TO THE ENDS OF THE

EARTH
HOW THE GREATEST MAPS WERE MADE

Philip Parker
INTRODUCTION

1. IN THE BEGINNING
The First Maps

2. SURVEYS AND SKETCHES

Gathering the Information

3. WHYS AND WHEREFORES

The Purpose of Maps

4. OLD TIMERS
The First Map-makers

5. IN THE ROUND
Globes and Spheres

6. SURFACE MATTERS
Materials for Drawing Maps

7. A MAP OF MANY PARTS

The Components of a Map

8. GOING NOWHERE
Places Which Weren’t There

9. THE DRAWING ROOM

Key Cartographers from the Golden Age to the Modern Age

10. MIGHTY MAPS

Mapping Superlatives

11. A MAP IN HAND

The Purposes to Which Maps Have Been Put

CONCLUSION

FURTHER RESOURCES
INDEX
CREDITS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR & ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
INTRODUCTION
T his is a book about the making of maps: the maps
themselves, the cartographers who made them and the
techniques and materials they employed. It covers a vast
arc in time, from the first identifiable attempts at map-
making contemporary with Stonehenge or the Great
Pyramids to the on-demand mapping available in billions of
21st-century smartphones, and also covers the journey of
individual maps from conception to completion.

First of all, what is a map? It seems such a simple question,

which in turn must have an equally obvious answer.
Everyone, after all, can recognize a map. Most people use
them daily for navigating around city streets or urban
transportation networks, and the majority of us have at
some point owned an atlas, either of our own country or the
world, with geographical areas neatly packaged in
rectangular slices, further subdivided by grid lines to enable
the easier location of points of interest.
Yet the wider the would-be map user’s gaze extends, the
more blurred becomes the concept of what a map is. Etched
lines on Neolithic rock-carvings. Clay tablets containing a
stylized world view from 7th-century BC Mesopotamia.
Medieval world maps teeming with martyrs, manticores and
mandrakes. Maps composed on the cusp of the age of
European exploration which are shorn of half the world
(because no one outside the Americas or Australia yet knew
of those regions’ existence). Maps of battlefields, with
contending armies arrayed behind the dense hatching of
sheltering hills or along the blue swirl of rivers to be
crossed. Maps of population density, literacy, the
distribution of sparrows or the frequency of use of dialect
words, colour-coded according to the exigencies of a
thousand thematic subjects. Maps of places that only exist
in the mind of an author: of Middle-earth, Hundred Acre
Wood or Earthsea. Maps of places that do exist, but which
we can never reach, such as Mars, Jupiter or, at the extreme
end of the mapping scale, the Milky Way or the entire
universe.

Illustration of surveying and astronomical instruments, Observatory at Peking, 1747, after an

engraving from Voyage au Chine (‘Voyage to China’), Louis Daniel Lecomte, 1698

All this dazzling, breathtaking and somewhat confusing

panoply – and much else besides – comes under the
heading of maps. Any definition needs to be wide enough to
encompass the vast spectrum of cartographic endeavours.
Perhaps ‘the visual representation of a space’ will do, as it
includes ideological, cultural and thematic spaces as well as
the purely geographical and allows for the creation of maps
on media as diverse as bone, marble, vellum, paper and
bronze, and intangibly on internet servers, and in both two-
and three-dimensional forms.
The word ‘representation’ is crucial here, as any map
involves a conversation between creator and audience.
While a conservative definition of mapping might relegate
the role of a map to a very practical tool for finding the way
from a physical starting point to a destination on the ground
and how the user examines it for that purpose, most maps
have not been used, and in many cases were scarcely
useable, to that end. One of the very earliest maps we have,
of part of a field system around Nuzi in Mesopotamia, which
dates from around 2300 BC, was not intended to show a
route, but to depict property rights. Similarly, the maps of
the New World that proliferated in the wake of Christopher
Columbus’s first European voyage there in 1492 were not
practical guides to following him, but a way of asserting
ownership on the part of his royal sponsors and to portray
the quite remarkable broadening of Europe’s horizons that
his and his imitators’ explorations heralded. Most world
atlases could never in any real sense have been used as a
practical means of navigating from one country to another
(the scale and level of detail is hopelessly impractical for
that purpose).
 Map of the 1854 Soho Cholera Outbreak, Dr John Snow

More generally, maps such as the doctor John Snow’s

plotting of cases during the London cholera epidemic of
1854 answered a question (of what the cause of the
infection might be), but they were not a route-planner, while
the whole genre of historical atlases tells us how nations
arrived in their current form (often coloured by the historical
concerns or prejudices of the compiler), but not how to
travel around their modern iterations.
 Tabula Rogeriana world map, Muhammad al-Sharif al-Idrisi, 1154

Cartographer at work, from Methodus Geometrica, Paul Pfintzing, 1598

 Of course, many maps did have an entirely practical
function: the portolan charts of the 14th century and
onwards – densely packed portrayals of coastal areas with
webs of lines helping to calculate the most direct way for
ships to traverse the seas – were compiled precisely for that
purpose, with pilots’ charts of harbours and maritime
hazards even more obviously so. Ancient itinerary maps,
such as the Peutinger Table, showed roads through the
Roman Empire, and the text that accompanied some of
them gave a wealth of practical information, such as the
best harbours in which to trade in ivory or gems. Then, from
around the 17th century, genuine travel maps began to
appear, which gave their users a good sense of the amount
of time they needed to allow in order to travel along
Britain’s patchily maintained road system. All of these, and
even 21st-century internet mapping, notably that produced
by Google, involve some element of choice and
compromise: in what to show, and in what to leave out to
avoid the map becoming so dense as to be
incomprehensible. In the case of much medieval mapping,
what to put in for those areas where the compiler’s
knowledge was partial or completely lacking led to
concocted coastlines, a plethora of fantastic beasts, and the
persistence of mysterious islands such as Antillia in the
Atlantic, whose staying power on maps defied their entirely
fictitious nature.
Mapping, then, is an uncertain science, where choices in
what to portray and how to do it, have played as much a
role as geographical knowledge and technical expertise.
This is hardly surprising. Humans are a very visual species
and mapping has always been an ideal medium to
encapsulate and transmit information in an immediately
appealing and understandable fashion. A map showing a
navigable channel through low-lying shoals (submerged
banks), one depicting the waxing and waning of an empire
over time, or another with arrows showing the routes of
migrations (forced or otherwise) speak more directly and
clearly than a thousand accompanying words could do.
Mapping is an art, too, as map-makers have always been
conscious of the appearance of their products. Lavish
cartouches, extravagant scrolls, sea beasts cavorting in the
ocean or the simple elegance of the lines engraved on the
page are all elements that have been employed by
cartographers to create objects of sometimes astonishing
beauty. Many of them, such as the late 13th-century
Hereford Mappa Mundi, the 15th-century Fra Mauro map,
produced by a monk on a small island close to Venice, or the
Cantino Planisphere, the product of a judicious exercise in
information espionage in the 16th century, are works of art
in their own right.

Cartography in the digital age

This book is a tribute to all those who have made maps,

from the very first anonymous cartographers to their
information-age successors. It tells the story of mapping,
map-makers and the ways in which maps have been
conceived, created and disseminated. From the origins of
the first maps, to the reasons for which maps have been
crafted through the ages; the ways in which that information
has been gathered and selected (which beast to include,
which bay to exclude?); the tools and methods the map-
maker has used to draw the map and then to reproduce it
(by laborious copying before the age of printing, by a
variety of printing techniques since then); the characters
and careers of the map-makers themselves; and, finally, the
uses to which the maps have been put (which were not
always those originally intended or even imagined by the
cartographers). This book tells the story from the point of
view of a hypothetical cartographer (of admittedly unlikely
longevity) investigating the means by which to create a
map, beginning in the age when maps were a rare and
experimental form of knowledge, and ending in the age of
the internet, when they are practically ubiquitous. Their
work stands testament to myriad ways of understanding the
world, a process that is still unfolding into the 21st century.
 CHAPTER 1

IN THE BEGINNING

THE FIRST MAPS

T here was a time before maps. The need to ‘find the way’
and even the desire to impose some sense of order on
the world almost certainly long predates the emergence 40–
50,000 years ago of the first figurative art (found in a cave
at Lubang Jeriji Saléh in Borneo – it may depict some form of
wild cattle). It required an advanced level of spatial
cognition, with an awareness of left and right, inner and
outer and an appreciation the importance of symmetry,
together with some sense of ‘boundary’ (one side of this line
is ‘ours’, the other is ‘theirs’) before the idea of mapping
could have any meaning at all.

Equipped with a mental map of their surroundings, and

having developed language sophisticated enough to
describe their immediate world, its hazards, the best
hunting grounds, sites imbued with some numinous quality
and perhaps even the migrations of their ancestors, it was
only a matter of time before the artistic impulse melded
with the linguistic one in early humans and the first map
was created. When, though, exactly did that occur?
Much of the earliest evidence and many of the candidates
for the earliest map present problems. For a map to be a
map, the person who created it must have intended it to be
a representation of the relationship of objects in some kind
of space, and that the representation should bear some
resemblance to a reality (even an imagined one) and not
simply be a jumbled set of images. Scratchings found on a
bone plaque excavated at Kesserloch near Thayngen in
Switzerland in the 1870s, which date from around 13,000 BC,
might have been intended as some kind of representation of
the local area, but it is hard to relate these with any
certainty to the topography around the cave. Only about
10,000 years later do objects begin to appear which more
plausibly could be described as mapping (or at least contain
elements which come close to it). ‘Picture maps’ which
contain possible images of huts or houses have been found
across the southern Mediterranean, from a cave painting at
Peñalsordo, near Badajoz, Spain, dating to around 10,000
BC, which may show two figures set inside some form of
enclosure, to rock paintings in Algeria’s Tassili Mountains
that really do look like groups of huts, around which human-
like figures are arrayed. The largest of these North African
picture maps is the Great Disk from Talat N’Iisk in the Atlas
Mountains of Morocco, a colossal stone slab around 1 m (3¼
ft) in diameter. Placed within a bounding circle are markings
which could be a valley between two mountain ranges with
a river and its tributaries in the middle. Perhaps as early as
the late 4th millennium BC, it is a little younger than an
earthenware jar excavated at Tepe Gawra in Iraq. The upper
portion of this ‘Landscape Jar’ is divided into 12 panels,
each decorated with parallel lines of triangles, which have
been interpreted as representations of mountains, and
herringbone patterns which may be intended to show rivers.
Topographic rock-engraving in Paspardo, Val Camonica, Italy, carved during the 3rd
millennium BC
Landscape jar, excavated at Tepe Gawra, Iraq, c. 4500 BC
Detail of the Bedolina Map, Val Camonica, Italy, 1000–1600 BC, possibly showing houses and
enclosures
Modern drawing showing Çatal Höyük in 7th–6th millennium BC
 Çatal Höyük town plan, c. 6200 BC

The clearest representation of an identifiable place

(though to what extent the artist did so accurately or even
intended to do so is unclear) is what may well be a plan of
the Neolithic town of Çatal Höyük, southeast of Konya in
modern Turkey. Its 6,000 or so inhabitants grew wheat and
barley, kept sheep and goats, and engaged in some form of
cattle cult. The skulls of the dead animals adorned the
plaster walls of their houses, with those of their human
ancestors buried – in, to modern sensibility, macabre
fashion – beneath their floors. The settlement flourished
until around 6200 BC and its prosperity was enhanced by
one of the earliest known long-distance trade routes, in
obsidian, a razor-sharp volcanic glass which was quarried
from the nearby volcano of Nemrut Dağ, worked in Çatal
Höyük and then transmitted onwards. The erupting volcano,
appearing as a faint cone with a red flame emerging from it,
is depicted on a fresco that adorned the wall of one of the
rectangular mud-brick dwellings in which the people of Çatal
Höyük lived, stacked on top of each other like a house of
cards. At the foot of the fresco, a regular pattern of
rectangles is hard to interpret as anything other than a plan
of the town. Over 8,000 years old, it has a strong claim to
be the very first map.
As well as tentatively beginning to map the land around
them, early peoples also started to map the sky. Some
attempts may have been purely symbolic and scarcely
reach the threshold to be counted as maps: a pottery dish
from Egypt’s Amratian period in the 4th millennium BC
shows what could be a representation of the Sun’s course
from east to west, passing over a primeval ocean and two
large mountains, but the subject is a generic one. Megaliths
such as Stonehenge – its first elements erected around 2500
BC – show a sophisticated understanding of the cycles of the
year, key parts of it oriented to align with the summer and
winter solstices, but, monumental though they are, these
are not maps. Dating from about a thousand years later, a
disc or pendant unearthed in 1999 at Nebra around 50 km
(31 miles) north of Erfurt in Germany shows the urge to
understand the heavens had been translated into a more
tangible visual form. The 30-cm (12-in) diameter circle of
bronze is unique: its greenish background is overlaid with
golden shapes that probably depict the Sun, the crescent
Moon in several phases and a pattern of stars, which have
been interpreted as representing the Pleiades. Whether it
was an instrument for calculating the phases of the Moon,
the pattern of sunsets or simply an outline of the heavens, it
is one of the earliest, and certainly one of the most
spectacular, celestial maps.
 Sky disc found at Nebra, Germany, c. 1800–1600 BC

As societies grew in sophistication, the needs of

increasingly complex administrations and the demands of
burgeoning trade led around 3200 BC to the invention of
writing, first in Mesopotamia and then in Egypt. Much of
what survives from the Sumerian cultures of Mesopotamia
comes in the form of clay-baked tablets incised with
cuneiform script – so called because the characters were
created by pressing the end of a stylus in the shape of a
wedge (cuneus in Latin) into wet clay. Before long, Sumerian
scribes added compilations of place names to their
repertoire – one series survives from the town of Ebla in
northern Syria, from around 2500 to 2200 BC – and
itineraries, including those of military expeditions. By the
late 3rd millennium BC, the scribes had progressed to the
occasional inclusion of sketches, showing walls, streets and
rivers. One, shown as part of a statue of Gudea, the ruler of
the city-state of Lagash from around 2141 to 2122 BC, shows
him balancing a table on his knees which has a plan of an
enclosure, possibly that of a temple, engraved on it. Created
around 1500 BC, a tablet from the religious centre of Nippur
may count as the first detailed town plan to survive. It
shows the city’s main temple, a park and enclosure and the
River Euphrates snaking through it, together with the city
walls punctuated by seven gates, each of which is named.
Earlier than all of these, however, is a small clay tablet
found near Kirkuk in the north of modern Iraq. Dating from
round 2300 BC it shows an area surrounded by two ranges of
hills, with a river or stream running through it. The central
portion depicts a field or plot of land, complete with its
boundaries and its extent (given as 354 Sumerian iku,
equivalent to around 12 hectares/30 acres), and even the
name of its owner, a certain Azala. An inscription at the
bottom indicates the region shown was at Durubla (near
modern Yorghan Tepe). Right at the start, ownership rather
than navigation was a primary motivation for mapping.
Statue of Sumerian ruler Gudea of Lagash with plan of temple enclosure, c. 2100 BC

Egypt, too, generated its own cartographic tradition. A

unitary state far earlier than Mesopotamia, it was united
under the first pharaohs around 3100 BC. Dependent on the
life-giving qualities of the River Nile, it was also a land
obsessed by death, or at least the provision to the deceased
of the means to survive in the afterlife. Drawings on the
tombs of many of the rulers and nobility have a map-like
quality, showing landscapes of town and country scattered
with fertile and idyllic gardens. Some, illustrating the
collection of spells known as The Book of the Dead, which
equipped the departed’s soul with the magical tools to
navigate the hazardous path to the afterlife, show idealized
fields which the dead person will cultivate in the next world.
The rather more detailed illustrations for another funerary
text, The Book of the Two Ways, which appear on coffins
from the Middle Kingdom period, around 2000 BC, show the
route the soul must take to reach the Field of Offerings, the
paradise presided over by the god Osiris. Along the way, the
map-like pictures show points such as the Lake of the Knife
Wielders and mystic guardians who must be cajoled or
overcome to allow the soul free passage, such as the
intriguingly named ‘He who eats the droppings of his hinder
parts’.
Although mystical maps – and celestial ones such as the
star chart painted on the ceiling of the tomb of Senenmut,
the chief minister of Queen Hatshepsut around 1470 BC –
had a religious role, the Egyptians used them for a very
practical purpose, too. Although the pharaonic
administration, ruling over a vast kingdom extending from
the Nile Delta to the frontier fort of Buhen south of modern
Aswan, must have had just as much need for mapping as its
Mesopotamian counterparts, very little has survived. One
notable exception is the Turin Papyrus, which takes its name
from the city in which it has resided, in the Museo Egizio,
since the 1850s, but which shows a section of Egypt’s
Eastern Desert around Wadi Hammamat. The main section,
around 40 cm (15¾ in) high, depicts roads, watercourses
and colour-coded rock formations. As well as being a main
trade route for expeditions to the Red Sea and then south to
the Land of Punt (possibly modern Somalia), the area was
the source of precious mineral resources, particularly gold
(which is indicated by a red shade) and greywacke, a
greyishgreen stone which was particularly prized by the
Egyptians. Greywacke was quarried for over 3,000 years,
and provided the material for the Narmer Palette, one of the
earliest artefacts to survive from pharaonic Egypt, which
shows the – possibly legendary – first pharaoh Narmer
smiting his enemies. Other features on the map include
wells, a cistern, a goldminers’ settlement and a stele
erected to the god Amun by Pharaoh Seti I. Probably
compiled as a route map for a stone-cutting expedition
under Pharaoh Ramesses IV (r. 1152–1145 BC), the papyrus
is both the earliest map showing genuine topographical
detail we have from Egypt as well as possibly the world’s
first geological map.

Nippur town plan, c. 1500 BC

Many subsequent cultures in the Near East and Europe

would develop their own cartographic traditions and
produce maps (most notably the Greeks and Romans), but
these fall long outside the bounds of the search for the first
map. Elsewhere in Asia, rock paintings not dissimilar to
those found in North Africa and southern Europe (see here)
depict what might be huts or symbolic plans of settlements,
such as those found in sandstone caves in Madhya Pradesh,
while information embedded in the Vedas, the sacred Hindu
texts, the composition of the earliest parts of which date
back to around 1500 BC, suggest a detailed geographical
knowledge. The first fragmentary survival of mapping from
South Asia, however, comes from the Mauryan Empire,
founded in 321 BC by Chandragupta Maurya. It should
perhaps come as no surprise that the institution by the
Mauryans of a land tax, which required surveyors and
assessors to determine how much landowners needed to
pay, coincides roughly with the same time period in which
we find the first cartographic artefacts from India.
Fragments of pots containing geographical designs that may
represent house plans, and some, such as a dish found at
Salihundam in Andhra Pradesh, which dates from the around
the 1st century BC or 1st century AD, are inscribed with plans
of monasteries or temples. After this, however, there is a
long hiatus, and it is not until the end of the 12th century AD
that Indian mapping re-emerges with a stone relief of the
cosmos as seen by the scriptures of the Jain religion. Placed
in the cloister of the Sagaram Temple at Saurashtra in
Gujarat it contained seven concentric circles showing the
various continents, culminating in Nandisvaradvipa, the
outermost of the Jain middle worlds in which humans were
said to dwell.
Star chart painted on the ceiling of the tomb of Senenmut, c. 1470 BC
Turin Papyrus, 12th century BC. The Wadi Hammamat is the broad line running across the
lower third, with ‘mountains of gold’ to either side.

By then, a tradition of mapping had been flourishing for

many centuries far to the east. In China, the early
establishment of a centralized state, with a large
bureaucracy and the accompanying need to tax subjects
(and, of course, to assess their wealth and landholdings as
accurately as possible) must have played a role in this.
Cities such as Chang’an (modern Xi’an), which became the
capital under the Han dynasty in 195 BC, and which by the
time of the Tang in the mid-8th century AD would have a
population of over a million, already had nearly 150,000
inhabitants shortly after its foundation, making it one of the
largest cities in the world. From here, merchants set out on
the long trek along the Silk Route through Central Asia down
into Persia and eventually the eastern Mediterranean, and
so the intelligence-gathering that eventually fed into
Chinese geographical awareness was substantial.
The earliest map that survives from China, though, is on a
far smaller scale. It was found in 1978 in the tomb of King
Cuo of the Zhongshan Kingdom, one of the many warring
states which struggled for dominance in the two centuries
before China’s eventual unification. Dating from around 310
BC and inscribed on a bronze plaque it is a map of King Cuo’s
mausoleum, with five sacrifice halls, an inner and outer wall
and the burial mound of the king himself. Covering a larger
area are the four wooden boards inked with a plan of the
Fangmatan region (now in Gansu Province), which were
buried in the tomb of an officer in the Qin army (which really
did unify China 18 years after the maps’ interment in 239
BC). Clearly intended to be of some strategic military use,
the Fangmatan map shows rivers with black lines, dried-up
gullies and even differentiates between the main species of
trees in woods (pine, fir or cedar), which are all separately
labelled. Even more striking are three maps found secreted
in a lacquer box inside a noble tomb at Mawangdui, in the
south-east of Hunan province. All three were created around
168 BC with vegetable-dye ink on silk; two of the maps are
purely topographic, showing a part of the frontier state of
Changsha, which formed part of the Han Empire, including
mountains, rivers and the seats of administrative counties.
The third is even more extraordinary: about 98 x 78 cm
(38½ x 30½ in) in extent, it includes the area of the border
with the tributary kingdom of Nanyue, and shows such
strategically useful information as military posts (with
symbols included for 25 of them, many of them sited on
commanding mountain peaks) and the total number of
households in each local village, as well as the position of
watchtowers and that of main army units. Referred to, for
obvious reasons, as the Mawangdui Military Map, it is the
first complete piece of mapping from China, as well as
probably the oldest piece of military cartography to survive.

One of two purely topographic maps discovered alongside the Military Map, c. 183–168 BC
 CHAPTER 2

SURVEYS AND SKETCHES

GATHERING THE INFORMATION

I f there is one thing that is certain about a map, it is that it
must contain information (accurate, we hope), and
someone must compile or gather that information. And
then, to be of any use, this must be transferred onto the
map using one of a variety of techniques developed over
time.

This chapter is dedicated to the surveyors who trekked

through forests, swamps and deserts and up mountains
throughout the ages, the instruments they took with them
and to those who engaged in the more delicate arts of
engraving, illumination and printing to create the physical
map which the final customer can use, and later generations
can admire.
To make a map, the land must be surveyed, observed and
measured, and the information compiled into a form the
cartographer can use. Or at least that’s the case for those
maps that are purporting to show some realistic image of a
place – those maps with a less practical purpose, or which
show a purely ideological image of the world, are more
surveys of the mind of the creator or his intellectual milieu
than of the real landscape (see Chapter 8). The very first
surveys, just as some of the very earliest maps, were
needed to show the boundaries between plots of land and to
resolve disputes between their owners. The Greek historian
Herodotus (c. 484–425 BC) reported that the Egyptian
pharaoh had inspectors who would re-survey the land when
the boundaries had been obliterated by the flooding of the
Nile, which would both ensure the owners’ rights were
respected and, more importantly to the ruler, that there
would be no quarrel about who owed tax on it. The
Egyptians clearly did have practical knowledge of surveying
– the Pyramids at Giza are aligned on a strict north–south
axis, and on the Great Pyramid the difference in length
between the north and east sides is an astonishingly small 6
cm (2½ in). All of this was achieved with fairly rudimentary
surveying instruments, notably knotted cords to establish
length, and varieties of plumb bobs, boards or frames to
which a cord with a round weight was attached in order to
establish vertical lines. Egyptian surveyors also employed
the merkhet, a simple alignment device consisting of one
split palm leaf and another plumb line, which could be lined
up against the celestial pole or other part of the horizon to
establish a consistent direction. One surveyor’s board with a
tear-shaped limestone bob on an A-shaped frame was found
in the tomb of Sennedjem, chief architect to the pharaohs
Seti I and Rameses II; dating to around 1250 BC, it is a
stunning demonstration that the art of surveying buildings is
a very ancient one.

Using stretched cords to measure wheat fields for the purpose of taxation, wall painting from
tomb of Menna, Thebes, c. 1420 BC
 Egyptian merkhet, c. 600 BC

Knowledge of such devices spread through the Near East

to the Assyrians and Persians, and eventually the Greeks.
They used a version of the knotted cord, known as the
skoinion, which was constructed of knotted rushes or flax,
and later iron chains (as these were seen as more reliable,
and not subject to stretching or fraying). Greek surveyors
also used measuring rods, or kalamoi, of varying lengths,
but normally about 6 cubits (an ancient measure equivalent
to the distance between the elbow and the fingertips, or
about 45 cm/17½ in). A less sophisticated method of
recording distances was simply to document the number of
paces, a technique employed by Alexander the Great during
his conquests in the 330s and 320s BC, when he designated
specialist soldiers to count the number of paces as they
marched and the direction in which they went so that these
could be compiled and converted into itineraries (and
possibly mapped). More complex means were needed to
plan those Greek colonies such as Thurii in southern Italy,
which were laid out on a regular grid pattern first devised by
Hippodamus of Miletus around 479 BC. Instruments such as
the dioptra, which was certainly in use by the time Hero of
Alexandria (a polymath among whose inventions was a very
early version of a steam engine) who described it in the 1st
century BC, consisted of a gradated column with a circular
bronze disc near the top, and a toothed wheel at the base.
The wheel could be rotated to change the angle of the disc,
which could then be used for sighting and establishing the
angles between two points in the distance. Hero also
describes an odometer, a wheeled instrument with another
toothed wheel which moved a pointed arm every time the
wheel rotated 400 times, a distance of 1 Roman mile (1,480
m/4,860 ft).
Tombstone of Lucius Aebutius Faustus, depicting the tools of a Roman land surveyor, 1st
century BC

The Romans took surveying to a new level. Their

conquest involved the establishment of new colonies for
retired military veterans which were laid out on strict
rectangular grids – based on the layout of a Roman
legionary marching camp with a central principal street
known as a decumanus maximus always running as an
east–west spine through its centre. All the plots which were
handed out to the former soldiers had to be measured and
recorded by surveyors, and so by the reign of Emperor
Augustus (r. 27 BC–AD 14), the profession of agrimensor, or
surveyor, was well established. They carried out
cadastrations, the formal process by which land was
measured, recorded and allotted in the new colonies, copies
of which were deposited in the Tabularium, a central registry
in Rome. We have the remains of only one substantial
cadastration, of the area of Arausio (Orange) in southern
France, carried out around AD 77 to settle land disputes as
the original owners sold or otherwise disposed of their land,
though we know that records of the subseciva (government
lands) and beneficia (private plots) were often displayed on
bronze plaques.
To the Romans we owe the first treatise on surveying, the
De aquis urbis Romae (‘On the Waters of the City of Rome’).
Written by Sextus Julius Frontinus (c. AD 35–103), who
combined a career as senior official (including as consul and
then governor of Britain, where he campaigned in South
Wales in the 70s AD) with that of surveyor, his experience as
superintendent of Rome’s aqueduct system gave him
unique insight into the challenges of urban planning. A more
comprehensive surveyor’s manual, the Corpus
agrimensorum was compiled in the 4th century AD, including
the work of a number of authors, notably Hyginus
Gromaticus (who lived during the reign of Trajan around 200
years earlier). His name is taken from the groma, the Roman
surveying instrument par excellence, which is frequently
shown on the tombstones of Roman surveyors, along with
the other tools of their trade. It was built around a vertical
staff of wood or metal on which a cross-shaped frame was
mounted at right angles. The ends of each of the four parts
of this cross had a plumb line and bob attached. The
surveyor would plant the groma in the ground using two of
the plumb lines to establish a straight line and then sight
this against a second groma some distance away. Although
effective at establishing straight line distances it had the
fatal flaw, as Hero of Alexandria pointed out, in strong
winds, which caused the plumb lines to sway, it became
next to useless.

Illustration of the Greek mathematician Euclid holding a sphere and dioptra and observing the
moon and stars; 11th-century German mathematician Hermannus Contractus holding an
astrolabe, Bernardus Silvester, late 14th century
 Modern reconstruction of a Roman groma

Although such instruments were useful in smaller-scale

ventures such as cadastration and in the laying out of the
course of the 80,000 km (50,000 miles) of roads which criss-
crossed the empire linking together key towns in an imperial
spider’s web, they were not used to construct larger-scale or
world maps. What survives of those, such as the Peutinger
Table (see here), or maps of the world constructed
according to the co-ordinates provided by Ptolemy of
Alexandria (c. AD 90–168, see here), must have been put
together by a combination of travellers’ tales, local
knowledge, small-scale surveys and simple speculation.
Although medieval Europe and the Islamic world produced a
wealth of beautiful-looking cartography and the use of
instruments such as plumb lines for the construction of
buildings and localized surveys must have continued, there
were few advances in surveying tools or methods.
As European merchants and navigators ventured further
into the Mediterranean and nudged around the coastlines of
West Africa, they began to make use of the quadrant, a cut-
down version of the astrolabe, probably invented by the
Greeks around 250 BC (though the story that Ptolemy
invented it when a celestial globe fell from his donkey and
was crushed by its hooves into a flat plate is doubtless a
myth, albeit a charming one). Consisting of a quarter circle
(hence its name) with two straight edges and one curved, it
had two sights on one of the straight edges, and a scale
marked in either degrees or latitude along the curve. A
plumb line whose angle moved when the sights were lined
up against a known point (at sea this was usually Polaris,
the North Star) would indicate the latitude of the ship. A
more sophisticated version was devised in 1730 by the
English mathematician John Hadley (1682–1744). It had an
index arm to move what was now a fixed line along the
scale, and which incorporated a split mirror to allow the user
to view both the celestial body being used as a fixed object
and the point on the horizon to which travel was intended.
In effect a double octant, it evolved into the sextant, which
became the standard instrument for taking readings at sea.
 Sextant, 18th century

By then, the techniques of land surveying had finally

shaken off their long torpor, considerably advanced by the
work of the Dutch mathematician Gemma Frisius (1508–55),
who devised the system of scientific surveying known as
triangulation. A man of a considerable breadth of talent,
from physician – he studied medicine at the University of
Louvain – to mathematics and astronomy, his greatest
contribution came in cartography, or specifically in devising
a system by which distances could be measured and a
baseline grid established for the construction of accurate
mapping. His Libellus de locorum describendum ratione
(‘Booklet concerning a way of describing places’) published
in 1533 used the principles of trigonometry – knowing the
two angles of a triangle and the length of one side, the
other angle and two sides can be calculated. By measuring
out a straight line between two points (the straightness
ensured by traditional sighting techniques) and then setting
a third stake or similar object to create a triangle and
measuring the angle between that and the first two points,
the distance between those and the third point can be
calculated without actually having to measure it. Once this
is done the process can be repeated to create a network of
triangles, with all the distances exactly calculated (hence
the term triangulation).
Medieval illustration of a quadrant
Illustration showing sundials, quadrants and a cross-staff being used to survey the height of a
tower, Rudimenta Mathematica, Sebastian Münster, 1551
Illustration of a mounted quadrant, The Lands of Heaven: An Astronomical Journey to the Other
Worlds, Camille Flammarion, 1884
 Brass quadrant, Italy, 1553

It was a system popularized by another Dutch surveyor

Willebrord Snell (1580–1626), who around 1615 laid out a
baseline from the church spire of Leiden, his hometown, to
nearby Zoeterwoude, and then used with increasing
regularity by the new breed of surveyors who created maps
of their nation-states, such as the four generations of
Cassinis, whose map of France took a century and a half to
complete. The originator of that survey, Giovanni Domenico
Cassini (1625–1712), can have had no inkling when the first
meridian line was surveyed in 1669-70 that it would only be
his great-grandson Jean-Dominique who would see it to
completion (or, nearly so, as the French Revolutionary
authorities nationalized the whole thing and seized the map
plates in 1790, before issuing the final maps in 1815). Nor
could he have predicted the hazards some of his surveyors
would face, including one who was murdered in the remote
Mézenc region of the Ardèche in the 1740s by villagers who
thought his surveying instruments were some kind of
diabolical device.

Theodolite, Jonathan Sisson, mid-18th century

 Portrait of Willebrord Snell

By then the mainstay of surveys had become the

theodolite, a hybrid between a compass and a telescope, or,
in the very earliest version invented by the English surveyor
Leonard Digges (1520–59), which was described by his son
Thomas in 1571, of a compass and a quadrant. The
telescopic versions of ‘great theodolites’ were first devised
by the English instrument-maker Jonathan Sisson (1690–
1747) around 1725. His renown was such that when a
survey was needed to resolve a long-standing quarrel
between the authorities in the colonies of New York and New
Jersey as to their mutual boundary, and no suitably accurate
instrument could be found anywhere in North America,
Sisson was commissioned to build one. His theodolite
arrived in 1745, and was found to measures angles with an
accuracy of 1/120th of a degree and soon settled the matter
of where the 41st parallel lay – the circle of latitude which
was supposed to be the line between the two colonies.
The acknowledged master of the theodolite, however,
was Jesse Ramsden (1735–1800). Yorkshireborn, Ramsden
was originally apprenticed as a clothmaker, but after moving
to London in 1755, he changed direction and became
instead apprentice to Mark Burton, a London instrument-
maker. His attention to the detail of construction of
theodolites brought him a steady stream of commissions
and election to the Royal Society in 1786. Not everyone was
quite so appreciative: when the British East India Company
ordered a theodolite from Ramsden as part of its surveying
efforts in India, they found the bill for the 90-kg (200-lb)
monster (with a 0.9-m/3-ft diameter horizontal circle) so
excessive that they refused to pay for it. Instead, the
instrument ended up in June 1791 with the Ordnance
Survey, which had just begun its own project for the
triangulation of Britain. It remained in their service for
nearly seven decades, traversing the length and breadth of
the nation on its own purpose-built carriage, being so
unwieldy it had to be winched to the top of church steeples
to make its observations. It was only finally retired in 1858,
by which time its constructor had been dead for nearly 60
years. While Ramsden’s mortal remains were put to rest in
the churchyard of St James’s Piccadilly in London, his
theodolite ended up a little further west in what was to
become London’s Science Museum.
 Phantom 2 Vision+ V3 drone hovering over Weissfluhjoch, Switzerland

Subsequent surveyors had access to even more

sophisticated equipment, such as the transit theodolite,
which could rotate in both the horizontal and vertical planes,
invented by the American surveyor William J. Young in 1832,
and the solar compass, devised in 1835 by another
American William Austin Burt to determine the direction of
true north in areas where the presence of large quantities of
iron ore made regular magnetic compasses useless.
Nowadays, though, theodolites are electronic and surveyors
go equipped with electronic distance-measuring tools, using
laser scanners and Global Positioning System (GPS) devices
for location. For those hard-to-reach places, it is no longer
necessary to scale a mountain or become stuck in a swamp
or parched in a desert: the 21st-century surveyor can simply
send in a drone. The romance of surveying may be dead,
but as an occupation it is an order of magnitude safer.
 Total Station EDM theodolite

Once the surveyors have delivered their information,

gathered by groma, theodolite and the hard grind of pacing
the land, it must all be written down in visual form. What
gets included is to a great extent determined by the
purpose of the map (see Chapter 3), but there is the very
practical consideration of which tools are used to physically
create the map and how, in later ages, it is to be printed.
For the first 3,000 years of map-making (broadly from the
Turin Papyrus, see here to the medieval mappae mundi, see
here), maps had to be drawn by hand. In Europe this was
done in much the same way, and often by the same
craftsmen and artists who created the illuminations that
graced Bible manuscripts or Books of Hours for aristocratic
families and well-appointed monasteries. Maps were largely
drawn with feather pens, the quills – if of the best quality –
plucked from the wings of geese or swans. The ink with
which to draw the outline of the map (or for plainer
productions like many portolans, almost the whole of it) was
a serious consideration. It could be made from charcoal,
which gave a suitably deep hue, but that was not long-
lasting and certainly for those maps likely to be used in the
field, over a long time, or at sea, was apt to fade away or
flake off. Instead, the best quality ink was manufactured
from powdered oak gall, a kind of allergic reaction in the
bark of oak trees to the activities of gall wasps. To this was
added iron sulphate, which darkened the ink and also made
it more permanent, and gum arabic, which was made from
the powdered sap of the acacia tree. For the decorative
elements, which abound in medieval maps, and for adding
colour to areas such as the sea or mountains, other
pigments were needed. The sources for these were
manifold, such as verdigris, created from copper acetate,
which could be used for green, or a deep blue, which was
made from powdered lapis lazuli. The most expensive and
rarest was gold, in leaf or powdered form, which was
reserved for the most luxurious or prestige maps.
Illuminated manuscript depicting the use of ink, Passionary of Weissenau, Frater Rufillus, c.
1170–1200
 Lapis lazuli, ground to a powder to create the pigment ultramarine

The intricate and painstaking world of hand-drawn maps

was revolutionized by the invention of printing. Although
printing using movable type, a process invented by the
Nuremberg printer Johannes Gutenberg some time in the
1440s, did not provide such a short-cut to mass production
as it did for purely text-based books (as the map still had to
be drawn by someone, while the type for text pages could
be made up, broken up and reset into a different page by
someone without artistic training), it still speeded up the
process and allowed far more copies of maps to be made.
Rather than hand-drawing or at best carving a wood block
and then inking it and using that to stamp a sheet of paper
or parchment, the lever on a printing press could be
depressed, pushing an inked printing plate down onto a
sheet of paper and the process repeated many times in an
hour.
Most of the maps or plans which accompanied text pages
were still at this stage woodcuts. Among the most
magnificent are the illustrations of cityscapes which
illustrated the Nuremberg Chronicle by Hartmann Schedel
(1440–1514), one of the runaway best-sellers of the early
age of printing. Published in 1493, it had over 600 woodcut
illustrations, including a large number of panoramas of
cities, in its rapid run through world history from the
Creation to (in rather more speculative mode) the Last
Judgement. Some of them are believed to be the work of no
lesser an artist than Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528), then an
apprentice in the workshop of Michael Wohlgemuth, who
provided most of the woodcut illustrations. The woodcutting
was done by leaving those parts of the surface which will be
shown on the map and cutting away the rest (as the raised
part of the wood that remains will carry the ink). Originally
the text for the maps was cut into the block, but as time
went on these were replaced with sections into which
movable type could be inserted, although purists argue that
this gives the type a rather stiff and formulaic look, unlike
the earlier purely engraved type which still has the air of the
older style medieval manuscript script.
Panorama of Marseille, Nuremberg Chronicle, Hartmann Schedel, 1493
 Woodblock printed map depctcing Kyoto, Japan, 1696

Engraving on wooden blocks was laborious, and etching

illustrations onto copperplates, which were more durable
and so more suitable for longer print-runs, was even more
so. First used for an edition of Ptolemy’s Geography
produced in Bologna in 1477 – the first printed edition of his
work – the technique involved a preliminary sketch which
was then transferred (often by a form of tracing) onto the
copperplate by incising it with a sharp engraving tool. Unlike
in woodcutting, the illustration is cut into the plate, rather
than standing up from it, so the ink goes into the hollows in
the engraved plate and is then transferred onto the paper
by the pressure of the printing press. The process permits
much finer lines to be etched into the copperplate than can
be cut out from the wood and so allows for a much greater
detail of geographical accuracy. As copperplates could last
through 4,000 or more impressions and even then could be
re-engraved by simply working over parts of the plate which
had become worn down, they were often used for decades,
meaning that sometimes, as in the era of competition
between Dutch map-makers in the 17th century, old
information kept being recycled as the same plates were
reused long after the information on them had become
obsolete.
Versions of copperplate engraving continued to be the
norm for map production until the invention of lithography
in around 1796. The brainchild of Alois Senefelder (1771–
1834), a Bavarian actor, it was originally intended as a
cheap and rapid means to produce playscripts and music
authored by his friends. The process relies on the water-
repellent qualities of grease. The image to be printed was
drawn onto a stone surface (stone being lithos in Greek, and
hence the term lithography, or stone-writing) using a
grease-based crayon or paint. The rest of the stone was
then treated with gum arabic and diluted nitric acid, which
made it water attractive. When an oil-based ink was then
applied to the stone it would only stick to the part coated in
the greased crayon (i.e. the lines of the map or other
illustration). This could then be pressed down on paper in a
printing press to produce the final image, and multiple
stones drawn with different colours used to create a
multicolour image.
Illustration depicting a lithographic press, 19th century
Geographical information system (GIS) display of the topography, landscape and
archaeological features of Caffarella Park in Rome, Italy, 21st century

Variations on these processes appeared, such as etching,

introduced in the 16th century in which the metal plate is
coated with acid-resistant wax, and then the image carved
into the wax and acid poured over it, which then ‘bit’ the
image into the plate. New technological advances such as
photography enabled greater automation such as
photolithography, invented in the 1870s, by which a
photographic negative could be imposed on a zinc plate
which had a special sensitized coating, creating an
impression that could then be incised. Nowadays most
printers use a computer-to-plate technology in which the
map (or other image) is transferred directly from digital files
by using lasers programmed to cut the image onto a heat-
sensitive metal plate. What took master cartographers like
Fra Mauro the best part of a decade to produce in the 1440s
can now be transferred onto a plate in a matter of seconds
and thousands of copies printed in an hour. Or in what
would have seemed to medieval or even Renaissance
cartographers a miracle, the map no longer even has to be
printed, being viewable or transferable by millions of users
simultaneously from a smartphone. The physical production
of our map, then, will no longer be a problem, but, just as in
the golden age of cartography, someone has to decide what
information to include, how to present it and then actually
draw the map.
 CHAPTER 3

WHYS AND WHEREFORES

THE PURPOSE OF MAPS

T he cartographer has gathered all the information necessary
create the map. Depending on the era, plumb lines,
gromas, quadrants, sextants or GPS stations have been
deployed and the base material collected, collated and
transmitted back home. But before actually beginning to draw
the map there are several crucial decisions which must be
made. The first of these, and perhaps the most important, is
what the map is actually for.

