Motion in Maps, Maps in Motion: Mapping Stories and Movement through Time 946372110X, 9789463721103

Citation preview

Mapping Stories and Movement through Time

Edited by Zef Segal and Bram Vannieuwenhuyze

Motion in Maps, Maps in Motion

Motion in Maps, Maps in Motion

Motion in Maps, Maps in Motion Mapping Stories and Movement through Time

Edited by Zef Segal and Bram Vannieuwenhuyze

Amsterdam University Press

Cover image: A Nightclub Map of Harlem, drawn by Elmer Simms Campbell in 1932 (Washington, Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division, 20540-4650 USA dcu). Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout isbn 978 94 6372 110 3 e-isbn 978 90 4854 295 6 doi 10.5117/9789463721103 nur 905 © Z. Segal, B. Vannieuwenhuyze / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2020 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher.



Table of Contents List of Figures List of Diagrams

7 11

Introduction

13

1. The New World Map and the Old

33

2. Entangled Maps

57

3. Flow Mapping through the Times

81

The Moving Narrative of Joan Blaeu’s Nova Totius Terrarum Orbis Tabula (1648)

Topography and Narratives in Early Modern Story Maps*

The Transition from Harness to Nazi Propaganda

4. The Tensions of Heterochronicity on Cartographies of Imperial Motion in Japan

105

5. A School Atlas as a History Machine: The Bosatlas Online

129

6. Facebook Cartographies and the Mapping of Local History

153

7. ‘Change-of-State’ in the History of Cartography

177

Storied Maps from the American Middletown



List of Figures

Figure 1 Ebstorf mappa mundi, thirteenth century. 15 Figure 2 A Nightclub Map of Harlem, drawn by Elmer Simms Campbell in 1932. 20 Figure 3 Second state of the map of Leyden, besieged by the Spanish army in 1574. 24 36 Figure 4 Joan Blaeu’s wall map of the world, published in 1648. Figure 5 Detail: the North Sea and the surrounding lands. How the Netherlands extend into the sea. 40 Figure 6 Detail: the inland of South America. Enslaved Africans at work 45 and barbarous ‘Indians’. Figure 7 Detail: the Copernican heliocentric system on top of the world. 50 Figure 8 Detail: the dedication to Bracamonte and the geocentric 51 systems of Ptolemy and Tycho attached to the old world. Figure 9 Siege map of Lingen in Willem Baudartius’ Nassausche Oorlogen (Amsterdam: Michiel Colijn, 1616), fol. 796-797. 58 Figure 10 Baptista van Doetecum’s map showing Willem Barentz’ three 58 sailing trips to the Arctic (Amsterdam: Cornelis Claesz, 1598). Figure 11 The bird’s-eye view of the besieged city of Ypres by Guillaume 62 du Tielt, about 1610. Figure 12 The image of Our Lady of the Tuine with the chronogram and the cartouche with the bishop’s crosier and two crossed lances. 63 65 Figure 13 The letters of the legend highlighted in red on the map. Figure 14 Copper engraving entitled Flandria Borealis.68 Figure 15 Title page of the Belägerung von Ostende, an anonymous 71 German journal of the siege of Ostend until January 1604. Figure 16 Abraham Hogenbergs earlier bird’s-eye view of Sluis, with the 73 first episodes of the siege in May 1604. Figure 17 Floris Balthasarsz van Berckenrodes news map of Maurits’ 74 Flemish Campaign, August 1604. Figure 18 The first flow map ever made. Map IV ‘Shewing the relative number of passengers in different directions’, in Henry Drury Harness, Atlas to accompany 2d report of the Railway Commissioners Ireland 1838 (1838). 83 Figure 19 The South Atlantic Ocean segment of the ‘Chart of the world’ by Heinrich Berghaus, published by Perthes Publishing (1879).88 Figure 20 ‘The commercial highways of the world’, in: J.G. Bartholomew, Atlas of the World’s Commerce (London: G. Newnes, 1907). 91

Figure 21 ‘Means of transport and communication’ in: George Philip, Putnam’s Economic Atlas (London: G. Philip, 1925). Figure 22 ‘Gerste’, in: Walther Schmidt and Georg Heise, Welthandelsatlas. Produktion, Handel Und Konsum Der Wichtigsten Welthandelsgüter (Berlin: Columbus-Verlag, 1927). Figure 23 Three types of flow maps published in John P. Goode, Goode’s School Atlas (New York: Rand McNally, 1923). Figure 24 ‘The races of the modern times’, in: Bernhard Kumsteller, Werden und Wachsen, (Braunschweig: Westermann, 1938). Figure 25 Nagakubo Sekisui 長久保赤水, Daishinkoku dōtei zu (‘Road map of the Great Qing’), from Tōdo rekidai shūgun enkaku zu 唐土歴代州郡沿革図 (‘Historical Atlas of China’), 1789, colour woodblock print. Figure 26 Hiyama Tansai 檜山坦斎, Jinmu Tennō tōkyoku zu 神武天 皇登極圖 (‘Map of Emperor Jingu’s Accession’), from Honchō kokugun kenchi enkaku zusetsu 本朝国郡建置沿革図説 (‘Historical Atlas of Provinces of Our Realm’), 1823, colour woodblock-print, 58 by 56.5 cm. Figure 27 Hiyama Tansai 檜山坦斎, Map of Empress Jingu’s Routes from Honchō kokugun kenchi enkaku zusetsu 本朝国郡建置沿革図 説 (‘Historical Atlas of Provinces of Our Realm’), 1823, colour woodblock-print, 58 by 56.5 cm. Figure 28 Tsumaki Chūta 妻木忠太, Chōsen hantō no fukuzoku to bunbutsu no denrai 朝鮮半島の服属と文 物の傳来 (‘The Subjugation of the Korean Peninsula and the Transmission of Writings’), from Saishin Nihon rekishi kaisetsu 最新日本歴 史解釈 (‘Japanese History Explained According to the Latest Sources’), 1917, colour copperplate print. Figure 29 Tsumaki Chūta 妻木忠太, Jinmu Tennō no sōgyō 神武天皇の 創業 (‘Emperor Jinmu’s Founding’), from Saishin Nihon rekishi kaisetsu 最新日本歴史解釈 (‘Japanese History Explained According to the Latest Sources’), 1917, colour copperplate print. Figure 30 Author Unknown, Emperor Jinmu and Map of Japan, 1920, collotype, color lithograph, ink and metallic pigment on card stock, 13.8 by 8.8 cm. Figure 31 Nishioka Toranosuke 西岡虎之助 and Hattori Shisō 服部之 総, Dai Nihon rekishi chizu 大日本歴史地図 (‘Historical Maps of Japan’), 1956.

93 96 98 100

109

111

113

116

117 119 121

Figure 32 Detail of the Noord-Brabant provincial map in the 1921 edition of the Bosatlas with a caption about the breaching of the Meuse dykes [size 4x7cm]. 130 Figure 33 Detail of the administrative map of Europe, as shown on consecutive editions of the Bosatlas a: 1919; b: 1921; c: 1922; d: 1923; e: 1924. 131 Figure 34 Detail from the world map on colonies and traffic from the 1899 fourteenth edition of the Bosatlas. 134 Figure 35 Part of South America in the 1877 (above) and 1936 (below) editions of the Bosatlas. The lines linking Pacific ports at right are telegraph lines, constructed by American or British companies.138 Figure 36 Detail of the map of the Habsburg Empire from the 1912 142 edition of the Bosatlas [11x15cm]. Figure 37 Detail of Drenthe province in the 1897 edition of the Bosatlas. 144 Figure 38 Rotterdam Port as rendered in the nineteenth edition of the 148 Bosatlas, published in 1910. Figure 39 Detail of the Rotterdam port map from the thirty-seventh 150 edition of the Bosatlas, published in 1947. Figure 40 A word cloud of the definition of deep map (image by author). 157 Figure 41 Muncietown, Laid out in the Year 1826 by Act of Legislature 159 (Anonymous, 1826). Figure 42 O.H. Bailey, Bird’s Eye View of Muncie, Ind. (Cincinnati, Strobridge Lithographing Company, 1872). 161 Figure 43 Muncie, Indiana, Sanborn Map, Sheet 9 (New York: Sanborn Perris Map Company, 1896). 162 Figure 44 Screenshot of the Lost Muncie Facebook page (https://www. facebook.com/groups/158496695087/).166 171 Figure 45 Finding Lost Muncie: Screenshots of map tour entry. Figure 46 Finding Lost Muncie: Screenshot of Story Map Shortlist. 172 Figure 47 Julius Hilgard’s centrographic map in the 1874 Statistical Atlas of the United States used the mean centre of population to describe the westward advance of the country’s population near the northern 39th Parallel. 179 Figure 48 The Carte Figurative des pertes successives en hommes de l’Armée Française dans la campagne de Russie 1812-1813, showing the successive losses of French soldiers during the Russian Campaign in 1812-1813. 181

Figure 49 Souvenir weather map for the evening of 27 May 1896, distributed by the US Weather Bureau, to publicize its successful forecast that morning of an outbreak of ‘tornadoes and violent local storms’, marked with red crosses. Faint patches of red squares and triangles are read-through images of warning signals printed on the opposite side.

182



List of Diagrams

Diagram 1 A graph showing the percentage of commercial atlases published between 1837 and 1939 that contain flow maps. Source: Atlas collection at the Library of Congress.

85

Introduction Jörn Seemann, Zef Segal, and Bram Vannieuwenhuyze Maps are movement For many people, maps are still conceived as two-dimensional graphic representations of spatial arrangements, printed or drawn on paper, included in a book, posted against a wall or, more recently, seen on a computer or smartphone screen. From this perspective, maps remain static documents, offering a range of lifeless geodata such as landscape objects (buildings, rivers, roads, mountains, swamps, etc.), surface areas (parcels of land, parishes, communes, cities, states, continents, etc.) and/or their thematic attributes (population densities, outbreak of diseases, levels of education, etc.). The function of maps is limited to location (what is where) and the physical space of the representation (printed or digital) only serves as a receptacle or repository for information. For their part, cartographers tended, and still tend, to map stable phenomena to endow their products with ‘greater longevity if not greater utility,’ and also to shift ‘the burden of dealing with environmental temporality’ to the map users.1 In other words, ‘[b]y making maps of relatively static features, cartographers may simplify their job, but they largely ignore the fact that time is a vital part of the map user’s world.’2 As a result of this limited and limiting notion of maps, both movement and temporality are put in the background, stripping cartographic representations of their temporal depth, spatial dynamicity, and, equally important, of their potential and power as storytelling devices. However, many old and new maps provide far more than just a static representation of spatial arrangements. Numerous examples of maps present narratives (e.g. wars and sieges, natural disasters, building campaigns, and miraculous events) and movement (e.g. traff ic f lows, pilgrimages, migration patterns, discoveries, weather changes, and trade routes). They visualize a particular (hi)story that happened ‘in’ the mapped landscape or territory, and spread the 1 2

Muehrcke and Muehrcke, Map Use, p. 160; see also Harrower, ‘Time’, p. 1528. Muehrcke and Muehrcke, Map Use, p. 162.

Segal, Z. and B. Vannieuwenhuyze, Motion in Maps, Maps in Motion: Mapping Stories and Movement through Time. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020 doi 10.5117/9789463721103_intro

14 

Jörn Seemann, Zef Segal, and Br am Vannieuwenhuyze

news of one or more events; they show the directions, extent, and importance of flows of people, goods, physical phenomena, or societal trends. In addition, their production and consumption is always connected to flows of material and intellectual resources. In this introductory chapter, we will discuss some current themes in the ongoing research on interrelations between mapping, motion, and narratives, and demonstrate the mutual existence of these elements in a thirteenth-century map and a twenty-first-century digital concept. We aim to focus the attention of map historiography on the diverse aspects of mobility, rather than the static depictions of the past. As the chapters in this volume eloquently demonstrate, maps do move, and in many diverse ways, whether in their content, production process, or usage. The six case studies range from seventeenth-century Dutch theatres of the world to the mapping of the present and the past in an American town through the lens of social media, from historical Japanese maps to Dutch school atlases, each showcasing different types of movement, relevant to its particular historical context, and the ‘emplotment’ of these movements in (series of) maps.

Movement in maps: The Ebstorf mappa mundi as example The famous Ebstorf mappa mundi from the thirteenth century may serve as an early example to point out the dynamic elements of maps that are characterized by narratives and movements in a broader sense, resulting in what we label ‘story maps’ and ‘motion maps’. Supposedly drawn in the Northern German monastery of Ebstorf and destroyed during World War II, the map is divided into thirty parchment sheets and spans an area of more than twelve square metres (Figure 1).3 The circular shape symbolizes the body of Christ, indicated by a pair of hands, feet, and a head on the top of the image, next to a representation of Paradise. As a medieval T-O-style map, the Ebstorf mappa mundi puts Jerusalem at its centre, with the rest of the world literally spinning around the sacred city. The map contains approximately 1,500 text references (mere place names or detailed descriptions) and the depiction of 500 edifices, 160 water bodies, sixty islands and mountains, forty-five human or human-like beings, and about sixty animals. 4 There are many parallels between this map and present-day story maps that convey messages, stories, facts, and sometimes fantasies or fake news. On the one hand, pictures of curious animals and humans with strange anatomies and qualities described in a Marco-Polo-esque style are used to tell stories of remote 3 Miller, Kurze Erklärung der Weltkarte, p. 11. 4 Warnke, ‘Das Thema ist die ganze Welt’, p. 269.

Introduc tion 

Figure 1: Ebstorf mappa mundi, thirteenth century (Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/File:Ebstorfer-stich2.jpg).

and unknown places, e.g. the four-eyed maritimi in Northern Africa who excel in archery, or the birds in the forests of Hyrcania, southeast of the Caspian Sea, whose feathers glow in the dark. On the other hand, locations closer to Europe and the known world, including Ebstorf itself, are only simple locations, depicted by words or drawings on the parchment. As a complex visual statement from the Middle Ages, the Ebstorf map serves multiple purposes: as an encyclopaedia for education; as an iconographic argument to document God’s creation; a devotional image; a political symbol of power; a world chronicle depicting medieval histories and worldviews; an illustrated Bible; a collection of myths and legends or even

15

16 

Jörn Seemann, Zef Segal, and Br am Vannieuwenhuyze

anecdotes for entertainment; a zoological handbook; and, most obviously, as a simple map.5 In addition to its multiple storytelling contents and function, the Ebstorf mappa mundi reflects various types of movement, as do many other maps. Movement could be physical, since the mapping process includes the motion of information: ‘Throughout history and across different cultures, oral and written stories have been recounted to map-makers by travellers and sailors, surveyors and artists, even writers and theologians. As map-makers assimilate these narratives, they in turn create their own graphic stories about the places they represent.’6 In order to obtain information about the places on the Ebstorf map, someone had to go there physically to report on this news. Furthermore, rumours or stories about a place had to spread geographically before they reached the mapmaker at the Ebstorf monastery. Movement was also intellectual. Maps that represent the same themes, use similar production techniques (e.g. colours or symbols), and were produced during the same era, or published in the same place, reveal an intellectual movement expressed through changes, errata, and the introduction of new ideas. The Ebstorf map, for example, was certainly inspired by previous medieval works (e.g. Isidore of Seville’s T-in-O map in his Etymologiae) and possibly served as a template for other cartographic depictions (e.g. the Hereford mappa mundi or Ranulf Higden’s world map in his Polychronicon). The comparison of maps from different places and times provides ideas about changes in map contents and cartographic design in a broader context of cartographic history. In addition, both the map and its users were and are in motion. This type of movement is accentuated and accelerated nowadays through digital mediums. With the emergence and spread of new cartographic applications and visualization technologies, many old maps, including the Ebstorf map, are now accessible online, not only as simple rasterized and downloadable digital images, but also through interactive interfaces that help map users navigate through the map space. Digital versions open up new perspectives on and relationships with maps because the users can literally be ‘inside’ them, adapt them, or add data. The Ebstorf mappa mundi is an early example of transferring analogue maps to digital environments. Since the end of the 1980s, the EbsKART digitization project at the Leuphana University (Lüneburg, Germany) has been working on a user-friendly, navigable online version of the document, which allows the reader to explore the map.7 5 Pischke, ‘The Ebstorf Map’, p. 157. 6 Brotton and Millea, Talking Maps, p. 9. 7 See the webpage http://www2.leuphana.de/ebskart/ (accessed 16 December 2019). The Belgian MAGIS Brugge project is a more recent example, which takes Marcus Gerards’ sixteenth-century bird’s-eye view of Bruges as the base layer for a searchable web database on the history of the medieval and early modern city, see http://magis.kaartenhuisbrugge.be (accessed 31 January 2020) and also Vannieuwenhuyze and Vernackt, ‘Digital Thematic Deconstruction’, pp. 26-30.

Introduc tion 

Mapping stories and motion This volume focuses on the multiple and diverse relationships that exist between maps and cartography, on the one hand, and narratives and motion on the other. According to John Brian Harley and David Woodward’s widespread definition of maps as ‘graphic representations that facilitate a spatial understanding of things, concepts, conditions, processes, or events in the human world,’ maps can indeed include or present narratives and motion.8 While the Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘narrative’ as ‘an account of a series of events, facts, etc., given in order and with the establishing of connections between them,’ the term ‘motion’ in its more general sense is considered as ‘the action or process of moving or being moved, with respect to place or position.’ Although both narratives and motion can – and mostly do – have a spatial compound and thus can be mapped, they only rarely raised interest among map historians. During the last decades, however, the spatial and digital turns in the field of the Humanities have resulted in a large number of publications investigating the relations between society and space, culture and place. From a cartographic point of view, one major concern is about how to visualize narratives, flows, processes, and ideas that have been widely deemed ‘unmappable’, or – in a conventional cartographic sense – impossible to represent on a map due to their subjectivity, locational fuzziness, instability, and the randomness of their contents. Going beyond the map as we know it, scholars are now searching for alternative types of maps that capture movements and practices, following a shift from representation towards action, ‘from considering texts as the bearers of culture, toward performative ways of knowing the world, in which the dynamic aspects of culture matter.’9 A current buzzword is ‘deep map’, a term introduced by the American travel writer William Least Heat-Moon in his in-depth exploration of place in Chase County, Kansas from 1991.10 According to the English writer Robert MacFarlane, deep maps reflect place-related experiences in time and space and ‘acknowledge the way memory and landscape layer and interleave.’11 Instead of hard data, these maps are fed by mappable subjective values and ‘discursive and ideological dimensions of place, the dreams, hopes, and fears of residents’; in short, they are ‘positioned between matter and meaning.’12 In the Digital Humanities, deep maps are multimedia depictions of places with many details and even ephemeral data 8 Harley and Woodward, ‘Preface’, p. xvi. 9 Perkins, ‘Performative and Embodied Mapping’, p. 126. 10 Heat-Moon, PrairyErth. 11 MacFarlane, The Wild Places, p. 145. 12 Bodenhamer, Corrigan and Harris, ‘Introduction’, p. 3.

17

18 

Jörn Seemann, Zef Segal, and Br am Vannieuwenhuyze

that are closely related to everyday life. They are essentially ‘visual, time-based, and structurally open’; in other words: They are genuinely multimedia and multilayered. They do not seek authority or objectivity but involve negotiation between insiders and outsiders, experts and contributors, over what is represented and how. Framed as a conversation and not a statement, deep maps are inherently unstable, continually unfolding and changing in response to new data, new perspectives, and new insights.13

What does a deep map look like? There is no specific general type. It can be an austere-looking official topographic map, on which indigenous sub-Arctic hunters pencil in their hunting grounds, fishing sites, and berry picking places,14 or a 39 x 59 inches, foldable map showing the travel routes of the sixteenth-century French explorer and cartographer Samuel de Champlain along the Saint Lawrence River to the unknown backlands, in which both indigenous and European place names and Champlain’s journal entries and imagined native dialogues appear as colourcoded texts.15 Another example is the City Atlas Trilogy of the American writer Rebecca Solnit, which focuses on cartographic deep mapping. Solnit has produced alternative urban atlases of San Francisco, New Orleans, and New York, counting on the skills, creativity, and imagination of collaborating artists and map-makers.16 The resulting atlases cover a wide range of themes addressing forgotten topics and marginalized populations from the past and present and combining improbable topics in one common map; for example, ‘Poison/Palate’ depicts famous or unique food places like the Ghiradelli chocolate factory and toxic waste disposals and polluting industries in the Bay Area. A Nightclub Map of Harlem, a pictorial map of night life in Harlem, New York during the final years of the Prohibition era in the United States, is another good example (Figure 2).17 Drawn by the American cartoonist Elmer Simms Campbell in 1932, the map features nightclubs and music shows (e.g. singer Cab Calloway, tap dancer Billy Bojangles, and pianist Garland Wilson), vignettes of common street scenes, and tips for night-birds, concentrated between Lenox Avenue and Seventh 13 Bodenhamer, ‘Beyond GIS’, p. 11. 14 Brody, Maps and Dreams. 15 Pearce and Hermann, They Would Not Take me There; see also Pearce, ‘Framing the Days’ and Pearce and Hermann, ‘Mapping Champlain’s Travels’. 16 Solnit, Infinite City; Idem, Unfathomable City; Idem, Nonstop Metropolis. 17 The map accompanied the folded newspaper Manhattan: A Weekly for Wakeful New Yorkers, 1933, vol. 1, nr. 1. Loose copies can be found in Washington, Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division, 20540-4650 USA dcu and in Stanford, Stanford Libraries, Rare Books Collection, G3804 .N4:2 H3 E622 1932 FF.

