1 00:00:03,960 --> 00:00:08,500 List and thanks to Tosca for the things stay. 2 00:00:08,500 --> 00:00:13,510 And thanks to doubly, it's the body not only for hosting, 3 00:00:13,510 --> 00:00:23,320 but also for supplying in the midst of lockdowns and by great archive material, which I'll introduce later on in the show. 4 00:00:23,320 --> 00:00:26,930 This is a code presentation between myself and thought. 5 00:00:26,930 --> 00:00:32,170 My colleague Mike Heffernan will both be here for questions at the end. 6 00:00:32,170 --> 00:00:42,300 But now I'm going to spend the next 50 minutes talking you through the political cartographer's of Matter Wrightman. 7 00:00:42,300 --> 00:00:48,480 So another argument was born in 1910, died 1964. 8 00:00:48,480 --> 00:00:52,110 She was ethnically Polish, Jewish during practise. 9 00:00:52,110 --> 00:00:54,930 She was very much an internationalist figure. 10 00:00:54,930 --> 00:01:02,810 She lived barely two years in Polish territories and she developed an internationalist form of photography. 11 00:01:02,810 --> 00:01:11,010 And she was something of a celebrity in her day, renowned, as one review put it, for her high standards of clarity, simplicity and accuracy. 12 00:01:11,010 --> 00:01:16,470 And her name was attached to bestselling popular Atlas's. 13 00:01:16,470 --> 00:01:20,940 A period of fame was relatively brief from about 1938 to 1944. 14 00:01:20,940 --> 00:01:26,270 Was punchy published? Mustaffa works when she was between the ages of just 28 and 34. 15 00:01:26,270 --> 00:01:33,770 It is rather sobering thought. But in that period, she published a substantial and significant body of work. 16 00:01:33,770 --> 00:01:43,080 And what follows? I'm going to take a kind of broadly chronological path through her through her life, her education, her career, 17 00:01:43,080 --> 00:01:50,330 and then her political cartography is sheer economic broughton's socialist cartography, 18 00:01:50,330 --> 00:01:54,370 her antifascist cut cartography and her geo strategic cartography. 19 00:01:54,370 --> 00:02:07,370 And I'll probably spend most time on the antifascist off in the store, particularly in relation to Sheeter Grant does work Europe and the Czechs. 20 00:02:07,370 --> 00:02:14,450 So she was the daughter of Ludvik, right, and the renowned Polish physician and bacteriologist, 21 00:02:14,450 --> 00:02:20,930 she was the second daughter born in 1910 in what was then Austria and Poland and Krakoff. 22 00:02:20,930 --> 00:02:23,060 But the family moved swiftly to London, 23 00:02:23,060 --> 00:02:29,420 where the defect was appointed by the Royal Institute of Public Health and where the family lived during the war. 24 00:02:29,420 --> 00:02:36,020 During the war live, it became more politically active than immediately upon the cessation of hostilities. 25 00:02:36,020 --> 00:02:44,510 He returned to Warsaw, where, with the backing of the new Polish government, he set up a National Institute of Epidemiology and his good work. 26 00:02:44,510 --> 00:02:52,100 That meant that he was noticed by Eric Herman, who appointed him as the very first director of the League of Nations new health action. 27 00:02:52,100 --> 00:03:03,360 The family moves again to Geneva. They're Ludvik, along with another employee of the League of Nations after Sweetzer and their wives. 28 00:03:03,360 --> 00:03:13,230 Maria Ruth. Yes, the Geneva based educationists Al Feria and Paul may offer plans for the world's first international school. 29 00:03:13,230 --> 00:03:16,290 The international school. And she even UN is excellent. 30 00:03:16,290 --> 00:03:27,050 Founded in 1924, the writers would be in charge of recruitment and the Sweetser is in charge of finance. 31 00:03:27,050 --> 00:03:33,850 One of the most notable retreats that Wrightman made was the pastor's job for Paul Dupee, who at the age of 70, 32 00:03:33,850 --> 00:03:44,700 retired from a long and distinguished career at the Akello months here in Paris to teach our Akela from 1925. 