This article aims to reflect on the role of cartography in the delimitation and demarca-
tion of colonial spaces associated with desert environments. The first part of the chapter reflects on the particularities of boundary making processes in such environments, with special attention to the frequent use of geometric boundaries and to the role of maps in the appropriation and colonization of these spaces, as well as in the boundary disputes linked to them.
© 2027, Mapping the Contested Line. Cartography and Border Disputes in the Iberian peninsula, North Africa and Latin America (18-20th Centuries)
As a case study, it will analyse the example of Western or Spanish Sahara, whose borders were defined in the Spanish-French conventions of 1900, 1904 and 1912, but were neither delimited nor demarcated until the 1950s, when a Joint International Commission was created to carry out these tasks. As the chapter argues, the cartography produced during this period was key in the process of geometrization and administrative purification of the borders of this mostly desert region, facilitating the transition from a zonal frontier, such as the one that separated the Spanish and French colonial administrations for several decades, to a linear boundary, linked to the European modern ideas of sovereignty and territoriality.
- Title: Drawing Lines in the Sand: Cartography and Boundary-Making in Colonial Western Sahara
- Author : Ana Raya-Collado and Jacobo García-Álvarez
- Editor : Jacobo García-Álvarez and André Reyes Novaes
- Date of publication : Agosto 2026
- Pages : 79-102
- DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-29889-8_5