. But British support was intimately bound up with the émigrés’ anti-Revolutionary military activities, as much as humanitarian concerns. The forced expulsion of most émigrés to Britain in summer 1796 resulted not from concerns about the wellbeing of the émigré community in face of imminent French invasion, but concerns about the Royalists’ military loyalties. During the Napoleonic Wars, British policy towards the émigrés lacked coherence and was not categorized by overriding humanitarian goals, though such concerns did compete with strategic ones.     

On the life and work of Korbinian Brodmann (1868–1918)

This study describes the life and work of early-twentieth-century German scientist Korbinian Brodmann (1868–1918). His medical training at universities in Munich, Würzburg, Berlin, and Freiburg and his further education are illustrated. His early Leipzig career and cooperation with brain researchers Oskar and Cécile Vogt in Berlin are portrayed, as are his contributions to a localization theory of the cerebral cortex—namely, Brodmann’s cytoarchitectonic approach—and the invention of a cortex area nomenclature, further developed until the beginning of World War I. His Tübingen professorship and being nominated to manage a major department of Emil Kraepelin’s Munich research unit represent further aspects of this study, a promising career ahead, harshly interrupted by an early and unexpected death.     

A variation on forced migration: Wilhelm Peters (Prussia via Britain to Turkey) and Muzafer Sherif (Turkey to the United States)

ABSTRACT

In 1933 the Turkish Republic formally offered university positions to 30 German-speaking academics who were dismissed with the coming to power of the National Socialist Government. That initial number went up to 56 with the inclusion of the technical assistants. By 1948 the estimated total had increased to 199. Given renewable five-year contracts with salaries substantially higher than their Turkish counterparts, the foreign émigrés were to implement the westernization program of higher education. The ten year-old secular Turkish Republic’s extensive social reforms had encompassed the adoption of the Latin alphabet, and equal rights for women, removing gender bias in hiring. Such a high concentration of émigré academics in one institution, “the highest anywhere in the world,” provides a unique opportunity to study a subject which has been neglected. In this article two cases in psychology will be examined: Wilhelm Peters (1880–1963), who came, via Britain, to Istanbul in 1936 from the University of Jena in Germany, and Muzafer Sherif (1906–1988) who went to the United States from Ankara University in 1945. The purpose of the comparative analysis is to identify the features that are specific to the German experience, and those that are shared and underlie translocation in science within the multifaceted complexity of the process of forced migration.     

Love and Hate of Foreign Lands: The Nineteenth-Century Russian Intelligentsia

Love and hate follow the same patterns among émigrés as among people in general. Among the several models of the love émigrés feel for a foreign land is pragmatic love, based not so much on real attachment as on interests. For an Orwellian Big Brother this love does not necessarily imply direct material benefits but could be an attempt to justify something that has already occurred—emigration, for example. Pragmatic love for a foreign land and people and a corresponding hatred for one's land of origin raises fewer problems than love for its own sake, which often leads to disappointment and a violent emotional response. Everything is reversed in one's mind: the distant motherland becomes desirable, almost an ideal, whereas the foreign land, the place of residence, is hated and despised. Such was often the case for Russian émigrés to the West from the seventeenth through the nineteenth century. Two nineteenth-century Russian intellectuals—Vladimir Pecherin (1807–55) and Alexander Herzen (1812–70)—though different in many ways, came to a similar conclusion: that the West was not the embodiment of goodness but the dead end of history, and that Russia, which they never visited once they had left it, was the shining star of humanity.     

Eugenics ideals,racial hygiene,and the emigration process of German-American neurogeneticist Franz Josef Kallmann (1897–1965)

