National Atlases – an atlas type reconsidered

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> The publication of the first National Atlas in 1899 marked the emergence of an atlas category that thrived over the upcoming century. The "Atlas de Finlande", successfully presented at the Paris World Exhibition in 1900, used to coin this title and being published in Paris by the National Geographic Society of Finland, had a true nation-building function.</p><p>In the same year, following the US victory in the Spanish-American War, the Atlas of the Philippine Islands (Atlas de Filipinas) was published by the US Coastal and Geodetic Survey, containing two front pages, one in English indicating the USC&amp;GS as publisher, the other in Spanish mentioning the supervision of the project by Father J. Algue, the director of the Manila Observatory. Never referred to as a national atlas, it comprises a series of maps on the Islands and a bilingual abstract on map conventions, a bilingual gazetteer and a thorough introduction into places, places names and their pronunciation. For these atlases, the publication circumstances remain somehow heterogeneous and cannot be compared with modern national atlases and even atlases published in the same period seem to have different hallmarks.</p><p>Why considering the Atlas de Finlande a national atlas but define the 1878 Statistical Atlas of the United States only a statistical Atlas? Because of the title? What atlases are more nationally defined than school atlases? Is an atlas published by a non-governmental executing agency a national atlas? Is governmental support and approval needed?</p><p>How national atlases fit into different approaches to thoroughly define them (e.g. Salischew 1967) has been subject to academic cartographic self-conception that ignored technological, institutional, economic and user-related developments over time. In addition, these approaches to categorise atlases solely focused structural elements, such as the number and topics of maps and their temporal and spatial sequence. The question of how atlases have been characterised by their publishers and have been perceived in closely following reviews is a possible approach to either situate national atlases as a strict category or a politically induced perception.</p><p>The article introduces a post-structuralist approach focussing the textual analysis of both, self-perception verbalized through introductions and prefaces in respective atlases and reviews, contemporarily published in the following years. Introducing common definitions and juxtapose the historical perception of national atlases tries to operationalize Harley's critical approach, that situates maps in their respective historical context. By regarding an atlas not only as a bound collection of maps but as a carefully organised selection of spatial information unveils the power of atlases, which maybe exceeds those of single maps. To analyse atlases in their historic context by including their self-definition and contemporary perception will identify so far unattended aspects and to alternative views on national atlases and their editing and production frameworks. Thus retrograde definitions can be reconsidered.</p>

Retro-atlases II: a new edition of the first Statistical Atlas of Switzerland (1897)

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> In 2018, the Swiss Federal Statistical Office celebrated the 125th edition of its most prominent annual publication &amp;ndash; the “Statistical Yearbook of Switzerland”. This celebration was also an opportunity of reissuing as a supplement a selection of attractive, but not well-known visualisations from the first Statistical Atlas of Switzerland initially published in 1897 and yearbooks from the 19th century. The original atlas produced issued by the Swiss Federal Statistical Bureau contained 22 coloured “plates”, including 6 maps and 16 diagrams. The techniques of visual display of statistical information were still in their infancy in statistical offices at this time, but this remarkable atlas already shows an expertise and judicious use of these techniques borrowed from the then reference book of Dr Georg von Mayr. The foreword of the original atlas gives a clue of what the authors intended with this visual collection: their main objective was to democratise interest in public statistics and their results using visualisations. In an educational effort, also an explanatory preamble on the methods of graphical representation in general was offered.</p><p>The data used were relatively recent at the time of publication and the datasets even contain first long-time series, ranging from 1850 to 1898. The themes addressed testify to the development of public statistics at the time and the historical context. We find the traditional demographic themes (birth rate, mortality, marriage, population structure, emigration and health), territorial aspects (surfaces and occupation and land use), political life (elected representatives and voting result), trade aspects (imports and exports) and the development of means of communications (railways, telegraph and telephone). The data visualisation techniques that were used already reflect a certain diversity: choropleth and proportional symbol maps, bar charts, pie charts, line charts and population pyramids, displayed as simple figures or as small multiples.</p><p>Following a similar first publication of a retro-atlas (The “Graphical-statistical Atlas 1914&amp;ndash;2014”), published in 2015, he this latest atlas edition combines the 22 plates from the 1897 atlas as well as 7 older visualisations from the 1891&amp;ndash;1899 yearbooks, and enriches this “retro” selection with their counterpart visualisations produced with recent data and modern tools around the year 2017. As the original atlas, the new atlas is fully bilingual and was printed in 2000 copies.</p><p>It is thus possible for the reader to compare different themes and developments in a broad historical perspective, as well as to appreciate the statistics bureau’s early know-how in visual communication. This anniversary edition is therefore an opportunity to bring the first statistical atlas back to the public's attention, and to show the early interest of official statistics in this excellent “<i>intuitive means of teaching, particularly suitable for popularising the interest in the work of statistics</i>”.</p>

Statistical Atlas of Poland and statistical atlases of voivodships

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> In 2018, 100 years had passed since the Central Statistical Office of Poland (since 2017: Statistics Poland – GUS) was established. This anniversary was considered an opportunity for preparation of a series of cartographic publications, i.e. 16 statistical atlases of Polish voivodships (first order administrative units) and the <i>Statistical atlas of Poland</i>. Publication of such a series of atlases is a new undertaking in the history of Polish statistics – it involved both the employees of the head office of Statistics Poland in Warsaw and the staff of statistical offices in 16 voivodships. Statistical atlases of voivodships and the <i>Statistical atlas of Poland</i> count 1888 pages in total with 2934 maps, on which the development of the country is presented in relation to regional and local conditions. All atlases are bilingual, Polish-English.</p>

