chapter two
Empiricist Foundations and Methodologies
for Map Evaluation, 1956-1974
Brian Harley might be widely remembered today as a
theorist, or at least as an interpreter of theories, but most
of his academic career was spent in the detailed empirical
study of maps and their makers. His decades of research,
teaching, and writing produced an amazing body of
detailed, careful, and rigorous history. That care and
rigour was manifested in the attention that he consciously
paid to methodological issues of interpreting evidence.
The definitive texts on the subject had been written in the
later nineteenth century, primarily by medievalists. Given
Harley's own training at the University of Birmingham in
the geography of medieval England, it was perhaps
natural that he read and took to heart their strictures
about how to read, evaluate, and interpret ancient
documents. In the event, it was his application of the
principles of evidentiary analysis to maps that would set
him on the road to his later theoretical excursions. I
accordingly begin this chapter's analysis of Harley's
particuiar intellectual foundations with a brief overview
of the style of historical inquiry in which he was trained.
The prevailing approach to historical inquiry within
British academia in the decades directly following World
War II was essentiaUy "empiricist" in character: historical
research was driven by its data. Licence was given for the
presentation of the data and for historical imagination,
but the historian was constrained and guided by his
source material. British philosopher of history R.G.
Collingwood could thus state as axiomatic that "all
history is the fruit of a more or less critical and scientific
interpretation of evidence" (1965, 91). We might also
consider the list of activities that defined the practice of
history for eminent US historian Charles Beard: "exam-
ining the documents of history, determining the authen-
ticity of records, selecting facts, ordering facts, drawing
inferences, exercising the art of constructive imagination,
and writing history" (1946, 14). Beard's list makes it clear
that the historian's task was to identify evidentiary
sources, to interrogate them in a critical manner, and
only then to construct interpretations induced from the
carfograpinica (volume 40, issues 1-2)
data. The historian's skill and craft lay in the ability to
manipulate source materials. It was an approach that set
itself on principle against unwarranted assumptions and
presuppositions as prejudicing and biasing the historian's
choice and interpretation of evidence. Rather, the
historian should first examine all of the evidence and
only then, if ever, construct explanations.
G.R. Elton, a leading British historian of the mid-
twentieth century, was one of the strictest advocates of
an empiricist history. He espoused an especiaiiy incre-
mental approach, in which historical understanding of
a given subject is recast only when a sufficient weight of
new material has been patiently unearthed by scholars
labouring in the archives. He would, for example, have
accepted a socio-economic explanation for the Reforma-
tion in Europe as the cultural manifestation of an
emergent bourgeoisie in northern Europe, had such an
argument been generated by the weight of evidence. But,
in fact, Elton thought that such arguments were driven by
(Marxist) theoretical positions that seemed to run
counter to the already accumulated mass of evidence,
which portrayed the Reformation as primarily a religious
phenomenon. He therefore could not agree with the
socio-economic revisionism (Elton 1967, 37-38). Elton's
position was inherently conservative in two ways. Eirst, in
his system, the scope of new research is defined by what
has already been done rather than by the asking of new
questions. Established arguments are thus reinforced,
while new arguments are discouraged. Second, he
advanced this argument in the later 1960s, when a new
generation of historians had already implemented a
number of methodological and theoretical reforms. But
even then, one US historian could stiil observe that
historians on both sides of the Atlantic displayed "a
tendency not to reject" Elton's position "in an abstract
way but rather to accept it in principle and to forget it in
practice." Most historians were not as overtly empiricist
as Elton, but they nonetheless suffered from a "habitual
reluctance" to pay attention to the organization of their
19
 Empiricist Foundations and Methodoiogies for Map Evaiuation, 1956-1974