ABSTRACT

Biological psychiatry in the early twentieth century was based on interrelated disciplines, such as neurology and experimental biology. Neuropsychiatrist Franz Josef Kallmann (1897–1965) was a product of this interdisciplinary background who showed an ability to adapt to different scientific contexts, first in the field of neuromorphology in Berlin, and later in New York. Nonetheless, having innovative ideas, as Kallmann did, could be an ambiguous advantage, since they could lead to incommensurable scientific views and marginalization in existing research programs. Kallmann followed his Dr. Med. degree (1919) with training periods at the Charité Medical School in Berlin under psychiatrist Karl Bonhoeffer (1868–1948). Subsequently, he collaborated with Ernst Ruedin (1874–1952), investigating sibling inheritance of schizophrenia and becoming a protagonist of genetic research on psychiatric conditions. In 1936, Kallmann was forced to immigrate to the USA where he published The Genetics of Schizophrenia (1938), based on data he had gathered from the district pathological institutes of Berlin’s public health department. Kallmann resumed his role as an international player in biological psychiatry and genetics, becoming president (1952) of the American Society of Human Genetics and Director of the New York State Psychiatric Institute in 1955. While his work was well received by geneticists, the idea of genetic differences barely took hold in American psychiatry, largely because of émigré psychoanalysts who dominated American clinical psychiatry until the 1960s and established a philosophical direction in which genetics played no significant role, being regarded as dangerous in light of Nazi medical atrocities. After all, medical scientists in Nazi Germany had been among the social protagonists of racial hygiene which, under the aegis of Nazi philosophies, replaced medical genetics as the basis for the ideals and application of eugenics.     

The camera goes down the streets. Dans les rues (Victor Trivas, 1933) and the Paris of the German émigrés

Marcel Carné's important clarion call to 1930s French cinema 'to take the camera down the streets' was uniquely troubled by the arrival of waves of German émigré filmmakers in the French capital. This article uses one émigré film set in Paris, Dans les rues (Victor Trivas, 1933), as a case study to discuss both the place of the city and the place of the outsider in cinematic cultural representation during this decade. It argues that despite right-wing critical discourse linking Jewish culture with the ill effects of city life, a film like Dans les rues can be seen as an important turning point in the on-screen depiction of Paris. Trivas's film may have looked backwards to 19th-century convention, but, at the same time, it responded uniquely to Carné's concerns to produce an important, though largely neglected, early example of poetic realism.     

The Idealist Tradition in Australian Religious Thought

Although British idealism has recently undergone a minor scholarly revival, its impact on Australian intellectual life remains an underexplored area of inquiry. Such work as there is on the Australian idealists has largely focused on social and political themes despite the fact that idealism was driven by deeply religious interests. This paper explores the religious writings of five Australian intellectuals whose work was shaped by the tradition of philosophical idealism. The writers chosen include two Scottish émigrés — Charles Strong (1844–1942) and Francis Anderson (1858–1941) — and three Australian born students of Anderson — M. Scott Fletcher (1868–1947), E.H. Burgmann (1885–1965), and A.P. Elkin (1891–1979). By identifying the threads that connect these writers, along with some of their British contemporaries, the case is made that they can be understood as giving voice to a coherent, if rather loosely bound, intellectual tradition. Among much else, this tradition sought a reconciliation of religious and secular knowledge, proposed an evolutionary or developmental understanding of religious truth, and defended the idea of human personality in an increasingly scientific and mechanistic civilisation.     

Folgen der Emigration deutscher und österreichischer Wissenschaftstheoretiker und Logiker zwischen 1933 und 1945

The paper begins by delimiting the scope of ‘logic’ and ‘philosophy of science’ and goes on to present the biographies and select bibliographies of 36 émigré scholars from Germany and Austria working in these fields. An evaluation of this material, and of data on societies, congresses, lecture series, books and periodicals on logic and philosophy of science, is then undertaken. Against the rich background of activity in the 20s and 30s of our century, there is manifest a rapid decline of high-ranking research in the philosophy of science and (to a lesser degree) in logic in Germany and Austria. Since, with one exception, émigré logicians and philosophers of science did not return after the breakdown of the Third Reich, recovery in these fields has been extremely slow. Pertinent knowledge had to be re-imported, and a satisfactory level has been reached only with the coming of a new generation.     

Timothy Pont's map of Shetland

The Dialect and Place‐Names of Shetland. Two Popular Lectures. By Jakob Jakobsen, Doctor of Philosophy, University of Copenhagen. Lerwick: T. and J. Manson, 1897.

Three Years in Savage Africa. By Lionel Dècle. With an Introduction by H. M. Stanley, M.P. With 100 Illustrations and five Maps, from original Photographs, Sketches, and Surveys by the Author. London: Methuen and Co., 1898. Pp. 503. Two Appendices and Index. 21s.

