Welcome to the International Cartographic Association
Welcome to the website of the International Cartographic AssociationGet to know the new ICA Executive Committee for the term 2023-2027
Welcome to the website of the International Cartographic Association
Get to know the new ICA Executive Committee for the term 2023-2027

Call for Articles: “A Terrible Mother Of Invention” – Cartographic Progress during World War I (1914-18)

To commemorate the centenary of the end of what then was called the ‘Great War to end all wars’ (H.G. Wells 1914) from a cartographical perspective, the International Journal of Cartography (IJoC) has invited the ICA Commission on the History of Cartography to guest edit a special issue to appear in November 2018.

The emphasis of the special issue will be on how the first truly global and industrialized war helped to emerge new ways to capture survey data, speed up processing and printing and, last but not least, introducing significant map series. For that focus on technologies and resulting cartographic products, maps on diplomacy and propaganda are intentionally outside the scope of the special issue.

Alongside already solicited contributions the ICA Commission on the History of Cartography does invite expressions of interest by way of submitting brief abstracts on two categories of articles:

  • Overview papers of national scope (about 10-16 pages in print according to the IJoC guidelines on the manuscript) and
  • Papers on special topics (about 4-8 pages in print) either with a regional focus (e.g. the Gallipoli Campaign) or a topical focus (e.g. emergence of aeronautical charts).

For overview papers of national scope special consideration will be given to the following national cartographies of war:

  • United Kingdom (Western Front and other theatres of war)
  • France (Western Front and other theatres of war)
  • Russia (Eastern Europe and Caucasus Front)
  • Italy
  • Japan

To conceptualize a contribution please note that each page in the special issue equals about 700 words, will be printed in full color and that thus a half page size figure takes up about 350 words.

Abstracts should be up to 500 words, plus a brief biographical notice. Abstracts (and subsequently accepted articles) should be written in English.

Important dates

  • Deadline for submissions of abstracts: October 17, 2017
  • Notification of acceptance for the Special Issue: October 31, 2017
  • Deadline for submissions of manuscript, incl. all attachments (figures): March 31, 2018

All questions and submissions should be sent electronically to the guest editor: Prof. Dr. Imre Josef Demhardt (Chair of the ICA Commission on the History of Cartography)

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