work, so that they might as well have been avowedly historians and other scholars use maps as legitimate
empiricist (Fischer 1970, 7). sources of evidence for historical studies.
By no means were all historians pure empiricists before
the 1960s. While empiricist approaches to history have Historical Geography: Evaluating Maps
been espoused periodically since the 1830s, when Leopold
as Evidentiary Sources
von Ranke argued that the historian's task was to show
"how it really was" {wie es eigentlich gewesen), to the Combining the empiricist tradition of history and the
extent that source materials could provide information, regional paradigm of geography, British historical geo-
there have also been several parallel phases of theory- graphers had assumed the task of observing and exam-
driven histories. These include, most notably, histories ining each landscape as the best source of evidence for
engendered by environmental determinism and biological reconstructing its own history (Prince 2002; Williams
metaphors of evolution (Appleby, Hunt, and Jacob 1994; 2003). After 1950, however, and perhaps motivated by
Carr 1961, 7-30). After 1945, however, Anglo-American some experiments in the United States (Conzen 1993,
historians pursued a particularly strong brand of empiri- 37-47), British historical geography was reinvigorated by
cism in reaction to the ideological abuses perpetrated a methodological revolution in which documentary
against "history," especially by fascists regimes, in the source materials were increasingly used to supplement
years leading up to and during World War II. Post-war and corroborate the evidence derived from landscape
historians advocated a history that was utterly "scientific" observation. Expanding the range of evidentiary sources
because it dealt only with documented facts and with the would not necessarily make historical analyses more
induction of generalizations from those facts; they decried comprehensive, but it would grant them greater rigor and
"theory" as the last, fallacious resort of data-hungry and validity. H.C. Darby, the leading proponent of this new
disreputable scholars (Fischer 1970, ix-xii). historical geography, wrote in 1953 that it "is an article of
faith among us that field work is the essential basis of
An empiricist approach to history is perhaps particularly
geographical study . . . and [our] cry ... has quite
well suited to the study of early maps. The modern
properly been 'field work and more field work.' ... Yet
conception of "map," which is to say the conception held
I suggest that the new cry might well be 'field work is not
since the early nineteenth century (Edney 1999}, holds the
enough' " (1953, 9). Most famously. Darby's own research
prototypical map to be the large-scale topographic map in
gave a geographical perspective to medieval England
which the "real world is concentrated in model form"
based upon extensive analyses of the famous Domesday
(Board 1967, 672; emphasis added). Under this concep-
Book, the late-eleventh-century agricultural and demo-
tion, maps are understood to be essentially empiricist
graphic census of most of southern and
documents. They are statements of facts about the earth's
central England (Darby 1977, 375-84; see Coppock and
surface and have certainly been appreciated as such by
others 2002, 3-7; Kain and Delano Smith 2003, 380-81).
academic geographers (Kain and Delano Smith 2003,
378-87). Academic cartographers have been more open to
When he began his doctoral program in historical
the manner in which maps are necessarily selections of
geography at the University of Birmingham in 1955,
facts and so are open to the human and "artistic"
Harley took Darby's call to heart." He studied the effects
elements of subjectivity and bias, but they have none-
of two centuries of population and land-use change in
theless consistently maintained that maps nonetheless
medieval Warwickshire by contrasting the evidence of tbe
represent the essence of that surface (e.g., Eckert 1908;
Domesday Book with that of the Hundred Rolls of 1279.
Board 1967, 676-77; MacEachren 1995, 220). The
In doing so, he significantly recast British geography to
similarity of the rhetoric of post-war cartography to
encompass economic and social concerns in addition to
that of post-war history is striking: Anglo-American
its traditional themes of landscape evolution (Harley
cartographers reacted strongly to German propaganda
1958, 1960, 1964b). The dissertation itself was shaped in
maps, construing them as wilful distortions for ideologi-
large part by Harley's two mentors. Harry Thorpe,
cal ends, ln contrast, post-war cartographers established
Harley's dissertation advisor, trained a veritable cadre of
their own profession as having the purpose of portraying
historical geographers who sought to reconstruct the
the physical and human worlds in as accurate and as
regional landscapes of pre-industrial England (Harley
correct a manner as possible (see Pickles 1992; Pickles
1977; Slater 1982). In addition, Harley learned much from
2004, 37-46).' But such standards could not be
Rodney Hilton, an economic historian at Birmingham
guaranteed for maps made in the past. The particular
who was then researching medieval social structures and
issue that motivated Harley's approach to maps, there-
who advocated a Marxist approach that Paul Laxton
fore, was the extent to which the information content of
(1991) has identified as "chiming" with Harley's "own
particular maps was determined, influenced, or corrupted
political ideology." We should not make too much of this
by the various circumstances of map-making in the past.
congruence of personal politics and historical research.
Only by understanding that issue, he argued, could
Like other Marxist intellectuals in Britain at the time.

20 cartograpiiica (volume 40, issues 1-2)

