All language subtitles for BBC.The.Beauty.of.Maps.4of4.Cartoon.Maps.Politics.and.Satire.1080i.HDTV.x264.AC3

The British Library in London
is home to a staggering
4.5 million maps.

Mysterious and beautiful,
these rarely seen treasures are much

more than just two dimensional
depictions of a physical world.

Among its most quixotic,
strange and colourful treasures

are the world's first
mass produced satirical maps,

maps that used country boundaries
to reinforce national stereotypes.

The form of a country,
the map of a country,

can have an enormous emotive force.

Visually striking, poking fun
at the high and mighty,

at countries and their leaders,
these maps came from a time

when nations were still
working out who they were.

People were asking, what
does it mean to be British?

What does it mean to be French?

What does it mean to be
German or Italian?

These extraordinary maps
did more than just poke fun.

They made politics visual.

They helped create
national identity.

And they ushered in a modern world

where mass media and political spin
went hand in hand.

Europe in the 1870's
was a place of political tension.

Countries vied with one another
for territory and influence.

Nationalism was on the rise.

Nationalism was a movement which
grew out of the Napoleonic wars.

The countries which had laboured

under Napoleonic rule
emerged from this period

with a distinct desire to have
an identity of their own.

And to defend that identity.

For Britain,
it was the great era of maps.

The Ordnance Survey was mapping the
nation in almost microscopic detail.

While the Empire and wars in Europe
made maps indispensable

for understanding Britain
and its place in the world.

By that time the shapes of
Europe, in particular,

were pretty well known.

The 19th century had seen a huge
explosion in map availability.

Papers were full of maps,
books were full of maps,

atlases were getting published.

The base of knowledge about
the shape of our lands,

and all the rest of it,
was already there.

One British Map maker,
Frederick Rose,

was determined to give that
knowledge a whole new twist.

In 1877, he made the first of the
world's mass-produced satire maps.

They impart opinion and information
all at the same time,

in a way that is visually
very striking and quite beautiful.

They are very much a product
of their age.

Rose was doing these maps
at the zenith of the British Empire.

And it shored up the Victorian sense

of who we are and our
place in the world.

Entitled, A Serio-Comic Map
Of Europe For The Year 1877,

Rose's map captures a
moment of anxiety for Europe.

The so-called Eastern question,

the fear of Russia,
pictured as a giant octopus.

The map was meant to inform,
to entertain, and to shock.

And it still does.

We know exactly how people
responded to it visually

because people are continuing
to respond to it visually.

There's the case of the
Russian academic recently,

who was incandescent with rage at
the fact that it had been reproduced

because he felt that the use of an
octopus to portray his country

was a monstrous distortion
of the true nature of his country.

This map has been insulting people,
and amusing people in equal measure,

for the last 130 years.

The tentacles of the
Russian octopus stretch out

over the much of the continent
with an alarming and malign reach.

So all of it links together
in some way and, really,

what you have are a series
of interlinked narratives,

linking up with each
other right the way across.

Moving over the whole
is the Russian octopus,

with tentacles
going out in every direction.

The idea of the octopus does seem
to be Rose's own, as far as I know.

I've seen earlier depictions
of Russia as a bear

or as a ravening wolf in
caricature maps like this

going back to the Crimean War.

But as soon as you're looking at
the detail and Rose's opinion

of what's going on in various
countries in Europe at the time,

you're sucked right in.

Rose uses the physical
shape of each nation

to create a cartoon stereotype.

Here's a grumpy looking Ireland
with 'home rule' on her mind.

Italy is a young woman,

because the nation had only been
in existence for a few years.

Germany is a fierce looking
Prussian, armed to the teeth.

Spain, indifferent to
events in Europe, is asleep.

But it's that grey menace of
the octopus that dominates.

This image gave, if you like,
the opponents of Russia a focus.

For instance, it's strangling Poland.

Poland then formed part of Russia.

It's in the process
of strangling Bulgaria.

And it was, in fact,
the Russian invasion of Bulgaria

that provoked the great crisis which
very nearly led to a First World War

something like 30 years before
it actually occurred.

It is such a convenient
thing because people do
recognise their own country.

The form of a country,
the map of a country,

can have an enormous emotive force.

It resonates.

It's a time of great political
upheaval and uncertainty,

and I suppose a slight
lightness of touch

is a good way of bringing
that home to people.

