The Use of Colors in Historical Atlases

The use of colour in cartography has received a great deal of attention for its capability to convey information in map-making ever since Jacques Bertin’s famous Se´miologie Graphique (published 1967). Since most studies on the use of colour in cartography clearly highlight the communicative power of colour in cartography, it is interesting and surprising that the use of colour to convey messages beyond the declared one is not taken into consideration into these works. The possible attempt of cartographers to imply nationalistic propaganda by their use of colour and its analysis is left to books on cartographic propaganda, to studies on historical atlases, or to articles on thematic maps. To merge these two topics, an analysis of South Tyrolean-themed maps taken from the most important German and Italian historical atlases based on psychological, symbolic, and optical theories is given. The analysed atlases were been published between the end of the processes of national unification and the aftermath of the Second World War, the period in which the South Tyrol was most disputed between German and Italian nationalists.