Putting the British seas on the map: John Dee's Imperial Cartography

Cartographica

Volumn 35, Issue 3-4, 1998, Pages 1-10

  Sherman, William H ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

BIOGRAPHY; CARTOGRAPHY; HISTORICAL CARTOGRAPHY; MAPPING;

ENGLAND; UNITED KINGDOM;

EID: 0032287150     PISSN: 03177173     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.3138/H698-K7R3-4072-2K73     Document Type: Article

References (52)

1. This phrase has been applied to a much later stage of the British Empire in Thomas Richards' suggestive study of Victorian literature, The Imperial Archive: Knowledge and the Fantasy of Empire (London: Verso Books, 1993). Recent accounts of Elizabethan imperialism have stressed its primarily 'paper' nature: see Mary C. Fuller, Voyages in Print: English Travel to America, 1576-1624 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), and Jeffrey Knapp, An Empire Nowhere: England, America, and Literature from Utopia to The Tempest (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).
2. This phrase has been applied to a much later stage of the British Empire in Thomas Richards' suggestive study of Victorian literature, The Imperial Archive: Knowledge and the Fantasy of Empire (London: Verso Books, 1993). Recent accounts of Elizabethan imperialism have stressed its primarily 'paper' nature: see Mary C. Fuller, Voyages in Print: English Travel to America, 1576-1624 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), and Jeffrey Knapp, An Empire Nowhere: England, America, and Literature from Utopia to The Tempest (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).
3. This phrase has been applied to a much later stage of the British Empire in Thomas Richards' suggestive study of Victorian literature, The Imperial Archive: Knowledge and the Fantasy of Empire (London: Verso Books, 1993). Recent accounts of Elizabethan imperialism have stressed its primarily 'paper' nature: see Mary C. Fuller, Voyages in Print: English Travel to America, 1576-1624 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), and Jeffrey Knapp, An Empire Nowhere: England, America, and Literature from Utopia to The Tempest (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).
4. Frances Yates, Astraea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975), Roy Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth: Elizabethan Portraiture and Pageantry (London: Thames and Hudson, 1977), and Gloriana: The Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I (London: Thames and Hudson, 1987).
5. Frances Yates, Astraea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975), Roy Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth: Elizabethan Portraiture and Pageantry (London: Thames and Hudson, 1977), and Gloriana: The Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I (London: Thames and Hudson, 1987).
6. Frances Yates, Astraea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975), Roy Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth: Elizabethan Portraiture and Pageantry (London: Thames and Hudson, 1977), and Gloriana: The Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I (London: Thames and Hudson, 1987).
7. See Christopher Haigh, editor's introduction to The Reign of Elizabeth I (London: Macmillan, 1984), 9.
8. The Age of Reconnaissance: Discovery, Exploration and Settlement, 1450-1650 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1963).
9. The Age of Plunder: The England of Henry VIII, 1500-1547 (London: Longman, 1976).
10. For an earlier (and, in places, fuller) treatment, see my monograph, John Dee: The Politics of Reading and Writing in the English Renaissance (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995) - especially ch. 7. Robert Baldwin has also produced an indispensable study, "John Dee's Interest in the Application of Nautical Science, Mathematics, and Law to English Naval Affairs," and I am grateful to him for sharing the manuscript with me.
11. For an earlier (and, in places, fuller) treatment, see my monograph, John Dee: The Politics of Reading and Writing in the English Renaissance (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995) - especially ch. 7. Robert Baldwin has also produced an indispensable study, "John Dee's Interest in the Application of Nautical Science, Mathematics, and Law to English Naval Affairs," and I am grateful to him for sharing the manuscript with me.
