Renaissance maps and the construction of the idea of Europe

Journal of Historical Geography

Volumn 25, Issue 2, 1999, Pages 137-165

  Wintle, Michael ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF HULL   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY; MAPPING; PERCEPTION; POWER RELATIONS;

EUROPE;

EID: 0033117378     PISSN: 03057488     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1006/jhge.1999.0111     Document Type: Article

References (170)

1. J. B. Harley, Maps, knowledge, and power, in D. Cosgrove and S. Daniels (Eds), The Iconography of Landscape: Essays on the Symbolic Representation, Design and the Use of Past Environments (Cambridge 1985) 277-312, especially 300-3.
2. J. B. Harley, Meaning and ambiguity in Tudor cartography, in S. Tyacke (Ed.), English Map-Making 1500-1650: Historical Essays (London 1983) 22-45, 22 and passim.
3. J. B. Harley and D. Woodward (Eds), The History of Cartography I - Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean (Chicago 1987), Chap. 1, 3 and passim.
4. For a further exposition of his distinctive viewpoint in the tradition of Foucault, see J. B. Harley, Deconstructing the map, Cartographica 26, 2 (1989) 1-20;
5. and J. B. Harley and K. Zandvliet, Art, science, and power in sixteenth-century Dutch cartography, Cartographica 29, 2 (1992) 10-9.
6. For example, C. Jacob, L'Empire des cartes: approche theoretique des cartes à travers l'histoire (Paris 1992);
7. D. Buisseret (Ed.), Monarchs, Ministers and Maps: the Emergence of Cartography as a Tool of Government in Early Modem Europe (Chicago 1992);
8. R. A. Rundstrom (Ed.) Introducing Cultural and Social Cartography, special issue of Cartographica 30, 1 (1993);
9. D. Wood (with John Fels), The Power of Maps (London 1993);
10. P. Barber and C. Board (Eds), Tales from the Map Room: Fact and Fiction about Maps and their Makers (London 1993);
11. J. B. Friedman, Cultural conflicts in medieval world maps, in S. B. Schwartz (Ed.), Implicit Understandings: Observing, Reporting, and Reflecting on the Encounters between Europeans and Other Peoples in the Early Modern Era (Cambridge 1994) 64-95;
12. M. Monmonier, How to Lie with Maps (Chicago 1996);
13. B. Schmidt, Mapping and empire: cartographic and colonial rivalry in seventeenth-century Dutch and English North America, The William and Mary Quarterly 54 (1997) 549-78;
14. and J. Black, Maps and History: Constructing Images of the Past (New Haven 1997).
15. See also the older work by D. Hay, Europe: The Emergence of An Idea (Edinburgh 1968) xxii-xxiii.
16. Harley and Woodward, op. cit., I, 2.
17. B. Geremek, The Common Roots of Europe (Cambridge 1996) 158.
18. Many of these works are triumphalist and Eurocentric-a classic example is D. de Rougemont, The Meaning of Europe (London 1965).
19. Some are teleological or Whiggish in seeing everything leading in an increasingly felicitous linear movement towards the present post-war European 'project', for example, J.-B. Duroselle, Europe: A History of Its Peoples (London 1990).
20. Others chart manifestations of political unity in Europe through the ages, for example R. H. Foerster, Die Idee Europa 1300-1946: Quellen zur Geschichte der politische Einigung (s.l. c. 1970);
21. and D. Heater, The Idea of European Unity (London 1992).
22. More balanced accounts are Hay, op. cit.
23. and, more recently, K. Wilson and J. van der Dussen, The History of the Idea of Europe (London 1995)
24. See also M. Wintle (Ed.), Culture and Identity in Europe: Perceptions of Divergence and Unity in Past and Present (Aldershot 1996).
25. See, in particular, J. Hale, The Renaissance idea of Europe, in S. Garcia (Ed.), European Identity and the Search for Legitimacy (London 1993) 46-63;
26. and Chapter 1 of J. Hale, The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance (London 1994).
