From Expedition Cartography to Topographic Mapping: Italian Military Maps of the Southern Lybian Desert from the 1930s

Abstract

In the 20th century different modes of mapping from traveller reports and expedition route maps to triangulation and topographical surveys still co-existed for a short period before systematic surveys started by colonial administration and the military. The extreme geography and the changing political conditions in the region resulted in remarkable interconnections between scientific research expeditions and surveying and mapping institutions, as well as intelligence and military cartography in colonial context. This paper investigates unique material, a series of reproductions of Italian military maps, made in the 1930s and preserved in Budapest to demonstrate the process of cartographic information acquisition and the practice of topographic map making in Italian Libya.