12. In addition to the influential works of Frances Yates - especially The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979) and Theatre of the World (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969) - see Peter French, John Dee: The World of an Elizabethan Magus (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972). A more recent and reliable account is Nicholas Clulee, John Dee's Natural Philosophy: Between Science and Religion (London: Routledge, 1988).
13. In addition to the influential works of Frances Yates - especially The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979) and Theatre of the World (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969) - see Peter French, John Dee: The World of an Elizabethan Magus (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972). A more recent and reliable account is Nicholas Clulee, John Dee's Natural Philosophy: Between Science and Religion (London: Routledge, 1988).
14. In addition to the influential works of Frances Yates - especially The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979) and Theatre of the World (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969) - see Peter French, John Dee: The World of an Elizabethan Magus (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972). A more recent and reliable account is Nicholas Clulee, John Dee's Natural Philosophy: Between Science and Religion (London: Routledge, 1988).
15. In addition to the influential works of Frances Yates - especially The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979) and Theatre of the World (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969) - see Peter French, John Dee: The World of an Elizabethan Magus (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972). A more recent and reliable account is Nicholas Clulee, John Dee's Natural Philosophy: Between Science and Religion (London: Routledge, 1988).
16. E. G. R. Taylor, Tudor Geography, 1485-1583 (London: Methuen, 1930); Antoine de Smet, "John Dee et sa place dans l'histoire de la cartographie," in Helen Wallis and Sarah Tyacke, eds., My Head is a Map: Essays & Memoires in Honour of R. V. Tooley (London: Francis Edwards Ltd., 1973); and David N. Livingstone, The Geographical Tradition: Episodes in the History of a Contested Enterprise (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992).
17. E. G. R. Taylor, Tudor Geography, 1485-1583 (London: Methuen, 1930); Antoine de Smet, "John Dee et sa place dans l'histoire de la cartographie," in Helen Wallis and Sarah Tyacke, eds., My Head is a Map: Essays & Memoires in Honour of R. V. Tooley (London: Francis Edwards Ltd., 1973); and David N. Livingstone, The Geographical Tradition: Episodes in the History of a Contested Enterprise (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992).
18. E. G. R. Taylor, Tudor Geography, 1485-1583 (London: Methuen, 1930); Antoine de Smet, "John Dee et sa place dans l'histoire de la cartographie," in Helen Wallis and Sarah Tyacke, eds., My Head is a Map: Essays & Memoires in Honour of R. V. Tooley (London: Francis Edwards Ltd., 1973); and David N. Livingstone, The Geographical Tradition: Episodes in the History of a Contested Enterprise (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992).
19. See Samuel H. Baron, "Herberstein and the English 'Discovery' of Muscovy," Terrae Incognitae 18 (1986): 43-54, for a discussion of the possible significance of one of these texts for English exploration.
20. See Dee's description in his "Compendious Rehearsall" -printed in James Crossley, ed., The Autobiographical Tracts of Dr. John Dee (Manchester: Printed for the Chetham Society, 1851).
21. What remains of their correspondence can be found in J. H. Hessels, ed., Abrahami Ortelii ... epistulae (Cambridge, 1887).
22. I cite Wayne Shumaker's facing-page translation in John Dee on Astronomy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), p. 111.
23. E. G. R. Taylor, "A Letter Dated 1577 from Mercator to John Dee," Imago Mundi 13 (1956): 56-68.
24. K. R. Andrews, Trade, Plunder and Settlement: Maritime Enterprise and the Genesis of the British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).
25. See, however, Bruce Henry, "John Dee, Humphrey Llwyd, and the name 'British Empire'," Huntington Library Quarterly 35 (1971-72): 189-90.
26. It is worth quoting the full passage in which this phrase appears: "Nowe (at length) ame I come to my chiefe purpose, of some Records settinge downe: which wilbe found sufficient, for to stire upp yo[u]r Ma[jes]tis most noble hart, and to directe yo[u]r Godlie conscience, to undertake this Brytish discovery, and recovery Enterprise, in yo[u]r owne Royall Interest: for the great good service of God, for yo[u]r highnes immortal fame, and the marvailous Wealth Publick of yo[u]r Brytish Impire" (Brytannici Imperii Limites, British Library, MS Additional 59681).
27. Ibid.