Introduc tion 

Avenue (today’s Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard). In the title, Campbell mentions that ‘the places that are open all night’ are indicated by stars, including the ‘nice new police station.’ Entertainment goes hand in hand with alcohol consumption, but Campbell does not pin down the speakeasies, the illegal saloons, on his map, ‘but since there are about 500 of them, you won’t have any trouble [finding them].’ The map is a ‘compressed’ version of Upper Manhattan between 131st and 142nd Avenues, emphasizing important clubs and omitting less relevant streets. The northern end of Central Park appears in the upper left corner; the top of the map is pointing southwest, as indicated by a compass rose in the lower right, which serves as a resting place for drunkards. The caricatured drawings of street scenes (e.g. the reefer man, the blind beggar, and the food sellers) visualize the agitated nightlife in Harlem. The map captures movements and actions, based on Campbell’s own personal experience and narrative of this New Yorker neighbourhood in the early 1930s: ‘[p]art tourist guide, part spoof, and part loving tribute, the map captures the boundless vitality of Harlem at the height of its popularity.’18 In his autobiography, Cab Calloway included a printed copy of Campbell’s map on the front and back inside cover of the book and wrote that ‘[i]t’s not an ordinary map, and it gave a better idea of what Harlem was like in those days than I can give you with all these words. I always loved that map and I still have the original in my office at home.’19 Much like twenty-first-century deep maps, Campbell’s multi-layered map is the beginning of a discussion with the viewer, rather than an objective and authoritarian map. As ‘a kind of topographic story-telling that captures the spirit of a place and has a political agenda,’ deep maps require ‘a methodological and intellectual move beyond planar cartography to a more complex spatial-temporal assembling of multiple kinds of evidence and media.’20 Accordingly, Robert MacFarlane distinguishes between story maps and grid maps. Story maps are place representations as they are perceived by individuals or groups. In a certain way, they are: [s]poken cartographies, describing landscapes and the events that took place in them. Maps that could be learned, amended and passed on between people and down through generations. This distinctive crag, that tree-line, this bend in the river, that rock at which this accident occurred, that tree where the hive was found: such features would have been descriptively plotted to make a route that was also a story.21 18 Schulten, A History of America, p. 190. 19 Calloway and Rollins, Of Minnie the Moocher, p. 119. 20 Rethinking Maps, p. 91. 21 MacFarlane, The Wild Places, pp. 141-142; for other examples of this kind of humanistic mapping, see Barry Lopez’s short story The Mappist and Richard Francaviglia’s cartographic history of the Great Basin (Lopez, ‘The Mappist’; Francaviglia, Mapping and Imagination).

19

20 

Jörn Seemann, Zef Segal, and Br am Vannieuwenhuyze

Figure 2: A Nightclub Map of Harlem, drawn by Elmer Simms Campbell in 1932 (Washington, Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division, 20540-4650 USA dcu).

Introduc tion 

21

22 

Jörn Seemann, Zef Segal, and Br am Vannieuwenhuyze

On the other hand, the grid map, a product of modern mapping practices that converts place into geometric space, ‘celebrates precision, and suppresses touch, feel and provisionality.’ The authority of grid maps eliminates ‘our sense of the worth of mapas-story.’22 Grid maps reproduce the rational ordering of space since the Renaissance, representing spaces and places as detached from human experience.23 The spread and success of these maps can be seen as products of – or may have contributed to – what Max Weber has called the Entzauberung der Welt (the ‘disenchantment of the world’), a process of rationalization, bureaucratization, and desacralization within modern Western society, which leaves no place for religion, superstition, magic, or mysticism.24 In cartography, the dogma reigned that any location can be determined precisely, while spatial fuzziness, imprecisions, and temporal change were ignored. In grid maps, the complex and dynamic world is reduced to static data. However, story maps and grid maps do not belong to separate or even opposite universes, and the former type is not scientifically worthless, nor is the latter humanistically insufficient. Furthermore, deep mapping, or at least its characteristics, is not necessarily a recent technique of cartography resulting from the digital revolution, as it can be found in many old maps. In their introduction to the exhibition catalogue Talking Maps, Jerry Brotton and Nick Millea rightly stressed that all maps are ‘repositories of personal and collective knowledge, beliefs and memories, brought together by their unique ability to combine science with art, space with time, the visual and the written.’25 With the selection and juxtaposition of thematically, chronologically, and methodologically diverse case studies in this volume, we also argue that motion and change in time and space occupy a central position in map-making through the times. In fact, maps are rarely truly static. There are at least four different ways in which cartographic movement occurs. First, maps capture movement and change in space and time to indicate geographical differences and allow historical comparisons. Second, a map is part of a mapping process, and not just a singular product. These mappings are not restricted to the mathematical, but may also be cultural, spiritual, political, or moral and take a measure of the world ‘in such a way that it may be communicated between people, places or times.’26 Third, maps entail a user dimension. They might be dynamic and interactive, seeking to engage the reader, who can frequently find himself/herself inside the map, (virtually) navigate through the map, and (literally) move with the map. Lastly, maps are contested references from and of the past in all its complexity, diversity, and ambiguity. 22 MacFarlane, The Wild Places, p. 143. 23 Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, p. 246. 24 Weber, Wissenschaft als Beruf, pp. 16 and 36. 25 Brotton and Millea, Talking Maps, p. 9. 26 Cosgrove, ‘Introduction’, p. 2.

Introduc tion 

Narrative in/and cartography There is another important element that characterizes story and motion maps: the representation of ‘spatio-temporal structures of stories and their relationships with places.’27 Maps can potentially ‘tell’ any kind of space- or place-related story visually.28 Potentially, any map can function like a story, e.g. the use of the metaphor ‘talking maps’ as the title of a very recent exhibition at the Bodleian Libraries in Oxford.29 In recent years, and especially with the emergence of critical cartography, cartographers, artists, writers, and journalists have increasingly become aware of the strong links between cartography and narratives. Sébastien Caquard and William Cartwright identified two main types of relationships: on the one hand, maps have been used to ‘represent the spatiotemporal structures of stories and their relationships with referential places’; on the other, both maps and mappings have narrative potential themselves. However, in another publication, Caquard distinguishes between three clear, and even fundamental, differences between what he calls ‘traditional forms of cartography’ and narratives: While maps represent place and space, narratives are structured around time and a sequence of events. While maps typically provide a panoptic view of the world from above, narratives are often grounded, embodied perspectives. While maps present themselves as scientific and objective as possible, it is more difficult to dissociate narratives from their author and sense of partial perspective.30

The existence of these distinctions possibly explains why it remains very difficult to understand the narratives present in maps. When Jacinta Prunty and Howard B. Clarke edited their guidebook to the Irish Historic Towns Atlas series, they chose the title Reading the Maps, echoing the famous phrase ‘reading the runes’. Just like runes, maps have an air of mystery about them, the editors argued, since ‘they make extensive use of symbols and of conventions that need to be explained; they convey messages about spatial arrangements in a three-dimensional present and early maps do this in a four-dimensional past.’31 The metaphor is, of course, especially relevant when it comes to ‘reading’ maps that ‘tell’ a story (and consequently, it appears in nearly all chapters of the present volume).32 Story and motion map users are not only invited and challenged to interpret the spatial objects the maps 27 28 29 30 31 32

Caquard and Cartwright, ‘Narrative Cartography’, p. 101. Caquard, ‘Cartography I’. Brotton and Millea, Fifty Maps, pp. 7-8; see also Brotton & Millea, Talking Maps. Caquard, ‘Narrative and Cartography’, p. 986. Reading the Maps, p. ix. Vannieuwenhuyze, ‘Reading History Maps’.

23

24 

Jörn Seemann, Zef Segal, and Br am Vannieuwenhuyze

Figure 3: Second state of the map of Leyden, besieged by the Spanish army in 1574 (Amsterdam, Allard Pierson, OTM: HB-KZL O.K. 199).

present, but also to understand the stories and discourses that together form the map’s narrative. The narrative can be represented in f igurative, abstract, or symbolic ways, according to the requirements of the mapmakers and to cartographic tendencies of the time. Sometimes, the map is all that is needed to present the story, or stories. Campbell’s Nightclub Map of Harlem, for instance, releases its stories directly. Map users face little trouble ‘reading’ this extremely appealing map, overloaded with motion – although their readings possibly do not correspond with the story or stories the map-maker wanted to tell. In many other cases, narratives and motion are much more difficult to discern and interpret, either because the mapped storylines are extremely interlaced, or because they are scarce, scattered, or fragmented. Map users and historians must then definitely take into account the so-called paramap,33 as is the case, for instance, with the seemingly motionless map of Leyden in the second volume of Georg Braun and 33 For a discussion of this concept, derived from Gerard Genette’s ‘paratext’, see Wood and Fels, The Natures of Maps, pp. 8-12.

Introduc tion 

Frans Hogenberg’s famous Civitates Orbis Terrarum, edited for the first time in Cologne in 1575 (Figure 3).34 The narrative elements are extremely scarce, but the text in the cartouche clearly explains that the map evokes the siege of the town by the Spanish, followed by the liberation thanks to the provisioning of food by William of Orange in 1574.35 Web 2.0 increasingly offers the opportunity to exploit the narrative potential of maps and produce map-based stories, since map-making has become a continuous digital process and maps are never finished.36 Virtual environments and map spaces and new ideas about map design help to transform static, analogue maps into interactive storytelling tools.37 The emergence of new technologies has increasingly enabled map-makers to produce motion maps, i.e. digital maps that also present movement, change, and stories, such as migration and traffic flows, processes of state formation, recommended routings, road trips, background decors for video games and film scenes, to mention a few uses.38 These applications are becoming more common and user-friendly. At the same time, the shift to digital map forms has triggered the debate on cartographic interaction, i.e. the dialogue between humans and maps through computing devices.39 Instead of using static maps, people all over the world are not only able to see maps as a process on the screen, but are also able to make their own dynamic motion maps and map the stories of their daily lives. In short, nowadays, maps increasingly (re)present motion and are in motion themselves.

Story and motion maps through the ages Somewhat surprisingly, the booming and revolutionary field of digital map applications that entails both technological innovations, such as augmented reality and philosophical reflections like deep mapping, does not really influence map historians, who seemingly remain focused on the analogue manuscript and printed maps and atlases they used to study. They tend to devote attention to the 34 De Vries, Historische plattegronden, p. 82; Van der Krogt, Koeman’s Atlantes Neerlandici, vol. IV-2, p. 1077. A loose copy of the second state of the map is kept in Amsterdam, Allard Pierson, OTM: HB-KZL O.K. 199. 35 See the original Latin text: opp. ab Hispanis obsidione cinctum, ab Auriacis autem comeatus invectione liberatum Anno parte salutis M DLXX IIII. 36 Caquard and Cartwright, ‘Narrative Cartography’, pp. 104-105. 37 Mocnik and Fairbairn, ‘Maps Telling Stories’. 38 For a recent critical assessment of six applications for mapping narratives on the internet, see Caquard and Dimitrovas, ‘Story Maps & Co’. 39 Roth, ‘Interactive Maps’.

25

26 

Jörn Seemann, Zef Segal, and Br am Vannieuwenhuyze

descriptive analysis, the production process, the accuracy, the multiple uses, and the power of maps instead of interpreting their multifaceted content. Map librarians and archivists, for their part, are putting incredible efforts into unlocking their collections online, for instance through web viewers and georeferencing tools, but within these applications the maps themselves often remain or, equally, are presented as static products. And although in recent decades scholars have devoted attention to journalistic and literary cartography, Peter Vujakovic still observes a ‘lingering “scientism” […] in which map-making is still regarded by many of its practitioners as an objective, scientific enterprise disassociated from ideological concerns.’40 Too often, cartographers criticized the designers and producers of narrative maps as ‘artists untrained in cartographic principles.’41 Consequently, the narrative qualities of maps remain heavily underexploited and the history of motion mapping is extremely understudied. The time seems right to reflect upon the crucial characteristics of story and motion maps, in order to better understand and exploit this aspect of cartography. This book, the first on the topic, claims that the mapping of stories, movement, and change is not only becoming and will be an important aspect – perhaps even the standard – of cartography in the near future, but that it also has a history that is older than often thought. The authors of the chapters reflect upon the main characteristics and evolutions of story and motion mapping, from the figurative news and history maps that were mass-produced in early modern Europe, through the nineteenth- and twentieth-century flow maps that appeared in various atlases, up to the digital and interactive motion and personalized maps that are created today thanks to new technologies, but which are part of the long history of human cartography. Rather than presenting a clear and homogeneous history of narrative and motion cartography from the past till the present and the future, this book aims to offer map historians a toolbox for understanding and interpreting the complex interplays and links between narrative, motion, and maps. The chapters offer a limited range of case studies, 42 yet cover different types of maps and atlases produced in various periods and regions. Each of the six chapters relates one or more specific case studies to four main questions: Which types of stories, events, flows or movements have been mapped? What were the goals of the map-makers, commissioners, and editors of these maps? What is the relationship between the mapped narrative and the spatial objects and how did or do readers understand it? And, finally, which 40 Vujakovic, ‘Cartography and the News’, p. 464. 41 Monmonier, Maps with the News, p. 14. 42 As a result, some periods and specif ic types of story and motion maps – e.g. literary maps and journalistic cartography – remain underexposed. With regard to the latter, see Schulten, ‘Journalistic Cartography’, Monmonier, Maps with the News, and, very recently, Reyes Novaes, Maps in Newspapers.

Introduc tion 

tools, techniques, and opportunities do twenty-first-century scholars have at their disposal for exploiting the narrative potential of these maps? The contributions have been written by both younger map historians and senior scholars and mirror actual research in the fields of cartography and map history. The book is largely structured in chronological order, starting with those case studies focussing on early modern maps and ending with those reflecting on present-day, internet-based digital maps and applications. All chapters are illustrated with a relevant sample of images that are necessary to understand and clarify the arguments. In the first chapter, Djoeke van Netten offers a close reading of Joan Blaeu’s Nova Totius Terrarum Orbis Tabula, a wall map that depicts the world in the midseventeenth century. Her study entails the analysis of contents, illustrative elements, and accompanying texts in Latin and French that create a compelling narrative of a new world order, dominated by a political discourse against Spain and a worldview that emphasizes the importance of the Dutch in the global scenario. By tracing some of the apparent and concealed narrative(s) of the wall map, Van Netten suggests that map-reading itself was a form of mobility. The second contribution, written by Bram Vannieuwenhuyze, offers a close ‘reading’ of two large-scale story maps from the early seventeenth-century Low Countries, a bird’s-eye perspective on the Ypres’ siege of 1383, and a map of Northern Flanders by Mathias Quad. Based on a discussion of the mapping process and consumption of both documents, Vannieuwenhuyze sheds light on the motives that incited early modern map-makers and commercial editors to include narratives and depict chains of events. By considering them as ‘entangled products’ instead of simple by-products of official cartography, he argues that the maps themselves were also part of a chain of objects, and that their production and consumption must be considered in broader contexts. In the third contribution, Zef Segal sheds light on the emergence of flow maps in Western cartography. Based on widely known flow maps and a survey of more than 400 commercial atlases in the collection of the Library of Congress that were produced between 1800 and 1940, he argues that flow maps were initially used to depict movement cartographically, but then changed into a tool for colonialism and nationalism by visualizing political expansion, commercial connections, and racial concepts, which is most evident in the maps of European imperialist projects and Nazi propaganda. The history of flow maps in this study is more than a technical history of depicting movement; it reveals changing meanings of ‘movement’ and ‘mobility’ in Western societies. The depiction of movement and time-space relations is also at the core in the fourth chapter by Radu Leca, who offers a longue durée account of Japanese historical maps and discusses the distinct ‘heterochronies’ in Japanese cartographic history. He examines in particular how time is perceived and represented in historical maps

27

28 

Jörn Seemann, Zef Segal, and Br am Vannieuwenhuyze

of Japan in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Leca shows that the dynamics of history were reflected in various ways by changing colours and shapes while retaining a certain static image of an unchanging Japanese territory. The fifth contribution, written by Ferjan Ormeling, approaches the regular re-editions and updates of the Bosatlas, the most important Dutch school atlas created in 1877 by the teacher Pieter Roelfs Bos, as a serial work that is currently in its 55th edition. Thanks to a recent digital project, copies of the first thirty-six editions are available online and allow the user to compare different versions of maps and their changes through the times with a single mouse-click. Ormeling argues that this ‘history machine’ turns a static school atlas into a visual tool to detect and understand changes both in map design and in the physical and cultural configuration of specific places throughout time. Ormeling offers a twentyfirst-century digital perception of ‘map-reading as mobility,’ which complements Van Netten’s seventeenth-century analogue perception of the same concept. In Chapter 6, Jörn Seemann points out the potential of social media as a source for historical cartography and map-making to create historical documents that reflect local memories and opinions. He engages with the comments of a Facebook group with more than 20,000 followers, who discuss the past of Muncie, a rustbelt town in the American Midwest. Leaning on the idea of deep mapping in the Humanities, Seemann reflects on the possibilities and challenges of visualizing these ‘big qualitative data’ in the form of story maps. Mark Monmonier’s short reflective essay at the end of the book presents a typology of narrative and motion maps and places the various case studies discussed in the chapters within this framework. He concludes by presenting some directions for future research on the topic. The editors hope that, together with Monmoniers incentives, the entire book and its individual chapters will spark a more continued dialogue on the historical relationship between narratives, motion, and map-making practices.

Bibliography D.J. Bodenhamer, ‘Beyond GIS: Geospatial Technologies and the Future of History’, in History and GIS: Epistemologies, Considerations and Reflections, ed. by A. Von Lünen and Ch. Travis (Dordrecht: Springer, 2013), pp. 1-13. D.J. Bodenhamer, J. Corrigan, and T.M. Harris, ‘Introduction’, in Deep Maps and Spatial Narratives, ed. by D.J. Bodenhamer, J. Corrigan, and T.M. Harris (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2015), pp. 1-6. H. Brody, Maps and Dreams. Indians and the British Columbia Frontier (Vancouver and Toronto: Douglas and McIntyre, 1988).

Introduc tion 

J. Brotton and N. Millea, Fifty Maps and the Stories They Tell (Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2019). J. Brotton and N. Millea, Talking Maps (Oxford: Bodleian Library – University of Oxford, 2019). C. Calloway and B. Rollins, Of Minnie the Moocher & Me (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1976). S. Caquard, ‘Cartography I: Mapping Narrative Cartography’, Progress in Human Geography, 37 (2011), pp. 135-144. S. Caquard, ‘Narrative and Cartography’, in The History of Cartography. Volume 6: Cartography in the Twentieth Century, ed. by M. Monmonier (Chicago, IL and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2015), part 2, pp. 986-991. S. Caquard and W. Cartwright, ‘Narrative Cartography: From Mapping Stories to the Narrative of Maps and Mapping’, The Cartographic Journal, 51 (2014), pp. 101-106. S. Caquard and S. Dimitrovas, ‘Story Maps & Co. Un état de l’art de la cartographie des récits sur Internet/Story Maps & Co. The state of the art of online narrative cartography’, M@ppemonde, 121 (2017) (online publication: http://mappemonde.mgm.fr/121_as1/, Accessed: 25 March 2020). D. Cosgrove, ‘Introduction: Mapping Meaning’, in Mappings, ed. by D. Cosgrove (London: Reaktion Books, 1999), pp. 1-23. D. de Vries (red.), Historische plattegronden van Nederlandse steden, vol. 7: Leiden (Lisse – Alphen aan den Rijn: De Stichting Historische Stadsplattegronden – Uitgeverij ‘Canaletto’, 1997). R. Francaviglia, Mapping and Imagination in the Great Basin: A Cartographic History (Reno, NV: University of Nevada Press, 2005). J.B. Harley and D. Woodward, ‘Preface’, in The History of Cartography, vol. 1. Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, ed. by J.B. Harley and D. Woodward (Chicago, IL and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1987), pp. xv-xxi. M. Harrower, ‘Time, Time Geography, Temporal Change, and Cartography’, in The History of Cartography. Volume 6: Cartography in the Twentieth Century, ed. by M. Monmonier (Chicago, IL and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2015), vol. 2, pp. 1528-1531. D. Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity. An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990). W.L. Heat-Moon, PrairyErth (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1991). B. Lopez, ‘The Mappist’, The Georgia Review, 54 (2000), pp. 45-55. R. MacFarlane, The Wild Places (London: Granta Books, 2008). K. Miller, Kurze Erklärung der Weltkarte des Frauenklosters Ebstorf (Köln: CommissionsVerlag, 1896). F.-B. Mocnik and D. Fairbairn, ‘Maps Telling Stories?’, in The Cartographic Journal, 55 (2018), pp. 36-57. M. Monmonier, Maps with the News (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1989). Ph.C. Muehrcke and J.O. Muehrcke, Map Use: Reading, Analysis, and Interpretation. Fourth edition (Madison, WI: JP Publications, 1998).

