-------- Original Message --------
Subject:        Globe question
Date:   Wed, 30 Apr 2008 11:09:46 -0400
From:   [log in to unmask]
Reply-To:       Maps-L
To:


Ms. Moore asked us to account for, rather than evaluate, and therefore
my initial response addressed, the practice of cataloguing as
American globes with British labels obscured by American overlabels.



I do, however, largely agree with Ms. Hudson that "the 'furniture' [of
such globes] is American, not the intellectual and design content of
the globes themselves."  However: (1) the fact that a globe's original
label is British does not exhaustively prove that the intellectual and
design content of the cartography is British given that American
manufacturers had their hand in so many other manufacturing aspects
(mounting, stand preparation, distribution, etc.) and may indeed have
commissioned the British engraving and (2) even if English
cartographers such as Johnston and Bacon were not commissioned or
otherwise influenced in their gore producing efforts by American
cartographic publishing companies, given the copying and other
interplay between cartographers in various countries (especially
prevalent by the 1890s, when American overlabels became prevalent)
allocations of "intellectual and design content" to a particular
country are a bit spurious.&nb sp; In social sciences, such
practices are known as the "fallacy of misplaced concreteness."