 Empiricist Foundations and Metliodoiogies for Map Evaluation, 1956-1974
Hilton used his political beliefs to frame his research
questions, which he studied empirically, rather than
binding his studies within ideological straitjackets.
Although he achieved some success in medieval economic
history - including the publication of an important and
"definitive" article that was still being cited more than 30
years later (Harley 1958; see Lawton 1992, 211}'^ - Harley
was nonetheless unwilling to compete with historians in
that arena (Campbell 1992b; Laxton 1991). He therefore
set medieval history aside as soon as he was done with
the dissertation."* He turned instead to an entirely new
area of research: the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
large-scale topographical surveys of England and Wales
(Figure 5). He embarked on this new direction under the
combined and no doubt potent influence of three
individuals. Several obituary writers noted the influence
of his advisors. Thorpe was already "known for his
enthusiasm for the reading and recovery of past land-
scapes through maps" (Laxton 1991} and was then
compiling a carto-bibiography of the printed maps of
Warwickshire with P.D.A. Harvey (Harvey and Thorpe
1959), while it seems to have been Hilton who suggested
Harley's first cartographic research project, on Christo-
pher Greenwood (Harley 1962; see Lawton 1992, 211;
Campbell 1992b). Harley himself identified the major
influence of a third mentor: R.A. Skehon, then super-
intendent of the British Museum's Map Room, now
the British Library's Map Library (Harley 1987b, 1 n.; see
Laxton 1991; Woodward 1992b, 120). Harley never
revealed the pressure these formidable figures may
have applied, but his reasons for changing his research
interests are nonetheless clear. Significantly, they related
to the use of maps as evidentiary sources for historians
and historical geographers.
Large-scale maps made before about 1835 recorded many
landscape features that would be destroyed, or at least
significantly altered, by subsequent industrialization and
urban growth. Such maps could therefore be of great
importance in the new documentary approach to
historical geography. Consider, for example, an early
instance in which a historian interrogated maps as sources
of evidence. Reflecting in 1897 on the morphology of the
English "'viir or 'town' of the later middle ages," F.W.
Maitland wrote,
But we are not entitled to make for ourselves any one
typical picture of the English vill. We are learning from the
ordnance map (that marvellous palimpsest, which under Dr.
Meitzen's guidance we are beginning to decipher] that in all
probability we must keep at least two ^ e s before our
minds. On the one hand, there is what we might call the
true village or nucleated village .... ln a country in which
there are villages of this type the parish boundaries seem
almost to draw themselves. On the other hand, we may
easily find a country in which there are few villages of this
character. The houses which lie within the boundary of the
cartographica (volume 40, issues 1-2)
parish are scattered about in small clusters, here two or
three, there three or four. (15-15]
Maitland continued this discussion by illustrating
and discussing the examples provided by two details
from later states of first-edition Ordnance Survey maps of
southern England, originally published in 1809 and 1830
(Figure 6). These he called cartographic "fragments" that
"will be more eloquent than would many paragraphs of
written discourse" (1897, 15-16). Maitland further drew
on August Meitzen's 1895 analysis of place names on the
topographic maps to suggest that the true villages were
Anglo-Saxon settlements, whereas the hamlets were the
remains of "old Celtic arrangements" that predated the
Anglo-Saxon migrations of the sixth through eighth
centuries. Maitland demonstrated the key aspects of map
use and the empiricist process: maps could be read
carefully to generate data; by comparing and correlating
different data sets, by looking for patterns in the data, the
researcher could derive explanations of the past.
"Towards theories of this kind," Maitland proclaimed,
"we are slowly winning our way" (Maitland 1897, 15-16;
see Meitzen 1895, 2:119fO.
Such analyses clearly had great potential for the ever-
increasing number of historians who, after 1850, aban-
doned political and diplomatic issues in favour of social
and morphological concerns. In the United States, |.K.
Wright (1924) had pursued Maitland's arguments for the
worth of topographical maps in studying geographical
changes; he thought them particularly useful in studying
the effects wrought by industrialization. Again, in France
during the late 1920s and i930s, the economic and social
history championed by Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre in
their journal Annales cVhistoire e'conomique et sociale
included the use of estate and cadastral maps for the
light they could shed on historical processes (e.g., Bloch
1929; see Fink 1989, 123-24, 154-57, 286; Friedman 1996,
142^4, 136-39).^ Bloch also went one step further in
his appreciation of the historical worth of old maps,
considering them to be more than repositories of
information; he recognized that they should also be
studied as integral components of the social milieu, as
when he specifically cited the role of estate mapping in the
seventeenth-century intensification of seigneurial control
in rural France (Bloch 1966, 131-33). Harley did not
cite this aspect of Bloch's work, but he would himself
eventually come to make the same argument.
Maps were obviously of great significance for the
documentary shift in British historical geography after
1950. Darby (1953, 9; 1962, 141; 2002, 53) quoted, at least
three times, Maitland's parenthetical comment that the
Ordnance Survey map is a "marvellous palimpsest, which
... we are beginning to decipher" (see Coppock and
others 2002, 18-19). Under Darby's influence, British
studies of past landscapes developed a methodology in
which the distribution of important relict features
21
 Empiricist Foundations and Methodologies for Map Evaluation, 1956-1974

Figure 5. P.P. Burdett, A Survey of the County Palatine of Chester [londor). 1777); detail of the south-west sheet. This was just
one of the many eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century, high-resolution maps of the English and Welsh counties, based on
topographical surveys, to which Harley turned after 1960. Harley and Laxton (1974) reproduced the map in facsimile.
Reproduced by permission of the British Library (maps K.9.2.2 TAB).

22 cartographica (volume 40, issues 1-2)

 Empiricist Foundations and Mettiodologies for Map Evaluation, 1956-1974

A LAND OF VILLAOBS
A LAND OF HAMLETS
Ihe hordet betaatu OxfanUan aid Utrktktre.
ih* tjvT'icr bcttwvii ^lacysot attti OHOOII.

Figure 6. F.W. Maitland, "A Land of Villages/A Land of Hamlets" (1897, between 16 and 17). These are the "two little fragments
of 'the original one inch [1:63,360] ordnance map'" used by Maitland for a comparative study of medieval English rural
settlement morphology. The left detail is taken from sheet 13 (first published in 1830), the right from sheet 21 (first published in
1809). Maitland's use of late states of both sheets did not hamper his analysis, because difficulties in re-engraving such detailed
images meant that the landscape features - especially the large open fields in sheet 13 - were not updated with field
enclosures and other landscape changes. (The principal change to the plates, effected after the 1840s, was the superimposition
of railroads.) Maitland enlarged both details far reproduction, but by differing amounts. From the collection of the author.

