The purpose of maps has always been to make it possible to locate the most efficient paths of circulation. Colonial expansion was facilitated by the pioneering of mercantile routes that mapped newer and faster channels of commodity exchange, creating wealth for European colonizers and merchants by enabling price differentials based on differential access to the assets that the maps represented (see Wolf, People without History, 88).

Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, loc. 919