28. W. F. Ganong, Crucial Maps in the Early Cartography and Place-Nomenclature of the Atlantic Coast of Canada, ed. Theodore E. Layng (Toronto: University of Toronto Press with the Royal Society of Canada, 1964), 439.
29. Bodleian Library, Ashmole 242, art. 83 (I owe this reference to Robert Baldwin). Cf. E. G. R. Taylor's Hakluyt Society edition of William Bourne's writings (London, 1963), Appendix 1.
30. British Library, MS Additional 59681.
31. J. O. Halliwell, ed., The Private Diary of Dr. John Dee (London: Camden Society, 1842), 9.
32. The area that Dee chose to highlight was closely related to the ongoing exploration of the North Atlantic: as several scholars have discussed (including E. G. R. Taylor, Tudor Geography; Samuel Eliot Morison, The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971); and Ganong, Crucial Maps - the last of which provides a photograph of the section in question as Figure 116) he reproduces a deeply misguided Canadian and Polar geography, including the islands of Estotilant, Grocland, and Groenland, and he shows the beginnings of a straight and wide-open Northwest Passage.
33. The area that Dee chose to highlight was closely related to the ongoing exploration of the North Atlantic: as several scholars have discussed (including E. G. R. Taylor, Tudor Geography; Samuel Eliot Morison, The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971); and Ganong, Crucial Maps - the last of which provides a photograph of the section in question as Figure 116) he reproduces a deeply misguided Canadian and Polar geography, including the islands of Estotilant, Grocland, and Groenland, and he shows the beginnings of a straight and wide-open Northwest Passage.
34. The area that Dee chose to highlight was closely related to the ongoing exploration of the North Atlantic: as several scholars have discussed (including E. G. R. Taylor, Tudor Geography; Samuel Eliot Morison, The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971); and Ganong, Crucial Maps - the last of which provides a photograph of the section in question as Figure 116) he reproduces a deeply misguided Canadian and Polar geography, including the islands of Estotilant, Grocland, and Groenland, and he shows the beginnings of a straight and wide-open Northwest Passage.
35. Ganong, 450.
36. R. A. Skelton and J. Summerson, A Description of the Maps and Architectural Drawings in the Collection ... at Hatfield House (Oxford: Printed for presentation to the members of the Roxburghe Club, 1971).
37. Helgerson, "The Land Speaks," in his Forms of Nationhood: The Elizabethan Writing of England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
38. See K. R. Andrews, note 14 above, 72-73; and E. G. R. Taylor, "John Dee and the map of North-East Asia," Imago Mundi 12 (1955): 103-106. A potentially confusing annotation by Burghley records the details of Frobisher's second (1577) voyage to the Northwest; but the note is actually on a previous page and may not refer to the Dee map at all.
39. See K. R. Andrews, note 14 above, 72-73; and E. G. R. Taylor, "John Dee and the map of North-East Asia," Imago Mundi 12 (1955): 103-106. A potentially confusing annotation by Burghley records the details of Frobisher's second (1577) voyage to the Northwest; but the note is actually on a previous page and may not refer to the Dee map at all.
40. This map was purchased in 1928 for the Rosenbach collection and is now held at the Free Library of Philadelphia. It was first reproduced and described by R. P. Bishop in the Geographical Journal 72 (1928): 235-43. It has since been reproduced and assessed in both Ganong, Crucial Maps, 453-54, and Morison, The European Discovery of America, 580-81 . All of the above ascribe the information if not the execution of the map to Dee, citing its consistency with Dee's previous pictures of the region as well as the presence of a symbol strongly resembling his "Monas Hieroglyphica" and his close involvement in Gilbert's schemes of exploration in 1582-83. I have nothing new to add in the way of evidence, and - despite the troubling presence of the phrase "T. S. fecit" - am more or less persuaded of Dee's role in the production of the map.
41. This map was purchased in 1928 for the Rosenbach collection and is now held at the Free Library of Philadelphia. It was first reproduced and described by R. P. Bishop in the Geographical Journal 72 (1928): 235-43. It has since been reproduced and assessed in both Ganong, Crucial Maps, 453-54, and Morison, The European Discovery of America, 580-81 . All of the above ascribe the information if not the execution of the map to Dee, citing its consistency with Dee's previous pictures of the region as well as the presence of a symbol strongly resembling his "Monas Hieroglyphica" and his close involvement in Gilbert's schemes of exploration in 1582-83. I have nothing new to add in the way of evidence, and - despite the troubling presence of the phrase "T. S. fecit" - am more or less persuaded of Dee's role in the production of the map.
