An Investigation of Maps and Cartographic Artefacts of the Gallipoli Campaign 1915: Military, Commercial and Personal

Abstract

Producing maps and related representations of geography in warfare provides information about the terrain and the positions of troops. They are also used in strategic planning and as operational tools. They are an integral part of a military campaign. Maps are provided by military topographic agencies as the main resource for operations. However, many complementary products have been produced by commercial map publishers and as support for newspaper articles reporting on battles. As well, combatants produce many ‘informal’ maps and diagrams before, during and after a campaign. These products can be considered to be more personal and to provide a different ‘view’ of a battle than the official maps provided by conventional publishing methods. An international collaborative research project is studying the geographical information resources and geographical representations used for analysis, planning, conducting and post-event analysis of large-scale operations. The research is focussing on the geographical information resources used in the Gallipoli Campaign in World War 1, so as to appreciate mapping resources used to visualise the political and physical geography that contributed to the selection of the Gallipoli peninsula as a site for a second front during World War 1, the determination of possible landing sites, developing ‘at location’ troop deployment and movement plans and the eventual evacuation of forces from Gallipoli. This chapter provides an insight into some of the mapping and geographical artefacts that were found during research into the availability of cartographic resources from the Dardenelles campaign of 1915. These can generally be described as official, commercial and personal. It describes samples of the maps and drawings that were found in historical map collections. These products were published by the military, by commercial map producers and in newspapers. As well, soldiers recorded things like their journey to the Gallipoli campaign, general observations of battle situations and field-drawn base maps and pictorial representations of troop positions and emplacements.