Kiepert, Heinrich, 1818-1899

Richard Kiepert, 1846 - 1915

1917

Nouvelle carte generale des provinces asiatiques de L'empire Ottoman

Dietrich Reimer

Berlin

Separate Map

100

158

1,500,000

1917 edition of map of the Ottoman Empire, covers most of Middle East and part of Near East. Colored on sheet 100x158, dissected into 24 sections, backed with linen, folded to 24x26. with sellers label of Simon Schrop & Co. Berlin on verso reading ""Kiepert l' Empire Ottoman". Map shows administrative divisions, cities, villages, roads, rivers and mountains. Relief shown by shading and spot heights. Prime meridian is Greenwich. Includes list of geographic terms in eastern languages and notes on administrative divisions. Includes notes on materials the cartographer used to put together the map.

Turkey

Middle East

Ottoman Empire

Administrative and political divisions

Ottoman Mapping

Nouvelle carte generale des provinces asiatiques de L'empire Ottoman : sans L'Arabie. Dressee par Henri Kiepert, Berlin. 1883. Berlin, Dietrich Reimer, Editeur 1884. Chemins de fer d'apres l'eat de 1917.

13119.002

2

Kiepert, Heinrich, 1818-1899

Richard Kiepert, 1846 - 1915

1917

Nouvelle carte generale des provinces asiatiques de L'empire Ottoman : sans L'Arabie. Dressee par Henri Kiepert, Berlin. 1883. Berlin, Dietrich Reimer, Editeur 1884. Chemins de fer d'apres l'eat de 1917.

OCLC: 557756383; British Library: Cartographic Items Maps 46970.(46.); National Library of Australia: 3424623. Cf. [Re: 1884 edition:] Lothar Zögner, Antike Welten, neue Regionen: Heinrich Kiepert, 1818-1899 (Berlin, 1999), ‘Karten’, no. 476 (p. 126).

