Decolonizing Mapping in the Digital Humanities

Yarimar Bonilla and Max Hantel bring light to pre-colonial and post-colonial history and mapping in their essay, “Visualizing Sovereignty: Cartographic Queries for the Digital Age.”  They press upon the United States’, British, French and Spanish control over The Caribbean, and how this factors skews the accuracy in pre-colonial history, territories, mapping of the Caribbean, and the continuous justification of these factors due to modern, post-colonial control. The need to decolonize mapping is essential to give accurate information about the world as well as justice to humanity that has been great affected by colonialism.

For a portion of their essay, Bonilla and Hantel focus on the Caribbean history and mapping. They highlight, “This history of fractured, uneven, contested, and negotiated sovereignty continues to shape the region as a whole, and at present the majority of societies in the Caribbean are not independent nation-states but rather protectorates, territories, departments, and commonwealths … In addition, the Caribbean also holds a large number of nonsovereign enclaves: military bases, privately owned islands, semiautonomous tourist resorts, free-trade zones, tax havens, wildlife preserves, satellite launching stations, detention centers, penal colonies, floating data centers, and other spaces of suspended, subcontracted, usurped, or imposed foreign jurisdiction that challenge the principles of bounded territorial authority associated with the Westphalian order,” (Bonilla, Hantel.) This shows how overtaken the Caribbean is taking over by foreign powers and their politics, that the land’s procession is inauthentic to it’s origin. This brings a morphed view of what the Caribbean really appears, naturally, and perpetuates colonial values over people and their respective land.

With the Digital Humanities in mind, the multitudes of research done and created to academically share is such an incredible step forward in promoting not only a decolonization and recognition of colonial values in mapping, but it also gives the opportunity for people who’s genetic lineage has been affected by colonization to reclaim their territory and history, even digitally. Bonilla and Hantel include modern data mapping visualizations that include Claudio Saunt’s “The Invasion of America: How the United States Took Over an Eighth of the World,” and Vincent Brown’s, “Slave Revolt in Jamaica 1760- 1761: A Cartographic Narrative.” Both of these intricate types of maps bring alive important concepts in history that have been silenced due to colonial rule of the narrative. Utilizing the Digital Humanities and digital mapping and resources, people can use these tools to create invaluable content that will change the historical narrative to a historically accurate and inclusive narrative.