Hansen Jason. Mapping the Germans: Statistical Science, Cartography, and the Visualization of the German Nation, 1848-1914

Publisher Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2015. — xvi, 193 p. — (Oxford Studies in Modern European History) — ISBN-10: 0198714394; ISBN-13: 978-0198714392.Mapping the Germans explores the development of statistical science and cartography in Germany between the beginning of the nineteenth century and the start of World War One, examining their impact on the German national identity. It asks how spatially-specific knowledge about the nation was constructed, showing the contested and difficult nature of objectifying this frustratingly elastic concept. Ideology and politics were not themselves capable of providing satisfactory answers to questions about the geography and membership of the nation; rather, technology also played a key role in this process, helping to produce the scientific authority needed to make the resulting maps and statistics realistic. In this sense, Mapping the Germans is about how the abstract idea of the nation was transformed into something that seemed objectively measurable and politically manageable.Jason Hansen also examines the birth of radical nationalism in central Europe, advancing the novel argument that it was changed to the vision of nationality rather than economic anxieties or ideological shifts that radicalized nationalist practice at the close of the nineteenth century. Numbers and maps enabled activists to "see" nationality in local and spatially-specific ways, enabling them to make strategic decisions about where to best direct their resources. In essence, they transformed nationality into something that was actionable, that ordinary people could take real actions to influence.Ordering Nations
Nationalism and Cartography
The Broader Geographical Context
Plan of the StudyCounting Germans: The Search for a Practical Means to Measure NationalityStatistics as a Science of Nationality
Enumeration: Mechanisms of Data Collection
Conclusion: A Believable Method for the Measurement of NationalityMapping Germans: Making the Cultural Nation VisibleEarly Nineteenth-century Ethnographic Maps, c.1820–60
“Accurate” Ethnographic Maps, c.1860–90
Conclusion: The Triumph of the Ethnographic MapRadical Germans: Demography and Nationalism, 1880–1914Demography and Location, 1870–90
Demography, Method, and Continuity, 1880–1914
Demography, Vision, and Nationalism, 1880–1914
Conclusion: Agency Over the Language FrontierConnecting Germans: The Circuitry of National Knowledge

Circulating Knowledge
Newspapers to the Rescue
Points of Refraction
Conclusion: Circulation, Legitimacy, and Science

[i]Defending Germans: Strategies of InterventionPixilating The Kulturnation
Building the Nation
Conclusion: Radicals, Not Revolutionaries
Conclusion: Statistics and Cartography, War and Peace
Ethnographic Statistics, Maps and Preparations for Peace
At the Paris Peace Conference
The Legacy of Statistics and Maps at the Peace ConferenceBibliography
Index