29

30 

Jörn Seemann, Zef Segal, and Br am Vannieuwenhuyze

M.W. Pearce, ‘Framing the Days: Place and Narrative in Cartography’, Cartography and Geographic Information Science, 35 (2008), pp. 17-32. M.W. Pearce and M.J. Hermann, They Would Not Take Me There; People, Places and Stories from Champlain’s Travels in Canada, 1603-1616 (Orono, ME: University of Maine – CanadianAmerican Center, 2008). M.W. Pearce and M.J Hermann, ‘Mapping Champlain’s Travels: Restorative Techniques for Historical Cartography’, Cartographica, 45 (2010), pp. 33-48. Ch. Perkins, ‘Performative and Embodied Mapping’, in International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, Volume 8, ed. by R. Kitchin and N. Thrift (Amsterdam and Boston, MA: Elsevier, 2009), pp. 126-132. G. Pischke, ‘The Ebstorf Map: Tradition and Contents of a Medieval Picture of the World’, History of Geo- and Space Sciences, 5 (2014), pp. 155-161. Rethinking Maps. New Frontiers in Cartographic Theory, ed. by M. Dodge, R. Kitchin and Ch. Perkins (London: Routledge, 2009). A. Reyes Novaes, Maps in Newspapers. Approaches to Study and Practices in Portraying War since the 19th Century (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2019). R.E. Roth, ‘Interactive Maps: What We Know and What We Need to Know’, in Journal of Spatial Information Science, 6 (2013), pp. 59-115. S. Schulten, ‘Journalistic Cartography’, in The History of Cartography. Volume 6: Cartography in the Twentieth Century, ed. by M. Monmonier (Chicago, IL and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2015), vol. 2, pp. 706-718. S. Schulten, A History of America in 100 Maps (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2018). R. Solnit, Infinite City. A San Francisco Atlas (Berkeley, Los Angeles, CA and London: University of California Press, 2010). R. Solnit, Unfathomable City. A New Orleans Atlas (Berkeley, Los Angeles, CA and London: University of California Press, 2013). R. Solnit, Nonstop Metropolis. A New York Atlas (Berkeley, Los Angeles, CA and London: University of California Press, 2016). P. van der Krogt, Koeman’s Atlantes Neerlandici. New Edition. Volume IV. The Town Atlases. Braun & Hogenberg. Janssonius. Blaeu. De Wit, Mortier and others (Utrecht: Hes & De Graaf Publishers, 2010). B. Vannieuwenhuyze, ‘Reading History Maps: The Siege of Ypres in 1383 mapped by Guillaume du Tielt’, Quaerendo, 45 (2015), pp. 292-321. B. Vannieuwenhuyze and E. Vernackt, ‘The Digital Thematic Deconstruction of Historic Town Views and Maps’, in Portraits of the City. Representing Urban Space in Later Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. by K. Lichtert, J. Dumolyn, and M.P.J. Martens (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), pp. 9-31. P. Vujakovic, ‘Cartography and the News’, in The Routledge Handbook of Mapping and Cartography, ed. by A.J. Kent and P. Vujakovic (London and New York: Routledge, 2018).

Introduc tion 

M. Warnke, ‘Das Thema ist die ganze Welt: Hypertext im Museum’, in Hypertext und Hypermedia, ed. by P.A. Gloor and N.A. Streitz (Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer, 1990), pp. 268-277. M. Weber, Wissenschaft als Beruf (München and Leipzig: Verlag von Duncker & Humblot, 1919). D. Wood and J. Fels, The Natures of Maps: Cartographic Constructions of the Natural World. (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 2008).

About the Authors Jörn Seemann teaches Cartography and Cultural Geography at Ball State University, United States. He is particularly interested in the relations between maps and society, with an emphasis on cartographic theories, methodologies and histories, creative approaches to mapping, and cultural ways of perceiving and representing space and place. Zef Segal is a lecturer of history, mathematics, and digital humanities at the Open University of Israel. His research has focused on movement, communication, and cartography in nineteenth-century Europe, as well as the implementation of computational research tools in the study of history. His current research project is the network of Hebrew journals in the second half of the nineteenth century. Segal’s latest book, The Political Fragmentation of Germany (2019), explores the spatial processes that construct national and territorial identities, within the context of nineteenth-century German states. Bram Vannieuwenhuyze studied history at Ghent University, where he obtained his PhD in 2008. His research focuses on historical cartography, town development, and urban morphology of medieval and early modern towns and landscape history. In 2015, he was named professor by special appointment of Historical Cartography at the University of Amsterdam, a chair established on behalf of the Cartographiae Historicae Cathedra Foundation. He also works as an independent scholar for Caldenberga (www.caldenberga.be).

31

1.

The New World Map and the Old The Moving Narrative of Joan Blaeu’s Nova Totius Terrarum Orbis Tabula (1648)1 Djoeke van Netten Abstract In 1648, Joan Blaeu, cartographer in Amsterdam, issued an enormous wall map of the whole world, entitled Nova Totius Terrarum Orbis Tabula. This article explores Blaeu’s world map to discover the worldview it conveys. A close reading of the map, and especially of the hitherto neglected explanatory text below the map, reveals a telling story with a multi-layered message. The communicated narrative can be summarized as pro-Dutch (or actually pro-Holland), Euro-superior, maledominated, in favour of Copernicanism, and optimistic about the progress of knowledge since classical times. Keywords: World map; wall map; Joan Blaeu; Dutch Golden Age

World maps convey worldviews. They may seem simple grid maps, rationally ordered lands placed on the assumed latitude and longitude, but a world map also forms an argument. Like the Ebstorf map mentioned in the introduction of this book, the world map debated in this chapter presents an argument about knowledge and power. In the mid-seventeenth century, bits of information from all over the world travelled to Amsterdam, arguably the largest information hub of its time and ‘the 1 I would like to express my gratitude to the National Maritime Museum in Amsterdam for giving me the opportunity to act as a guest curator of the exhibition ‘The World According to Blaeu. Master Cartographer of the Dutch Golden Age’ (April 2017-September 2018). Special thanks to Ernst van Keulen, Diederick Wildeman, Mascha Dammers, Lotte Sturkenboom, Harry Eggink, Jacqueline Visser, and Merel Luijendijk. The illustrations were provided courtesy of Bart Lahr. This research was carried out in the context of my NWO-Veni-project, granted by the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research. Moreover, I would like to thank Erling Sandmo, Marianne Groep-Foncke, Jaap van Netten, and the editors Bram Vannieuwenhuyze and Sef Zegal for reading along and improving the text.

Segal, Z. and B. Vannieuwenhuyze, Motion in Maps, Maps in Motion: Mapping Stories and Movement through Time. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020 doi 10.5117/9789463721103_ch01

34 Djoeke van Ne t ten

bookshop of the world’.2 These bits of information had to be repacked, relabelled, and represented to create knowledge. This knowledge had to be moulded into a form that was understandable and acceptable as a world map for contemporaries.3 Thus, new and old information found its way into the renowned atlases and wall maps of the most renowned cartographers of the century: Jodocus Hondius, Joan Blaeu, Jan Janssonius, and Frederik De Witt. World maps represent existing worldviews at the time of production, but also influenced, nuanced, or changed worldviews by omitting or adding boundaries and place names, by using certain languages and colours, by repeating stereotypes, by exaggerating or playing down the size of geographic features. Early modern cartographers were well aware that world maps were distorted representations, not showing the globe ‘as it was’. This is nicely illustrated by Joan Blaeu in an explanatory text entitled Maneductio / Discours below his large wall map, which will be explored in this chapter, the Nova Totius Terrarum Orbis Tabula of 1648 (Figure 1.1)4: Together, the earth and the water form a round body, that one cannot represent […] naturally, spherically, like globes […]. The […] approximation is some kind of flat figure pictured as two circles, as one can see on this map. [Even though] this does not demonstrate the true situation and distances of places like globes do, this surpasses them; one can see the whole earth in one glance, without turning around from one side to the other.5

On the one hand, Blaeu explicitly presents his map as a static device; it is not necessary to rotate. On the other hand, the map is designed for the onlooker’s eyes 2 See Lesger, The Rise of the Amsterdam Market; Pettegree and Der Weduwen, The Bookshop of the World. 3 Howlett and Morgan ed., How Well Do Facts Travel?; Burke, What Is, p. 6. 4 The research for this chapter is based on the copies now in the National Maritime Museum, Amsterdam [S.0864] (second state, c. 1655), and in the Kraus Map Collection of the Harry Ransom Center of the University of Texas [Kraus 3] (first state, 1648). The Maneductio / Discours below the map, consisting of ten columns in Latin and ten in French, is the same in both states. The Latin text is divided into 31 paragraphs and is labelled with Roman numerals. The first 24 paragraphs of the French text are more or less literally translated from the Latin text. Due to lack of space (the French language needs much more space), the last seven Latin paragraphs are summarized in the French paragraph XXV. I refer in my footnotes to the Latin paragraphs as Maneductio and to the French paragraphs as Discours, adding the numbers of the paragraphs. All translations into English are mine. 5 Original: La terre & l’eau fais ensemble un corps rond, on ne les peut presenter en aucune figure plus commode, ni qui ressemble mieux à la naturelle, que la spherique, comme est celle des Globe […]. De laquelle approche en quelque sort la figure plate depeinte en deux ronds, comme on voit en-cette Carte. Car combien quelle ne montre pas si exactement que les Globes le vrayes situations & distances de lieux, toutesfois elle le surpasse en cecy, qu’on peut voir toute la terre d’un seul jet de l’oeil, sans qu’il soit besoin de les tourner tantost d’un costé tantost de l’autre (Discours, III).

The New World Map and the Old 

to wander and wonder. As I will show in this chapter, this is a motionless map, which, nonetheless, was intended to move the viewer, their eyes, and also their viewpoints. This motion has to be constructed: spatially, from Europe to the wider world, and beyond, to the stars, considering the place of the Earth in the universe; and chronologically, from the times and knowledge of the ancient world, to modern times, starting in 1492, when a new world had been discovered, up to 1648, when the map was produced, and eventually to the time of the beholder. Most historians of cartography who have studied Blaeu’s maps, be it in the 1920s or the 1980s, have compared them with other maps, which are indeed comparable, and with modern knowledge on the places they depict.6 In this chapter, I will focus on this single map and the narrative it conveys. This narrative is a comprehensive story, connecting the different elements of the map, combining the map and the ‘para-map’.7 This not only includes the lines of the lands and the texts on the map, but also decorative elements as well as the text that appears outside the two hemispheres. The aforementioned Maneductio has never been studied before. My research shows that the map-maker has firmly taken position in several political, scholarly, and scientific debates. As a whole, the map provides a compelling narrative of a new world order, in which the Dutch, in particular the Hollanders, played an important role. As will be shown, this map provides a Euro-superior, male-dominated, optimistic, and pro-Dutch – if not downright anti-Spanish – worldview. The case study does not intend to be representative of all other world maps of this period or all other maps by Blaeu; this is one of the largest world maps ever produced on paper, characterized as the most up-to-date in its time, from one of the most eminent cartographers ever. If not representative, it is, however, illustrative: a telling story with a multi-layered message. In this chapter, I present the moving argument of Blaeu’s world map by taking an imaginative spiral trip on the map. As most viewers of maps firstly look for home, I propose to start in Western Europe; not just my own place of residence, but also the part of the world where both the producer and the dedicatee of the map came from. Then, I proceed clockwise over the old world, into Asia and Africa, before visiting the Americas and heading for the most unknown parts of the world, the poles. From the lower corners, the story heads to the upper corners of the map, to the stars, and from the heavens back to the Earth, and back in time to the pre-Columbian era – or at least to Blaeu’s representation of the world before his own time, to discover his ideas concerning progress.

6 Wieder, Monumenta, III; Debergh, ‘A Comparative Study’. 7 Cf. Genette, Paratexts.

35

36 Djoeke van Net ten

Figure 4: Joan Blaeu’s wall map of the world, published in 1648. This figure and all other details in this chapter are provided by courtesy of the National Maritime Museum, Amsterdam [inv.nr. S.0864]. Photographer: Bart Lahr.

The New World Map and the Old 

37

38 Djoeke van Ne t ten

The map-maker and its readers: More questions than answers Joan Blaeu (1598/99-1673) was a publisher and cartographer in Amsterdam, who succeeded his father Willem Jansz Blaeu in the late 1630s and carried forward the production of maps, globes, atlases, and all kinds of books – both for his own profit and in service of the Dutch East India Company (VOC).8 We cannot know for sure what he personally contributed to the production of his 1648 map. As the manager of the firm, it is highly improbable that Blaeu personally engraved all 21 brand-new copperplates, notwithstanding the fact that this map is obviously based on his earlier world map, dated 1645-1646, which was itself printed with plates already in use in 1619.9 Blaeu presumably did not carry out the manual work of printing the folio sheets and glueing them together, creating a wall map of 210 x 307 cm. We even cannot say for sure that Blaeu himself wrote the Maneductio / Discours, the aforementioned 16-column explanation in Latin and French. Possibly, he was assisted by scholars in his network. In any case, the whole document is signed ‘De l’imprimerie de Jean Blaeu’ and he takes the credit by putting his name under the dedication. This dedication is to be found in the central cartouche on the map. Centrally positioned, but also slightly obscured, squeezed between two hemispheres, ‘Io Blaeu’ dedicates his map to ‘the very illustrious and very excellent Caspar de Bracamonte and Guzman, count of Peñaranda’. Bracamonte (1595-1676) was a Spanish diplomat, who represented King Philip IV and led the Spanish delegation at the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, for which Blaeu thanks him in the dedication.10 The explicit reference to the Peace of Westphalia – which ended the Thirty Years’ War and the Dutch Revolt against Spain, also known as the Eighty Years’ War – is why this map is dated 1648, even though the date itself is nowhere to be found on the map. Other copies of the map, of which the provenance is known, show that it was indeed intended as a diplomatic gift. The king of England, the great elector of Brandenburg, the king of France, and the Japanese emperor are among the contemporary owners of the map, in several states and versions, sometimes with and 8 De La Fonteyne Verwey, ‘Dr. Joan Blaeu’; Donkersloot-De Vrij, Drie generaties Blaeu; Van Netten, Koopman in kennis, pp. 240-247. For (facsimiles of) his cartographic work, see several publications by Günther Schilder and Peter van der Krogt. On the Blaeu family and their work for the VOC: Zandvliet, Mapping for Money, pp. 118-130. 9 Schilder, Monumenta, III. The reprint from the 1640s is now only extant in one, quite damaged, copy in the Maritime Museum, Rotterdam [K259] 10 Illustrissimo, excellentissimo, D. Casparo de Bracamonte et Guzman, Comiti de Peñaranda, […] ad S. Caes. Maj. Oratori extraord. Nec on ad universalia Pacis foedera, Monast. Westphal. Sancienda, Primario plena cum potestate Legato, Novam hanc Orbis Terrae tabulan gratulabundus dedicat, gratus suspendit.

The New World Map and the Old 

sometimes without adapted texts and dedications.11 We do not know if Blaeu’s enormous present was ever received by Bracamonte. His published correspondence and the existing biography do not offer any clues.12 Another frustratingly unanswered question is who ordered and paid for this cartographic endeavour. Was it Blaeu’s own initiative and investment, or was he summoned to undertake this task? A decisive role of the Dutch States General seems obvious, but that remains speculation. The map is solely dedicated to Bracamonte, but in the text below the map Blaeu refers to a much larger potential public. In the French Discours, he addresses the general lovers of geography, amateurs de la Geographie. The first word after the title, Messieurs, acknowledges that knowledge of geography or learning in general was apparently not appropriate for women. The reception and reading of maps in history is an as yet understudied part of the history of cartography. How the gentlemen and the counts and kings mentioned above, read and understood this map, remains rather obscure. Even though there are almost no clues to how early modern people actually read maps, it seems obvious, even universal, to start exploring a world map from home. Moreover, it is plausible that Western Europeans read from left to right and from top to bottom. This chapter tells some of the stories they could have read, by reconstructing the comprehensive narrative behind them.

From Holland to New Holland Western Europe (Figure 1.2) can be found in the upper middle part of the world. For most twenty-first-century people this presumably goes without saying. We are completely used to the convention of depicting the North on top and the Americas on the left. However, a convention is just what it is, and this representation of a round earth stems from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, brought about by, mostly, Netherlandish cartographers like Mercator, Ortelius, Hondius, and Blaeu. In the discussed map, Blaeu presented the world in a globular projection and not, for example, a Mercator projection. A Mercator projection, in which straight lines on earth are depicted as straight lines on the map, is useful for sailing, yet a wall map of this size was not suitable for use on a ship in any case. Accordingly, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, this double 11 Debergh, ‘A Comparative Study’, p. 36. On Blaeu’s large world map(s), see Wieder, Monumenta, pp. 61-65 and plates 51-71; Shirley, The Mapping of the World, nos 300, 366 and 371; Schilder, Monumenta, III. 12 Ortega, Biografía; research into Bracamonte’s letters in several Spanish printed and digital sources has been done by Merel Luijendijk.

39

40 Djoeke van Net ten

Figure 5: Detail: the North Sea and the surrounding lands. How the Netherlands extend into the sea.

hemispheric projection was quite popular for large world maps.13 Furthermore, the spaces in between and around the two hemispheres provide room for all kinds of decorative elements. The place of Europe did not really differ in either projection. This is a convention, not randomly chosen, but politically and ideologically informed. The Eurocentrism of Blaeu and his milieu is unsurprising, though it is important to emphasize that, arguably, this choice had a profound and enduring influence on longer-term thinking about the place and role of Europe in the world. This place was in the middle, the upper middle, thus presenting Europe as the centre of and as superior to the rest of the world. The precedence Blaeu gives to Europe is also visible in his use of Latin for his title and for all the lands and seas; in short, for every geographical name that 13 See Shirley, The Mapping of the World.

The New World Map and the Old 

transcends the local. Moreover, whenever Blaeu provides a geographical example in his texts, for instance countries, islands, peninsulas, and cities, these all concern places in Europe.14 The Netherlands is drawn in the middle of Europe. Although early modern historians usually refer to the Northern Netherlands in the seventeenth century as the Dutch Republic, or the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands, these terms are not to be found on Blaeu’s map or in his text. He either used a larger entity: Belgica/Pays Bas, i.e. Belgium/The Low Countries, which also comprised the Spanish Southern Netherlands, or smaller entities, namely provinces. In the case of the Northern Netherlands, only the most powerful and most prosperous coastal provinces are mentioned: Frisia, Zeeland, and, most importantly, Holland. Occasionally, when the land does not provide enough space, the names of cities are engraved in the sea. This happens nowhere as densely as in the North Sea. It seems that there is so much to mention about Holland, Zeeland, and their cities, that the adjacent waters must be filled with text. This could be considered as some form of Dutch colonizing. Remarkably, when Dutch people are mentioned in the Maneductio/Discours, they are never called Belgians or Netherlanders, but always Hollanders: Hollandois in French or Batavi in Latin.15 The Batavi – a Germanic tribe in Roman times, from which some Dutch historians claimed Dutch people descended – lent their name to the city of Batavia, named thus by the Dutch in 1619.16 Batavia is the only Asian city mentioned in the Maneductio. The greater part of this text consists of a lengthy enumeration of countries, provinces, rivers, gulfs, straits, and islands, arranged per continent. The instances where more than just a geographical name is provided are telling. Thus, the remark regarding ‘Java, where there is a strong Dutch fortification, Batavia,’ can be seen as Dutch boasting.17 European ships had been sailing around Africa to Asia from the late fifteenth century onwards. In the mid-seventeenth century, over one and a half centuries after the first Portuguese endeavours, several European nations had tried to get their share of the lucrative trade in spices and other Asian luxuries. The facts that Blaeu deemed noteworthy about this part of the world are scattered on the map as small text fragments in the Indian and Pacific Oceans; they demonstrate what was of greatest interest: European voyages, like Vasco da Gama’s circumnavigation, and the merchandise purchased there. For example, the only thing we learn about Ceylon is that cinnamon grows there, and cloves on the Moluccas. 14 Maneductio, I, XI, XII. The single exception is Cabo de Bona Esperanza, which is, of course, also European nomenclature. See also Harley, ‘Silences and Secrecy’. 15 Maneductio, XIII. 16 Today, Jakarta in Indonesia. 17 Original: Iava Maior, in qua est arx Hollandorum Batavia (Maneductio, XIX).

