Cartographic infrastructures: Geographical pathology, tumour safaris, and colonial networks in British East Africa

In this article, we explore infrastructures—human, epistemic, and material—that enable the creation of maps and the stories they tell about the world. We develop the concept of ‘cartographic infrastructures’ to reveal the hidden and fragile political, scientific, and social worlds that undergird the production of maps and the truths they bring into being. To illustrate this, we examine a series of highly influential maps published in the early 1960s by Denis Burkitt—a colonial doctor working in British East Africa—showing the geographical distribution of a pediatric tumour in Africa. By correlating the tumour with altitude and rainfall, the maps suggested it had a viral origin, a finding that profoundly affected cancer research and helped accelerate the development of viral oncology. Using reports, diaries, and photos left behind by Burkitt and others, we excavate the cartographic infrastructures that underpinned his maps and viral hypothesis. First, we examine how the research tradition of geographical pathology—with its focus on environmental factors in carcinogenesis and its interest in Africa as a laboratory for cancer research—provided Burkitt with the theories, networks, and funding necessary to conduct his work. Second, we examine the surveillance practices, ranging from tumour safaris to geographical plotting, that enabled Burkitt to generate and interpret the data underlying his maps. Third, we analyze the communities of white colonial medical officers and missionary doctors spread across Africa with their shared imaginaries of race, empire, and adventure on which Burkitt relied to conduct his surveys.