This has been touched on to some extent already: some of the

very earliest maps have a ritual purpose, others arose from the
needs of growing bureaucracies in early city-states; yet others
represented statements of power by rulers, or stores of
geographical knowledge. To modern eyes, their now-general
use to ‘find the way’ only becomes predominant quite late in
mapping history. All maps have a ‘view’, a purpose towards
which they are directed, even if it’s not quite the use to which
we put them today, and these have fallen into several broad
categories throughout history.
The first of these is the use of maps to state or promote an
ideology or, more broadly, to express a particular
understanding of the way the world (or the cosmos) works.
Early states imposed order on what before had seemed chaos,
their rulers establishing hierarchies that provided greater
certainty in terms of the supply of food, albeit at the cost of a
level of subservience for the vast majority of the population
which they had not experienced in more egalitarian small-
scale farming communities. Maps, too, created a sense of
order. The earliest world map we possess, known as the
Babylonian Map of the World, comes relatively late in the
history of the Ancient Near East, dating from around 600 BC, a
millennium after the city of Babylon had reached its first
apogee under Hammurabi. His law-code, drafted around 1760
BC, contained terms later perceived as so harsh that they gave
us the expression ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’,
imposing order of a rather different kind. By the time the clay
tablet some 12.5 cm x 8 cm (5 x 3¼ in) was incised with a
stylized portrayal of the world, Babylon was ruled by
Nebuchadnezzar II (605–562 BC). He recreated Babylon’s glory
days out of the shattered remnants of the Assyrian Empire,
projecting Babylonian power as far as Egypt, the Phoenician
city-states of modern Lebanon and Jerusalem, which he sacked
in 587 BC, deporting most of its population back to Babylon. He
was a great builder king, reconstructing the royal palace and
the vast ziggurat of Etemenanki (whose sky-piercing bulk
probably gave rise to the legend of the Tower of Babel). For
such a man, and for his people, Babylon must truly have
seemed the centre of the world, which is precisely how the
Babylonian Map of the World depicts it. A circle representing
the city sits firmly in the middle, with parallel lines running
through it indicating the course of the Euphrates. Arrayed
around it are a series of names, and some circles representing
regions and cities within the Babylonian orbit, such as Habban,
capital of the Kassites, Urartu (the successor-state to the
Hittites) and Assyria. Bounding the central area is the circular
course of the ‘Bitter River’ beyond which lie eight outlying
areas, regions which fade into fable, such as one ‘Where
Shamash (the Sun) is not seen’ (since it is in the north, and the
Babylonians believed that having traversed from east to west
during the day, it returned back to its starting point through
the Underworld, never passing into the north). Topographic
precision this was not, but it expressed the centrality of
Babylon as the keystone of the world in terms that would have
satisfied Nebuchadnezzar II, the conqueror of much of it.
He, too, was the keystone of his empire, which collapsed just
23 years after his death, when Cyrus II of Persia overran it. By
then, far to the West, the forerunners of another great empire
were establishing a tenuous hold on a peninsula jutting out
into the Mediterranean. The Romans, who would create the
largest state the world had yet known, were inveterate
builders: each major town within the empire became a ‘mini-
Rome’ with a central forum, a basilica (or law court), temples
to the major gods, such as Jupiter and Minerva and, in many
cases, an amphitheatre, where gladiators fought each other
and wild beasts to the delight of crowds who accepted the
bloodthirsty spectacle in part-payment for their political
subjugation. The empire was bound together, too, by an
ideology of empire, an almost accidental evolution after the
Republic, ruled by two annually elected consuls and a
quarrelsome Senate of the city’s elite, which collapsed into
civil war and re-emerged in 27 BC as an actual empire, with an
actual emperor (of whom Augustus, Julius Caesar’s adoptive
son, was the first).
Babylonian Map of the World, 6th century BC; and modern diagram to help parse it
Babylonian Map of the World, 6th century BC; and modern diagram to help parse it
Map of Roman roads through Britain, based on the Antonine Itinerary, William Stukeley, 1723

The Romans mapped. They did so at a practical level and on

a small scale to determine the parcelling out of land in new
settlements established for retired military veterans, a process
known as cadastration, which yielded maps such as one from
Arausio (Orange) in southern France (see here). The very first
reference we have to a Roman map, though, comes in 174 BC,
when Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus is said to have set up a
table containing a map of Sardinia after commanding a
victorious Roman army there. As Rome’s territory expanded,
the demands of imperial administration meant that such
occasional flourishes were insufficient and that more ambitious
mapping was needed. The Cosmographia Iulii Caesaris, which
is probably the work of Julius Honorius, a rhetoric teacher of
the 4th or 5th century AD, claims that Julius Caesar appointed
four geographers to survey the four quarters of the world.
They were somewhat dilatory in carrying out their task,
allegedly taking over 30 years to bring it to completion. The
whole thing, though, is probably apocryphal, but Augustus’s
chief lieutenant Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa (c. 63–12 BC) did
commission a world map shortly after his imperial master’s
accession. Presumably inscribed on marble, it was set up on
the Porticus Vipsania, a colonnade in the centre of Rome.
From the mother-city, the Romans built a network of roads
that radiated out through the empire, stretching as far as
Britain in the far north-west and what is now northern Iraq in
the east. Generally built with stone and crushed gravel bound
together with cement – a Roman innovation – they were
topped off with a surface of larger paving blocks. These were
state-of-the-art thoroughfares, ancient superhighways which
facilitated the movement of goods and official messengers.
Most importantly, they allowed the rapid movement of Rome’s
legions, as these were redeployed to make new conquests,
stem barbarian intrusions or – as happened all too often after
the empire’s first century – to stifle or support pretenders to
the imperial throne. The roads formed spokes which linked the
cities, the nodes of empire, to each other, and a tradition grew
up of itineraries, lists of the principal routes which connected
them, together with the distance (in Roman miles or in days)
the journey should take. One of the most substantial of these
is the Antonine Itinerary, which was probably compiled in its
existing form in the late 3rd century AD, but has become
attached by its name to the Antonine dynasty of emperors
which ended with the murder of Severus Alexander by
mutinous troops along the Rhine frontier in 235. It contains
details of 17 such principal routes through the empire, and a
number of sub-routes in each, totalling 225 in all. The British
section is divided into 15 such shorter itinerary segments,
seven of which radiate out from London, showing that the
London-centric nature of Britain’s transport system is almost
two millennia old (though the three originating in Calleva, now
the small village of Silchester near Basingstoke in Hampshire,
equally emphasize that alternatives are possible!).
The most striking cartographic statement of Rome’s imperial
might – and one of the very few to survive in anything like a
complete form – is not in fact a Roman original. It was found in
a monastic library in 1494 by the German humanist Konrad
Celtes. He in turn bequeathed it in his will to his friend Konrad
Peutinger (1465–1547), after whom the map became known as
the Peutinger Table (or Tabula Peuteringiana). In its original
state it was an elongated piece of parchment 6.75 m long x 34
cm wide (22 ft x 13¼ in) bearing a graphic representation of a
series of itineraries, similar to those of the Antonine Itinerary,
which show the main routes between the 555 towns portrayed.
Originally, there were almost certainly more towns, as the
section which contains Britain has lost all but a portion of the
south of the province. Over 400 of the towns are shown with
towers and a few with more lavish illustrations, such as
Constantinople and Rome, which both have depictions of Tyche
(the goddess personifying the Fortune of the city). In the case
of Rome she is seated on a throne, bearing an orb and spear,
and for Constantinople she is orb-less but wearing a helmet.
Alexandria is shown with one of the most famous landmarks of
the ancient world, the Pharos lighthouse, whose beacon had
guided mariners into its harbour since its construction in the
early 3rd century BC.
The map is probably a medieval copyist’s version of what
might have been a 4th-century original. It is, though, an
eloquent statement in the mapping of a world view which was
diminished (though not entirely extinguished) as the western
Roman provinces fell one by one into the hands of barbarian
invaders, with Italy itself succumbing in 476 to Odoacer, a
Germanic general in Roman service who simply swept away
the last western emperor and ruled it instead as a king. The
empire clung on in the East, but then much of it in turn fell to a
new set of invasions, as the armies of the Islamic caliphate
overran its holdings in Syria, Palestine and North Africa from
the 630s. The new rulers inherited cultures of scholarship that
were centuries old, melding existing practices with their own
traditions to create hybrids and innovations that burst into a
cultural golden age under the Umayyads and Abbasids from
the 7th to 10th centuries. Geographers such as Muhammad
ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi (c. 780–850) built on Ptolemy of
Alexandria’s lists of latitude and longitude to construct maps of
the Islamic world – around 830 he drew for his Kitab Surat al-
Ard (‘Book of the Image of the World’) featured over 4,000
place names. Among the most striking is one showing the
course of the Nile from the umbrella-like source in the
Mountains of the Moon to the green square that represents the
Mediterranean, all cut through with a series of red lines, which
represent the ‘climes’ or climatic bands into which late Greek
geographers divided the world.
MAIN
Details from the Peutinger Table, 4th century AD (1888 copy, based on 12th–13th-century version).

INSET ABOVE
Rome

INSET LEFT TOP

Constantinople

INSET LEFT BOTTOM

Pharos Lighthouse at Alexandria

A more specifically Islamic world view was expressed in the

work of the most renowned Islamic cartographer of all, Abu
Ishaq al-Istakhri (or al-Farisi) who lived in Istakhr in southern
Iran in the early 10th century. Little is known of his life, but his
Kitab al-masalik wa-al-mamalik (Book of Routes and Kingdoms)
is a striking attempt to map the whole of the umma, or the
world of the Islamic community. The book contains 20 regional
maps showing itineraries within the Islamic world – perhaps in
a nod to the itinerary maps of the Greeks and Romans.
Discarding any attempt to depict distance geographically or
the topography of the land, his is an elegant composition of
lines, and circles or squares for the towns, colour coded to
show the main routes in red and even distinguishing between
salt water (green) and fresh water (blue). Regions outside the
Islamic world are excluded entirely, appearing only in the
overall world map.

Map from the Kitab al-masalik wa-al-mamalik, Abu Ishaq al-Istakhri, c. AD 950

An even more overtly ideological view of the world appears

in the Christian topographies which emerged in Europe in the
centuries following the collapse of the Roman Empire, when
learning became the preserve of a small minority, mainly
centred on the Church (and particularly on monasteries). Such
world maps are generally referred to as mappae mundi (‘maps
of the world’). Among the most widely reproduced were those
compiled by Isidore, who became Bishop of Seville around 600,
as part of his Etymologiae (‘Etymologies’) an encyclopedic
compilation of the entirety of classical knowledge and
literature – or at least those parts that Isidore saw fit to
preserve. The map is extremely simple, showing the three
continents into which the world was supposed to be divided
(Asia at the top and Africa and Europe at the bottom),
separated by great dividing rivers, including the
Mediterranean, all set within a circular encompassing ocean,
giving the map the shape of a ‘T’ set within an ‘O’ (from which
this and its many imitators became known simply as T-O
maps).
Medieval Christian cartography was not especially
concerned with showing the physical reality of the world or
providing a means by which to navigate around it. Its space
was spiritual, and its focus was on depicting the centrality of
the biblical narrative and in particular the life of Christ. This
was given a physical reality by, in general, showing Jerusalem,
and the area around it in which most of the events narrated in
the Old and New Testament took place, at its centre. Figures
from the Christian past were co-opted to serve as inspiration,
even if they had no direct map-making role themselves. One
very idiosyncratic image of the world came from the
Topographia Christiana (‘Christian Topography’) of Cosmas
Indicopleustes, written in the mid-6th century by a Greek
speaker whose nickname indicates he was probably a
merchant who had travelled to India. He took it as his task to
disprove what he saw as the erroneous view that the Earth
was spherical. He instead showed its landmass as flat, but with
the Heavens forming the curved shape of a box (intended to
be modelled on the tabernacle within which the tablets of the
Ten Commandments given by God to Moses had been
transported by the early Israelites).

Topographia Christiana, Cosmas Indicopleustes, mid-6th century (top); and modern diagram
(bottom)

For some reason, Cosmas’s heavenly box did not catch on.
Instead, slightly more conventional religious maps became the
norm, such as the mappa mundi compiled by Beatus of
Liébana, an 8th-century monk who lived in Asturias, one of the
small Christian kingdoms which had clung on in the north of
Spain following the conquest of much of the Iberian Peninsula
by an Islamic army that crossed the Straits of Gibraltar in 711.
Much like Isidore’s map, the world is still divided into three
continents, with Asia at the top and Jerusalem at the very
centre, but it contains a far greater level of detail, sprinkled
with stylized walled towns (of which only Rome approaches
Jerusalem in size) and four great rivers – the Tigris, Euphrates,
Geon (Nile) and Phison (possibly the Indus or Ganges) – which
run dramatically across the canvas. At the top of the map (and
so to the very east of Asia) Beatus includes a feature which
was to become a perennial in the early Middle Ages, the
Earthly Paradise (from which Adam and Eve were expelled
after eating the apple from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good
and Evil). Beatus depicts the tree still standing there, with the
entrance to the paradise guarded by a cherub wielding a fiery
sword (in case any of Adam and Eve’s descendants felt
tempted to try to sneak back in).
 Hereford Mappa Mundi, c. 1280–90, colour enhanced

By the 14th century, Christian mapping had reached its

peak in vast compositions such as the Hereford Mappa Mundi,
which teem with creatures such as manticores (legendary
creatures with the head of a man, the body of a lion and the
tail of a dragon or scorpion) or the mythical giants Gog and
Magog. By then, though, European mapping, at least, had once
more begun to take a more practical turn. On a small scale,
this had always been the case – a schematic plan of the Abbey
of St Gall in Switzerland dating from c. 820 shows that the
skills inculcated by Roman surveyors had never been wholly
lost in the enthusiasm to portray a Christian-inflected world. In
addition, the gradual recovery from the political and economic
doldrums of the early Middle Ages had, by the 1200s,
produced a varied landscape of increasingly prosperous towns
linked by trade routes along which both necessities such as
grain and wool and luxury goods (such as the finished cloth
produced in large quantities by the weavers of Italy and the
Netherlands and more refined products, such as books, and
even maps) passed.
Seaborne commerce became particularly important, as
maritime republics in Italy such as Amalfi and Pisa, and then
Genoa and Venice, established their dominance in the central
and eastern Mediterranean, vying with Catalan merchants in
the west. Their sea captains were practical men, more
interested in profit than the location of the Earthly Paradise,
and their most pressing concerns were to navigate around
shoals and sandbanks, rather than avoiding the snares of sin.
From the very end of the 13th century, their needs were
answered by new forms of map known as portolans, which are
almost schematic in their simplicity and were intended as
guides to the coastlines these trading ships plied. Drawn on
vellum parchment made from calfskin, they often have a
curious protrusion, where the original shape of the animal’s
neck can be made out. The epicentre of this mapping tradition
was in Italy, above all Genoa, and in the possessions of the
Catalan kingdom, particularly Majorca. With a focus on the
ports, headlands and islands, much of the inland interior of the
portolans is generally left all but blank, but they are criss-
crossed by a series of rhumb lines which form a triangular
mesh of waypoints across the sea to help with navigation (see
here). Typical of them is the 1325 portolan by Angelino
Dulcert (or Dalorto), originally from Italy, but who transferred,
together with his cartographic skills, to Majorca around the
1330s.
The portolans were genuinely practical maps, which must
have been used in many cases aboard ship (in a very few
cases the boards to which they were affixed during
consultation survive). This type of mapping would eventually
wither away, but as ships undertook ever longer voyages
(culminating in the first circumnavigation in 1519–22 by a
flotilla under the command of the Portuguese navigator
Ferdinand Magellan, and then, after his death by Juan Delcano)
more sophisticated and elaborated maps proliferated. The
coastal chart, or roteiro¸ of João de Castro, who served from
1547 to 1548 as viceroy of the little Portuguese empire in India
(centred on Diu and Goa) shows a wealth of detail of the
coasts around the Indian Ocean, including dozens of
measurements of magnetic declination (the angle between
magnetic north as shown by a compass and true north) which
he took on his outward voyage to India. Sadly, de Castro did
not live long to enjoy his chart as he died before his pleas to
be recalled to Lisbon were granted by the Portuguese court,
expiring in the arms of his friend, the Jesuit missionary St
Francis Xavier (though some posthumous consolation came in
the form of the positive reception of the three roteiros which
emerged from his voyages and his fame as the discoverer of
magnetic declination).
 Plan of Abbey of St Gall, Switzerland, c. 820

Coastal charts continued to be a principal driver for the

improvement of cartography, particularly in the hands of the
Dutch, who after the foundation of the Verenigde Oostindische
Compagnie (the VOC, or Dutch East India Company) in 1602,
expanded their range from the waters off the Netherlands and
the Baltic down across Africa and thence to South America and
the Indian Ocean. Established to help the Dutch muscle in on
the Spice Islands trade, the VOC (or as it was colloquially
known ‘Jan Compagnie’) was one of the first successful joint-
stock companies in the world (in which shareholders spread
the risk between them of such hazardous voyages rather than
one single captain risking ruin if things went wrong). The
Heeren XVII (or ‘seventeen gentleman’) who formed its
governing body achieved this and more, elbowing aside the
Portuguese, until by the mid-17th century it was Amsterdam,
and not Lisbon, that ruled the waves of the East Indies,
presided over by the company’s governor from his fortress
headquarters in Batavia (now Jakarta).
All these voyages, both long- and short-distance, needed
charts and a vast cartographic industry grew up in the
Netherlands to provide them. In their origin, the pilot guides,
or ‘rutters’ as they came to be known, were simple books
containing directions for sailing and warnings about coastal
hazards. Much of the information was held in the heads of
experienced local pilots, but it never hurt to have things down
in black and white on paper. Originating in the late 15th
century – in France, rather than the Netherlands, as it
happens, with Le routier de la mer (‘The Map of the Sea’) by
Pierre Garcie – by 1520 these had started to feature crude
illustrations of landmarks such as dunes and church spires,
although they still largely circulated in manuscript form. The
Dutch began printing rutters in 1532 with De kaert vander zee
(‘The Map of the Sea’) by Jan Severszoon, but this was a text-
based affair, and it was only slowly that coastal profiles
became more sophisticated until they culminated in the
Spiegel der zeevaerdt (‘The Mariner’s Mirror’) by Lucas
Janszoon Waghenaer. Born around 1533 in the north Dutch
town of Enkhuizen alongside the Zuider Zee, a settlement
whose nickname ‘the Herring City’ gave a clue to the source of
its prosperity, Waghenaer’s early career as a pilot, both locally
and on longer voyages between Cadiz in Spain and western
Norway, gave him a wealth of material on which to draw for his
compilation of coastal charts. He chose to bind these together
into a single volume, producing for the first time something
like a comprehensive pilot’s guide to north-western Europe,
which was published in 1584. With its handy tables of tides,
instruction on how to use a cross-staff to take navigational
measurements, the use of portolan charts, and its inclusion of
a profusion of buoys, reefs, shoals and safe passages on its 44
pages of charts plus an overall map of western Europe, it
provided everything an aspiring pilot could possibly want. So
successful was it that in 1592, Waghenaer published a second,
more portable edition, entitled the Thresoor der zeevaert
(‘Treasure of the Sea’), whose easier-to-handle oblong shape,
smaller size and more detailed accompanying notes, as well as
the extension of its range to cover the northern seas as far as
Scotland and the White Sea, north of Russia, was even more
popular than the original. It was no wonder that such
compilations of pilots’ charts came to be universally known by
a corruption of his name as ‘Wagoneers’.

Portolan chart, Gabriel de Vallseca, c. 1447

The Gulf of Suez, Roteiro do Mar Roxo (‘Roxo Sea Route’), João de Castro, 16th century

Naturally, those who ventured into what were for them new
regions of the world mapped them, not least to prove to their
sponsors the worth of the voyages they had undertook, and to
provide information for those who followed them. Many of the
most famous products of the great age of European voyage,
such as Martin Waldseemüller’s 1507 map (in which America is
named for the first time, see here) come from this desire to
memorialize or glorify or simply to wonder at the vastly
enlarged extent of the world as seen from Lisbon, Seville,
Amsterdam or London. The annals of mid-16th century
cartography are filled with ever more resplendent productions
(of which Gerard Mercator’s famous 1569 map of the world is
but one, see here), but a more specific purpose was served by
maps of the new regions which the European maritime powers
were first exploring, then settling. As exploration turned to
settlement and colonization, a tradition of colonial mapping
emerged, which produced maps such as those of the British
geographer James Rennell (1742–1830), whose work
culminated in the Map of Hindoostan published in 1782. North
America, too, became intensively mapped, first by the British
colonial power, beginning with the very first map drawn on the
continent – a simple affair published by John Foster, a printer
from Boston, in 1677. They became gradually more
sophisticated until Lewis Evans’ A Map of the Middle British
Colonies, which was printed on a press owned by the future
Founding Father Benjamin Franklin in 1755.
Map of Western Europe
The Bay of Biscay
 Title page from Spiegel der zeevaerdt, Lucas Janszoon Waghenaer, 1584

A still more important landmark was the Mitchell map,

commissioned by the British Board of Trade and Plantations,
the body which supervised the economic and political well-
being of Britain’s Thirteen Colonies in North America – a task
to which, before long, it was to prove itself thoroughly unsuited
as the colonists’ opposition to rule from London exploded into
violent confrontation. Drafted at a time when there was
increasing concern that the French (who were ensconced not
only in eastern Canada, but in a string of territories down the
Mississippi as far as Louisiana and western Florida) were
encroaching on what should, according to the 1713 Treaty of
Utrecht, have been British land. The map’s author, John
Mitchell (1711–68), knew the colonies well, being himself from
a well-to-do family of Virginia merchants. He hadn’t originally
intended a career in map-making, being far more inclined to
medicine, which he studied at the University of Edinburgh in
the late 1720s, before returning to Virginia in 1731. There he
occupied himself with an increasing interest in botany and
writing tracts blaming British troop ships for the waves of
epidemic disease striking the colonies. It was when Mitchell fell
victim to one of these in 1745, that the course of his life
changed. He took ship to Britain to recover, almost perishing
when the vessel was attacked by a French privateer off St Malo
– by ill chance Britain was once again at war with France
during the Austrian War of Succession. All of Mitchell’s
precious botanical collection was carried off by the privateers
and so when he finally reached London, he consoled himself by
turning to cartography.
Map of Hindoostan, James Rennell, 1782 (1788 edition)
 A Map of the Middle British Colonies in North America, Lewis Evans, 1755

Conscious of the French threat to Virginia and the other

colonies – one which he felt all the more keenly given his
recent misadventure – he set to producing an improved map of
North America, using Henry Popple’s 1733 A Map of the British
Empire in North America as the basis. Mitchell also managed
to insert himself into the fashionable intellectual life of London,
being elected to the Royal Society in 1748. His growing fame
brought Mitchell’s work to the attention of the Board of Trade
and Plantations, which then allowed him access to its archives,
crammed with local geographical records and surveys. They
even allowed him to peruse reports from the colonial
governors about the extent of French encroachment and where
exactly the frontier lay between the two powers’ territories.
Finally, in 1750 the first draft of the map was ready, and then
on 13 February 1755 the final version, bearing the stamp of
approval of the Board for his A Map of the British and French
Dominions in North America.
 It was the last great cartographic enterprise of British North
America. Though it had its flaws – Mitchell labelled the town of
Worcester, Massachusetts, incorrectly as ‘Leicester’ – it was
well respected. So much so that a copy of the fourth edition –
which included additional details of the treaties which defined
the frontiers of Quebec and of the Proclamation Line of 1763
which was supposed to mark the boundary between the
Thirteen Colonies and the lands of Native Americans beyond –
was still used by Richard Oswald the British ‘Peace
Commissioner’ tasked with negotiating the final peace deal in
Paris which recognized the independence of the United States
in 1784.
Mitchell’s map, though it formed part of the tradition of
colonial mapping, was born out of fear of war with the French
(a consummate irony, in that its most prominent use was
precisely after the humiliating defeat against the colonists
which had in large part been abetted by their alliance with
France in 1778). More directly, the needs of the military have
been one of the principal drivers of cartography, at least since
the 16th century. Although armies long before that must have
made use of guides and possibly some form of sketch maps,
generals had to wait until maps became sophisticated enough,
and the means to produce and distribute them reliable
enough, to make them of real strategic, and even tactical use.
Somewhat before that, the 16th century saw the rise of a
kind of commemorative mapping, recording events on the
battlefields for the information or edification of the public back
home. Events such as the siege of Malta in 1565 were
recorded in dramatic, semi-pictorial maps, in which the
invading Ottoman army could be seen clustered around the
beleaguered Knights of St John, the walls of forts such as St
Elmo pounded almost to rubble by the Turkish siege. Pitched
battles, too, received the same kind of treatment, with serried
ranks of opposing forces often showing a rather idealized (and
occasionally inaccurate) view of the fighting. The Thirty Years’
War, with its impossible tangle of shifting alliances that
devastated Europe’s heartlands between 1618 and 1648 as no
conflict has since (around a third of Germany’s population is
said to have perished) also offered fertile ground for
cartographers. The plan by Matthäus Merian (1593–1650) of
the Battle of Lützen (notable for the death of the Swedish
warrior-king Gustavus Adolphus, shot as he became separated
from his troops in the literal fog of war caused by palls of
gunpowder smoke) is one such image. Almost every
subsequent major battle on the European continent or in North
America received its battle plan, some heavily annotated, such
as Jakob van der Schley’s map of Frederick the Great’s
triumphant defeat of the Austrians at Leuthen in 1757 or
Wellington and Blücher’s final defeat of Napoleon in 1815, a
‘damn near run thing’ as the British commander remarked
afterwards, which spawned a plethora of explanatory maps.

A Map of the British and French Dominions in North America, John Mitchell, 1755
 By then, though, mapping had itself become a tool of
warfare, with military surveyors accompanying generals on
their campaigns, such as the staff of the British Quartermaster-
General (QMG), who accompanied the troops during the
Peninsular War Campaign from 1808 to 1814. The pre-war
maps of the Iberian Peninsula on which the Duke of Wellington
(1769–1852) – or Viscount Wellington of Talavera as he was for
most of the campaign – relied were woefully inadequate:
another British general acidly remarked of Thomas Faden’s
maps of Gibraltar and Minorca (both at the time British
possessions) that they were ‘only fit for burning’. The
Quartermaster-General’s Office had been thoroughly
reorganized in 1803 to make it fit for more than occasional
bridge-building and keeping the odd amphibious sally onto the
continent supplied. Its representative in the Peninsular
Campaign, Sir George Murray (1772–1846), proved himself an
incredibly adept military cartographer, deploying his initial
staff of two permanent QMG members and around 20 officers
seconded from various other units to produce a stream of high-
quality reconnaissance maps which smoothed Wellington’s
way through what otherwise would have been unknown
terrain. Those of the Lines of Torres Vedras on the outskirts of
Lisbon, where the British and their Portuguese allies held off a
French counter-offensive under General Masséna for nearly 10
months between November 1809 and September 1810, show
a delicacy and fine detail in the delineation of the surrounding
hills that belies the utilitarian military purpose of the
cartography. Ironically, at the very end of the campaign, when
Wellington pushed across the Pyrenees and into France itself in
October 1813, he no longer had to rely on fresh mapping
produced by his own staff, as he could now use sheets from
the Cassini map of France which had just, finally, been
completed (see here).
 Pictorial map of the Siege of Malta in 1565, 16th century

The tradition of military cartography was continued in most

major armies, including those of the contending sides in the US
Civil War, where Union map-makers such as Robert Knox
Sneden (1832–1918), who had begun his career as an
architect, and so knew a thing or two about draftsmanship,
and William H. Willcox (1832–1929), who used his military
experience to go on to design skyscrapers in Seattle, created
memorable maps of battles such as First Bull Run (1861) and
Gettysburg (1863). The two World Wars spawned veritable
cartographic industries, either in the official histories which
chronicled them after their end (in the case of the First World
War amounting to 109 volumes for the British version,
illustrated with thousands of maps) or near the front lines,
chronicling the achingly slow shift in the 800 km (500 miles) of
trenches which snaked across France and Belgium, each yard’s
advance from which was won only at the cost of hundreds of
lives. By the Second World War, the effort was even greater,
with the German forces employing over 1,500 officers in its
map production unit, which is calculated to have produced a
staggering 1.3 billion printed maps by 1945.

The Battle of Gettysburg, William H. Willcox, 1863

Victory in war often brought new frontiers. Louis XIV’s Wars

of Devolution (1667–68) won France new territories to the
north-east as its armies bit off pieces of the Spanish
Netherlands and gnawed away at the previous borders in a
series of sapping sieges. In the 18th and 19th centuries Tsarist
Russia expanded its border through a mixture of warfare,
aggressive diplomacy and the planting of towns in thinly
settled regions of Siberia’s vast taiga, while the exigencies of
war found even long-established states such as the Austro-
Hungarian Empire finding themselves in need of mapping.
Other states, such as Denmark and Switzerland, threatened by
acquisitive neighbours, felt the imperative to define their
frontiers as a pre-emptive gesture. All these countries saw
maps of their national borders as a power statement, a kind of
cartographic secret weapon in the struggle to assert
themselves against rivals. The map of France, though, took
over a century to complete, with the measurement of the first
meridian (to be used as a baseline for the rest of the survey)
being laid out under the supervision of Giovanni Domenico
Cassini in 1669. The project then consumed the lives of four
generations of Cassinis, until it was eventually completed 146
years later in 1815, a quarter of a century after the French
Revolutionary state had dispensed with the services of his
great-grandson Jean-Dominique. Far less prolonged was the
birth of the national map produced by Britain’s Ordnance
Survey, an organization set up in 1791, which in 1801
produced its first map of Kent. It was interrupted for 15 years
from 1825 by the need to complete a survey of Ireland and
bedevilled by problems with the standard measure being used
to lay out the survey’s meridian lines, which led to the
moulding of a special bar rod made of brass and iron which did
not shrink or expand appreciably when the temperature
changed. That bar perished in the fire in October 1834 which
destroyed the Houses of Parliament – where it had been
lodged for safekeeping – but another was rapidly recast and
the survey continued, to be finally completed in 1842. If there
were bragging rights to be had, France’s map had taken 146
years, and Britain’s 41.
 Not all maps were made for the use of politicians, generals,
navigators, explorers or even for those simply trying to find
their way. Many, and especially from the 18th century
onwards, were produced as educational tools for use in
schools. The very first was the brainchild of the German
schoolmaster Johann Strube, whose Orbis terrarum veteribus
cogniti typus in binis tabulis (‘An Arrangement of Knowledge of
the Old World in Two Tables’) was published in the 1660s, and
was an atlas specifically designed for schoolchildren which had
two versions of each map, one without the place names, so
that the pupils could fill them in as a form of test. By 1710, the
market had grown, particularly in Germany with the
publication of the Kleiner Schulatlas (‘Little School Atlas’) by
Johann Hübner (1668–1731), a German geographer and
polymath, who used his position as rector of the high school in
Merseburg to engage in a series of educational experiments –
many of them centring on a ‘question and answer’ pedagogic
style. This, the first atlas specifically marketed at the
educational sector, was soon imitated in other European
countries, with works such as the 1779 Atlas Nouveau by
Edme Mentelle (1730–1816). A playwright turned
schoolmaster, Mentelle’s pupils at the École Militaire where he
was a professor included Napoleon Bonaparte, who fortunately
did not hold it against his former teacher that he had also
acted as tutor to the future Louis XVI, designing him a
beautiful terrestrial globe complete with undulating submarine
mountain ranges.
 Paris, Carte de France, Cassini Family, 1762

Most modern school atlases – and indeed many of the

earliest educational maps – are to some extent thematic,
showing subjects such as the geology of a country, population
density or the distribution of local languages or ethnic groups.
Such thematic mapping can be turned by today’s
cartographers to almost any subject – bird migrations, the
results of elections, the spread of a pandemic or, in a
significant subset of the field, to the mapping of history, by
showing the development of national borders, vicissitudes of
war, flows of peoples, locations of archaeological sites or any
one of a multitude of subjects that make up the historical
landscape. Thematic mapping began early – arguably the Turin
Papyrus’s shading for various different types of rock is the first
example and the St Albans monk Matthew Paris’s map of the
Anglo-Saxon heptarchy (the seven states which dominated
England from the 7th to 9th centuries) drawn around 1250
may represent the first attempt at historical mapping – but it
was the advent of printing in the mid-15th century that
provided the impetus for the production of a wider spectrum of
mapping types. The Reformation, with its concern for the literal
nature of religious truth embedded in the Bible (as opposed to
in pronouncements of the Papacy), led Protestant scholars to
focus on sources, and so to produce maps which accompanied
their new translations or commentaries on the Bible. By the
1590s individual maps had burgeoned into whole historical
atlases, with the compilation by Christiaan van Adrichem
(1533–85), a priest from Delft in the Netherlands, of the
Theatrum terrae sanctae (‘Theatre of the Holy Land’),
published in Cologne in 1590, which included plans of
Jerusalem and the areas settled by the 12 tribes of Israel. The
Renaissance fascination with the classical world began to
make itself felt in historical atlases, too, with the publication
from 1579 in gradually enlarged editions of the Parergon by
Abraham Ortelius (1527–98), as a side enterprise to his
monumental Theatrum orbis terrarum (‘Theatre of the Globe of
the World’) world atlas, whose range of subjects included
ancient Gaul, the Roman expansion in Italy and the conquests
of Alexander the Great. Ever since then no self-respecting
cartographic shelf has been complete without its share of
historical atlases, whose highlights have included the
Genealogical, Chronological, Historical and Geographical Atlas
compiled by the French emigré Emmanuel de las Cases (1766–
1842) in London in 1801 and the Times Atlas of World History,
first published in 1978, whose beautiful hill-shading (initially
hand-drawn) and innovative integration of text and maps set
the standard for the next four decades.
The County of Kent, with part of the County of Essex, Britain’s Ordnance Survey, 1801
India, Atlas Nouveau, Edme Mentelle, 1779
Jerusalem, Theatrum terrae sanctae, Christiaan van Adrichem, 1590
Ethnographical Map of the World, Atlas of Physical Geography, August Heinrich Petermann, 1850

A wider range of subjects was treated in the 1829 Atlas

physique, politique et historique de l’Europe (‘Physical, Political
and Historical Atlas of Europe’) by Maxime-Auguste Denaix
(1777–1844), who had learnt the map-maker’s art as head of
the French army cartographic office. As well as its headline
coverage of the political and historical development of the
continent, it also included maps of linguistic distribution and of
European flora and fauna. The widespread adoption of
lithography, a printing process invented by the Bavarian
playwright Alois Senefelder around 1796 (initially as a cheap
method to reproduce playscripts, see here) allowed a finer
gradation of tints to be shown and enabled a huge leap in the
sophistication of thematic mapping. It needed also the genius
of August Heinrich Petermann (1822–78), a German
cartographer who moved to Scotland in 1845 to help out with
an English edition of Heinrich Berghaus’s Physikalischer Atlas
(‘Physical Atlas’), and then to London, where he managed to
secure himself a position as Physical Geographer-Royal to
Queen Victoria in 1868. He published a series of innovative
atlases including the Atlas of Physical Geography in 1850,
among whose maps was one of the pattern of waves caused
by the Lisbon Earthquake of 1755. Petermann’s successors as
thematic map-makers have been legion, from those treating
more conventional subjects such as the distribution of crops,
or population density, for example, Charles Oscar Paullin’s
exemplary Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United
States (1932), to entire atlases dealing with thematic subjects
such as the Atlas of Breeding Birds of Britain and Ireland, first
published in 1976, and even entirely imaginary worlds, such as
the splendid maps of Middle-earth accompanying J.R.R.
Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (1973). With the capacity in the
digital age to create digital and thematic overlays to maps
with relative ease, it now seems that the only limit to which
subjects can be mapped, and how, is the cartographer’s
imagination.
A display of ideology, an assertion of power, a military tool,
a delineation of the nation’s borders, an educational device, an
illustration of avian migrations or a simple means of finding
the way: the purpose of the map has been chosen. Who,
though, is to draw it?
An example of a thematic atlas – a map showing the spread of the 1918 Spanish flu, The Atlas of
Disease, 2018
 CHAPTER 4

OLD TIMERS

THE FIRST MAP-MAKERS

I t’s all very well meticulously gathering the information for
the map, gromas and sextants in hand, mountain ranges
and oceans traversed, and then determining its purpose,
shaped by ideology or simple wayfinding, but someone
must actually create that map.