41

42 Djoeke van Ne t ten

Blaeu divides the world into six parts and states that three were already known by the ancients: Europe, Africa, and Asia. The other three were discovered in (by then) recent times – the Americas and the northern regions – or were yet unknown – the Southland. I will return to these last three in the next section. Asia, as usual in early modern worldviews, comprised every land and island east of Africa and west of America, including the lands now known as Australia and New Zealand. And with respect to these latter lands we see more than boasting, we see claiming. Regarding Australia, Blaeu offers no place names, mountain ranges, or explanatory texts; the only information available appears to be a history of Dutch discoveries. On the north, west, and south coasts of Australia, he presents some dates, ships, and names of discoverers, governors, and directors of the Dutch East India company.18 This part of the world provides a purely Dutch narrative, because the coastlines were mostly based on the explorations of Abel Tasman, the first European to sail around Australia and visit New Zealand in 1642-1643. As the VOC’s cartographer, Blaeu had been the first to receive his notes and sketches. However, while Tasman had proposed honouring his Governor General of the Dutch East-Indies, Antonio van Diemen, Blaeu did not opt for Van Diemen’s Land but rather named the islands Hollandia Nova and Zeelandia Nova, thus claiming them by referring to the most important provinces of the Dutch Republic: Holland and Zeeland. At this time, Africa, the part of the old world that has not been discussed yet, was just a great landmass that lengthened voyages to Asia for most sailors. The coastline was accurately charted during centuries of Portuguese experience, hence the southern tip of the continent was called Cabo de Bona Esperanza in Portuguese. The Dutch visits to these coast, and the reasons for these forays, are narrated on the east coast of southern Africa: Vleijsbay, Visbay, Mosselbay (Meat Bay, Fish Bay, Mussel Bay). Clearly, this was a coast to cater.19 On the western side of Africa, Europeans had other interests: the slave trade. However, there are no direct references to it on this side of the Atlantic. In 1637, the Dutch had captured the Portuguese stronghold El Mina, from which many enslaved Africans were shipped, mostly to the Caribbean. The place is inscribed on the map as S. George d. Mina, thus not referring directly to the Dutch, in contrast to nearby Fort Nassau, named after the Dutch stadtholder. Between the east and west coast of Africa lay much land unknown to Europeans. In contrast to the interior of Australia, which was depicted as completely empty on the map, Blaeu demonstrated that he had enough knowledge at his disposal to fill the whole continent of Africa. Based on classical and biblical sources, Africa 18 See also Zandvliet, ‘Golden Opportunities’, p.73. 19 Sometime after 1648, the Dutch would establish a settlement at the Cape of Good Hope, which became the city of Cape Town much later.

The New World Map and the Old 

is rich with stories of deserts, rivers, and mountains, complemented with small drawings of animals, caravans, and men with spears.

The (non-)Dutch Americas and the parts of the world yet to be discovered As we have seen, Blaeu spatially divided the world into six parts, but these parts can be distinguished chronologically as well: ‘We call ancient what has been known by the ancient geographers, like Ptolemy, Strabo, and others; new is what has been discovered since the year 1492 and afterwards, by the works of Columbus, Vespucci, and several others.’20 In modern terms, we can characterize Blaeu’s continents as ‘knowns’, ‘former unknowns’, and ‘known unknowns’. The three aforementioned parts of the old world are covered by the first category, though North America falls into the latter two categories. In the Maneductio, Blaeu explains that the whole continent is also called ‘Mexican’, in contrast with ‘Peruvian’, which is the name he uses as an alternative for South America. On the map, the Latin texts read America Septentrionalis / America Meridionalis. Looking at the names of what Blaeu calls ‘provinces’ in what is today the United States of America and eastern parts of Canada, ‘New Europe’ would also be apt: we find Nova Granada, Hispania Nova, Nova Francia, New South Wales, New North Wales, and Nieu Nederland. This can also be seen as cartographic justifications of colonialism and the claiming of lands, to the detriment of the Amerindians. Blaeu only lists eastern provinces, since the ones farther inland were unknown, he states.21 Blaeu seems quite certain that there is more land to be discovered, but, due to a lack of sources, he leaves the whole of northwest America blank, not even sketching a coastline. The same can be seen on the Australian coast with respect to those parts for which he lacked Tasman’s or anyone else’s information. The periphery of the known world, or at least the periphery of this map, consists of unconnected coastlines, thus leaving the connections, the size, and form of the lands, to the imagination of the onlooker. Compared to most earlier world maps, and many later ones, this is exceptional. Coastlines are almost always connected, even when no knowledge was available on where to draw the line. However,

20 Original: Orbis terrarum Tabulâ nostrâ descriptus, est vel Vetus, vel Novus. Veterum vocamus illum qui veteribus Geographis, ut Ptolemaeo, Straboni, aliisque fuit cognitus; Novum verò eum qui ab anno MCCCXCII Christophori Columbi, Americi Vespucci & aliorum subsequentium industria fuit detectus (Maneductio, XII). Whereas in English we would use ‘continent’, the literal translation world-part (mundi pars, parti du monde, or werelddeel in Dutch) is actually more appropriate. 21 Ulterius enim nihil fere est cognitum (Maneductio, XVI).

43

44 Djoeke van Net ten

when Blaeu had no source, or perhaps lacked a trustworthy source, the lines are simply omitted.22 In South America, we find an enigmatic aspect of the map, where we miss certain information, even though Blaeu himself must have been in the know. There is no Brazil, and, more precisely, there is no Dutch Brazil. In 1630, the Dutch had captured the Portuguese strongholds Olinda and Recife, and, by 1648, Dutch rule in Brazil was well-established, under governor Johan Maurits, Prince of Nassau-Siegen.23 Although in the text Brasilia/Bresil figures as a province and many Portuguese place names are written near the Brazilian coast,24 Mauritsstad, as the Dutch had renamed Recife, is not to be found, in contrast both to other world maps of this period and to all other relevant maps and globes by Blaeu. The name Brasilia is not even on the map. It seems too easy to assume that this was simply a mistake or a better fit on the copperplate, but I cannot yet provide a convincing alternative explanation for this remarkable omission. The narrative of this part of the map is puzzling, at least to modern eyes, but perhaps already to early modern eyes as well.25 Not surprisingly, the coast of South America is brimming with Portuguese and Spanish geographical names, as they had ‘discovered’ and charted this territory – from a European perspective, that is. A few exceptions are to be found at the southern tip of the continent: C[abo] de Hoorn, Straet van Lemair, and Staten Landt. In 1615, these places were ‘discovered’ by ships sent out from the Dutch city of Hoorn, and their names reference Holland. But there seems less boasting here than in Southeast Asia and Australia. Similar to Africa, beyond the coastal strip, very little geographical information based on recent experience was available. However, in South America, Blaeu did not have classical narratives to fall back on. Instead, he resorted to larger illustrations, without text, to fill the land (Figure 1.3). Using an armadillo and a dragon, Blaeu told a story of a place filled with exotic animals.26 In the same manner, exotic, strange, and primitive people are depicted in South America, elaborately drawn in comparison to most other illustrations on the map: enslaved Africans working at a sugar mill, ‘Indians’ in a hammock with a fire underneath, Patagonian giants, and cannibalistic ‘Indians’ roasting a leg on their barbecue while pulling out intestines. The latter picture is accurately modelled after a woodcut in a French travel journal 22 To Renate Pieper I owe the suggestion that this could have to do with Blaeu intending to make his map look like manuscript maps, on which it was much more common to leave out unknown coastlines. See also Monmonier, Coast Lines. 23 Van Groesen ed., Dutch Brazil; Van Groesen, Amsterdam’s Atlantic. 24 Maneductio, XVI. 25 Could it be that this has to do with Blaeu being in service of the East India Company, while Dutch Brazil was West India Company territory? 26 Schmidt, Inventing Exoticism.

The New World Map and the Old 

Figure 6: Detail: the inland of South America. Enslaved Africans at work and barbarous ‘Indians’.

published a century earlier.27 This narrative of Brazilian cannibals was commonplace in travel texts for quite some time both before and after Blaeu. We could ask if there were actually cannibals living there – the answer is probably negative – but it seems more interesting to ponder Blaeu’s argument: barbarous, heathen, primitive people are to be found there.28 Blaeu leaves the comparison with civilized Christian Europeans to the viewer, but the outcome is obvious. From the Americas, the fourth part of the world, we travel to the fifth part, the North. Blaeu narrates that these were both unknown to the ancients, but had been discovered in recent times. Presented as another victory of his own time, the Maneductio tells of the English and the Hollanders who had discovered that many people lived above 81 degrees latitude – a fact denied in classical sources. Further on, Blaeu recounts that the Hollanders had discovered Novaya Zemlya, but became stuck in the ice at 81 degrees latitude.29 The famous wintering of the Dutch on Novaya 27 Thevet, Les singularitez de la France antarctique, p. 77. I thank Michiel van Groesen for discovering this. 28 This f its a larger pattern of Dutch stereotyping of Brazilian Indians; see Van Groesen, ‘Arnoldus Montanus’. 29 detectae Batavorum navigationibus (Maneductio, XVII). Actually, the northern tip of Novaya Zemlya is 76 degrees N. The reason he refers to 81 degrees needs further research.

45

46 Djoeke van Net ten

Zemlya in 1596-1597 is illustrated with a ship frozen in the ice and a tiny wooden lodge, the so-called Behouden Huis.30 It is the only drawing on the map that refers directly to a historical event. Here, time and place come together. Moreover, this must have been immediately recognizable, evoking Dutch prowess and heroism. Just like parts of the coastline of Australia as well as the north and west of Hudson Bay, certain areas east of Novaya Zemlya are left blank, demonstrating Blaeu’s ignorance of this part of the world, which was not yet fully charted by Europeans. Apparently, Blaeu did not have sources on which he wanted to rely; therefore, the east coast of Novaya Zemlya is not delineated. However, some coastlines further east are depicted in surprising detail. Here, we can glimpse again Blaeu’s way of dealing with sources and presenting facts. Apparently, if any credible source was available, information was conveyed, even if some of this knowledge was ancient or disputed – even in Blaeu’s own time. For example, in a region in the northeast Asia, named ‘Cathay under the great Khan, in the land of Tartary,’ Blaeu relies on the Roman author Pliny and the Venetian traveller Marco Polo, from the first and thirteenth century, respectively.31 Blaeu mentions their names explicitly, which, on the one hand, can be seen as showing off with classical and medieval references.32 On the other hand, this can also be perceived as Blaeu expressing doubts and not taking this knowledge for granted. So, besides ‘known unknowns’, for example, the definitely existing, but not yet charted east coast of Novaya Zemlya, we should take into account the category of disputed knowns: cases where Blaeu provides the information for want of anything better, but keeps his distance by naming the source. The North Pole and the South Pole had not yet been visited by humans in the seventeenth century, but the knowledge of their existence logically emanated from a round-shaped earth. On a world map with a double hemisphere, the poles were actually presented twice, and the region could not be captured in a single glance. To overcome this, Blaeu also provided two inset maps in the lower corners, with polar projections. Curiously, his large hemispheres appear not to be based on the same geographical sources as the small North Pole map in the corner. In the latter, Blaeu presents some islands that had already disappeared from most world maps – entities that would later be called ghost islands or imaginary islands.33 It seems that he used an older map of the North Pole as a model, but it is not easy to see for what purpose.34 30 There is much literature on this, though not much in English. For the original text of the travel journal, see De Veer, Reizen. 31 Original: ‘Cathaya. Regnum priarmium magni Cam.’ 32 Van Netten, ‘The Richest Country’. 33 Stommel, Lost Islands. 34 Blaeu def initely did not make use of Willem Barentsz’s map of the North Pole area (published in 1598), which he must have been aware of.

The New World Map and the Old 

The most southern region of the world makes up Blaeu’s sixth part of the world, and he states that it is the only part of the world ‘we do not yet know.’35 The word ‘yet’ makes it clear that these lands are also ‘known unknowns’. Since Blaeu did not delineate an ‘unknown’ Southland, some authors have characterized him as more scientific and modern than his contemporaries.36 Not delineating unknown coastlines is thus seen as a step forward compared to previous cartographers, who invented or copied imagined lands for which no experience-based evidence existed. Some question marks can be placed here, since, even though Terra Australis is not delineated, it is definitely mentioned, as the map itself states Austrasia Incognita just below 70 degrees southern latitude. The Maneductio makes it clear that Blaeu, like most of his contemporaries, was convinced of the existence of a southern continent, albeit not yet discovered. Just like the North Pole projection mentioned above, which was found in the lower left corner, Blaeu provided an inset map of the South Pole in the lower right corner. The circle is largely empty, with the exception of Tierra del Fuego, but, fascinatingly, Blaeu advertises this map as aimed at people who wish to navigate there.37

Seas, heavens, and history Obviously, Joan Blaeu’s cartographical project did not really serve navigational purposes. A completely new world map on this scale was a piece for showing off, for the publisher as well as for contemporary and later owners. But even though this was not a map to consult when sailing, the waters play an important role. Oceans, seas, gulfs, and rivers are mentioned even more frequently in the Maneductio than countries, provinces, and islands. Just like the lands, the waters are generally only described with their names. Only some waters apparently deserve more attention, such as the names given in various languages for the three big oceans and the Mediterranean.38 Concerning the Caspian Sea, Blaeu relates that some consider it to be a lake, thus showing that he is aware of contemporary geographical discussions.39 In addition to leaving out coastlines where he did not have any information, Blaeu resorted to text as another strategy for indicating his uncertainty. By inserting full sentences, he could display disputes, discussions, opinions, and explanations, which were impossible to visualize with just lines on a map. 35 Original: Ultima [= Terra Polari Antarctica] verò nos adhuc plane lateat (Maneductio, XII); see also Maneductio, XVI on the not yet-discovered lands south of Strait Le Maire. 36 De La Fontaine Verwey, ‘Dr. Joan Blaeu’, p.170. 37 qui in illis maribus & circa Polos navigant (Maneductio, XXV). 38 Maneductio, XVIII, XXII. 39 Mare Caspium, sive Hircanum, vulgo Mar de Sala & Bachu: quod nonnulli lacum quam mare appellare malunt (Maneductio, XXII).

47

48 Djoeke van Net ten

Much explanatory text is to be found in the Maneductio, but in the oceans we also find cartouches with text, containing two rather lengthy expositions about measuring distances on the Earth’s surface. The Maneductio below was apparently meant to be all-encompassing, since it even contains explanatory references to these explanatory texts in the cartouches. 40 The same is true for the – apparently not self-evident – two compasses added in the Pacific, with cardinal points in either Latin or Dutch.41 The Maneductio can be seen as a textual equivalent to every geographical and cosmographical element of the map. Blaeu himself introduces it as a basic lesson in geography, while admitting that a written narrative is sometimes needed in addition to a drawn map: ‘Who has not yet sufficient knowledge of geography […] will be served with this small explanation regarding its use [of the map], to facilitate the understanding, if the image is not clear enough.’42 The items in Blaeu’s oceans that are not commented on in text, are the ships that are scattered over the Pacific, the Atlantic, and the Indian Ocean. However, they convey their own argument, albeit more speculatively. On Blaeu’s earlier large world maps and his large globe, also dating from the mid-1640s, the seas are not only filled with ships, but mostly with sea monsters, as was common at that time.43 Leaving out the monsters was a conscious choice. Could it be that Blaeu wanted to say that the seas were not scary? That they connected rather than divided, creating opportunities rather than dangers? It seems an optimistic argument for trade, perhaps not surprisingly from an entrepreneur in one of the most commercial cities of its age. It can also be seen as a more aggressive, more patriotic narrative, since all the flags on the ships are triband. On at least one copy, they are actually coloured in the red-white-blue of the Dutch flag.44 Put boldly, what Blaeu intended to show was Dutch ships ruling the waves, omnipresent on the world’s oceans. Even more stories can be found outside the world – or outside the work, as Blaeu uses the term hors d’oeuvre.45 These outer parts are more than just decoration, they literally and imaginatively frame the world, and the worldviews conveyed. We find a salamander, whale, mole, and eagle, reflecting classical ideas of the four elements. The Nova Totius Terrarum Orbis Tabula really was a map of the whole world, even 40 Maneductio, IX. 41 Maneductio, XXIII. Blaeu states that these compasses are to be found on the eastern part of his map, although from the map this appears to be the western part. I am not sure whether we should read this as a slip of the pen, or whether he initially planned to put the compasses somewhere else. In any case, the largest space to put them was the Pacific Ocean. 42 Original: Et afin que ceux-la qui n’ont pas encore beaucoup de connaissance de la Geographie, […], j’ay estime qui’il seroit à propos d’y adjouster ce petit Discours touchant son usage, pour faciliter l’intelligence de ce que la peinture ne represente pas assés clairement (Discours, first paragraph). 43 Van der Krogt, Globi Neerlandici. 44 The coloured copy is kept in Texas, see note 4. However, it is not clear when the colouring was done. 45 Discours, XXV.

The New World Map and the Old 

of the whole universe. As the heavens literally frame the Earth, the stars of the northern and the southern hemisphere are depicted in the upper corners of the map. In the Maneductio, Blaeu briefly mentions constellations and states that, according to classical knowledge, there were 1022 stars. ‘But,’ he adds, ‘nowadays one states, by the use of telescopes, that there are over a hundred thousand.’46 Obviously, new inventions had made it possible to surpass ancient knowledge. Probably, this is also how we should consider Blaeu’s demonstration of astronomy, or what we would call our solar system. Exactly in the upper middle of the wall map is the sun-centred Copernican system, executed quite elaborately (Figure 1.4). It is entitled ‘hypothesis’, just as the much smaller alternative ‘hypotheses’ of Ptolemy and Tycho Brahe depicted below, both with a static earth in the middle. However, from the mise-en-place and from the text, it becomes quite clear which hypothesis Blaeu adhered to. In the text, Blaeu refers to the ‘opinion’ of Ptolemy and the ‘system’ of Copernicus, and elaborates, primarily in Latin, only on the latter, referring to, among other things, Galileo and the telescope ‘invented by him.’47 Echoing Galileo, Blaeu also teaches his reader that the Holy Scriptures were not meant to instruct humanity on astronomy, but only on religion. 48 Before 1648, there was only one world map showing the Copernican system, albeit less prominently displayed. This map was published, probably not uncoincidentally, by Joan Blaeu’s father, Willem Jansz Blaeu, in 1619, and reprinted in 1645-1646, as mentioned above. Blaeu senior was not only one of the first Copernicans in the Dutch Republic, he also famously printed the third edition of Copernicus’ own De Revolutionibus in 1617, just one year after it was put on the Catholic Index of forbidden books. 49 Although, in 1648, more scholars were convinced of Copernicanism than a few decades before, the theory was still disputed, and fiercely attacked and prohibited by orthodox Calvinists as well as Catholics.50 We can wonder what the Catholic Spaniard Bracamonte thought of this map demonstrating so openly an opinion condemned by his church. The issue of Copernicanism was thus raised for Blaeu’s map viewers. It is not difficult to imagine their gaze descending from the heavens to the earth, and thereby 46 Original: Ex quibus antiquis Astronomis […] cognitae sunt tantum XLVIII [constellations], & in illis 1022 stellae. Sed hanc nequidem centesimam millesimam stellartum ese partem telescopio nunc deprehenditur (Maneductio, XXXI). 47 Original: Galilaeus Galilaei, ingeniosissimus Mathematicus, […] ope Telescopii à se inventi (Maneductio, XXIX). 48 Scopus Scripturae Sacrae non est instituere nos in Astronomia, sed in iis quae ad religionem pertinent (Maneductio, XXX). 49 Van Netten, ‘Astronomia Instaurata?’. 50 Much has been written on Copernicanism. Most important for the Dutch case is Vermij, Calvinist Copernicans. On Blaeu and world maps: pp. 68-72 and 222-237. Unfortunately, Vermij seems not to have read the text below the 1648 map.

49

50 Djoeke van Net ten

Figure 7: Detail: the Copernican heliocentric system on top of the world.

from modern astronomy (i.e. heliocentrism) to history. Specifically, right below the solar system, squeezed in between the large hemispheres, under the dedication and in between the geocentric hypotheses of Ptolemy and Tycho, we find a small world map showing just Europe and parts of Africa and Asia (Figure 1.5). The title reads: ‘Rendering of the world known by the ancients till the year 1490’.51 Presumably 1490, instead of 1492, is just a typo, since 1492 is twice stated as a historical watershed in the text below the map, honouring Columbus and Vespucci.52 This small error is not as important as the narrative in favour of Copernicanism. It is certainly no coincidence that the old astronomy is literally attached to the old world, to things of the past.53 The old world map, however, is not some ancient world map. On further consideration it appears to be a late sixteenth-century world map, largely cut off. The map is modelled exactly on Abraham Ortelius’s map of the world before 1492, in his historical atlas volume called Parergon, first published in 1590.54 The similarities 51 Original: Typus terrae qualis veteribus, usque ad annum salutis nonagesimum supra millesimum quadringentesimum, cognita fuit. 52 Maneductio, XII and XXVI. 53 This has been already remarked by Vermij, Calvinist Copernicans, p. 224. 54 On this Ortelius map, see Van den Broecke, Ortelius Atlas Maps, pp. 568-570; Meurer, Fontes cartographici, pp. 21-23; Binding, Imagined Corners, pp. 282-287.

