Thematic atlases

Summary

This article surveys the worldwide development, classification, purposes, and publication trends of thematic atlases from the late nineteenth century to the mid-1970s, with particular attention to national, regional, planning, informational, and specialized atlases. Its central point of departure is K. A. Salishtchev’s 1956 proposal to the International Geographical Union that every country prepare a comprehensive national atlas portraying its physical and economic characteristics. The proposal reflected a broader transformation of geography from a predominantly descriptive discipline into one concerned with the spatial organization of productive forces, the rational use of natural resources, and the formulation of regional development policy. A national atlas was therefore conceived as a “mapped national inventory” integrating information on environment, population, society, and economy. International coordination was intended to analyze existing atlases, identify common scientific problems, develop model contents, and recommend compatible projections, scales, legends, and representational methods. It was later extended to regional atlases, especially for large and internally diverse countries. The article traces national-atlas production from Finland’s pioneering works, initially associated with national identity and independence, through atlases created for boundary justification, political communication, and state propaganda, to the postwar expansion of atlases designed primarily for economic planning, higher education, and public information. By approximately 1975, forty countries had published a national atlas or part of one, while another twenty-four had issued comparable comprehensive thematic works. Most planning-oriented atlases sought to support coordinated economic development, but recurring problems included prolonged publication of multivolume or serial editions, uneven revision of outdated data, and restricted international circulation caused by language or writing systems. Regional atlas production—concentrated especially in the United States, the Soviet Union, and a limited number of developed countries—served more specific purposes: preparing development programs, supplying evidence for major investments, assessing regional resources and constraints, and supporting administrative or educational needs. Examples from France, the Federal Republic of Germany, and India demonstrate the importance of standardized dates, uniform territorial units, rapid processing, and timely dissemination. They also show that traditional cartographic methods may require so long that statistical information loses practical value before publication. Beyond comprehensive national and regional works, the study catalogs specialized atlases devoted to climate, agriculture, geology, hydrography, soils, vegetation, forests, industry, energy, population, settlement, education, dialects, ethnography, medical geography, history, and archaeology. Historical sections, though initially recommended for national atlases, were often omitted because of political sensitivities or weak relevance to immediate planning and subsequently appeared as separate publications. Overall, thematic atlases are presented both as major instruments for synthesizing, comparing, and visualizing geographical knowledge and as practical infrastructure for resource inventories, spatial planning, public administration, education, and national self-representation. Their continued usefulness depends on international standardization, efficient production, comparable cartographic conventions, and regular updating.