Hindu Manners, Customs, and Ceremonies. By the Abbe J. A. Dubois. Translated from the Author's later French ms. and edited by Henry K. Beau‐champ. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1897.

L'Algérie. Par Maurice Wahl, Docteur ès lettres, Inspecteur‐Général honoraire de l'Instruction publique aux Colonies. 3^ème édition, revue et augmentée. Paris: Félix Alcan, 1897. Pp. 442. Price 5 Frs.

L'Italie: Géographique, Ethnologique, Historique, Administrative, Economique, Beligieuse, Littéraire, Artistique, Scientifique, etc. Paris: Larousse, 1897. Pp. 608. Price 5 fr.

The Pioneers of the Klondyke: being an Account of two years’ Police Service on the Yukon. Narrated by M. H. E. Hayne, N.C.O. of the N‐W. Mounted Police, and recorded by H. West Taylor. London: Sampson Low, Marston, and Co., 1897. Pp. xii + 184. Price 3s. 6d.

The Gold Fields of the Klondike. Fortune‐Seekers’ Guide to the Yukon Begion of Alaska and British America. By John W. Leonard. London: T. Fisher Unwin, N.D. Pp. 216. Price 2s. 6d.

Imperial Defence. By Lieut.‐Col. Sir George S. Clarke, K.C.M.G., F.E.S. London: The Imperial Press, Limited, N.D. Pp. xv + 251. Price 5s. net.

With Nature and a Camera: being the Adventures and Observations of a Field Naturalist and an Animal Photographer. By Richard Kearton, F.Z.S., Author of British Birds’ Nests; Birds’ Nests, Eggs, and Egg‐collecting, etc. Illustrated by 180 Pictures from Photographs, by Cherry Kearton. 8vo. London, Paris, and Melbourne: Cassell and Co., Lim., 1897. Pp. xvi + 368.

La Face de la Tern (Das Antlitz der Erde). Par Ed. Suess. Traduit avec l'autorisation de l'auteur et annoté sous la direction de Emmanuel de Margerie avec une préface par Marcel Bertrand, de l'Académie des Sciences, Professeur à l'École nationale supérieure des Mines. Tome I^r, avec 2 cartes en couleur et 122 figures dont 76 exécutées spécialement pour l'édition française. Paris: Armand Colin et C^ie., 1897. Pp. 835 + xv.

Anthropologische Studien über die Urbewohner Brasiliens, vornehmlich der Staaten Matto Grosso, Goyaz, und Amazonas (Purus‐Gebiet). Nach eigenen Aufnahmen und Beobachtungen in den Jahren 1887 bis 1889, von Dr. Paul Ehrenreich, Berlin. Mit zahlreichen Abbildungen und Tafeln. Braunschweig: Druck und Verlag von Friedrich Vieweg und Sohn, 1897. Pp. 165. Bibliography and 30 plates, 96 in text and 9 plates of vertex curves. Price 25 M.

Kleinasiens’ Naturschätze, Seine wichtigsten Tiere, Kulturpftanzen und Mineral‐schätze. Von Karl Kannenberg. Berlin: Bornträger, 1897. Pp. xii + 278. Price M. 14.

Thessalien und Epirus: Reisen und Forschungen im nördlichen Oriechenland. Von Dr. Alfred Philippson. Berlin: W. H. Kühle, 1897.

North America. Vol. I.—Canada and Newfoundland. By Samuel Edward Dawson, Litt.D. (Laval), F.R.S.C. Stanford's Compendium of Geography and Travel (new issue). London: Edward Stanford, 1897. Pp. xxiv + 719. Price 15s.

Geografia Commercial de la America del Sur. Por Carlos B. Cisneros y Romulo E. Garcia. Entregas 1 y 2. Lima: Imprenta de la Escuela de Ingerieros, 1897. Pp. 100.

Egypt. Handbook for Travellers. Edited by Karl Baedeker. 4th Eemodelled Edition. Leipsic: Karl Baedeker, 1898. Pp. cciv + 395. Price 15 M.

Spain and Portugal. Handbook for Travellers. By Karl Baedeker. Leipsic: Karl Baedeker, 1898. Pp. lxxxvi + 618. Price 16 M.