The New World Map and the Old 

Figure 8: Detail: the dedication to Bracamonte and the geocentric systems of Ptolemy and Tycho attached to the old world.

between these two maps by Ortelius and Blaeu were already commented on in the 1920s, when Blaeu’s 1648 map was first described.55 However, when reading the texts published with these maps, the narrative accompanying the historical map appears to be completely different. In his Parergon, Ortelius, a typical Renaissance humanist, seems to be trying to reconstruct the ancient world to the best of his knowledge by presenting, juxtaposing, and comparing classical texts. Blaeu, who does not even mention Ortelius or any other cartographer before him, in his Maneductio does not explain that the old world map is a reconstruction, but only claims that one can see ‘how much is added to geography in the past two centuries.’56 Here, again, we see Blaeu’s own times being brought to the fore, presented as being better than classical, medieval, and Renaissance times.

Conclusions With his Nova Totius Terrarum Orbis Tabula, Blaeu presented a new world, and a new world order. Even if ‘nova’ was quite a common adjective in the titles of 55 Wieder, Monumenta, III, p. 63. 56 Ex ejus collatione cum Tabula nostra videre est quantum postremis hisce duobus saeculis per novarum terrarum detectionem incrementi sumserit Geographia (Maneductio, XXVI).

51

52 Djoeke van Ne t ten

seventeenth-century maps and atlases, the fact that it was the first word in the title of this map is relevant to the narrative. We have assumed that the old astronomy was consciously attached to the old world. Arguing along the same lines, we can reconsider the dedication to the Spanish diplomat Bracamonte.57 Visually, the decoration around the dedication has the old world as a foundation, and it does not even touch the hemispheres presenting the modern world (Figure 1.5). Seen from a political perspective, Spain had had its day, especially after the Peace of Westphalia. Thus, Joan Blaeu desired to show a Nova Tabula. In hindsight, many historians since the nineteenth century have characterized the Dutch seventeenth century as a ‘Golden Age’, especially because of Dutch primacy in world trade.58 Blaeu’s 1648 world map offers some kind of parallel foresight. We can already discern a secured Dutch place in world trade and global politics, and Dutch omnipresence on the proverbial seven seas. More accurately, Holland’s omnipresence. Nowadays, the name Holland is frequently used often as a pars pro toto for the whole country of the Netherlands, but I have the strong impression that Blaeu’s use of terms like Hollandia Nova and Batavi was deliberate. This is definitely provincial particularism, reflecting Holland’s primacy in the Dutch Republic.59 Holland effectively ruled the Dutch Republic, and Europe ruled the world. Blaeu did not need to narrate the latter explicitly. The superiority of white Christians must have been self-evident to him. Apparently, he did not even feel the urge to justify European presence in Asia, Africa, America, and Australia. They were just there. On the map, the indigenous people depicted in Africa and South America are reduced to the level of exotic animals. While European people are not portrayed, the humans that are named individually in the text are all white, and all male: from ancient scholars to modern discoverers, including Bracamonte and Blaeu himself. Thus, Blaeu’s worldview can be summarized as pro-Dutch, Euro-superior, male-dominated, and in favour of Copernicanism. Finally, his narrative can be termed optimistic. Blaeu seems highly optimistic concerning the course of science, the advance of learning, and future discoveries. As we have seen, the Maneductio provides at least as much insight as the map itself. Explicitly in the text on the old and the new world, but also in the case of known and unknown continents, the number of stars, habitation on high latitudes, and astronomical discussions; in all these cases, Blaeu emphasizes ancient ignorance and modern (i.e. seventeenthcentury) knowledge. He seems to take a firm stance in a discussion that later, in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, would be characterized as the 57 Thanks to Samantha Lourens for this suggestion. 58 Helmers and Janssen, ‘Introduction’; Israel, Dutch Primacy. 59 See Price, Holland and the Dutch Republic.

The New World Map and the Old 

Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, or the Battle of the Books. In Blaeu’s optimistic view, the moderns definitely excelled the ancients, and progress was undeniable. Nova Totius Terrarum Orbis Tabula, dated 1648, demonstrates Blaeu’s knowledge and view of the world, or at least a worldview that must have been shaped, and perhaps even partly dictated, by his immediate milieu and possible commissioners. This worldview consists partly of unconscious convictions deeply ingrained in Holland’s society, but every line, dot, and letter on the map, including eventual omissions, also stem from a conscious choice by the producer. Post-production, Blaeu’s world and his stories lived on, influencing recipients and onlookers more distant in time and place. As shown above, the knowledge Blaeu conveyed can be perceived as a single compelling narrative, but several smaller and independent stories can also be discerned and highlighted, told and retold. Unlike modern-day historians, most contemporary and many later viewers did not have other editions or versions of Blaeu’s world map or of one of his competitors at their disposal. They must have been impressed by this map, its dimensions, and its abundance of information, encompassing the whole world and beyond. They must have been moved by its narrative, as they gazed at all the worldly accomplishments of the Dutch.

Bibliography P. Binding, Imagined Corners. Exploring the World’s First Atlas (London: Review, 2003). P. Burke, What Is the History of Knowledge? (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2016). M. van den Broecke, Ortelius Atlas Maps. An Illustrated Guide (Houten: HES & De Graaf, 2011). M. Debergh, ‘A Comparative Study of Two Dutch Maps’, Imago Mundi 35 (1989), pp. 20-36. M. Donkersloot-De Vrij, Drie generaties Blaeu. Amsterdamse cartografie en boekdrukkunst in de zeventiende eeuw (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 1992). H. De La Fontaine Verwey, ‘Dr. Joan Blaeu, schepen, en zijn zonen’, in: In en om de ‘Vergulde Sonnewyser’ (Amsterdam: Israel, 1979), pp. 165-182. G. Genette, Paratexts. Thresholds of Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). M. van Groesen (ed.), The Legacy of Dutch Brazil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). M. van Groesen, ‘Arnoldus Montanus, Dutch Brazil, and the Re-Emergence of Cannibalism’, in Transformations of Knowledge in Dutch Expansion, ed. by S. Friedrich, A. Brendecke and S. Ehrenpreis (Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2015), pp. 93-120. M. van Groesen, Amsterdam’s Atlantic. Print and Culture and the Making of Dutch Brazil (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017).

53

54 Djoeke van Net ten

J.B. Harley, ‘Silences and Secrecy’, in: The New Nature of Maps. Essays in the History of Cartography, ed. by P. Laxton (Baltimore, MD, and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), pp. 83-107. H.J. Helmers and G.J. Janssen, ‘Introduction: Understanding the Golden Age’, in: The Cambridge Companion to the Dutch Golden Age, ed. By H.J. Helmers and G.J. Janssen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). P. Howlett and M.S. Morgan (eds), How Well Do Facts Travel? The Dissemination of Reliable Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). J. Israel, Dutch Primacy in World Trade, 1585-1740 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989). P. van der Krogt, Globi Neerlandici. The Productions of Globes in the Low Countries (Utrecht: HES, 1993). C. Lesger, The Rise of the Amsterdam Market and Information Exchange: Merchants, Commercial Expansion and Change in the Spatial Economy of the Low Countries, c.1550-1630 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006). P.H. Meurer, Fontes cartographici Orteliani. Das ‘Theatrum Orbis Terrarum’ von Abraham Ortelius und seine Kartenquellen (Weinheim: Acta Humaniora, 1991). M. Monmonier, Coast Lines. How Mapmakers Frame the World and Chart Environmental Change (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2008). D. van Netten, ‘Astronomia Instaurata? The Third Edition of Copernicus’s De revolutionibus (Amsterdam 1617), Journal for the History of Astronomy 43 (2012), pp. 75-91. D. van Netten, Koopman in kennis. De uitgever Willem Jansz Blaeu in de geleerde wereld (1571-1638) (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 2014). D. van Netten, ‘The Richest Country in the World. Dutch Knowledge of China and Cathay and How to Get There in the 1590s’, in: Foreign Devils and Philosophers, ed. by Th. Weststeijn (Amsterdam: Brill, 2020) 24-56. A. Ortega, Biografía de don Gaspar de Bracamonte y Guzmán, ed. by Francisco Hernandez Mendez (Peñaranda de Bracamonte, 1999 [1766]). A. Pettegree and A. der Weduwen, The Bookshop of the World. Making and Trading Books and the Dutch Golden Age (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2019). J.L. Price, Holland and the Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth Century. The Politics of Particularism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994). G. Schilder, Monumenta Cartographica Neerlandica, 9 vols (Alphen aan de Rijn: Canaletto. 1986-2013), vol. III: Twee wandkaarten van de wereld van Blaeu (1990). B. Schmidt, Inventing Exoticism. Geography, Globalism and Europe’s Early Modern World (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015). R. Shirley, The Mapping of the World. Early Printed World Maps, 1472-1700 (London: The Holland Press, 1983). H. Stommel, Lost Islands. The Story of Islands that Have Vanished from Nautical Charts (Vancouver: University of British Colombia Press, 1984). A. Thevet, Les singularitez de la France antarctique (Paris: De La Porte, 1557).

The New World Map and the Old 

G. de Veer, Reizen van Willem Barentsz, Jacob van Heemskerck, Jan Cornelisz Rijp en anderen naar het Noorden (1594-1597), ed. by S.P. L’Honoré Naber, 2 vols (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1917). R. Vermij, The Calvinist Copernicans: The Reception of the New Astronomy in the Dutch Republic, 1575-1750, (Amsterdam: Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, 2002). F.C. Wieder, Monumenta Cartographica, 5 vols (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1925-1933), vol. III (1928-1929). K. Zandvliet, ‘Golden Opportunities in Geopolitics. Cartography and the Dutch East India Company during the Lifetime of Abel Tasman’, in The Furthest Shore. Images of Terra Australis from the Middle Ages to Captain Cook, ed. by W. Eisler and B. Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 67–84. K. Zandvliet, Mapping for Money. Maps, Plans and Topographic Paintings and their Role in Dutch Overseas Expansion during the 16th and 17th Centuries (Amsterdam: De Bataafsche Leeuw, 1998).

About the Author Djoeke van Netten is senior lecturer Early Modern History at the University of Amsterdam. She studied at the University of Groningen, where she wrote a PhD dissertation on Willem Jansz Blaeu, published as Koopman in kennis in 2014. Her research is at the crossroads of the history of knowledge, maritime history, and the history of maps and books. She also worked at the National Maritime Museum in Amsterdam, as research fellow, tour guide, and guest curator.

55

2.

Entangled Maps Topography and Narratives in Early Modern Story Maps* Bram Vannieuwenhuyze Abstract This chapter offers a close ‘reading’ of two story maps from the early modern Low Countries, a bird’s-eye perspective on the Ypres siege of 1383 engraved by Guillaume du Tielt about 1610, and a map of Northern Flanders, presumably made by Mathias Quad in 1604. Both are sophisticated multimedia products in which different layers of information are inextricably intertwined. The documents ask for a thorough analysis of their content as a whole. By considering them as ‘entangled products’, instead of simple by-products of official cartography, the chapter argues that the maps themselves were also part of a chain of objects, and that their production and consumption must be considered in broader contexts. Keywords: Story map; History map; Eighty-Years’ War; Flanders; News Publishing

Old maps, old stories, new readers In Western Europe, the late sixteenth century and all of the seventeenth century may perhaps be considered as the golden age of narrative cartography. Various books published at the time include maps with a visual narrative and numerous single- or double-leaf news maps from that period are still preserved in today’s map collections (Figures 9 and 10). A common characteristic of such story maps is that they not only provide information about early spatial arrangements, but also include one or more visual narratives. In other words, these documents combine the representation of geodata with the genre of the so-called news or history prints. Battle pieces were especially popular; many of them were produced as bird’s-eye * I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to Marieke Moerman, Kristiaan Dillen, Ward Leloup, Bart Lambert, Paul Arblaster, Pieter Kuiper, and both anonymous reviewers for their precious help.

Segal, Z. and B. Vannieuwenhuyze, Motion in Maps, Maps in Motion: Mapping Stories and Movement through Time. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020 doi 10.5117/9789463721103_ch02

58

Br am Vannieuwenhuyze

Figure 9: Siege map of Lingen in Willem Baudartius’ Nassausche Oorlogen (Amsterdam: Michiel Colijn, 1616), fol. 796-797 (Amsterdam, Allard Pierson, OTM: OL 146).

Figure 10: Baptista van Doetecum’s map showing Willem Barentz’s three sailing trips to the Arctic (Amsterdam: Cornelis Claesz, 1598) (Amsterdam, Allard Pierson, OTM: HB-KZL O.K. 129).

Entangled Maps 

views that represent the military and political events of the Eighty Years’ War that scourged different parts of Western Europe between 1568 and 1648.1 The interpretation of such early modern story maps is far from easy, especially because they are hybrid, multifaceted, and multi-layered documents, stuffed with different types of data: geodata, pieces of text inside and outside the map, heraldic emblems and symbols, diagrams, cartouches and different kinds of ornaments. More schematically, the maps juxtapose what has been called a ‘topographical layer’ (the static, lifeless representation of landscape or territory) and an ‘actional or narrative layer’ (the dynamic story). 2 In his discussion of seventeenth-century war maps, Jeremy Black also distinguished both layers. He regarded these war maps as ‘an important fusion type of map.’ In his eyes, ‘the illustration provided the dynamic quality and sense of vigour, and an aspect of the visual appeal,’ but could ‘throw light on the topography of the battle.’3 Moreover, scholars regularly emphasize the primacy of one of the layers over the other. Geographers such as Sébastien Caquard and William Cartwright, for instance, implicitly gave prominence to the topographical layer by stating that cartographers have used the stories ‘to f ill in the blanks of their maps.’4 Conversely, the art historian Christi M. Klinkert highlighted the narrative layer of story maps when arguing that the scenes have been represented against a topographical background.5 The basic assumption of this chapter is not the primacy of one of these layers, but rather that they are inextricably entangled. In this sense, I follow Cornelis Koeman’s view that the ‘character’ of those news maps is simultaneously pictorial and topographical.6 I go a step further, however, by arguing that both parts or layers of story maps have been conceived and designed together and hence resulted from a blending of iconographic, cartographic, literary, and ornamental methods, practices and traditions. Narratives were not just added to f ill the so-called white lies of the maps, and topographical layers functioned as more than a background decor for the visualization of stories. Unfortunately, the multifacetedness of story maps has restrained scholars from interpreting their content and meaning more profoundly. According to Christi M. Klinkert, ‘many scholars may say something about news prints [and maps], but […] almost nobody dares to exploit their multifacetedness fully, by approaching them from various 1 Harvey, The History of Topographical Maps, pp. 169-170; Koeman, ‘Krijgsgeschiedkundige kaarten’, p. 22; Van den Heuvel, Papiere Bolwercken, p. 66. 2 Klinkert, Nassau in het nieuws, p. 249. 3 Black, Maps of War, p. 38. 4 Caquard and Cartwright, ‘Narrative Cartography’, p. 102. 5 Klinkert, Nassau in het nieuws, p. 249. 6 Koeman, ‘Krijgskundige kaarten’, p. 221.

59

60

Br am Vannieuwenhuyze

disciplinary angles.’7 Perhaps scholars have been daunted by the fact that ‘little is known about the practice of seventeenth-century news cartographers, especially in this early period.’8 Too often, we only have the documents themselves at our disposal. Luckily, many of these early modern story maps are much more than ‘mute witnesses’, to use the term coined by the cultural historian Peter Burke.9 It is often suggested that maps ‘talk’ to us, that they tell us a story. Recently, for instance, the metaphor was deployed as the title for the exhibition Talking Maps, organized by the Bodleian Library in Oxford from 5 July 2019 to 8 March 2020. In the introduction of the accompanying book, curators Jerry Brotton and Nick Millea argued that maps ‘can function very much like a story’ and offer ‘a graphic story about what they represent,’ but stressed at the same time that ‘it is up to those who see and use the map to give it credence by agreeing to accept what it shows.’10 They rightly moved the agency to the map user. But how can a map user understand the narrative of a story map? In contrast to many old images for which it is difficult to ‘translate their testimony in words,’11 story maps are often accompanied by pieces of texts that partly explain or help interpret their content. According to Burke, the metaphor of ‘reading’ helps to discern and interpret the visual narrative of an image or a map.12 This certainly does not mean that it would be sufficient to simply read the different pieces of text – the title, legend, index, address, place names, etc. – on or around a map in order to understand the story the map-maker wanted to tell and map users of the time understood. Compare it to reading a book; it is impossible to catch the ideas, visions, thoughts, and conclusions only by browsing through the pages and reading the title, colophon, blurb, and table of contents. Anyone who really wants to plumb the depths of the argument must gain insight into the composition of the work and read the chapters, paragraphs, sentences, and words attentively. Similarly, looking at a map and reading its texts leaves a general impression of its content and composition and might be sufficient for a whole range of consumers, e.g. when it comes to deciding whether to buy or exhibit or not. Yet, it will definitely not suffice for those map ‘readers’ who want to properly understand and interpret the discourse and meaning of the entire document. Map historians therefore need to employ a comprehensive toolbox and to follow a methodological path to identify the narrative conventions of the visual discourse. 7 Klinkert, Nassau in het nieuws, p. 12 (my translation). 8 Helmers, ‘Cartography, War Correspondence and News Publishing’, p. 354; see also Van Luijk, ‘Maps of Battles’, p. 211. 9 Burke, Eyewitnessing, p. 14. 10 Brotton & Millea, Talking Maps, p. 10. 11 Burke, Eyewitnessing, p. 14. 12 Burke, Eyewitnessing, pp. 143-144; see also Lee and Pérez-Simon, ‘Relations texte/image’, p. 294.

Entangled Maps 

In this chapter, I will argue that, firstly, a meticulous and multidisciplinary analysis of story maps is crucial for discovering and interpreting the numerous – and sometimes ‘hidden’ – narratives and storylines they present. Secondly, it is necessary to distance oneself from the documents and to locate them into the broader production and consumption contexts in which they were created and used. In the following paragraphs, I attempt to interpret and contextualize two maps presenting events and stories that happened in Flanders, one of the former counties of the Southern Low Countries. Both were produced and consumed during the Eighty Years’ War, more precisely in the decade before the Twelve Year’s Truce (1609-1621) permitted the ‘development of a stable news market’ in the Low Countries.13

The siege of Ypres in 1383, mapped and imagined by Guillaume du Tielt around 161014 At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Flemish engraver Guillaume du Tielt produced a bird’s-eye view of the 1383 siege of the Flemish city of Ypres, situated in present-day Belgium (Figure 11).15 The siege was one of the innumerable military engagements of the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453), an interminable struggle for the French crown between the royal houses of Valois and Plantagenet. In the last quarter of the fourteenth century, the conflict between the pro-French count of Flanders and the city of Ghent, which attempted to forge an alliance with the English, reached new heights.16 Since Ypres had submitted to the authority of the count, it was besieged by the urban militias of Ghent and by English troops in 1383.17 The besiegers fled when the news spread that a French relief force was approaching. The inhabitants of Ypres, however, attributed their resistance to Our Lady of the Tuine,18 who subsequently became the city’s patron saint. The following year, an annual civic festival, the so-called Tuindag, was established to commemorate the lifting of the siege. Nevertheless, the blockade had had a devastating impact on Ypres: the trade embargo on English wool spelled the end of the local cloth industry 13 Helmers, ‘Cartography, War Correspondence and News Publishing’, p. 351. 14 This paragraph summarizes and deepens the results and statements presented in Vannieuwenhuyze, ‘Reading History Maps’. 15 Ypres, Municipal Museum, cat. SM 3185. For biographical notes on Guillaume du Tielt, see Vandenpeereboom, Guillaume du Tielt and Gyselen, ‘De Ieperse graveur’, pp. 284-285. 16 Trio and Simons, ‘Achtergronden’, pp. 107-110; Verbruggen, Geweld in Vlaanderen, pp. 57-58. 17 Trio and Simons, ‘Achtergronden’, pp. 110-114; Mus, ‘Het beleg van Ieper’. 18 The Middle Dutch word tuine originally meant an enclosure; the word in fact referred to the wooden breastwork that once demarcated the farmyards and gardens of Ypres; see Mus, ‘Het beleg van Ieper’, p. 33.

61

62

Br am Vannieuwenhuyze

Figure 11: The bird’s-eye view of the besieged city of Ypres by Guillaume du Tielt, about 1610 (Ypres, Yper Museum, cat. SM 3185).

and the city’s outermost wall and suburbs had been razed definitively. Ypres is one of the very rare examples of a shrunken town in the medieval Low Countries. Guillaume du Tielt’s map is a history map, a cartographic genre close to the so-called history prints, which offer a visual representation of events that happened in the past. The map-maker stuffed his relatively small bird’s-eye view – its dimensions are 17.2 x 20.3 cm – with an abundance of data. According to Raleigh Ashlin Skelton, the primary aim of artists such as du Tielt was ‘not to produce well-balanced landscapes, but to give as much information as possible in a pleasing visual form.’19 The densely built city centre of Ypres, clearly circumscribed by a moated rampart, is depicted in the middle. Between the rampart and a second broad, 19 Braun & Hogenberg Civitates Orbis Terrarum, I, p. vi.