We don’t know the identity of those who crafted the very

first maps, such as the town plan at Çatal Höyük or even the
Babylonian Map of the World, but as time goes on the
cartographers emerge from the shadows and become
identifiable people with stories that can be told. At first
isolated names, by the classical era we know the identity of
dozens, and then hundreds of map-makers in the golden
age of cartography in the 16th and 17th century. It would
take a volume 20 times the size of this one to chronicle the
lives and achievements of them all, but the following is a
selection of some of the most notable up to the end of the
medieval period, from whom the selection of our
hypothetical map-maker might be made.
The philosophical school which emerged in the Greek
colonies of Ionia, what is now western Turkey, in the 6th
century BC was the first to speculate on the nature of the
world (other than attributing it to divine whim) and so,
understandably, some of its members were also the first to
try to map it. The earliest to have attempted this feat is said
to have been Anaximander (c. 610–546 BC) about whom
vexingly little is known: only a bare six lines of his work has
survived, but he is said to have believed the universe was
made up of a nebulous substance known as ‘the boundless’.
He was apparently well travelled and introduced the
gnomon or sundial to Sparta and, according to the later
Roman geographer Strabo (c. 64 BC–AD 24), published the
first geographical map.
 Roman mosaic of Anaximander, with a sundial, 3rd century AD

Perhaps a little less elusive might be Hecataeus (c. 560–

480 BC), another Milesian, who wrote the Periodos ges
(‘Circuit of the Earth’), the first Greek treatise on geography.
He, too, seems to have travelled widely, including to Egypt,
then under the control of Cambyses II of Persia (r. 530–522
BC), where he gained first-hand an appreciation of the might
of the Persian Empire. He tried his hand at statesmanship,
seeking in vain to dissuade his fellow citizens in Miletus from
joining a revolt of the Ionian Greek cities against Persia
which erupted in 499 BC. The Milesian leader Aristagoras is
said to have taken a pinax or bronze tablet showing a map
of the entire world as part of his campaign, though
presumably not the world map which Hecataeus, who
vigorously opposed the war, had himself composed. That
one is said to have shown the world as circular, with a
bounding ocean surrounding it, a feature of most early
Greek world maps, which the historian Herodotus mocked,
noting how unlikely it was the Earth was an exact circle as
though drawn ‘with a pair of compasses’.
Two centuries later, Greek cartographers had made
significant strides. Dicaearchus of Messana (c. 360–296 BC),
who as a pupil of Aristotle (384–322 BC) had access to an
intellectual milieu that embraced all the latest
developments in politics, history and philosophy, also wrote
a geographical treatise (confusingly also entitled Periodos
ges), which included a world map. Only tantalizing
fragments of his work survive, including a history of Greece,
a work on the soul (which he believed was not immortal)
and a treatise on measuring the height of mountains which,
oddly, he wanted to prove were not as high as they seemed
in order to confirm his theories about the Earth’s spherical
nature (mountainous bumps on whose surface would have
upset his sense of symmetry). On his world map
Dicaearchus was the first cartographer to insert a parallel, in
his case a line of latitude, dividing the world in two at a line
which ran eastwards from the Straits of Gibraltar through
Sardinia, Sicily, Asia Minor and as far as the western edge of
the Himalayas, where his geographical information petered
out.
The World According to Hecataeus of Miletus, 19th century reconstruction

Dicaearchus’s Periodos, and with it his world map, are

long lost and so there is no way of assessing whether the
criticism levelled at it by the Greek historian Polybius (c.
200–118 BC) and Strabo – that he got his measurements
wrong and portrayed the inhabited portion of the world as
far narrower than it really was – was justified. Almost a
thousand years later, Ambrosius Theodosius Macrobius (c.
AD 370–430) was still carrying the flame for classical
cartography. As proconsul of Africa in 410 and praetorian
prefect of Italy in 430, he was a witness to the buckling of
Rome’s frontiers under the growing weight of barbarian
incursions. His former area of operations in North Africa
suffered invasion by the Vandals, a Germanic group who
crossed the Strait of Gibraltar in 429 and steadily advanced
eastwards, swallowing up town after town until they finally
took Carthage, the greatest prize, 10 years later. His main
contribution to map-making came in a curious work, a
commentary on Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis (‘Dream of
Scipio’), in which the earlier author describes a sleep-vision
by the general Scipio Aemilianus shortly before his final
conquest of Carthage at the end of the Third Punic War in
146 BC. He is granted vision of the universe by his dead
grandfather Scipio Africanus – renowned for his defeat of
Rome’s almost-nemesis Hannibal – which demonstrates to
him how, despite its apparent might, Rome is just a small
part of a greater whole. The commentary explains how he is
shown the celestial spheres in which the planets are said to
circulate, and, most importantly for Macrobius, the climatic
belts into which the Earth was considered to be divided. The
northern hemisphere, the one in which all the regions known
to classical geographers were situated, was divided into a
cold zone in the far north, then a temperate one and to the
south a hot zone, with the assumption that beyond the
burning and impassable heat of the equator there was a
balancing southern set of climatic zones.
 Macrobius’s map of the World, Abbo of Fleury, 10th century

Although Macrobius’s map, like those of so many of his

predecessors, vanished over the ages, it did influence a
series of medieval imitators who incorporated his zonal
division on their much-simplified maps of the world. Despite
a flirtation with a non-spherical view of the Earth (as
championed by Cosmas Indicopleustes in the 6th century,
who, despite his apparent extensive travels as a merchant,
became convinced, once ensconced in a monastery in
Egypt’s Sinai Desert, that it was shaped like the Old
Testament Ark of the Covenant, see here), an alternative
tradition persisted, of maps which showed the world as
round. These maps divided it into two (or sometimes three)
landmasses, riven by great rivers (usually the Nile, Tigris
and Euphrates) which rendered it into the shape of the letter
‘T’, within the ‘O’ of the circle, and seem to have originated
with the 7th-century Spanish bishop, Isidore of Seville (see
here). Among its masters was the Benedictine abbot Beatus
of Liébana (c. 730–800) who wrote a Commentary on the
Apocalypse of St John around 776. From his eyrie in the
Picos de Europa mountains in the north of Spain, it must
have seemed like his world really was in the midst of an
apocalypse. The Kingdom of Asturias, in which his monastic
house lay, was in the last Christian region to survive the
conquest of the Visigothic Kingdom by Islamic Arab-Berber
armies in the decades after 711. The vibrant illustrations of
his manuscript are masterpieces of medieval art, their
shockingly bright hues and assemblage of strange beasts
such as fire-breathing horses with lions’ heads a warning to
sinners that judgement is at hand. His T-O map that
accompanies the work is equally bright, drawn in a style
known as Mozarabic, which incorporates the influence of the
Arabic culture that was just beginning to flower in the lands
to the south. Oriented with east at the top (where paradise
is shown with four rivers issuing from it), it shows a fourth
continent in addition to the traditional three (a reference to
the fact that each of the four evangelists, the authors of the
New Testament Gospels, was said to have been despatched
to one of them), the fourth of which is ‘farthest from the
world, beyond the ocean, in a region unknown to us because
of the heat’.
For sheer colour, yet simplicity, Beatus might be the
cartographer of choice, but the net can be cast a little wider.
One of the most renowned of early Chinese cartographers,
Pei Xiu (224–271) became a minister in the newly
established state of Western Jin. He was selected not for his
map-making ability, but for his reputation for virtue and
knowledge of the Confucian Classics – a talent that came in
handy in his initial posting as Prefect of the Masters of
Writing (in effect the imperial secretary). He was then
promoted to Minister of Works and immediately set about
commissioning a survey to replace the existing Han-era
maps which he criticized for their sloppiness, stating ‘one
cannot rely on them’ as they, in an unforgivable
cartographic sin, showed things which were simply not
there. In his Yu gong diyu tu (‘Regional Maps for the Tribute
of Yu’), a work on cartography which included maps, he set
down six basic principles to guide future map-makers,
including those that distances should be in proportion to
each other, and consistent means be used to measure road
lengths and the height of hills and mountains.
T-O map, Commentary on the Apocalypse of St John, Beatus of Liébana, c. AD 776 (11th-century
copy)
 Statue of Gyōki in Kobe, Japan

Pei Xiu’s reputation in China endured for many centuries.

In Japan, one of the first known cartographers became
equally famous. Gyōki (668–749) was a Buddhist monk who
entered the monastery of Asuka-Dera in the imperial capital
of Nara at the age of 15, but later adopted an itinerant life,
preaching Buddhism, offering succour to the poor and
building temples (almost 50 are attributed to him). He and
his followers also carried out public works, building dams,
canals and bridges to improve the life of the people. His
travels seem to have inspired him to reflect on the shape of
Japan, and he is said to have compiled a series of maps
(which may have been associated with an imperial order
issued in 738 for the creation of provincial mapping).
Although nothing survives directly to prove that Gyōki really
did make maps, a genre of slightly stylized maps of Japan,
with sparse topographical information included and a rather
flattened shape to the Japanese islands, came to have his
name attached to them (one of the oldest, created in 1306,
is held in the Ninna-ji Temple of Kyoto and bears an
inscription warning that it should not be shown to
outsiders).
There is something strangely comforting in the idea that
just as European monks were huddled in their scriptoria
laboriously copying lavish manuscripts, including splendid
maps of the world such as the Beatus Apocalypse, their
Buddhist counterparts in Japan were doing the same. By the
time Beatus and Gyōki were working, map-making had
become established in another part of the world, too. The
culture of scholarship which flourished under the Muslim
Abbasid dynasty from its new capital in Baghdad, founded in
762, made it the centre both for the transmission of
knowledge from the classical world and a vibrant centre of
innovation in learning in its own right. The Bayt al-Hikmah or
House of Wisdom, established around 830 in Baghdad,
became the epicentre of it and among its greatest stars was
Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi (c. 780–850), a polymath
with a huge range of interests which included astronomy,
geometry and algebra. In the latter his contribution, solving
six standard forms of equation, was so great that a
corruption of his name gave us the modern term ‘algorithm’
(in Latin he was known as Algorismus). He also produced
the Kitab Surat al-Ard (‘Book of the Image of the World’),
which included a list of over 4,000 locations, with their
latitude and longitude. It was all rather like Ptolemy of
Alexandria (see here), and indeed al-Khwarizmi claimed to
have extracted the information from the Greek geographer,
adding Macrobius to his list of influences by including a
division into seven climatic zones in the world map he
included in his book. Only one copy survives with just four
maps, including a famous map of the Nile, showing the
fictional ‘Mountains of the Moon’ believed by Ptolemy to be
the river’s source (see here).

Map of the Nile, Kitab Surat al-Ard, Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, c. AD 820 (11th-
century copy)

While Arab and Persian cartographers were reaching ever

greater heights of excellence, their European equivalents
were floundering somewhat, the scholarship of Rome
crystallized into conformist collections acceptable to the
Christian Church, map-making caught in a limbo between
the lost technical knowledge of the Romans – though a few
isolated maps may have survived – and before a new burst
of map-making in the 14th century. In this relatively dark
period Gerald of Wales or Giraldus Cambrensis (c. 1146–
1223) would probably not recommend himself for
topographic accuracy, but for novelty – his is among the
very first cartographic representations of Ireland – and for
the vividness of his writing, he would make an entertaining
choice. Born in Pembrokeshire, he overcame the
disappointment of being rejected as candidate for the
bishopric of St Davids (by no less a figure than Henry II of
England, who may have held Gerald’s distant relationship to
the Welsh royal family of Deheubarth against him) and went
to study canon law and theology at Paris, one of Europe’s
principal centres of ecclesiastical learning. Despite earlier
royal disfavour, in 1184 Gerald entered the service of Henry
II as a chaplain and was selected to accompany the king’s
brother John on an expedition to Ireland the following year.
Out of that trip came the Topographia Hibernica, which he
completed in 1188 and which is illustrated by his rather
schematic map and enlivened by a narrative of Irish history
and customs, spiced with some rather unlikely tales of
chimerical half-lions, half-female creatures and a fish which
had three golden teeth. He can hardly have endeared
himself to his Irish hosts as he described their countrymen
as completely savage and given to ‘abominable treachery’.
He followed this up with a similar work on Wales, the
Descriptio Cambriae, in which he is rather more sympathetic
to his countrymen and – at a time when much of Wales was
yet to be conquered by the English – he advises that ‘while
the English fight for power, the Welsh fight for freedom’. The
latter part of his career was again embittered by being once
more blackballed as a candidate for the bishopric of St
Davids in 1199 and, after a pilgrimage to Rome in 1207, he
fades into obscurity.

Britain, Ireland, and the Orkney Islands (top); illustration from a legend of the priest of Ulster
and the wolf (bottom), Topographia Hibernica, Gerald of Wales, 1188 (late 12th or early 13th
century copy)
 Not all medieval cartographers were as well travelled as
Gerald, but some managed to achieve even greater fame
for their geographical erudition. Ranulf Higden (c. 1280–
1364) was a Benedictine monk at the Abbey of St Werburgh
in Chester, a retreat which he seems scarcely to have left in
his adult life. Yet it did not stop him composing the
Polychronicon (1342), a universal history of the world up to
Higden’s own times, which became one of the publishing
sensations of the 14th century and was one of the first
books printed (now in English translation) after William
Caxton introduced the printing press to England in 1475.
The maps which accompanied it included a fine world map
with personifications of the wind arrayed around the outside
border and elements Higden considered of especial
importance picked out in red (including the Pillars of
Hercules, looking alarmingly as though they are going to
sink off the coast of Spain). Versions of his maps, which
have their roots in early Christian mappae mundi are
circular, almond-shaped or oval – the latter because it was
supposedly the shape of Noah’s Ark. So famous did Higden
become that he was even summoned to the court of Edward
III in 1352 ‘with all your chronicles, and those which are in
your charge to speak and take advice with our council on
certain matters which will be explained to you on our
behalf’.
World map, Polychronicon, Ranulf Higden, 1342
Map of Hibernia (Ireland) and Albion (Great Britain) derived from Ptolemy’s Geography,
associated with Maximus Planudes, early 14th century

If a cartographer with royal connections is insufficient a

catch, then one who (though relatively little known)
arguably had the greatest influence of any map-maker
during the 14th century might pass muster. Although the
Byzantine Empire, the modern name for the eastern Roman
provinces which survived the collapse of the empire in the
West in the 5th century, was not known for its intellectual
vibrancy, it did transmit, or at least preserve, a great deal of
ancient learning and manuscripts which would otherwise
have been lost. In its twilight, as much of it had been lost to
invading Ottoman Turks, Christian kings in the Balkans,
misdirected crusaders and other sundry adventurers, it
underwent something of a miniature intellectual renaissance
of its own. One of those responsible for the revival in
scientific studies was Maximus Planudes (1260–c. 1310), a
scholar and theologian who established a monastery for
laymen in Constantinople (more a gentlemen’s club for the
retired than a hothouse of prayer), where he gathered
manuscripts from throughout the rather diminished empire.
In between a new edition of the Greek Anthology, writing a
treatise on Arabic numerals (the cumbersome Roman
version were still in use at the time), a definitive collection
of Greek prose from classical times to the 11th century AD
and acting as an ambassador to Venice, he decided to
research Ptolemy’s long-neglected Geography. It took a
concerted search, but in 1295 he came across a copy.
Although the text referred to 26 maps, there were none with
the manuscript that he had unearthed and so Planudes had
new ones drawn, using the instructions contained in the
manuscript. These were so striking that the emperor
Andronicus II (r. 1282–1328) had a copy made for himself
and others followed suit. It was one such manuscript that
Manuel Chrysoloras, leading light of a later generation of
Byzantine scholars, brought with him when he came to
Florence in 1397, sparking interest in the West in Ptolemy
(once humanists in Italy had learnt enough Greek to
appreciate it!). Planudes had unwittingly ignited a
cartographic revolution.
Of course, when western European cartographers began
their intense engagement with Ptolemy’s maps – ironically
just a century before the Ptolemaic world view was radically
upended by the voyages of Christopher Columbus – they
had the benefit of over a century of experience of map-
makers working within the portolan tradition. Many of these
are little more than names; the earliest of whom with any
clue to his identity is Pietro Vesconte (fl. 1310–30), who,
from inscriptions on his maps, claimed to be Genoese, but
appears to have spent his active career in Venice. His
earliest chart of 1311 was followed by several others of the
Mediterranean, and then in 1320 by a larger atlas. This was
appended to the Liber secretorum fidelium crucis (‘Book of
the Secrets of the Faithful of the Cross’) by Marino Sanudo
(c. 1270–1343), an aristocratic Venetian, whose forebear
Marco had acquired his own mini-state based in Naxos in the
Aegean as ‘Duke of the Archipelago’ when the Byzantine
Empire was dismembered by the armies of the Fourth
Crusade in 1204. Despite this rather dubious heritage – the
Fourth Crusaders had been supposed to travel to the Holy
Land to recover control of Jerusalem but had been diverted
by the Venetians in payment of the funds to transport them
across the Aegean – Marino Sanudo lobbied vigorously for
the launching of a new crusade to revive the Crusader
States in Palestine and Syria (the last significant stronghold
of which had been lost when Acre fell to the Mamluk Sultan
al-Ashraf Khalil in 1291). Despite his liberal use of
Vesconte’s mapping, Sanudo never acknowledged the
authorship of a cartographer whose work shows an
increasing sophistication of knowledge even outside his
home domain (the Isle of Man starts to appear on his work
from 1321, whereas before it was largely absent).
Engraving of Ptolemy of Alexandria in his observatory, 19th century
Map from the Atlas nautique de la mer Méditerranée et de la mer Noire (‘Nautical Atlas of the
Mediterranean and Black Seas’), Pietro Vesconte, 1313

Perhaps the most stunning piece of mapping surviving

from the 14th century is the Catalan Atlas, a kind of hybrid
of a Christian mappa mundi and a portolan, drawn on four
leaves, which together would make a huge map some 3 m
wide x 65 cm tall (6½ x 2 ft). It is packed with figures from
myth (such as the giants Gog and Magog somewhere in
Siberia) and from history, most notably Mansa Musa, the
ruler of Mali, rumours of whose wealth were based on his
very real pilgrimage to Mecca, during which his lavish
spending of gold in Cairo caused a crash in the value of the
metal, and who is shown on the atlas’s first map leaf
contemplating a large gold nugget he holds in his hand. The
atlas was the work of Abraham Cresques (1325–87) and his
son, whose cartographic workshop in Palma, Majorca,
produced maps for Pedro IV of Aragon (who had conquered
Majorca from his cousin Jaime III in 1343) and his son John.
So valuable did Pedro find Cresques’ services that in 1381
he awarded him the title Magister mapamundorum et
buxolarum (‘Master of World Maps and Compasses’), and
exemption from having to wear the identifying badge which
other members of the Catalan Jewish community were
forced to display.

Mansa Musa, Catalan Atlas, 1375

The main reason for these accolades must have been the
Catalan Atlas, a piece of lavish cartographic diplomacy
which was commissioned from Abraham as a gift to Charles,
the future King Charles VI of France, but then the dauphin.
The map-making tradition was carried on by Abraham’s son
Jafudà (or Yehuda), but the magic of the royal protection
afforded by the Catalan Atlas had clearly run out, as in 1391
he was forced to convert to Christianity and adopted the
name Jaime Riba. It was long believed that Jafudà had taken
refuge in Portugal, where he entered the service of Prince
Henry the Navigator, whose school of navigation at Sagres
became the driving force behind many of the early
Portuguese voyages down the west coast of Africa. Although
the identity of the ‘Jacome de Mallorca’ who became
Henry’s favoured cartographer is now disputed, whoever he
was certainly came from Majorca and was succeeded before
1439 by Gabriel de Valseca (c. 1408–67), another Jewish
Catalan convert, who compiled one of the first really
accurate maps of the Azores (though also including a
scattering of imaginary mainstays of 15th-century Atlantic
mapping, such as Antillia and Brasil, see Chapter 8).
The Portuguese voyages had already opened a maritime
window on the world to Europeans who had for centuries
been confined in their horizons to the Mediterranean in the
south, the uncertain borderlands with the Islamic world to
the east and the Baltic to the north, with little practical
knowledge and much speculation and wishful thinking about
what might lie to the west. That window grew larger by the
mid-15th century and coincided with a significant increase
in the number of maps produced which relied on Ptolemy as
their model rather than medieval mappae mundi or portolan
charts. At least two of the most notable cartographers of the
era were monks, such as Fra Mauro (c. 1400–64), who
created a stunningly beautiful world map from the refuge of
the Camaldolese monastery of St Michael on the Venetian
island of Murano around 1450.
More prolific was Nicolaus Germanus (c. 1420–90), a
monk at the Benedictine Abbey of Reichenbach in south-
western Germany from 1442. By 1464 he had made his way
to Italy and, armed with a knowledge of mathematics,
cartography and a passion for Ptolemaic mapping which he
had somehow acquired, he began producing revised
versions of Ptolemy’s Geography. In all he created about 15
versions over the next 20 years, most notable for the
tabulae modernae (‘modern tables’) which included parts of
the world that were unknown to Ptolemy (such as
Scandinavia and West Africa). He also displayed his
cartographic skill by introducing dots to show the location of
places on the map (rather than just putting the place name
in the rough locality) and employing a new trapezoidal
projection, in which the lines of latitude were equidistant
from each other but those of longitude converged on the
Poles. One of the earliest of these, in 1466, was produced
for Duke Borso d’Este of Ferrara, who was so taken with it
that he wrote a personal letter of thanks praising Nicolaus
‘for his excellent book’ together with 100 gold florins, and
then, a month later, sent a further 30 gold florins. Nicolaus
continued drawing maps in the early 1480s, and in 1488 he
was visited by the humanist Conrad Celtis in Florence who
heard him complain that others had made use of his work
and derived all the glory and profit from it (clearly, the
stream of donations from rich patrons had dried up).
Gabriel de Valseca portolan containing the first cartographic representation of the Azores,
1439
World map, Fra Mauro, c. 1450
Nicolaus Cusanus (wearing purple robe), detail of Passion Triptych in the Abbey chapel of St
Nikolaus Hospital in Bernkastel-Wittlich, Germany, 15th century

An even more illustrious cleric cartographer was another

Nicolaus, Nicolaus Cusanus (1401–64), also known as
Nicholas of Cusa, who was born at Kues between Koblenz
and Trier on the River Mosel. He came from a well-to-do
merchant family and was educated at the University of
Heidelberg, where he studied philosophy, but then
transferred to Italy, where he gained his doctorate in canon
law in 1423. There he associated with a humanist circle
which included the mathematician Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli
(1397–1482), also a talented cartographer, who produced a
world map that may have influenced Columbus’s decision to
voyage across the Atlantic in 1492 (see here). By 1427 he
had entered the service of the Archbishop of Cologne,
cultivating on the side a huge variety of intellectual
interests, which ranged from unearthing a new manuscript
of the comedies of the Roman playwright Terence, to
proving that the Donation of Constantine (the allegedly 4th-
century document on which the Papacy based its claim to
secular power over much of central Italy) was a forgery. By
the 1430s he had been ordained a priest and attended the
Council of Basel in 1432 called to re-establish papal
supremacy after a period of rifts, schisms and anti-popes,
but which ended in acrimony and the transfer of most of the
delegates to Ferrara, more safely in the papal orbit. Nicolaus
was then sent to Constantinople in 1437 as part of a mission
to attempt to reunite the Orthodox and Catholic Churches,
and achieved the apex of his career in 1448 when he was
elevated to become a cardinal.

The earliest map of Germany, Nicolaus Cusanus, 1450

Nicolaus wrote widely on astronomy, philology and

political science. By a rather convoluted path he prefigured
Copernicus by asserting that the Earth could not be the
centre of the universe (but only because he reasoned that
only God could be the centre of the universe, and as he was
a non-corporeal being, then if the universe had a physical
centre, it could not be God). During his travels, this
intellectual magpie picked up much about mapping and
manuscripts both of Ptolemy’s Geography and the Antonine
Itinerary (see here) He wrote a cartographical treatise De
figura mundi (‘On the Figure of the World’) in 1463 which
has, unfortunately, since been lost. His cartographic legacy
instead relies on the map he made of central Europe,
showing the area between Flanders and the Danube Delta
and between Jutland in Denmark and northern Italy. Because
there were few sources to go on, he probably obtained a
great deal of his information during a trip he made as a
papal envoy to Germany in 1450–52. The final version, now
known as the Eichstätt map was probably completed in the
early 1470s, and represents the first map of the region
which shows it with any degree of accuracy. By this time,
though, Nicolaus had been dead for almost 10 years.
By then the age of scholar monks had only a few decades
left to run before the Reformation shaped a radically
different intellectual landscape in Europe. The world as
Ptolemy knew it (albeit with a few judicious additions by
cartographers such as Nicolaus Germanus) was also in its
last years. Almost the final map created before Christopher
Columbus’s voyage revolutionized Europeans’
understanding of the world was produced, by chance, in
1492, the very year that the Genoese navigator landed in
the Americas: a globe by Martin Behaim (1459–1507), which
is the oldest world globe to survive. It was not the very
earliest, as terrestrial globes are referred to in the 1430s
and Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy had one in 1467,
according to an inventory of his library, which referred to it
as having ‘the form of an apple’. Made in 1444 by his court
astronomer Guillaume Hobit, it took three-and-a-half years
to construct. Referring to such globes as ‘apples’ clearly
already had a track record by the time Behaim created his
Erdapfel (‘Earth Apple’). Behaim wasn’t himself a prominent
cartographer, but by trade a cloth merchant from
Nuremberg, who spent several decades in the service of the
Portuguese, participating in voyages down the west coast of
Africa sponsored by King Joaõ II. He certainly seems to have
visited the Azores and may have sailed down as far as
Guinea. When he returned to his hometown in 1490, his
reputation as a man versed in the new geography preceded
him and he was commissioned by the council of magistrates
to produce a world globe. It took a team of artists and
craftsmen to translate the knowledge Behaim had gleaned
into the globe. The spherical clay ball which formed its core
was fashioned by the local artisan Hans Glockengiesser,
while another craftsman, Ruprecht Kolberger, made the
structure into which the Erdapfel was slotted. The artist
Georg Glockendon painted the map itself onto strips of linen
which had been fixed to the clay sphere during firing.
 Erdapfel, Martin Behaim, 1492

The most striking thing to modern eyes about the

Erdapfel is what it does not show. Where the Americas
should be there is a simply a foreshortened stretch of ocean
between western Europe and Cipango (or Japan), a
deceptively short distance made even more enticing by the
placing of the legendary island of Antillia as a convenient,
but fictitious, resting point along the way. It was notions
such as this – but not Behaim’s globe itself, which was not
complete in time for Columbus to see it – that inspired the
first European voyages across the Atlantic. Shortly after the
first of them set off, Behaim returned to Portugal – he had
only been in Nuremberg to sort out his late mother’s estate
– where he died in 1507. By then, doubtless word had
reached him about the new lands which his globe had
entirely omitted, an occupational hazard for cartographers
in an age when every year brought new coastlines and
interiors in need of mapping and the redundancy of what
had seemed the most up-to-date images of the world.

Portrait of Martin Behaim

Modern recreation of the map gores that made up Behaim’s Erdapfel from Martin Behaim. His
Life and his Globe by Ernst Ravenstein, 1908
 CHAPTER 5

IN THE ROUND

GLOBES AND SPHERES

I t seems intuitive that a map should be flat, on a surface that
can be spread out and easily consulted (or equally as two-
dimensional images viewed on a computer or smartphone
screen). Yet we all know that the world itself is not flat, and no
mapping projection can ever accurately represent the areas,
angles or distances on the ground in two dimensions. The
answer? A globe.

The assertion of the 17th-century Dutch mathematician and

surveyor Gemma Frisius (1508–55) that ‘The mounted
globe . . . is the only one of all instruments whose frequent
usage delights astronomers, leads geographers, confirms
historians . . . is admired by grammarians, guides pilots, in
short, aside from its beauty, its form is indescribably useful
and necessary for everyone’ probably goes further than most
cartographers today would allow in their praise of the globe,
but it has a certain appealing truth about it.
 Portrait of Gemma Frisius

The manufacture of globes is a very ancient practice,

divided into two complementary but related areas. The
observation of the heavens by ancient astronomers, with the
sky appearing roughly in the shape of a hemisphere,
suggested the idea of a spherical model of the sky marked
with the planets and constellations, with the very first
mention of such a creation being by the Greek poet Aratus of
Soli (c. 315–240 BC) who described one which had been built
by the renowned astronomer Eudoxus of Cnidus (c. 408–355
BC). The other, and to us more familiar, form of globe is a
terrestrial sphere depicting the geography of the Earth, and
these seem to have come a little later, with the first reference
being to one built by the Greek philosopher Crates of Mallos
around 150 BC.
The oldest globe that still survives is part of a sculpture –
the Farnese Atlas, a marble statue of Atlas, though he is
shown holding up a model of the heavens, rather than the
Earth. Dating from around AD 150, it shows 17 constellations
in the northern sky, one of the oldest star maps in existence.
It forms part of a tradition of models of the heavens which
later resulted in the construction of armillary spheres (three-
dimensional models representing the paths of celestial
bodies) and astrolabes, which show the same phenomena,
but on a flat plane. While other forms of cartography
languished, these were produced in some numbers in the
Middle Ages, particularly in the Islamic world, such as the
magnificent celestial globe built by the Mosul astronomer
Muhammad ibn Hilal around 1275.
Well before then, the idea of constructing globes (and
maps) had been given an intellectual coherence by the Greek
geographer Ptolemy of Alexandria (c. AD 90–168) whose
Geography provided co-ordinates for the location of places,
which could then be mapped. As far as we know, however, no
one in Europe actually constructed a globe again until 1325,
the date at which the celestial globe acquired by the German
cardinal and astronomer Nicolaus Cusanus (or Nicholas of
Cusa, see here) was built. An intricate construction with a
celestial sphere mounted in an outer sphere made of three
brass rings which could be manipulated to show the
precession of the equinoxes (the gradual shift of the stars in
the night sky over the years), Nicolaus bought it for a bargain
38 guilders in a job lot with other astronomical instruments
and manuscripts in 1444.
Map after Crates of Mallos, 2nd century BC (19th century reconstruction)
 Farnese Atlas, c. AD 150

A terrestrial globe is mentioned in a manuscript from

Vienna, the Regionum sive civitatum distantiae (‘The
Distances of Regions and Cities’), dating from 1430–35, but
the first terrestrial globe to survive was the Erdapfel (or ‘Earth
Apple’) made by the Nuremberg cartographer Martin Behaim
in 1492 (see here). A collaboration with the artist Georg
Glockendon, it set the model for globe construction for
centuries, created from a clay spherical core (later papier-
maché or paperboard was used) on which a layer of vellum or
paper was then laid, before the sphere was split in two, and
the vellum sheet cut into 12 elliptical tooth-shaped sections
on which the map was then drawn (or, as time went on,
printed). The two halves of the sphere were then reattached
and the map sheets (or ‘gores’ as they were termed) were
pasted onto it and varnished. Ornate brass or other metal
rings fixed the globe onto a metal or wooden frame which
then allowed the globe to be rotated.
Globes captured the spirit of the age in the 16th century,
when it seemed discoveries of new lands (or at least new to
Europeans) were being made almost every year and a globe
seemed a striking and apt way to capture them. It is no
accident that the first printed map gores to survive were
made by Martin Waldseemüller (1470–1520), whose 1507
world map fixed the New World’s name as ‘America’. He was
a man who understood that the geography, as it had been
transmitted ever since Ptolemy, had changed for ever.
Among the greatest map-makers of the era was Johann
Schöner (1477–1547), born in Karlstadt in Germany, whose
career as a Catholic priest was cut short by his superiors on
account of his worrying interests in astronomy and the three
children he had with his concubine. On one, made in 1515, he
shows a strait of water between ‘Basilie Regio’ (or Tierra del
Fuego) and South America, a full five years before Ferdinand
Magellan (1480–1521) actually discovered it. He was the also
the first to make a pair of matching terrestrial and celestial
globes, the second of which may well have formed the model
for that shown in Hans Holbein’s celebrated painting of The
Ambassadors (1533).
World map gores, Martin Waldseemüller, 1507
Title page of Luculentissima quaedam terrae totius descriptio (‘A Most Lucid Description of All
Lands’), Johann Schöner, 1515

By 1530 Gemma Frisius had produced his De principiis

astronomiae & cosmographiae decque vsu globi (‘On the
principles of astronomy and cosmography through the use of
the globe’), a manual for aspiring terrestrial globe-makers
(which may explain his excessive enthusiasm for their
production). The rest of the 16th century saw no let-up in
their production, with masterpieces such as the diminutive
11-cm (4¼-in) diameter celestial globe by Caspar Vopel,
which is encased in a cradle of 11 metal rings to form a
complex armillary sphere. Gerard Mercator (1512–94), too,
turned his hand to constructing terrestrial globes, some of
which are marked with stars to guide the confused terrestrial
traveller at night. The masters of later 16th-century globe-
making, however, were the Van Langren family, one of whom
made the first map of the Moon. Arnold Floris van Langren (c.
1525–1610) had been a pupil of the astronomer Tycho Brahe,
who created a massive celestial sphere, some 2.7 m (9 ft) in
diameter at his Uraniborg observatory in Denmark, and it was
perhaps there that he developed his taste for globes. Van
Langren’s earliest masterpiece, a 33-cm (13-in) diameter
terrestrial globe built around 1586, took advantage of the
increasing skill of conventional Dutch cartographers such as
Lucas Janszoon Waghenaer (see here), and began a period of
about a century in which Dutch globe-makers such as Willem
Janszoon Blaeu (1571–1638) became dominant.
Blaeu’s 1617 globes, which had a diameter of 68 cm (27
in), were the largest produced until that date in a market
which had become focused more on luxury tastes than the
practicalities of navigation at sea (where such leviathans
would have been impractical). Just as the middle of the
century saw the scales of global maritime supremacy begin to
tilt towards the British, so London became the centre of a
new, thriving trade in globe-making, beginning with Joseph
Moxon (1627–91) who spent much of his youth in the
Netherlands where his Puritan father had fled to avoid
religious persecution. On his return to London about 1650 he
used what he had learnt there to print maps and build globes,
two of which the diarist Samuel Pepys acquired. He also
produced globes at the opposite end of the size scale from
Blaeu, his business catalogue described his 1670 globe as
‘Concave hemispheres of the starry orb, which serves for a
case to a terrestrial globe of 3˝ diameter made portable for
the pocket’, making him arguably the inventor of the pocket
globe.

Armillary sphere, Caspar Vopel, 1542

Pair of globes (terrestrial and celestial) for Sultan Murad III, Gerard Mercator, 1579
Terrestrial table globe, Jacob Floris van Langren, 1589
 Globe, Willem Janszoon Blaeu, 1602

In patriotic fashion, Moxon’s diminutive globe showed the

course of Sir Francis Drake’s circumnavigation of the world,
but he, and other British globe-makers such as Robert Morden
(c. 1650–1703) who created a larger 76-cm (30-in) globe in
1675, faced stiff competition in the international market.
Vincenzo Coronelli (1650–1718) like many cartographers a
cleric (in his case a Franciscan monk), created a huge pair of
globes for Louis XIV of France in the early 1680s, with a
diameter of over 3.85 m (12½ ft). The fee he received from
the king was a handy addition to his already comfortable
stipend of 400 florins a month as Official Cosmographer of the
Venetian Republic. It was also part of a gigantism in globe-
production that would culminate in such monsters as that
presented by Duke Frederick of Holstein-Gottorp to Tsar Peter
the Great of Russia in 1714, which was over 3.1 m (10 ft) in
diameter and had a door through which a dozen people could
cram into the interior to experience a planetarium-like effect
on a celestial sphere inscribed on the inside, or the even more
gargantuan 9.7-m (31¾-ft) Pancosmos created by the German
globe-maker Erhard Weigel (1625–99), into which an even
larger crowd could squeeze, to be treated to displays of
meteorological phenomena such as fog and lightning.
Globe-makers such as John Senex (1678–1740), best known
for his conventional English Atlas of 1714, carried on the
tradition in London, which was inherited by George Adams
(1709–72) who achieved the cartographic heights of
mathematical instrument-maker to the Board of Ordnance in
1748 and provided maps, instruments and globes to James
Cook’s expedition to the South Seas to observe the Transit of
Venus in 1769.
As the expedition of Cook and other European explorers,
particularly in Africa, filled in the blanks in European maps,
globe production spread to all corners of the world they
portrayed, with the first successful manufacturer in the United
States being James Wilson (1763–1855), who made his first
globes in his Vermont farmhouse and never travelled outside
New England to see the world portrayed on his work. By then
globes had become a fixture in the libraries of educated
households and in school classrooms. What had once been a
novel and almost mystical way of comprehending the
universe, was now commonplace.
Pair of globes for Louis XIV, Vincenzo Coronelli, early 1680s
Terrestrial and celestial pocket globe, John Senex, c. 1710
 CHAPTER 6

SURFACE MATTERS

MATERIALS FOR DRAWING MAPS

O n what surface is the map to be drawn? For a long time the
answer to this question would have appeared obvious: on
paper, on course. Yet in the 21st century doubt is creeping in.
Most of the maps we summon on our phones or computer
screens exist in a kind of electronic limbo, as intangible data in
an innumerable collection of computer servers that make up
‘the cloud’. It’s a return to an era more than 2,000 years ago,
when paper was not yet even invented and maps were drawn,
inscribed, engraved and, in some cases, chiselled on a
surprising variety of surfaces.

