Harley, Brian (1932–1991)

James Brian (J. B.) Harley was a historical geographer and a key figure in the contemporary field of the history of cartography. He helped lay down some of its main theoretical foundations and ideas on how to look at maps and helped structure and expand the discipline as well. Central to his contribution was his conception of the map as a social and not simply a technical construct. As exemplified by his Maps and the Columbian Encounter, published in 1990, using notions from [Page 1402]postmodern literary criticism and from the history of art, he especially scrutinized maps for their “hidden agendas” and “silences” and other biases that directly reflect the values of their creators and the times of their creation. He fervently advocated the study of maps within their social and cultural contexts.

Harley was born on July 24, 1932, in Bristol, England. He attended Brewood Grammar School in Staffordshire, and after graduation, he served for 2 years in the British Army in Cyprus, Egypt, and Trieste. Thereafter, he majored in geography and minored in history at the University of Birmingham, receiving his PhD in 1958. In the same year, Harley was appointed to an assistant lectureship in geography at Liverpool University in 1958 and a lectureship at the University of Exeter in 1970, where he became the Montefiore Reader in Geography in 1972. In 1976, he became a professor of geography at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and director of the Office of Map History at the university's Golda Meir Library, which contains the map collection of the American Geographical Society. For his scholarship, Harley was awarded a Doctor of Letters from Birmingham in 1985 and the silver medal of the British Cartographic Society in 1991. He died of a heart attack on December 20, 1991.

While in Liverpool, Harley turned to the history of cartography. He was influenced early on by Harry Thorpe and R. A. Skelton. His first work in the field was Christopher Greenwood, County Map-Maker, published in 1962. It was followed by the valuable Historian's Guide to Ordnance Survey Maps in 1964 with C. W. Phillips. In addition to continuing work on the Ordnance Survey, Harley published Mapping the American Revolutionary War in 1978 with Barbara Petchenik and numerous articles in Imago Mundi, Cartographica, and the Geographical Journal, among others. In 1977, with David Woodward from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Harley conceived and collaborated on the monumental six-volume History of Cartography, the first three volumes of which were published in five large books in 1987, 1992, and 2007. It is not only becoming the foundational reference work, but it is also profoundly influencing the entire field.