| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Martin Brückner. The Geographic Revolution in Early America: Maps, Literacy and National Identity. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Va. 2006. Pp. ix, 276. Cloth $49.95, paper $22.50.

Early in his book, Martin Brückner notes that "In some cultural and literary criticism, it has been argued that the act of mapping ... is inherently oppressive," particularly when it turns to contexts in which Native Americans are involved (p. 48). The author does not deny that mapping, broadly construed, can be understood as a technology working in the service of colonialism. In fact, he even contributes to our understanding of it as such through a brief discussion of how Lewis and Clark attempted to train Amerindian leaders in the "proper" conceptualization of land and property (p. 230). But oppression is not his major theme: it is productivity. Departing from historiographical models that cast maps and mapping as villains in the stories of colonialism, nationalism, and/or modernity, Brückner explores the ways in which geography became central to the nascent national culture of the early United States, and how in turn it played a constitutive role in the development of early national identities.

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