33 00:03:44,700 --> 00:03:50,390 And deeply extended the founding philosophy of the international school into his teaching. 34 00:03:50,390 --> 00:03:56,480 He believes that geography and cartography should be taught from an international standpoint. 35 00:03:56,480 --> 00:03:59,000 Is also a believer in active teaching methods. 36 00:03:59,000 --> 00:04:05,160 Native students practise cartography by drawing maps that would illustrate the geopolitical subjects today. 37 00:04:05,160 --> 00:04:17,620 And here I'm drawing on work by RICO Frenzy with the party standing at the back next to this Great Wall in his classroom here. 38 00:04:17,620 --> 00:04:29,620 This is an example of this is a matter of fact, of maps produced by DePuy students hanging on the side of the wall of his classroom. 39 00:04:29,620 --> 00:04:38,880 We developed a special bond with Master Iceman. Here we see a hand draw a matter of his ready to be mounted on a globe which 40 00:04:38,880 --> 00:04:46,010 he dedicated to Thomas Reisman and remains in the possession of her family. 41 00:04:46,010 --> 00:04:53,120 He is also in Reitman's own recollections, his years writing in 1946. 42 00:04:53,120 --> 00:04:57,980 In fact, here she is in this photo. Martha Wrightman is here second. 43 00:04:57,980 --> 00:05:07,400 Right. And if we it again, she recalled, I think with emotion about the years spent at Akela. 44 00:05:07,400 --> 00:05:19,840 I'm fine. Is a student of Mr. DePuy. It seems to me that every faculty is logical and intelligent work I owe to the professor and dear friend. 45 00:05:19,840 --> 00:05:24,980 In 1929, she graduated from Excellent studied for a couple of years. 46 00:05:24,980 --> 00:05:34,230 Instead of the planned Geneva and in 1941, she goes to study geography at the Sorbonne. 47 00:05:34,230 --> 00:05:42,990 The department, though, is headed by Emmanuel D'Amato, who is at that very time developing a course on cartography, 48 00:05:42,990 --> 00:05:48,300 which he envisioned as a kind of a professional training course, which would last one and a half years. 49 00:05:48,300 --> 00:05:53,730 And we're train five cartographer geographers per year to the very highest. 50 00:05:53,730 --> 00:06:03,330 And he will say to his blackboard that only two students were admitted to this course from the first year, 51 00:06:03,330 --> 00:06:10,440 but they both went on to great renown and fast maths, Wrightman and Jack. 52 00:06:10,440 --> 00:06:15,600 Now, today, that town's probably the name, which is really known to us. 53 00:06:15,600 --> 00:06:19,020 He would go on to play a significant role both in the development of French 54 00:06:19,020 --> 00:06:23,130 cartography institutionally and in his seminal books on cartographic theory, 55 00:06:23,130 --> 00:06:27,530 most notably, that's from his terminology graphics. 56 00:06:27,530 --> 00:06:35,840 At the time, it was the 24 year old Reichmann that was the star pupil and the 16 year old, but very much played a supporting role. 57 00:06:35,840 --> 00:06:43,410 And we see this in Demosthenes rapports, annual rapports to the University Unell, 58 00:06:43,410 --> 00:06:53,680 in which he tells us that Breitman prepared the complete illustration of a work on political and economic geography. 59 00:06:53,680 --> 00:07:00,260 And more or less finished with the help of Jack, but to the preparation of a war map of Poland. 60 00:07:00,260 --> 00:07:09,420 She also collaborates in tomatillos, great projects of the time, his Atlas Diphones. 61 00:07:09,420 --> 00:07:20,820 Upon graduation, Wrightman moved swiftly into paid employment as a cartographer and here's the kind of selected bibliography of her made up. 62 00:07:20,820 --> 00:07:26,160 I want to draw your attention to her two points here. The first is the congested time period. 63 00:07:26,160 --> 00:07:35,400 So we Thebe 1938 was very much a kind of an mirabilis with four major works published and a fifth Pringle's. 64 00:07:35,400 --> 00:07:39,260 China's Struggles for Unity was meant to be published in 38. 65 00:07:39,260 --> 00:07:43,950 Ends up being published in the first month of 1939. 