27. The field has been pioneered especially by the seminal work of Hay, op. cit.
28. See also Hale, The Civilization of Europe;
29. W. H. Parker, Europe: how far?, Geographical Journal 126 (1960) 278-97;
30. and M. Pastoreau and J. C. Schmitt, Europe: memoire et emblemes (Paris 1990).
31. Much of this has recently been usefully summarized in Wilson and Van der Dussen, op. cit.
32. Black, Maps and History, 53;
33. see also 8-12, 16-17 and 25-6, and Chap. 3. Black refers mainly to a later period, the nineteenth century and afterwards. On maps and nationhood, see also Monmonier, How to Lie with Maps, Chap. 7,
34. and on the importance of maps to the state-building efforts of Burghley in England, see V. Morgan, The cartographic image of 'the country' in early modern England, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 29 (1979) 129-54.
35. Schmidt, Mapping and empire, 554, 557 and 578.
36. L. Jardine, Worldly Goods (London 1996) 270-4,
37. and Chaps 5 and 6 in general. On the importance of patronage, see also P. D. A. Harvey, Maps in Tudor England (London 1993) 40.
38. For a more extensive account of the three main traditions of the mapping of Europe summarized below, see M. Wintle, 'Europe's image: visual representations of Europe from the earliest times to the twentieth century',
39. in Wintle, op. cit., 64-72.
40. On mappae mundi, see Woodward's Chapter 18 in Harley and Woodward, The History of Cartography I;
41. and P. D. A. Harvey, Medieval Maps (London 1991),
42. Chap. 2. On the representation of Europe in particular, see Hay, op. cit., 37-43.
43. See N. J. W. Thrower, Maps and Man: An Examination of Cartography in Relation to Culture and Civilization (Eagle Cliffs, NJ 1972) 48-55.
44. On the increasing accuracy of the portrayal of Asia, see D. F. Lach, Asia in the Making of Europe I: The Century of Discovery (Chicago 1965)217-25.
45. Harley and Woodward, op. cit., I, notes to plate 18;
46. and P. Whitfield, The Image of the World: 20 Centuries of World Maps (London 1994) 32-3.
47. See Jardine, op. cit., Chap. 7, especially 350-4 and 363-6.
48. On the contribution of cosmography to this transition, see F. Lestringant, Mapping the Renaissance World: The Geographical Imagination in the Age of Discovery (Cambridge 1994) 1-13.
49. Hay, op. cit., 99-100;
50. P. den Boer, 'Europe to 1914: the making of an idea', in Wilson and Van der Dussen, op. cit., 44-7;
51. Whitfield, op. cit., 66-74.
52. Other types of medieval maps were somewhat different. The zonal, or Macrobian versions, showed the three known continents occupying part of the northern hemisphere, and a corresponding landmass in the southern temperate zone was thought to be inhabited by the Antipodeans. None the less, Europe still covered a quarter or a third of the known world. On zonal and quadripartite mappae mundi, see Harley and Woodward, op. cit. I, 295-300;
53. Friedman, op. cit., 84-8;
54. and Harvey, Medieval Maps, 19-21.
55. On the portolan charts, see Campbell's Chapter 19 in Harley and Woodward, op. cit., I.
56. Only the coasts of lands outside Europe were well mapped at the time. See Black, Maps and History, 13.
57. On the significance of heraldic arms placed on maps, see Harley, Meaning and ambiguity, 37.
58. Another fine example of this transition between the medieval tradition and the new portolan-based maps of the Renaissance is provided by the work of Battista Agnese, working in Venice in the 1530s. See Wintle, Europe's image, 71-3.
59. Illustrated in L. Bagrow, History of Cartography (Chicago 1985), plate H, after 110.
60. Illustrated in J. Goss, The Mapmaker's Art: A History of Cartography (London 1993), plate 3.13 on 69-70.
61. Ibid., plate 3.26 on 78. It includes a highly unusual version of Australia merged with South America. Another, later example of this type of world map,
62. by Antonio Sanchez in 1623, is illustrated in Whitfield, op. cit., 86-7.
63. The literature on Ptolemy is best summarized in O. A. W. Dilke's Chapter 11 in Harley and Woodward, op. cit., I.
64. On the influence of Ptolemaic maps on Europeans in the age of Columbus, see V. I. J. Flint, The Imaginative Landscape of Christopher Columbus (Princeton 1992) 36-7.