The very first maps may have been ephemeral affairs

scratched in the dirt with sticks, which soon washed away.
Something of this tradition, but with a philosophical bent,
survived in the sand mandalas created by Tibetan Buddhists.
Mandalas are a representation of the Buddhist universe (and
are yet another form of ideological or religious mapping) and
appear as early as the 1st century AD on carvings and in
manuscripts. A physical representation of a mental or sacred
space, they act as a guide to meditation as the observer works
his way through the labyrinth of representations and meanings
portrayed on them. In the 15th century, Tibetan Buddhists took
this one stage further by creating mandalas made of brightly
coloured sand. First mentioned by the Buddhist scholar Gos lo
tsa ba Ghzon ndu dpal in 1476–78, their value lies partly in
their very impermanence: they are created to be contemplated
and then destroyed in a gesture symbolic of the transience of
all physical things and as a lesson in not becoming too
attached to material objects.
Marshall Islands ‘stick map’, c. 1920s
 Sketch of Upper Canada on birchbark, Elizabeth Simcoe, c. 1795

Slightly more permanent than sand (although likely to decay

unless carefully preserved) are maps made of wood. A tradition
arose in the Pacific, in particular in the Marshall Islands, of
‘stick maps’ which showed the routes between islands. Their
uniqueness lies in the laying of the network of sticks to show
ocean swells and currents. These were of vital importance to
the early Polynesian navigators who ventured out from around
AD 500 on outrigger canoes to conduct voyages of exploration
and settlement, which were arguably more impressive than
those of European navigators such as Columbus or Magellan a
thousand years later. Although the tradition is probably of great
antiquity, the techniques were passed in secret within the
islands’ ruling families and they only came to the notice of
outsiders in the 1860s when European missionaries came
across them, and a detailed description was only made in the
1890s by a certain Captain Winkler of the Imperial German
Navy. He described the main swells, such as the rilib or
‘backbone’, which the Marshallese chronicled on their stick
maps, and even the okar or interference pattern in currents
caused by the presence of a nearby island. Although now
superseded by modern navigational devices, the craft of
making them was still alive in the 1960s, giving a sense of the
very first attempts that humans must have made to give
physical representation to the space around them.
The Marshallese stick maps are not the only maps to have
been created from wood, although most have been drawn on
its surface rather than using the material as the map itself.
European explorers and scientists in North America and Siberia
came across maps drawn on birchbark by indigenous peoples.
Various species of the Betula or beech tree shed their bark in
thin layers, providing an ideal medium for sketching maps, a
practice that seems to have been particularly common among
the Algonquian and Iroquoian peoples around the Great Lakes.
The French explorer René-Robert de la Salle (1643–87) – a
complex character who gave up his vocation to be a Jesuit
missionary because of ‘moral weakness’ but who explored the
Mississippi for France as far as its basin in Louisiana – came
across one in 1687 among the Cenis people. This showed ‘a
map of their country, of that of their neighbours, and of the
river Colbert, or Mississippi’ and the memory of how to make
them seems to have still been alive at least two centuries later
along the east coast of the United States and Canada.
Kangnido map, 1402
OSS Escape and Evasion Map printed on silk, US Central Intelligence Agency, 1944

Even more apparently perishable, but of enduring

importance in the history of cartography, were maps drawn on
silk. The earliest surviving examples are the Mawangdui maps,
found in a Han-era tomb and dating from around 168 BC (see
here), at a time when the use of silk for documents in general
had become widespread. We know that there must have been
earlier examples, however, as one of them played a central role
in an assassination attempt on Prince Zheng of the state of Qin.
Not long before the final stages of his campaign to unite China
– he became its first emperor and took the title Qin Shih Huang
Di in 231 BC – Zheng received a message that a defector from
the rival state of Yan had gained possession of a map which
bore intelligence of vital military importance. Having a
weakness for maps in general, the prince admitted Jing Ke, the
defector, but the plot failed, as the would-be assassin bungled
his strike, and Zheng was saved by his chief physician who
bludgeoned him into submission with his medical bag.
Textile maps had a long career in East Asia – the Kangnido
map of the world, made in Korea in 1402 is one notable
example – but they were produced independently by other
cultural traditions. When the Spanish arrived in Mexico and
overthrew the Aztec Empire in 1521, among the items of
plunder which they could not simply melt down for bullion
(resulting in the wholesale destruction of much of the Aztec
artistic production) were maps drawn on cloth created by
weaving the fibres of the agave plant. Although the
conquistador Hernán Cortes (1485–1547) is said to have been
shown cloth maps illustrating the whole of the Aztec Empire,
one of the very few to survive is the Map of Metlaltoyuca,
named after the town in the state of Puebla where it was found
hidden in a stone box in the 19th century. It portrays an as-yet
unidentified town, with a stepped pyramid temple in the centre
surrounded by a network of rivers and roads, and glyphs which
denote regional boundaries (which, too, have not been
deciphered).
 Detail of Warwick, Sheldon Tapestry, William Sheldon, c. 1590–1600

By the time Europeans encountered cloth maps in

Mesoamerica, they had already adopted the practice in Europe,
although woven with wool rather than agave or silk. The
tradition of lavish tapestries – products of the high-end weaving
houses of the Netherlands or East Anglia – which adorned the
houses of the nobility and the palaces of royalty was extended
to maps. One such example displayed in Greenwich Palace on
the occasion of a feast attended by Henry VIII in May 1527, was
designed by Nicholas Kratzer, the royal astronomer, and
described as ‘a connying [cunning] thing’. A particularly fine
set of tapestries was created by William Sheldon, who owned a
weaving business at Barcheston in Warwickshire, but who
engaged in a fortuitous piece of self-promotion by producing
sets of huge county maps of Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and
Worcestershire, as well as his home county. At 6 x 4 m (20 x 13
ft) in extent, they must certainly have been eye-catching and a
sign of how cartographic tapestries could be used for
ostentatious display. Not long after, Lord Howard of Effingham -
Queen Elizabeth I’s Lord High Admiral and the commander of
the fleet that defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588 –
commissioned the Dutch weaver François Spierincx to produce
a new set of map tapestries to celebrate his triumph. He called
on the best artistic talent available, with the designs made by
the Dutch artist Hendrik Cornelisz Vroom (1562–1640), the
greatest early Dutch maritime painter, and the maps designed
by the queen’s surveyor of buildings, Robert Adams. The
resulting 10 tapestries hung in the House of Lords until 16
October 1834, when they were destroyed in the fire that
engulfed the Houses of Parliament, fuelled by the huge amount
of combustible material stored there, including centuries of the
Exchequer’s records and Sheldon’s maps.

Map of London and The Great Exhibition on a glove, 1851

On a far different scale, but still employing fabric as the

medium for the map, were the ‘glove maps’ which came into
vogue in Victorian London. One set, produced by the London
corn merchant George Shove, showed a plan of the Great
Exhibition of 1851 and the surrounding area, ensuring that the
owner never got lost as the map was, quite literally, always on
hand.
Such perishable mediums are somewhat at odds with the
desire for permanence exhibited by many of the earliest maps
and their creators. We have already seen how some of the very
first were created on clay tablets, such as the Nuzi field map
which dates from Mesopotamia around 2300 BC, or the town
plan of Nippur from about 1500 BC (see here), which were
baked after being inscribed with the maps, a process that
ensured their long-term survival. Even earlier, the Tepe Gawra
jar from around 4500 BC is the first example of the painting of
maps onto a ceramic base, a technique that was still going
strong in 19th-century Japan when plates, bowls and sake cups
showing maps of Japan and the imperial capital Kyushu were
produced in large quantities (and in commemorative plates and
bowls into the 21st century).
Nuzi clay tablet, Mesopotamia, 2300 BC
 Pottery ostracon of a temple plan from Deir el-Bahri, Egypt, c. 1250 BC

Stone, perhaps the most durable surface of all, was used as

the base on which to draw maps right from the beginning, such
as the Çatal Höyük fresco map from Neolithic Anatolia, which
dates from c. 6200 BC (see here) and the Bedolina Map, from
northern Italy’s Val Camonica, which comprises a series of
petroglyphs, which have been interpreted as a topographic
map incised into a rock around just over 4 m (13½ ft) long,
including what may be the huts of villages, trackways and
fields.
The Bedolina Map was drawn sometime between 1600 and
1000 BC, by which time another set of inhabitants of the Italian
peninsula had built both states of vastly greater complexity and
longevity and maps of far greater sophistication. The Roman
genius for engineering and determination to lay out their new
settlements into intricately surveyed plots (see here) found its
expression in stone, such as the cadastral (or survey) map from
Arausio (modern Orange) in southern France produced about AD
77. Existing now only in a series of fragments, when complete
it was probably affixed to a wall, a very public demonstration of
who was supposed to own which plot of land. That this was a
very live issue is proven by the inscription which accompanied
the cadastral maps. This related that the survey had been
compiled under the Emperor Vespasian (r. AD 69–79) to bring
order to the muddle of land rights to plots originally granted to
the soldiers of the II Augusta Legion. They had been given their
holdings around 35 BC, by Octavian, soon to become Emperor
Augustus, during his protracted campaigns against the
assassins of his adoptive father Julius Caesar and other rivals
for supreme power in Rome’s domains. Some had sold their
plot, subdivided it or otherwise alienated it, creating a
confusing patchwork, where once there had a regimented
pattern, divided into rectangular plots of 33½ iugera (this was a
Roman land measure originally supposed to be the amount of
land a single ox could plough without resting, but in deference
to the fact that some farmer’s beasts were more energetic than
others, it was regularized at an area of 240 by 120 Roman feet,
or around 0.25 hectares). The map as a consequence includes
fine details such as annotations for rei publicae, land retained
by the state; reliqua coloniae, land owned in common by the
community; and subsecivae, the tiny slivers of land at the edge
of the whole survey, in between surveyed plots or for which the
owners could not be identified.
Detail of the Bedolina Map, Val Camonica, Italy, 1000–1600 BC
 Fragment of the Forma Urbis Romae stone map, AD 203–208

A map of the entire world (or at least the Roman-controlled

part, which amounted to a substantial portion of that known)
was erected by Augustus’s lieutenant Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa
(see here), engraved on a huge marble slab. Slightly less
ambitious, but with the virtue (for historians at least) of having
survived in part is the Forma Urbis Romae (known as the
Severan Marble Plan), a monumental 13 x 18 m (43 x 60 ft)
map of the city of Rome itself which, from the evidence of the
latest buildings included in it (an ornamental gateway called
the Septizonium), was made shortly after AD 203 during the
reign of the Emperor Septimius Severus. Extraordinarily, the
holes showing where the map was fixed for public display are
still visible on a wall just outside of the Church of Saints
Cosmas and Damian in central Rome.
A slight variant on maps in stone or marble are mosaic maps,
constructed with thousands of tiny glass tesserae intricately
fitted together to form an overall pattern. The most spectacular
of these is a map of the Holy Land on the floor of the church of
St George in Madaba, Jordan. Originally created in the 550s or
560s (it shows the Church of the Theotokos, dedicated in
Jerusalem in 542, but not buildings erected there after 570), its
depiction of the area from Lebanon to the Nile Delta originally
contained over 2 million tesserae. Unsurprisingly, for such a
magnificent object designed for display in a church, it focuses
mainly on sites of biblical importance, and in particular those of
significance for the life of Christ (Jerusalem is shown with a
particularly high level of detail), although embellished with
rather more secular decorative flourishes such as a lion hunting
a gazelle in the Moab desert and fish swimming in the River
Jordan.

Jerusalem, Madaba mosaic map, c. AD 550

Stone maps were by no means confined to Europe and the

Middle East. After a long cartographic hiatus in China following
the Han silk maps (see here), maps of the Chinese Empire
begin to appear in the 12th century during the Song dynasty in
the form of a series of stone maps. The earliest of these, the Jiu
yu shouling tu (‘Map of the Prefectures of the Nine Districts’)
was engraved in 1121 in Rongzhou (now in Sichuan) and
includes the names of more than 1,400 administrative districts,
while a single stele engraved with two separate maps was set
up there around 1136. The more detailed of these, the Yu ji tu
(‘Map of the Tracks of Yu’), shows a remarkably accurate
coastline of eastern China and also includes the first
appearance of a reference grid in cartographic history – a finely
engraved lattice of squares, the sides of each of which were
100 li (a unit which has varied in extent throughout Chinese
history, and now represents 500 m/1,460 ft, but which under
the Song was just over 400 m/1,310 ft).
Almost as durable a surface for cartography as stone are
various metals on which maps have been engraved through the
ages. As metal can be smelted and shaped in moulds, it is
generally a more flexible medium (and mistakes are easier to
repair than they are on stone), although the ability to melt
down a metal object (particularly if it is of a precious metal,
such as gold or silver) means that the chances of maps in
metal surviving are correspondingly slighter. The Frankish ruler
Charlemagne (r. 768–814) is said to have possessed three
silver tablets, which bore maps of the imperial cities of Rome
and Constantinople, with the third showing the entire world
(presumably, if the subject matter of the first two is an
indication, based on a long-lost Roman model). These,
however, have long since disappeared. So, too, has the 2-m
(6½-ft) diameter disc containing a map of the world created by
the Arab cartographer Muhammad al-Sharif al-Idrisi (c. 1100–
66) for his patron Roger II of Sicily in 1153. Created using over
180 kg (400 lb) of pure silver, the value of its raw materials
alone meant that it was probably melted down not long after
Roger’s death the following year. More fortunate was the fate of
the celestial globe, or astrolabe, created by the Arab
astronomer Ibn as-Said as-Sahli in 1085 in Valencia. Some 20
cm (8 in) in diameter and made of brass, it is the earliest
Islamic globe charting the heavens to escape destruction and
includes the positions of 1,042 stars in the night sky.
Celestial globe, Ibn as-Said as-Sahli, 1085
Borgia World map, c. 1430
 Occupations of Ani in Elysian Fields, Papyrus of Ani, c. 1250 BC

Smaller-scale (and less precious) metal maps, however, have

survived, notably the Borgia world map, made around 1430
and engraved on two copperplates riveted together, filled with
black ink to pick out the details. The rather intriguing object,
which has 37 holes drilled into it, possibly for attaching flags or
emblems of important cities or countries (which have long
since disappeared), is of unknown provenance, having been
found by chance by Cardinal Stefano Borgia in an antiques
shop in Portugal in 1794. Oriented to the south (as are a
number of 15th-century world maps, such as that of Fra Mauro,
see here), the most obvious signs of the era in which it was
composed are the lack of the Americas (still six decades away
from their encounter with Europeans) and the non-inclusion of
the fruits of the Portuguese voyaging around the coast of West
Africa, which got under way in the 1430s. Adding to the almost
medieval cast of the map is the cartographer’s populating of
practically every otherwise empty space with a variety of flora
and fauna. These include a polar bear emerging from an igloo
in Norway, a veritable flotilla of ships from coastal barges to
galleys and ocean-going vessels, and a variety of annotations
warning of ‘huge men with horns four feet long’ in India, of
serpents that could swallow an ox whole and of the debatable
lands between China and the Earthly Paradise, which are
hazardous to cross on account of their being infested by
cannibals.
Rather later, in the age of printing, many maps while not
appearing in their final form in metal, were originally engraved
on metal plates, which were then used to create the image
(alongside the main text) in a printed book. One of the most
intriguing of these is known as the Copperplate Map of London.
Originally on 15 plates, of which just three have survived, it
was most probably created in 1558 (as it shows a cross in the
churchyard of St Botolph-without-Bishopsgate, which was
destroyed in an anti-Catholic riot that year) and shows a dense
labyrinth of medieval streets in the City of London, a sign of
how such a city had grown organically without any sense of
town planning.
The most common medium on which maps are produced
today is of course paper, a flat and relatively smooth surface
which is ideally suited to the printing press. It was preceded by
papyrus, made from reeds that grew prolifically along the
banks of the River Nile and which was used for a huge number
of documents, many of which have survived because they were
interred in tombs or discarded in rubbish dumps, where the dry
conditions in Egypt’s deserts impeded their decay. Among them
are relatively few actual maps, although the 12th-century BC
Turin Papyrus showing a mineral-rich section of the Eastern
Desert indicate that these must have existed (see here). There
are, though, a larger number of map-like objects, such as those
associated with the magic required by the deceased to survive
in the afterlife, which show such exotic locations as the Fields
of the Dead, providing a guide for the soul in its post-mortem
journey.
For much of the ancient and medieval world, where papyrus
reeds were not available, animal skins were used instead. Cut
from calves, cows or sheep (and occasionally goats), these
were cleaned with lime and then stretched on frames to
produce vellum or parchment. Such day-to-day maps as the
Romans produced for administrative purposes must have been
drawn on such a surface, but it is only from the later Middle
Ages that we have surviving maps, including the Anglo-Saxon
Mappa Mundi (dating from c. 1000, see here) and the whole
gamut of mappae mundi. Most of the portolans, which
navigators used to find their way around the Mediterranean,
were also produced on vellum and even after the advent of the
printing press in the 1450s, its durability in the unavoidably
damp conditions at sea (with the animal skin being able to
absorb more moisture without perishing) meant that it was in
use as late as the 1680s, when the Dutch cartographer Pieter
Goos’s chart of Oost Indien (‘the East Indies’) was published.
Chart of Oost Indien (the East Indies), Pieter Goos, 1680s
The first ever printed map, a T-O Mappa Mundi, Etymologiae, Isidore of Seville, c. 625 (printed in
1472)

In mapping terms, though, it was paper that became king,

even though it took a long time for it to establish its global
dominance. It was allegedly devised by the Chinese imperial
official Cai Lun around AD 105, who after his appointment as
chief of the palace workshop dedicated to producing
instruments, resolved to find some more economical way of
producing manuscripts other than the very expensive silk or
the rather inconvenient bamboo. His use of what would
otherwise have been waste material, such as rag, bark and
even fishing nets, took a while to catch on and even longer to
travel westwards out of China, reaching Baghdad around 793,
and from there being transmitted to Europe, where paper mills
are recorded in Italy in the 13th century. In Japan, maps were
produced on paper as early as the 8th century, but in Europe,
paper’s heyday, for books in general as well as maps, only
came from the later 15th century, after the invention of
printing, with the first printed map appearing in a 1472 edition
of Isidore of Seville’s venerable Etymologiae (a work originally
dating from the 7th century).
Since then, many thousands of maps have appeared on
paper, in atlases, single-sheet maps or embedded in other
works, dwarfing the entire production of maps in all other
media through history. Its seemingly unchallengeable position
was only threatened in the age of computing, with the first
Global Information Systems (GIS) on mainframe computers in
the 1950s. Now, though, in the 21st century, billions of
smartphone users can summon up a map of their location (or
almost any other on the planet) in a few clicks, touches or
swipes. From their very first appearance on stone, and through
all the permutations of durable, more perishable and even
ephemeral media, maps now exist in numberless quantities in
the flickering of liquid crystal displays or light-emitting diodes,
or the even more intangible medium of data stored
electronically on myriad computer servers.
Now everyone can easily summon a map wherever they go
Now everyone can easily summon a map wherever they go
 CHAPTER 7

A MAP OF MANY PARTS

THE COMPONENTS OF A MAP

H aving resolved to draw a map, established what the map’s
purpose (overt or implicit) should be, and having
gathered the information – whether through surveys,
travellers’ accounts or simply modifying those to compile it –
the would-be cartographer now must decide on the best way
to translate all this onto the surface of the map or globe.

Even the simple matter of which way should be ‘up’ is not as

straightforward as it seems, and there is no compelling reason
why north should be at the ‘top’, as it is in most modern maps.
The very word ‘orient’, in the sense of alignment, is a clue to
this, as in Latin oriens means east, and many medieval maps
were oriented with east at the top, as this was the direction of
Jerusalem and the Holy Land, considered the most important
element in medieval Christian maps. Typical of these mappae
mundi (or maps of the world), is the Anglo-Saxon Mappa Mundi
created around 1025.
The earliest surviving map drawn in England, it reflects the
state of geographical knowledge at the time, showing only
Asia, Africa and Europe, the three continents known to the
ancients. The outline of each, even the Mediterranean, is very
schematic, with a bloated starfish-shaped Sicily in the west
and a blood-red gash marking the Nile Delta in the east
wavering into fable as it proceeds further into the continent
(where an ‘ever-burning mountain’, mons semper ardens, is
marked). The curiously angular nature of the map means that
many of the landmasses are compressed into odd shapes, and
in Asia its coverage peters out at the Red Sea, beyond which
the cartographer only had myths to portray, such as those of
the giant Gog and Magog, rather than geographical realities.
In deference to its place of composition, somewhere in
England, the map’s outline of Britain and Ireland is more
secure, though Cornwall – over which two knights fight for an
unknown prize – is dramatically enlarged. Amid all its 150 or
so place names and annotations – among which Armagh in
Ireland makes its cartographic debut – it is clear that the
accent is on the biblical, with Noah’s Ark perched atop Mount
Ararat somewhere in Armenia, and to retain the focus on
Jerusalem and the lands of the Bible, the orientation has east
at the top (which explains Britain’s rather uneasily squashed
position at the bottom left of the map).

MAIN
Anglo-Saxon Mappa Mundi, showing east at the top, 1025

INSET TOP
Noah’s Ark on the twin peaks of Mount Ararat

INSET BELOW
Britain and Ireland, with a dramatically enlarged Cornwall

If east was the direction of choice for medieval Christian

cartography, for Arab geographers it was instead the south,
the direction of the holy city of Mecca. Typical of this is the
world map of Muhammad al-Sharif al-Idrisi (c. 1100–66), who,
though a Muslim, around 1138 took service at the court of the
Christian Roger II of Sicily – a haven of comparative, if
shortlived, tolerance, where a syncretic culture flourished. The
surviving world map comes from a collection of 70, which
illustrated all parts of the known world, though not in a
precious a form as the enormous silver disc, described as ‘400
Roman ratls in weight’ on which was inscribed ‘a map of the
seven climates’, which had formed its model. As the
centrepiece of the Nuzhat al-mushtaq fi’khtiraq al-afaq (‘The
Entertainment for He who Longs to Travel the World’), more
laconically known as the Book of Roger, al-Idrisi’s map has
south at the top. Its bounding ocean a striking ribbon of blue,
it does suffer the inconvenience that the lands south of the
Nile are largely a blank, though still focusing the mind
somewhat on the Arabian Peninsula (and Mecca) in the centre
and, somewhat conveniently in view of his royal patron,
contriving to have Sicily somewhere near centre stage.
World map showing south at the top, Muhammad al-Sharif al-Idrisi, 1154.

Other orientations are of course possible – the Forma Urbis

Romae, the fragmentary 3rd-century AD map of the city of
Rome points towards the southeast – but west, apart from a
handful of ancient Chinese maps, never seems to have been a
popular option. Instead, north became the predominant
choice, at first in China, most probably because the north
emerged as the centre of imperial power: at Chang’an (now
Xi’an), the capital under the Han (221 BC– AD 220) and Tang (AD
618–907) dynasties; at Kaifeng, under the early Song (939–
1127); and at sites in and around Beijing from the Jin dynasty
(1153 onwards), through the Mongol rule over China in the
13th and 14th century and then into modern times. In Europe,
north probably first gained a foothold because the series of co-
ordinates left by the 2nd-century AD Greco-Roman geographer
and astronomer Ptolemy which could be – and in the later
Middle Ages and Renaissance were – used to create a series of
regional and world maps, implied that north was at the top.
Added to this, the magnetic compass – forms of which were
first invented in China around the 2nd century BC and which by
the early 12th century AD was in practical use as a maritime
navigation technique – privileged a north–south view of the
world (Chinese compasses actually pointed south rather than
north!). The device had reached Europe by at least 1190,
when the English monk Alexander Neckam makes reference in
his De naturis rerum (‘On the Nature of Things’) to a
magnetized needle to help mariners navigate. Gerard
Mercator’s world map of 1569, which acted as the blueprint for
subsequent generations of cartographers, cemented north’s
position as being firmly at the top, and from then habit and
convention took over to leave most subsequent printed maps
as north-facing.
 Model of an early magnetic Chinese compass

Allied to the question of orientation is that of the meridian,

or the choice of central position for the map. As already
remarked, most Christian topography, as well as having the
maps oriented east, had Jerusalem in the central position.
Often, like the Hereford Mappa Mundi, such maps are crowded
with towns and other locations from the life of Christ, acting
more as spiritual than practical geographical guides. Given a
choice, however, most cultures have tended to place their own
state or country at the centre. The striking 18th-century
circular Cheonhado world maps produced in Korea have a
stylized appearance, with China and the Korean peninsula
firmly at the centre, surrounded by a set of concentric circles
of lands and seas, all enfolded by trees to the east and west
showing the directions of the rising and setting of the sun.
Produced over a period of nearly 200 years, they conformed to
quite rigid parameters. Despite adopting different visual styles
(from rather plain drab grey to the outright gaudy), they
almost all have the same number of place names (around
144), with some of them entirely fictitious, such as the ‘Land
of the Hairy People’ and the intriguingly named ‘Land of the
One-Armed’. World maps produced in Europe after the
discovery of the Americas tended to have Europe at the
centre, and hence the newly encountered lands of North and
South America to the left of the sheet and Asia to the right.
Similarly, maps produced in Russia placed Moscow in the
privileged centre position. In the United States, a number of
cities competed for the prize of the prime meridian, including
Philadelphia (where a meridian is recorded as early as 1749),
New York (which has a zero meridian drawn through it on the
map compiled by Claude Joseph Sauthier in 1776), and
Washington, whose claims grew more compelling after its
selection as the national capital in 1790. Even then, a number
of different lines were surveyed, each purporting to be the
true meridian. The 1791 plan by Major Pierre Charles L’Enfant
(1754–1825) – a French-born military engineer who served in
the Continental Army during the American Revolution and,
after a post-war career designing furniture for the well-heeled
among the new elite, was appointed by George Washington to
design the new federal capital – shows a meridian passing
through the ‘Congress House’. By 1804, maps were showing a
meridian passing through the ‘President’s House’, the origin of
the Zero Milestone monument just south of the White House
from which distances from Washington to other points in the
country were supposed to be measured. By 1850, Congress
had adopted a measure ordering ‘that hereafter the meridian
of the observatory at Washington shall be adopted and used
as the American meridian for all astronomic purposes
and . . . Greenwich for all nautical purposes’ (with the
observatory in question being the Old Naval Observatory, a
site whose astronomical operations stretched from 1844 to
1893, and at which two new moons of Mars, Phobos and
Deimos, were discovered in 1877).
 In short, the matter of the meridian had become an
almighty muddle, a problem aggravated by the advent of long-
distance train travel, which meant that each town set its own
clock according to local observations of sunrise, sunset and
noon. Once the transcontinental railroad across the United
States was completed (with the ceremonial driving in on 10
May 1869 of a ‘golden spike’ at Promontory Summit, Utah,
where the lines of the Central Pacific Railroad, which had been
built eastwards, and that of the Union Pacific Railroad, which
had been driven westwards from Missouri, met), the problem
became even worse. Train timetables had to have dozens of
different departure times to take account of the differing
stations from which passengers might have departed. The
United Kingdom had pioneered a solution when a single
‘Greenwich Mean Time’ was adopted by Britain’s railways in
1848, with a meridian passing through the Royal Observatory
in Greenwich. The railway companies in the United States
pushed through a similar measure, all agreeing that from noon
on 18 November 1883 there would be four time zones
covering the continental landmass (with an additional one in
eastern Canada), each an hour apart, anchored at points 75,
90, 105 and 120 degrees of longitude west of Greenwich.
Tae Choson Chido, Korean world map, 1874.
 Moscow-centred world map, US Central Intelligence Agency, 1985

Although Britain and the United States were now provided

with the rudiments of a time zone system, and their railway
passengers no doubt mightily relieved of the need to
resynchronize their pocket watches at every single station
along the route, this represented nothing like a universally
accepted system. There was a vigorous lobby to resolve this,
not least on economic grounds (as having the world’s
merchant fleet unclear on the exact time was inefficient and
occasionally dangerous). The railway engineer Sandford
Fleming penned a paper entitled ‘Time-Reckoning and the
selection of a prime meridian to be common to all nations’ in
1879, revealing that eleven principal meridians were in use,
including El Hierro in the Canaries, and Cadiz in Spain, but that
almost two-thirds of the tonnage of the world’s cargo ships
used Greenwich.
The logical choice seemed obvious, but political sensibilities
were involved (who, after all wanted their national capital to
end up as a footnote so many degrees west or east of the
prime meridian?). In October 1884, 41 delegates from 25
countries gathered at the International Meridian Conference in
Washington, summoned by President Chester Arthur – no
doubt pleased at the order so recently created out of his
country’s previous temporal chaos – to determine once and for
all which would be the international prime meridian. It did not
take long for the delegates to come to the only viable
conclusion, that the meridian would pass through the
Greenwich Observatory (and that travelling east from there
would count as ‘plus’ longitude, and westwards as minus). As
a sop to those resentful that their own local time had in some
way been subordinated, the conference decreed that the new
‘universal day . . . shall not interfere with the use of local or
other standard time where desirable’.
The geographers and astronomers had agreed, but national
governments were much slower in coming on board (and the
conference itself had not actually mandated a system of time
zones, which only slowly emerged by default as various
governments declared themselves as being located in one
time zone or another). Japan was the first country to do so, in
1886, with France adopting Greenwich Mean Time as the
reference point for its own national time in 1911. The United
Kingdom itself followed a curiously muddled approach, given it
had secured the meridian prize for Greenwich, and it was only
in 1925 that The Nautical Almanac, with the blessing of the
Royal Astronomical Society began to use GMT as its official
time.
 Deciding where to centre a map is an easy task compared
to the next conundrum facing the cartographer, of which
projection to use. The problem arises because the Earth is –
more or less – a sphere, but apart from globes on which its
surface can be accurately represented, projecting an image of
its seas and landmasses onto a flat surface, a map, always
involves some form of compromise. It’s a little like peeling an
orange and trying to lay it flat – there will always be gaps or, if
the peel is pushed together, bulges created. Ever since the
Greek philosopher Pythagoras in the late 6th century BC, most
serious astronomers and geographers had long understood
that the Earth was spherical – despite a commonly held
misapprehension that ancient and medieval scholars believed
that it was flat (which would actually have made map-making
considerably easier!). The earliest map-makers, such as
Dicaearchus of Messina (c. 350–290 BC) and Eratosthenes (c.
275–194 BC), generally ignored the problem and it was only
Hipparchus (c. 190–127 BC) who tried to devise a systematic
method of assembling all the points on the map in such a way
that, even if there was some distortion of the size of
landmasses or the distance between places, this was at least
logical and consistent.
Delegates of the International Meridian Conference, 1884
 World map with a cordiform projection, Oronce Finé, 1531

A wide variety of such systems, or projections, eventually

emerged. To Hipparchus we owe the stereographic or
azimuthal projection, in which the lines of latitude emerge
from the Pole and are true there, and in which angles between
places are preserved, but the distances are not, and
orthographic projections, which portray the surface of the
Earth like a hemisphere seen from space, but which
particularly distorts shapes and areas near the edge of the
map. Mathematical cartography endured a decline during the
Middle Ages, during which God not geometry took centre
stage in mapping, and it was not until the rediscovery of
Ptolemy’s mapping co-ordinates in the 15th century that
cartographers began to address themselves once more to
making a spherical Earth fit into a (largely) rectangular map
sheet. Nicolaus Germanus’s world map of 1467 used a
‘pseudocylindrical’ projection (as though the spherical surface
had been projected onto a cylindrical piece of paper), while
among the more unusual shapes chosen were ‘cordiform’
(heart-shaped) projections in which the surface of the Earth
was divided into two conjoined flat hemispheres, rather like a
two-dimensional model of the human heart.
A fine example was compiled by Oronce Finé (1494–1555), a
mathematician from the Dauphiné region of France. Although
he followed his doctor father in studying medicine, his first
loves were mathematics, astronomy and astronomical
instruments (he is said to have constructed a sundial while
serving a prison sentence for having rashly made a horoscope
which was unfavourable to Louise de Savoie, an influential
member of the French court). He published an edition of the
Tractatus de sphaero (‘Treaty on the Sphere’) by Johannes de
Sacrobosco, a 13th-century English monk who gave one of the
first accounts accessible to medieval Europeans of Ptolemy’s
celestial system and wrote no fewer than five works on the
equatorium, a rather rare astronomical instrument which
displayed the past or future positions of the Sun, Moon and
planets according to Ptolemy’s model. Finé’s monumental
Protomathesis, published in 1532, includes two volumes on
astronomy and astronomical instruments, and it is no surprise
that all these mathematical interests fed into his cartography.
His 1531 double cordiform map is a tour de force from the
point of view of its striking projection, although it includes a
number of cartographic anomalies, such as the enormous
‘Terra Australis’ on the right-hand (southern) section,
necessary to balance the northern landmass according to
Ptolemy’s theories, and his joining North America firmly to
Asia (as the early European explorers of the Americas
presumed it was).
 Engraving of cartographer Oronce Finé

The most influential map projection of all, however, was that

used by the Flemish cartographer Gerard Mercator in his 1569
world map. Technically a conformal cylindrical projection, it
was shaped like a flattened version of a cylinder and devised
so that any straight line drawn on the map would represent a
constant compass bearing (hence conformal, or retaining
correct angles). This also meant that the shapes of
landmasses were shown correctly, but their actual sizes might
be distorted, becoming proportionately larger towards the
Poles and compressed towards the equator. Given that the
main purpose of his maps was to facilitate navigation at sea,
this was not a particular hindrance, but has led to much
subsequent criticism that his projection – which by the 20th
century had become ubiquitous – unfairly magnified the
importance of countries in Europe and North America at the
expense of many poorer nations, especially in Africa.
All subsequent cartographic projections have been attempts
to square this circle, or more accurately to circle the sphere.
None of them can ever be entirely true in two dimensions to
the stubbornly three-dimensional nature of the Earth’s surface.
They make these compromises in one of three principal ways:
being conformal, retaining the correct angle between two
points, and so the ‘shape’ of the terrain; equivalent, in keeping
the areas shown on the map in correct proportion to that in
the real world; or equidistant, in doing similarly with the
distances between two points. Inevitably one of these will be
privileged over the others and in 1973 German historian Arno
Peters (1916–2002) came up with what he said was a new
projection, which produced more equal areas, though to those
used to the Mercator projection it seemed to strangely
elongate the South American and African continents. In the
furious polemic which accompanied its unveiling, it became
the fashionable choice for those eschewing old ‘colonial’
projections, including its adoption by the United Nations. It
was not, of course, entirely new, being simply a fresh
rebalancing of one of the timeworn three cartographic
projection choices. Moreover, it bore a striking resemblance to
the orthographic projection devised by the Edinburgh
clergyman the Reverend James Gall (1808–95) in 1855. Before
becoming a wayfinder for God in his role as a minister at the
Free Church in Canongate, Gall had been a partner in his
family publishing firm, which specialized in maps. He took the
family speciality very seriously, and as well as the
orthographic projection devised two others, the Gall isographic
and Gall stereographic, presenting all three at a meeting of
the British Association for the Advancement of Science in
Glasgow in 1855. Even after becoming a cleric in 1858, he
continued to pursue his mapping interests, albeit in a more
low-key fashion, producing an Easy Guide to the Constellations
in 1870. His focus on the heavens is reflected, too, in his more
theological works, including The Stars and the Angels (1858)
in which he mused on the possible existence of life on other
planets (and supposed that the Archangel Gabriel had flown
from one of them on his way to announce to Mary that she
was to bear the Messiah).

Nova et aucta orbis terrae descriptio ad usum navigantium emendate accommodate, Gerard
Mercator’s 1569 world map showing his most famous projection
 Modern example of the James Gall orthographic projection

We are all so familiar with the lines which divide up most

world or regional maps into equal square areas, that we
almost fail to notice them, until trying (if using a paper map)
to find where a particular location is by reference to the map’s
index. Most early maps used lines of latitude and longitude,
the former the angular distance of a point north or south of
the equator, the latter east or west of an arbitrary meridian
(which as we have seen was agreed in 1884 to be the
meridian running through the Royal Observatory at
Greenwich). The division into 360 degrees, however, is of
much greater antiquity than this, being based on a Babylonian
division of the heavens – first recorded around 410 BC – and
then extended around 150 BC by the Greek astronomer
Hipparchus (see here) to measurements of the Earth’s
surface. He also drew up lists of latitude and longitude of
important places, a system enlarged around AD 150 by the
great Greco-Roman geographer Ptolemy, whose Geography
contains co-ordinates for around 8,000 locations.

