Imaging the Past: Cartography and Multicultural Realities of Croatian Borderlands

Abstract

Recent researches since the end of 20th century tend to subvert the traditional, positivist model in analyzing the maps, replacing it with one that is grounded in iconological and semiotic theory of the nature of maps. Maps could be understood as a social construction of the world expressed through a medium of cartography, or as a socially constructed image of reality. Researching past images through the maps is of particular interest in multicultural spaces, where a variety of different cultures, religious systems, complex ethnic structures and imperial systems have met. Borderlands are typical spaces where a multiplicity of such contacts reflect and produce a multiplicity of perceptions and images. Early Modern period in Croatian history is burdened with frequent changes of borders between three imperial systems with different religious systems and cultural traditions that have met on the Croatian territory, and consequently reflected different attitudes toward the borderlands. Through a number of examples of the Croatian borderlands, the main aim is to reveal the symbolic layer of the map that leads us into the process of imaging the past, i.e. opening the richness of perceptions in the multicultural realities of the Croatian borderlands.