Ceylon. Von Emil Schmidt (Leipzig). Mit 39 Bildern und 1 Karte. Berlin: Schall und Grund, 1897. Pp. 323 + viii.

A. Hartleben's Kleines Statistisches Taschenbuch über alle Lander der Erde. Nach den neuesten Angaben bearbeitet von Professor Dr. Friedeich Umlauft. Wien, Pest, Leipzig: A. Hartleben's Verlag, 1898. Pp. 98.

Verhandlungen des Zwölften Deutschen Geographentages zu Jena, 1897. Heraus‐gegeben von dem ständigen Geschäftsführer des Centralausschusses des Deutschen Geographentages, Georg Kollm, Hauptmann, a.d. Berlin: Verlag von Dietrich Reimer (Ernst Vohsen), 1897. Pp. lviii + 252.     

Negotiating German colonial heritage in Berlin’s Afrikanisches Viertel

Abstract

Conceptualising heritage as a contested process of past-based meaning production in the present, this paper analyses the ongoing dispute over street names in Berlin’s Afrikanisches Viertel. In 1899, Berlin named two of its newly-built streets Togo Street and Cameroon Street. Togo and Cameroon had been proclaimed the first German colonies in 1884. By 1958, 22 Berlin streets had been named after African regions that had been colonised by the German Empire or after German colonial protagonists. In 2004, several NGOs called for the renaming of some of these streets, igniting a fierce dispute over the heritage status of the German colonial past. Drawing on guided interviews and document analyses, we analyse this debate on three levels, showing how the NGOs and their claims have been marginalised on each level. While the level of agency can be traced back to the different positioning of the actors in the political field, the levels of temporality and spatiality belong to the realm of ideas about the world and one’s place in it. By exploring the authoritative power of traditional notions of permanence, and of place and space, this paper seeks to bring temporality and spatiality into the focus of those studying heritage-making practices.     

‘Not Like the Stories I am Used to’: East German Film as Cinematic Memory in Contemporary Chile

This paper is concerned with East German films which deal with the subject of Chile in the aftermath of the 1973 coup d’état in a contemporary Chilean cultural framework. Conceived in the charged political atmosphere of the Cold War, this material is valuable in Chile today because it reflects East Germany as a cultural and social environment for Chilean émigré artists during the 1970s and 1980s. The author explores the films’ potential as a form of cinematic postmemory for younger Chilean audiences, focusing on two feature films, Die Spur des Vermißten (1980) and Blonder Tango (1985). Do young Chileans accept these images as truthful and do they inspire a rethinking of the controversial subject of the Pinochet regime? The results suggest that the DEFA films, due to their narrative and aesthetic textures, present this audience with challenging perspectives, uncover misconceptions and evoke empathy with antagonistic social and political agents. Based on this case study, the author argues that the DEFA films are audio-visual materials which can be highly productive in cultural and educational contexts and can complement efforts to revive collective memory in Chile.     

On the Classification of Proverbs and Sayings of the Isle of Man

PALE HECATE'S TEAM. By K. M. BRIGGS. London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962. Pp. 291 + 8 plates. 40s. net. Reviewed by H. A. Beecham.

THE DARK WORLD OF WITCHES. By ERIC MAPLE. London, Robert Hale Ltd., 1962. Pp. 192 + 21 plates. 21s. net. Reviewed by H. A. Beecham.

ATLAS DER DEUTSCHEN VOLKSKUNDE. Neue Folge: 4th issue, part 1. Edited by M. ZENDER. Marburg, G. Elwert, 1966. Maps NF 37–48. Explanations Pp. 233, with 28 text ills. Reviewed by Ellen Ettlinger.

FOLKTALES OF HUNGARY. Edited by LINDA DÉGH. Translated by JUDIT HÁLÁSZ. Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965. Pp. xlvi, 381.35s. Reviewed by Jacqueline Simpson.

DAREDEVILS OF SASSOUN. By LEON SURMELIAN. George Allen and Unwin, 1966. Pp. 251. 30s. net. Reviewed by E. O. James.

JEFET SCHWILI ERZHÄLT. Hundertneunundsechzig jemenitische Volkscrzählungen aufgezeichnet in Israel 1957–1960. Edited by DOV NOY. Berlin, Walter de Gruyter, 1963. Supplement-Serie zu Fabula, Reihe A, Band 4. Pp. xii + 376. DM 58. — Reviewed by W. F. H. Nicolaisen.     