It's not only the
octopus that's important.

You've got other little side scenes.

For instance, one very small touch
is that the Turkish Empire

is shown as a Turk who
lies prostrate beneath the octopus,

and the golden watch of the Turk
is Constantinople

which everybody thought was the main
objective of Russia's expansion.

If you look, even in small detail
at Belgium,

you've got the King of Belgium,
Leopold II,

who was making a fortune
out of running the Congo
as its private fief.

And he's there, counting his money.

So, wherever you look at the map,

you have references to
the current situation.

Even if, thanks to the
mastery of the design,

the eye is at first drawn to the
main conflict, which is Russia.

It's really clearly
seen in the map itself that
tension was building up in Europe.

For example, France is
checking its weapons,

getting ready for something.

Austria-Hungary, the big empire,

actually you can see that Hungary

is depicted as a man who
is really getting angry,

he wants to get at Russia.

Who is held back by a
young woman, Austria.

You can actually see that everybody
is getting ready for something

but they are not quite sure
what will come next.

For Rose's audience, this was map
and news bulletin rolled into one.

And the British viewer
could gain comfort

from the stalwart figure
of John Bull.

Resolute, solid and reliable.

Often, when all the other characters
representing all the other countries

are scrapping and fighting, or
kipping on the job, John Bull,

up there in the top left corner,

is always looking remarkable
and in full control of everything.

On all his maps, we're always
looking terribly smug and...

gazing benignly on the
rest of the unfortunates

in the world, who haven't have
the good grace to be born British.

Rose's work was revolutionary.

He made politics
visual through maps.

He defined national stereotypes.

And for the first time
in Britain's history,

he brought the world of
political satire to a mass audience.

It was a breakthrough in
printing technology

that made it all possible.

We could almost call this the first
map for the masses,

because its produced using
chroma-lithography

which had two important features.

First of all, it was produced
en masse, almost infinite
copies could be produced.

Secondly, it could
be produced in colour.

It cost virtually nothing.

It quite literally
spread like wildfire

and it had an enormous impact.

In the 1870's,

there were 250 lithographic
printers in London alone.

Today, this Victorian warehouse
in south London

is home to one of the last remaining
traditional printers

in the whole of Britain.

Using the same lithography process

that was used to make
the Rose original,

Megan Fishpool and Colin Gale
are printing the octopus map,

probably the first to be printed
in over a century.

In the years before Rose,
each colour element had to be

laboriously drawn out and printed
from cumbersome stone plates.

But photography
had transformed the process.

Historically, this is right
at the cross over point

where they started moving from stone
lithography to plate lithography.

Plates have got the advantage.

Obviously, they're cheaper, lighter,

more portable and faster to print.

What we've got here, it's the
modern day equivalent, it's
photo sensitive aluminium.

The plate's been exposed
using ultraviolet light

to a drawing which is
made on clear acetate.

I'm pouring on liquid developer and
literally developing out the image.

While the plates are being prepared

to be printed, you mix the colour.

There are four colours and a black
in this particular image.

And all of the colours are
actually made by hand from scratch.

To our 21st century eyes,
the process may look laborious,

but in 1877 this was right at the
cutting edge of new technology.

Basically, it evolved
the concept of quantity.

And so, a couple of printers
working together could print

a phenomenal amount of imagery
in very short period of time.

This is the plate for the
main body of the octopus.

Which is going to be printed
in a transparent grey.

We need a separate plate
for each image, and each
colour is printed separately.

All the pinks are printed and
all the yellows are printed,

all the blues are printed,

and that's the way
the image is built up.

Five plates in total for
this particular picture.

The new process took advantage
of two burgeoning technologies.

One was photography, allowing
plates to be made without drawing.

The other was chemistry.

Lithography is very simple
chemistry.

It's the fact that oil
and water don't mix.

The image is greasy
and attracts ink.

And the non-image area is kept damp
and repels the greasy ink.

Colour printing would've been
very, very expensive,

only open to rich people.

This is a way of reaching
the mass market very, very
cheaply, very, very quickly.

High volume and low cost brought
maps like Rose's to a new audience.

It also revolutionised
the map business.

Previously, mapmakers took
huge financial risks

producing their costly product,
and often went bust.

Rose's maps proved hugely popular,
and highly profitable
for his publisher G. W. Bacon.

George W. Bacon was actually known

for making maps of London
and the surroundings,

for example, for biking trips.

