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Cartography And The Great War

Shawn Woodford
April 19, 2017

Detail of “Die Schiffsversenkungen Unserer U-Boote.” Carl Flemming (Firm), 1918. [Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress.]

There is no denying it: maps are cool. National Geographic’s All Over The Map blog has another cool story about advances in cartography during the First World War. Greg Miller summarizes some new work by Ryan Moore, a specialist in the Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress. Moore recently updated a 2014 publication of his, “Maps of the First World War: An Illustrated Essay and List of Select Maps in The Library of Congress.”

Moore’s paper and accompanying blog posts cover aspects of military cartography from mapping enemy trench lines, layouts of minefields, naval blockade zones, interpreting aerial photography, and more. The information is interesting and the maps are fascinating. Take a look.

Shawn Woodford

Shawn Robert Woodford, Ph.D., is a military historian with nearly two decades of research, writing, and analytical experience on operations, strategy, and national security policy. His work has focused on special operations, unconventional and paramilitary warfare, counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, naval history, quantitative historical analysis, nineteenth and twentieth century military history, and the history of nuclear weapon development. He has a strong research interest in the relationship between politics and strategy in warfare and the epistemology of wargaming and combat modeling.

All views expressed here are his and do not reflect those of any other private or public organization or entity.

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