Mapping Asia 2022 in Gotha: International Perspectives on Historical Cartographies of Asia

With the end of the year in sight and a detailed conference report forthcoming, this short note serves to remember the international conference Mapping Asia: Cartography and the Construction of Territoriality, which took place on the 24th and 25th of November 2022 at the Centre for Transcultural Studies in Gotha. Being part and parcel of the project Cartographies of Africa and Asia (1800–1945), the project team welcomed international scholars of Asian Cartography to discuss their respective research on the construction of territoriality and to explore the artefacts of the Perthes Collection. The conference was characterized by lively and active debates, fruitful discussions and a familiar atmosphere, which allowed researchers from all over the world to connect in Gotha.

An extended trip to the Perthes collection allowed the participants to get introduced to some of the most outstanding artefacts of the Perthes Collection, due to presentations by Petra Weigel, Iris Schröder, Patrick Müller, Frances O’Morchoe and Claudia Berger. Afterwards, the digital infrastructure of the digitization project Cartographies of Africa and Asia was introduced and different strategic avenues for researching the digitized map folders were discussed.

At the end of a successful second conference day, organizers Claudia Berger and Frances O’Morchoe summarized the discussions and underlined the relevance of the Perthes Collection for cartographic studies of Asia. While the Perthes Collection remains an internationally widely underused collection, its relevance and potential had been successfully demonstrated, hopefully inspiring further research and heightened visibility of one of the most spectacular collections of historical cartography in continental Europe.