Ptolemy’s world map with longitude and latitude points, Nicolaus Germanus, 1467

Cantino Planisphere, 1502

 Knowledge of the principles of latitude and longitude was
kept alive in the Islamic world, after the loss of much scholarly
knowledge in the West following the collapse of the Roman
Empire. Through conduits such as Sicily (reconquered by the
Normans from its Muslim Zirid emirs by 1091) and Spain
(where by 1250, advancing Christian armies had confined the
Muslim-controlled territory to Granada), long-lost learning
percolated back into Europe. Gerard of Cremona (c. 1114–87)
translated the Arabic version of Ptolemy’s Almagest back into
Latin, meaning western European scholars had access once
more to tables of latitude and how to calculate them. The
translation of the Geography had to wait until 1406, and it
wasn’t until 1477 that the first printed edition of Ptolemy
complete with maps was published in Bologna. By the time
Henricus Martellus Germanus produced his large world map
around 1490 and Martin Behaim created the Erdapfel globe
(see here), knowledge of the principles of latitude and
longitude had become widely diffused. The first map that
actually included some lines of latitude marked on them was
the Cantino Planisphere, which also had the Tropics of Cancer
and Capricorn indicated. The former was so called because it
marks the most northerly point at which the Sun’s rays strike
the Earth at 90 degrees, which takes place at the summer
solstice on 21 June, when the Sun is situated alongside the
Constellation of Cancer in the sky. A wobble in the tilt of the
Earth’s axis as it orbits around the Sun has meant that this
position has now shifted, and the equinox now falls when the
Sun is in Taurus, although there has been no appreciable
campaign to have the latitude line rebadged as the ‘Tropic of
Taurus’.
Longitude lines took a little longer to catch on – some are
shown on the 1477 Ptolemy map and on another published in
Rome in 1478. They are, however, largely erroneous and
Behaim’s globe only had one line of longitude indicated. The
Treaty of Tordesillas, which divided Portuguese and Spanish
domains in the New World along a line 270 leagues west of the
Azores (see here), underlined the importance of being able to
calculate longitude and marking it on maps (which occurs with
increasing frequency during the 16th century). Determining it
accurately at sea, however, proved extremely difficult as it
depended on precise timekeeping between two points and no
clock existed which could so without losing time, particularly
in the harsh conditions aboard ship. It took the offer of a series
of prizes from the British Admiralty, including one of £20,000
for anyone who could come up with a marine chronometer
which could measure longitude at sea to an accuracy of half a
degree, and decades of work by the Yorkshire clockmaker John
Harrison to produce the H4, a diminutive chronometer only 13
cm (5 in) in diameter, which when trialled by the Admiralty’s
Board of Longitude in 1761 was found to lose less than three
seconds per day during a voyage from Portsmouth to
Kingston, Jamaica, and even that at a fairly steady rate which
could be compensated for. Harrison chronometers became a
regular feature of subsequent British scientific and exploratory
voyages and Captain James Cook, during his second voyage
from 1772 to 1775, described the H4 he had with him as ‘our
faithful guide through all the vicissitudes of climates’. Sadly,
the Admiralty was not quite so appreciative and wriggled out
of ever giving Harrison his full prize money.
 Portolan, Jacopo Russo, 1533

Carte Pisane, c. 1270, the earliest surviving portolan

 Instead of lines of latitude and longitude, most sailors
before the 17th century put their trust in rhumb lines (or at
least their navigators and captains did). The mesh of lines
which criss-cross 14th- and 15th-century portolans were so
called because they ‘conserved the rhumb’, another name for
a compass direction. The theory was that any straight line on
a map indicated by a rhumb line was the shortest distance
between two points along it, a very useful reassurance on long
sea voyages. Also called loxodromes, the geometry works out
that a ship sailing along a rhumb line or loxodrome is always
not quite at a right angle to a line of latitude. The rhumb lines
therefore form a kind of helix shape across the globe (and in
fact if you followed one to the bitter end you’d be inexorably
sucked towards the Poles). Pedro Nuñes (1502–78), the chief
cartographer to the Portuguese Crown, was the first to
describe the phenomenon of spiral loxodromes and it was
these to which Mercator turned when devising his 1569
projection in which the in-theory spherical or helix-shaped
rhumb lines are shown as straight lines.
Not all maps have grids composed of latitude and longitude
lines (or rhumb lines). Many atlases and street plans have
alternative forms of square grid (in modern times labelled with
numbers and letters which could be referenced against a place
name in an index to find its location). Such square grids,
however, are of extreme antiquity, and a particular feature of
Chinese mapping (which did not use latitude and longitude
lines at all until Western-style cartography was imported from
the 17th century). The invention of the grid is attributed to the
astronomer Zhang Heng (AD 78–139), a scholar with an
eclectic range of interests which included most notably – apart
from the map grid – the world’s first recorded seismograph, a
cylindrical metal device with eight dragons’ heads arranged in
the cardinal directions on an upper layer and eight frogs with
open mouths below them. When a tremor occurred, it shook a
metal ball from one of the dragons into the mouth of a frog
which indicated the direction of the earthquake. Work
attributed to the cartographer Pei Xiu (see here), who worked
in the state of Cao Wei during the turbulent Three Kingdoms
Period which followed the collapse of the Han dynasty (and
with it China’s unity) in AD 220, suggests that he, too, used
square grids, while the now-lost Hainei Huayi Tu (‘Map of the
Chinese and Barbarians Peoples within the Seas’) composed
by Jian Dan (730–805) around 801 during the Tang dynasty
certainly contained grids. The striking stone Yu ji tu (see here)
from 1136 has a strong network of grid lines incised into it,
which, against the material of which it is made, make it look
like an enormous game of battleships.
Chinese square grids were also used as a means of
indicating the scale of the map, with most of them including
some indication of the distance which was supposed to be
represented by each line of the square. The cartographer at
some point must determine the scale of the map, and
therefore the amount of detail which can be shown on it. One
of the most ancient map representations of all, that of the
temple plan held in the lap of the statue of Gudea, ruler of
Lagash (c. 2100 BC, see here) has a gradated rod indicating its
scale. This, and subsequent indications of scale, generally
suffered from the flaw that they depended on knowing what
the unit being referenced was (be it Chinese li, Roman milia or
British furlongs). Only in 1806 did the French Revolutionary
government’s zeal for decimal systems of measurement (and
its introduction of the metre as a standard unit of measure)
lead to the devising of the notion of a representative fraction,
which is expressed in terms of a ratio: so, 1: 100,000 means
that one unit on the map (generally a centimetre, or in those
countries using imperial measurements, an inch) represents
100,000 of those units (for the metric version 1,000 metres or
a kilometre). Long before the French Revolution, however, the
idea of a linear scale bar, showing the map’s users what a
distance on the map represented in real life had become
established. Some of them are beautifully elaborate, with
surveyors’ dividers forming a triangle against the bar, such as
those accompanying Christopher Saxton’s 1578 map of
Caernarvonshire and Anglesey.
Yu ji tu, c. 1136
ABOVE
Map of Caernarvonshire and Anglesey, Christopher Saxton, 1578

INSET
Detail of the scale bar

As we have seen, the orientation of maps was of primary

importance, particularly in the eras when they were used for
navigation. As well as the general assumption that north lay at
the top of the maps, cartographers also incorporated a handy
device known as a wind rose, a circle with the directions of the
eight main winds (each of which was believed to come from a
particular direction) inscribed around it, often very ornately.
The naming of winds was a very ancient practice, and they
were seen as minor deities in their own right, such as Boreas
(the north wind) and Zephyrus (the west wind). After a
flirtation with 12 winds, and then, in the work of the 1st-
century BC architectural writer Vitruvius, with a finely gradated
24, the number had reduced by the Middle Ages to eight,
which handily equates to the four cardinal points (north, east,
south and west) and the points half-way in between (such as
north-east). On portolans these were often labelled with the
Italian versions of the names: tramontana (north), greco
(north-east), levante (east), sirocco (south-east), austro
(south), libeccio (south-west), ponente (west) and maestro
(north-west). The wind roses are thus labelled with the initials
for the winds (so TGLSOLPM) with the T for the north often
indicated by a spear. These gradually became even more
decorative and stylized so that by the time of Pedro Reinel’s
chart of 1504 they have morphed into a fleur-de-lys shape
with a central petal-shaped panel.
The Countye of Monmouth, with ornamental scale bar, John Speed, c. 1610
Chart, Pedro Reinel, 1504
 Compass rose detail from the Catalan Atlas, 1375

For any map to be comprehensible to its users there must

be a generally understood – if not actually agreed – set of
conventions regarding the symbols shown on it and the way in
which the information is displayed. Early modern map-makers
had something of a mania for detailed annotations imparting a
wealth of information (or sometimes misinformation) about
the lands shown. They took to framing this within a scroll-like
panel known as a cartouche, sometimes flanked by gigantic
mythological figures such as Atlas. Often the cartouche simply
contained the title but sometimes, and particularly in Dutch
mapping of the 17th century, the cartographer or his
assistants indulged themselves with mini-works of art,
showing battles, cherubs or idyllic rural scenes.
Peutinger Table, showing early versions of symbols for towns, 4th century AD (1888 copy, based on
12th-13th-century version)

The information in the cartouche was easily understood, but

the symbols placed on the map were the subject of more
complex conventions. The tradition of doing this pictorially is
an ancient one – on the Peutinger Table it is fairly clear which
towns are fortified with walls, because the artist has drawn
them around the settlement, while the Madaba mosaic map
(see here), with its detailed images of buildings within cities
such as Jerusalem is a rather extreme case. What
cartographers call ‘conventional signs’ require a little more
work to understand. The idea that a stylized wavy line should
represent rivers or a pointy triangle lacking its base should be
some form of hill or mountain has a certain logic about it, and
is indeed very ancient, dating back to the Nuzi map from
Mesopotamia 4,000 years ago (see here). The signs on maps
generally became more abstract over time – the practice of
using circles to represent towns was employed as early as the
maps of the Islamic cartographer Mahmud al-Kashgari in the
11th century – and so users needed a little more help. Where
the signs were numerous or the map acted as a kind of
narrative device, telling the story of a battle, for example, a
map legend (from the Latin legendum, ‘that which must be
read’) had to be added. The first legend appeared on a map of
the area around Nuremberg published in 1492 by the German
astronomer and cartographer Erhard Etzlaub (c. 1460–1532),
and by the time he produced his Romweg (‘The Way to Rome’)
map, a kind of pilgrimage souvenir for those heading to the
holy city, he felt the need to include a whole separate sheet
explaining the symbology.
By 1585, Gerard Mercator incorporated a veritable mini-
guide at the beginning of his Galliae tabulae geographicae,
the part of his world atlas dealing with France, rather than
cluttering up each individual map. Military maps in particular
required legends or keys to explain which colour (often hand-
shaded) indicated which side and the symbology that
represented various types of unit (in general infantry versus
cavalry, but shading in the latter case into fine distinctions of
hussars, dragoons and lancers). By the 19th century a whole
cartographic lexicon of conventional signs had grown up with
crosses for rocks on sea charts, different signs for churches
with towers or steeples and those without and, in the case of
Britain’s Ordnance Survey, for everything from pubs, police
stations, cattle grids and golf courses to – where such a beast
still exists – public telephone boxes. In 2015 the Survey ran a
competition to design new symbols to reflect changes in
society’s needs. The winners included redesigns of the signs
for art galleries and public toilets, but also new ones that
symbolized the preoccupations and leisure activities of the
21st century: for solar farms and electric charging points. The
long-ago cartographer of the Nuzi map would have found it
baffling and at the same time reassuring.
Britain’s Ordnace Survey maps.
New symbols for art galleries (top); public toilets (middle) and solar farms (bottom), OS Tour Map
competition, 2015
Britain’s Ordnace Survey maps.
 CHAPTER 8

GOING NOWHERE

PLACES WHICH WEREN’T THERE

O ne of the primary roles of mapping is to show us what is
there, indicating the best route, landmarks along the
way and insuperable obstacles on land or at sea which must
be circumvented. Historical mapping is intended as a guide
to the past (even if the emphases can sometimes be
misleading or have an ulterior motive), and we expect
thematic mapping to have basis in truth.

There are of course exceptions. Maps of imaginary places,

such as Tolkien’s Middle-earth, can be elaborate, replete
with loving details of locations which exist only on the pages
of the author’s fictional creation, but the author is not
pretending that the places are real, or if he or she is, then
the reader is in on the game.
There is, though, another category of places which were
believed to exist in the real world, and duly appeared on
maps, but which are as much fantasy as the Shire or Mordor.
Such cartographic phantasms are distinct from the made-up
coastlines and menageries of unicorns, giants or wyverns
which the map-maker used to fill in unknown regions of the
globe. These were places which the compilers of the maps
genuinely believed (or at least suspected) really existed.
Many of them remained stubbornly portrayed in maps and
atlases for centuries. Some were the object of expeditions to
locate their whereabouts and a few, such as the ‘Kingdom of
Prester John’, retained such a hold on the popular
imagination that their supposed existence had significant
geopolitical consequences.
The Kingdom of Prester John was one of the longest-
lasting cartographic confabulations, a product of misplaced
hope that somewhere, somehow, there might be a Christian
kingdom which would rescue the failing Crusader States of
the Levant from the local Muslim rulers who had regained
their balance and unity since the First Crusade captured
Jerusalem in 1099. He might even push back the waxing
power of Islamic states such as the Seljuks, who dominated
much of Asia Minor from the late 11th century. This hoped-
for saviour, Prester (or Presbyter – ‘priest’) John, was
believed to be a Christian ruler whose realm was situated
somewhere in the East: no one was quite sure where
(understandably, as he never existed in the first place). The
legend seems to have first arisen in the 1140s, when Hugh,
Bishop of Jabala in Syria, visited Pope Eugene III in Viterbo in
central Italy, where he was residing because Rome had
become too dangerous for the Papacy, his predecessor
Lucius II having been killed by a rock hurled during an anti-
papal riot incited by the Senate. Bishop Hugh delivered the
exciting news that Prester John, a member of the Nestorian
Church (a heterodox Christian sect which had split away
from the mainstream in the 5th century over theological
differences concerning the divine and human natures of
Christ) was mustering his forces in defence of western
Christendom. It was just as well, as the crusaders had just
lost control of the county of Edessa, one of the states they
had established in the wake of the First Crusade half a
century earlier, which had fallen to the forces of Zengi, the
Atabeg of Mosul, in December 1144. Prester John’s letter
maintained that he was owed tribute by no fewer than 72
kings, that his realm extended from Babylon as far east as
India, and paints an idyllic picture of a realm where ‘Honey
flows in our land, and milk everywhere abounds’. In this
paradise on Earth, there were no poisonous snakes and
even the frogs were said not to croak too loudly.
The Kingdom of Prester John, Abraham Ortelius, 1573
A New World Map, showing Prester John’s Kingdom in Africa, Laurent Fries, 1522

It was all of course a fantasy, possibly concocted

somewhere in the surviving Crusader States to drum up
support for a new crusade. Yet the hope that Prester John
might swoop in from the wings and bolster the Christian
cause in the Levant refused to die, even when the warrior-
priest stubbornly failed to make his appearance. A century
later, with the rise of the Mongol Empire, it was thought that
perhaps the Great Khan might be the elusive priest-king
(after all the Mongols did become known for their tolerance
of Christianity, and Nestorianism, the version of the faith to
which Prester John allegedly adhered, flourished in their
realms). A stream of emissaries was sent, including the
Franciscan friars Giovanni da Pian del Carpini in 1245 and
William of Rubruck in 1253. They were met with at best
polite amusement and certainly not by any substantive offer
of assistance. Prester John, it seemed, must live elsewhere.
Europe’s hopeful gaze turned to East Africa, where the rulers
of Ethiopia, rumoured to be descended from the biblical
Queen of Sheba, were suitably Christian and whose contacts
with the Mediterranean world were sufficiently sporadic to
foster wild fantasies and rumours.
Prester John is first shown there on a portolan map by
Giovanni da Carignano (c. 1250–1329) in around 1310, by
which time his mooted assistance was already too late, as
Acre, the last crusader stronghold in the Holy Land, had
been captured by the Mamluk Sultan al-Ashraf Khalil in
1291. Nonetheless, he continued his will-o’-the-wisp
existence in cartographic form, appearing on tappearing on
the Catalan World Map of 1450, a splendidly illustrated late
medieval mappa mundi, at a time Ottoman advances into
the Balkans were causing deep concern in western Europe.
He is still there in Abraham Ortelius’s 1573 map, which is
solely dedicated to showing ‘A Description of the Empire of
Prester John or of the Abyssinians’, which includes an
impressive swathe of East Africa said to be ruled by the
monarch, as well as his coat of arms and details of his
alleged descent from biblical kings such as Solomon and
David. The first Portuguese expedition finally reached
Abyssinia in 1520. The account, published 20 years later by
Father Francisco Alvares, one of its members, and which was
still entitled A True Account of the Lands of Prester John of
the Indies, made it clear that the rulers of Ethiopia, powerful
though they were, were unlikely to fulfil the centuries-old
expectations of succour for Western states in their struggles
against the Ottomans and other Islamic powers.
 Prester John, Catalan World Map, 1450

Ortelius’s map also shows the Mountains of the Moon,

deep in the interior of Africa, but still well within Prester
John’s alleged realm. These elusive hills had their origins in
an account by the great Greek historian and geographer
Herodotus in the 5th century BC. He described them as being
close to Syene (modern Aswan in southern Egypt) and
situated at the point at which the waters of the Nile flowed
northwards into Ethiopia. They issued from fountains so
deep that the Egyptian pharaoh Psammetichus had ordered
ropes to be used to ascertain their depth, but after
thousands of feet of twine had been lowered and the bottom
had still not been reached, he gave up. The Mountains had
migrated somewhat further south by the time of the account
by Ptolemy in the mid-2nd century AD, who quotes the
testimony of a certain merchant named Diogenes who
travelled for a month into the African interior and came
across snow-capped peaks which were, for the first time,
described as ‘mountains of the moon’. While the belief in
them faded during the European Middle Ages, Arab
geographers such as al-Idrisi continued to pass on the fable,
and when Ptolemy’s Geography became known again in
Europe, spawning world maps such as that of Maximus
Planudes around 1295, their elusive slopes reappeared in a
long succession of cartographic works. The German
cartographer Martin Waldseemüller’s 1513 map of the
southern part of Africa duly has them there, labelled the
‘Mons Lune’, while the Totius Africae tabula of Sebastian
Münster (1488–1552; see here) from around 1550 includes
two enormous (and also entirely made up) lakes which are
shown draining into the Nile. A Jesuit explorer, Pedro Páez
(1564–1622), who visited Ethiopia in 1618, even claimed to
have seen the two fountains from which (as he believed) the
Nile issued and whose depths Psammetichus had failed to
plumb.
When European explorers ventured into the interior of
East Africa from the 1850s, though, confidently expecting to
behold the Mountains of the Moon at the source of the Nile,
they of course found no such thing. Richard Francis Burton
and John Hanning Speke’s three-year expedition from 1856
ended with the two explorers violently quarrelling (and
Speke temporarily losing his sight and hearing when a
beetle became lodged in his ear), but it did locate Lake
Victoria, the true source of the Nile (which was finally
confirmed in 1874 when Henry Morton Stanley made a
complete circuit of the lake).
 Africa’s Mountains of the Moon finally evaporated at about
the same time as another curious inland cartographic fiction
in Australia. The existence of the continent itself had long
been rumoured, on no better basis than that there must – if
Aristotle was to be believed – exist a southern landmass to
counterbalance those known (at least partly so) in the north.
It was a supposition carried over into Ptolemy’s Geography
and those cartographers who drew from it, and so a Terra
Australis – a southern land – became a regular feature on
maps. This southern continent finally achieved a kind of
reality when the Dutch expedition led by Willem Janszoon
(not to be confused with the globe-maker Willem Janszoon
Blaeu) in the Duyfken happened across the Cape York
Peninsula in 1606, spending some weeks mapping the
coastline and interacting with the local Wik-Mungkan
people. There are tantalizing hints, however, that the
Portuguese may have beaten the Dutch to it, as an island
named Java la Grande begins to appear on maps from the
mid-16th century. It took its name from a location
mentioned by Marco Polo as being beyond ‘Java Minor’ (or
Sumatra) and which he wrote ‘is under the dominion of one
king’ and inhabited by ‘idol worshippers’. The island makes
its debut on maps in the 1540s, appearing on the Dieppe
map-maker Guillaume Brouscon’s world map in 1543, and is
still there in Nicolas Desliens’ 1566 version at the northern
edge of a positively vast southern continent. To its east
there lies a jutting section of land which – and it may be
coincidence – rather resembles the actual outline of Cape
York in northern Australia. The occurrence on some of the
Dieppe cartographers’ depictions of Java la Grande on
Portuguese flags lends credence to the suggestion that they
believed that the area was claimed or colonized by the
Portuguese, who maintained outposts at Malacca and in a
number of the Spice Islands of what is now Indonesia before
they were pushed out by the Dutch in the 17th century.
Totius Africae tabula, Sebastian Münster, c. 1550
Tabula Nova Partis Africae, Martin Waldseemüller, 1541
 World map; and detail of Java la Grande, Guillaume Brouscon, 1543

Whichever European nation first encountered the

coastline of Australia, and whether it was the Portuguese or
the more securely attested Dutch who made the earliest
maps, it was the British expedition led by Captain James
Cook (1728–79), which landed on the east coast of the
continent in April 1770, that was the true precursor to
European colonization. Early European settlement clustered
around the coastline, where the initial landings had been
made, but it was assumed that rivers such as the Darling
and Murray flowed inland into fertile territories that would
eventually be ripe for exploitation. A map published in 1830
by Thomas J. Maslen, a frustrated would-be emigrant to
Australia, who was chafing in what he called the ‘Siberian
Wilds’ of Yorkshire after a failed career in British India,
shows a large sea in the continent’s interior. Published in his
book The Friend of Australia, an attempt by Maslen to
encourage others to migrate to the new colonies, it includes
the enticing-sounding ‘Great River or the Desired Blessing’,
which offered potential expeditions a direct route into the
verdant heart of Australia. For good measure, Maslen also
penned a letter to the Leeds Mercury in 1834 claiming that
there was a Dutch colony already implanted in the centre of
Australia (with the strong implication that the British
government had best redouble its efforts to explore and
settle the region), but it was all a fiction. Despite only selling
a handful of copies, The Friend of Australia still cast a long
shadow, feeding the confidence of explorers such as Charles
Sturt (1795–1869), who headed an expedition in 1829–30,
that rivers flowing west from New South Wales must
inevitably lead to the fabled inland sea. They turned out
instead to be tributaries of the River Murray and a second
attempt in 1844 foundered in the harsh terrain of the Stony
Desert and Simpson Desert. If there was an inland sea, it
was not one of water, but of sand and stone.
Far more water was to be found surrounding another
group of mythical locations, which were alleged to lie far out
in the mist and spray of the Atlantic Ocean. Generation after
generation of people on the storm-lashed shores of western
Ireland, Cantabria or Portugal might have gazed westwards
and supposed that somewhere amid the swells and the
spray there must lie undiscovered lands. It might even be
that some intrepid voyagers had reached landfall in places
such as the Canaries (or even the banks of Newfoundland,
where huge shoals of cod could be fished), but had kept
quiet about it. But no one knew for sure.
One such fog-shrouded and utterly unreachable landfall
was known as Antillia, named for the legendary refuge of
seven Christian bishops who were said to have fled the
Muslim invasion of Visigothic Spain in 711. Seven centuries
later, rumours emerged that Antillia had been found, or at
least it began to appear on portolan charts of the Atlantic,
beginning with one by Zuane Pizzigano in 1424. It sits in a
red box far to the west of Ireland, equipped with its own
mini-archipelago of seven satellite islands, presumably one
for each of the original episcopal exiles. On Grazioso
Benincasa’s 1482 map of the Atlantic we get even more
detail, with details of bays and inlets and the names of the
subsidiary islands given as Aira, Ansodi, Con, Antinib,
Anssalii and Ansolli.
Antillia even played a role in the voyage of Christopher
Columbus (1451–1506) which finally did discover lands
beyond the Atlantic (although not Antillia). The Florentine
cartographer Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli (1397–1482) showed
the Genoese explorer a copy of a letter he had written to a
Portuguese colleague Fernão Martins in 1474, in which he
advised ‘From the island of Antillia, which you call the Seven
Cities and of which you have knowledge, there are ten
spaces [2,500 miles] on the map to the most noble island of
Cipango [Japan]’. Japan was of course far further than
Toscanelli’s calculations made out, and Antillia did not exist
at all, but it all formed part of the cocktail of miscalculation
and wishful thinking that encouraged Columbus to believe
that not only would the voyage across the Atlantic be short,
but that it would lead him to the riches of East Asia.
Sketch of the Coasts of Australia, The Friend of Australia, Thomas J. Maslen, 1830
 Portolan chart featuring Antillia, Zuane Pizzigano, 1424

Already in 1486 King João II of Portugal had sent out an

expedition under Fernão Dulmo, governor of Terceira in the
Azores, to locate and claim Antillia for the Portuguese
Crown, but neither he, Columbus, nor subsequent searchers
found anything but empty sea. The legend, though, still
would not die and Martin Behaim’s Erdapfel, one of the last
globes to be made before the Americas really were
encountered by Columbus, includes the inscription:
‘In the year 734 of Christ, when the whole of Spain had
been won by the heathen (Moors) of Africa, the above island
Antilia, called Septe citade [Seven cities], was inhabited by
an archbishop from Porto in Portugal, with six other bishops,
and other Christians, men and women, who had fled thither
from Spain, by ship, together with their cattle, belongings,
and goods. In 1414 a ship from Spain got nighest it without
being endangered’.
 As late as the French cartographer Pierre Desceliers’ map
of 1546, Antillia was still being marked, by which time it had
migrated a little west and north to a site somewhere off the
coast of Bermuda. Even Ortelius in 1570 and Mercator in
1587, otherwise scrupulous with geographical detail, felt the
need to pay homage to the legend of Antillia and included it
in their maps. Thereafter, the seven bishops and their
descendants were left to live undisturbed in the annals of
places that never were and Antillia vanishes from the map
for good.

Antillia, from a portolan by Bartolomeo Pareto, 1455

Antillia was not the only island rumoured to lie in the

Atlantic. The legend of Hy Brasil, said to lie somewhere to
the west of Ireland, was of equal antiquity and almost
similarly stubborn persistence. It was said to be something
of an earthly paradise, ruled over by a certain King Breasal,
and to emerge from its underwater hiding place once every
seven years. Hy Brasil was first mapped by Angelino Dalorto
in 1325 when it is labelled as ‘Insula de montonis’ and then
reappears on his 1339 portolan as Brasil. Expeditions were
sent out to find it, including, if an account by Pedro de Ayala,
the Spanish ambassador to England in 1498 is to be
believed, a number by the English court (although he may
have heard muddled reports of John Cabot’s expedition to
North America which really did depart in 1497 and came
back with intelligence of ‘new found lands’). Even in 1570,
Abraham Ortelius included it on his world map as a small
speck to the west of Ireland. So firm was the belief in Hy
Brasil’s existence that even an obviously satirical account of
it penned by Richard Head in 1674 could not shake it. His
tale recounted a landing on Hy Brasil by Captain John
Nisbet, who found cattle, sheep, large quantities of black
rabbits and a tower in which a Gaelic-speaking man said he
had been imprisoned by a necromancer. This encouraged
otherwise perfectly sensible scholars, such as the scientist
Robert Hooke – a brilliant mind of wide-ranging interests,
whose discoveries included a law of elasticity, the crystalline
structure of snowflakes and the science behind the
diffraction of light – in their faith that somewhere on the
ocean, Hy Brasil was waiting to be discovered.
 World map, and detail of Hy Brasil, Abraham Ortelius, 1570

Still, Hy Brasil lingered on, though in diminished form, to be

shown in 1753 on an Atlantic chart by the British
cartographer Thomas Jefferys (c. 1719–71) as ‘the imaginary
Isle of O.Brazil’ and then in 1769 by the French map-maker
Guillaume Delisle (1675–1726) as the minuscule Rocher de
Brasil (‘Rock of Brasil’) a little to the west of Ireland.
Thereafter it, too disappears.
On the continent of North America other lands enjoyed an
ephemeral existence and then disappeared as exploration
revealed that in the spaces they had once been confidently
mapped, something entirely different existed. The Seven
Cities of Gold (or Cibola) believed to lie somewhere in the
south-west of the modern United States proved to be
mirages (though perhaps inspired by the huge cliff-face
villages of the Puebloans).
California and the Western Parts of North America; and detail of Fou-sang (Fusang), Antonio
Zatta, 1776

Fusang, a land first attested in Buddhist accounts of the

mid-7th century and said to lie some 20,000 li (about 11,000
km/6,835 miles) on the far side of the ‘Eastern Ocean’, gave
rise to the notion that there was a Chinese colony
somewhere on the west coast of North America. It is shown
on the 1776 map by the Italian cartographer Antonio Zatta
(fl. 1757–97) as colonia de Chinesi (‘colony of the Chinese’),
just south of another fictional geographical feature which
was to be of far greater long-term significance.
The dawning realization that the Atlantic was not a short-
cut to the riches of East Asia and that the landmass which
Columbus had encountered was a continent in its own right
had not shaken the niggling feeling that there must be a
way to sail from Europe to China and Japan without having
to sail right around South America (a dangerous route for
early modern ships as Ferdinand Magellan discovered during
five storm-lashed weeks in 1520 when his expedition
became the first to discover it). The search for this North-
West Passage (so called simply because it was believed that
there must be a navigable route north-west across North
America) sparked innumerable voyages, including
expeditions led by Jacques Cartier in 1534 and Sir Francis
Drake (c. 1540–96) in 1577–80. All of these added to
knowledge of the geography of the Arctic reaches of North
America – and in Drake’s case ended up in the second
circumnavigation of the globe – but none of them discovered
the elusive passage.
Map of the west coast of North America, showing the Strait of Anian Cornelis de Jode, 1592
 World map, based on the work of Giacomo Gastaldi, Paulo Forlani, 1565

Undeterred, cartographers took to showing the passage,

often in the form of an invitingly wide ‘Strait of Anian’, or
‘Estreto de Anian’ as it appears in the Dutch map-maker
Cornelis de Jode’s 1593 map of the west coast of North
America (in which he also adds, for good measure, the
equally fictitious Kingdom of Quivira, fabulous rumours
about which might reflect vague accounts of the Wichita
people of central Kansas). The name Anian might have been
borrowed from a location mentioned in the Travels of Marco
Polo (1254–1324), a rich sourcebook liberally employed by
later writers to try to confect links between what they knew
of the Americas and what Polo related about Asia. That
Polo’s Anian probably referred to the Gulf of Tonkin in the
north of Vietnam was of little account to Giacomo Gastaldi
(c. 1500–66; see here) who first placed it on his depiction of
North America in 1561 (and to Mercator who did the same in
1567).
Some sea captains even claimed to have sailed right
through the Strait of Anian, including Juan de Fuca (1536–
1602) whose expedition sponsored by the viceroy of New
Spain is said to have seen a huge spire of rock at the strait’s
entrance. The strait continued to appear in maps right until
the 1720s, when Johannes van Keulen (1654–1715) placed it
on the opposite side of the continent to Hudson Bay.
Expeditions continued to go out in search of it, slowly
exploring the network of waterways which really did create
a sort of passage through and to the north of Canada.
Ironically, it was the disappearance of one of them, led by
Sir John Franklin in 1846–48, which finally led to the
discovery of a real North-West Passage (though not in the
form of the Strait of Anian). Franklin, along with the entirety
of the crew of his vessels the Erebus and Terror, simply
vanished, setting off a frenzy of expeditions to discover his
fate – galvanized in large part by the determination of his
wife Jane. Although the first indications of what had
happened to Franklin came from accounts given to John Rae
by local Inuits in 1853–54 (that the ships had become
trapped, Franklin died and the survivors set off overland,
gradually to die from exhaustion and starvation), it was
another expedition, commanded by Robert McClure in 1850
that located a way through the Prince of Wales Strait.
Although his ship, the Investigator, was trapped in the ice,
he led a party by sledge to Beechey Island, so becoming the
first, technically, to traverse the elusive Passage, although
the route was not navigated entirely by sea until the
Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen did so in 1906.
The Strait of Anian was not the first geographical mirage
to draw travellers across the North Atlantic. Centuries
earlier, Viking voyagers from Iceland had extended their
range westwards, and around 930, one of them, Gunnbjörn
Ulfsson, is alleged to have found an archipelago of tiny islets
and shoals which became named after him as Gunnbjörn’s
skerries. From there, apparently, in the right kind of
weather, when the freezing mists which often enwrapped
the area lifted, a landmass could be made out further west.
It was rumours of this that prompted Eirik the Red to go in
search of it, leading to the discovery of Greenland around
982. Gunnbjörn’s skerries, however, seem to have vanished,
despite accounts which claim that 18 farms had been
established on the island. They still appeared on maps,
including one by Johannes Ruysch in 1507, on which an
annotation claims that they had been destroyed during a
volcanic explosion 50 years before. Equally elusive was
Hvitsark, an island said to lie between Iceland and
Greenland and which was used as a navigational point by
voyagers travelling between the two. The Swedish
cartographer Olaus Magnus (1490–1557) shows it in his
1539 Carta Marina as a speck just to the south-east of
Greenland, although by then all contacts between
Scandinavia and the Viking colony established by Eirik the
Red (which it is presumed died out some time around the
mid-15th century) had lapsed, along with direct knowledge
of the area. By the time the Danish King Christian IV sent
out new expeditions in 1605–07, to be followed by a more
sustained recolonization effort led by the Lutheran pastor
Hans Egede in 1721, all trace of both Gunnbjörn’s skerries
and Hvitsark had vanished.
 Strait of Anian, Novissima totius terrarum orbis tabula, Hugo Allard, 1685

They joined a long list of lands which simply weren’t there

(including Atlantis which, although it began its career as an
allegory of an ideal state in the writings of the Greek
philosopher Plato, still did appear occasionally on 17th-
century maps as a real place). The cartographers, though,
could hardly be blamed. Sometimes the belief, or the simple
hope, that a place existed, or the reluctance to simply leave
blank spaces on the map was enough to lend them shadowy
existence. If no one found them, perhaps it was because
they had not searched hard enough.
Greenland and the rock of Hvitsark I, Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus, Olaus Magnus, 1555
Carta Marina, Olaus Magnus, 1539
 CHAPTER 9

THE DRAWING ROOM

KEY CARTOGRAPHERS FROM THE GOLDEN AGE TO

THE MODERN AGE
A patron has been procured, engraving tools chosen, the
surface on which the map is to be drawn selected and
even a few illusory isles or fantastic coastlines selected or
discarded from the list of places to be incorporated. Still,
perhaps, a cartographer needs to be chosen (if the long
2,000-year array of them from Hecataeus to Behaim has
proved inadequate). Perhaps as the 16th century
approaches, new techniques are discovered and new
regions of the world come into contact with each other,
necessitating more and better maps, a suitable map-maker
might appear. These are some of the most notable
candidates, from the golden age of map-making in the 16th
century and on into the 19th century.

Columbus’s encounter with the Americas in 1492 not only

opened up a whole new horizon for the crowns of Spain and
Portugal to build themselves a colonial empire. It also
revolutionized the world of cartography. Juan de la Cosa
(1450–1510) literally lived this change.
A navigator, as well as a map-maker, he had met the
Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias when he returned
from his rounding of the Cape of Good Hope in 1488, and it
was perhaps in search of similar fame that de la Cosa joined
Columbus’s expedition as master of the Santa Maria, the
largest vessel in the fleet. He took part in Columbus’s
second voyage, too, in 1493 as master of the Mariagalante,
and sailed with the third voyage in 1498 in a lesser role. The
following year he was back in the Americas, as pilot for
Alonso de Ojeda and the flamboyant self-publicist Amerigo
Vespucci, becoming with them the first Europeans to set
foot on the South American continent. He made three
further trips to the Americas, dying when he was shot with
poison arrows during a skirmish with indigenous people at
Turbaco in modern Colombia. Before then he had made use
of the precious intelligence he had garnered about the
Americas to produce several maps, including one world map
drafted in 1500, which is the first to survive that shows the
new discoveries. With the half covering the Americas at a
scale deliberately larger than that of the ‘Old’ world, de la
Cosa clearly intended to emphasize the importance of the
new discoveries. Including the coast of Newfoundland (only
explored by John Cabot in 1497) and showing Cuba as an
island (in contrast to the belief by Columbus that it was
joined to the mainland), it is startlingly accurate in its
depiction of a continent of which Europeans were utterly
ignorant just eight years before.

Detail of the Carribean, Map of the Old and New Worlds, Juan de la Cosa, c. 1500
 De la Cosa’s unfortunate end was a rare one, although
this was an age in which the roles of explorer and map-
maker merged, making the occupation a more than usually
hazardous one. Johannes Ruysch (c. 1460–1533), who was
probably born in Utrecht in the Netherlands, was an unusual
combination of priest, explorer and cartographer. Although
he joined the Benedictine Order at their monastery of St
Martin at Cologne around 1506, where he studied art and
astronomy, combining them to paint the monastery with a
cycle of signs of the zodiac, he had previously contrived to
take part in a voyage from Bristol to North America, very
possibly that of John Cabot in 1497. His fame as an artist
spread to Rome and he was summoned by Pope Julius II to
travel there to help redecorate the papal chambers, so
joining such illustrious company as Michelangelo, Botticelli
and Raphael (with whom he shared lodgings for a while). It
was there that Ruysch was able to indulge another passion,
this time for cartography, by compiling a world map which
covered all of the recent discoveries (including the arrival of
the Portuguese in Sri Lanka in 1506). Somewhat austere,
and lacking the sea monsters which adorned the works of
his competitors, it includes lines of latitude and longitude
and has a fan-like projection in which the North Pole is
depicted as a point (and not a hole, as it had been in
previous maps). Most notably it includes the label Mundus
Novus (‘New World’) on the Americas for the first time,
although he still places Cuba suspiciously close to Asia, in
deference to the continued hope that the coast of Japan and
access to the riches of the Spice Islands lay within easy
reach of the Mundus Novus. After leaving Rome (where his
former room-mate Raphael had rather crowded out all the
other artists), Ruysch took service with King Manuel of
Portugal as an astronomer and cosmographer, making
several more voyages (though to where, it is unclear),
before retiring to his Cologne monastery to continue his
beloved astronomical painting. He died there aged 75,
wholly unaware that his future fame rested not on his
artistic endeavours but on a single map, and, to some
extent, to just two words he had inscribed on it.