Entangled Maps 

Figure 12: The image of Our Lady of the Tuine with the chronogram and the cartouche with the bishop’s crosier and two crossed lances (Ypres, Yper Museum, cat. SM 3185 – Bram Vannieuwenhuyze).

double moat we notice a chaotic accumulation of access roads, ribbon development, camps, fires, offensive and defensive army movements, windmills, ordnance, trees, fields, etc. On the edges of the engraving, du Tielt devoted some space to the surrounding countryside, additional troop movements, a legend at the bottom, and two cartouches at the top. The piece of text to the right of the image of Our Lady encodes the year of the siege through a chronogram and alludes to the protection of the Virgin and Child. In addition, it also evokes the loyalty and bravery of the citizens: ‘O citizens loyal to the prince, O, fight bravely. Lo, from above Mother and Child stretch out their arms to suffering Ypres.’20 The oval cartouche in the top right corner points at the unity of the city’s institutions and inhabitants: a bishop’s crosier (representing ecclesiastical power) and two crossed lances (representing military and judicial civil power) are held by two clasped hands and enclosed in the inscription Concordia Civium, ‘civil concord’ (Figure 12).21 According to the local historian Alphonse Vandenpeereboom, the engraving is interesting for its view of the old topography of both the city and its lost suburbs.22 Yet, the engraver’s primary purpose was certainly not to provide a topographically and planimetrically accurate and good-looking map. Instead, he wanted his map to tell a story: the history of the city under siege in 1383. In doing so, du Tielt offered a ‘dynamic interpretation’ of what happened in 1383, since consecutive events are portrayed simultaneously.23 Furthermore, it is interesting to evaluate how Guillaume du Tielt imagined and mapped events that happened more than 225 years earlier. My interpretation is based on the Digital Thematic Deconstruction of 20 Translation by Paul Arblaster; the original Latin phrase reads: EIâ fIDeLeIs prInCIpI CIVeIs, EIâ, pVgnate fortIter èn parens ab œthere èt gnatVs, IprIs passa tenDVnt braChIa. The capitals taken as Roman numerals add up to 1383. 21 Vanrolleghem, Ieper à la carte, p. 33. 22 Vandenpeereboom, Guillaume du Tielt, p. 30. 23 Vanrolleghem, Ieper à la carte, p. 30.

63

64

Br am Vannieuwenhuyze

the engraving, which, in short, implies the systematic analysis of a high-resolution scan of an old topographical or chorographical map, followed by its transformation into a thematically multi-layered file by using Photoshop or GIS technology.24 The analysis of the Ypres siege view demonstrates that we cannot always rely on what we see with the naked eye: while the engraving gives the visual impression of a heavily built-up city centre, the digital analysis reveals that only one third of the area within the inner city wall actually consists of buildings. It is known that many city views and maps were intentionally deformed in order to highlight particular objects and features.25 However, while the map witnesses serious geometrical deformations, the topographic accuracy of the key buildings and general spatial layout turns out to be quite high: one can easily recognize the characteristic shape of Ypres’s street pattern, traversed by a number of radials and parallel thoroughfares, and of the important buildings such as the famous cloth hall, St Martin’s Church, monastic buildings, city gates, etc. Either du Tielt was very familiar with the spatial layout of the city and capable of mapping it properly, or he produced a simplified derivative of more detailed bird’s-eye views, such as the impressive bird’s-eye view of Ypres made by Thévelin-Destrée in 1564, or those published in Guicciardini’s Descrittione di tutti i Paesi Bassi (1567) and Braun and Hogenberg’s Civitates Orbis Terrarum (1581). Simplification was not only a necessity because of the relatively small size of the engraving, but was also the logical consequence of Guillaume du Tielt’s choice to produce a story map: the engraver did not just fill the gaps with some figurative elements and narratives, but deliberately chose to ‘sacrifice’ space in order to present the complex events of 1383 that marked the city’s history. However, interpreting the story of the siege within its topographical setting turns out to be quite difficult. Indeed, ‘la narrativité, comme la description, est un défi pour l’image, qui se donne dans la synchronie.’26 Most battle pieces and maps offer a highly condensed image of acts of war, reducing the grand narrative to a limited series of smaller narratives or sequences (a few major events and actions of individuals), a technique that is often used in images in order to arrange a visual discourse.27 Just like other story map-makers, du Tielt used this technique, yet he could not avoid mixing up the different acts of war. In order to resolve this problem, he added an extensive legend below the frame of the map, with references to both the landscape and acts of war (Figure 13). It starts with the inhabitants swearing to remain united (letter 24 Vannieuwenhuyze and Vernackt, ‘The Digital Thematic Deconstruction’; Vannieuwenhuyze, ‘Reading History Maps’, pp. 300-314. The Digital Thematic Deconstruction of du Tielt’s engraving of the siege of Ypres was done by Marieke Moerman, MA student at Ghent University in 2009-2010. 25 Carlton, ‘The World Drawn from Nature’, p. 29. 26 Lee and Pérez-Simon, ‘Relations texte/image’, p. 293. 27 Burke, Eyewitnessing, pp. 146-147.

Entangled Maps 

Figure 13: The letters of the legend highlighted in red on the map (Ypres, Yper Museum, cat. SM 3185 – Bram Vannieuwenhuyze).

A), which certainly was not the first thing that happened in 1383, but presumably was the most important thing to emphasize. Further in the legend one can find the miracles attributed to the Virgin (letter D), as well as the victory (letter H) and bravery (letter P) of Ypres’s troops, while the acts of the enemy are associated with violence (letter G), rebellion (letter L), and their final withdrawal (letter R). The other letters are concentrated in and outside the lost suburbs, where most acts of war took place and which consequently suffered heavily from the siege in 1383. These parts of the city were definitely lost, while the city centre remained intact. Obviously, in the early seventeenth century, it remained very important to remember the tragic events and du Tielt’s map played a role in the promotion of Counter-Reform, but it was apparently less important than highlighting the importance of civil concord.

65

66

Br am Vannieuwenhuyze

Interestingly, this notion of civil concord has permeated various parts of Guillaume du Tielt’s story map. The distortion of scale is concentric (the scale is smallest in the centre of the engraving) and provokes a centripetal effect, with the heart of the city as the main eye-catcher. It is no coincidence that the letter A – the only one in the densely built city centre – has been located here. In doing so, du Tielt connected the notion of civil concord to the big central marketplace of Ypres, which not only functioned as the central meeting point for the organization of the city’s defence, but, in 1383, in 1610 and still today, was the focal point of economic, political, social and cultural life, urban power, and a symbol of the city’s identity.28 In addition, the map leaves the impression of a compact and resilient core resisting its besiegers, which can be linked to the same notion of civil concord. I therefore consider du Tielt as one of those map-makers who walked the ‘f ine line between providing an acceptable semblance of reality, and simultaneously capturing the symbolic identity of the place depicted,’ as Genevieve Carlton typified them.29 According to Carlton, their bird’s-eye views often served as an ‘aid of learning’ and can be seen as ‘mnemonic devices’. It seems, however, that du Tielt’s bird’s-eye view was not only intended for commemorative purposes, since it also propagates a contemporary political and religious message to its seventeenth-century consumers. The siege view has not been created as an isolated object and should therefore not be interpreted thus. According to Vandenpeereboom, it was part of a set of four copper plates of the Tuindag procession du Tielt was paid for in 1611-1612 by the Ypres city council.30 In 1610, these four plates were published in a book written by the city alderman Adriaan van Schrieck, an intimate of the Catholic Habsburg Archdukes Albert and Isabella, in which he attempted to establish the origins of the Tuindag.31 We may reasonably assume that it was neither van Schrieck’s, nor du Tielt’s intention to recall the disastrous consequences of the siege in 1383, but to celebrate the miraculous liberation of the city thanks to the intervention of Our Lady. In the dedication of his book to the Ypres city council, van Schrieck motivated his attempt ‘to extract the oldest and surest memorials, to add them together, and so to derive this narrative, that I present to Your Worships in the hope that others will take my example and do better, the more to help repair and add lustre to the city.’32 Presumably, he wrote the book around 1609, when the Tuindag procession – which had been abolished during the religious turmoil of the second half of the sixteenth century – was reinstituted. 28 Stabel, ‘The Market-Place’; see also several chapters in La place publique urbaine. 29 Carlton, ‘The World Drawn from Nature’, p. 22. 30 Vandenpeereboom, Guillaume du Tielt, p. 37. 31 For biographical notes on Van Schrieck, see Lambin, Beleg van Ypre, pp. xiii-xv. 32 Vandenpeereboom, Guillaume du Tielt, p. 38 (my translation).

Entangled Maps 

The reintroduction of processions, devotions, and festivities in the early seventeenth century often appealed to ‘invented traditions and open innovations.’33 Was this also the case when Adriaan van Schrieck and Guillaume du Tielt related and mapped the story of the siege? On the one hand, van Schrieck stressed ‘the obscurity of the causes of our Tuindag, which grow more and more unknown to most of the populace’; on the other hand, it seems he partly based his narrative on two maps of the city showing the causes of the Tuindag and which were shown to him by Pieter Vanden Broucke, pensionary to the council and clerk civil.34 According to Vandenpeereboom, these two maps were based on an older painting, which showed, on one side, the siege of Ypres in 1383 and, on the other, the procession in honour of Our Lady of the Tuine. The painting was said to have been produced to mark the first centenary of the liberation of Ypres, in 1483.35 Perhaps du Tielt documented his work in the same way: Anne Vanrolleghem argued that he based his depiction on ‘credible documents’ from the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries.36 Unfortunately, neither the old painting, nor these documents seem to have been preserved – very few archival documents survived the First World War in Ypres. We also lack data on the distribution and reception of both van Schrieck’s book and du Tielt’s siege view among the population of Ypres, but presumably they were both part of the promotion, organization, and experiences of the reinstituted Tuindag procession.

Matthias Quad’s news map of the ‘Flemish Campaign’37 In 1604, the north-western part of the County of Flanders was the subject of a copper engraving, briefly titled Flandria Borealis (‘Northern Flanders’) (Figure 14). The print’s dimensions are 23.2 x 34.2 cm and one of the preserved copies is part of the well-known Frederik Muller Historieplaten collection kept in the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum.38 The first phrase in the cartouche (‘Actual report of the County of Flanders, as it lays in the north-east next to Zeeland’) reinforces the impression that Flandia Borealis is nothing more than a territorial or topographical map. The German text, however, continues by identifying the region as ‘the place where the 33 Arblaster, ‘The Southern Netherlands Connection’, p. 125. 34 Vandenpeereboom, Guillaume du Tielt, p. 38 (my translation). 35 Vandenpeereboom, Ypriana, p. 89. 36 Vanrolleghem, Ieper à la carte, p. 32. 37 This paragraph builds on the analysis presented in Dillen and Vannieuwenhuyze, ‘Bedrieglijke eenvoud’. 38 Amsterdam Rijksmuseum, RP-P-OB-78.784-308; see also Franz Hogenberg – Abraham Hogenberg, nr. 372.

67

68

Br am Vannieuwenhuyze

Figure 14: Copper engraving entitled Flandria Borealis (Amsterdam Rijksmuseum, RP-P-OB-78.784-308).

Dutch Estates’ Army launched its first attack’ and finally points at a beigefugter Narration (‘added storytelling’) of ‘those things that happened early May in these places, in the year 1604’.39 In addition, a small piece of text written on the map informs us about one of the military episodes (‘IJzendijke taken by the Estates’ Army on May 9th’). 40 In the Rijksmuseum’s online catalogue, the engraving is attributed to the Hogenberg workshop in Cologne, which produced an impressive series of news prints on the Eighty Year’s War.41 Dirk de Vries attributes it to the engraver Matthias Quad von Kinckelbach (1557-1613), one of the many collaborators of the Hogenberg family.42 39 The original text reads: Eigentliche verzeichnus der Graefschafft Flandern, wie dieselbige uff der kanten ins NordOosten gegen Selant zu gelegen, an welchem ort die Statische Armey ihren erfsten einfall gethan, mit beigefugten Narration oder erzehlung was sich von anfang Maiens uff jeder platzen zugetragen. Im Jahr Christi 1604. 40 The original text reads: Isendijck von den Stätischen gewunnen den 9 Maij. 41 http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.442179 (accessed 18 October 2018), see also Muller, De Nederlandsche geschiedenis in platen, I, p. 54. 42 D. de Vries, ‘Cartografische beeldkroniek’, p. 101; for biographical notes on Mathias Quad, see Hildenbrand, Matthias Quad and Meurer, ‘Quad Matthias’, pp. 28-29.

Entangled Maps 

According to Peter Meurer, Quad worked in Cologne between 1587 and fall 1604, 43 which means that he presumably engraved Flandria Borealis between spring and fall 1604. 44 This story map can thus be considered as a news map. According to Ruben B. van Luijk, such a news map should be defined as ‘any map intended to inform the public about an event in the news,’ but it is perhaps more appropriate to adopt Henk van Nierop’s wider definition of ‘a plano map presenting a recent, contemporary event, provided with a title and mostly a separately printed textual explanation.’45 Just like Guillaume du Tielt’s bird’s-eye view of the Ypres siege, Flandria Borealis can theoretically be split up into a topographical and an actional layer. This is suggested by the words beigefugter Narration, which seemingly indicate that the story had been added afterwards. The map presents the northwestern part of the former County of Flanders between Assenede, Lichtervelde, Oostende, Breskens, and the North Sea coast in orthogonal projection. The representation of the county’s topography is limited to the main cities and towns, villages, creeks, rivers, canals, dikes, roads, forts, and castles. In-between, small clusters and lines of trees evoke the forest lands, while parts of the dunes alongside the coastline are also represented. Although most of these landscape objects are drawn in a simplified, abstract way, Matthias Quad tried hard to convince viewers that he had made a planimetrically accurate map. The first words of the title (Eigentliche verzeichnus) emphasize both the accuracy and the actuality of his map. Dutch map-makers similarly employed words such as warachtig (‘truthful’), nieuw (‘new’), or tegenwoordig (‘present’). 46 Inside the towns, Quad engraved a punctuated double circle, a well-known surveying symbol used to mark triangulation points. 47 Furthermore, he added a compass rose and explained how to understand the black scale bar at the bottom of the cartouche.48 Quad was very honest about his map’s geometrical distortion, especially on the upper and right sides. In the technical note (Nota) below the map, he explains in Latin that he reduced the geometrical proportions ‘outside both drawn lines’ in order to put the city and bulwarks of Ostend on the map. 49 Nonetheless, the map-maker wanted to overwhelm his map with a scientific sérieux. He displayed his 43 Einzelkarten des Matthias Quad, p. 11. 44 And not in 1605, as has been stated before, see D. de Vries, ‘Cartografische beeldkroniek’, p. 101. 45 Respectively, Van Luijk, ‘Maps of Battles’, p. 213 and Van Nierop, ‘Profijt en propaganda’, p. 74 (my translation). 46 Helmers, ‘Cartography, War Correspondence and News Publishing’, p. 359. 47 De Dainville, Le language des gégraphes, p. 221; Leenders and De Graeve, ‘A Surveying Symbol’. 48 The original text reads: Dieser strich hat die lenge einer kleiner Flamischen meilen. 49 The original text reads: Quod ea quae extra duas illas per tabulam tractas lineas posita sunt, arctiori quam proportio Geometrica poscebat, mensura sint contracta: ob id saltem ut hic infra Ostendam oppidi, illic Tsassiani propugnaculi situs indicetur. Ostenda enim tribus à propugnaculo Hardenbergensi miliaribus distat cum spacium oculare non supra quinque quadrantes complectatur.

69

70

Br am Vannieuwenhuyze

acquaintance with the cartographical jargon of the time, informed his German- and Latin-speaking public about technical issues, and hence demonstrated his capacities as a skilled and estimable map-maker.50 Possibly, Matthias Quad was worried about the fact that his map had become ‘distorted’ by the beigefugte Narration. The viewer’s eyes are immediately drawn to the bottom left, where a huge fleet lies alongside the North Sea coast and military actions are taking place. The sixteen German verses at the bottom summarize the events that happened during the first two weeks of Maurits of Nassau’s military campaign in the County of Flanders – the so-called Flemish Campaign – and highlight the importance of Ostend, a Flemish port city that was besieged by the Spanish army from 1601 onwards but which remained in Dutch hands until 1604, and of the city of Sluis.51 Yet, although the final verse states that the Beigefugte Histori ‘tells’ what happened to Sluis, it turns out to be very difficult to understand the story. Given the congested nature of the print, the storyline is very difficult to follow. Especially for us – twenty-first century viewers who are unfamiliar with the events of the time – it is almost impossible to read the map and understand what happened in and around Sluis in 1604. But what about the seventeenth-century consumers? The languages used and its publication in Cologne suggest that the print was intended for a German-speaking and educated public.52 Did they know what happened in the Flemish coastal plain, hundreds of kilometres to the west? Were they able to ‘read’ the Beigefugte Histori; in other words, to discern the narrative from the news map and to capture the storyline? One can, of course, assume that they followed the news of Maurits’s military campaigns through other media, such as the Belägerung von Ostende, an anonymous German journal that tells the story of the siege of Ostend until January 1604, published that same year (Figure 15).53 A comparison between the mapped story and textual accounts of the Flemish Campaign shows that, inevitably, Matthias Quad has made choices.54 Given the limited surface of his print and the 50 Dillen and Vannieuwenhuyze, ‘Bedrieglijke eenvoud’, pp. 529-532. 51 The original text reads: Weil mit dem Leger vor Ostend Die Staten spürten gar kein end: Habn sie diss Jahr ein grosse Macht An Schiff un volck zusamen bracht. // Mit denn sie thaten wanderen; Hin nach die Grafschafft Flanderen, Bei dem Casant sie nemen ein Ettlich der kleinen Schantzen gschwin. // Auch Isendijck das starcke nest, Das Hasengat dies schantze vest, (Sonst auch das new Castell genant) Bekomen sie in ihre hant. // Bei Schluis des Stätlin Middelburch Gewinnen sie, sampt Ardenburch. Was sonst mit Sluis sich zugetragen, wirdt beigefugte Histori sagen. 52 According to Klinkert, the German-speaking, educated Protestants were the main audience of Hogenberg’s news prints, although it also seems that the public of consumers was quite large (Klinkert, Nassau in het nieuws, p. 61). 53 Belägerung von Ostende. 54 After the Twelve Years’ Truce was concluded in 1609, various historiographical works offered a more comprehensive account of what happened between 1601 and 1604 and put the events in the broader context

Entangled Maps 

Figure 15: Title page of the Belägerung von Ostende, an anonymous German journal of the siege of Ostend until January 1604 (Amsterdam, Allard Pierson, OTM: OF 63-992 (3)).

space devoted to topographical data, he had to select those parts of the story that he wanted to present to his viewers. Just like Guillaume du Tielt, he cut the ‘grand narrative’ into sequences. These are all situated in the area around Sluis, which, consequently, causes twisted storylines and ‘pictorial contamination’.55 Quad also added some fantasy, e.g. by evoking the burning of the village of Maldegem, far away from the other military events. Maldegem does not seem to have played any role in of the Dutch Revolt, see for instance Van Meteren, Historie, pp. 508-510 and Baudartius van Deynse, De Nassavsche oorloghen, fol. 783. Today, we have some recent scientif ic monographs and articles at our disposal, see in particular De val van het Nieuwe Troje; Oostende verloren, Sluis gewonnen; De Vries, ‘De Vlaamse veldtocht van 1604’. 55 Some soldiers, cavaliers, and canons, for instance, are acting in different parts of the map. With regard to pictorial contamination, see Klinkert, Nassau in het nieuws, p. 61.

71

72

Br am Vannieuwenhuyze

the whole story, so Quad was probably trying to increase the dramatic nature of his map. Indeed, according to Cornelis Koeman, ‘horryfying details’ such as gigantic fires were a recurring motive on military news maps.56 Quad also did not engrave the reconquest of Middelburg by the Spanish and clearly exaggerated the fleet alongside the coast, probably to demonstrate his sympathy for Maurits’s campaign. It is reasonable to state that, while producing his news map, Matthias Quad sought a balance between objectivity and subjectivity, between the search for cartographic accuracy and using narrative techniques. He combined various devices and techniques: geodata and cartographic symbols, figurative elements, German verses and a scientific discourse. In short, he wanted to be both a good map-maker and a good storyteller. From this perspective, it is unreasonable to distinguish and dissociate the topographical from the actional layer, since both ‘parts’ of the map were created simultaneously and are intensely intertwined. Unfortunately, Quad did not fully achieve his goal, since Flandria Borealis makes a rather sloppy impression. An anonymous nineteenth-century biographer praised Quad’s diligence and the print’s Geschichtlichkeit, but deplored its aesthetic qualities.57 Frederik Muller qualified the map as très curieuse (‘very strange’) and très rare (‘very rare’), without actually saying that he did not really like it.58 Was Quad too ambitious? Or perhaps he was not the skilled map-maker, artist, and storyteller that he believed he was? Or did the intertwining of story and cartography, of words and image, of scientific sérieux and imagination lead to an unattractive product? It seems, however, that another important factor determined the general shape and impression of Flandria Borealis: the very short production process. According to Helmer Helmers, ‘accurate, up-to-date maps simply were the most sensational form of war news available, and the quickest ones to appear were sure to be distributed widely.’59 The other side of the coin is that map-makers barely had time to get informed about recent events and to produce cartographic products of high quality. As argued above, Matthias Quad must have engraved his news map between the middle of May and fall 1604. Moreover, he was working in Cologne, far away from the mapped region and from Maurits’s Flemish Campaign. Of course, Quad may have visited the coastal region of Flanders before he settled in Cologne, but there is no evidence that he undertook fieldwork for his 1604 news map or that he joined Maurits’s troops in order to get the latest news and put it on his map. It is known that the Hogenberg workshop was provided with regular oral, textual, and graphical information by news agents, correspondents, artists, engineers, and 56 Koeman, ‘Krijgskundige kaarten’, p. 237. 57 Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, XXVII, p. 2. 58 Muller, Topographie de l’Europe, p. 71. 59 Helmers, ‘Cartography, War Correspondence and News Publishing’, p. 359.