(especially settlement morphologies, place names, moated
sites, and boundaries) could be established from eight-
eenth- and nineteenth-century maps; these distributions
could then be augmented and corrected against both field
observations and other contemporary documents (Darby
2002, 58-59; Hamshere 1987, 52}.
Despite historians' cartographic interests, Harley found
in the early 1960s that the methodologies for properly
using old maps as evidentiary sources had yet to be
precisely defined. Maitland himself had been well aware
of this problem: "the student who is perusing the 'estate
map' and who is fascinated by the possession of a new
tool for picking historical locks, should warn himself
that, though there has been permanence, there has also
been change" (1897, 362; see also 381-83). That is to
say, the pre-industrial landscape represented in eight-
eenth- and early-nineteenth-century maps would have
undergone an indeterminate degree of change since
the medieval period, change for which the historian
must somehow account. The issue for Maitland was,
therefore, how to date each component of a cartographic
landscape.
More generally, there was still much uncertainty as to how
to read maps. Gerald Crone (1967, 258) would later

carfographica (volume 40, issues 1-2) 23

 Empiricist Foundations and Methodologies for Map Evaluation, 1956-1974
suggest that some historians were inclined "to reject maps
as evidence" because of the difficulties in their analysis
(quoted in Harley 1968b, 63, 73; Blakemore and Harley
1980, 75; Harley 1981). This was, perhaps, an over-
generalization. Those historians who have considered the
evidentiary use of maps have generally passed favourable
judgment, but they have invariably qualified their positive
assessments by remarking on the need for proper
guidance in map interpretation. J.A. Williamson, who
has mistakenly been portrayed as being staunchly opposed
to using maps for historical evidence,** wrote late in the
1920s that "it is impossible to be dogmatic about the
evidence of maps unless we know more than we
commonly do about the intention and circumstances of
those who drew them" (Williamson 1929, 279; quoted in
Harley 1990b, 6; also in Andrews 2001, 7). Another
pragmatic reflection on the issue - which Harley {1987b,
3; 1990b, 3) twice quoted - was that by |.H. Parry (1976):
"old maps are slippery witnesses. But where would
historians be without them?" Historians of cartography
had done little by the early 1960s to present any solution
to this issue of trust. The only study of this topic then
current - Skelton's short How to Look at Maps (1965) -
consisted of a series of brief analyses of the problems
historians had gotten into with maps; it did not attempt
any formal statement of principles.
The most important reason for Harley's shift from
medieval settlement patterns to the large-scale surveys of
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was thus the need
to establish the basic characteristics of those surveys so that
their resultant maps might be properly read and so used by
other historians. In this respect, Hariey (1964c, 5; 1987c,
18) also quoted Maitland (1897) on the promise of the
Ordnance Survey for historical enquiry. This project was to
form the core of his early career. A recent example will
suffice to demonstrate that Harley was not wrong in bis
belief that cartographic research will enable historical
geographers to use old maps with greater confidence and
correctness than could otherwise be attained. David
Turnock (1995) used William Roy's map of Scotland
(surveyed between 1747 and 1755) as "an excellent
indication of the extent of hamlet settlement" for part of
his study of Scotland's rural landscape (Figure 7). His
interpretation is based on the caveats of historians of
cartography about reading Roy's map. As a map intended
for broad military purposes, it should not be taken to be a
map of great precision. Roy himself called it "a grand
military sketch" rather than "a very accurate map of a
country" (Roy 1785, 386-87). Thus, while each hamlet is
symbolized by irregular clusters of square-shaped dots
symbolizing buildings, Turnock realized that it "cannot be
assumed that the number of symbols or their precise
arrangement is an accurate indication of tbe number of
buildings and tbe precise morpbology" of each hamlet. He
was therefore required to qualify his conclusions and to
24
search tor further data. Ultimately, Turnock provided a
more sophisticated understanding of his problem than
had he simply undertaken a literal interpretation of tbe
map (Turnock 1995, 204-6).
On more intellectual rather than methodological grounds,
Harley seems also to have been attracted to tbe agricultural
and industrial "revolutions" of the 1700s and 1800s
because of their great historical significance. All of Britain
was then affected by profound social, economic, political,
and, above all, spatial changes that together produced the
modern landscape. By explicating the maps of the period,
Harley would also be providing important data for a key
period in British history. Finally, eighteenth- and nine-
teenth-century mapping had barely been touched by
historians (Harley 1967b); as a result, the subject must
have been highly attractive to any young scholar wishing
to carve out a research niche.
Harley thus turned his attention after 1959 to maps. He
soon began to produce what would develop into a
substantial corpus of historical studies. He tackled the
economic and social conditions of commercial, large-scale
mapping in the English counties; the prizes offered by the
Royal Society of Arts to promote county surveys; tbe
Ordnance Survey itself; and the nineteenth century
transition from commercial to state sponsorship of
large-scale map-making. He also published detailed
analyses of particular maps in local history journals,
where they could inform those historians most likely to be
analysing the maps. As was tbe hallmark of Harley's
empirical studies, all of these essays were thoroughly
researched and well crafted.
Tbe key factor in this early research was that Harley dealt
with medium- and large-scale maps, which is to say, with
those maps that seem most closely tied to the earth's
surface. His interest was in the flow of geographical data
from the world to tbe map via the surveyor's instruments
and the map-maker's symbolization schemas. His work
on tbe cartographers themselves and on their working
conditions stemmed from his concern for understanding
how extraneous circumstances affected the data flow and
thus the resultant maps. His methodology was strictly
empiricist: locate any and all archival records concerning
each map-maker and his maps, then construct the
narrative accordingly. His understanding of the maps
was similarly empiricist: be understood them to be
repositories of data and, therefore, subject to external
forces that could distort their content.
In addition to his studies of the technological and
institutional circumstances of eighteenth- and nine-
teenth-century surveyors and map makers, Harley also
pursued a program of examining maps for their historical-
geographical information on past landscapes. These
evaluations appeared as introductions to full-size facsimile
reproductions of large-scale topographic maps by both
commercial and state map-makers. The purpose of the
cartographica (volume 40, issues 1-2)
 Empiricist Foundations and Methodologies for Map Ev3luation, 1956-1974

