Atlasy narodowe

Summary

This article examines the development, characteristics, and significance of national atlases against the backdrop of the late 19th and 20th centuries. It identifies four key factors driving the rapid advancement of cartography: colonial economic expansion, national liberation movements, improvements in cartographic techniques, and economic transformations. Among various cartographic products, national atlases—comprehensive monographic atlases covering a single country—emerged as a leading genre. The author provides detailed accounts of national atlas projects in several countries, including France, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, and Scotland, discussing their structure, scales, organization, and publication processes. Special attention is given to the Atlas de France, which took about 25 years to complete with contributions from leading French specialists, and to the Swedish national atlas with its serial publication format. The article then focuses on Poland, reviewing the compilation of the Atlas Polski (Atlas of Poland) and the Atlas Powszechny (General Atlas). The Polish national atlas project, initially planned to cover physical, human, and economic geography, was discontinued after only four fascicles were published between 1953 and 1956. The author attributes this failure to a lack of external cooperation and support, which seriously damaged the prestige of Polish cartography. With the approaching millennium anniversary of Poland, the author urges the resumption of work on the Atlas Polski, proposing that it should become a comprehensive geographic-synthetic monograph incorporating findings from history, archaeology, ethnography, and linguistics. Such an atlas would serve as an essential reference for education, research, and publicizing national achievements. The article concludes that national atlases represent the best informational medium about a country, and compiling a new Atlas of Poland should be a paramount task for Polish cartography in the near future.