Entangled Maps 

73

Figure 16: Abraham Hogenberg’s earlier bird’s-eye view of Sluis, with the first episodes of the siege in May 1604 (Leiden University Libraries, Special Collections, COLLBN Port 37 N 72).

map-makers.60 Matthias Quad may have read and copied episodes of the story of the Flemish Campaign in journals like Belägerung von Ostende and combined them with oral or other written information that had reached the workshop in spring or summer 1604. In addition, like many of his peers, he certainly made use of existing maps and prints. Interestingly, Abraham Hogenberg had already published a bird’s-eye view of Sluis with the first episodes of the siege in May 1604 (Figure 16).61 We may reasonably assume that Quad aimed to provide an update and a retrospective synthesis of the events, because he inserted the siege of Sluis in a wider geographical and chronological frame. Broadening the scope, however, implied that he had to present the topography and the story in a more abstract 60 Klinkert, Nassau in het nieuws, p. 60. 61 Leiden University Libraries, Special Collections, COLLBN Port 37 N 72; see also De Vries, ‘Cartografische beeldkroniek’, p. 79.

74

Br am Vannieuwenhuyze

Figure 17: Floris Balthasarsz van Berckenrode’s news map of Maurits’ Flemish Campaign, August 1604 (Amsterdam Rijksmuseum, RP-P-OB-80.656).

– clumsy? – way and that he was forced to reduce the scale of his map, in accordance with the standard format of Hogenberg’s news prints. In 2004, the exhibition Oostende verloren, Sluis gewonnen 1604 (‘Ostend lost, Sluis won 1604’) commemorated the four hundredth anniversary of both sieges by presenting no less than twelve news prints and maps of the Flemish Campaign to the public.62 Clearly, the Hogenberg atelier competed against map-makers and editors such as Pieter van den Keere, Floris Balthasarsz van Berckenrode, Broer Jansz, Georg Keller, and Jacques Horenbault. Especially Balthasarsz’s work must have been very inspiring, since he had joined Maurits’s army during the Flemish Campaign, taking notes of his experiences and making preparatory sketches. Back home in 62 De Vries, ‘Cartografische beeldkroniek’, pp. 79-109.

Entangled Maps 

Delft, in the County of Holland, he published a news map and furnished it with a title, an extensive textual explanation, sixteen Latin verses written by Grotius, and a legend that helps to discern some of the storylines (Figure 17).63 The last sequence shows the defeat of the enemy and is dated 26 May 1604. In the explanatory text, the Spanish attack on Maurits’s camp, on 7 August, is also evoked, which suggests that the document was produced shortly afterwards. According to De Vries, an older state of the map did exist,64 and it is also likely that Balthasarsz was inspired by Pieter van den Keere’s large news map of Maurits’s travels in Flanders in April 1604, or by his own map of Maurits’s earlier Flemish journey in 1600.65 Undoubtedly, Matthias Quad’s Flandria Borealis was hugely inspired by Floris Balthasarsz’s news map of the Flemish Campaign. On the one hand, he plagiarized the composition scheme and various details of Balthasarsz’s map; on the other, he adjusted it to fit the format of the Hogenberg news prints. He omitted the large textual explanations, legend, and Latin verses and replaced them with a much shorter technical note and with German verses, as was common practice in the Hogenberg atelier. Above all, he literally added new cartographical and narrative data (the extensions ‘outside both drawn lines’), and was honest enough to explain the distortions that they caused. This not only means that we must push forward the production date of Quad’s map to the end of the summer or the beginning of the fall, but also that time constraints must have been higher than initially thought. We can imagine that Abraham Hogenberg, under pressure from the output of his competitors, was no longer satisfied with the earlier news map and that he asked Quad to engrave a new version with an update of the events. By extending Floris Balthasarsz’s map, he could include the city of Ostend, where the military actions would concentrate after the capitulation of Sluis (20 August 1604) and the treaty between England and Spain (25 August 1604). While his engraving perhaps leaves a clumsy impression and was certainly the product of hasty work, it clearly achieved its intended goal: to spread news.

Conclusion Based on a quick look, one might think that the main theme of du Tielt’s engraving is the commemoration of the Ypres siege and the intercession of Our Lady. Yet, in-depth analysis has led to the discovery of a somewhat hidden message. The mapped cityscape, the various pieces of text, and the ornaments directly and 63 Amsterdam Rijksmuseum, RP-P-OB-80.656. 64 De Vries, ‘Cartografische beeldkroniek’, p. 88. 65 Leiden University Libraries, Special Collections, COLLBN Port 72 N 173; see also De Vries, ‘Cartografische beeldkroniek’, p. 85; Bodel Nyenhuis, Over de Nederlandsche landmeters en kaartgraveurs, pp. 5-7.

75

76

Br am Vannieuwenhuyze

implicitly point to an underlying notion of ‘civil concord’. Other scholars have argued that devotional events, such as the Tuindag procession, indeed fostered ‘a feeling of unity in the urban population.’66 Hence, it is reasonable to think that du Tielt’s bird’s-eye view had the same purpose and should be seen in the wider socio-political context of the promotion of urban cohesion and unity. Presumably, he not only intended to produce a mnemonic device or to glorify the victors more than two hundred years later, but rather he hoped that his entanglement of the city’s topography, the history of the siege, the intercession of Our Lady, and the central idea of civil concord could promote and instigate a sense of urban cohesion among the viewers of his map in the early seventeenth century. Matthias Quad’s Flandria Borealis leaves the impression of a quite modest, even clumsy topographical map, to which some narrative elements with regard to Maurits van Nassau’s Flemish Campaign in 1604 have been added. His product, however, turns out to be more complex than initially thought. Quad must have created the news map quite rapidly, and did not hesitate to plagiarize the work of a rival map-maker. Yet, he was more than just the umpteenth copycat, since he produced a sophisticated product: he added topographical data as well as narrative elements, replaced and rearranged the different metadata, tried to prove his cartographic sérieux, and, above all, he wanted to inform his consumers about the latest events in Northern Flanders. Just like du Tielt and various other map-makers of the time, he created an entangled map, in which different layers of information are inextricably intertwined. Evidently, a quick look will never suff ice to understand and interpret such entangled documents properly. Many, if not all, early modern news maps are complex compositions and therefore demand a thorough analysis of their content as a whole. As a consequence, scholars should avoid approaching them from a single perspective, since the maps reveal their messages and meanings through the entanglement of cartography, art, history, news, and literature. In this sense, early modern story maps can rightly be considered multimedia products, and certainly not ‘by-products of official mapping practices, slightly refitted to meet the demands of commercial editors and governmental propaganda,’ as argued by Van Luijk.67 On the contrary, the highly competitive context of the emerging media revolution, which took place against the background of the devastating Eighty-Years’ War, not only pushed map-makers to work fast, but also to deploy artistic and scientific strategies to prove their skills, efficiency, adaptability, and so on. Secondly, such sophisticated story maps can only be understood, analysed, and interpreted thoroughly if they are compared and combined with related products. 66 Arlinghaus, ‘The Myth of Urban Unity’, pp. 224-225. 67 Van Luijk, ‘Maps of Battles’, p. 218.

Entangled Maps 

Most of them are part of a chain of documents and events. In other words, the maps are also entangled with other documents, like books, maps, pamphlets, or images. ‘The fields of cartography and news publishing were overlapping to a considerable extent in the early seventeenth century,’ Helmers rightly argued.68 The same can be said for the overlapping fields of cartography and painting, warfare, book editing, mathematics, navigation, etc. Although it is sometimes very clarifying to study old maps in their own right, scholars should simultaneously be aware of the complex and overlapping contexts in which the early modern news maps have been produced.

Bibliography Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, vol. XXVII (Leipzig: Historische Commission bei der Königliche Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1888). P. Arblaster, ‘The Southern Netherlands Connection: Networks of Support and Patronage’, in Catholic Communities in Protestant States: Britain and the Netherlands c.1570-1720, ed. by B.J. Kaplan, B. Moore and H. van Nierop (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009), pp. 123-138. F.-J. Arlinghaus, ‘The Myth of Urban Unity: Religion and Social Performance in Late Medieval Braunschweig’, in Cities, Texts and Social Networks, 400-1500: Experiences and Perceptions of Medieval Urban Space, ed. by C. Goodson, A.E. Lester and C. Symes (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 215-232. W. Baudartius van Deynse, De Nassavsche oorloghen (Amsterdam: By Michiel Colijn, boeck-vercooper op ‘t VVater in ‘t Huysboeck, 1616). Belägerung von Ostende. Journal oder eigentlich taglichs Register von allen ghedenckwüdigsten Sachen, handlunghen und Gheschichten (s.l.: s.n., 1604). J. Black, Maps of War. Mapping Conflict through the Centuries (London [etc.]: Conway Bloomsbury, 2016). J.T. Bodel Nyenhuis, Over de Nederlandsche Landmeters en Kaartgraveurs, Floris Balthasar en zijne drie Zonen. Onbekend aan de Levensbschrijvers (s.l.: s.n., 1846). Braun & Hogenberg Civitates Orbis Terrarum 1572-1618, ed. by R.A. Skelton, 3 vols. (Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum Ltd., 1965). J. Brotton & N. Millea, Talking Maps (Oxford: Bodleian Library – University of Oxford, 2019). P. Burke, Eyewitnessing. The Uses of Images as Historical Evidence (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001). S. Caquard and W. Cartwirght, ‘Narrative Cartography: From Mapping Stories to the Narrative of Maps and Mapping’, The Cartographic Journal, 51 (2014), 101-106.

68 Helmers, ‘Cartography, War Correspondence and News Publishing’, p. 357.

77

78

Br am Vannieuwenhuyze

G. Carlton, ‘The World Drawn from Nature: Imitation and Authority in Sixteenth-Century Cartography’, Intellectual History Review, 24 (2014) 21-37. F. De Dainville, Le langage des géographes (Paris: Éditions A. et J. Picard & Cie, 1964). De val van het Nieuwe Troje. Het beleg van Oostende 1601-1604, ed. by W. Thomas (OostendeLeuven: Davidsfonds, 2004). D. de Vries, ‘Cartografische beeldkroniek van de strijd om Sluis in 1604’, Oostende verloren, Sluis gewonnen, 1604. Een kroniek in kaarten. Catalogus bij een tentoonstelling in de Leidse Universiteitsbibliotheek van 12 augustus-12 september 2004, ed. by D. de Vries (Leiden: Universiteitsbibliotheek Leiden, 2004), pp. 71-173. D. de Vries, ‘De Vlaamse veldtocht van 1604 op de nieuwskaarten in de Zelandia Illustrata’, in Zeeland, 18 (2009), pp. 19-27. K. Dillen and B. Vannieuwenhuyze, ‘Bedrieglijke eenvoud. Flandria Borealis tussen kaart en historie, tussen afbeelding en uitbeelding’, in Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 130 (2017), 521-543. Einzelkarten des Matthias Quad (1557-1613), ed. by P. Meurer (Mönchengladbach: s.n., 1984). Franz Hogenberg – Abraham Hogenberg. Geschichtsblätter, ed. by F. Hellwig (Nördlingen: Verlag Dr. Alfons Uhl, 1983). G. Gyselen, ‘De Ieperse graveur Guillaume du Tielt opnieuw geïnventariseerd’, Biekorf. WestVlaams archief voor geschiedenis, archeologie, taal- en volkskunde, 3 (1986), pp. 284-285. P.D.A. Harvey, The History of Topographical Maps. Symbols, Pictures and Surveys (London: Thames and Hudson, 1980). H. Helmers, ‘Cartography, War Correspondence and News Publishing: The Early Career of Nicolaes van Geelkercken, 1610-1630’, in News Networks in Early Modern Europe, ed. by J. Raymond and N. Moxham (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2016), pp. 350-374. F.J. Hildenbrand, Matthias Quad und dessen Europae universalis et particularis descriptio. Eein Beitrag zur Geschichte der deutschen Kartographie (Frankenthal: Buchdruckerei von F. Albeck, 1892). C.M. Klinkert, Nassau in het nieuws. Nieuwsprenten van Maurits van Nassaus militaire ondernemingen uit de periode 1590-1600 (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 2005). C. Koeman, ‘Krijgsgeschiedkundige kaarten’, in C. Koeman. Miscellanea Cartographica. Contributions to the History of Cartography, ed. by G. Schilder and P. van der Krogt (Utrecht: Hes Publishers, 1988), pp. 221-242. J.-J. Lambin, Beleg van Ypre door de Engelschen en Gendtenaers, ten jaere 1383, en oorsprong van de feest gezegend den Tuindag (Ypres: by den gebroeders Lambin, boekdrukkers, 1833). La place publique urbaine du Moyen Âge à nos jours, ed. by L. Baudoux-Rousseau, Y. Carbonnier and Ph. Bragard (Arras: Artois Presses Université, 2007). H.-M. Lee and M. Pérez-Simon, ‘Relations texte/image’, in Les images dans l’Occident medieval, ed. by J. Baschet and P.-O. Dittmar (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), pp. 291-303. E. Leenders and J. De Graeve, ‘A Surveying Symbol Connects G. Mercator and J. van Deventer’, in Conference Proceedings Mercator Revisited. Cartography in the Age of Discovery.

Entangled Maps 

25-28 April 2012. International conference, Sint-Niklaas, Belgium, ed. by Soetkin Vervust, Bart Ooghe and Philippe De Maeyer (Zelzate: University Press, 2012), pp. 53-67. P. Meurer, ‘Quad, Matthias’, in Neue Deutsche Biographie (München: Historische Kommission bei der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2003), XXI, pp. 28-29. F. Muller, De Nederlandsche geschiedenis in platen. Beredeneerde beschrijving van Nederlandsche historieplaten, zinneprenten en historische kaarten, 4 vols. (Amsterdam: Frederik Müller, 1863-1870). F. Muller, Topographie de l’Europe. Catalogue à prix marqués de cartes anciennes et de vues de villes, XVme-XIXme siècle (Amsterdam: F. Muller & cie, 1903). O. Mus, ‘Het beleg van Ieper in 1383. De vernietiging van de buitenwijken en de gevolgen voor de binnenstad en de bewoners ervan’, in Verwoesting en wederopbouw van steden, van de middeleeuwen tot heden. 18de Internationaal Colloquium. Spa, 10-12.IX.1996. Handelingen (Brussels: Gemeentekrediet, 1999), pp. 21-50. Oostende verloren, Sluis gewonnen, 1604. Een kroniek in kaarten. Catalogus bij een tentoonstelling in de Leidse Universiteitsbibliotheek van 12 augustus-12 september 2004, ed. by D. de Vries (Leiden: Universiteitsbibliotheek Leiden, 2004). P. Stabel, ‘The Market-Place and Civic Identity in Late Medieval Flanders’, in Shaping Urban Identity in Late Medieval Europe, ed. by M. Boone and P. Stabel (Leuven and Apeldoorn: Garant, 2000), pp. 43-64. P. Trio and W. Simons, ‘Achtergronden bij het ontstaan van de tuindagprocessie : bronnen en situering’, in Ieper Tuindag. Zesde Eeuwfeest. Een bundel historische opstellen, ed. by R. Vinckier (Ypres: Stedelijke Culturele Raad Ieper, 1983), pp. 107-128. C. van den Heuvel, ‘Papiere Bolwercken’. De introductie van de Italiaanse stede- en vestingbouw in de Nederlanden (1540-1609) en het gebruik van tekeningen (Alphen aan den Rijn: Canaletto, 1991). A. Vandenpeereboom, Ypriana. Notices, études, notes et documents sur Ypres. Vol. 5. Tuindag et Notre Dame de Tuine (Bruges: Aimé de Zuttere, 1881). A. Vandenpeereboom, Guillaume du Tielt, graveur. Notes sur sa vie et sur ses œuvres (Ypres: Imprimerie de Simon Lafonteyne, 1882). R.B. van Luijk, ‘Maps of Battles, Battle of Maps: News Cartography of the Battle at Neerwinden, Flanders, 1693’, in Imago Mundi, 60 (2008), 211-220. E. Van Meteren, Historie der Nederlandscher ende haerder naburen oorlogen ende geschiedenissen, tot den iare M.VIC.XII (s’Gravenhage: By Hillebrant Iacobssz, 1614). H. van Nierop, ‘Profijt en propaganda. Nieuwsprenten en de verbeelding van het nieuws’, in Romeyn de Hooghe: de verbeelding van de late Gouden Eeuw, ed. by H. van Nierop, E. Gabrowsky, A. Janssen, H. Leeflang and G. Verhoeven (Zwolle: Waanders, 2008), pp. 66-85. B. Vannieuwenhuyze, ‘Reading History Maps: The Siege of Ypres in 1383 mapped by Guillaume du Tielt’, Quaerendo, 45 (2015), 292-321. B. Vannieuwenhuyze and E. Vernackt, ‘The Digital Thematic Deconstruction of Historic Town Views and Maps’, in Portraits of the City. Representing Urban Space in Later Medieval

79

80

Br am Vannieuwenhuyze

and Early Modern Europe, ed. by K. Lichtert, J. Dumolyn and M.P.J. Martens (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), pp. 9-31. A. Vanrolleghem, Ieper à la carte. De Ieperse vestingen in kaart gebracht (Ypres: Erfgoedcel Ieper, 2006). R. Verbruggen, Geweld in Vlaanderen. Macht en onderdrukking in de Vlaamse steden tijdens de veertiende eeuw (Bruges: Uitgeverij Marc Van de Wiele – Genootschap voor Geschiedenis, 2005).

About the Author Bram Vannieuwenhuyze studied history at Ghent University, where he obtained his PhD in 2008. His research focuses on historical cartography, town development, and urban morphology of medieval and early modern towns and landscape history. In 2015, he was named professor by special appointment of Historical Cartography at the University of Amsterdam, a chair established on behalf of the Cartographiae Historicae Cathedra Foundation. He also works as an independent scholar for Caldenberga (www.caldenberga.be).

3.

Flow Mapping through the Times The Transition from Harness to Nazi Propaganda Zef Segal Abstract One of the most commonly used types of maps today are flow maps, which simultaneously depict movement in time, place, and volume on a geographical map, as seen in GPS navigation devices. This type of map-making was invented independently during the 1830-1840s by three railway engineers from the United Kingdom, Belgium, and France. However, as this chapter argues, the growing popularity of the genre had little to do with the intent of the three pioneers. By looking at the context, in which flow maps appeared, rather than the technique used to design them, the chapter shows the importance of culture, politics, and ideology in understanding the changing meanings of flow maps during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Keywords: Flow map; atlases; nineteenth century; colonialism; English cartography; German cartography; American cartography

Introduction One of the most commonly used types of maps today are flow maps, which simultaneously depict movement in time, place, and volume on a geographical map, as seen in GPS navigation devices. Flow maps were first introduced in 1837 but only became popularized during the second quarter of the twentieth century. Based on the collection of nineteenth- and twentieth-century European and American atlases in the Library of Congress, this chapter examines the developing popularity of flow maps as a graphical method since the mid-nineteenth century. Historiography of cartography, like historiographies of other sciences and arts, focuses on the innovators and pioneers of the field. However, despite the obvious importance of these trailblazers, they rarely cause the dissemination and popularization of new techniques. I will start by describing the first cartographers, who

Segal, Z. and B. Vannieuwenhuyze, Motion in Maps, Maps in Motion: Mapping Stories and Movement through Time. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020 doi 10.5117/9789463721103_ch03

82

Zef Segal

invented flow maps independently in the United Kingdom, Belgium, and France. Yet, flow maps became something completely different from what they initially intended to be. The introduction of flow maps in commercial atlases appeared much later, in places that had little to do with those original innovators, and reflected themes that were radically different from those present in the pioneering flow maps. The history discussed here is not a linear one of scientific progress, but rather an erratic history of changing paradigms, with no single scientific milestone to mark the point of change. Furthermore, I will claim that this development was not an immediate outcome of a new technology, a new set of symbols, or even a conceptual and cultural change, but rather of a growing Western colonialism and nationalism that required new means to depict Western and national global dominance. Flow maps are cartographic depictions of movement, with an emphasis on its quantitative values. Flow line symbolization is used when the cartographer wants to show the type, volume, and density of movement between two or more places.1 The symbolization of qualitative data is most often done by varying the direction, colour, or shape of the lines in question in order to reflect differences in values. For the quantitative variety, the widths of the flow lines connecting the places are usually drawn in proportion to the quantity of movement represented. Flow maps are important because of their ability to simultaneously represent multiple variables in such a way that they are ‘integrated gently and unobtrusively that viewers are hardly aware that they are looking into a world of four or five dimensions.’2

The invention of flow maps Although ‘[f]lows – of people, products, or information – often seem to beg for cartographic portrayal,’ as stated by Mark Monmonier, this was only realized in the early nineteenth century.3 The invention of flow maps independently in the United Kingdom, Belgium, and France was part of a larger development in the history of statistical graphing, described as the beginning of modern graphics.4 However, a more relevant context was the fact that, in 1840, the three states had the longest operating railway systems in Europe.5 Consequently, the three innovators of flow maps were engineers looking for new ways to visualize the effects of modern transportation and individual movement patterns on their societies, and consequently improve the public transportation infrastructures of their states. The earliest flow maps were 1 Dent, Cartography, p. 188. 2 Tufte, The Visual Display, p. 40. 3 Monmonier, Mapping it Out, p. 189. 4 Friendly, ‘Milestones in the History of Data Visualization’, p. 37. 5 Mitchel, International Historical Statistics, p. 655-656.