But then, on the side, he decides to
start publishing these cartoon maps.

I think he was
a rather wily businessman

because after the first map
of Frederick Rose
in 1877 was published,

fairly quickly after that there
was a second edition of the map
already in the same year.

It sort of gives us a clue that there
was business in these kinds of maps.

I can imagine Bacon
taking the most immense pleasure

in putting these cartoon maps
in the window of his shop

because he liked eye-catching,
and those certainly are.

And I think that is
what Bacon is about.

It is about mass appeal,

selling maps to people who didn't
even know they wanted maps.

Satire maps were sold
on street corners,

they appeared in newspapers,
in schools, in offices,

in ordinary homes.

What had once been costly,
luxury items were now
throwaway objects in a mass market.

The modern world of map publishing
had begun.

It's always quite
exciting as a printmaker.

We've got all the colour layers
down now

and until you put the final black
layer on, you don't know
what it's going to look like.

It's always kind of a magic moment,
just peeling it off and seeing
the final result for the first time.

There you go. Beautiful.
Spot-on register.

Perfect.

In the spring of 1880,

Rose turned his sharp-edged,
satirical lens on British politics.

It was general election time,
with the Liberals

seeking to topple a Tory government
that many saw as corrupt,

warmongering and dishonest.

Uniquely, Rose produced two
satire maps, one for each party.

The maps have lain in the
British Library's basement
for well over a century

and were only recently rediscovered
by Peter Barber.

Part of the fun of being a curator is
that you do have almost unrestricted
access to your collections.

I mean,
there is nothing more exciting
than going through a file of maps

and seeing something you've never
seen before and you're pretty sure
that nobody else has seen before.

It really is great
to find something that is really new,

and to look at the expressions
of surprise on faces of people
who equally have never seen them.

And, sometimes, the things
can be really, really important
because they can change perceptions.

They can provide evidence which
previously had been lacking.

Rose's octopus maps are very
familiar and, as you can see,

he's signed his name down here,

well, under his signature,
Fred W. Rose,

we've got the "Author of the
Octopus Map of Europe".

It's absolutely lovely to see
something completely fresh
and completely new.

And I know it's been lying in
the vaults of the British Library

for the last 130 years or so,
but I'd never seen them before.

I had never even
seen these reproduced

in any publications.

In the pro-Conservative image,
Disraeli, the Prime Minister,

is a heroic figure,

stabbing his enemies
with the sword of patriotism.

In the pro-Liberal map,
Rose turns it all around.

This time, Gladstone is the hero,

while Disraeli is depicted
as a corrupt despot,

his subservient cabinet
kneeling at his feet.

Here you've got King Jingo,

Benjamin Disraeli, being unseated,
but it's interesting
to see what he's being unseated by.

And it's something which echoes right
the way down to the present time.

You've got here "broken promises".

You've got there
"harassed interests",

and finally, and most important,

"public opinion",
which is unseating him.

If you notice carefully, he's
sitting on top of the ballot box.

It's a marvellous allegory
of the electoral process,

very, very well portrayed.

The burning issues of
the election have an
eerily contemporary ring to them.

Britain was fighting
a prolonged war in Afghanistan.

And the national debt was at
its highest in living memory.

You have the comment that Gladstone,
who's depicted as a Highlander,

has taken on some clothes
and some arms,

which he has taken
from the stiffening corpses

of English soldiers in Afghanistan.

We have the references
to public expenditure.

And also to the general economic
state of the country

because you do get this mention
of public debt de profundis.

And at the moment, if that isn't
a key question, nothing is.

It's a marvellous way of
dramatising issues

which are matters of debate,
and dramatising them in a way,

with a clarity which
a verbal debate or a written debate

can't really bring to the fore.

Rose's legacy lives on today,

in the work of graphic artists
like Peter Brookes,

political cartoonist at The Times.

Political cartoons are
odd things anyway, to be honest.

A political cartoon to me,

a definition of it,

is kneeing somebody in the groin
with a smile, if you like.

There are so many instances of things
that other people have done

that lodge in your subconscious.
You're aware of them.

You like them. You like what
Rose does because it's within your
professional territory, so to speak.

It's the same sort of thing
as you do.

You have to be able to
recognise symbols,

which your general reader
can be familiar with.

And maps, if anything, are symbols.

Before Rose,
there were people producing maps,

political commentary through maps,
like Gillray.