42. This map was purchased in 1928 for the Rosenbach collection and is now held at the Free Library of Philadelphia. It was first reproduced and described by R. P. Bishop in the Geographical Journal 72 (1928): 235-43. It has since been reproduced and assessed in both Ganong, Crucial Maps, 453-54, and Morison, The European Discovery of America, 580-81 . All of the above ascribe the information if not the execution of the map to Dee, citing its consistency with Dee's previous pictures of the region as well as the presence of a symbol strongly resembling his "Monas Hieroglyphica" and his close involvement in Gilbert's schemes of exploration in 1582-83. I have nothing new to add in the way of evidence, and - despite the troubling presence of the phrase "T. S. fecit" - am more or less persuaded of Dee's role in the production of the map.
43. This map was purchased in 1928 for the Rosenbach collection and is now held at the Free Library of Philadelphia. It was first reproduced and described by R. P. Bishop in the Geographical Journal 72 (1928): 235-43. It has since been reproduced and assessed in both Ganong, Crucial Maps, 453-54, and Morison, The European Discovery of America, 580-81 . All of the above ascribe the information if not the execution of the map to Dee, citing its consistency with Dee's previous pictures of the region as well as the presence of a symbol strongly resembling his "Monas Hieroglyphica" and his close involvement in Gilbert's schemes of exploration in 1582-83. I have nothing new to add in the way of evidence, and - despite the troubling presence of the phrase "T. S. fecit" - am more or less persuaded of Dee's role in the production of the map.
44. See Bishop, "The Map of c. 1582-3," 236.
45. Ganong, 452. In fact, Dee and Lok were in close contact during the mid-1570s, in the run-up to the Frobisher voyages for which Lok acted as financial director and Dee as technical adviser. In an autobiographical defence prepared during his imprisonment for bankruptcy in 1581, Lok described how, in 1576, he had arranged a meeting at his own house with Frobisher, Borough, Hall, and others, where Lok laid before Dee " my Bokes & authors, my Cardes & Instruments, & my Notes thereof made in writing ... ." Dee was reportedly moved in sympathy to instruct "the Masters & Marriners in the use of [in]struments for Navigation in their voyage ... .& (BL, MS Cotton Otho E.Viii, fol. 44r-v: this account is, except for fol. 45, in Dee's hand).
46. See, in addition to the previously noted sources, Nicholas H. Clulee, John Dee's Natural Philosophy, 188.
47. There are three known copies of this manuscript. Two are in Dee's hand: a draft, in BL MS Harley 249, and a cleaner copy, bound with Dee's General and Rare Memorials in BL C.21.e.12. The third, roughly contemporary, copy is BL MS Royal 7 C.XVI, fols. 158-65.
48. The best guide to the meaning and history of the term is Clark G. Reynolds, "'Thalassocracy' as a Historical Force," in History and the Sea: Essays on Maritime Strategies (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1989).
49. On this point, see Matthew Edney's review article, "Mapping and the Early Modern State: The Intellectual Nexus of Late Tudor and Early Stuart Cartography," Cartographica 29, 3-4 (Autumn/Winter, 1992): 89-93.
50. Thomas Wemyss Fulton, The Sovereignty of the Sea (Edinburgh: W. Blackwood, 1911).
51. Terrence Henry Lloyd, England and the German Hanse, 1157-1611: A Study of Their Trade and Commercial Diplomacy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), Ch. 6; and E. P. Cheney, "International Law under Queen Elizabeth," EHR 20 (1905): 659-72. The relevant primary sources are scattered throughout the State Papers Domestic and Foreign at the Public Record Office: see especially the Uncalendared State Papers Foreign Hamburg and Hanse Towns (SP 82).
52. Terrence Henry Lloyd, England and the German Hanse, 1157-1611: A Study of Their Trade and Commercial Diplomacy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), Ch. 6; and E. P. Cheney, "International Law under Queen Elizabeth," EHR 20 (1905): 659-72. The relevant primary sources are scattered throughout the State Papers Domestic and Foreign at the Public Record Office: see especially the Uncalendared State Papers Foreign Hamburg and Hanse Towns (SP 82).