Maps were a crucial tool in the military campaigns along the Western Front and elsewhere during the First World War, with great innovations in the development of surveying and cartography through photogrammetry and aerial photography. While historical geographers and historians of cartography have in recent years used qualitative approaches to understand the efficacy of these military developments in 'spatial technologies', this paper sets out an analytical framework for using Geographical Information Systems (GIS) – as a 21st century spatial technology – to explore how British trench maps were made and used. Using recent collaborative cross-disciplinary research linking the National Library of Scotland, University of Kent and Queen’s University Belfast, the paper explores otherwise 'hidden histories' of frontline geographies that emerge through using geovisualisation tools and analysing digitized trench maps. The paper focuses on a series of 1:20,000 scale map-sheets, covering Messines between 1916 and 1918, to look 'behind the lines' on the map by using MapAnalyst software, This allows us to assess the accuracy of the underlying geodetic network, such as trigonometrical stations and survey work, that underpinned these larger-scale Allied topographic maps of the Western Front. Clearly, examining how far these trench maps were cartographically ‘accurate’ is of great importance in evaluating their efficacy in conducting warfare on the ground, both in Belgium and in France. The results of our initial analyses will be presented and discussed in this paper, and their wider potential and significance evaluated.
Dr Keith D. Lilley (Queen's University, Belfast)
Venue: Conference Room, Town Hall (2nd floor), Cloth Hall, Grote Markt 34, 8900 Ieper.
In Flanders Fields Museum, Gateways to the First World War and the University of Kent organize a series of eight seminars, accessible to all. Full details of all the seminars are available here.
