Seventeenth-century Maps Research Articles

A Modern Form of the Sacred

Édouard Glissant’s Poetics of Relation is unlikely to strike most readers as a sacred text. True, the design of the 1997 English paperback edition hints at something mysterious within. The seventeenth century map on the cover, glowing green and only partially visible from the front, disrupts the geographic orientation a map might be expected to provide. The seeming clarity of the title, author, and translator, is likewise unsettled by their placement, suspended above the surrounding white expanse. Yet this trace of eeriness is easily dispelled by the physical book’s assertion of scholarly credentials. “Michigan,” the name of the university press publisher, prominent on the spine and back, also announces itself on the front cover, and the text on the back declares the book an aesthetic and political—but not sacred—project, with three blurbs praising the translator’s achievement and the author’s brilliance. The Library of Congress cataloguing information on the copyright page tells us that Poetics of Relation, Glissant’s third monograph, is first and foremost about his birthplace (Martinique--civilization, language, culture, nationalism, and literature of). Secondarily, according to the cataloguers, it is a book about the French connection (“6. Martinique—Dependency on France. 7. West Indies, French—Relations—France. 8. France—Relations—West Indies.”). Scholarly interpretations of Poetics of Relation are of course more expansive and exploratory than cataloguing’s brevity allows. Still, most who write about this strange and beautiful text focus on poetics and politics, with very few lingering over Glissant’s own claims about the importance of the sacred.

Sheltering in Place

Abstract This essay explores the relationship of solitude to place in Jerome’s fourth-century Life of Saint Hilarion. It does so through the medium of Burrus’s own experience of solitude and place. In 2020, having planned to visit Hilarion’s mountaintop hermitage in Cyprus, she found herself instead weathering the pandemic at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Thus she came to know Hilarion’s Cyprus by developing a relationship with the northern Berkshires; she came to know Hilarion’s solitude by experiencing her own. The essay reperforms this interspatial dynamic, reading Jerome through the mediation of four objects of art that Burrus encountered on the Clark campus in 2020–21. Three are contemporary sculptures—Kelly Akashi’s A Device to See the World Twice (2020), Thomas Schütte’s Crystal (2015), and Giuseppe Penone’s Le foglie delle radici (The Leaves of Roots) (2011)—and one is a seventeenth-century map. Burrus suggests that solitude allows us to know place (and ourselves as part of it) more deeply and intimately, offers a vantage point for seeing further and more clearly, undoes our sense of distinctiveness as humans, and transforms the intervals and flows of our movements in space.

The Dutch East India Company (VOC) Tasman Map and Australia: Competing Interests, Myth Making, and an Australian Icon

The floor of the entrance to the Mitchell Library vestibule, which is part of the State Library of New South Wales, displays a stunning mosaic 1939-1941 reproduction of a seventeenth century map recording Abel Tasman’s two journeys of 1642 and 1644. It charts the west, north and southern coasts of the Australian continent, but is incomplete, thus representing the historical moment between an imagined Terra Australis Incognita, and the final survey of the east coast which presaged British colonisation. The original Tasman map, also held by the Mitchell library and currently undergoing restoration, has a strange and chequered biography. This paper explores the myths associated with what is known colloquially as the Bonaparte Tasman map, in honour of its last owner Prince Roland Bonaparte, a nephew of Napoleon. We examine its contested origins and role as an agent of Dutch East India Company imperial ambitions, relegation to forgotten cast-off when that empire collapsed, Bonaparte’s desire to gift it to the nascent Australian Commonwealth as a symbol of new nationhood, and the international subterfuge involved in its acquisition by not by the nation, but the State Library of NSW. Analysis of what was known of the map in the decades prior to its arrival in Australia challenges the conventional narratives, and we propose the biography of the Tasman map (and its embodiment in the Mitchell Library vestibule mosaic) is a study in imperialism, colonialism, federation, and power.

The Trials of Thomas Morton: An Anglican Lawyer, His Puritan Foes, and the Battle for a New England

The Trials of Thomas Morton: An Anglican Lawyer, His Puritan Foes, and the Battle for a New England

The remedies of the machi: visualizing Chilean medicinal botanicals in Alonso de Ovalle’s Tabula geographica (1646).

This art historical study analyzes images of colonial-era medicinal botanicals in South America within a little known seventeenth-century map, the Tabula geographica regni Chile, and proposes that these renderings were central to a visual program by which their author Alonso de Ovalle attempted to construct a positive image of his homeland before the Spanish Crown. These renderings of specific Chilean plants and their expressed medicinal applications are examined in relation to the rise of materia medica for commerce in southern Europe and the Spanish interest to locate botanical medicines for profit. This approach allows us to consider pre-Linnaean botanical renderings as persuasive documents, as purveyors of indigenous knowledge, and as instruments of negotiation (prospecting for new commercial goods) for the advancement of criollo agendas. Finally, looking at Ovalle's images of Chilean medicinal botanicals in comparison with later documents demonstrates that while early pictured conveyances across the Atlantic formulated conceptions of American nature, the transference of actual specimens to Europe involved their adaptation for new functions and uses.

