Maps and mapping are fundamentally political. Whether they are authoritarian, hegemonic, participatory or critical, they are most often guided by the desire to have control over space, and always involve power relations. The Politics of the Mapping takes stock of the knowledge acquired and the debates conducted in the field of critical cartography over some thirty years on a range of subjects: the cartography of modern states, the challenges of the digital age, maps produced by Indigenous peoples or migrant organisations in Europe, and citizen participation. This introduction traces the stages of critical approaches to political cartography and recalls its epistemological foundations.