66 00:07:43,950 --> 00:07:51,630 The second thing I want to draw your attention to is her kind of gradual growth to prominence as a name. 67 00:07:51,630 --> 00:08:00,300 So she she starts off on the front cover, but on the inside here, maps by Reichmann, graduates to the front cover. 68 00:08:00,300 --> 00:08:05,960 Text by Pringle, maps by Reichmann. And then becomes co-author. 69 00:08:05,960 --> 00:08:12,010 We see here this blog, Hudson Unwrite Men share equal billing and eventually to top billing. 70 00:08:12,010 --> 00:08:22,050 Martha Reitman sole authorship and the descriptive text is very much a secondary consideration. 71 00:08:22,050 --> 00:08:27,720 I can move on now to work in support of Sheila Grant Duff Europe. 72 00:08:27,720 --> 00:08:32,780 European cheques. Sheila Grant Duff was British for a foreign correspondent. 73 00:08:32,780 --> 00:08:40,610 Again, a very young woman. Twenty five. At the time that this was published in nineteen thirty eight. 74 00:08:40,610 --> 00:08:51,410 And it was a book written in haste to convince the British in particular of the need to defend the sovereignty of Czechoslovakia. 75 00:08:51,410 --> 00:08:54,140 It was very much in haste, 76 00:08:54,140 --> 00:09:04,370 Grunter forfeited her royalties in the first 60000 copies in exchange for sped up production and the necessity that it would get out there. 77 00:09:04,370 --> 00:09:14,420 And she insisted that free copies be delivered to every MP. Get unhealthy and hear those, of course, targeted for while dissemination. 78 00:09:14,420 --> 00:09:20,660 It was part of Alan Lane's Penguin special series, which was designed for cheap public consumption. 79 00:09:20,660 --> 00:09:26,210 We see here an online site is an incubator, which is something of a marketing gimmick. 80 00:09:26,210 --> 00:09:36,470 But it was true that these volumes were available on every railway station in the country and it was a success in terms of sales. 81 00:09:36,470 --> 00:09:41,690 The book sold eighty thousand copies in its first three weeks. 82 00:09:41,690 --> 00:09:46,220 However, it did not, of course, prevent nudity. 83 00:09:46,220 --> 00:09:53,810 And here we have a passage from sheet of memoirs where she recalls travelling back to London on the 30th of 84 00:09:53,810 --> 00:10:02,900 September 1938 and thing in W h Smith the morning newspapers announcing the Munich agreement beside her, 85 00:10:02,900 --> 00:10:05,540 her book, Europe and the Czechs, 86 00:10:05,540 --> 00:10:16,670 and she fights against the background of a map of Europe or in black cover showed the blood red outlines of the Czechoslovakia and no longer existed. 87 00:10:16,670 --> 00:10:31,570 It was my first fight, but this now useless book. If we open the books to take a look at the cartography we see here, this illustration. 88 00:10:31,570 --> 00:10:39,300 And of course, as the German threat to Czechoslovakia and just like his natural defences would make a couple of points here. 89 00:10:39,300 --> 00:10:44,730 The first is it's obvious kind of conferences with geopolitical mapping in 90 00:10:44,730 --> 00:10:50,510 terms of the way in which Reichmann illustrates the threat to Czechoslovakia, 91 00:10:50,510 --> 00:10:58,170 but from encirclement from Germany, it's very much the inverse of contemporary forms of geopolitical nothing that the map, 92 00:10:58,170 --> 00:11:03,990 the threat to Germany, encirclement budgets back in. 93 00:11:03,990 --> 00:11:12,330 But the second point I want to make kind of runs counter to that one and the way in which Righton felt uncomfortable with certain elements, 94 00:11:12,330 --> 00:11:18,150 the geopolitical orthodoxy. I'm here. I'm gonna turn to the the archive. 95 00:11:18,150 --> 00:11:28,990 Grant Duff's archives are best at the bottom. And we see in the archives that she did Grant Duffett requested the Wrightman only show the 96 00:11:28,990 --> 00:11:36,360 Sedates Mountains in order to emphasise this point of Czechoslovakia's natural frontiers. 