"This is a unique example of the finest general map of the Near East and most of the Middle East available during World War I, being the ultimate edition of Heinrich Kiepert’s gargantuan masterpiece.  The work depicts the heart of the Ottoman Empire, including Turkey, the Levant (modern Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Jordan) and Iraq; plus, adjacent regions, including parts of Persia (Iran), Egypt and the Caucuses.  Considered to be by far and away the era’s most detailed and accurate geographical overview of the region, the first edition was compiled in 1883 by the foremost authority on the cartography of the Ottoman Empire, the German geographer Heinrich Kiepert, and is here significantly updated to 1917, taking into account the partial construction of the famous Bagdadbahn (Istanbul to Baghdad Railway) and the Hejaz Railway, which connected Damascus to Medina (here partially shown).  This edition of the Kiepert map is especially interesting and important, as it was made specifically to be used as a strategic aid by Central Powers commanders during World War I.  The war in the Near and Middle East was heavily determined by geographic variables, and perhaps no other map better showcases these factors, providing a panoptic overview all in one place.  The present example features extensive contemporary markings in red and blue crayon highlighting key garrison towns and potential military targets, likely added by a German or Turkish officer.  We are not aware of another example of the Kiepert map with wartime manuscript markings, making this a rare example of the best regional map of World War I, bearing direct evidence of wartime use. The Ottoman lands are outlined in pink, while to the northwest is Bulgaria, the south-easternmost of the European Central Powers.  To the northeast, are the Caucuses, outlined in green, which are possessions of Russia (soon to become the Soviet Union), an ancient foe of the Ottomans, and a fierce opponent in World War I conflict in Eastern Anatolia.  To the east, is Persia, outlined in yellow, the Turks’ oldest adversary, yet neutral in the ongoing war.  Egypt is shown to be a British Protectorate, and the main Entente base in the region.   The main map is exceedingly detailed, based on the most advanced scientific surveys available.  The names of many geographical features and towns are given in Greek, Turkish, Arabic, and Persian, as explained in the table below the title, indicative of Kiepert’s great love and languages.  All major topographical features are depicted, with mountains expressed through shading.  Innumerable cities and towns are noted in their precise locations, while all major roads and railways (many of which had been completed only recently and were still in the progress of construction) are delineated.  Importantly, Kiepert includes ethnographic information, labelling the local peoples in each area, critical important in such a politically volatile region.  The map features all the information necessary for strategic military planning, here showcased in a far more accurate and clear manner than on any other map. Heinrich Kiepert initially drafted the map in 1883, and the first edition was chromolithographed onto 6 large sheets and published in 1884 by Dietrich Reimer in Berlin.  The map was very highly regarded, and examples were ordered by German industrial concerns and government agencies across Europe.  It was reissued in several updated editions, in 1891, 1898, 1899, 1909, 1910, 1912 and 1917 (the present edition).  Richard Kiepert, Heinrich’s son, oversaw the editions issued after the elder Kiepert’s death in 1899, until his passing in 1915.  Importantly, the editions of the map are often accompanied by a smaller map, Aperçu General de la Division Administrative des Provinces Asiatiques de l'Empire Ottoman, depicting the Ottoman Empire’s internal divisions (not present here).  It is possible, that due to the strategic military purpose of the present example of the map, it may never have been issued with the small map, which would have possessed no military value.  The present example of the map bears the seller’s pastedown stamp of the esteemed Berlin mapmaker and dealer Simon Schropp & Co.   The Manuscript Additions on the Present Map: Direct Evidence of WWI Strategic Use It is remarkable to find an example of the finest World War I general map of the Near and Middle East featuring direct evidence of strategic military use.  The present example of the 1917 Kiepert map is unique, in that it features extensive manuscript markings, in blue and red crayon.  While the purpose of the additions is not explicitly spelled out, it seems that they are meant to highlight important World War I garrison towns (mostly of the Central Powers).  Some of the towns in Palestine are marked in red, surrounded by blue lines, indicative of the locations of key Ottomans posts, enveloped by military cordons.  Indeed, these centres were subject to British-Arab attacks in 1917 and 1918.  In Western Anatolia, some of the blue manuscript additions follow the rail routes, of both the Istanbul-Ankara railway and the only partially completed Bagdadbahn, indicating the lines’ importance to the Central Powers’ war effort.  The fact that the map was issued in Berlin during the height of the war, plus the focus of the manuscript additions, suggests that the was used by Central Powers officers for strategic planning, as opposed to operatives of the Entente side.   World War I: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire & the End of the ‘New’ Great Game The present map showcases the eastern theatre of World War I (1914-8), the dramatic climax of the ‘New’ Great Game, being the Anglo-German rivalry that had dominated Near and Middle Eastern Politics over the last generation.  Since German interests gained control of the Ottoman Empire’s railway networks in 1889, an increasingly ambitious and wealthy German Empire was looking for ways to gain its place under sun, preferably at the expense of Great Britain.  While Germany knew that it could not likely acquire any major conquests in Asia comparable to the British colonies, or Russian holdings, it saw an opening to assume great political and economic power in the Middle East by stealth.  The Ottoman Empire was decaying, lacking the financial and military resources to maintain its immense domain.  The Sublime Porte was eager to shake off the Anglo-French compact that had, in return for financing the empire, demanded extortionate economic and political concessions.  Germany seemed provide the perfect alternative, as they offered to invest vast capital in the Ottoman lands, while promising not to assume political control over any of the territory – they only requested a business stake in their proposed mutual projects (at least for a time).  As presented on the map, prior to World War I, there were two main German geo-strategic plays in the Ottoman Empire, both of which centred around the construction of railways.  The first was to create fixed link from Istanbul to the Persian Gulf.  Not only was the Gulf long-considered a key British zone, but geologists had predicted that the region possessed immense reserves of oil (which would be proven true in 1908). In 1903, German interests sponsored the extension of the existing Anatolian Railway, from Konya (West-Central Turkey) to Baghdad, via Aleppo (Syria).  This would connect Istanbul with Baghdad, and by extension, with Berlin, so promising to create the ‘Berlin-Bagdad Express’.  The so-called Baghdad Railway (German: Bagdadbahn), could be easily extended to Basra, the gateway to the Persian Gulf, and within striking distance of India.  Both the Germans and the Ottomans would then be able to move large numbers of troops thousands of kilometres to the heart of the Middle East in only a few days – much faster than the British or the Russians.  