International Cartographic Association

Summary

Founded in 1959 to promote the discipline and profession of cartography in an international context, the International Cartographic Association (ICA) quickly grew into the world's leading organization dealing with the conception, production, dissemination, and study of maps. Its members are individual nations, typically represented by the country's national mapping organization or a national committee connected with a society of professional mapmakers and academic cartographers. Membership grew from 61 national members in 1991 to 83 in 2006. The ICA's formation was partly an outgrowth of technological spurts following the two world wars, which created a vast market for cartographic products, and of the recognition of cartography as a discipline worthy of serious scientific study. In 1956, the Esselte Conference on Applied Cartography led to the appointment of the Committee of Six to investigate forming an international cartographic society. In June 1959, an independent International Cartographic Association was formed in Wabern, Switzerland, distinct from sister societies serving geodesy, surveying, and photogrammetry. The first General Assembly met in Paris in 1961, adopting statutes and electing officers. Despite initial skepticism from Soviet and Eastern European geographers during the Cold War, who viewed the free exchange of cartographic information as a threat, the ICA moved forward with support from national mapping agencies and major atlas publishers in North America and Europe. The early decades required a delicate balance between the two Cold War protagonists, and once the Soviet Union and its allies determined the organization was viable, they quickly joined. By the end of the twentieth century, as technology made spatial information widely accessible, cartography had become a subject with recognized effects on civilians and governments alike, and the ICA stood as a necessary response to the expanded knowledge of the century.