Political Cartographies: Colonial Mapmaking in the Philippines and the Implications for the Recovery of Missing Service Members from World War II

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Material Aspects of Global Conflict" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In contrast to the perception of cartographic progress, wherein the scientific mapping of the world becomes more accurate over time, historical map series inherently reflect political biases of their makers where specific information is prioritized, omitted, or overlooked. This is especially the case in regions with colonial histories where mapmaking largely occurred during periods of war or political turnover. During World War II, the necessity of accurate maps across several fronts initiated one of the most intense periods of “scientific” mapmaking by global powers, often using advances in aerial photography and resulting in new representations of geographic regions. Using the Philippines as a case study, we analyze the colonial history of mapmaking by the successive Spanish, British, American, and Japanese imperial powers and how such geospatial representations reflect ontological differences within processes of placemaking. We assess our contemporary use of historical maps within GIS applications and the ongoing search for missing service members from World War II in the Philippines. We emphasize the limitations of state mapping projects that omit indigenous knowledge of local landscapes and topologies and propose new approaches to bridge cartographic theory with practice.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Material Aspects of Global Conflict   •
• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 51901