Post-War Ethnic Boundary-Mapping from Above and Below

Abstract

The chapter presents a multi-scalar account of the uses of ethnographic mapping to negotiate the Estonian-Latvian state border in the aftermath of the First World War. Focusing on the period between 1919-1920, it examines the interactions between Estonian and Latvian government representatives, the Estonian-Latvian Boundary Commission, and the efforts of local inhabitants to influence the outcome of the bordering process. The chapter offers a novel bottom-up perspective on bordering processes by examining the written petitions and maps drawn by border region dwellers to inform, correct, and challenge decisions about nationality, property ownership, and boundary-drawing made by the boundary commission. The inhabitants of the border region deployed considerable cartographic literacy to make specific claims about where they believed borders ought to be located and why. The development of cartographic thinking and the production of maps over the course of the nineteenth century, which had circulated in schoolbooks and newspapers, spread cartographic literacy among broad elements of the Baltic populations. The very subjects of ethnographic cartography themselves became mapmakers and consequently agents in the border drawing process. This chapter further demonstrates how ethnographic mapping permeated multiple levels of society and impacted thinking about territory and nationhood.