Leo Bagrow's forgotten early survey of the development of cartographic historiography

Abstract

Many historians of cartography may be vaguely aware that Leo Bagrow, Imago Mundi's founder, wrote a short history of cartography some years before his now classic, if somewhat outdated Geschichte der Kartographie,I familiar to all. It was published in Russia, at that time still Bagrow's home, in two separate printings of 1917 and 1918, years when Russia was simultaneously involved in external warfare and a revolution. It is dedicated to Nordenskidld, and has the title The History of the Geographical Map. Review and Bibliography.2 For the time, it provided a fairly good rapid survey of the field, and certainly was the only work of its kind in Russian. It even included a large number of facsimile reproductions, fully 69 in its short 60 pages.3 However, by and large it was an insignificant work, being largely just a chronological run-through of examples of early maps, with a tendency to stress Russian cartography, and lacking notes. As far as I know, Bagrow does not refer to it in later works, not even in the foreword to his 1951 history. It is, however, not the history itself which is of interest here, but the materials which accompany it: (1) Bagrow's preface, (2) a mammoth and universal bibliography of the history of cartography, and (3) a review of the development of the historiography of cartography. It is the latter item which is the main initiative for the present short paper, and a translation of it follows here. But before presenting it, I would like to say a few words about some interesting information contained in the preface, and especially, about the bibliography.