\
Figure 7. David Watson, William Roy, etal., [Military Survey of Scotland] (1747-1755); detail of the area around Inverness and
the Moray Firth. Concerning this map, see Skelton (1967); Harley and O'Donoghue [1975, ix-xiii); and Whittington and Gibson
[1986). Reproduced by permission of the British Library (maps C.9.b.26 sheet 4/2).

reproductions was to make the maps and their data Harley established their tone in his first major carto-
available to the non-cartographic historian (Blakemore graphic study (Harley 1962). This vi'ork studied the
and Harley 1980. 42-44; Skelton 1972, 76-81). Although culmination of the commercial county surveys in a great
most of these facsimiles were published in the 1970s, atlas of England and Wales at about one inch to a mile

cartographica (volume 40, issues 1-2) 25

 Empiricist Foundations and Methodologies for Map Evaluation, 1956-1974
(1:63,360) that Christopher Greenwood attempted to
publish between 1817 and 1834, but which would
never be completed because of competition from the
mapping program of the Ordnance Survey. Most of
Harley's monograph detailed the full range of Green-
wood's cartographic enterprise, but he also included a
chapter on the Worcestershire landscape in the early
nineteenth century as revealed in Greenwood's 1822 map
of that county (Figure 8}. Harley appended a facsimile of
the map to the monograph.
The chapter on the Worcestershire landscape consisted of
an extensive comparison of Greenwood's map against
other data sources, such as later Ordnance Survey maps
and contemporary documentation of social and economic
conditions. Of central importance were the several
thematic maps constructed by Harley to show the
distribution of specific categories of land use extracted
from Greenwood's map (see Figure 9). Harley stated the
purpose of the chapter thus:
It is certain, however, that as a record of the landscape
[Greenwood's] map has many defects: the accuracy of
distances on the horizontal and the bearing of one place to
another are inferior to those on the modern Ordnance Survey
maps: the representation of relief is particularly ineffective -
except for the main escarpments and the deepest of valleys,
the terrain of Worcestershire would appear to be mono-
tonously flat - the visible archaeological remains of the
county are entirely omitted; and little attempt has been made
to regularize the fonn of minor place names from literary
sources .... The present chapter attempts to assess the
accuracy of these data, and to appraise the value of the map
as historical evidence in the context of the period. To this end
it will be reviewed as a factual report on certain of the social
and economic features of Worcestershire in the early ninc-
leenth century. (Harky 1962. 41)
Harley thus implicitly recognized the distinction to
be drawn between a map's geometrical accuracy,
which can be determined through cartometric processes,
and its topographical accuracy, which should more
properly be assessed through qualitative processes. This
last point would later be made explicit by one of Harley's
students from this period (Laxton 1976).
The character of Harley's evaluation can be seen from his
findings. Greenwood's representations of the boundaries
of the three levels of administrative territory - county,
hundred, and parish - were found to be unacceptable.
Harley did not lay much blame on Greenwood for this:
the poor contemporary knowledge of the precise config-
uration of these highly complex boundaries was only just
becoming an issue for the central government in tbe early
nineteenth century (see Fletcher 1999); furthermore,
parish boundaries were so complex that the first super-
intendents of the Ordnance Survey had refused to map
26
them (Harley 1962, 41-46, Fig. 7). Greenwood's repre-
sentation of land use was limited to only three categories
- parkland, heaths, and woodlands - of which only
parkland was shown in a comprehensive manner (Harley
1962, 45-48, Fig. 8). (Harley did not find this surprising,
since the map's principal subscribers were tbe gentry who
owned and bad created tbe parks.) As a representation of
the early industrial landscapes of Worcestershire, the map
was limited. Although Worcestershire's industrial regions
were still limited in extent, comparison of the map witb
contemporary published accounts indicated that Green-
wood's surveyors bad not paid much attention to
industrial sites (Harley 1962, 48-51, Fig. 9 [reproduced
as Figure 9]). Transportation routes were again biased
toward the interests of the gentry: rivers were shown, but
not their navigability; canals and turnpikes, in which the
gentry bad invested, were, in contrast, "carefully
depicted" (Harley 1962, 51-54, Figs. 9-10).
Harley restated his principles for his analysis of Green-
wood's map in his concluding summary: Greenwood's
map can be seen to be "not a single, but a composite
document to be cross checked against as many sources as
possible and examined in the context of its period.
Although its value as historical evidence varies with the
features represented, its errors should not be regarded as
an inventory of negligence, but as originating from varied
factors" (1962, 54). He would repeat bis landscape
analyses in many of his later introductions to facsimiles
of large-scale maps, putting into practice tbe principles
that be preached to historians, historical geographers, and
historians of cartography.
Harley's Initial Methodological Statements
The argument that Harley's underlying motive at the start
of his career was to improve the evidentiary use of old
maps by historians in general is borne out by a parallel
series of essays that he published in The Amateur
Historian (later renamed The Local Historian). Harley
addressed the characteristics of the different types of
large-scale maps that tbe general historian would
encounter and need to interpret. A first series of tbree
essays, published in 1962-1963 and reprinted in book
form in 1964, summarized early Ordnance Survey maps
(Harley and Phillips 1964; see Oliver 1994, 6). A second
series of six essays, published in 1967-1969 and
republished in book form in 1972, dealt witb commer-
cially published large-scale maps (Harley 1972a). Each
article in tbe second series followed a standard format. An
introductory description of the map type was followed by
a list of the relevant bibliographies and carto-bibliogra-
phies produced to date; a summary of the maps' political,
economic, and social contexts; and an account of the
maps' overall reputation for accuracy and of the manner
in which they could be evaluated. The purpose of all these
cartographica (volume 40, issues 1-2)
 Empiricist Foundations and Methodologies for Map Evaluation. 1956-1974

