Between the Imperial Eye and the Local Gaze - Cartographies of Southeast Europe / Entre la surveillance impériale et le regard local / Cartographies de l'Europe du Sud-Est
–Bucharest, Romania
Cartography was an instrumental tool in devising and disseminating the concept of South-Eastern Europe, both amongst the Westerners and Easterners. Turkey in Europe, Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the countries behind the Iron Countries, the EU's newcomers were constructs of cultural geography that successively reinforced and reshaped the idea of a different, second class Europe, as the Other to the West. The colonial view modeled the local gaze, as the 19th and the 20th century national cartographies emerged as an alternative to the imperial discourses.
Nevertheless, the Western cartography remained the yardstick against which maps were judged, for both those who advocated modernization and for those who promoted autochthonism.