Nouvelle Carte de France, d'Apres les Dernieres Decouvertes des Savants et des Explorateurs [New Map of France, After the Latest Discoveries of the Scientists and Explorers]
- Title:
- Nouvelle Carte de France, d'Apres les Dernieres Decouvertes des Savants et des Explorateurs [New Map of France, After the Latest Discoveries of the Scientists and Explorers]
- Alternate Title:
- Nouvelle Carte de France
- Collection:
- Persuasive Maps: PJ Mode Collection
- Creator:
- Robida, Albert
- Other Creators:
- Yves et Barret, engravers
- Date:
- 1882
- Posted Date:
- 2024-04-25
- ID Number:
- 2458.01
- File Name:
- PJM_2458_01.jpg
- Style/Period:
- 1870 - 1899
- Subject:
- Conduct of Life
Other Moral & Social
Politics & Government
Satirical - Measurement:
- 48 x 40 on sheet 54 x 76 (centimeters, height x width)
- Notes:
- This "New Map . . . After the Latest Discoveries of the Scientists and Explorers" provides a satirical view of France at year-end 1882. The work is for the most part light hearted, adorned with bathing women, a laughing cow in Normandy, the fairy-tale chateaux of the Loire, and a scantily-clad celebrant astride a giant bottle of champagne just uncorked. In Paris, elegantly dressed patrons of a brightly-lit nightclub toast a dancing woman. The map is surrounded by views of significant French cities: Avignon, Rouen, Marseille, Le Puy, Limoges, Lyon, Bordeaux, Nice, Versailles, Carcassonne, and two views of Paris. The text beneath the map describes the French as "all beautiful, shapely, gracious, intelligent and spiritual" (apart from those resulting from "familial inbreeding"). Its citizens are "kind and gallant, especially with the wives of neighbors who never have faults." The climate is "good for umbrella merchants."
But there is a darker side to this work, reflecting the nation's broadening problems. France was still suffering from its dramatic defeat in the Franco-Prussian war, represented here by the cloud of dark smoke from a German pipe over Alsace-Lorraine (shown in white as French territory!). The very important wine industry had been hit by an outbreak of phylloxera. (In the Rhone wine region, the map shows a man armed with a pistol and carrying a sign, "Mort au Philloxera.") Most significantly, the bank Union Generale collapsed suddenly in January 1882, triggering a crash in the French stock market and a deep recession that lasted for years.
By the Fall, following a series of violent strikes, the American press was reporting "Panic About France . . . . the spirit of riot and destruction . . . has spread until the peace of society is threatened and the authority of the Government defied on every hand." New York Times, Oct. 30, 1882, p.4. Two weeks later, "the great proletarian movement . . . has steadily spread through the provinces and has finally gained the capital . . . . Anarchists, Socialists, and Collectivists," led by the "Nihilist committee" of Prince Krapotkin, the radical who had escaped prison in Russia and was living in southeastern France after being expelled from Switzerland. Ibid., Nov, 14, 1882, p.2. Nine "anarchists" were arrested in Lyon on charges of murder and "manufacturing dynamite." Ibid., Nov. 1, 1882, p.1. (The text under the inset illustration of Lyon begins, "General view for the moment, unless dynamite has changed its appearance.") And on December 21, Prince Kapotkin was arrested in Lyon for alleged efforts to "overthrow the social order by means of pillage and assisination" and "organizing a conspiracy at secret meetings" as "the chief mover of an anarchist association in France." Ibid., Dec. 22, 1882, p.1.
Some of these concerns are reflected on the map in varying degrees of clarity. Bottles of fine wines from famous Burgundy regions are arrayed in a military circle as cannons on gun carriages, their corks exploding, their flag declaring a "War on Melancolie." In the South, enthusiastic, wild-eyed residents of Gascogne emerge from boiling cauldrons, waving flags that proclaim "Forward Gascogne," and the same for Provence. Near Lyons are images and references to dynamite, gunpower, and more cannons. Paris, "the political baking oven for all of France," illustrates the tensions of the times. Below the illustration of dancing and drinking in the brightly-lit nightclub there are three smaller panels of darkened subjects, out of the light: a young bearded figure (radical?) writing a document, a worker beating on an anvil, and an older scholar or philosopher reading.
The map is signed, "A. Robida, surveyor of the Alpine Club of Montmartre." The mapmaker, Albert Robida (1848-1926), was a prolific illustrator, caricaturist and novelist. This map was a supplement to the magazine La Caricature, which he founded and edited. He is best known today as a "futurist" for three science fiction novels written in the 1880s imagining a number of military and other inventions, as well as social changes, that did in fact develop in the 20th century.
Cornell University Library is pleased to present this digital collection of Persuasive Maps, the originals of which have been collected and described by the private collector PJ Mode. The descriptive information in the “Collector’s Notes” has been supplied by Mr. Mode and does not necessarily reflect the views of Cornell University. - Source:
- La Caricature, December 23, 1882, Supplement.
- Format:
- Image
- Rights:
- For important information about copyright and use, see http://persuasivemaps.library.cornell.edu/copyright.