65. Goss, op. cit., 92.
66. On the Mercator projection and Eurocentricity, see (amongst many others) J. A. S. Grenville, National Prejudice and International History: An Inaugural Lecture (Leeds 1968) 7-10.
67. Whitfield, op. cit., 108.
68. A 1535 copy of the map is reproduced in Goss, op. cit., plate 5.10 on 126.
69. A late but eloquent case is the commercially successful 'Crystal Palace Game' of c. 1854, printed and sold in large numbers in Britain to teach global geography to the nation's children. Here, Siberia, China and Australia are positioned in the middle of the map. Illustrated in G. Hill, Cartographical Curiosities (London 1978) plate 8 on 13.
70. The distortion of relational size by the Mercator projection was the reason for the development of the projection by Arno Peters, which accurately represents surface area, and paints a very different picture of the continents indeed. A lively account of the Mercator/Peters projection controversy is found in Wood, op. cit., 56-61.
71. See also J. Rabasa, Allegories of the atlas, in F. Barker et al. (Eds), Europe and Its Others (Proceedings of the Essex Conference on the Sociology of Literature July 1984) (2 vols, Colchester 1985) II, 1-16, which gives a complicated account of the Europeanization of the world perpetrated by the Mercator-Hondius tradition.
72. Harley, Maps, knowledge, and power, 291-2.
73. Goss, op. cit., 92-3.
74. On the fascination with, popularity of and demand for maps, see Jardine, op. cit., 106-9;
75. and Morgan, op. cit., 148.
76. Hale, The Civilization of Europe, 22-6.
77. For a summary of the issues and developments concerning Europe's eastern border, see Wintle, Europe's image, 58-63.
78. The classic study is Parker, op. cit.
79. Another example would be Sebastian Münster's 1552 map of Europe, 'Moderna Europae Descriptio', in his Cosmographia Universalis Libri VI (Basel 1552),
80. drawn with south at the top, and showing no internal boundaries. Illustrated at H. A. M. van der Heijden, The Oldest Maps of the Netherlands: An Illustrated and Annotated Carlo-Bibliography of the 16th Century Maps of the XVII Provinces (Utrecht 1987) 68.
81. Bagrow, op. cit., 176.
82. An example is the portrayal of the continent in a sea-atlas by Battista Agnese in 1536, illustrated in ibid., plate LXVI.
83. Geremek, op. cit., 105.
84. B. Kempers (Ed.), Openbaring en bedrog: de afbeelding als historische bron in de Lage Landen (Amsterdam 1995) 63
85. (my translation). On the Habsburg use of cartography, see Vann's Chapter 6 in Buisseret, op. cit.
86. See also A. Wheatcroft, The Habsburgs: Embodying Empire (London 1996) 112
87. and passim. The Habsburgs were not alone in using cartography to assert their power: the Tudors were also adept in the art. See Harvey, Maps in Tudor England;
88. S. Anglo, Images of Tudor Kingship (London 1992);
89. and R. Strong, The English Icon: Elizabethan and Jacobean Portraiture (London 1969),
90. especially on the c. 1592 'Ditchley' portrait of Elizabeth II by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, where the queen stands on a map of England (289), and on the c. 1588 'Armada' portrait of her by George Gower, where she has her hand on a globe, again asserting dominion (182). See Harley, Meaning and ambiguity, 33.
91. Philipp Eckebrecht's world map was drawn after a design by the astronomer Joseph Kepler. Illustrated at Bagrow, op. cit., plate CI.
92. I have argued this point further in Wintle, Europe's image, 76-9.
93. A good example from dozens available would be the engraving by Hieronymus Wierix after Maarten de Vos, 'Perseus met het schild van Willem Oranje bevrijdt Andromeda en de 17 Nederlandsche provincies, belaagd door het Spaanse monster, 1577-80',
94. held in the Atlas van Stolk, Rotterdam, nr 461, and illustrated in Kempers, Openbaring en bedrog, 82.