97 00:11:36,360 --> 00:11:43,950 But Reichmann protests. She writes to the publisher, saying it would much exaggerate their importance in the middle of Europe. 98 00:11:43,950 --> 00:11:52,600 And as a matter of fact, personally, I do not believe anymore in natural defensive frontiers. 99 00:11:52,600 --> 00:12:01,760 And we think the compromise that was reached, which was a straight months of shipping in black and other mountains in Hachey. 100 00:12:01,760 --> 00:12:08,070 If I'm going to move on now briefly and kind of cover the rest. 101 00:12:08,070 --> 00:12:19,110 A career in May 1939. Right. Themselves with Shalosky to Cape Town, where he had been appointed vice consul and were married in 1948. 102 00:12:19,110 --> 00:12:26,330 The family with a new baby son emigrated to Washington, D.C., where Martha's family already lived. 103 00:12:26,330 --> 00:12:33,750 And while in the US, Martin published a series of Atlas's educate the public on the geostrategy and geography of the world. 104 00:12:33,750 --> 00:12:40,710 More than four compactors answered the questions. 105 00:12:40,710 --> 00:12:43,830 Meanwhile, the influence had started work for a major pharmaceutical company, 106 00:12:43,830 --> 00:12:50,760 which led the family to spells living in Mexico and off to Argentina, Egypt, Iran and Greece. 107 00:12:50,760 --> 00:12:56,970 In 1951. Martha was diagnosed with cancer, obscure and active. 108 00:12:56,970 --> 00:13:02,610 She used the commission for the Argentinian National Airline to pay for a trip to see her family in France. 109 00:13:02,610 --> 00:13:08,640 And while that, she flew to Washington, D.C. for the 1952 National Geographic Congress, 110 00:13:08,640 --> 00:13:17,160 where she served as the official translator for the Section Cartographic. 1958, Matheny's is the major operations. 111 00:13:17,160 --> 00:13:21,750 The family moved to Princeton, New Jersey, in 1961. 112 00:13:21,750 --> 00:13:30,130 With back to Athens, Greece, where she died at the end of 1964. 113 00:13:30,130 --> 00:13:34,230 So hopefully this is showing something of the international life and cartography 114 00:13:34,230 --> 00:13:39,370 of a woman who brings but extraordinary period that coincided with a more general 115 00:13:39,370 --> 00:13:44,800 ascendancy of the importance of cartography to political communication and education 116 00:13:44,800 --> 00:13:50,170 was very much one of the most prominent and bankable hotspots in the world. 117 00:13:50,170 --> 00:13:56,960 And, Daryn. And any questions you have? Thank you very much indeed. 118 00:13:56,960 --> 00:14:03,150 Ben and Mike, for that really fascinating contribution, I'm sure, 119 00:14:03,150 --> 00:14:08,690 on one of many people who feel we should have heard more about Motter Reisman before. 120 00:14:08,690 --> 00:14:15,840 So thank you for for alerting us to her importance. So a number of questions coming in here. 121 00:14:15,840 --> 00:14:24,350 The question about the international school which she's attending and where she gets much of her geographical conter graphical training, 122 00:14:24,350 --> 00:14:36,580 the 100, if you could tell us a little bit more about the students there and the and the curriculum and what it was intended for. 123 00:14:36,580 --> 00:14:39,380 Chuck, I can say something about that. It was. 124 00:14:39,380 --> 00:14:52,190 I mean, the is the first international school and it really had this extraordinary in off of it was there. 125 00:14:52,190 --> 00:15:02,690 There was a free discipline. The students not to be disciplined was make sex, which is unusual certainly in Geneva at the time. 126 00:15:02,690 --> 00:15:10,310 It was a very kind of modern school is very self-conscious, the modern and it was also self consciously internationalist. 127 00:15:10,310 --> 00:15:19,810 And as befits its status as an international school serving the kind of the international institution of the League of Nations. 128 00:15:19,810 --> 00:15:29,550 And so, yes, I think you can see the kind of modern modern ethos, sadly, in the choice of staff they hired. 