World map, Johannes Ruysch, 1507–1508

If in search of an artist-cartographer, Ruysch might be

one choice, but perhaps the most renowned in the field
would be the German painter and print-maker Albrecht
Dürer (1471–1528). The son of a Nuremberg goldsmith,
Dürer was a prodigy who was already producing work of
considerable talent by his late teens. Travels in the 1490s
took him through Germany, the Netherlands and finally to
Italy, where he imbibed the atmosphere of the Renaissance
and transformed into an artist of real power, producing
harmonious and detailed landscapes and energetic
portrayals of the human body, while still infusing his work
with a brooding sense of the old Gothic style. Over the next
40 years he crafted a succession of masterpieces, including
the engraving of The Knight, Death and the Devil, which is
one of his most haunting. His major contribution to
cartography came in 1515, when, under a commission from
the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I he created a beautiful
celestial map, showing both the stars of the northern and
southern hemisphere accurately placed, but with striking
figures representing the constellations enclosing them. The
first proper printed star map to survive, it also pays homage
to eminent astronomers of the past, who are portrayed in its
corners, including Ptolemy and the 10th-century Persian
astronomer al-Sufi, the first to describe the Andromeda
nebula.
Celestial map, Albrecht Dürer, 1515
 Model of Piri Reis in Kilitbahir Castle, Turkey, where he drew his world map

If European merchants and explorers were often virtually

indistinguishable from pirates and conquerors (a moral
flexibility which goes back at least to the Vikings), the same
interchangeability of role affected the Islamic world. The
Turkish corsairs who plied the Mediterranean after the
Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453 were often
independent freebooters, but just as frequently served in
the sultan’s fleets, and their leaders often reached positions
of huge political importance. One of the most famous, and,
almost uniquely among them, also a gifted cartographer
was Piri Reis (c. 1465–1553). He cut his teeth as a junior
pirate in the fleet of his uncle Kemal Re’is, who operated in
the Aegean, preying on Venetian and other Christian vessels
that strayed too close to Ottoman ports. By 1499 he had
developed such prowess that he was promoted to re’is
(captain) himself, with his own ship, and for the next 12
years he patrolled the eastern Mediterranean on behalf of
his sultan, engaging in several battles against the
Venetians. In 1511 he retired to Gallipoli where, using both
his personal experience of a quarter-century of voyaging
and the knowledge he must have gleaned from Venetian
documents that came into Ottoman hands, he compiled his
very own world map.
Surviving fragment of world map, Piri Reis, 1513
 World map, Diogo Ribeiro, 1529

The result was a portolan-style map, which originally

measured 1.4 x 1.65 m (4½ x 5½ ft), although only about a
third of it now survives. It covers the Atlantic, with parts of
the coasts of France, Spain, North and West Africa in the
east, and Cuba, the Bahamas and a section of Brazil to the
west. Among its annotations, Piri notes how Christopher
Columbus had found the Americas and handed them over to
the Spanish king. He also gives a list of his sources, saying
he had employed over 20 charts – including one made by
Columbus himself and nine ancient Arabic maps. Ten
exquisitely detailed ships are shown criss-crossing the
ocean in what was clearly a labour of love for Piri, a
masterpiece which in 1517 he presented to Sultan Selim the
Grim. It then disappeared into the imperial archives in
Istanbul’s Topkapi Palace, only to emerge in 1929 when
scholars began a proper audit of its contents.
Piri also produced his own version of the western
wagoneers and rutters (see here) in his Kitab-I Bahriye
(‘Book on Seafaring’), which he finished in 1521. Its 130
chapters each cover a port and its surrounding region and
each has a chart illustrating the local landmarks and
hazards, together with the surrounding topography such as
hills, all clearly intended to help sea captains and pilots
navigate around the area. Piri was proud enough of this that
he presented it to the new sultan Suleiman I in 1525 (and
made a special deluxe version for him the following year).
By now he was back in official service, having taken part in
the successful siege of Rhodes in 1522 which expelled the
Knights of St John (and caused them to take up residence on
Malta). By 1547 he had reached the pinnacle of his career,
as an admiral and commander of the Ottoman fleet in the
Indian Ocean. In 1548 he chased the Portuguese out of the
strategic port of Aden, but five years later he failed to
dislodge them from Hormuz, sailing out of the port with a
shipload of plunder, but leaving the enemy still in command
of the fort. Despite their earlier cordial relations, Sultan
Suleiman was furious and ordered the aged admiral, by now
in his mid-80s, to be executed by strangling, so putting an
end to the life of Turkey’s greatest map-maker.
For ambition, few cartographers could beat Diogo Ribeiro
(d. 1533), who in the international way of his chosen
profession spent most of his life known by the Spanish
version of his name Diego Ribeiro after he took service with
Charles I (who was also Emperor Charles V of the Holy
Roman Empire) in 1518, a few years after Ferdinand
Magellan. He possessed privileged information, having been
on Vasco da Gama’s voyage of 1502 and that of Afonso de
Albuquerque in 1509, which established the Portuguese
presence around Goa. By 1523 he had become official royal
cosmographer and a member of the Spanish delegation
which tussled with the Portuguese as to whether the line
they had agreed in 1494, dividing the world between them
in the Atlantic, should carry on around the globe and divide
the Pacific world of the Spice Islands also (see here). He
worked under the auspices of the Casa de Contratación in
Seville, the body set up by the Spanish Crown to control all
trade with the Americas and to ensure that information
about the new lands did not leak to Spain’s rivals. Ribeiro’s
contribution was the Padrón Real, a type of master plan of
the world or, as he put it ‘A universal chart containing
everything that has been discovered in the world up until
now’.
All Spanish sea captains returning from the Americas
were required to report what they had seen to the Casa de
Contratación, and adjustments could then be made to the
‘universal chart’. Of the four surviving world maps made by
Ribeiro during his time in Spain, the 1529 map is the most
splendid, giving the most accurate geographical portrait of
the world as the Spanish knew it. Meticulously drawn, with a
quadrant and an astrolabe portrayed as the tools of his
trade, the Spanish flag is also firmly planted on the
Moluccas, asserting Spain’s claim to the spice-producing
region.
Four years later Ribeiro was dead, and a decade after that
the first leak appeared in the Spanish information dam,
although ironically with the permission of the Crown.
Ribeiro’s predecessor Sebastian Cabot (c. 1474–1557), the
son of John who had first explored North America for the
English Crown in 1497, had become Spain’s pilot-major and
chief cartographer in 1522 (although, always the
opportunist, he engaged in possibly treasonous
correspondence with Venice at the same time). His voyage
to South America in 1526 was a fiasco: the enticingly named
Rio de la Plata (‘River of Silver’) on the present Argentine-
Uruguayan border proved to conceal no riches; several
senior officers mutinied and Cabot had them stranded on a
remote island, where they are presumed to have died;
another ship ran aground; and when Cabot finally returned
to Seville in 1530 he was arrested, tried for causing the
officers’ deaths and sentenced to four years of exile in Oran
in North Africa. When Ribeiro died he was recalled and
restored to his former job, and in 1544 he was surprisingly
given permission to have a world map printed in the
Netherlands, largely based on the Padrón Real, which
contains the fruits of the Spanish expeditions (his own ill-
fated one included) over the past 15 years. Its detail on the
Amazon, the Rio de la Plata and the Caribbean is precise,
and he even took the opportunity to pay homage to his
father in an inscription off the coast of North America.

World map, Sebastian Cabot, 1544

Cabot left Spanish service in 1547 and went back to

England. Negotiations with the Emperor Charles V yielded
no results, and he spent the next decade as an adviser on
possible English expeditions to find the North-West Passage
and to the Muscovy Company (founded in London in 1553)
on a hypothetical North-East Passage that might provide a
short-cut to East Asia.
Though an able cartographer and inveterate explorer,
Cabot’s unreliability might recommend against his
employment to draw our map. But his venture in the
Netherlands was just a sign that efforts by the Spanish and
Portuguese to try to keep information about the new
discoveries to themselves were ultimately futile. World
maps were produced by an ever wider range of
cartographers, such as Sebastian Münster born in Ingelheim
near Mainz and educated, as most of his family had been
before him, in a school run by the Franciscans there. He
proved an able student devouring new (and possibly
theologically rather worrying to his tutors) knowledge about
mathematics, geography, astronomy and languages
(including Hebrew, about study of which he wrote dozens of
books). By 1524 he had become Professor of Hebrew at the
University of Heidelberg, where he expanded his already
enormous field of interests into cartography, beginning to
put together information for an encyclopedia whose
ambition was breathtaking. The Cosmographia was to be
simply a compilation of all knowledge available in the world.
It took him nearly 20 years to bring it to completion, with
the assistance of numerous other scholars and in the course
of this he defected from Catholicism to Lutheranism during
the Reformation (which took him to Basel, where he was
also Professor of Hebrew). He also drew on the services of a
gallery of talented artists, including Hans Holbein the
Younger. One of the maps included with it, the Tabula
novarum insularum (‘Table of New Islands’) in 1544 is the
first to show the Americas as a discrete continent (although
the North is rather squashed and referred to as the ‘Terra de
Cuba’ or land of Cuba). Although schematic, the wide
circulation of the Cosmographia, which went through two
dozen editions over the next century, meant that Münster
became one of the most effective popularizers of the new
geography. When he was laid to rest after his death in 1552,
his epitaph is said to have lauded him as the ‘German
Strabo’, the equal of the ancient geographical
encyclopedist.
 Portrait of Sebastian Münster, Johann Theodor de Bry, reproduced in 1650

The torch of cartography was passed to Italy, too, where a

stream of masters such as Battista Agnese (c. 1500–64) led
a workshop in Venice that produced dozens of maritime
atlases and world maps, in most of which the main
landmasses are coloured a very curious deep green. Maps
began to appear in other formats, too, and if in search of a
truly monumental map, the Venetian Giacomo Gastaldi
might be a wise choice. Beginning his career as an engineer
who drew up plans of the complex system of waterways
which criss-crossed Venice (and still does), from the mid-
1540s he turned to producing maps with a wider ambit, in
1548 creating an edition of Ptolemy’s Geography which
included a series of regional maps of the Americas, the first
to be produced in atlas form, and whose reduced format
made him, in effect, the first ever cartographer to publish a
pocket atlas. His fame as a map-maker grew so great that
the Venetian senate, not an easily impressed body,
commissioned him to produce a huge wall map on the
Doge’s palace between 1549 and 1553. Though that has
since perished, it would have allowed the Council of Ten –
one of Venice’s most important ruling bodies – to reflect on
the vast new discoveries made over the past six decades
and how their own city, once the supreme maritime power,
had largely been excluded from this bonanza. Gastaldi
rounded off his career with another stunningly beautiful
production: a 1561 world map which, though a masterpiece
of the map-maker’s art, showed both a North-West and a
North-East Passage and thus routes to Asia via both the
Americas and northern Russia, neither of which existed, but
whose siren-like lure launched (and wrecked) dozens of
expeditions over the next 300 years.
Gallia, Cosmographia, Sebastian Münster, 1544
 Tabula novarum insularum, Sebastian Münster, 1544

Gastaldi’s life and career was roughly contemporary with

one of the most colourful cartographers of them all, who
proved that map-making and the pirate’s life are not
mutually exclusive occupations. Guillaume Le Testu (c.
1509–73) was born in Le Havre and formed part of an
eminent school of French map-makers based around Dieppe,
whose pre-eminent practitioner was Jean Rotz (c. 1505–60)
the author of the Boke of Idrographie – a manuscript atlas
incorporating a two-hemisphere world map – who spent
several years in the service of Henry VIII of England. By
1550, Le Testu had risen to the rank of royal cosmographer,
and was commissioned by King Henri II to map the coast of
Brazil (with the intention of seizing land there from the
Portuguese). He then accompanied the French admiral
Nicolas Durand de Villegaignon to help found a French
colony in the region of modern Rio de Janeiro, whose
establishment in 1555 was the subject of much rejoicing,
but which soon fell apart into Catholic and Calvinist factions
(the latter being banished by Villegaignon), while the
remaining French settlers were finally expelled by the
Portuguese in 1567. Le Testu used what he had learnt
though to publish the Cosmographie universelle selon les
navigateurs, tant anciens que modernes (‘The Universal
Cosmography According to Ancient and Modern
Navigators’), which contained six world maps, some with
highly complex projections, showing his virtuosity as a map-
maker. If Le Testu had stuck to cartography, all would have
been well, but in the early 1570s he returned to sea and
took up life as a privateer, raiding Spanish shipping on
behalf of the French Crown. In 1573 he found himself off the
Isthmus of Panama, where by chance he encountered Sir
Francis Drake, who was engaged in the same sort of
licensed piracy on behalf of Queen Elizabeth I of England.
The two hit it off, and Le Testu offered to join Drake in a raid
on a Spanish silver mule train that was on its way to
Nombre de Dios in Panama before being shipped back to
Spain. Although the raid was a complete success and seized
around 100,000 gold pesos, Le Testu was wounded and left
behind to recuperate and to avoid slowing down the
treasure-laden main group. When Drake sent back a rescue
party, they found no trace of Le Testu, and it was presumed
that he had been captured by the Spanish and executed.
The mystery surrounding his final fate is equalled by the
controversy surrounding his 1555 world map whose
inclusion of the island of Java la Grande (which was, as we
have seen, a regular feature of late-medieval mapping) in
the place where Australia lies and the drawings of strange
birds which bear a passing resemblance to cassowaries,
native to Australia, have led to suggestions that he knew of
the continent from Portuguese explorers. While unlikely, the
discovery in 2018 on an island off northern Australia of a
coin that came from the East African merchant town of
Kilwa, with whom the Portuguese were in contact (although
largely by raiding), suggests trading networks of hitherto
unexpected extent and that maybe, just maybe, the
Portuguese sighted or landed in Australia as early as the
1520s.

Atlantic Ocean

That landing would have been 80 years before that of

Willem Janszoon, the first Dutch explorer to reach Australia,
who made landfall on the Cape York Peninsula in 1606 (see
here). His travels and those of other Dutch navigators such
as Abel Tasman were greatly facilitated by the increasing
pre-eminence of Dutch cartographers, working in the
tradition of Gerard Mercator (who in 1571 produced the first
world atlas). Men such as Petrus Plancius (1552–1622), an
astronomer as well as cartographer, who like many of his
Protestant peers, fled Flanders for the safety of Amsterdam
in the 1580s. Plancius became a Protestant minister and the
Dutch East India Company’s first cartographer. Among those
for whom he prepared maps was Jan Huygen van Linschoten
(1563–1611), a native of Enkhuizen in the northern
Netherlands (also the hometown of Lucas Janszoon
Waghenaer, the pioneer of sea atlases, see here), who was
one of the age’s most inveterate travellers. His father had
been an innkeeper, and so he was no stranger to travellers’
tales, which inspired a wanderlust that took him to Seville in
the service of Philip II of Spain, and then to Goa in the
company of its Portuguese archbishop João Vicente da
Fonseca. Van Linschoten remained there five years,
assiduously gathering information from Portuguese
mariners, and his own observations about local flora and
fauna and Indian custom, which he collected together in his
Itinerario, a work which fuelled the appetite of Dutch
merchants for trading ventures to the east, and which
allowed Plancius to raise his profile with the world map he
provided for one of the volumes. Further fame came in 1589
from Plancius’s collaboration with another renowned Dutch
cartographer Jacob Floris van Langren on one of the first
celestial globes to include first-hand information on the
constellations visible in the southern sky and an even more
detailed version on which he collaborated with yet another
Dutch map-maker Jodocus Hondius the Elder (1563–1612)
nine years later. While some of the constellations named on
it, such as the Bee and the Southern Arrow, have fallen out
of fashion, Monoceros, the Unicorn, is still there on modern
star charts.
Pages showing the zodiac and astronomical instrument (right); portolan atlas, Battista Agnese,
c. 1544
Two different projections of the world, Cosmographie Universelle, Guillaume Le Testu, 1555
Celestial globe; and detail showing the constellation of Argo Petrus Plancius, 1625

Hondius established himself as one of the mainstays of

the Amsterdam cartographic scene by acquiring the plates
from Mercator’s original atlas and continuing to publish
revised and enlarged versions of them (which are known as
the Mercator-Hondius atlases). He is also notable for two
curious maps; one of which shows the route of the second
circumnavigation of the globe by the English seafarer Sir
Francis Drake in 1577–80 with an idiosyncratic projection in
which the world is divided into two hemispheres, but the
eastern half of North America lies in one, while the western
half is sited in the other (unlike most such hemispherical
maps where the Atlantic marked the division). About
halfway up the coast of western North America is marked
‘Nova Albion’, the spot at which Drake is said to have landed
(now called Drakes Bay, in California) and which he claimed
for his monarch Queen Elizabeth I, but over which the
English never succeeded in exerting any control. The map
was published in 1590, two years after the defeat of the
Spanish Armada had made Drake a national hero and
elevated Elizabeth to the position of saviour of the European
Protestant cause against the Catholic Spanish. It was in this
milieu that Hondius published what has become known as
the Christian Knight World Map, an otherwise standard
Mercator projection world map that writhes with symbolic
figures (Mundus, ‘the world’; Peccatum, ‘Sin’; Diabolus, ‘the
Devil’) and a Christian Knight who is seen trampling on Caro
(‘Lust’) and about to decapitate Peccatum, who is seen as a
monstrous hybrid of snake and human.
Hondius’s map is almost a nod in the direction of all those
medieval mappae mundi, which similarly drew on Christian
and allegorical imagery, but they were set in the context of
an increasingly modern and scientific cartography. The
baton of premier map-makers gradually passed from the
Dutch to the French and British, who dominated the field
from the mid-17th century. The flood of information from the
height of the age of exploration was slowing now, but there
were plenty of lands not mapped or lightly mapped by
Europeans, and Guillaume Delisle (1675–1726) contributed
noteworthy maps of the French possessions in North
America, the search for commissions helped by the fact that
he had been tutor to the future French regent Philippe of
Orléans, was appointed to the Académie Royale des
Sciences at the comparatively tender age of 27, and
reached the summit of the French cartographic tree in 1718
when he was appointed Premier Géographe du Roi. That
guaranteed him patronage and a pension. Among the many
maps he produced was one that showed the area beyond
the Mississippi which had been explored by the French
traveller Louis-Armand, Baron de Lahontan in 1688–89.
Lahontan had reported what he called a ‘Longue River’,
which led from the Mississippi to a great range of mountains
to the west. Delisle duly included this on his map, but he
was sceptical and added a note, which must greatly have
annoyed Lahontan, adding a note to it that the river was
there ‘unless the Seigneur de Lahonton [sic] has invented all
of these things, which it is hard to tell, he is being the only
one to have penetrated this vast land’. Delisle later became
embroiled in a court case with a rival French cartographer
Jean-Baptiste Nolin (1657–1708) whom he accused of
plagiarizing his work by including information that he had
prepared for a terrestrial globe, but not yet published. Nolin
was forced to retract his maps and to pay the costs of the
ensuing court case.
 Portrait of Petrus Plancius, J.H. Rennefeld, c. 1870

Employing Delisle to make our map might risk undue

criticism of the patron, or expensive litigation. If Delisle was
ambitious, though, the English cartographer James Wyld
(1812–87) was even more so.
Vera Totius Expeditionis Nauticae; and detail of Drake’s landing site, Jodocus Hondius the Elder,
1595
Christian knight world map, Jodocus Hondius the Elder, c. 1596

Coming, as many of his peers through history have done,

from a dynasty of cartographers – his father had carried out
work for the Ordnance Survey – he was steeped in map-
making lore. He joined the Royal Geographical Society aged
just 18, and was only 24 when he took over the family
business after his father’s death. His career was
characterized by a keen understanding of the market and
opportunistic publishing – his maps included one of the
California gold fields, to take advantage of the interest
roused by the Gold Rush of 1849 – and his position as MP for
Bodmin from 1847 gave him an insight into, and access to,
the highest reaches of decision-making. It was this that
proved his downfall, when he saw the announcement of the
Great Exhibition in 1851 as an opportunity for his greatest
project yet. Wyld proposed that the exhibition should
include a huge globe of the world, some 18 m (60 ft) in
diameter, the interior of which would feature models in relief
of geographical features and notable world landmarks. To
his great chagrin, Wyld was turned down by the exhibition’s
organizers, in part because he wished to charge a side-
entrance fee (from which he would profit) but also for the
very practical reason that his proposed globe was simply too
large to fit inside the exhibition building.
Undeterred, Wyld negotiated with the owners of Leicester
Square Gardens in central London (now Leicester Square)
and arranged a 10-year lease which would give him ample
time to build, fit out and profit handsomely from the globe.
At first things went well. Although the lease had cost £3,000
and the building of the attraction proved expensive, not
least because the interior relief of the globe required the
moulding of thousands of plaster casts, the crowds
queueing up to pay one shilling (and two shillings and
sixpence on Saturdays) proved satisfactory, and Wyld was
able to persuade notables such as Prince Albert and the
Duke of Wellington to visit. The end of the Great Exhibition,
however, led to a drop in visitor numbers, as fewer came
from outside London and even a desperate bid to inject
interest with special additions such as a scale model of
Stonehenge, a stuffed polar bear and a room on the
Crimean War, failed to lift them. Rival attractions such as
Robert Burford’s Panorama, which also fronted on to
Leicester Square Gardens, and the Regent’s Park Diorama
also siphoned off some of the tourist trade and by 1862 the
globe and its surrounding area were almost derelict. Wyld
had lost control of the building to one of the proprietors of
part of the square, John Augustus Tulk, and in October that
year it was demolished and broken up for scrap. Wyld
managed to hold onto part of the square until 1868, but was
never able to revive the globe project or launch anything
quite so ambitious. In a previous age, he might have
inscribed dragons on his maps, or sailed uncharted seas in
search of sea monsters. Instead, his chimeras were of his
own making, if no less romantic for that. In our own age,
where virtual reality makes images of everything possible,
and maps of anything plausible, perhaps, as the last knight
errant of cartography, he should be our choice.

Illustration of the building in Leicester Square for James Wyld’s Great Globe, The Illustrated
London News, 29 March 1851
Cross-section of the Great Globe designed by James Wyld, 1851
 CHAPTER 10

MIGHTY MAPS

MAPPING SUPERLATIVES
I f there are numerous contenders for the title of the oldest
map in existence (see Chapter 1 for the very first
cartographic ventures of all), and if the newest maps are
created millions of times a second as people tap in queries
on their smartphones, there are still many other
superlatives vying for attention in the cartographer’s world.

Most maps are intended for legibility and so making them as

small as possible is not generally the best idea. Many early
maps were very definitely not portable, engraved on marble
slabs or stone stelae, or in the form of wall paintings or
painted on awkward-to-carry objects such as jars. Portolan
maps were of course by their very nature portable – they
were designed to be consulted aboard ship – but later on
atlases became bulkier and less easy to manage.
Smaller editions of those maps which carried enough
detail to be used as practical guides when travelling did,
though, finally begin to appear, such as Emanuel Bowen’s
Britannia Depicta (1720), which contains 273 strip road
maps showing principal routes in Britain. Much of it was
copied from John Ogilby’s rather weightier Britannia,
published in 1675, but the printing of the maps on both
sides of the paper reduced the bulk and made it a
practicable proposition to take out on the road (and perhaps
merited the rather cheeky subtitle ‘Ogilby Improv’d’).
Since then portable, pocket and ‘handy’ atlases have
proliferated, although the advent of maps accessible by
phone has dealt a serious blow to small-format road atlases.
Far more diminutive than all of these, however, is the world
map devised in 2012 by scientists working at IBM. The 22 x
11 micron map (which is, in other words, just over
1/50,000th of a metre wide) is, astonishingly, in 3D and was
created using a special tool on the tip of a microscope which
engraved the lines on the corner of a silicon chip in just 2
minutes and 23 seconds.
 At the other end of the scale, the record for the largest
atlas was held until 2012 by the Klencke Atlas, a positively
elephantine book which measures 1.7 x 2.31 m (5½ x 7½ ft)
when opened, and contains 41 massive copperplate maps
within a massive bulk that takes six people to move.
Presented to King Charles II on the occasion of his
restoration to the throne in 1660 by a consortium of Dutch
sugar merchants headed by Johannes Klencke (c. 1620–72),
the atlas so impressed the contemporary diarist John Evelyn
that he called it ‘a vast book of mapps in a volume of neare
four yards large’. Klencke was awarded for his oversized gift
with a baronetcy – a hereditary knighthood – and his atlas
remained in the royal collection until 1828, when it was
passed to the British Museum. Klencke’s monumental tome
retained its title as the world’s largest atlas until 2012, when
it was toppled by the Earth Platinum atlas, which spans over
2.8 m (9 ft) when opened, contains 128 maps on 61 pages
and weighs over 200 kg (440 lb), which is more than twice
the weight of the average adult American male. Only 31
copies were printed – few have the right-sized shelves! –
and not only the bulk, but the price tag of $100,000, puts it
out of reach of the average user.
The world’s smallest map, IBM, 2012
The road from London to Bristol, Britannia Depicta, Emanuel Bowen, 1720
 Klencke Atlas, 1660

Staggering though this cost seems, it falls well short of

the highest price ever paid for a map. One buyer paid more
than four times this amount in 2018, handing over £430,000
for the original map of the Hundred Acre Wood drawn by
E.H. Shepard for A.A. Milne’s perennial favourite Winnie-the-
Pooh, making it the most expensive map embedded as a
book illustration. The highest price paid for a map at
auction, however, dwarfs even this. Abel Buell’s 1784 A New
and Correct Map of the United States of North America went
under the hammer at Christie’s in New York for nearly $2.1
million in 2010. Sold by the New Jersey Historical Society,
which had held it since 1862, it was one of only three copies
of the extremely rare map to be sold in over a century. The
first map to be produced in the newly independent United
States and the first to show a United States flag, its
colourful creator the Connecticut silversmith Abel Buell
(1742–1822) was sentenced early in his career to having
part of his ear amputated for forging banknotes. He
recovered sufficiently to make his fortune in minting copper
coins for his home state, produced the first printing type
produced in North America, and developed a sideline in the
manufacture of steel coins. Somehow, though, Buell
managed to squander away all these riches and he died in
poverty in 1822 in the New Haven Almshouse.

Earth Platinum, Millennium House, 2012

Even Buell’s map, however, cannot claim the title of the

most expensive ever. That accolade goes to the 1507
Universalis cosmographia secundum Ptholomaei traditionem
et Americi Vespucii aliorumque lustrationes, (‘The Universal
Cosmography according to the Tradition of Ptolemy and the
Discoveries of Amerigo Vespucci and Others’) better known
as the Waldseemüller map, the 12-sheet world map created
by German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller. Its status as
the first map to use the name ‘America’ made it sufficiently
an object of desire in the United States that it was
purchased by the Library of Congress for $10 million in July
2001. Created by Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringman
(1482–1511), it originally accompanied a work they
compiled entitled An Introduction to Cosmography and over
a thousand copies were printed. Over time, though, these
almost all disappeared – worn out or simply lost.
Subsequently, scholars knew that there must have been a
map, as copies of the Introduction itself did remain in
circulation, and these referred to it, but frustratingly none
seemed to have survived. One copy, however, had escaped
the fate of all the others. Purchased by the Nuremberg
geographer Johannes Schöner around 1515, all trace of it
was lost after his death in 1547. That was until it
mysteriously resurfaced in 1901, when a Jesuit priest, Father
Joseph Fischer, stumbled across it while on a book-hunting
expedition to Wolfegg Castle in southern Germany. What he
found there was beyond his wildest expectations. As well as
unearthing a rare map of Greenland – the original object of
his travels – on the final day of his trip he was shown an
upper room piled with books and manuscripts. One of them,
bound in pigskin with two large brass clasps, drew his
attention. On opening it, he was greeted with the
dedication: ‘Posterity, Schöner gives you this as an offering.’
Once Fischer opened up the volume and began to
scrutinize the contents, he realized it was a precious
offering indeed. As well as a rare star chart by the German
artist and engraver Albrecht Dürer, there was a giant world
map in 12 sheets. Fischer knew the Introduction to
Cosmography well, and to his amazement the annotations
on this map matched those which were mentioned in that
book. The appearance of the name ‘America’ on one of the
sheets confirmed his growing suspicions that this must be
the long-lost Waldseemüller map.
 This cartographic treasure, though, despite various efforts
to purchase it, remained in Wolfegg Castle, surviving the
two World Wars, during which many artistic treasures
perished or vanished, until, after years of negotiation the
$10 million price was agreed between the Library of
Congress and Wolfegg’s owners. The official transfer
happened in April 2007, since when the world’s most
expensive map has been on permanent display at the
library in Washington DC. Its price is unlikely to be
surpassed any time soon, unless that is someone finds
somewhere in a dusty archive one of those maps – such as a
Roman-era version of Ptolemy’s mapping – which it’s
hypothesized might have existed, but which vanished
centuries or even millennia ago.

Universalis Cosmographia, Martin Waldseemüller, 1507

 CHAPTER 11

A MAP IN HAND

THE PURPOSES TO WHICH MAPS HAVE BEEN PUT

T he map has been planned, the information gathered, a
patron secured, the cartographer employed. The map
has been surveyed, drawn and distributed. Some maps,
though, have an afterlife which makes their significance far
greater than their drafters can ever have imagined.

In some cases this is because they chronicle a voyage or

exploration, or map a region whose later significance gave
even greater weight to the cartographer’s work. Maps lend
authority to the possession of land, or at least to claims to
possess it, and have done ever since the Nuzi map, four
millennia ago in Mesopotamia, named the owner of a field
(see here). Written charters and other legal agreements or
international treaties may state that such and such a portion
of territory belongs to one or other power, but the visual
representation of this on a map seems to have an almost
mystical hold. Display it cartographically, and it is so.
North Atlantic Ocean, Atlas Miller, Pierre and Georges Reinel and Lopo Homem, 1519

Medieval borders were a muddle, and nowhere more so

than in Europe, where the overlapping claims of feudal
suzerainty meant that one individual could hold land from
several lords (and even in extreme cases hold land from a
feudal superior who in turn held land from him in a different
district). William IX, Count of Poitiers from 1153 to 1156 was
the first son of King Henry II of England, but also owed
allegiance to King Louis VII of France for his Poitevin lands
(which had come into English hands through Henry’s
marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine in 1152), though any moral
and political dilemmas were somewhat mitigated by
William’s passing away aged just three. Great lords could
also be little ones. The Hundred Years’ War eventually did
break out between England and France in 1337 after Edward
III stubbornly refused to swear an oath of allegiance to Philip
VI of France for his lands in Aquitaine (including Bordeaux)
and only ended in 1453, with the English in possession of
just Calais. Any serious attempt to resolve this through
mapping, even had there been the will or the technical
capacity to do so, would have been doomed to failure.
As central governments became more powerful,
bureaucracies more capable and widespread, and
cartography more sophisticated, the options available to
rulers who wanted to assert their claims through maps grew.
The projection of European power outwards into new lands,
in Asia, Africa and in particular the Americas from the late
15th century, both raised the issue of mapping these
territories (some of them, in Mexico and East Asia in
particular, had long had their own cartographic traditions)
and of resolving disputes between the colonizing powers as
to where the boundaries between them should lie.
 View of Seville, Sanchez Coello, 16th century

Perhaps the first international dispute to be resolved by

reference to maps was that between Spain and Portugal as
to where the dividing line between their respective
territories should be drawn after the discovery of ‘New
Worlds’ by Christopher Columbus in 1492. The arbiter whom
the Spanish and Portuguese chose to determine this was the
Papacy. In one sense this was logical: ever since the 1450s
the Papacy had promulgated the ‘Doctrine of Discovery’,
initially aimed at regularizing the Portuguese explorations
around the west coast of Africa. In 1455 Pope Nicholas V
issued the papal bull Romanus Pontifex (‘Roman Pontiff’;
such documents are simply named after the first few words
contained within them), in which he granted King Afonso V
of Portugal the right to ‘invade, search out, capture and
subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever . . . and to
reduce their persons to perpetual slavery’ along a long
stretch of the west coast of Africa.
Columbus’s voyages, which opened up a new area for
exploitation by the Spanish to match Portugal’s advances in
Africa, was followed by vigorous lobbying by both nations for
a papal determination of where their respective zones of
influence should end. The Spanish were rewarded on 4 May
1493 with the papal bull Inter Caetera (‘Among Other
Things’) which granted them ‘all island and mainlands found
and to be found, discovered and to be discovered towards
the west and south, by drawing and establishing a
line . . . one hundred leagues towards the west and south
from any of the islands commonly known as the Azores and
Cape Verde’. As a salve to religious sensibilities, and just to
be on the safe side, the bull excluded any territories which
were in the possession of ‘Christian princes’ and it also
enjoined and encouraged the Spanish to convert any
peoples they found to Christianity. Ferdinand and Isabella of
Spain could be well satisfied that vast new realms were now
open to them and, just as importantly, that interlopers from
Portugal could be kept out. Understandably, the Portuguese
were not entirely happy with this outcome, claiming that the
1479 Treaty of Alcáçovas, which had granted all lands south
of the Canaries to Portugal (at a time nobody in Europe was
aware that anything much of significance lay to the west),
meant that all of Columbus’s discoveries and all of the vast
new domain claimed by the Spanish Crown was, in law,
actually Portugal’s property.
 Inter Caetera, Papal Bull, 1493

Bypassing the Papacy this time, the Spanish and

Portuguese negotiators agreed a new line, 270 leagues west
of the Azores, which gave Portugal some confidence that its
trade routes around Africa would not be impinged upon by
Spanish adventurers, and left the Spanish reassured that
the Portuguese would keep out of the New World. It turned
out that King João II of Portugal had the better side of the
bargain struck by this new Treaty of Tordesillas, since in April
1500 the Portuguese navigator Pedro Álvares Cabral (c.
1467–1520) landed in Brazil, the eastern portion of which
lay comfortably to the east of the agreed line. It may have
been a coincidence but there were whispers at the time, and
suggestions since, that the Portuguese knew all along that
the terms of Tordesillas would leave them with at least a
share of the new lands across the Atlantic.
 The treaty line is marked in dramatic fashion on the
Cantino Planisphere, a map whose origins lie in a piece of
16th-century espionage. Other rulers had their own
ambitions to secure some part of the riches falling to Lisbon
and Madrid from their new empires, or at least to get a
better sense of their extent. Ercole I d’Este, Duke of Ferrara,
was a true Renaissance ruler and patron of the arts (and in
particular music: his cappella, boasting the finest singers in
Italy, was the envy of other rulers and he managed to snag
the services of Josquin des Prez, the most prestigious
composer of the age). In 1502, he despatched an agent,
Alberto Cantino, to Lisbon with instructions to find out as
much as he could about the new lands Portugal and Spain
had been busily slicing up between them. It was a risky
assignment as the penalty for revealing information about
the lands across the Atlantic was death. Even so, Cantino
managed to make contact with an informant who provided
him firstly with details of a Portuguese expedition to
Newfoundland led by Gaspar Corte-Real the previous year,
but, more importantly, handed over (for the price of 12
ducats) a copy of a world map showing Portugal’s holdings
in South America. Only the second map to show the New
World’s coastlines in any kind of detail, it highlights that of
Brazil in a garish green (matching the parts of West Africa
and the Malay Peninsula – also key parts of the growing
Portuguese global empire). More tellingly, it shows the
Tordesillas line, a deep red scar running vertically down the
Atlantic, bisecting South America just west of where Brazil
juts out into the ocean. This, clearly, was a document
originally drafted by someone very close to the court, aware
of the political sensitivities of the demarcation line (not that,
as the century wore on, the Portuguese kept too strictly to
it, and they quite happily occupied large parts of what is
now Brazil, which lay far to the west of the line).
The map, though, possessed one glaring flaw, in that it
did not (as the terms of the Treaty of Tordesillas also failed
to do) extend around the Poles to show where the dividing
line between Spanish and Portuguese should lie in the
eastern hemisphere. It soon dawned on cartographers and
kings alike that the area where an extension of the
Tordesillas line might run through lay right in the middle of
the Spice Islands, the source of incredibly rare and exotic
commodities such as pepper, clove, nutmeg and mace, from
which the Portuguese were profiting handsomely. This had
not been a problem at the time of Tordesillas. Only in 1511,
when the Portuguese captured Malacca and began to push
eastwards, did it become apparent that the area to its east
could prove at least as valuable an economic proposition as
the entire Americas. It was in part as a counter to
Portuguese expansion in the area that Ferdinand Magellan
embarked on the voyage that would ultimately result in the
first circumnavigation of the globe (although not by him, as
he died during a skirmish with local people on the island of
Mactan in the Philippines). Even so, the arrival of a Spanish
fleet in March 1521 set off a flurry of diplomatic
manoeuvring, including the employment by Spain of a
Portuguese cartographer Diogo Ribeiro (see here) who
produced a map locating the Spice Islands firmly to the east
of the hypothetical extension of the Tordesillas line, and
hence within the Spanish sphere. Only in 1529 did Charles V
give up the Spanish claim, as he needed Portuguese support
to prosecute a war against France and England, and so he
agreed to the Treaty of Zaragoza, which formally extended
the Tordesillas line and affirmed that the region in dispute
lay on the Portuguese side. With no hint of irony, Ribeiro
was once again employed to map the occasion, this time
lauding how it showed the world ‘divided into two parts
according to the capitulation between the Catholic Kings of
Spain and King John of Portugal which they made at
Tordesillas in 1494’.
Detail of the dividing line between Spanish and Portuguese possessions as agreed at the
Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494, Cantino Planisphere, 1502
Map of Asia with an ‘ante-meridian’ to demarcate the Portuguese sphere of influence (west of
the red line) from the Spanish, Nuño García de Toreno, 1522

