ABSTRACT
Michael George Mulhall, the author of Mulhall's Dictionary of Statistics and a number of other illustrated statistical texts, was a ubiquitous feature of late-nineteenth-century statistics—often quoted, often corrected, sometimes ridiculed, but always at hand when one wished to make an argument backed by numbers. After his return to England, Mulhall began to publish statistical books in earnest. The best known and most successful of these works were his illustrated dictionaries of statistics. Mulhall gives us examples of how graphics were developed and used in part to compare the national (and thus by nineteenth-century terms, inevitably racial) qualities of different countries. Examples from atlases comparing the principal mountains and rivers of the world show a striking resemblance to Mulhall's graphics on international commerce and wealth. During Mulhall's lifetime, however, the focus of imperialism definitely shifted to this focus, in that imperial success grew to be measured in wealth, rather than in land.
