Mapping the War

A few weeks ago, you may remember Nicolas, I talked to you about those world globes that popped up unexpectedly in the midst of the news. Their story reveals how mapping the world is always a way of interpreting it and telling our own story. Allow me this morning to add a chapter to this story by talking to you again about cartography. But this time, maps that tell the story of wars.

Because ever since the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and now in Iran and the Middle East, maps have taken center stage in the media. Maps of strikes, troop movements, occupations, regional alliances, oil flow maps. They have become the daily intermediaries of our contact with the world.

With this dual function. While the maps I am talking about help us understand wars, their reasons, and their consequences, as the well-known geographer Yves Lacoste would say, they have also been used to make war.

Equipping oneself with good maps, getting to know the terrain well: this is one of the tips from Machiavelli in the Art of War.

One must imagine what it means to map an area from the ground up. Soldiers who are also cartographers, surveyors who accompany the troops to take measurements. And very quickly, the modern European states centralize these maps, in France it is the Department of War created under Louis XIV. It becomes a real race to map that begins and culminates in the 19th century. Napoleon Bonaparte, Louis XVIII, Napoleon III, all understood the decisive nature of maps in victories and defeats. Bonaparte demanded precise maps from the Corps of Engineer Geographers of the Department of War, of all territories in conflict at a scale of one hundred thousandth. Almost all of Europe was surveyed. Ironically, all 420 Napoleonian map sheets were lost in the Battle of Berezina. Maps have redefined war. But war, at times, has had the upper hand on maps.

And maps also disrupt the narrative of war.

Technological advancements like aviation, radars, satellites have allowed for the production of increasingly precise and detailed maps. But drawing a map still entails representing a center, a scale, a point of view, a temporality. As geographers like to say: a good map always contains a multitude of little lies. It distorts the truth to allow the user to see what they need to see.

They frame our representation of the world. And in this sense, they are eminently political. One conflict in particular has been told through maps.

It is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. After the Oslo accords, the United Nations proposed a mapping system that allowed the portrayal, in images, of realities that were too complex, with the A, B, and C zones of the West Bank. These maps also illustrate the territorial evolution of the conflict, what was then referred to as the “maps of discord”. Here, as during the Lebanon war, maps were drawn in hundreds of meters, village by village, colony after colony.

The war in Iraq, too, marked a turning point. Maps took center stage in news broadcasts detailing the geography of Kuwait. And the legendary “Dessous des Cartes” made cartography a dynamic and colorful visual object.

The map has become a tool for representing current events.

Since the war in Ukraine, a small revolution has been taking place in the maps that tell the story of war. First, it is the unprecedented quality of satellite images and the multitude of image sources that have bridged the gap between the cartographer and the territory, between the digital space and the real world. It is also the development of geographic information systems that allow for the precise localization of explosions, for example. Elements never before seen by the general public.

Furthermore, the impossibility of accessing certain areas on the ground, such as Gaza, has transformed the role of journalist cartographers in newsrooms. Just look at the rise of the mapping services at Le Monde or the BBC to realize this.

Finally, the abundance of images on social networks has transformed the nature and form of maps that now unfold the individual experience of war.

No longer just the front lines or troop movements, but everything that makes up war. The quality of destroyed buildings, the distance to travel to reach a supply point in Gaza, the composition of the Mariupol city center. The fleeing inhabitants of Tehran. These experiences, engraved by cartography, scream out the horror of war.