Cartography continued to lie at the heart of European

expansion, with maps being surveyed and produced as a
means of asserting ownership. Occasionally they were used,
as at Tordesillas, to resolve disputes between the imperial
powers, but in one case they actually sparked an almost
uncontrollable rush to occupy territory. By the late 1870s
Europeans had occupied much of the coastline of Africa,
initially in the west where they established forts as conduits
for the transatlantic slave trade, beginning with Elmina (in
modern Ghana), founded by the Portuguese in 1482 (and
eventually captured by the Dutch West India Company in
1637), and extended into North Africa as Ottoman rule there
decayed in the early 19th century. They had not however
penetrated too far into the African interior where the difficult
terrain and hazy knowledge of the river systems, which did
provide a way in, hampered any European push inland.
Just as at Tordesillas, it was the European powers’
suspicions of each other that sparked another ratchet
upwards in their colonization efforts. Although the English,
French and Portuguese, whose colonial holdings were the
largest on the continent, other countries, and in particular
Germany, felt excluded. Portugal principally controlled
Angola and Mozambique, France was pre-eminent in the
north and west, and Britain’s interests centred in the south
and east, although with a significant presence in West
Africa, around what is now Nigeria and Ghana. In 1884–85,
the redoubtable German chancellor Otto von Bismarck
(1815–98) called a conference in Berlin, ostensibly to
resolve competing imperial claims to African territory and in
particular to the Congo Basin, which the French maintained
should belong exclusively to them, but with the scarcely
concealed additional motive to carve out some kind of
German presence in Africa.
The French advances had been in part intended to head
off those of King Leopold II of Belgium (r. 1865–1909), who
was creating a private empire under the auspices of the
International Congo Society. Based on the extraction of
rubber, this involved the imposition on the indigenous
population of a regime of almost unimaginable brutality
(local officials amputated the hands of plantation workers
who failed to fulfil their quotas). In 1880 a French expedition
under Pierre de Brazza (1852–1905) claimed the region
around what is now Brazzaville, while both Britain and
Portugal sought to press counter-claims in the region. The
British in turn felt pressured by the burgeoning French
expansion eastwards from Congo, which threatened to cut
the hoped-for continuous ribbon of British-controlled
territory from South Africa via Sudan to Egypt (which Britain
had in effect occupied in 1882 after a nationalist revolt
against the regime of the Khedive Tewfik led to an anti-
Christian riot in Alexandria, and the despatch of British
gunboats and troops to restore order).
To resolve the escalating spiral of claims, Bismarck invited
delegations of 13 European nations, plus the United States
to a conference at Berlin, which opened on 15 November
1884 and dragged on for over three months, until the end of
February the following year. As well as resolving to end the
slave trade within Africa (where, even after its abolition by
European powers, it remained in operation in areas not
controlled by them), it also confirmed Leopold in his
occupation of the Congo, where conditions were so bad as
to be tantamount to slavery, and which, with his rule
internationally sanctioned, the Belgian king in August 1885
declared to be the ‘Congo Free State’. Crucially, the Berlin
Conference also enshrined the principle of ‘effective
occupation’. This laid down that a European state could only
lay claim to an area of Africa in which it had a real presence,
with an organized administration and forces to defend its
position. It could not, in other words, simply rely on signing
treaties with local rulers who signed away their rights
(whether they possessed the power to do so or not, and
whether they were tricked or cajoled into doing so). Despite
the principle being explicitly limited to coastal lands, which
were almost all in any case already occupied (and of which
Germany had none), it was interpreted by France and Britain
in particular to mean that the possession of coastal bases
also brought legal control of the hinterland behind them.
Cartoon of the Berlin Conference, Chronicle, 1884
Africa before the Berlin Conference, Guyot’s New Intermediate Geography, Arnold Guyot, 1882
Africa after the Berlin Conference, Handy Reference Atlas of the World, John Bartholomew, 1893

The result of the conference was to inflame colonial

competition for Africa rather than to calm it. The Portuguese
issued the Pink Map joining up their territories in
Mozambique and Angola by claiming a linking strip going
through what is now Zambia and Zimbabwe, land which the
British vigorously insisted should be theirs. The French
pressed eastwards, leading to a confrontation at Fashoda in
Sudan in 1898, where an expedition led by Jean-Baptiste
Marchand occupied a fort on the Nile and found itself in a
tense confrontation with Lord Kitchener’s Anglo-Egyptian
force fresh from victory against the Mahdist Islamist rebels
at Omdurman. It was again realpolitik that intervened, as
the French foreign minister Théophile Delcassé ordered a
withdrawal back to Congo as the price for securing British
support against the new common enemy, Germany.
Out of the ‘Scramble for Africa’, which by 1898 left only
Ethiopia and Liberia independent of European rule, Germany
did gain its long-hoped-for colonial empire. In 1884 the
German East Africa Company was set up and by the
following year had established a presence in Tanganyika
(the mainland portion of modern Zanzibar). By the end of
the decade this new German empire had expanded into
Urundi (Burundi) and Ruanda (Rwanda). In West Africa,
meanwhile, the German explorer Gustav Nachtigal, who had
branched out from his position as physician to the bey
(ruler) of Tunis to engage in several expeditions in Chad and
the Kordofan region of Sudan, was sent by Bismarck to plant
the German flag in Cameroun and Togo. Germany also
annexed what is now Namibia by the tried-and-trusted
colonial expedient of negotiating agreement with local
chieftains – the European side of the ‘bargain’ in this case
being the adventurer Adolf Lüderitz, who succeeded in
persuading the Berlin government to declare the area a
German protectorate in August 1884. German South-West
Africa, as it became known, would become the site of
protracted resistance to European rule by the Nama, Herero
and other indigenous peoples, resulting in a genocidal
extermination campaign by the German military, which
killed almost 80 per cent of the Hereros between 1904 and
1908.
The Upper Nile from Korosko to Fashoda, at the time of the Mahdist War, Field Marshal Lord
Kitchener, His Life and Work for the Empire, 1916
Illustration of the Anglo-French Convention of 1898, Le Petit Journal, April 1899

Germany was assured its ‘place in the sun’, as foreign

minister Bernhard von Bülow characterized it with deceptive
quaintness in 1897, but the consequence of the Berlin
Conference for Africans had been a catastrophic loss of
independence, as the maps of the continent in 1882 and
1893 show (see here). In trying to prevent a spiralling land
grab, the conference had in played a great role in
accelerating the ‘Scramble for Africa’, a colonial knot-tying
that was only to be unravelled in the 1960s.
If the Berlin Conference and the redrawing of the map
that arose from it evoke bitterness in Africa, even more raw
emotion was raised by another set of lines, whose
imposition (or attempted imposition) in the Middle East still
has the power to create aftershocks in the 21st century. The
Asia Minor Agreement was the archetypal ‘line drawn in the
sand’, a monument to imperial arrogance. More generally
known as the Sykes-Picot Agreement, it was negotiated by
Sir Mark Sykes (1879–1919) on the British side, and François
Georges-Picot (1870–1951) for the French. Both Britain and
France were keen to head off growing German influence in
the decaying Ottoman Empire (and in particular to stymie
the project for a Baghdad to Berlin railway that would bind it
tightly in Germany’s economic embrace).
Britain had already encouraged a revolt by Arab leaders
in Iraq, Palestine and Syria against Ottoman rule, enticing
Abdullah and Faisal, the sons of Sherif Hussain of Mecca to
join their cause. Yet British promises of support for Arab
independence soon proved hollow. Almost as soon as Sykes
and Picot had their first meeting in London in November
1915, the plans to create an Arab state centred around
Lebanon, which the French regarded as firmly in their sphere
of influence, and Syria, on which the Paris government also
had designs, were dropped. Instead, the two negotiators
carved up the Middle East with no regard to previous
pledges, and little either for the historic allegiances or
contemporary aspirations of the region’s population or its
leaders. As the map of the agreement shows, Britain kept
control of most of modern Iraq, while France was handed
Lebanon and the northern part of Syria (the two countries’
allocated areas marked in solid blue and red). A rather
vaguer area in which the respective European powers were
to be pre-eminent without absolute control were marked as
‘Area A’ (in Syria, which was to be in the French orbit) and
‘Area B’ (in western Iraq and Jordan, which fell to the
British). Palestine remained largely unresolved: Haifa and
Acre were allocated to Britain, but the bulk was to be
governed by an international committee, an arrangement
that proved satisfactory to nobody and which was ended
when Britain was awarded a League of Nations mandate
over the whole of Palestine in 1922.

Map of Eastern Turkey, Syria and Western Persia, Sir Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot,
1916
 The agreement was supposed to remain a secret: after all
Britain still needed the active military support of the Arab
leaders who were participating in an uprising against the
Ottomans (in which the army officer T.E. Lawrence, later
immortalized as ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ was playing a colourful
part). The whole project was scuppered, however, because
the agreement also included the annexation by Russia of
part of Armenia, and in the aftermath of the overthrow of
the Tsar by Lenin’s Bolsheviks in November 1917, the new
revolutionary government leaked its terms. Matters were
further complicated by the promises which the British prime
minister had made in the Balfour Declaration the same
month that Britain would ‘view with favour’ the
establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, thereby
flatly contradicting what Faisal and Abdullah had understood
would happen.
A different carve-up of the region in the end occurred,
with Palestine and Iraq being awarded to Britain by the
League of Nations to hold as ‘mandates’, and Syria and
Lebanon coming under French rule on the same basis. The
theory was that they would be governed by the mandated
powers on behalf of the League, but in practice this varied
very little from full-blooded colonial rule. Before long,
opposition to the new rulers was growing (fuelled in great
part by resentment at the diplomatic manoeuvring of Sykes-
Picot) and major revolts broke out against the British in Iraq
in 1920 and in the Jabal al-Druze region of French Syria in
1925. During the Iraqi uprising, Winston Churchill, then the
Secretary of State for War, ordered the unleashing of a
bombing campaign by the RAF against the rebels and,
infamously, promoted the use of poison gas to subdue the
uprising. In the end the nationalist rebels gained their
longed-for independence, as Iraq was granted it in 1932,
Lebanon in 1943 and Syria in 1946. For them, one line in the
sand had proved as bad as another.
 If the British had used maps in the construction of their
empire, they played a key and often destructive role in the
dismantling of imperial rule. The deceptively straight lines
which the colonial powers drew across Africa in the
aftermath of the Berlin Conference took no account of the
realities on the ground and often scythed through the lands
of indigenous groups, leaving parts of them stranded on the
other side of a legal barrier which they had had no say in
erecting. Matters were even more complicated in Palestine.
The Balfour Declaration, which offered the prospect of
British support for a Jewish homeland, had encouraged
migration to Palestine, where the Jewish population, which
had been around 85,000 in 1922, reached almost 450,000
by the start of the Second World War. Tensions between
these incomers and the existing Arab inhabitants, who
feared (as it turned out, rightly) the demographic tide
turning against them, sparked sporadic violence, including
large-scale riots in 1920 and 1929 when Jewish properties
were attacked. In 1936, the Peel Commission recommended
that a Jewish state be established, based around Tel Aviv,
but Zionist claims for a larger share of the Holy Land could
not be satisfied by such a partial measure. The Second
World War brought a temporary pause to the growing
conflict, but the aftermath of the Holocaust, which both
increased sympathy by those arguing for a Jewish state and
also the numbers of refugees from Europe reaching
Palestine, reignited a campaign by Jewish guerrilla groups
against the British mandate.
By 1947, it was clear that the British government was
losing the will to remain in the region, its resources, both
diplomatic and economic, sapped by the Second World War,
and aware that it could satisfy neither party, Arabs or Jews,
fully, and that its continuing holding of the mandate was
causing its international prestige to ebb away. Britain
decided that the best solution was to simply hand back the
problem to the United Nations, in effect the successor to the
League of Nations, which had inherited responsibility for the
mandates. In May 1947 the United Nations Special
Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) was set up, which sent
rapporteurs to Palestine to take evidence from the
contending sides. The result was a report in early
September which recommended separate independent
Jewish and Arab states (although a minority of the
committee proposed a federal union). Arab leaders,
however, felt that their interests had been ignored and
rejected the plan, while Jewish Zionist leaders accepted the
majority proposal, which was formalized by the Ad Hoc
Committee on the Palestinian Question that was set up to
implement the plan.
Faisal, son of Hussain of Mecca, with his delegates and advisors at the Versailles Peace
Conference, 1919
 Syria/Lebanon, French Colonial Atlas, P. Pollachi, 1931

The map shows a tenuous Jewish state actually cut into

three segments by the proposed Arab state south of Ramla
and east of Haifa, while an Arab enclave south of Jaffa
looked more precarious still. Jerusalem was to be retained as
a zone under international administration, because to either
partition it or award it to either the Jewish or Arab state
seemed too incendiary a move.
The Ad Hoc Committee map and the belief that UNSCOP’s
proposal had created a settled environment for the two new
states proved ephemeral. On 14 May 1948 the British
withdrew their last forces from Palestine and on the same
day the Jewish leadership under David Ben-Gurion declared
the State of Israel. War immediately erupted with the new
state’s Arab neighbours, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan
and Egypt, who sent troops pouring over the border. An
initial four weeks of bitter fighting was followed by a series
of ill-kept truces and renewed combat which only finally
ended with armistices in February and March 1949. The
Israeli army, formed around the Haganah and other Zionist
military organizations which had fought the British, had by
far the better of the war and Israel ended up in possession
of nearly 80 per cent of the old British mandate. Jordan, in
turn, pre-emptively occupied the West Bank of the Jordan
and the eastern part of Jerusalem, while Egypt took the
Gaza Strip. The Palestinian Arabs were left with nothing and
hundreds of thousands of them fled to refugee camps where
many of their descendants remained into the 21st century.
The UNSCOP draft had proved to be one of a succession of
maps which turned out to be cartographic mirages, at each
stage of which the hoped-for peace and the potential
territory to be ruled by an Arab or Palestinian state grew
more exiguous.
The division of Palestine by map was at least done on the
basis of years of survey and consideration of how to draw a
line between the warring communities. In contrast, British
India was sundered in two by cartographic fiat. Just as in
Palestine, decades of opposition to British rule had sapped
London’s will to remain, and it was evident by 1947 that
greater political autonomy would not satisfy the aspirations
of Indian nationalists and that independence would have to
be granted. Complicating matters was the vigorous
campaign by the All-India Muslim League, led by
Muhammad Ali Jinnah (1876–1948), which lobbied for a
separate state for India’s Muslim population, arguing that
their interests could never be fairly represented in one that
encompassed the whole of British India, in which they would
be forever condemned a minority in a broadly Hindu
population.
Despite last-ditch attempts by veteran Indian nationalists
such as Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) and Mahatma Gandhi
(1869–1948) to preserve a one-state solution, the British
government acceded to Jinnah’s demands and made
preparations for the division of India. In June 1947 they
chose Cyril Radcliffe (1899–1977), who had been a civil
servant in the wartime Ministry of Information, to determine
where the partition between India and Pakistan (as the new
Muslim state would be known) should lie. It was a last-
minute decision and its implementation bore all the
hallmarks of near panic. There was no time to carry out new
surveys to determine which areas near the proposed border
had Muslim- or Hindu-majority populations and the
boundary commissions established to make decisions on
Bengal and Punjab, two of the most contested areas, were
paralyzed by squabbles between their equally balanced
Hindu and Muslim membership. The commissions were
forced to work with census returns which were decades out
of date and Radcliffe did not help matters by taking a
hands-off approach in which he scarcely engaged with the
fine detail of the decisions made.
The process was doomed to failure, but its failure proved
to be a catastrophic one. By the time Radcliffe’s final report
was published, two days after the independence of India
and Pakistan had taken effect, hundreds of thousands of
people were already on the move. The flight accelerated
when many villages along the line found they were not on
the side of the line that they had expected to be. Over 15
million people fled their homes in one of the largest mass
exoduses in history, and around a million died as gangs of
vigilantes hunted down and slaughtered those of a different
religion. Whole trainloads of refugees were massacred and
by the time the violence had subsided, relations between
Pakistan and India were permanently damaged, a situation
aggravated by tensions over the state of Kashmir. These
were complicated by the actions of its maharajah Hari Singh
(1895–1961), who had decided to preserve his own domain
as a third independent state in the Indian subcontinent. In
theory he had every right to do so: the British had never
ruled the whole of India directly, and much of it was
controlled by a patchwork of princely states which remained
independent, as long as they did not impinge upon essential
British interests. In 1947, the independent princes were
given the choice of opting to become part of India or
Pakistan or remaining as mini-states in their own right. Most
of them acceded to less than subtle pressure from the new
Indian or Pakistani governments or accepted the reality that
they simply could not survive on their own. Not so Hari
Singh. He soon, though, faced a revolt among his Muslim
subjects in the west of Kashmir, an invasion by Muslim
Pashtun tribesmen and a counter-invasion by Hindu and
Sikhs from the Punjab, and the prospect that Pakistan would
simply step in and annex the whole of his kingdom. Suitably
cowed, the Maharajah signed the Instrument of Accession to
India in October 1947, provoking the long-feared
intervention by Pakistan, which invaded from the west and
sparking the first of three invasions over Kashmir (the
others being in 1965 and 1971), sporadic skirmishing over
the Line of Control agreed between India and Pakistan in
1949, and a state of permanent animosity between the
Delhi and Islamabad governments. The legacy of Radcliffe’s
line was long-lasting and poisonous.
Palestine: Plan of partition with Economic Union proposed by the Ad Hoc Committee on the
Palestinian Question, UN Geospatial Information Section, 1947

By the 1990s, cartographers must have believed that

their role in delineating border shifts within Europe was
over. Long gone were the seismic upheavals at the end of
the First World War, when the dissolution of the Austro-
Hungarian Empire gave rise to a much-reduced Austria, a
separate Hungary and the new state of Yugoslavia, as well
as adjustment to the borders of Italy, the achievement of
independence from Tsarist Russia by Finland and Poland and
the cession back to France of Alsace – which Germany had
annexed after the Franco-Prussian War in 1870–71. The
turmoil after the Second World War, when Poland was
literally moved hundreds of kilometres to the west by taking
a chunk out of Germany and losing its eastern marchlands
to Russia, also seemed a distant memory. The reunification
of Germany as its eastern half, liberated from its role as a
Soviet satellite state when communist regimes throughout
eastern Europe collapsed in 1988–90, joined West Germany
to form a united federal republic, was followed within two
years by the dissolution of the Soviet Union itself into its 15
constituent republics, now independent states.

Cyril Radcliffe, seated with Nehru and Jinnah, announces the Partition line at a press
conference in New Delhi, India, 1947
Map showing the northern section of the Radcliffe Line, including Kashmir, London War Office,
1947

These changes, though, happened along established

borderlines and without widespread fighting. Yugoslavia
would be different. Constructed in 1918 out of a hotchpotch
of Slavic ethnic groups – largely Catholic Slovenes and
Croats, Orthodox Serbs and Macedonians, and with
significant Muslim populations in Bosnia and Kosovo – the
cauldron of nationalities was kept from boiling over by the
firm hand of Marshal Josip Tito (1892–1980), Yugoslavia’s
communist autarch, who was a veteran of the struggle
against Germany in the Second World War. His political
canniness also involved keeping the ambitions of the
various communities confined to carefully controlled
competition within the Communist Party, while forbidding
overt expressions of nationalist feeling.
Map of the disputed region of Kashmir, US Central Intelligence Agency, 2019

Tito’s death on 4 May 1980 changed everything. Although

Yugoslavia struggled on for a further decade and even
seemed to weather the storm of the collapse of communist
regimes elsewhere, voices within its constituent republics
arguing for a better deal for their own ethnic groups grew
ever more strident. One man, Slobodan Milošević (1941–
2006), who rose to prominence in the Communist Party’s
Belgrade branch, argued that Serbs were being given a raw
deal. In 1987, he inflamed nationalist feeling with a speech
on the field of Kosovo Polje, site of Serbia’s historic defeat
by the Ottoman Empire exactly 600 years before (after
which the medieval state of Serbia was extinguished). In it
he argued that Kosovo, with a largely Muslim population,
should have its status as an autonomous component of the
Serbian republic revoked.
Relations between Serbia and the other Yugoslav
republics deteriorated dramatically, and by January 1990
the consensus which had long held the country together
collapsed during the 14th, and final, Congress of the
Yugoslav Communist Party. On 25 June 1991 Slovenia
declared its independence. The brief ‘Ten-Day War’ followed
when the Federal Yugoslav Army advanced into Slovenia,
but facing resistance from Slovene territorial forces, rapidly
withdrew. The conflict in Croatia was far worse, beginning
with attacks by Serb nationalists in the Krajina region and
escalating into a full-scale war as what was left of the
Yugoslav army, allied with Serb militia, occupied much of
Eastern Slavonia, reducing towns such as Vukovar to rubble.
The fighting, which cost over 20,000 lives, died down early
in 1992, but by then an even bloodier civil war had erupted
in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where a three-way struggle between
Bosnian Muslims, Croats and Serbs saw atrocities on a level
not seen in Europe since the Second World War. The
activities of the Serb forces in particular, whose nearly four-
year siege of the capital Sarajevo left around 14,000 dead,
and the massacres by Serb militias of large numbers of
Bosnian Muslim civilians trapped in the enclave of
Srebrenica, led to accusations of genocide.
The tide turned in 1995 as the Croatian army intervened,
Bosnian Muslims and Croats patched up an alliance that had
fractured during the early part of the war, and NATO
airstrikes on Serb positions brought Milošević to consider
that the cost of war now outweighed the price of peace. The
leaders of the contending parties were flown to the US
Airforce base at Dayton, Ohio, a location chosen deliberately
for its isolation (so that the leaders, including Milošević,
Franjo Tudjman of Serbia and the Bosnian Muslim president
Alija Izetbegović could not grandstand in front of press
conferences in between negotiating sessions). Sequestered
from the outside world they were put under considerable
pressure by the United States to come to an agreement.
Hours of argument, offers and counteroffers led to the final
Dayton Agreement map (shown on this page). The Bosnian
Serbs could be satisfied that their share of the territory had
grown from 46 per cent, which they occupied before Dayton,
to 49 per cent (although largely by dint of acquiring tracts of
mountainous territory in the east of Bosnia at the expense
of giving up Sarajevo). The Bosnian Muslims got most of
Sarajevo, strategic strips of eastern Bosnia, and grew their
share of the republic from 28 to 30 per cent. The Bosnian
Croats lost land, including in particular Donji Vakuf, which
they had fought to hold, but outnumbered and under
pressure, they gave in.
Map of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, 1922
 Dayton Peace Accords map, US Central Intelligence Agency, 1996

The Federal Republic which the Dayton Agreement

established, divided between a largely Serb component in
the east and a Croat-Bosnian Muslim one in the west,
struggled to escape from the supervision of the United
Nations and the European Union, threatening at times to
enact a miniature version of the dissolution of Yugoslavia
and a re-run of its stage of the Yugoslav Civil War, in which
over 100,000 people had died. For all its faults, all sides
agreed that ripping up the Dayton Agreement map would
lead to disaster and so its lines, which in truth had pleased
no one, largely held nearly 30 years later.
Disputes over borders continue to be a source of tension
between states into the 21st century, and there are
somewhere over 100 open border disputes between
members of the United Nations, some of which flare up into
open warfare, as did that between Armenia and Azerbaijan
over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh in
September 2022 (rekindling a war which had first broken
out in 1991 amid the dying embers of the Soviet Union). The
annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 was
characterized by Russia as part of a long-standing territorial
dispute between Moscow and Kyiv, although that of the four
border oblasts of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhia
in September 2022 after a full-scale Russian invasion did not
even have the fig leaf of a pre-existing dispute to cover the
first state-level annexations by force in Europe since the
Second World War.
In Africa, the drawing of lines at the time of the Berlin
Conference and drive to African independence from the late
1950s left many of the infant nation-states with borders
whose deceptively straight lines masked very real problems.
Ethnic groups straddled the borders and historic claims
which had mattered little when both sides were occupied by
the same colonial power, suddenly came to be of existential
importance when two new and proudly assertive countries
had to deal with the unresolved issues. Ethiopia, which had
resisted European colonization (apart from a brief Italian
occupation in 1936), found itself enmeshed in a border
dispute with Eritrea, which Italy had gradually annexed
between 1869 and 1889 and retained as a colony until it
was placed under British military administration in 1943
following the Italian surrender to the Allies. It was then
subsumed into Ethiopia in 1952, a decision sanctioned by
the United Nations over the heads of the Eritreans, which
led to the foundation of the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) in
1961. This and a splinter faction, the Eritrean People’s
Liberation Front (EPLF), which eventually became the
dominant nationalist faction, fought a more than 30-year
war against the Ethiopian government, securing most of
Eritrea’s territory by 1977 – although a government
offensive the following year pushed them back –and in 1991
seizing the rest as the Marxist government in Addis Ababa
fell after the collapse of the Soviet Union, its long-time
sponsor.
In a referendum in 1993 Eritrean independence was
confirmed, but that still left the border between it and
Ethiopia ill-defined, particularly in the region of the town of
Badme. Clashes between the two erupted in early May
1998, and despite a temporary cessation of hostilities in
March the following year, peace talks failed, and Ethiopian
forces pushed further into Eritrea. By May 2000 they
occupied more than a fifth of the country. The peace which
was signed between the two countries in Algiers in
December 2000 referred the matter to the United Nations,
whose Ethiopia-Eritrea Boundary Commission based at the
Hague called on no less a map-maker than the head of the
UN Cartographic Section to scrutinize maps and agreements
between the various parties, including the Ethiopian empire
and the Italian colonial authorities which went back to the
early 20th century. Colonial treaties from 1900, 1902 and
1908 were pored over and interpreted – not an easy task
when the original maps themselves were ambiguous and
the watercourses which defined sections of the frontiers
were badly marked. Things proceeded relatively smoothly
until in 2003 Ethiopia disputed part of the commission’s
determination in the eastern sector, leading the UN to
decree that if both parties did not accept the commission’s
recommendations by November 2007, then those
recommendations would in any case become binding.
 In 2012, fighting erupted again along the border and the
two sides traded accusations of supporting rebel
movements against the other. Only in 2018 did peace and a
resolution to the border question seem in prospect, when a
new Ethiopian prime minister Abiy Ahmed announced that
the Ethiopians were giving up all claims to the disputed
areas, including the long-contested town of Badme. If maps
had been the cause of a century of border conflict, the lines
of the frontier on this one seemed finally settled.
There seems little prospect, however, that the long
tradition of calling on map-makers either to assert
possession of territories through mapping, or to create or
interpret maps in an effort to resolve international dispute
will end. As well as the renewal of conflict between
Azerbaijan and Armenia, the backwash of Russia’s invasion
of Ukraine in February 2022 touched Central Asia, where
Moscow’s influence remained strong even after the Soviet
Union’s collapse. In mid-September that year border guards
from Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan clashed along a section of
the border that was not properly demarcated as the Kyrgyz
accused the Tajiks of encroaching on their territory. Over
100 people were killed in a week of fighting before a
ceasefire restored calm. Yet this dispute is unresolved and
seems likely to flare up again, particularly as it is worsened
by arguments about control of a resource which is becoming
ever more scarce and precious: water.
Treaty Line, as established by the 1900 Italian-Ethiopian Treaty, Ethiopia-Eritrea Boundary
Commission

For the foreseeable future, therefore, map-makers will

continue to be forced into the role of peacemakers and
maps will continue to have the potential to ignite conflict.
CONCLUSION
I n any business someone pays, someone purchases and
someone profits. The map that has been carefully planned
must be paid for, distributed, purchased (its maker hopes)
and then found useful enough that the customers will want
to buy more. In the 21st century, those customers must
subscribe more or click more as mapping becomes
increasingly a digital phenomenon and their ability to create
or modify their own maps without the intervention of a
cartographer raises the question of whether the age of the
map – at least as a physical object – is finally at an end.

Most maps through history have had a patron, been

commissioned by someone, or, as the map-making process
became an industry, have been produced with an eye on
the market. We will probably never know quite who decided
to create the Çatal Höyük fresco map but it, and similar
large-scale ancient cartographic creations, involved an
investment in time in return for a pay-off in the fulfilment of
ritual or the gaining of prestige. The Turin Papyrus in around
1150 BC clearly had a more practical purpose – the mapping
of mineral resources in Egypt’s Eastern Desert (see here)
and was instigated by the pharaoh himself or someone
close to him.
 Map of Westmorland and Cumberland, Christopher Saxton, 1576

Ventures such as the various Roman itinerary maps, like

the Antonine Itinerary, or whichever map formed the basis
of the Peutinger Table (see here), or the cadastrations
which mapped out land holdings for each new Roman
settlement, all required the support of the imperial or at
least provincial administrations. In the Middle Ages, at least
in Europe, patronage for maps was more spasmodic, though
elaborate productions such as the Hereford Mappa Mundi
were costly in terms of the time and materials taken to
produce them. We rarely have accounts of what they did
cost (though one mappa mentioned in the accounts of the
monastery of Klosterneuburg specified that the map had
cost 30 florins to produce, a huge amount for the time).
 There was nothing like a cartographic ‘industry’ until the
15th century, by which time the Spanish and Portuguese
Crowns were formally sponsoring map-making and, later
seeking to monopolize it through institutions such as the
Casa de Contratación in Seville. Among them was Cardinal
Raffaele Riario, who received a chart compiled by Grazioso
Benincasa in 1482, though slightly less elevated folk were
by now commissioning atlases, such as the Genoese doctor
Prospero da Camogli who ordered one from Benincasa in
1468 (which happened to include the first appearance on
maps of the Cape Verde islands, discovered by the
Portuguese just a dozen years earlier). In this respect Italy
benefited from the tradition of patronage which had grown
up in the arts more generally, where contracts with fees
between artist and patron were commonplace.

Map from Travel Account of the Voyage of the Sailor Jan Huyghen van Linschoten to the Portuguese
East India, 1601 edition

High-ranking and preferably royal patronage was vital.

The Catalan Atlas compiled in 1375 by Abraham and Jafudà
Cresques was a specific royal commission (see here), and
prominent churchmen, too, were presented with maps to
whose production they would have provided an element at
least of the costs. Without such backing the production of
large-scale works was haphazard and fraught with difficulty.
Christopher Saxton (c. 1540–1610), who created an epic
series of county maps of England and Wales between 1573
and 1579, enjoyed the patronage of the lawyer Thomas
Seckford (1515–87), whose impressive portfolio of offices
included Master in Ordinary of the Court of Requests.
Through him Saxton came to the attention of Lord Burghley,
Elizabeth I’s chief minister, but even then, cost pressure
resulted in many important coastal counties (the main point
of the survey from the Crown’s point of view being to give
an accurate map of areas which might be subject to foreign
invasion) being mapped at a reduced scale. Rather than
direct payment, Saxton was awarded a 10-year monopoly
on printing his maps from July 1577. Even in their largesse,
patrons could be parsimonious.
In the Netherlands of the 17th century, map-making
thrived due to the heady mix of a thrusting new commercial
culture, the growth of bourgeois patronage networks and
sheer curiosity about the world in a population that
understood the sea was the route to power and prosperity.
Men such as Jan Huyghen van Linschoten (see here), whose
pathfinding voyages to the East Indies did much to open the
eyes of his countrymen to the profits to be had there and to
the weakness of the Portuguese monopoly, had access to a
dynamic and ambitious elite in his hometown of Enkhuizen.
These circles included well-connected men like François
Maalzon (1538–1602), a local physician, who was an adviser
to Prince Maurits, the Captain-General of the Dutch Republic
and mastermind of their successful rebellion against the
Spanish. Maalzon also helped select Jan Huygen as the
leader of a voyage to search out the North-East Passage, a
hypothesized route over Russia to East Asia in which the
Dutch vested great hopes. He also knew Berend ten Broeke
(known as Palludanus), whose home in Enkhuizen acted as a
salon and networking site for travellers and scholars (his
album amicorum or guest book has over 1,900 names
mentioned in it). Van Linschoten was also acquainted with
the chart-maker Lucas Janszoon Waghenaer who thanked
him in his 1598 Enchuyser Zee-caert-boeck. It was
connections such as these that secured Jan Huygen both a
place on a voyage to China sponsored by the East India
Company and a 10-year privilege (an early form of
copyright) on his Itinerario, an account of his various
voyages.

Detail of the Cotentin Peninsula, Carte générale de la France, Cassini Family, 1758

The map of France produced by the multigenerational

effort of the Cassini family from 1643 (see here) is a clear
demonstration that the large-scale surveys needed to
produce modern scientific maps could not be supported by
an individual. Apart from the costs of the instruments
themselves the surveyors had to be kept in food and lodging
for many months. For just that of Brittany in 1721, the cost
came to 12,000 livres in a year, while César François Cassini
de Thury (1714–84) told Louis XV in the 1750s that to
complete the survey of France would cost 40,000 livres a
year. In Britain, too, map-making experienced a process of
consolidation. Just before the establishment of the Ordnance
Survey in 1766, its future mastermind William Roy (1726–
90) submitted a plan, estimating that a national survey
would cost £2,778 (equivalent to roughly £375,000 today).
And if the cost of surveying was bad enough, that of printing
the maps could be staggering and explained why, by the
18th century, cartographers handed their work over to
publishers, rather than trying to bring the map to market
themselves. The engraved copperplates were among the
most expensive items: a plate measuring 20 x 28 cm (8 x 11
in) weighed about 5 kg (11 lb) and given the cost in France
could be up to 3 livres a pound, this soon mounted up. The
engravers had to be paid, and their work was painstaking
and time-consuming: the plates for Lord Anson’s A Voyage
Round the World (finally published in 1748), which gave an
account of his four-year-long circumnavigation of the globe,
took a further two-and-a-half years to produce. Maps were
expensive and they could not be hurried.
All this cost meant that the prices being charged for maps
escalated so much that in 1688 the French government
passed an ordinance stamping down on the then prevalent
practice of forcing customers to buy a whole atlas when
what they really wanted was just a single sheet –
nonetheless prices charged to customers still escalated from
5 to 6 sous for a map in late 17th-century France to three
times that amount early the next century. Print-runs were
relatively small, generally between 500 and 1,000 maps,
and trade was not always brisk. When Guillaume Delisle
died in 1726, his widow was left holding a stockpile of
18,000 maps, which she estimated as 25 years’ worth of
sales. In the absence of a rich patron such as Philippe, duc
d’Orleans (1674–723), who hired Guillaume Delisle as tutor
to the heir to the throne and began a tradition of awarding
titles such as Géographe du Roi to favoured cartographers,
map-makers turned to other ways to raise funds. Some tried
subscription. The Carte de France used it to escape from its
perennial funding crisis through the establishment in 1756
of a subscription system by which all 173 sheets of the
projected map could be had for 500 livres (as opposed to
the 720 livres cost if bought piecemeal). Unfortunately for
the project, only 203 subscribers ever stumped up. In Britain
the map publisher and cartographer John Senex (1678–
1740) was more successful, attracting 1,047 subscribers to
his New General Atlas in 1721. Around a quarter of whom
were humble craftsmen and yeomen, suggesting that the
appetite for maps was not limited to the higher echelons of
society.

Isle of Wight, British Ordnance Survey, First Series, c. 1870

Pages from Itinerario, Jan Huygen van Lischoten, 1596
Pages from Itinerario, Jan Huygen van Lischoten, 1596
The Americas, Atlas bestehend in auserlesenen und allerneuesten Land-Chartern über die gantze
Welt, Johann Baptist Homann, 1707

The final solution was the establishment of large-scale

publishing companies such as the Homann family firm,
founded in 1702 by Johann Baptist Homann (1664–1724),
which launched its century-and-a-half of cartographic
successes with Atlas bestehend in auserlesenen und
allerneuesten Land-Chartern über die gantze Welt (‘Atlas
Comprising the Selected and Very Latest Country Maps of
the Entire World’) in 1707, followed by the awarding of the
accolade of Kaiserlicher Geograph (royal geographer) in
1716. By the middle of the century it was probably the
premier map-publishing outfit in Europe, although time,
commercial missteps and increasing competition from
France and Britain meant it finally fell out of fashion, out of
the hands of the original family in 1813, and then out of
business in 1852 when all its plates were sold. In Britain, the
trade was characterized still by individual cartographers and
entrepreneurs, such as Thomas Jefferys, whose map of New
Hampshire (1761) was the first comprehensive one of that
colony, but whom the cost of major new surveys of English
counties such as Bedfordshire and Oxfordshire (1769)
bankrupted. Larger companies now took over, such as John
Bartholomew & Co, founded in 1826 by John Bartholomew
Senior (1805–61), whose son and successor John
Bartholomew Junior, notably, engraved the map that
appears in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, and
George Philip (1800–82), who established George Philip &
Son in 1834.
The 20th century saw such companies become larger
until finally the inevitable happened with the consolidation
of publishing houses from the 1970s and then the impact of
digital publishing and smartphones, which hit physical map
publishing particularly hard. Google Maps launched in 2005,
gradually overtaking all competitors until its position in the
eye of the average internet user became virtually
unassailable. As computer software and smartphones grew
ever more sophisticated and powerful, users increasingly
had the ability to summon up a map at will, and, if prepared
to spend a little more time and a few more clicks, even to
customize it with the location of their favourite coffee shops
or as a base on which to draw the frontlines of the Russia–
Ukraine conflict. It seemed finally, as the second quarter of
the 21st century approached, that the long career of the
map as an item produced by trained specialists and with a
defined physical form was over. We no longer need
cartographers, doomsayers might pronounce, or, more
optimistically, we are all cartographers now.
 Both views have their merits, and both contain an
element of truth. The basis of mapping is the collection,
compilation and presentation of information about the world
in graphic form. The information in Google Maps does not
exist in isolation and has been collected in some form of
survey (aerial or in the time-honoured means of going on
foot, or on moped). The projections shown on digital maps
are variants on those developed through the ages, and the
decisions on what to show and how to show it are exactly
those faced by cartographers, their publishers and patrons
through the ages. Someone still needs to conclude that a
map is needed and why, to pay for it, to collate the
information, decide what to show and then deliver it to the
customers. That some of these stages are quicker (almost
instantaneous in the delivery to the digital map consumer)
makes them no less real. That map users can now
customize their maps is a boon rather than a threat, though
the barrier to entry of the huge cost of assembling a digital
database such as Google maintains, raises troubling
questions about who controls the information, and how it
might be manipulated without the end-user being aware.
However, these are perhaps no more than contemporary
versions of the challenges faced by the map-makers who
wanted to know more about the latest discoveries in the
Americas, but encountered obstruction by the Spanish and
Portuguese authorities who wished to maintain at least a
partial veil of secrecy.
If anything, maps are more ubiquitous than they have
ever been, available to almost anyone with internet access
and providing a near universally understood means of
approaching the geography of our planet, of depicting
thematically the challenges facing it, and of navigating with
ease around it. In our search for the ultimate cartographer,
perhaps the answer is that everyone now is one – and in our
search for the best map, perhaps the solution is that we
hold it in our hands.
Digital map of Blenheim Palace and Bladon Park, Oxfordshire, UK
FURTHER RESOURCES
Books
Bagrow, Leo History of Cartography, Revised edition, edited by R.A. Skelton
(London 1964)
Barber, Peter and Board, Christopher Tales from the Map Room: Fact and Fiction
about Maps and their Makers (London 1993)
Barber, Peter and Harper, Tom Magnificent Maps: Power, Propaganda and Art
(London 2010)
Brooke-Hitching, Edward The Phantom Atlas: The Greatest Myths, Lies and
Blunders on Maps (London 2016)
Brotton, Jerry A History of the World in Twelve Maps (London, 2012)
Brown, Lloyd A, The Story of Maps (London 1951)
Delano Smith, Catherine and Kain, Roger J.P. English Maps A History (London
1999)
Dilke, O.A.W., Greek and Roman Maps (Baltimore, 1998)
Harper, Tom, Maps and the 20th Century: Drawing the Line (London 2016)
Harper, Tom and Bryars, Tim A History of the 20th Century in 100 Maps (London
2014)
Haywood, Jeremy To the Ends of the Earth: 100 Maps That Changed the World
(London 2006)
Hewitt, Rachel Map of a Nation: A Biography of the Ordnance Survey (London
2011)
Parker, Philip Atlas of Atlases (London 2021)
Rapoport, Yossef Islamic Maps (Oxford 2020)
Talbert, Richard Ancient Perspectives: Maps and Their Place in Mesopotamia,
Egypt, Greece and Rome (Chicago, 2012)
Woodward, David & Harley J.B (Series Editors) The History of Cartography,
volumes 1 to 6 (Chicago, 1987 to 2020)

Websites
The History of Cartography (Online versions of Woodward & Harley series):
press.uchicago.edu/books/HOC/index.html
Imago Mundi, The International Journal for the History of Cartography:
maphistory.info/imago.html
Map History, cartographic gateway from former British Library map librarian:
maphistory.info/index.html
Cartography Unchained, essays on cartographic history before 1600:
cartographyunchained.com
The Chart Room, links to images of antique maps:
wildernis.eu/chart-room
The Map Room, large collection of historical maps and atlases:
maproom.org/index.html
Bibliothèque Nationale, searchable map index from France’s National Library:
gallica.bnf.fr/html/und/cartes/cartes?mode=desktop
Old Maps Online, large collection of online historical maps:
oldmapsonline.org
My Old Maps, wealth of articles on key maps in the history of cartography:
myoldmaps.com
National Library of Scotland, over a quarter of a million hi-res zoomable images
of the British Isles and beyond:
maps.nls.uk
INDEX
Page numbers in italics refer to illustration captions.

