Ethnic maps as forms of the authoritarian mode of speech (part I)

Abstract

The history of Hungarian cartography boasts a long tradition and priceless achievements. The “spatial turn of events” effected in social sciences, however, have resulted in an important recognition by the field of cartography. In order to gain a nuanced picture of the methods of national cartography (as is attempted here), the social and cultural networks in which the maps in question were drawn, must definitely be taken into consideration. The so-called “memoryboom” which took place in the last decades of the previous century imported narratives of national memory, not linked to actual physical sites, into the domain of lieux de memoires. In this novel approach, “site” stands for mental milieu in a broad sense rather than objective space. This approach involves relative cultural scenes which constantly organise the collective memory underpinning national identity, ensure its unhindered flow and regularly update it (as the case may be, with ever newer content). The spirit of the nation is represented by national holidays, archives, libraries, symbolic acts, buildings, songs, and rites as so many ethnic maps. Buried deep in national troves of records, there are documents that offer tangible links between political and ethnic map-making. What is more, they can definitively prove the direct influence of practical politics according to the rules of social sciences. The study interprets the meticulously detailed documentation of a language-boundary action. This may wrest from obscurity the direct political intentions quietly lurking behind the poorly-publicized process of drawing a map for public-administration purposes. The analysis of this source is even more intriguing because of the fact that the surviving records effectively question the validity of a historical myth. Notably, the one that, as of the years immediately following World War I, it was natural for politics to interfere in ethnic cartography. (Considering some well-known events [Trianon – 1920], this influence may as well be acceptable – our collective memory says). However, the language-boundary action to be presented here – which had manifested itself against an obvious political backdrop – had come about nearly two decades before the Treaty of Trianon.