Ana Maria Alves,Guerre et exil chez Louis-Ferdinand Céline,Peter Lang, 2013. 414 pp., €86.50, ISBN 978-3-03-43-1297-4

ALMÉRAS, P. Un Français nommé Pétain Robert Laffont, 1995 451pp., 75F., ISBN 2 221 07960 4

BADIE, B., and WIHTOL DE WENDEN, C. (Eds) Le Défi migratoire: questions de relations internationales Presses de la Fondation nationale des sciences politiques, 1994 185pp. ISBN 2 7246 0650 7

BOURDAIS, H. La JOC sous l'occupation allemande Les Editions de l'Atelier, 1995 224pp., 130F., ISBN 2708231855

BRELOT, C. I. and MAYAND, J.‐L. (Eds) Voyages en histoire Annales littéraires de l'Université de Besançon, no. 550 Série Historique, no. 9, 1995 215pp.

CAHM, E. The Dreyfus Affair in French Society and Politics Longman, 1996 211pp., £11.99, pbk, ISBN 0 582 279780

CAIRE, G. L'emploi: des repères pour comprendre et agir Liris, 1994 192pp., 89F., ISBN 2 909420 09 4

COQ, G. Laïcité et République. Le Lien Nécessaire Félin, 1995 335pp., 139F., ISBN 2 86645 196

DREYFUS. F.‐G. Histoire de la Résistance Editions de Fallois, 1996 653pp. 150F., ISBN 2 87706 257 0

ELLIS, K. Music Criticism in Nineteenth‐century France Cambridge University Press, 1995 273pp., £35, ISBN 0 521 45443

GILDEA, R. France since 1945 Oxford University Press, 1996 280pp., £17.99, ISBN 0 19 219246 9

GREILSAMER, L., and SCHNEIDERMANN, D. Un certain Monsieur Paul Fayard, 1994 266pp., 110F., ISBN 2 213 59248 9

JULLIARD, J. and WINOCK, M. (Eds) Dictionnaire des intellectuels francais, les personnes, les lieux, les moments Seuil, 1996 1258pp., 295F., ISBN 2 02 018334 X

KRITZMAN, L.D. (Ed.) Auschwitz and After: Race, Culture, and ‘the Jewish Question’ in France Routledge, 1995 335pp., £40 hbk, ISBN 0 415 90440 4; £14.99 pbk, ISBN 0 415 90441 2.

MAGUIRE, G.E. Anglo‐American Policy towards the Free French Macmillan, 1995 210pp., £35, ISBN 0 312 12710 3.

PEDLEY, A. As Mighty as the Sword: a Study of the Writings of Charles de Gaulle Elm Bank Publications, 1996 226pp., £24.99, ISBN 0 9502595 3 5

RAJSFUS, M. La Police de Vichy, les forces de l'ordre français au service de la Gestapo, 1940–1944 Le Cherche‐Midi, 1995 286pp., 115 F., ISBN 2 86274 358 5

RIGAUD, J. L'exception culturelle: culture et pouvoirs sous la V^e République Grasset, 1995 299pp., 120F., ISBN 2 246 5143 1 2

TEYSSIER, A. La V^e République 1958–1995 de de Gaulle à Chirac Pygmalion/Gérard Watelet, 1995 557pp., 150F., ISBN 2 85704 461 5

ULLMANN, B. Jacques Soustelle Plon, 1995 443pp., 159F., ISBN 2 259 02793 8

WRIGHT, G. France in Modern Times W. W. Norton, 1995 490pp., £14.95, ISBN 0 393 96705 0     

New Aspects of the Magdalenian in Central Europe

G. Bosinski and G. Fischer. Die Menschendarstellungen von Gönnersdorf der Ausgrabung von 1968. Gönnersdorf, Vol. 1. Wiesbaden: 1974. 131 pp.

B. Bosinski and J. Hahn. Der Magdalénienfundplatz Andernach (Martinsberg). Rheinische Ausgrabungen, Vol. 11, pp. 81–257. 1972.