95. The Dutch maid is portrayed as Andromeda in distress, backed by the Seventeen Provinces as maidens, being attacked by the Spanish dragon, and rescued by William of Orange who appears as Perseus. For the personification of 'Belgica' in books and on maps (by Hondius), see van der Heijden, op. cit., 75-7 and 181-2.
96. Any number of examples could suffice. Another very apt one is a German piece in the form of a lead plaque with Europe crowned and sceptred, with both horse and bull, as well as the attributes of war and the gentler arts. It is illustrated in C. Le Corbeiller, Miss America and her sisters: personification of the four parts of the world, Metropolitan Museum Bulletin 19(1961)209-23, esp. 215.
97. Ibid., 209-11;
98. Hale, The Civilization of Europe, 12.
99. See also Hay, op. cit., 104;
100. and Den Boer, op. cit., 53 and 56.
101. J. Dee, General and Rare Memorials pertraying to the Perfect Arte of Navigation (London 1577).
102. The frontispiece is reproduced and the iconography and allegory fully explained in an erudite and entertaining account: M. Corbett and R. Lightbown, The Comely Frontispiece: The Emblematic Title-Page in England 1550-1600 (London 1979), especially 34-7 and 49-51.
103. See, for example, his Prosopographia of 1579. See also Hay, op. cit., plate V and 104.
104. Wintle, Europe's image, 82-4.
105. See, for example, the edition of the Iconologia (Augsburg, Hertel, 1760).
106. See also B. Rupprecht, Imago Europae: Elemente europaischer Kunst, in J. A. Schlumberger and P. Segl (Eds), Europa-aber was ist es? Aspekte seiner Identitat in interdisziplinärer Sicht (Cologne 1994) 127-62, esp. 138.
107. Illustrated in the frontipiece to C. R. Boxer, The Dutch Seaborne Empire 1600-1800 (London 1965).
108. See also the title page of Jan Commelin's 1697 catalogue of the Amsterdam botanical gardens, which displays the continents personified as young women (Europe alone is crowned), bringing their flora to the maid of Amsterdam. See also Wintle, Europe's image, 83.
109. Le Corbeiller, op. cit., 220-3.
110. Harley, Maps, knowledge, and power, 299.
111. P. Hulme, Colonial Encounters: Europe and the Native Caribbean 1492-1797 (London 1992), 211.
112. L. C. Olson, Emblems of American Community in the Revolutionary Era: A Study in Rhetorical Iconology (Washington 1991) 14-15 and 75-80.
113. Ibid., 14-15.
114. Many of the pictorial and literary accounts of the 'colonial encounters' between Europeans and the inhabitants of the New World have been portrayed in these terms. The literature is considerable. See, in particular, the work of the Essex University group on the sociology of literature, for example, F. Barker et al. (Eds), Uses of History: Marxism, Postmodernism and the Renaissance (Manchester 1991);
115. Hulme, op. cit.,
116. and F. Barker et al. (Eds), Colonial Discourse/'Postcolonial Theory (Manchester 1994).
117. On the 'othering' of Europe in medieval maps, see Friedman, op. cit., 66-7.
118. Hulme, op. cit., 84-6.
119. On the complexity of the function of'cannibalism' in the construction of identity, see also W Arens, The Man-Eating Myth: Anthropology and Anthropophagy (Oxford 1979).
120. See Hay, op. cit., 104;
121. Hale, The Civilization of Europe, 9-13;
122. Den Boer, op. cit., 48-51;
123. Wintle, Europe's image, 80-1.
124. Again, Brian Harley has made the point. Maps and the historical process are, he claims, "linked by means of reciprocally structured relationships . . . Maps-like books-can be regarded as agents of change in history". Quoted in Harley and Woodward, op. cit., I, 4-5.
125. See Goss, op. cit., plate 11.2 on 330.
126. See the illuminating commentary by M. Mollat du Jourdin, Europe and the Sea (Oxford 1993) xiii.
127. Goss, op. cit., 331;
128. T. Hoenselaars' essay in J. T. Leerssen and M. van Montfrans (Eds), Borders and Territories: Yearbook of European Studies 6 (Amsterdam 1993) 103;
129. and Den Boer, op. cit., 52-3.
