Une coproduction impériale

Abstract

The study builds on the analysis of a corpus of sixteen maps which were printed by a Russian society of geography during the second half of the 19th century. Interestingly enough, each of them was annotated and translated into Ottoman Turkish, presumably by the Ottoman military services. Based on a comparative history of cartographic traditions shaped in both countries, the study first sheds light on cartography as an instrument of political domination and scientific and technical cooperation instaured between Saint-Petersburg and Istanbul. Second, cartography is altogether addressed as geographic representations of an imperial neighbour, perceptions of the other and the self and reflections of Ottoman-centered visions over the Russian and Eurasiatic space. However, instead of analysing these maps only in terms of cultural transfers, the article lastly addresses them as topographic and toponymic “trans-acting matters”, in other words, not only as the intrication of uniformized standards and Ottoman geographic conceptions, but also as materialized outputs derived from an imperial coproduction.

Keywords

• cartography
• geopolitics
• trans-acting matters
• Russia
• Ottoman Empire