The origins of the Selden map of China: scientific analysis of the painting materials and techniques using a holistic approach

Since the ‘rediscovery’ of the Selden map of China, an early seventeenth century map of Asia, in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, the importance of the map in our understanding of globalisation in the early seventeenth century has been recognised. One of the unresolved questions is the origin of the map. This paper addresses the question through material evidence provided by a holistic approach using a suite of complementary analytical techniques. The map was examined in situ and non-invasively by a remote spectral imaging instrument (PRISMS) modified for close range imaging, which was followed by a range of complementary techniques applied to a number of detached fragments, though most of the techniques are non-invasive and can be applied to the map directly in the future. The binding medium was found to be a gum, almost certainly gum Arabic, rather than the animal glue commonly used in Chinese paintings. Some of the pigments and their usage were found to be at odds with the common practice in paintings from China. The detection of gum Arabic, a binding medium used by the Europeans, South and West Asians and the use of a mixture of orpiment and indigo, commonly found in European, South and West Asian paintings gives further evidence on the unusual origins of this map. The likely detection of a basic copper chloride, such as atacamite, in the green areas suggests an influence from the South and West Asian rather than the European tradition. Detailed analysis of the various spectral bands of the spectral image cube along with visual inspection of the large scale colour image showed that the map was not fully planned at the beginning but rather painted in stages, at times by trial and error and that it was unfinished. A new hypothesis for the origin of the Selden map in Aceh Sumatra is proposed based on the new evidences.

Cartographic evidence for seventeenth-century ‘cross-sites’ in North-East Scotland: Robert Gordon of Straloch and the Blaeu maps of Scotland

ABSTRACTThis paper considers the cartographic depiction of a series of crosses shown on one of Robert Gordon of Straloch’s seventeenth-century maps of North-East Scotland. Their portrayal in map form within the religious context of the time is problematic. Their potential existence on the ground raises even greater problems of identity and form. That they were not, in reality, as they were depicted on the maps is evident by the landscape evidence. The survival of documentary evidence in the form of the Straloch Papers moves the story from the North-East of Scotland to Amsterdam, the place of production of the maps. These papers describe aspects of the wider political upheavals during which these maps were made and suggest possible motivations beyond geographic interest.

Representações e apropriações dos topônimos/etnônimos indígenas numa carta geográfica do século XVII

In this article we intend to clarify the various dilemmas related to the process of elaboration, circulation and attribution of ownership of a seventeenth century map of colonial Paraguay and adjoining territories. We will first examine questions related to authorship, chronology and the sources for the production of maps in the Dutch cartography market of the seventeenth century. Secondly, we will focus on significant disputes and considerations of intellectuals in human sciences about the themes and dilemmas concerning this map. Keywords: maps, Rio de la Plata, toponyms/ethnonyms, appropriations.

London: The Selden Map and the Making of a Global City, 1549–1689, by Robert K. Batchelor

London: The Selden Map and Making of a Global City, 1549-1689, by Robert K. Batchelor. Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press, 2014. vi, 334 pp. $45.00 US (cloth). How did become a global city? Traditional answers to that question emphasize its physical growth during early period and its dominance of markets first within Britain, then Europe and finally Atlantic world. But for Robert K. Batchelor this is only a part of story, and in this book he sets out to that encounters and exchanges with trading cities of Indian Ocean and East Asia were also a crucial component in London's rise. Representative of these interactions is a seventeenth-century map of China and Chinese trade routes that was collected by scholar and antiquarian John Selden (1584-1654), which reveals, according to Batchelor, how knowledge of Asia and its markets was translated within London. The concept of translation--how meaning is carried across linguistic, cultural, economic, and political boundaries--is central to book and is used to make an argument not only for global character of but also for global processes behind origins of modernity. To demonstrate power of translation, narrative of book is structured around chapters on five traditional points in of London (p. 22). By time of conclusion, however, these are seemingly turning points in British history (p. 241, my emphasis); in spite of book's title, and its inhabitants disappear from it for long periods. The initial point is Edwardian Reformation, during which time London's first joint-stock company was founded, while second is late Elizabethan period, when London's growing global ambitions resulted in formation of East India Company. Chapter three focuses on investigations undertaken between 1620s and 1650s by figures such as Selden into contractual and legal agreements about trade that devolved authority from monarchy, while fourth chapter charts emergence of imperial monarchy and English absolutism between 1660s and 1680s. The Asian roots of events of 1687-89 that led to Glorious and Newtonian Revolutions and the birth of modern is subject of fifth and final chapter. Aside from an annoying number of typos and exceedingly small endnotes, University of Chicago Press deserve congratulations for book's production. Amidst ever-increasing cost of academic monograph, it is refreshing to see a book that is reasonably priced--the more so when it contains numerous illustrations (but why is there no list of these in book's front matter? …

