Biographical Note
Joseph E. Schwartzberg (1928-2018) was a geographer, a writer, a world federalist, and peace activist. He joined the faculty of geography at the University of Minnesota in 1964 to undertake the position of editor of A Historical Atlas of South Asia. Overseeing a multi-disciplinary team of specialists, he brought the atlas to publication in 1978 with the University of Chicago Press, and then issued a revised edition in 1992 with Oxford University Press. From his award-winning work on the Historical Atlas he joined the History of Cartography Project at the University of Wisconsin, becoming the principal author and associate editor of two volumes addressing cartography in Islamic, South Asia, Southeast Asian, and East Asia societies. He also wrote prolifically, contributing numerous book reviews, as well as articles and essays on South Asian politics, political geography, ethnology in South Asia, peace activisim, and federalism. After retirement from academia in 2000, he focused on issues of global governance, working with the United Nations on peacekeeping and voting issues, and authoring three monographs advocating for a world federalist movement. In the last few years of his life, Schwartzberg established The Workable World Trust, an organization for disseminating and promoting the many global governance proposals in his last book, Transforming the United Nations System: Designs for a Workable World, with provision to carry on that work after his demise.