Cartography and Narrative in the Maps of Herman Moll’s The World Described

Abstract

Herman Moll (c. 1654-1732) was the most renowned cartographer in early 18th-century Britain and his large double-sheet atlas, The World Described, first published in 1709 and expanded during Moll’s lifetime and even after his death, was the most important folio atlas of its day. While historians like Dennis Reinhartz have discussed the presence of Moll’s maps in encyclopedic geography texts like Atlas Geographus as well as buccaneer narratives like William Dampier’s A Voyage Round the World and Woodes Rogers’ A Cruising Voyage Round the World and fictional texts like Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, they have not discussed to any extent how narrative was an integral part of Moll’s maps in The World Described. Numerous notations and comments, along with images, insets, and views, established a narrative framework for reading Moll’s maps which were clearly entangled with the scientific, artistic, political, diplomatic, military, and economic concerns of his day. This article examines the interplay of line, word, and image in selected Moll maps and explains how they combined appeals to scientific accuracy, profitable enterprise, and national good to form a narrative in support of British imperial endeavor that foregrounded British foreign economic, political, and territorial interests in an age of fierce imperial rivalries.