How the Black Line, Dash and Dot Created the Rules of Cartographic Design 400 Years Ago

This paper analyses the use of the black line, dash and dot techniques in maps in commercial Dutch atlases from Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (1570) to Atlas Maior (1662). It is argued that the distinction between these three graphical means of expression became the basis for considering the nature of design rules for the next 400 years. In a departure from previous studies, this paper applies a combination of cartographic pragmatics and Gestalt theory with relation to the practical utilisation of graphical means of expression available in copperplate technology. While the importance of Gestalt theory and cartographic pragmatics has previously been highlighted in research papers and in textbooks, this study is the first to apply these two perspectives with relation to sixteenth and seventeenth century maps.

Hollow Earth: the long and curious history of imagining strange lands, fantastical creatures, advanced civilizations, and marvelous machines below the Earth's surface

Beliefs in mysterious underworlds are as old as humanity. But the idea that the earth has a hollow interior was first proposed as a scientific theory in 1691 by Sir Edmond Halley (of comet fame), who suggested that there might be life down there as well. Hollow Earth traces the surprising, marvelous, and just plain weird permutations his ideas have taken over the centuries. From science fiction to utopian societies and even religions, Hollow Earth travels through centuries and cultures, exploring how each era's relationship to the idea of a hollow earth mirrored its hopes, fears, and values. Illustrated with everything from seventeenth-century maps to 1950s pulp art to movie posters and more, Hollow Earth is for anyone interested in the history of strange ideas that just won't go away.

Mapping and the European Search for Intercultural Alliances in the Colonial World

Mapping and the European Search for Intercultural Alliances in the Colonial World Cynthia J. Van Zandt When Richard Hakluyt the younger published Divers voyages touching the discouerie of America in 1582, he included works written originally for other enterprises. One such tract was a set of instructions sent by the merchants of the Muscovy Company with two of their employees on an expedition to find a northeast passage. Hakluyt thought the Muscovy Company's advice was useful for "other enterprises of discouerie" and appropriate for those who would explore and colonize North America. In their instructions, the Muscovy Company's merchants were very specific about the kinds of goods and behaviors most likely to impress persons of credit whom the expedition might meet. The merchants' list of goods included most commodities important to late sixteenth-century European trade, with emphasis on goods produced in England. However, two of the items the merchants thought were certain to impress seem more surprising. In addition to cloth, shoes, gloves, and English glass, they urged their men to take maps, and the merchants had very clear ideas about which maps would make the best impression. They wanted to send maps that represented the territory, wealth, and market power of the English kingdom. For these merchants, the visual images on maps could be particularly useful in intercultural contacts where pictorial images, material goods, and gesture could be more important than words.1 [End Page 72] Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century maps seem inaccurate to audiences informed by the framework of modern western scientific geography. Yet early modern maps were neither merely stepping stones in an ongoing quest for knowledge, nor were they simply the product of ignorance, however much they differ from current geographical and geopolitical perceptions. Mapping allowed people to imagine geopolitical relationships and aspirations, and they were integrally linked to practical attempts to establish intercultural alliances. Mapmaking, cartographical principles, and related concepts and skills from navigation formed the foundation of early modern Europeans' quest to establish trade and military alliances with native peoples during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Early modern Europeans were particularly fascinated with maps and mapping. They drew secret maps by hand and carefully protected the knowledge of lucrative trade routes and strategic military outposts that such maps represented. Increasingly, changes in navigation, mathematics, and the use of perspective helped to create a rapidly growing European market for maps, and an increasing number and array of maps became readily available in European markets.2 As changes in print and cartographic technologies greatly increased Europeans' familiarity with mapping concepts and navigation techniques, Europeans extended the language and concepts from mapping and navigation [End Page 73] and applied them to political and cultural relationships. When European colonial sponsors and explorers worked to map the earth and its waterways, they sought also to map the peoples and social problems of the world. Early modern Europeans saw mapping and navigation as parts of a larger whole, and both were explicitly connected to colonialism. In this context, maps as well as geography and navigation materials performed a similar function to colonial travel accounts and promotional literature. Indeed, they were complementary materials and were read as such by European readers. One of the purposes of this material was to work out all possible connections between the world's various peoples. Some of the most famous compilers of travel narratives and ethnographic descriptions of new lands and peoples drew out these connections explicitly. The English colonial promoter Richard Hakluyt and the Dutch colonial promoter Johann De Laet, for instance, both sought to pinpoint how different nations were related: religiously, linguistically, culturally, and diplomatically. This too was a kind of mapping, and as part of it, colonial promoters like Hakluyt were explicitly interested in laying out the enemies and allies of new peoples whom Europeans encountered. Alliances were an integral part of the context of mapping in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and vice versa. Moreover, maps themselves often specifically focused on the importance of intercultural alliances by specifying where different peoples lived, who and where their allies and enemies were. This was as true of mapping enterprises in North America as elsewhere. The European colonial ventures...

