“One result of winning a war meant that all the conquered places got new names, which was a pretty good deal for someone in the mapmaking business.”
The book examines issues related to colonialism and imperialism. Sai is a young girl who has suffered from the lingering effects of these geopolitical interests. In this observation, however, she is coming to an awareness of the way that such intrusive and invasive operations can benefit even someone of her low status. The reference to winning a war is a reference to the imperialist conquering of foreign lands. Colonialism can trickle down even to someone at the level of Sai since the mapmaking business is profiting from having to redraw new maps. And these maps are the direct result of one nation conquering another and claiming the land for itself.
“How about Wilna and Dusak, all those faraway places that our Queen has never set foot on but now claims for her own? They have been stripped of their forests, mines have been dug into their mountainsides like open wounds, and their people have been given no choice but to work in them. Mangkon has grown into a bloated beast, devouring all her neighbors. And how does she find her next meal? She uses my maps.”
The master mapmaker has directly asked Sai if she knows what happens when one country takes over another country. This is his answer to the rhetorical question that he poses to her, asking what happens to the natives of the conquered land. This quote is the flip side of the coin to the above quote. While colonial imperialism has kept him employed, it has done so at the cost of ever-increasing guilt. He is aware that the maps he draws are merely symbols of the population inhabiting the land. Paiyoon is aware of the dark side of conquering foreign lands. The Queen of his country is also a symbol. Though he and many others have benefited from the imperialist invasions, those at the top who are in charge of making the decisions benefit the most while doing the least. The metaphor comparing his country to a predatory animal implies that the Queen is the mouth of that beast.
“Master Paiyoon told me once that every place he ever went had already been discovered by someone else. So maybe that Pramong mapper wasn’t the first either.”
What Sai learns from Master Paiyoon is one of the fundamental principles of exploration. In the actual historical sense, this line speaks to the idea of crediting Balboa with “discovering” the Pacific Ocean. By the time he got there, it had already been seen for the first time by perhaps millions of indigenous peoples. Exploration is not just the process of discovery but also the process of claiming ownership. On a much broader scale, Paiyoon’s lesson applies not just to the so-called “discovery” of land but to borders themselves. Maps are created not just for navigational guidance but also to assert possession of land within borders. Often these borders are entirely imaginary, existing without any topographical features for demarcation. A map therefore becomes a document of possessorship which, given enough time, becomes the only legal reference for dispute. The reference to the Pramong mapper speaks to this idea that while we usually view maps as definitive, they are quite fluid and always subject to a certain amount of change.
