This paper examines the making of the first atlas of New Zealand, by the Viennese geologist Ferdinand von Hochstetter (1829–1884) and the Gotha cartographer August Petermann (1822–1878). It offers novel insights into the production, exchange, and transformation of map knowledge from the field to the printing press. The "Geologisch-Topographischer Atlas von Neu-Seeland" (1863) was instrumental in shaping the geographical imagination of New Zealand in the late nineteenth century, yet its origins have largely remained unknown. By studying previously untapped archival sources such as correspondence, field notes, and sketch maps, this paper analyses how spatial information circulated over long distances between diverse actors, sites, and empires. It traces this ‘translocal’ knowledge from Hochstetter’s fieldwork in New Zealand during the Austrian frigate SMS Novara’s circumnavigation (1857–1859) to the cartographic visualisation under Petermann at the publishing house Justus Perthes in Gotha. Special attention is given to the negotiations among key figures and institutions in their efforts to establish authority and credibility. Their reliance on often marginalised actors, both within and beyond Europe, highlights the power–knowledge dynamics that influenced the mapmaking process.

As the nineteenth-century waned, European overseas empires were approaching their peak and nation states were growing in Europe and elsewhere. Geology was very much a science of territory, be it subterranean, subaqueous, mountainous, flatland, or other; it was of necessity entangled with empires. Minerals were a key part of the metabolism of modern empires and they remain integral to geopolitics and global economic exchanges, and the great prestige geology enjoyed into the early twentieth century owed much to its imperial connections. Geological surveys and the mineralogical inventories they offered were a crucial part of the machinery of empire. They were also deeply tied to the rise of nation states and were part of the mixture that forged national identities. The case of Canada is illustrative of the ways geology simultaneously served imperial and national agendas, as is the career of A. P. Coleman, a leading figure in Canadian geology who was also widely known among alpinists for his promotion of international tourism in the Rocky Mountains. His detailed study of the genesis of nickel ore in the Sudbury region was part of important geological debates about the genesis of ores, debates that preceded meteorite/asteroid impact theory. His geological map of this region was of great utility to mining companies and, it should be added, nickel was crucial for armament manufacturing for the First World War and played no small part in Anglo-American geopolitical interests. National ambitions overlapped with imperial aims and geology was in the service of both.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, internationalisation led to the organisation of supranational congresses. The first congress in the field of geology was held in Paris in 1878, followed every three years by congresses in other metropolises. As part of both international and national institutionalisation processes, these conferences served many functions. They contributed to building the prestige and image of the discipline and the empire both internally and externally, establishing scientific priorities, fostering competition between leading international scientific centres, and increasing the visibility of science in relation to an empire that positioned itself as a knowledge power. The 1903 congress in Vienna focussed on “Balkans and Orient”. It provided a unique opportunity to relate geological research to the imperial order, with a special focus on Bosnia-Herzegovina, which was ceded to the Habsburg monarchy in 1878. The emphasis on Bosnia-Herzegovina highlights a longstanding entanglement of Habsburg political, cultural, and scientific activities. This contribution discusses how an empire shaped the practice of science while simultaneously examining how scientific imperial knowledge functioned as a constitutive element of imperial rule. This reciprocal relationship between the empire and science is analysed on the basis of questions of loyalty between nation, empire, and institution. Furthermore, the question of the inclusion of local sites within the empire and the newly acquired territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina will also be analysed. Finally, the overarching concept of empire will be related to the scientific concept of tectonics.

Alexander Logie du Toit (1878-1948) was the most famous South African geologist in the first half of the 20th Century. During 24 years (1903-1927) spent with the geological surveys in South Africa, he mapped the geology and hydrology of the Cape and Karoo basins, and their older basement. In the process, he became the foremost authority on the geology of South Africa as a whole, and was regarded by Harvard Professor Reginald Daly as “the world’s greatest field geologist”. Du Toit was an ardent supporter of Wegener’s Continental Drift hypothesis. In 1923 he spent three months mapping in Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina, and found strong geological and palaeontological evidence that South America and Africa had once been together, as part of the Gondwana supercontinent. This work, and his “Our Wandering Continents” (1937) provoked strong opposition from European and American geoscientists who were against the idea of “continental sliding”. Du Toit had an extensive global network of correspondents in more than 20 countries and six continents, to whom he sent copies of all his papers and his books. His publishers Oliver & Boyd in Edinburgh were provided with lists of people to whom they sent complimentary copies of books directly. During his career as consulting geologist for De Beers, and after his retirement in 1941 in Cape Town, du Toit was the premier node for the global dissemination of papers, ideas, and arguments in favour of Continental Drift, long before they were vindicated by the Plate Tectonics revolution in the 1960s.