.a.

Figure 8. Christopher Greenwood, Mop of the County of Worcester, from Actual Survey made in the Years 1820 et 1821
(London: G. Pringle, Jr., and C. Greenwood, 1822); detail of north-west sheet. This map was the subject of Harley (1962).
Courtesy of the Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress (G5753 .W6 1821 .C2).

essays was to give historians some basic guidelines for
using different maps as sources of information in an
appropriate manner, perhaps even with some sophistica-
tion, and without undue interpolation or unwarranted
extrapolation.
The sequence of topics examined in the second series of
papers for The Amateur/Local Historian consciously
followed the scheme that Harley had just previously set
out in a plea for renewed vigour in researching the
detailed history of British cartography: "Uncultivated
Fields in the History of British Cartography," written in
1966 (Harley 1967b).^ In this essay, Harley defined three
interrelated methodological "fields" in which new
research was needed: bibliography, including carto-
bibliography; biography; and map evaluation. Bibliogra-
phy was necessary to provide basic information about the
range of maps available for content analysis. Biographical
studies of surveyors and cartographers, including the
careful examination of seemingly peripheral and frag-
mentary evidence, offered insight into their work and
social conditions, factors that might influence map
content. As an example of this, Harley cited his own
study of the 1766 bankruptcy of the London map seller
Thomas Jefferys (Harley 1966), which probably resulted
from lefferys* overly ambitious investment in new county
surveys; Harley restated this essay's fundamental lesson as
demonstrating that cartography's "pace of progress" did
not depend solely upon technical knowledge but was
necessarily affected by social circumstances and idiosyn-
cratic events (Harley 1967b, 9). A complete understanding
of the apparent errors in a map, as well as of the selection
of the information presented on a map, could thus come
only from an understanding of the cartographic process
and its socio-economic conditions, as Harley would soon

cartographica (volume 40, issues 1-2) 27

 Empiricist Foundations and Methodologies for Map Evaluation, 1956-1974

Mills
Coai ptts
Novigoble rivers
NovigoU* cands

M I L E S

Figure 9. J.B. Harley,"Worcestershire: Navigable Rivers and Canals in 1822," Figure 9 in Harley (1962, 49). Photograph courtesy
of the Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education, University of Southern Maine; reproduced by
permission of the Worcestershire Historical Society.

also demonstrate with respect to the Ordnance Survey
(Harley 1968a; 1969, xix}. Furthermore, the proper
selection of the techniques to be used in evaluating
maps could be made only with knowledge of the processes
by which the maps were created. Thus, both biblio-
graphical and biographical research would underlie the
evaluation of a map's content through both cartometric
analyses and more qualitative comparisons against other
maps and documentary sources. In all this, Harley was at
pains to stress that the "process of evaluating the accuracy
of maps is an ultimate goal of cartographical scholarship"
because it enables "scholars in other historical disciplines
to use cartographic evidence with confidence" (Harley
1967b, 9).
Almost contemporary with the publication of "Unculti-
vated Fields" was Harley's presentation to the Interna-
tional Conference on the History of Cartography, held in
London in September 1967. The conference's theme was
"Early Maps as Historical Evidence," and Harley served as
the program secretary. He subsequently edited eight of the
conference's 21 presentations for publication in Imago
Mundi in 1968. Harley's own essay for the conference -
"The Evaluation of Early Maps: Towards a Methodology"
(Harley 1968b) - explored the general principles to be
followed in map analysis. This essay had its origins in
Harley's presentation to the congress of the International
Geographical Union in London in 1964, in which he had
attempted to formalize the approach he was already

28 cartographica (volume 40, issues 1-2)

 Empiricist Foundations and Methodologies for Map Evaluation, 1956-1974-

Figure 10. Ordnance Survey, County Series (1:10,560), Devonshire CIX, SE, Newton Abbot [second edition of 1906; first
surveyed in 1885-1886); detail. Newton Abbot was Harley's home for 17 years, from 1969 to 1986; this map, with this detail,
wasthesubject of his lyrical exposition of the "map as biography" (Harley 1987c; also Laxton 1991). Courtesy of the Geography
and Map Division, Library of Congress [G5753 D4 SIO G71).