R. Feustel, ed. Die Kniegrotte. Eine Magdalénien‐Station in Thüringen. Veröffentlichungen des Museums für Ur‐und Frühgeschichte. Thüringens, Vol. 5. Weimar. 1974. 213 pp. 74 DM.

H. Hanitzsch. Groitzsch bei Eilenburg. Schlag‐ und Siedlungsplätze der späten Altsteinzeit. Veröffentlichungen des Landesmuseums für Vorgeschichte Dresden. Vol. 12. Berlin: 1972. 123 pp. 40 DM.

P. F. Mauser. Die jungpaläolithische Höhlenstation Petersfels im Hegau (Germarkung Bittelbrunn, Ldkrs. Konstanz). Badische Fundberichte, Sonderheft 13, Freiburg: 1970. 127 pp.

F. Poplin. Les grands vertébrés de Gönnersdorf, fouilles 1968. Gönnersdorf, Vol. 2. Wiesbaden: 1976. 212 pp.

D. A. Sturdee. “Some Reindeer Economies in Prehistoric Europe.” In: E. S. Higgs, ed. Palaeoeconomy, pp. 55–95. Cambridge: 1975.     

Die Verlegung der Berliner Sternwarte nach Babelsberg — ein konservativer Neubeginn

In 1913 the Berlin Observatory was moved from the center of the city to Babelsberg on the outskirts of Berlin, now part of Potsdam. The new observatory was considerably larger in size and with respect to its staff, and it had got a completely new equipment. At that time it was the most modern astronomical observatory in Germany and possibly even in Europe. However, the scientific results achieved afterward were not comparable to that of other institutions, especially in the USA. A main reason was the conservative concept for the observatory, drawn up by Wilhelm Foerster and his colleagues, and restricting the work to classical fields of astronomy. Foerster's successor Hermann Struve tried to follow rather strictly this concept as well as the traditions of his family of astronomers. This led to conflicts with his collaborators Eugen Goldstein, Erwin Finlay Freundlich and Paul Guthnick, who were interested rather in astrophysics than in the classical problems.     

A Review of “Magnanimity and Statesmanship”

ABSTRACT

This article compares Eric Voegelin's contribution to political science to European émigré scholars of the same period: Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Hannah Arendt, Hans Morgenthau, and Leo Strauss. It highlights Voegelin's main contributions to the field, reviews The Eric Voegelin Reader, and how The Reader will help scholars in both the classroom and scholarship.     

Between resentment and aid: German and Austrian psychiatrist and neurologist refugees in Great Britain since 1933

ABSTRACT

This article is a historiographical exploration of the experiences that German and Austrian émigré psychiatrists and neurologists made in Great Britain since 1933, after the Nazi Governments in Central Europe had ousted them from their positions. When placing these occurrences in a wider historiographical perspective, the in-depth analysis provided here also describes the living and working conditions of the refugee neuroscientists on the British Isles. In particular, it looks at the very elements and issues that influenced the international forced migration of physicians and psychiatrists during the 1930s and 1940s. Only a fraction of refugee neuroscientists had however been admitted to Britain. Those lucky ones were assisted by a number of charitable, local, and academic organizations. This article investigates the rather lethargic attitude of the British government and medical circles towards German-speaking Jewish refugee neuroscientists who wished to escape Nazi Germany. It will also analyze the help that those refugees received from the academic establishment and British Jewish organizations, while likewise examining the level and extent of the relationship between social and scientific resentments in Great Britain. A special consideration will be given to the aid programs that had already began in the first year after the Nazis had seized power in Germany, with the foundation of the British Assistance Council by Sir William Henry Beveridge (1879–1963) in 1933.     

On Trial—Social Relations of Map Production in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Britain

ABSTRACT

This article examines the social relations of map production in mid-nineteenth-century Britain with reference to moments when maps and their makers were ‘on trial’—legally in court in Edinburgh in 1853 and by public opinion in London in 1854 following a lecture. The principal protagonists include Alexander Keith Johnston of the map firm W. & A. K. Johnston, the German cartographer August Petermann, the mapseller Trelawney Saunders and John Bartholomew junior of the Bartholomew map firm. The article draws upon Thomas Gieryn’s idea of the ‘truth spot’ and on Matthew Edney’s call for studies in processual map history.