# Modern Maps of Afghanistan and Their Critics

In a presentation entitled “Surveying the Surveyors: Modern Maps of Afghanistan and Their Critics,” Shah Mahmoud Hanifi, professor of history at James Madison University, discusses the geographic space of Afghanistan in the context of imperial, national and military cartography in the modern era. The imperial era is considered through British colonial cartography in South Asia in which context a series of 19th century mapping projects culminated in the bounded space of Afghanistan that remains in place, however tenuously, today. The second part of the presentation addresses national mapping projects undertaken by the Afghan state and its international benefactors in the middle decades of the 20th century. The final component of this presentation addresses the militarized mapping of Afghanistan from the 1980s to the 2010s. This lecture is part of the Philip Lee Phillips Society 2024 fall presentation, “Mapping in the Islamic Tradition.”

- Kind: Talk
- Year: 2024
- By: Hanifi, Shah Mahmoud
- Archive: [Library of Congress](https://www.loc.gov/item/video-10410/)
- Licence or status: Rights statement at the Library of Congress (as the archive states it)
- Credit: Library of Congress
- Who can watch: Teens profiles and older (the archive gives no rating; placed by Invisible Network from its collection and subjects)

[Watch now](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/watch/archive/loc/video-10410?play=1)