taking to the analysis of British county maps such as those
by Greenwood (Harley 1964a). Shortly thereafter, Skelton
had published his pioneering essay in map evaluation.
Looking at an Early Map (1965). This short pamphlet was
the transcript of a 1962 public lecture that, despite its
chattiness and informality, remains essential reading for
anyone who wants to get evidence from maps. It
comprised a series of cautionary tales: moving briskly
through the flaws in several studies of pre-1600 maps,
Skelton demonstrated how a failure to consider carefully
all the processes by which the maps had been made
leads inexorably to unwarranted conclusions. Hariey's
particular purpose in 1967 was to combine the attempted
methodological rigor of his 1964 presentation with
Skelton's topical scope (Harley 1968b, 62-63).
textual evidence and argued that the established proce-
dures of textual criticism should therefore be applied to
maps. He actually presented his basic presuppositions as
his conclusions. Although he admitted that map analysis
does require some special knowledge on the part of the
historian, Harley nonetheless concluded/presupposed that
maps do, in fact,
conform to the same procedures of analysis as do other
historical sources .... Some of the principles applied to
the investigation of manuscripts apply equally to maps
which must be subjected to the same stages of extemal
and internal criticism. Maps may be a somewhat different
species of historical document, but many of the rules of
thumb of the genus as a whole apply. (Harley 1968b, 73)

To construct a formal structure for the evidentiary The essay begins with references to several of the basic
analysis of all maps, Harley explicitly equated maps with texts on historical method, hut Harley left the best for last.