They could transport commercial goods from Asia to Europe far more quickly than through the British-controlled Suez Canal.  The famous contemporary orientalist Morris Jastrow observed: “It was felt in England that if, as Napoleon is said to have remarked, Antwerp in the hands of a great continental power was a pistol levelled at the English coast, Baghdad and the Persian Gulf in the hands of Germany (or any other strong power) would be a 42-centimetre gun pointed at India.”  The other strategic play was for the Germans to control a railway extending deep down into the Red Sea area.  The realization of such a line would threaten Britain’s naval dominance over the sea, and its vital link to India and Southeast and East Asia via the Suez Canal.  The Ottomans had long dreamed of having a rail link from Istanbul to Medina and Mecca, to better facilitate the Hajj, and it seems that this religious imperative perfectly coincided with practical German ambitions.  The line of the Hejaz Railway had been completed from Damascus to Medina by 1908 (but did not extend to Mecca). Meanwhile, Russia and Britain, whose rivalry, the original ‘Great Game’, had overshadowed the Middle East and Central Asia since the 1830s, had both become exhausted, and tired of opposing each other in particular.  Britain had won the Second Boer War (1899-1902) in South Africa, but at an awesome cost.  Russia’s navy was crushed in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-5), and the Czarist regime subsequently faced severe internal unrest.  Moreover, both powers were more than a little spooked by the speed and success of the German operations in the Ottoman Empire.  The dramatic expansion of the German military and a series of provocations had convinced both St. Petersburg and London that Berlin’s aims in the Middle East were far from peaceful.  They saw Germany as being a far greater threat to their mutual fortunes than they were to each other. Accordingly, both empires signed the Anglo-Russian Entente of 1907, whereby Russia agreed to respect Britain’s domination of Afghanistan; Britain agreed to recognize Russia’s conquests in Central Asia; both parties agreed not to make moves on Tibet; and they mutually agreed to divide Persia into respective zones of influence.  The ‘New’ Great Game became the Anglo-Russian design to hinder and contain the German-Ottoman Alliance, the geo-strategic realities of which are perhaps no better illustrated than on the present map.  As it happened, the ‘New’ Great Game was not to last long.  The German-Ottoman designs, and their antagonism towards Britain and Russia, spiked after the 1909 Coup placed the bellicose ‘Young Turk’ regime in charge of the Ottoman Empire.  In 1914, Turkey followed German and Austria-Hungary to war against the Entente Powers.  While World War I in Western Europe was, until 1918, a bloody stalemate, the conflict in the Near and Middle East was fluid and dramatic.  The British notably failed to invade Turkey, losing the showdown at Gallipoli (1915), while the Ottomans failed to take the Suez Canal.  The matter of the railways proved critical to the outcome of the war.  At the start of the conflict only 740 km of the 1,600 kilometres length of the Bagdadbahn had been completed.  As shown on the map, much of the line along the border of Anatolia and Syria was uncompleted, while, more critically, the route across Turkey had two major unfinished gaps, in the Taurus and Nur Mountains.  While German engineers tried their best during the war to close these gaps, this proved impossible.  Consequently, the German-Ottoman side was unable to quickly move troops into Iraq, allowing Britain to gain the upper hand, seizing the region.  Further south, Lawrence of Arabia and his Arab allies severed the Hejaz Railway, leaving the Ottoman Empire’s southern flank vulnerable to the successful British-Arab conquest of Palestine and Syria.  Undoubtedly, the German-Ottoman failure to complete and maintain its rail lines at least severely weekend its cause and was perhaps a decisive factor in allowing Britain to gain ultimate victory.  As is well-known, by the fall of 1918, Germany was vanquished, and the Ottoman Empire disintegrated.  This proved to be largely to Britain’s gain, making her the undisputed master of the Persian Gulf and its oil reserves.  All considered, the present map brilliantly illustrates what was the keystone region of global geo-politics during a crucial juncture in history.   Heinrich Kiepert: Foremost Authority on the Geography the Ottoman Empire Heinrich Kiepert (1818 - 1899) was a German geographer and historian of unusual intellect and diversity of interests.  Born in Berlin, he grew up in an affluent, culturally sophisticated family, mentored by leading academics and travelling widely.  He studied history, geography and philology, with a focus on Greece and the Near East, at the Humboldt University of Berlin under the legendary co-founder of modern geography, Carl Ritter (1779 - 1759).  He showed great talent as a cartographer and worked closely with many commercial mapmakers.  His first major project was assisting Ritter in the production of his Atlas von Hellas und den hellenischen Kolonien (1840).   Between 1841 and 1848 Kiepert made four trips to Ottoman Europe and Asia Minor, and become a world-renowned expert on Turkey.  This led him to produce his own cartographic works concerning the Ottoman Empire, including the Karte des osmanischen Reiches in Asien (1844); the Karte von Klein-Asien (1854); the Specialkarte vom Westlichen Kleinasien (1890-2) and his posthumously-published, monumental Karte von Kleinasien meist nach noch nicht oder in kleinstem Massstabe veroffentlichten Aufnahmen in 24 Blatt (1902-6). Upon his return from the Near East, Kiepert became the head of the Geographisches Institut in Weimar and, in 1854, was appointed a full professor as the University of Berlin.  He maintained a long association with the prominent Berlin map publisher Dietrich Reimer, who was responsible for issuing the present map.  Kiepert was a remarkably adept editor of cartographic material, possessing an uncanny ability to select the best and most accurate information out of a variety of conflicting sources, resulting in maps of amazing authority and precision for their time. Kiepert also produced excellent large-format maps of diverse parts of the world, including of the Russian Empire, Central America, as well as various parts of the Near East, Caucuses and the Mediterranean.  Notably, the present map was one of Kiepert’s most highly regarded works.  He also produced educational tomes, including, Lehrbuch der alten Geographie (1877); Leitfaden der alten Geographie (1879); and his enlarged atlas of the ancient world, Formae orbis antiqui (1894).  Additionally, Kiepert produced many maps for the Baedeker travel guides. Following his death, in 1899, Heinrich Kiepert’s cartographic work was ably continued by his son, Richard Kiepert (1846 - 1915), a professional geographer, who issued revised editions of his father’s maps.  The present 1917 edition of Kiepert’s great Near and Middle East map incudes revisions made by Richard up to his death, and was completed by the editorial team of the publisher, Ernst Vohsen.   A Note on Rarity All editions of the map are rare; the present 1917 wartime edition seems to be especially so, we cannot trace another example as having appeared on the market in the last generation, and we can trace only a handful of institutional examples.  The present example is also unique, bearing extensive manuscript additions, evidence of its strategic wartime use." (Alexander Johnston, 2028)

13119.000

Separate Map

100

158

13119002.jp2

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Kiepert, Heinrich, 1818-1899; Richard Kiepert, 1846 - 1915