130. See Hay, op. cit., frontispiece.
131. Also in Hale, The Civilization of Europe, 11.
132. See Goss, op. cit., plates 11.9 and 11.8, on 334.
133. Wintle, Europe's image, 82.
134. Leerssen and Van Montfrans, op. cit., 107.
135. Bagrow, op. cit., 219.
136. Harley noted the crucial though often overlooked significance of the title page in Renaissance atlases: "it may provide the key to the context as this was understood both by the map-maker and his patrons". See Harley, Meaning and ambiguity, 38.
137. Hale, The Civilization of Europe, 12-3.
138. Theatrum Orbis Terrarum sive Atlas Novus (Amsterdam, Blaeu, 1649),
139. illustrated in Goss, op. cit., plate 4.26 on 112.
140. Illustrated in D. F. Lach, Asia in the Making of Europe II: The Century of Wonder (3 parts, Chicago 1970-77) iii, plate 81.
141. For example, the Blaeu atlas went through editions in German, French, Latin and Dutch, from 1635 on. See Goss, op. cit., 112.
142. On the commerce in maps and atlases in sixteenth-century Europe, see Lach, op. cit., Il, iii, 476-7 and 488.
143. Harvey, Maps in Tudor England, 1.
144. Goss, op. cit., 260.
145. Illustrated in Lach, op. cit., Il, i, plate 59.
146. All maps are an interplay of drawing and text of one sort or another: see C. Delano Smith, Cartographic signs on European maps and their explanation before 1700, Imago Mundi 37 (1985) 9-29;
147. and Jacob, op. cit.
148. Harley, Meaning and ambiguity, 36-7;
149. Geremek, op. cit., 158.
150. A late seventeenth-century title-piece of a Dutch map of the Mare Germanicum, illustrated in R. V. Tooley, Maps and Map-Makers (London 1970), plate 35.
151. Whitfield, op. cit., 74.
152. Ibid., 75.
153. Wintle, Europe's image, 84-5.
154. For an approachable account of the search for a solution to the problems of fixing longitude, finally resolved by accurate chronometers in the eighteenth century, see S. Berthon and A. Robinson, The Shape of the World (London 1991) 117-24.
155. Illustrated in A. G. Hodgkiss, Understanding Maps: A Systematic History of their Use and Development (Folkestone 1981) 158.
156. See, for example, the cartoon in the magazine Fun (24 September 1870)
157. entitled 'A Word for Peace', in which Europe is seen restraining the bickering Prussia and Paris (portrayed respectively as an army officer and Marianne) during the siege of the French capital after the Franco-Prussian war. This is reproduced on the cover of B. Waller (Ed.), Themes in Modern European History 1830-1890 (London, 1995).
158. In another image, entitled 'Enough!', in Punch magazine (1 May 1897), Europe is calling a halt to the war between Greece and Turkey. This is reprinted in R. Douglas, 'Great Nations still Enchained': The Cartoonists' Vision of Empire 1848-1914 (London 1993) 120.
159. The splendid maps of c. 1870 by F. W. Rose and Joseph Goggins come to mind, illustrated and discussed in Hill, op. cit., 44-7.
160. Wintle, Europe's image, 85-7.
161. Black, Maps and History, 16-26.
162. Geremek, op. cit., 71.
163. Lach, op. cit., II, iii, 447.
164. Ibid., i, 76.
165. The triumphalism is also documented in Hay, op. cit.;
166. Hale, The Civilization of Europe;
167. and Den Boer, op. cit.
168. The basic message would have been instantly clear to all. However, there could be wheels within wheels. On the intricate depths of the iconography of the maps drawn by Philips Galle, see H. A. M. van der Heijden, Een kaart als historisch document: de Nederlanden op de kaart van Philips Galle, Spiegel Historiael 32, 2 (1997) 88-91.
169. Some of the triumphal arches erected for the Joyeuses Entrees in medieval Flanders were so complex that even the person for whom they were intended could not understand them all, and thus they might even have contained subversive elements. See L. W Forster, Old High German in Ghent in 1549, in M. J. Wintle (Ed.), Modern Dutch Studies (London 1988) 105-15.
170. Geremek, op. cit., 114-5.