129 00:15:29,550 --> 00:15:40,650 And also, I think in that the kind of firm, the work of the Reichmann and other other alumni ended up going on to do was right. 130 00:15:40,650 --> 00:15:45,440 Men attracted to it because it had an emphasis on geopolitics and cartography, 131 00:15:45,440 --> 00:15:53,310 or did she sort of get her interest in geopolitics and cartography because she was that which way did the causal relationship a. 132 00:15:53,310 --> 00:15:57,720 I think both actually in that particular case. 133 00:15:57,720 --> 00:16:00,990 But it is worth emphasising that in the aftermath, first of all, 134 00:16:00,990 --> 00:16:06,960 there was this belief that you needed to completely transform the education system 135 00:16:06,960 --> 00:16:11,970 and the discipline which traditional disciplines were not going to work for, 136 00:16:11,970 --> 00:16:15,540 you know, the cultivation of an international sensibility. 137 00:16:15,540 --> 00:16:27,980 And so they the Geneva School was was part of a much wider idea that you would relaunch higher education. 138 00:16:27,980 --> 00:16:33,750 Is the origins of international relations. Isn't as as a science, as a subject. 139 00:16:33,750 --> 00:16:42,390 So it is part of a much wider initiative, which, interestingly, lots of British people are prominently involved with, 140 00:16:42,390 --> 00:16:47,120 including most being of Oxford, as you well know, Murray and Alfred Zimmer. 141 00:16:47,120 --> 00:16:51,480 All those people who are very prominently involved. 142 00:16:51,480 --> 00:16:59,040 But certain places became very influential in this, notably Geneva as a kind of international centre. 143 00:16:59,040 --> 00:17:08,670 So it's different, though, because I think to the degree to which geography was prominently position within that committee, 144 00:17:08,670 --> 00:17:13,920 that was not always the case in the way that international relations, as it evolved, 145 00:17:13,920 --> 00:17:19,580 was often quite suspicious of geography because of its association with an imperial past. 146 00:17:19,580 --> 00:17:24,260 And the notion that you could have an international geography is itself quite contentious, 147 00:17:24,260 --> 00:17:34,760 could go on in Geneva was an attempt to do precisely that, internationalise the mind, but in geography as well. 148 00:17:34,760 --> 00:17:42,380 Fascinating. Thank you. And we've had a question about Martha Reitman's personal politics and perhaps you could tell us a 149 00:17:42,380 --> 00:17:52,810 little bit about that in the context of the maps that she draws and how she chooses to represent them. 150 00:17:52,810 --> 00:18:04,460 Yeah, that's a really great question. It's there's a lot to depend on in far. 151 00:18:04,460 --> 00:18:15,680 It's hard to nail it down. There's references to her as bear being known as the Bolshevik queen she was not at. 152 00:18:15,680 --> 00:18:24,560 And suddenly she she goes on to illustrate Alexander Rondos, Socialist Atlas. 153 00:18:24,560 --> 00:18:29,750 And so we can perhaps infer something from from those references. 154 00:18:29,750 --> 00:18:41,840 But I think it's notable that as she kind of move away from the cartography that she does for other people and towards her own cartography, 155 00:18:41,840 --> 00:18:52,820 this becomes much more kind of muted and it becomes less and less overtly political in that sense. 156 00:18:52,820 --> 00:19:05,140 And more. I guess she think that is illustrative of kind of trends, global trends, rather than persuasive. 157 00:19:05,140 --> 00:19:11,860 Thank you. Well, I I'm sure we could spend the rest of the afternoon talking about Mr. Rothman, 158 00:19:11,860 --> 00:19:16,060 she's obviously an absolutely fascinating figure that we should should know more about. 159 00:19:16,060 --> 00:19:21,010 But I'm afraid time presses. So we must move on to our next paper. 160 00:19:21,010 --> 00:19:29,946 But thank you both very much indeed for that really, really fascinating and intriguing talk.