Konstantin Stepanovich Veselovskii. To the 200th anniversary of his birth

The paper considers the contribution of K.S. Veselovskii (20.05.1819–03.11.1901), the Russian statistician of the 19th century, to the development of geographical science. Compiled under his editorship and with his direct participation, the Economic-Statistical Atlas of the European Russia, the first Russian economic atlas, summarized key information on agriculture as the basis for the Russian economy of the mid-19th century. The method of graphical representation of statistical data on the maps of the Atlas was innovative and contributed to the development of world cartography. The history of compiling the earliest Russian soil map is discussed in detail. The map depicted the geographical patterns of soil distribution in European Russia and their relation to climate. The generalized map was included in the Economic-Statistical Atlas and it became the first soil map of the country in the world. The study “On the Climate of Russia,” in which K.S. Veselovskii collected and critically processed all available observations of air temperature, winds and precipitation played a significant role in the development of geographical science. The role of K.S. Veselovskii in the organization of meteorological observations in Russia is also shown.

The birth of official statistics in Poland

The birth of the Polish official statistics, commonly associated with the establishment of Statistics Poland on 13 July 1918, was possible thanks to the ideas and grassroots work of various scholars, including statisticians, who thus demonstrated their faithfulness to the resolutions of the Four-Year Sejm (Parliament) and the Constitution of 3 May 1791. Statisticians from Kraków, who established Poland’s first statistical society (the Polish Statistical Society) and authored a study entitled Statistics of Poland, Kraków (1915), edited by Adam Krzyżanowski and Kazimierz Kumaniecki, deserve a special recognition in this paper. In the two consecutive years, 1916 and 1917, Kraków saw the publication of two important works, namely Geographical and Statistical Atlas of Poland, Kraków (1916), edited by Eugeniusz Romer and Ignacy Weinfeld, and the Yearbook of Poland. Statistical Tables, Kraków (1917). But scientists from other parts of Poland contributed to the process of laying the foundations for the Polish official statistics as well. Statisticians from Warsaw compiled three volumes of Statistical Yearbooks of the Kingdom of Poland edited by Władysław Grabski, and the work entitled Statistical Yearbook of the Kingdom of Poland and other Polish lands. The Year 1915 under the editorship of Edward Strasburger was published in 1916 in Sankt Petersburg. Around the same period, Polish scientists associated with the University of Lviv expanded the scope of their scientific activity. After regaining independence, the process of establishing the system of official statistics in Poland, at that time carried out already within the framework of Statistic Poland, continued developing dynamically thanks to the scientific input of several dozen Polish statisticians.

New statistical atlases of voivodships and Poland

In 2018, 100 years had passed since the Central Statistical Office of Poland (since 2017: Statistics Poland – GUS) was established. This anniversary was considered an opportunity for preparation of a series of cartographic publications, i.e. 16 statistical atlases of Polish voivodships (first order administrative units) and the Statistical atlas of Poland. Publication of such a series of atlases is a new undertaking in the history of Polish statistics – it involved both the employees of the head office of Statistics Poland in Warsaw and the staff of statistical offices in 16 voivodships. Until 2018 Polish public statistics did not have many such publications. The first atlas publication of Central Statistical Office was Republic of Poland – statistical atlas released in 1930. The next Statistical atlas, covering all of Poland, was published only in 1970. Subsequent statistical atlases were published over 30 years later – the atlases of five voivodships, published in 2006−2016, and the Demographic atlas of Poland published in 2017. Atlases for individual voivodships were prepared by the relevant regional statistical offices. The project was managed by the head office of Statistics Poland which prepared the guidelines and provided technical and substantive supervision. Due to different sizes of voivodships, the atlases were prepared in scales from 1:900,000 (Opolskie and Świętokrzyskie Voivodships) to 1:1,500,000 (Mazowieckie and Wielkopolskie Voivodships). A standard page contains a map of a voivodship divided into communes (gminas) or counties (powiats) and a map of Poland at the scale of 1:9,500,000 divided into voivodships. The number of pages of the voivodship atlas is 104 with 165 maps: 76 maps of voivodships, 76 maps of Poland, one administrative map of Poland at the scale of 1:3,800,000 and 12 maps of the European Union or Europe at the scale of 1:21,500,000. The Statistical atlas of Poland was published in early July 2018. It consists of 216 pages, with 281 maps (full-page maps of Poland at the scale of 1:3,800,000, quarter-page maps of Poland at the scale of 1:9,000,000, full-page maps of Europe or the European Union at the scale of 1:21,500,000, and half-page world maps at the scale of 1:200,000,000) and 175 charts/graphs. Maps made by using quantitative cartographic presentation methods predominate in the atlas – choropleth and diagram methods are used most frequently (they are observed on 263 maps). Statistical atlases of voivodships and the Statistical atlas of Poland count 1888 pages in total with 2934 maps, on which the development of the country is presented in relation to regional and local conditions. All atlases are bilingual, Polish-English. Publications printing was co-financed from EU funds within the Operational Programme Technical Assistance 2014–2020. Atlases are also available free of charge in the PDF format on the website of Statistics Poland: https://stat.gov.pl/statystyka-regionalna/publikacje-regionalne/podreczniki-atlasy/atlasy/.