Secrets of the Dead II: Death at Jamestown

Secrets of the Dead II: Death at Jamestown explores why so many settlers died in the first three years of settlement at Jamestown. The video highlights recent archaeological discoveries of the fort site and of a settler's skeleton, and it summarizes the conflicts among Jamestown residents, relations with the Indians, and the starving time. The format is familiar —interviews with the anthropologist who led the excavations, short statements by Ivor Noel Hume (the dean of early Virginia archaeologists) and staff from the national park at Jamestown, on-site footage, dramatizations, and seventeenth-century maps and drawings. To add drama, the script exaggerates historical neglect of Jamestown in favor of New England. Colonial historiography once had a New England bias, but there is also a long tradition of work on Virginia's founding, and both a state and a national park interpret the Jamestown experience. Similarly, the video treats the gunshot death of the person whose remains were found as a mystery. Nonetheless, if the documentary had ended after the first half hour, it would be a useful and colorful introduction to Jamestown.

The map as index of the real: Land art and the authentication of travel

Maps can mean many things, and often their meanings change over the centuries of their existence. Maps which at first had way-finding purpose read very differently when their directions can no longer be relied on. They become icons from the distant past. An equally pronounced variation of meaning occurs when the map enters the regime of representation: that is to say, when it is annexed to, or included in, work of art. This article is about the special circumstances in which the map is used to reproduce, and at the same time to authenticate, the artist's journey, as in the distinctive contemporary form of expression which goes by the name of Land Art. However, I shall be arguing that this contemporary art movement is not unprecedented in the way it utilises the map. Indeed the map's role of authenticating travel can be seen as perennial possibility, depending on the precise conditions which the cartogaphic sign is designed to fulfil. My introduction to Land Art will thus include specific reference to the representation of seventeenth-century map which works in this way. I shall, however, begin with more famous seventeenth-century example which could well be used to demonstrate the many-layered possibilities of the map within representation. Jan Vermeer's Art of Painting incorporates splendid map of the United Provinces, displayed on the back wall of an artist's studio.' The map is rendered with astonishing precision, so much so that it has become a source for our knowledge of cartographic history.2 But it is more than that. Lit dramatically from the side, with its intricately painted folds and crinkles denoting its status as an object, the map becomes an index of Vermeer's exceptional skill in describing the infinite particularities of the visible world. Both an object of knowledge, marking real relationships and distances, and represented object caught in the glancing light, it functions as an eloquent internal metaphor of Vermeer's art. Vermeer's work is useful for further reason in preparing the ground for my argument, since it displays, in addition to the map, an artist in his studio confronted with dishevelled model. This raises the obvious question of who the artist may be supposed to be. We may begin by asking if he is perhaps surrogate for Vermeer. Does Vermeer intend us to interpret the clearly delineated figure, with his back towards us, as in some sense representative of the act as well as the art of painting? This is an issue which the linguist Emil Benveniste helps us to analyse in more precise way by drawing categorical distinction between the functions of histoire and discours?' Whereas histoire conveys the past as past, with no subjective intervention, discours always implies that subject is enunciating the message. The question therefore could be expressed in the following form. Does Vermeer intend to convey the meaning, here I am at my easel, painting? Or does he imply, this artist is part of the story that I am telling? In fact, the answer to this question is easy. Here we see painter at the easel, painting; yet this is not, and cannot be, the painter Vermeer who has delegated his role to the artist in the picture. We know that Vermeer painted in different way from the process in which the anachronistically dressed artist is engaging in. And yet the more we discover about Vermeer's working procedure,4 the more the question of enunciation seems to become complicated to the

The Seventeenth-century Maps and Surveys of William Fowler

AbstractDespite the recent publication of several dictionaries of surveyors and cartographers, little is known of the professional and personal background of the majority of such practitioners. This lack of detailed biographical analysis is particularly applicable to the surveyor in the seventeenth century. This paper examines the activities of one of the most prolific west Midlands' estate surveyors in that century, William Fowler. Present knowledge of surveying practice in that period is reviewed and Fowler's work is compared to this pattern. An appendix details Fowler's extant maps and surveys.

The seventeenth century maps of China an inquiry into the compilations of European cartographers

The seventeenth century maps of China an inquiry into the compilations of European cartographers