A
Adams, George 101
Adams, Robert 109
Africa 128–129, 178
Africa after the Berlin Conference 206
Africa before the Berlin Conference 206
Berlin Conference 202–207, 219
Agnese, Battista 176
portolan atlas 178
Agrippa, Marcus Vipsanius 47, 111
Ahmed, Abiy 220
al-Ashraf Khalil 149
al-Istakhri (al-Farisi), Abu Ishaq Kitab al-masalik wa-al
mamalik 50
al-Kashgari, Mahmud 142
al-Sharif al-Idrisi, Muhammad 113, 121, 121, 150
Tabula Rogeriana 8
al-Sufi 170
Albert, Prince 186
Alexander the Great 27
Alvares, Francisco A True Account of the Lands of Prester
John of the Indies 149
America 34, 93, 114, 193–194
see also North America; South America; United States
Amundsen, Roald 162
Anaximander 72, 72–3
Anglo-Saxon Mappa Mundi 116, 120, 120–121
Angola 202, 206
animal skins 115–116
Anson, Lord A Voyage Round the World 225
Antillia 10, 84, 87, 154–156
Antonine Itinerary 46, 47, 87, 222
Aratus of Soli 92
Aristagoras 73
Aristotle 73, 150
Armenia 219, 220
armillary spheres 97, 97
Arthur, Chester 125
astrolabes 29, 30, 92, 113, 174
Atlantis 163
Atlas 92, 93, 141
Atlas of Breeding Birds in Britain and Ireland 69
Atlas of Disease, The 69
atlases 64–65
Augustus 29, 46, 47, 111
Australia 150–153, 178
Austria 214
Austro-Hungarian Empire 63, 214
Ayala, Pedro de 156
Azerbaijan 219, 220
Azores 84, 84
Aztec Empire 107–108

B
Babylonian Map of the World 44, 45, 72
Bartholomew, John 228
Handy Reference Atlas of the World 206
battle maps 60–63
Beatus of Liébana 51–3
Commentaries on the Apocalypse 74, 75, 76
Bedolina Map, Italy 14, 15, 110, 110
Behaim, Martin 87–89, 89, 168
Erdapfel 89, 89, 93, 133–134, 155
Ben-Gurion, David 212
Benincasa, Grazioso 154, 222–223
Berghaus, Heinrich Physikalischer Atlas 69
birchbark maps 105, 105
Bismarck, Otto von 202–203, 207
Blaeu, Willem Janszoon 96–101, 151
 globe 100
Blücher, Gebhard 61
Bonaparte, Napoleon 61, 64
Borgia, Stefano 114
Borgia world map 113, 114
Borso d’Este of Ferrara 84–86
Bosnia-Herzegovina 217–219
Botticelli, Sandro 169
Bowen, Emanuel Britannia Depicta, or Ogilby Improv’d 190,
191
Brahe, Tycho 96
Brazza, Pierre de 203
Britain 10, 29, 35, 47, 58–60, 63, 96, 124, 134, 152–153
division of India 212–214
‘Scramble for Africa’ 202–206
Sykes-Picot Agreement 207–210
see also United Kingdom
Brouscon, Guillaume 152, 152
Buell, Abel 192
New and Correct Map of the United States of North America 192–193
Burford, Robert 187
Burghley, Lord William Cecil 223
Burt, William Austin 35
Burton, Mark 34
Burton, Richard Francis 150
Byzantine Empire 80–81, 82

C
Cabot, John 156, 168, 169, 174, 175
Cabot, Sebastian 174–175
world map 174
Cabral, Pedro Álvares 200
cadastrations 29, 30, 46–47, 110–111, 222
Cai Lun 116
Canada 58, 105
Cantino, Alberto 200
Cantino Planisphere 11, 133, 200–201, 201
Cape Verde islands 223
Carte Pisan 135
Cartier, Jacques 161
cartouches 141–142
Cassini family
Carte de France, 1762 61, 63
Carte générale de France, 1758 224
Cassini, Domenico 34, 63
Cassini, Jean-Dominique 34, 63
Cassini de Thury, César François 224
Çatal Höyük, Turkey 16–17, 222
Çatal Höyük town plan 16, 72, 110
Catalan Atlas 82–83, 83, 223
Catalan World Map 149, 149
cave art 14, 20–1
Caxton, William 78
Celtis, Conrad (Celtes, Konrad) 47, 86
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) 107, 124, 216
ceramic maps 109–110, 110
Charlemagne 113
Charles I of Spain (Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor) 173,
175, 201–202
Charles II 190
Charles VI of France 83
China 21–2, 76, 116, 121–122, 135–136
Mawangdui Miitary Maps 21, 22, 107
Yu ji tu 112, 136, 136
Christian IV of Denmark 163
Churchill, Winston 209
Cibola (Seven Cities of Gold) 157
Cicero Somnium Scipionis 74
cloth maps 107–109
coastal charts 53–5
Coello, Sanchez View of Seville 199
Columbus, Christopher 7, 81, 86, 87, 89, 105, 154–155,
159, 168, 172, 199–200
compass roses 140–141
computer-to-plate technology 41
Congo Basin 202–203
Contractus, Hermannus 29
Cook, James 101, 152–153
Copernicus 87
copperplate engravings 40, 225
Copperplate Map of London 115
Coronelli, Vincenzo 101, 101
Corpus agrimensorum 29
Corte-Real, Gaspar 200
Cortes, Hernán 108
Cosmas Indicopleustes 74
Christian Topography 51, 51
Crates of Mallos 92, 92
Cresques, Abraham and Jafudà 82–83, 223
Croatia 217–219
Cuba 168, 169
Cusanus, Nicolaus (Nicholas of Cusa) 86, 86–87, 87, 93
De figura mundi 87
Cyrus II of Persia 44

D
da Camogli, Prospero 222–223
da Fonseca, João Vicente 182
da Gama, Vasco 173
de Albuquerque, Afonso 173
de Castro, João 54
Roteiro do Mar Roxo 55
de Fuca, Jean 161
de Jode, Cornelis 160, 161
de la Cosa, Juan 168
Map of the Old and New Worlds 168
de la Salle, René-Robert 105
de las Cases, Emmanuel
Genealogical, Chronological, Historical and Geographical Atlas 68
de Ojeda, Alonso 168
de Valseca, Gabriel 54, 84, 84
Delcano, Juan 54
Delcassé, Théophile 206
Delisle, Guillaume de 157, 183, 225
Denaix, Maurice-Auguste Atlas physique, politique et
historique de l’Europe 68
Denmark 63, 87, 96, 163
des Prez, Josquin 200
Descelier, Pierre 155
Desliens, Nicolas 152
Dias, Bartolomeu 168
Dicaearchus of Messana 126
Periodos ges 73
Digges, Leonard and Thomas 34
digital cartography 11, 69, 228–229
Blenheim Palace and Bladon Park 229
Drake, Sir Francis 101, 161, 177–178, 183, 184
drones 35, 35
Dulcert (Dalorto), Angelino 53, 156
Dulmo, Fernão 155
Dürer, Albrecht 37–40, 169–170, 193
celestial map 170
Dutch East India Company (VOC) 54, 182, 224
Dutch West India Company 202

E
Earth Platinum 190–192, 193
educational maps 63–64
Edward III 78–80, 198
Egede, Hans 163
Egypt 18–20, 26, 27, 110, 115, 203, 222
Papyrus of Ani 114
star chart 19, 20
The Book of the Two Ways 19
Eirik the Red 163
Eleanor of Aquitaine 198
Elizabeth I 108, 177, 183, 223
Eratosthenes 126
Ercole I d’Este of Ferrara 200
Eritrea 219–220, 221
etchings 41
Ethiopia 149–50, 206, 219–220, 221
Etzlaub, Erhard Rom Weg 142
Euclid 21
Eudoxus of Cnidus 92
Evans, Lewis A Map of the Middle British Colonies 58, 59
Evelyn, John 190

F
Faden, Thomas 61
Finé, Oronce 127
world map with a cordiform projection 126, 127–128
Finland 214
Fischer, Father Joseph 193–194
Flammarion, Camille The Lands of Heaven: An Astronomical
Journey to the Other Worlds 33
Forlani, Paolo 161
Forma Urbis Romae 111, 111, 121
Foster, John 58
Fra Mauro 11, 41, 84, 84, 114
France 34, 55, 59–60, 63, 125, 136–137, 142, 177, 215
‘Scramble for Africa’ 202–206
Sykes-Picot Agreement 207–209
Franklin, Benjamin 58
Franklin, Lady Jane 161
Franklin, Sir John 161–162
Frater Rufillus
Passionary of Weissenau 36
Frederick of Holstein-Gottorp 101
Frederick the Great 61
Fries, Laurent A New World Map 148
Frisius, Gemma 92
De principiis astronomiae 96
Libellus de locorum describendorum ratione 31
Frontinus, Sextus Julius De aquis urbis Romae 29
Fusang (Fou-Sang) 159
G
Gall, James 129, 129
Gandhi, Mahatma 212
Garcie, Pierre Le routier de la mer 55
Gastaldi, Giacomo 161, 176–177
George Philip & Son 228
Gerald of Wales (Giraldus Cambrensis) 77–78
Descriptio Cambriae 78
Topographia Hibernica 78, 79
Gerard of Cremona 132
Germanus, Henricus Martellus 133
Germanus, Nicolas 84–86, 87, 127, 130
Germany 60–61, 215, 216
earliest map of Germany 87
‘Scramble for Africa’ 202–207
Giovanni da Pian del Carpiniin 149
GIS (Geographical Information System) 41, 116–117, 117
globes 87–89, 92–101
Glockendon, Georg 89, 93
Glockengiesser, Hans 89
glove maps 108, 109
Google Maps 228–229
Goos, Pieter Oost Indien 115, 116
Gos lo tsa ba Ghzon ndu dpal 104
GPS (Global Positioning System) 35
Gracchus, Tiberius Sempronius 41
Great Disk, Morocco 14
Greece 27, 30, 72–73, 92, 126
Greenland 163, 163
Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) 124–125
groma 29–30, 30
Gudea of Lagash 18, 18, 136
Gunnbjorn Ulfsson 162–163
Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden 60
Gutenberg, Johannes 37
Guyot, Arnold Guyot’s New Intermediate Geography 206
Gyōki 76

H
Hadley, John 31
hand-drawn maps 35–37
Hari Singh of Kashmir 214
Harrison, John 134
Head, Richard 156
Hecataeus of Miletus 73, 73, 168
Periodos ges 73
Henry II 78, 198
Henri II of France 177
Henry the Navigator 83
Henry VIII 108, 177
Hereford Mappa Mundi 11, 52, 53, 122, 222
Hero of Alexandria 27, 30
Herodotus 27, 73, 149
Higden, Ranulf 78–80
Polychronicon 78, 79
Hipparchus 126–127, 129–132
Hippodamus of Miletus 27
historical mapping 65–68
Hobit, Guillaume 87
Holbein, Hans the Younger 175
The Ambassadors 96
Homann, Johann
Baptist 228
Atlas 228, 228
Homem, Lopo Atlas Miller 198
Hondius, Jodocus the Elder 182–183
Christian Knight World Map 183, 186
Vera Totius Expeditionis Nauticae 184
Honorius, Julius
Cosmographia Iulii Caesaris 47
Hooke, Robert 156
Howard of Effingham, Lord Admiral 108
Hübner, Johann Kleiner Schulatlas 64
Hugh, Bishop of Jabala 146–148
Hungary 214
Hvitsark 163, 163
Hy Brasil 84, 156–157
Hyginus Gromaticus 29–30

I
IBM world’s smallest map 190, 190
Ibn as-Said as-Sahli 113
ibn Hilal, Muhammad 92
ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, Muhammad Kitab Surat al-Ard 47–
50, 50, 76–77, 77
India 20–1, 54
partition 212–214, 215
inks 36
International Meridian Conference, 1884 125
Iraq 47
Ireland 63, 77–78
Isidore of Seville 74
Etymologiae 50, 51, 116, 116
Islamic world 47–50, 76–77, 132, 170–173
Israel 212
Italy 53, 214, 219–220, 223
Izetbegović, Alija 217

J
Janszoon, Willem 151, 178–182
Japan 76, 110, 125, 155, 169
Java La Grande 151–152, 152, 178
Jefferys, Thomas 157, 228
Jian Dan Hainei Huayi Tu 136
Jinnah, Muhammad Ali 212, 214
João II of Portugal 89, 200
John Bartholomew & Co 228
Julius Caesar 46, 47, 111
Julius II, Pope 169
K
Kashmir 214, 215, 216
Kitchener, Lord Herbert 206, 206
Klencke, Johannes
Klencke Atlas 190, 192
Kolberger, Ruprecht 89
Korea 107
Cheonhado maps 122
Kangnido Map 107, 107
Tae Choson Chido 123
Kratzer, Nicholas 108
Kyrgyzstan 219–220

L
L’Enfant, Pierre Charles 122–123
Lahontan, Louis-Armand 183
lapis lazuli 36, 36
Lawrence, T.E. 208
Le Testu, Guillaume 177–178
Cosmographie universelle 177, 181
Lecomte, Louis Daniel Voyage au Chine 6
Leopold II of Belgium 203
lines of latitude and longitude 73, 84, 129, 132–135
lithographs 40, 40–1, 68–9
Louis VII of France 198
Louis XIV of France 63, 101
Louis XV of France 224
Louis XVI of France 64
loxodromes 135
Lüderitz, Adolf 207

M
Maalzon, François 223–224
Macrobius, Ambrosius Theodosius 73–74, 76
Madaba map, Jordan 111–112, 112, 142
Magellan, Ferdinand 54, 96, 105, 159, 173, 201
magnetic compasses 122, 122
magnetic declination 54
Magnus, Olaus 163, 163
Carta Marina 165
Malta 173
Siege of Malta, 1565 60, 61
Mansa Musa of Mali 82, 83
Map of Metleltoyuca 108
mappae mundi 35, 50, 51, 78, 84, 116, 120, 183, 222
Hereford Mappa Mundi 11, 52, 53, 122, 222
maps 6–11
uses 44
Marchand, Jean-Baptiste 206
Marshall Islands stick maps 104, 105
Martins, Fernão 154
Maslen, Thomas J. The Friend of Australia 153, 154
Masséna, André 61
Maurits, Prince of Orange 223
Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor 170
McClure, Robert 162
Mentelle, Edme Atlas Nouveau 64, 65
Mercator, Gerard 58, 96, 98, 122, 156, 161, 182, 183
Galiae tabulae geographicae 142
Nova et aucta orbis terrae 128, 128
Merian, Matthäus 60
meridians 34, 122–125
Greenwich meridian 124–125, 129
Mesopotamia 6, 18
Nuzi field map 7, 109, 109, 142, 198
metal maps 112–115
Michelangelo 169
Middle East 207–12
Milne, A.A. Winnie-the-Pooh 192
Milošević, Slobodan 216–217
Mitchell, John 58–59
A Map of the British and French Dominions in North America 59–60, 60
Morden, Robert 101
mosaic maps 111–112
Mountains of the Moon 77, 149–150
Moxon, Joseph 96–101
Mozambique 202, 206
Münster, Sebastian 175, 177
Cosmographia 175–176, 177
Rudimenta Mathematica 33
Tabula novarum insularum 175, 177
Totius Africae tabula 150, 150
Murray, Sir George 61

N
Nachtigal, Gustav 207
Nebuchadnezzar II 44
Neckam, Alexander De naturis rerum 122
Nehru, Jawaharlal 212, 214
Netherlands 53, 54–5, 63, 96, 108, 151–152, 170, 175,
182, 223–224
Nicholas V, Pope 199
Nippur town plan 18, 19, 109
Nolin, Jean-Baptiste 183
North America 34, 58–60, 105, 156, 174 see also America
North-East Passage 175, 176–177, 223–224
North-West Passage 159–162, 175, 176–177
Norway 55
Nuñes, Pedro 135

O
Odoacer 47
Ogilby, John Britannia 190
Ordnance Survey 35, 63, 143, 186, 224
Isle of Wight 225
symbols 142, 143
The County of Kent, with part of the County of Essex, 1801 64
orientation 120–122, 137–141
Ortelius, Abraham 149, 156, 157
Parergon 65
The Kingdom of Prester John 147, 149
Theatrum Orbis Terrarum 65–68
orthographic projection 129, 129

P
Páez, Pedro 150
Pakistan 212–214, 215
Palestine 209–12
Plan of partition with economic union 213
Palludanus (Berend ten Broeke) 224
paper 115, 116
papyrus 115
Pareto, Bartolomeo 156
Paris, Matthew 65
Paullin, Charles Oscar
Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States 69
Pei Xiu 76, 136
pens 36
Pepys, Samuel 96
Persia 73
Peter the Great of Russia 101
Petermann, August Heinrich 69
Atlas of Physical Geography 68, 69
Peters, Arno 129
Peutinger Table 10, 30, 47, 49, 142, 142, 222
Peutinger, Konrad 47
Pfintzing, Paul Methodus Geometrica 10
Philip II of Spain 182
Philip the Good of Burgundy 86
Philip VI of France 198
Philip, George 228
Philippe d’Orléans 183, 225
photography 41
Picot, François Georges 207, 208
pigments 36
pilot guides see rutters
Piri Reis 170–173
Kitab-I Bahriye 172–173
world map 170, 172
Pizzigano, Zuane 154, 155
plan of Abbey of Saint Gall, Switzerland 53, 53
Plancius, Petrus 182, 182–183, 183
Planudes, Maximus 80, 80–81, 150
Plato 163
Pliny the Elder Natural History 86
points of the compass 141
Poland 215
Pollachi, P. French Colonial Atlas 210
Polo, Marco 151–152
Travels 161
Polybius 73
Popple, Henry A Map of the British Empire in North America
59
portolan maps 10, 36, 53–54, 54, 55, 81, 84, 116, 134,
135, 135, 140, 141, 155, 156, 178
Portugal 54, 83–84, 89, 114, 134, 135, 151–152, 155,
168, 169, 173, 175, 177, 178, 182, 199–202, 206, 222–
223
Prester John 146–149
printing 37–41, 65–69
costs 224–225
projections 126–129
Psammetichus 149, 150
Ptolemy of Alexandria 30, 47–50, 76–77, 81, 122, 127,
130, 170, 195
Almagest 132
Geography 40, 80, 81, 84, 87, 92, 93, 132–133, 149–150, 176
Pythagoras 126

Q
Qin Shih Huang Di 107
quadrants 30–31, 33

R
Rae, John 162
Ramsden, Jesse 34–35
Raphael 169
Ratcliffe, Cyril 212–214, 214, 215
Regionum sive civitatum distantiae 93
Reinel, Pedro 140, 141
Reinel, Pierre and Georges Atlas Miller 198
Rennefeld, J.H. 183
Rennell, James Map of Hindoostan 58, 59
rhumb lines 135
Riario, Raffaele 222
Ribeiro, Diogo 173–175, 201–202
Padrón Real 174, 175
world map 173, 174
Ringmann, Matthias
An Introduction to Cosmography 193–194
Roger II of Sicily 113, 121
Roman Empire 10, 28, 29–30, 45–7, 50, 73–74, 110–111,
132, 222
Rotz, Jean Boke of Idrographie 177
Roy, William 224
Russia 55, 63, 101, 176, 208–9, 214–215, 219–220, 224,
229
Moscow-centred world map 122, 124
Russo, Jacopo 134
rutters 54–5
Ruysch, Johannes 163, 168–169
world map 169

S
Sacrobosco, Johannes de Tractatus de sphaero 127
sand mandalas 104
Sanudo, Marino Liber Secretorum Fidelium Crucis 81–82
Sauthier, Claude Joseph 122
Saxton, Christopher 137, 137, 223
map of Westmorland and Cumberland 222
scale 136–137, 137, 138
Schedel, Hartmann Nuremberg Chronicle 37, 37–40
Schöner, Johann 93–96, 96, 193–194
Seckford, Thomas 223
seismographs 135–136
Senefelder, Alois 40, 69
Senex, John 101, 101
English Atlas 101
New General Atlas 225–228
Serbia 217–219
Seven Cities of Gold (Cibola) 157
Severszoom, Jan De kaert vander zee 55
Severus Alexander 47
sextants 31, 31
Sheldon, William 108, 108, 109
Shephard, E.H. 192
Shove, George 109
silk maps 107, 107
Silvester, Bernardus 21
Simcoe, Elizabeth 105
Sisson, Jonathan 34
sky disc, Germany 17–18, 18
Slovenia 217–219
smartphones 6, 41, 116–117, 117, 228–229
Sneden, Robert Knox 61
Snell, Willebrord 34
Snow, John 7
Map of the 1854 Soho Cholera Outbreak 7
solar compass 35
South America 128–129, 175
see also America
Spain 14, 55, 107–108, 132, 134, 154, 168, 172–175,
178, 199–202
Speed, John The Countye of Monmouth 138
Speke, John Hanning 150
Spice Islands 54, 152, 169, 173, 201
Spierincx, François 108
square grids 135–136
Sri Lanka 169
Stanley, Henry Morton 150
Stevenson, Robert Louis 228
stone maps 110–112, 136, 136
Strabo 73, 176
Strait of Anian 160, 161–162
Strube, Johann Orbis terrarum veteribus cogniti typus in
binis tabulis 64
Stuart, Charles 153
Stukeley, William Antonine Itinerary 46
Sudan 206, 207
Suleiman I 172–173
surveying 26
early instrumentation 27–31
modern instrumentation 35
theodolites 34, 34–35, 35
triangulation 31–34
Switzerland 14, 63
Sykes, Sir Mark 207, 208
symbols 141–142

T
T–O maps 50, 74
Tabula Peuteringiana see Peutinger Table
Tajikistan 219–220
tapestry maps 108–109
Tasman, Abel 178–182
Ten Broeke, Berend (Palludanus) 224
Tepe Gawra landscape jar 14, 14, 109
Terra Australis 150–153
thematic mapping 64–69
theodolites 34, 34–35, 35
time zones 122–125
Times Atlas of World History 68
Tito, Josip 216
Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings 69, 146
topographic rock engraving, Italy 14, 15
Toreno, Nuño García de Map of Asia 202
Toscanelli, Paolo dal Pozzo 86, 154–155
triangulation 31–34
Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn 133
Tudman, Franjo 217
Tulk, John Augustus 187
Turin Papyrus 19–20, 21, 35, 65, 115, 222

U
Ukraine 219–220, 229
United Kingdom 125
see also Britain
United States 60, 101, 105
time zones 122–125
see also America

V
van Andrichem, Christiaan Theatrum Terrae Sanctae 65, 66
van der Schley, Jakob 60–61
van Keulen, Johannes 161
van Langren, Arnold Floris 96
van Langren, Jacob Floris 98, 182
van Linschoten, Jan
Huygens 223, 223–224
Itinerario 182, 224, 226
vellum 116
Verenigde Nederlandse Ostlindische Compagnie (VOC) see
Dutch East India Company
Vesconte, Pietro 81–82
Atlas nautique de la mer Méditerranée 82
Vespasian 110
Vespucci, Amerigo 168
Victoria 69
Villegaignon, Nicolas Durand de 177
Vitruvius 140
Vopel, Caspar 96, 97
Vroom, Hendrik Corneliz 108–109
W
Waghaener, Lucas
Janszoon 96, 182, 224
Spieghel der Zeevaerdt 55, 57
Thresoor der Zeevaerdt 55
wagoneers 55
Waldseemüller, Martin 55, 93, 94, 150, 193
Tabula Novis Partis Africae 150, 151
Waldseemüller map (Universalis cosmographia) 193–195, 194
Washington, George 123
Weigel, Erhard 101
Wellington, Duke of 61, 186
Willcox, William H. 61
The Battle of Gettysburg, 1863 62
William of Rubruck 149
Wilson, James 101
winds 140–141
Winkler, Captain 105
Wohlgemuth, Michael 40
woodcuts 37–40
map of Kyoto, Japan 39
Wyld, James 183–186
Great Globe 186–187, 187

X
Xavier, St Francis 54

Y
Young, William J. 35
Yugoslavia 214, 215–216, 217
Dayton Agreement 217–219, 218

Z
Zatta, Antonio 159, 159
Zhang Heng 135–136
CREDITS
Key: l = left; r = right; t = top; b = bottom; and variations
thereof

Front cover: Based on a world map by Jodocus Hondius, 16th

century. Universal Images Group North America LLC/Alamy.
Back cover & 182l: Celestial globe of Argo Petrus Plancius,
1625. Science & Society Picture Library/Getty Images.

2 & 85 World History Archive/Alamy; 6 The Granger

Collection/Alamy; 7 Antiqua Print Gallery/Alamy; 8–9 Library
Of Congress, Geography And Map Division/Science Photo
Library; 10 The Granger Collection/Alamy; 11
Andrey_Popov/Shutterstock; 14t Utopian100 (CC BY-SA 4.0);
14b TRACCE open access papers via Ruparch (CC BY-SA
3.0); 15 funkyfood London - Paul Williams/Alamy; 16l ©akg-
images/De Agostini Picture Library; 16–17 Images &
Stories/Alamy; 18t Frank Vincentz (CC BY-SA 4.0); 18b
GRANGER - Historical Picture Archive/Alamy; 19 DEA
PICTURE LIBRARY/De Agostini via Getty Images; 20
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (public domain); 21
Photo Scala, Florence/FMAE, Torino; 22–23 History and Art
Collection/Alamy; 26 Zev Radovan/Alamy; 27 Science &
Society Picture Library/Getty Images; 28 DEA/A. DAGLI
ORTI/De Agostini via Getty Images; 29 CPA Media Pte
Ltd/Alamy; 30 DeAgostini/Getty Images; 31
DeAgostini/Getty Images; 32 Jean-Loup Charmet/Science
Photo Library; 33tl Oxford Science Archive/Print
Collector/Getty Images; 33tr Collection Abecasis/Science
Photo Library; 33b Tomsich/Science Photo Library; 34t
Universitaire Bibliotheken Leiden (CC BY 4.0); 34b Science &
Society Picture Library/Getty Images; 35t Capricorn4049
(CC BY-SA 4.0); 35b Chris Pancewicz/Alamy; 36t The Picture
Art Collection/Alamy; 36b PjrRocks/Alamy; 37 Photo
12/Alamy; 38–39 BotMultichillT (public domain); 40 World
History Archive/Alamy; 41 Pasquale Sorrentino/Science
Photo Library; 44 World History Archive/Alamy; 45 Prisma
by Dukas Presseagentur GmbH/Alamy; 46 Bibliothèque
nationale de France; 48–49 Balkanique (public domain); 50
Kharbine-Tapabor/Shutterstock; 51l The Picture Art
Collection/Alamy; 51r INTERFOTO/Alamy; 52 Mappa Mundi
reproduced by kind permission of the Dean and Chapter of
Hereford; and the Hereford Mappa Mundi Trust from the
digitally restored facsimile published; by the Folio Society,
2010; 53 Tm (public domain); 54 Art Collection 2/Alamy; 55
FLHCAA1/Alamy; 56–57 Universiteitsbibliotheek Utrecht; 58
Yale Center for British Art (public domain); 59 Library of
Congress, Geography and Map Division; 60 Library of
Congress, Geography and Map Division, Louisiana: European
Explorations and the Louisiana Purchase; 61 Bibliotheque
Nationale, Paris, France/Bridgeman Images; 62
unknown/Alamy; 63 David Rumsey Map Collection, David
Rumsey Map Center, Stanford Libraries; 64 David Rumsey
Map Collection, David Rumsey Map Center, Stanford
Libraries; 65 Antiqua Print Gallery/Alamy; 66–67 Stanford
Libraries, Renaissance Exploration Map Collection (Public
Domain); 68 David Rumsey Map Collection, David Rumsey
Map Center, Stanford Libraries; 69 ©Quarto Publishing; 72
PRISMA ARCHIVO/Alamy; 73 Kognos (public domain); 74
Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin - Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin,
Germany (public domain); 75 Lebrecht Music & Arts/Alamy;
76 ©Jnn (CC BY 2.1 JP); 77 Bibliothèque nationale de
France; 78t ©British Library Board. All Rights
Reserved/Bridgeman Images; 78b ©British Library Board.
All Rights Reserved/Bridgeman Images; 79 The History
Collection/Alamy; 80 Cmdrjameson (public domain); 81
World History Archive/Alamy; 82 Bibliothèque nationale de
France; 83 Bibliothèque nationale de France; 84 The Picture
Art Collection/Alamy; 86 Gfreihalter (CC BY-SA 3.0); 87
Wuselig (public domain); 88l INTERFOTO/Alamy; 89b
Digitalised: Universitätsbibliothek Freiburg i. Br./J 4554,d
(public domain); 89t gameover/Alamy; 92t Science History
Images/Alamy; 92b INTERFOTO/Alamy 93 Adam
Eastland/Alamy; 94–95 Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität
München (public doain); 96 & 240 Paulis (public domain);
97 Science & Society Picture Library/Getty Images; 98
Photo ©Christie’s Images/Bridgeman Images; 99 Caird
(formerly Mensing) Collection (via Maggs), National Maritime
Museum, Greenwich, London; 100 Skokloster Castle/Erik
Lernestål/CC BY-SA; 101t ©Estate of Gerald Bloncourt. All
Rights Reserved 2023/Bridgeman Images; 101b Caird
Collection (via Spencer), National Maritime Museum,
Greenwich, London; 104 Library of Congress, Geography
and Map Division; 105 Topographical Collection/Alamy;
106–07 CPA Media Pte Ltd/Alamy; 107r Central Intelligence
Agency (United States Government work); 108t
©Warwickshire County Council Collections/Bridgeman
Images; 108b The National Archives of the UK; 109 Science
History Images/Alamy; 110t ©The Trustees of the British
Museum; 110b funkyfood London - Paul Williams/Alamy;
111 Gianni Dagli Orti/Shutterstock; 112t Boaz
Rottem/Alamy; 112b Luisa Ricciarini/Bridgeman Images;
113 Hermericus (public domain); 114 Ivy Close
Images/Alamy; 115 Bibliothèque nationale de France; 116
©British Library Board. All Rights Reserved/Bridgeman
Images; 117t VDWI Automotive/Alamy; 117b
MShieldsPhotos/Alamy; 120 ©British Library Board. All
Rights Reserved/Bridgeman Images; 121 Universal History
Archive/Getty Images; 122 View Stock/Alamy; 123 Library
of Congress, Geography and Map Division; 124 Library of
Congress, Geography and Map Division; 125 EU/BT/Alamy;
126 Fine, Oronce. Noua, Et Integra Uniuersi Orbis Descriptio.
[Paris?: Orontius Fineus, 1531] Map.
https://www.loc.gov/item/2005630228/, World Digital
Library; 127 Wellcome Collection (CC BY 4.0); 128 The
History Collection/Alamy; 129 ©MAPS IN MINUTES™ (2015).
All rights reserved.; 130–31 Alvaro German Vilela/Alamy;
132–33 Alvesgaspar (public domain); 134t Nationaal
Archief Nederland (public domain); 134b–135 The Picture
Art Collection/Alamy; 136 AF Fotografie/Alamy; 137
©British Library Board. All Rights Reserved/Bridgeman
Images; 138–39 ©British Library Board. All Rights
Reserved/Bridgeman Images; 140–41 Alvesgaspar (public
domain); 141r Bibliothèque nationale de France; 142
Balkanique (public domain); 143r Ordnance Survey; 143
gbimages/Alamy; 143b Jane Tregelles/Alamy; 147 Plank
(public domain); 148 Ray007 (public domain); 149 DEA
PICTURE LIBRARY/De Agostini via Getty Images; 150 The
Picture Art Collection/Alamy; 151 The Picture Art
Collection/Alamy; 152–53 Geagea (public domain); 154
State Library, South Australia; 155 James Ford Bell Library,
University of Minnesota; 156t Peripatesy (public domain);
157 Library of Congress, Parallel Histories: Spain, the United
States, and the American Frontier; 158–159 Geographicus
Rare Antique Maps/Wikimedia Commons (public domain);
160 GRANGER - Historical Picture Archive/Alamy; 161
Everett Collection Historical/Alamy; 162–63 The Picture Art
Collection/Alamy; 163r The History Collection/Alamy; 164–
65 Debivort (CC BY-SA 3.0); 168 Album/Alamy; 169
Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress; 170t
Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1951, Metropolitan Museum of
Art, New York; 170b fotopanorama360/Shutterstock; 171
Heritage Image Partnership Ltd/Alamy; 172–73 Science
History Images/Alamy; 174–75 The Picture Art
Collection/Alamy; 176t Florilegius/Alamy; 176b ©University
of St. Andrews Library/Bridgeman Images; 177 Science
History Images/Alamy 178–79 Library of Congress; 180
Bibliothèque nationale de France; 181 Bibliothèque
nationale de France; 182r Science & Society Picture
Library/Getty Images; 183 The Print Collector/Print
Collector/Getty Images; 184–85 Library of Congress; 186
©British Library Board. All Rights Reserved/Bridgeman
Images; 187t Broichmore (public domain); 187b GRANGER -
Historical Picture Archive/Alamy; 190 Reprint Courtesy of
IBM Corporation ©. Photo: A. Knoll, D. Pires, O. Coulembier,
P. Dubois, J. L. Hedrick, J. Frommer and U. Duerig, ‘Probe-
based 3-D Nanolithography using Self-Amplified
Depolymerization Polymers’ Advanced Materials, Advanced
Online Publication in the scientific paper, 23 April 2010.
Copyright Wiley-VCH GmbH. Reproduced with permission.;
191 ©British Library Board. All Rights Reserved/Bridgeman
Images; 192 ©British Library Board. All Rights
Reserved/Bridgeman Images; 193 Jonathan
Hordle/Shutterstock; 194 Library of Congress, Geography
and Map Division; 198 Photo ©Photo Josse/Bridgeman
Images; 199 Album/Alamy; 200 Zuri Swimmer/Alamy; 201
Alvesgaspar (public domain); 202 CPA Media Pte Ltd/Alamy;
203 Chronicle/Alamy; 204 Florida Center for Instructional
Technology, Courtesy the private collection of Roy
Winkelman; 205 Antiqua Print Gallery/Alamy; 206–07
Classic Image/Alamy; 207r INTERFOTO/Alamy; 208 Niday
Picture Library/Alamy; 209 Bettmann/Getty Images; 210–11
Antiqua Print Gallery/Alamy; 213 UN. Geospatial Information
Section; 214 World History Archive/Alamy; 215 ©British
Library Board. All Rights Reserved/Bridgeman Images; 216
Central Intelligence Agency (United States Government
work); 217 Colin Waters/Alamy; 218 Library of Congress,
Geography and Map Division; 220–21 Decision Regarding
Delimitation of the Border between the State of Eritrea and
the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, Eritrea-Ethiopia
Boundary Commission, 13 April 2002. Accessed via
haguejusticeportal.net; 222 Photo ©Christie’s
Images/Bridgeman Images; 223 AF Fotografie/Alamy; 224
Bibliothèque nationale de France; 225 Oranjblud (Ordnance
survey/UK government, public domain); 226–27
Universiteitsbibliotheek Utrecht; 228 Library of Congress,
Geography and Map Division; 229 Bridgeman Images
About the Author
Philip Parker is a historian with a particular interest in the
role of maps, and the ways in which we can use them to
uncover history. He is the author of the DK Eyewitness
Companion Guide to World History (2010), History of the
World in Maps (2015), History of Britain in Maps (2017), A–Z
History of London (2019), History of World Trade in Maps
(2020), Small Island: 12 Maps that Explain the History of
Britain (2022) and The Atlas of Atlases (2022) and was the
General Editor of The Great Trade Routes: A History of
Cargoes and Commerce over Land and Sea (2012). He is
also a specialist in late antique and early medieval history
and wrote The Empire Stops Here: A Journey Along the
Frontiers of the Roman World (2010) and The Sunday Times
bestseller The Northmen’s Fury: A History of the Viking
World (2015). He studied History at Trinity Hall, University of
Cambridge and International Relations at Johns Hopkins
School of Advanced International Studies Bologna Center.
He previously worked as a diplomat, the editor of a travel
magazine and as a publisher running a list of historical
atlases and illustrated history books, and lives in London.
Acknowledgements
Just as the making of a map involves a host of people other
than the named mapmaker, so a book about the making of
maps has needed the time and skills of a team of whom the
author is but one. I would like to thank especially Richard
Green, Publisher at Ivy Press, for commissioning the title
and to Laura Bulbeck for her heroic efforts in keeping the
book (and author) on track. Thanks also to Caroline Earle for
copy-editing, Victoria Lympus for proof-reading and Ben
Ruocco for the page design, all of whom shaped the book
you hold today. Finally, thanks to my family for their
perennial good humour and tolerance of yet more authorial
months hunched over medieval and early modern maps.
First published in 2023 by Ivy Press,
an imprint of The Quarto Group.
One Triptych Place
London, SE1 9SH,
United Kingdom
T (0)20 7700 6700
www.Quarto.com

Copyright © 2023 Quarto Publishing plc

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilised in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without
permission in writing from Ivy Press.

Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders of material quoted in
this book. If application is made in writing to the publisher, any omissions will be
included in future editions.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-0-7112-8264-3
Ebook ISBN 978-0-7112-8266-7

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Text by Philip Parker

Design by Ben Ruocco