And a particular one I love which
is George III and the Bum-Boats,

where George III is defecating
the fleet against the French.

A wonderful image. So wonderfully
scatological, so vulgar,

it makes you laugh
just because it is, you know!

It appeals to my
ribald sense of humour, if you like.

And you laugh, but the point behind
it, when you're fighting France,

is obviously serious as well.

Peter Brookes' own work
owes much to Gillray and Rose,

a mark of the abiding
political power of the satire map.

This Spectator cover, again
uses that familiar shape of Britain.

And the article was about,
as you can read there,

"Yobland, Our Yobland."

The idea of Wales being the 2 hands,

Norfolk's his bum, obviously,
and his trainers,

you can manage to make the outline
of the West Country.

The only thing I think
is wrong about it

is that Ireland really doesn't have
a great deal to do with that.

But to make it work,
as a yob kicking an old lady,

I'm afraid Ireland was used
for that purpose.

Well, I drew this for The Times
immediately after

the Continuity IRA
murdered a policeman,

having previously murdered
two British soldiers

a short while before that.

And the idea was to show
the Good Friday Agreement

being shot to ribbons, basically.

The outline of Ireland, it's
a familiar image to people, you hope.

And the shape is what does it.

And then putting bullet-holes
in with it as well,

and the burn marks round it.

To make up the idea.

You may think, "Well, because
they've been around for a long time,

"what possible sort of...

"enjoyment can come out of
trotting out the same old stuff?"

But it's not the same old stuff.

First of all, the political situation
is always different, by definition.

And you're using
the constant shape of something

which people are familiar with.

That makes it
a different challenge, I think.

Political crisis is also the subject
of Rose's last satire map.

Made in 1899,

Angling In Troubled Waters
depicts growing tensions in Europe.

In 1914, those tensions erupted

into the bloodiest conflict
the world had ever seen.

With war, satire maps took on a more
savage tone than Rose had ever used.

But his legacy shines through.

Here's the octopus,
his great creation,

at the heart of a brooding
anti-German French map of 1917.

This vicious Russian satire map
used the "hunger spider"

to show the invidious influence
of Russia's churches

on the flagging revolution.

And this map
brings the story full circle.

Made in 1941,

the fascists of Vichy France
savagely turned Rose's octopus idea

against Britain itself.

Well, this is an Axis cartoon

attacking British policy
throughout the world

during the Second World War.

And it does so
by resurrecting the octopus

that had been first seen
nearly 70 years earlier.

And in this particular case,

the octopus has been turned
into Winston Churchill.

The tentacles of the British octopus

are shown being cut in places which
have had resonances for the French.

There was an allied attempt to
seize Dakar in west Africa,

it didn't succeed.

There's a cut tentacle.

There's an attempt by the British
to seize a French fleet

at Mers El-Kebir.

There's another tentacle that's cut.

The French caption reads,

"Confiance ses amputations se
poursuivent methodiquement,"

which means,

"Have confidence,
the amputations of its tentacles

"are being pursued
in a methodical manner."

In other words,
"You don't need to worry,

"soon there'll be no tentacles left

"and the octopus will be reduced

"to a dying mass of fish
in Great Britain."

The image is crude and vicious.

All the subtlety and humour
of Rose is gone.

This is the ultimate satire map,

from a time when politics had
become a matter of life and death.

We're used to regarding Churchill

as a positively good thing

and I think it'll come as a shock
to many people

to be reminded of the time when,

in many parts of the world,
Churchill was regarded

as the embodiment
of everything that was evil.

Because the incidental detail
has been omitted,

you also omit a lot of the humour.

This is a very, very stark, unwitty,

attack on Winston Churchill

which is not intended
to provoke any happy chuckles.

It does show just how powerful
a map image can be.

And in a way which, I think,
nowadays, people will understand

because the rendering
of the map is modern,

it represents the Rose idea

reduced to its most negative essence.

The satire map
has made an extraordinary journey

over a tumultuous
century-and-a-half.

Rose's world
of Victorian technology,

of John Bull and Empire,
may seem far-distant.

But by combining maps,

mass media and political spin
for the first time,

he left an enduring legacy.

One that testifies
both to his own genius,

and to the extraordinary power,
depth and beauty of maps themselves.

To explore the new world
of digital mapping

and to find out more about the
British Library Map Exhibition,

go to..

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk