Historical atlas project deserves funding

LD 1279, to provide funds to develop a new Historical Atlas of Maine, has been passed by the Appropriations Committee of the Legislature with a majority “ought to pass” recommendation, and this bill is now before the full Legislature.

The Maine Historical Atlas funded by this bill will be comparable to the National Geographic Society’s “Historical Atlas of the United States” or the “Historical Atlas of Massachusetts,” published by the University of Massachusetts Press. Such historical atlases present the history of a region in a series of plates that translate complex historical information into visual form, usually maps and graphs accompanied by some explanatory text. A single such plate can encode information that would require many pages of text, if laid out fully in written form, and thus historical atlases offer a uniquely powerful and economical way of dramatizing to a people the course of their history.

The proposal currently before the legislature has been prepared by a University of Maine team composed of social and cultural historians, geographers and natural scientists. This team is chaired by Professor Richard Judd, one of the principal editors and authors of “Maine: The Pine Tree State,” the state-of-the-art history of Maine. As laid out by Prof. Judd’s team, the proposed new Maine Historical Atlas will establish a new standard for regional atlases by maintaining a continuing focus on interplay of human beings and the natural environment. In this way the new atlas will help the people of Maine to understand how their lives have been shaped by the natural environment of this region where the forests meet the sea, and in turn how the actions of human inhabitants of this region have affected the natural environment. The atlas will illuminate Maine’s unique history as in early centuries a contested borderland between the United States and Canada, as a frontier region even into the 20th century and as throughout the its history a crossroads where diverse peoples — Native Americans, English, French and many other immigrant groups — have come together. The proposed atlas will also bring into clearer focus the long-standing and deeply-rooted split between the “two Maines.”

In recent decades we have seen one of these Maines begin to move boldly into the 21st century, while the other seems to be caught within an economic decline that began in the 19th century. The new atlas will show that the divergences between the two Maines are rooted in the geography and even the geology of this region, but it will also show how throughout their history, the two Maine’s have been, despite their differences, mutually interdependent.

The new Historical Atlas will be designed to be useful to teachers of Maine history at all levels, and therefore the team of researchers that will develop the atlas will include middle and secondary school teachers. LD 1279 also stipulates that in exchange for public funding, a copy of the atlas will be placed in every school in the state. But the atlas will also be of interest to all the citizens of Maine, because it will help to illuminate the social and natural forces that have shaped the circumstances of our lives. An atlas designed to help the people of Maine understand their own unique historical position will also enrich the experiences of the many visitors that have come to love this state, and will prove useful to historians, social scientists, economists, etc., who want to understand the environmental and historical conditions that have shaped the lives of people of Maine.

The proposal for the new Maine Historical Atlas to be funded by LD 1279 has been developed by a group of University of Maine faculty, which represents the largest concentration of natural scientists, historians and students of political, social and cultural history in the state. However, this organizing team plans to invite many other scholars to join this project as active researchers, including faculty from all other campuses of the University of Maine System, from several private institutions of higher education in the state and from middle and secondary schools, and some of the contributers will be independent scholars with no academic affiliation. The atlas project is, therefore, not solely a University of Maine project or even a University System project; rather it represents a state-wide endeavor designed to raise the level of historical and cultural awareness of all the people of Maine.

The appropriation requested under LD 1279 will be a one-time cost. It will purchase a specific product that will be of lasting value ot the cultural lives of people of this state, and no further expenditures will be required. This project is also uniquely appropriate to this moment in history. As we approach the millenium, it is appropriate that we both look back at the course we have traveled to arrive at this moment, and look forward with hope toward the future. An historical atlas can play an invaluable role in helping us both to understand our past and to anticipate the pitfalls and the promises that await us in the coming millenium. For all of these reasons, I urge support for the atlas project by members of the legislature and by the voters of Maine.

Burton Hatlen is professor of English at the University of Maine, where he has taught for 32 years; he lives in Bangor.