cartographica (volume 40, issues 1-2) 29

 Empiricist Foundations and Methodologies for Map Evaluation, 1956-1974
In his final sentence he quoted Bloch (1953, 64): "maps,
like other documents or material remains of the past, are
passive objects, and ... 'will speak only when they are
properly questioned'" (Harley 1968b, 74). In other
words, maps should be subject to the same evidentiary
rules as other source materials. They should be evaluated
in terms of what they themselves reveal (internal
criticism) and what is revealed by situating them in
their proper contexts (external criticism) (see Gottschalk
1950, 118-71, for a useful summary).
The two aspects of evidentiary criticism - internal and
external - correspond broadly to the three method-
ological avenues that Hariey had suggested in "Unculti-
vated Fields." On the one hand, only comprehensive
carto-bibliography, supported in part by cartometry, can
provide the solid database needed for dating, identifying,
and locating maps within given genres and so allow
comparative evaluations to be made of the maps
themselves; this constitutes internal criticism. On the
other hand, biographical study will uncover the cartog-
rapher's intentions, the conditions of cartographic
production, and the contemporary assessment of maps;
this constitutes external criticism. At the root of both
essays was Harley's pragmatic, empirical training. "All too
often," he warned, "a theoretical method is irrelevant to
the particular map, and there may be no substitute for the
judgement, intuition and common sense of the moment"
{1968b, 62). That is to say, each and every map is different
and so requires a different formulation of techniques and
questions for its critical analysis, regardless of any theory.
Map Analysis: A Recurring Theme
The application to maps of the established principles
of examining historical sources remained a key theme in
Harley's work throughout the 1970s. Indeed, it recurred
in his writings even after 1980, when his theoretical turn
diverted his overt attention toward issues of interpreta-
tion. In particular, Harley rehearsed the principles of map
analysis in his introduction to David Buisseret's From
Sea Charts to Satellite Images (Harley 1990b), a work
intended to demonstrate how maps could be used as a
resource by historians. This larger purpose obviously
required Harley's discussion of empirical methodologies.
Harley gave another late, and clear, statement of the bio-
bibliographical approach to map evaluation in 1987,
when he contributed an essay, "The Map as Biography,"
to a special issue of The Map Collector. In explaining why
his favourite map was the "six-inch" (1:10,560) Ordnance
Survey sheet covering Newton Abbot (Figure 10), where
he had lived from 1969 until 1986, Harley focused on its
analysis. "Like any map," he wrote, this map was a
biography in four senses. First, the map sheet itself has a
biography as a physical object designed, crafted and used
in a different age. Second, the map serves to link us to the
30
biographies of its makers - draughtsmen, labourers, printers
and surveyors who worked to reproduce its image. Third,
the map is a biography of the landscape it portrays;
abiography, moreover - as F.W. Maitland [ 1897] put it - "more
eloquent than would be many paragraphs of written
discourse." Fourth, and of most interest to me as collector, the
map reciprocates my own biography. It is a rich vein
of persona! history, and it gives a set of co-ordinates for the
map of memory. (1987c, 18)
With the exception of the fourth form of biography, this
statement obviously reincarnates Harley's older categories
of evidentiary analysis, complete with conscious refer-
ences to Darby's and Maitland's historical geography.
There is carto-bibliography, or the map's biography; the
biographies of the map's makers; and the evaluation of
the map to reconstruct the land's biography. "It is the
collective biographies of many such maps, suitably
generalized," Harley added, "that Igive] substance to
the history of cartography" (1987c, 18).
The fourth form of biography identified by Harley should
not be understood as a unique idea required by the
autobiographical mode of his essay. Instead, it should be
seen as manifesting a further category of evidentiary
analysis, specifically that of map use. "The uniqueness of
my particular sheet lies ... not in its [hypothetical]
rarity," Harley wrote, "but in the history of how it has
been used, understood, and acted upon" (1987c, 18).
Harley introduced this theme into his thinking about
maps after 1974 as the logical outcome of his awareness,
first, of the cartographic communication models then
prevalent in academic cartography and, second, of the rise
within Anglo-American historical geography of humanis-
tic studies that addressed the issue of what people in the
past knew about distant places. These developments are
examined in the following chapter. Harley's acceptance of
the cartographic communication models, although only
in their broadest sense, and the broadening of his
intellectual awareness by humanistic geographers together
mark the beginning of the transition in his intel-
lectual concerns from methodologies based on the
common sense of empiricism to a more theoretical
and conceptual approach to map history. The transition
would not be completed, however, until about 1984.
The recurrence of evidentiary analysis in Harley's
writings, even after his theoretical turn in about 1980,
indicates a final point whose importance cannot be
stressed too strongly. Previous commentators and obit-
uary writers have followed a natural tendency to periodize
Hariey's research and publications. But it is a serious
mistake to assume that changes in what Harley wrote
indicate changes in the entirety of his thinking about
maps and their history. The theoretical tum of his writ-
ing did not mean that he stopped being interested in
detailed, empirical studies of old maps. Rather, it meant
that he increasingly focused on specific questions of
cartographica (volume 40, issues 1-2)
 Empiricist Foundations and Methodologies for Map Evaluation, 1956-1974
interpretation. In terms of basic empirical research,
Harley continued to advocate the construction of com-
prehensive carto-bibliographies and the careful sifting of
archival materials. Taking such procedures for granted, he
no longer dwelled on them in his later essays.
Notes
1. Herb (1997, 34-47) identified the paradox that the
highly propagandized cartographic representation of
Germany, especially vis-a-vis Poland, that pervaded all
aspects of interwar German political discourse was at the
time justified by Eckert's (1921-1925) appeal to an objective
and truthful Kartenwissenschaft or "map science" that was
intended to reveal the "true" Germany. Despite what can be
readily identified in hindsight as its overtly political agenda,
Eckert's text has been celebrated by Anglo-American
academic cartographers after 1945 as a pioneering
programmatic statement for an empiricist cartography.
2. Darby (2002, pi. 8) reproduces a photograph of
Harley talking with Darby over dinner, on a field trip during
the CUKANZU5 meeting in 1979; wine was, of course,
prominent on the table.
3. A search in November 2004 of two online citation
indexes - FirstSearch and 151 Web of Science - revealed
three recent citations to Harley (1958): Raban (1988);
Campbell, Galloway, and Murphy (1992); and Dyer (1992).
4. One aspect of the dissertation would persist in
Harley's subsequent research: he studied his own backyard.
At each stage of his academic career in Britain, and to
some extent in the United States, Harley published essays
on topics of specifically local interest in local history
journals.
5. A complete typology of map interpretation for
historical purposes must also inciude the use of topo-
graphical maps that are contemporaneous to the historian.
Frederick Jackson Turner, for example, used the first USG5
topographical quads to support his environmentally deter-
ministic history of the American frontier. As he wrote to
Woodrow Wilson on 24 December 1894, "the most history I
cartographica (volume 40, issues 1-2)
ever found in any map, however, I found in the contour
maps of the U.S. Geolog[ical] Survey - nine sheets, without
any names, or political boundaries on the map - giving
lakes, rivers, and contour lines only. It is a revelation. The
same thing is published with county and state boundaries,
names of towns, rivers, etc. - But this destroys its value as
showing the part played by physiographic conditions -
Address Mr. Gannett, U.S. Topographer, U.S. Geological
Survey, Washington, D.C. It is not for sale" (Jacobs 1968,
199). Turner also constructed thematic maps of past voting
patterns, infrastructure, physiography, and so on and used
them to formulate some of his theories (Jacobs 1968,
149-50, 156).
6. Williamson (1937, 7) made the powerful and ad
hominem aspersion that "maps are a dangerous type of
evidence: too much study of them saps a man's critical
faculty. Henry Harrisse knew as much as any man of the
Renaissance maps, and one may see from his remarks
that as his learning increased his judgement deterio-
rated." Skelton (1965, 4) quoted Williamson's rather
gratuitous slander and qualified it by remarking that "it
is as a rule not 'too much study' but insufficient study
that prevents a student from extracting from an early
map the authentic kernel of fact that lies in it, and no
more." Despite Skelton's qualification, it has become
common to quote only the first sentence of Williamson's
slander, thereby redirecting it against all historians:
Koeman (1968, 75) seems to have been the first to
have done so, and was explicitly quoted by Harley
(1968b, 73). Harley (1978c, 79) and, in part, Blakemore
and Harley (1980, 75) rehearsed the quotation; Harley
(1987b, 3) repeated the spirit of the aspersion without
actually quoting Williamson. Hindle (1998, vii) repeated
the abbreviated statement, although without attribution,
as a prelude to refuting it.
7. Indeed, Harley subsequently grouped his essays
for The Amateur/Local Historian (Harley 1972a) together
with his two explicitly methodological essays (Harley
1967b, 1968b) in the third volume on "general and
methodological essays" of his DLitt thesis (Harley 1985a).