Flow Mapping through the Times 

Figure 18: The first flow map ever made. Map IV ‘Shewing the relative number of passengers in different directions’, in: Henry Drury Harness, Atlas to accompany 2d report of the Railway Commissioners Ireland 1838 (1838). Published with the permission of the University College Library.

83

84

Zef Segal

created by Henry Drury Harness (1804-1883) to augment the second report to the railway commissioners of Ireland in 1837.6 Harness was an engineer in the British army, who had no previous experience or education in cartography. His flow maps show the relative number of passengers travelling in different directions throughout Ireland (Figure 18). The lines on the maps are shaded and the varying widths are proportional to the average number of weekly commuters along that route. Within ten years, Alphonse Belpaire (1807-1857) from Belgium and Charles Minard (1781- 1870) from France began publishing flow maps as well. According to all records, each of the three had no knowledge of the other two. Belpaire, an engineer with the Belgian Railways, included two flow maps in his 1847 treatise on railway expenses. These maps, much like that of Harness, showed transportation movement in Belgium in 1834, 1835, and 1844. He used these maps to make the point that railroads did not take traffic away from canals and that in the vicinity of towns there was an intense use of road carriage. Unlike the other two map-makers, who never again published maps, Minard was a French civil engineer who became a cartographer at age 64 and published 51 maps, most of which were flow maps. In 1845, he published his first flow map, in which he depicted the number of travellers from Dijon to Mulhouse. His maps covered a large array of topics ranging from human flows, and rail traffic to coal and commodities, to Napoleon’s Russian campaign of 1812. With the exception of a few maps that were published in his final years, Minard’s work tended to display the movement of people and commodities within France.7 Although the second half of the nineteenth century is defined as the golden age of statistical graphics, the innovations of Harness, Belpaire, and Minard had little effect on commercial cartographic production. Harness and Belpaire published their maps within professional engineering publications and were only rediscovered decades later by historians of cartography.8 Minard, on the other hand, was known to French officials and French statisticians but had very little contact with contemporary geographers, cartographers, and commercial editors of atlases and maps.9

From pioneers to commercial publishing A survey of 414 different commercial atlases, published between 1837 and 1939 in four of the most central production centres of cartographic material (USA, UK, 6 Robinson, ‘The 1837 Maps of Henry Drury Harness’. 7 Only fourteen of Minard’s flow maps described foreign trade or travel, of which eleven were produced between 1861 and 1869. 8 Robinson, ‘The 1837 Maps of Henry Drury Harness’. 9 Robinson, ‘The Thematic Maps of Charles Joseph Minard’, p. 96; Rendgen, The Minard System, pp. 26-28.

85

Flow Mapping through the Times 

Diagram 1: A graph showing the percentage of commercial atlases published between 1837 and 1939 that contain flow maps. Source: Atlas collection at the Library of Congress. 35 33 30

25

20

15

14

10

8 5

5

0

0

0

1839-1850

0 1850-1880 Germany

0 1881-1919 Britain

1920-1939 USA

Germany, and France), shows that the popularization of flow maps was not directly related to the early pioneers.10 Diagram 1 shows the percentage of commercial atlases published between 1837 and 1939 that contained flow maps. The graphs distinguish between four historical periods, and three places of atlas production: Germany; the UK; and the USA. France is not included in this graph since none of the French atlases at the Library of Congress had any flow maps. Minard’s influence on French cartography was limited to the realm of French public services and did not spread further to commercial cartography. In 1879, the newly established French Bureau of Statistical Graphics, which was established under the Ministry of Public Works, began publishing an annual series of statistical atlases that expressed graphically the flow of passenger travel as well as freight. The Album de Statistique Graphique was 10 The survey included 156 American atlases, 121 British atlases, 106 German atlases, and 31 French atlases. All are kept in the Geography and Map division at the Library of Congress. New editions of each atlas were surveyed as well but are not added to the atlas total.

86

Zef Segal

published between 1879 and 1897 and included many flow maps, with the proposed intention of supporting the planning, development, and administration of public works. In 1897, the French Bureau of Statistical Graphics was dissolved and the series was discontinued due to the high costs of production;11 its maps and their relative themes were not reflected in contemporary commercial atlases. While the French Bureau of Statistical Graphics was interested in visualizing aggregated individual statistics on a national scale, commercial atlases were much more focused on global movement, as will be described further on. The first flow maps in commercial atlases appeared in the third quarter of the nineteenth century, but only in German atlases. Between 1851 and 1880, eight per cent of German atlases included in the survey displayed a flow map. Its appearance in German atlases was a continuation of the development of thematic mapping in Germany. Since the publication of Heinrich Berghaus’ Physikalischer Atlas in 1845, which did not include flow maps, German cartographers attempted to visualize cartographically various physical and human aspects of the earth that had not been represented previously. The inclusion of flow maps that depict global movement was a direct outcome of the ethos of German thematic mapping. Accordingly, the first flow maps did not refer to any of the three pioneers of flow mapping; instead, they all referred to previous work done on physical, meteorological, and commercial thematic cartography in German atlases. British atlas publishers introduced flow maps from 1891 onwards, yet the low number of atlases that included flow maps (five per cent) reflects a limited popularity among publishers. This applies even more in the case of American atlases that generally refrained from representing motion in their maps, and preferred to depict static places and locations. Between the two world wars, these percentages grew to over 30 per cent of all new British and German atlases as well as fourteen per cent of all American atlases. This growth seems ill-placed. It did not reflect the innovation itself, which had happened almost 80 years earlier, nor was it connected to any new print technology or graphical innovation. In fact, the first half of the twentieth century is even referred to as the ‘dark ages’ in terms of introductions of new methods in statistical graphing and thematic cartography.12 However, as Michael Friendly claims, this was a time of dormancy, application, and popularization, rather than new inventions. Statistical graphics during this period became both mainstream and standard use in public and private sectors of society; commercial atlases were affected by this change. The next sections investigate the themes and the visual appearances of published flow maps in order to have a clearer understanding of the changes in popularity. 11 Faure, ‘France’, p. 295. 12 Friendly and Denis, ‘The Early Origins’.

Flow Mapping through the Times 

Early flow maps (1850-1880) and physical geography The earliest examples of flow lines in German atlases were very different in content and style from the pioneering flow maps. They were not even flow maps per se, since the depicted flows were not the sole focus of the maps. Unlike the originals, these maps rarely showed inland movement, nor did they focus on a specific national territory. Flow lines were not a tool to solve state-centric problems, as they were for Harness, Belpaire, and Minard, but a graphical way to depict growing global trade and its various modes of trans-oceanic transportation as well as understanding the emerging globalization. The mapping of flow maps in German atlases followed the steps of Von Humboldt, who saw geography as a natural science addressing itself to the whole globe.13 One of the first examples appears in the second map of Meyer’s Hand-Atlas (1867).14 A map entitled Erdkarte (‘Map of the Earth’) emphasizes postal ship routes and the colonial division of the world and uses a unique graphical technique in order to describe the routes of ships, as well as the duration of travel time and frequency of journeys. Much like other maps of the mid-nineteenth century, the map’s prominent symbol is that of natural motion, dotted white lines, which signifies ocean currents, and sporadic black arrows that describe their direction. However, only ship routes are drawn as multivariate lines. Two types of black lines are used to distinguish between routes leading from Europe to routes leading to Europe, dots above the lines define the frequency of the ships along this course (monthly, fortnightly, or weekly), and numbers describe the length of travel in days. Although the graphic is simple and still relies on verbal notation, it provides information about the direction, frequency, duration in travel time as well as length in distance travelled. The purpose of the map is to reflect the multiplicity and complexity of trans-oceanic traffic. A similar, but more advanced map entitled Allgemeine Welt-Karte (‘General Chart of the World’), was drawn by Hermann Berghaus in 1863 and published by Perthes Publishing in German and in English (Figure 19).15 This map, in its various editions, depicts telegraphs, submarine cables, and railway lines, all of which are drawn as lines with no other quantitative value attached. However, oceanic currents and steam ship routes are drawn as multivariate lines indicating direction, route, and the magnitude of the movement. Four different types of currents are depicted: Equatorial currents; Equatorial counter currents; periodical currents; and Polar currents. The currents include arrows indicating their direction and numbers indicating their mean 13 Wardenga, ‘German Geographic Thought’, p. 137. 14 Meyer, Meyers Hand-Atlas. 15 Berghaus, Allgemeine Welt-Karte.

87

88

Zef Segal

Figure 19: The South Atlantic Ocean segment of the ‘Chart of the world’ by Heinrich Berghaus, published by Perthes Publishing (1879). Published with the permission of the Library of Congress.

Flow Mapping through the Times 

velocity. Steam ship routes are identified by their national flags (sixteen different nationalities indicated by colour), principal companies (56 different companies indicated by initials), as well as their frequency (monthly, fortnightly, weekly, and bi-weekly), and direction, visualized by shape. Numbers above the depicted lines describe distances in nautical miles and days of travel. The resulting image is that of a flow map since the multiplicity of lines and the abundance of data reflects the amount of transport along oceanic routes. Despite the tremendous achievement of Berghaus’ map, its influence on atlas production was limited, as evinced by the miniscule number of atlases that included similar types of maps.

The turn of the century (1880-1914) and economic geography In contrast to the German school of cartography, which related global trade to the physical world and natural sciences, the British interest in global trade was more nationalistic and economically oriented. British flow maps were introduced as part of the late nineteenth-century emergence of economic geography in the academy as well as in school education, which was a consequence of imperial British commerce, a global trading system and the system of free trade.16 British economic geographers believed that trade was above all a geographical phenomenon, and that Britain was at its centre.17 Accordingly, the first British atlases to simultaneously depict time, space, and movement were the Atlas of Commercial Geography (1889) by John Bartholomew and the Atlas of Commercial Geography (1892) by W.A.K. Johnston, both published almost simultaneously as the first textbook on economic geography, George Chisholm’s A Handbook of Commercial Geography (1889). Bartholomew and Johnston were two of the most prominent atlas publishers in late nineteenth-century Britain, but their only atlases that included these types of maps were atlases of commercial geography. These atlases had no flow maps, but utilized a different graphical style, developed a few years earlier, called isochrone maps.18 Unlike flow maps, which focus on specific routes, an isochrone map depicts areas of equal travel time from a specific point. The thirteenth map of the Bartholomew atlas and the first map of the Johnston atlas depict the earth’s surface as coloured regions, identifying areas of equal travel from London. The map in Johnston’s atlas shows railways, caravan routes, steamer tracks, sailing ship tracks, and telegraphs, but only those related to routes leading to or from London. While German flow-maps were interested in the nature of global trade in general, and as such, usually centred 16 Barnes, ‘In the Beginning was Economic Geography’. 17 Barnes, ‘Inventing Anglo-American Economic Geography’, p. 15 18 Galton, ‘On the Construction of Isochronic Passage-Charts’.

89

90

Zef Segal

its maps on the Atlantic Ocean, British flow maps were far more interested in the characteristics of British trade. By the first decade of the twentieth century, the interest in commercial cartography made trade flows into a significant element in specialized atlases in Germany as well as in Britain. The first map of the Handels Atlas zur Verkehrs und Wirtschaftsgeographie (1902) is titled Weltverkehr, Kolonien und Handelsflotten (‘World Traffic, Colonies, and Merchant Fleets’).19 It depicts the earth as divided among eleven colonial powers and connected through roads, railway lines, rivers, and ship routes, in that order of significance. All routes are defined as lines of various kinds, but the important routes of steam ships are depicted as stripes whose widths indicate the frequency of traffic along that route. The distance in travel time is written inside the relevant stripe. Unlike mid-nineteenth-century German maps, physical features, such as ocean currents and winds, are ignored. The shift from physical geography to economic geography transformed global trade into a central force without any relation to natural phenomena. Despite the change in content, German maps were not nationalistic like the British maps. The 1871 unification of Germany did not initially alter the decentralized nature of German politics, nor did it hinder the independence of German publishing houses, which operated from many small towns and cities. As a result, its influence on German atlas production was underwhelming in the first few decades. Accordingly, the centre of the maps is the Atlantic Ocean and the flows have no national colours; they are all coloured with a similar tone of pink. In contrast, British flow maps remained nationalistic in style and content. The Atlas of the World’s Commerce (1907) includes two flow maps, and an isochrone map centred on London.20 Although all three maps show the entire world, their primary focus is Britain. The editor, John Bartholomew pronounces his intention in the preface of his atlas: Commerce leads the way, and in this new age, it has come to be realized that commerce is the real basis of our modern material civilization, and that the nations, which maintain commercial supremacy, will also be assured of political supremacy. National competition for the world’s trade must every year become keener, and in such competition, a thorough appreciation of the whole economic situation will be of primary importance.21

The first flow map (Figure 20) is entitled ‘Commercial Highways of the World’ and depicts railway, telegraph, rivers, and steamship routes. Of these principal highways 19 Scobel, Handels-Atlas, pp. 2-3. 20 Bartholomew, Atlas of the World’s Commerce. 21 Bartholomew, Atlas of the World’s Commerce, Preface,

Flow Mapping through the Times 

Figure 20: ‘The Commercial Highways of the World’, in: J.G. Bartholomew, Atlas of the World’s Commerce (London: G. Newnes, 1907). Published with the permission of the Library of Congress.

on land and sea, only steamship routes are depicted in varying widths. However, unlike Drury, Belpaire, and Harness, it was not the intention to draw the width to scale. The map key states that ‘the routes with the greatest traffic are indicated by thicker lines,’ but Bartholomew never clarifies the meaning of ‘greater traffic’ in his thorough introduction or in a footnote. In this map, wider and narrower lines are not exact representations of quantitative differences but rather visual means to emphasize variance. The second flow map in the Atlas of the World’s Commerce depicts telegraphic communication. Unlike the previous map that uses width to indicate ‘greater traffic’, this map indicates traffic by the number of cables connecting two points on the map. For example, five British cables and three foreign cables connect south Britain to Nova Scotia, while only one foreign cable connects south Britain to the Azores. Graphically, the map itself is extremely simple. There are only five map symbols in the map key:

91

92

Zef Segal

three types of lines signifying British cables, foreign cables and land telegraphs, and two colours of the earth’s territories, ‘countries with telegraphic communication’ and ‘regions without telegraphic communication’. Both distinctions, created by the map symbols, reflect Bartholomew’s imperialistic agenda. The distinction between the two primary types of cables follows a nationalistic tendency of the map-maker, which distinguishes between us (Britain) and them (foreign nations). The territorial distinction between developed ‘countries’ and undeveloped ‘regions’ divides the world between countries that could not be colonialized and regions that are available for conquest. In short, it was a visual manifestation of Bartholomew’s preface.

Interwar maps: Geopolitical cartography Atlas production slowed to a halt during the First World War and was only revived in the mid-1920s. In British and German atlases published subsequently, flow maps appeared more frequently than before, and their colonial agenda was much more apparent than in previous years. In addition, in the first quarter of the twentieth century, there was a transition in the geographical paradigm: commercial geography changed the emphasis from race and climate to prioritizing trade and commerce. Consequently, the discourse of civilization described the world as divided according to an evolutionary logic of stages of human development.22 Accordingly, many of the flow maps mutually depicted flows (primarily European) and territorial hierarchy. Movement and flows became the signifiers of cultural and scientific progress, while lack of movement was a sign of retardation. For example, Putnam’s Economic Atlas (1925) includes a flow map entitled ‘Means of Transport and Communication’ (Figure 21).23 In this map, the colours of the regions of the world are based on the primary means of transport in that region. The colours range from yellow, used for motorized transport, to pink, indicating dog or reindeer sledges and canoe transport. Three different orange tones mark methods such as horses and oxen. The gradation in the colour scheme (yellow-orange-pink) establishes a hierarchy of civilizations. Simultaneously, the map depicts primary transport routes, which include railway lines, inland waterways, and principal channels of maritime trade. The latter are symbolized with blue stripes whose widths indicate the relative value of marine trade. Unlike the indistinct widths in Bartholomew’s 1907 map, George Philip, the editor of the Putnam’s Economic Atlas, clearly defines the widths. However, most stripes are identical in width and the variation that exists is an overt statement of his European and British bias. The stripes are widest around 22 Domosh, ‘Geoeconomic Imaginations’, pp. 947-948. 23 Philip, Putnam’s Economic Atlas, pp. 3-4.

Flow Mapping through the Times 

Figure 21: ‘Means of Transport and Communication’ in George Philip, Putnam’s Economic Atlas (London: G. Philip, 1925). Published with the permission of the Library of Congress.

Europe and become narrower as the route moves further away. In addition, Britain is depicted as the only hub connecting Europe and North America. Similar maps appear in other British atlases, and although the phraseology is different, the style and content of the various maps remain the same. For example, the fifth map of Cassell’s New Atlas (1932) entitled ‘The World: Commercial Development’ follows a similar style as it depicts principal steamship routes with varying widths together with territories whose varying colours are based on their commercial development.24 Although the categorization of the various lands is based on density of population, the title of each category reflects its level of sophistication: ‘Highly developed manufacturing districts’; ‘Highly developed agricultural and plantation regions’; ‘Other industrial and agricultural regions’; ‘Productive agricultural or pastoral regions, less highly developed’; ‘Less productive or under-developed pastoral, forest, or agricultural regions’; and ‘Other under-developed regions’. Instead of referring to 24 Philip, Cassell’s New Atlas.

93

94

Zef Segal

the actual data, density of population, the titles provide a value judgement for each region. The map is also surrounded by comparative diagrams showing the principal states of the world in order of population and area. These diagrams emphasize the magnitudes of empires, most importantly that of Great Britain. German flow maps followed the British example and began emphasizing German flows, rather than global flows. The Westermanns Welt Atlas (1926), for example, includes a map entitled Was die verschiedenen Teile der Erde dem Weltmarkte liefern (‘What the different parts of the world deliver to the world market’).25 This map shows the distribution of manufactured commodities around the world and in greater detail the production of major European states. The map, except for the letters marking the various commodities, is a reproduction of the opening map of the previously discussed Handels Atlas (1902). However, the reproduction includes a number of significant changes, reflecting the new agenda of German flow maps. The centre of the map is shifted eastward in order to focus on Germany, rather than the customary centre of global trade in the Atlantic Ocean. In addition, the map distinguishes between foreign ship routes, coloured light purple, and German ship routes, coloured with dark purple. Despite its lengthy key, this map, unlike the older map, does not explain the various widths. Much like the British maps, this map is a representation of European and German dominance, rather than reflecting actual quantities of trade. Germany had now become the centre of the frame of German flow maps, and German flows were the most important element of these maps. In the Lange Diercke Schulatlas (1932), the map depicting global trade only mentions ‘Germany’s world trade and world traffic.’.26 It marks German ships and cables, centres of production of imported goods, and trade flows between Germany and the rest of the world. The map itself does not visually depict any cultural hierarchy, but two small inset maps on the same page provide relevant information. The first map, in the bottom left corner of the page, shows the world divided by ways of animal transportation: horses; oxen; camels; yaks; llamas; and reindeers. The only colour without any explanation is that of the ‘civilized’ world, Europe and the United States. The second map, in the bottom right corner of the page, complements the first one by dividing the world based on agricultural advancement. These two inset maps are an integral part of the flow map above them. The superiority and centrality of Germany and its flows, as visually detailed in the main map, are the direct outcomes of the sophistication and superiority of Germany’s communication and agricultural systems, as portrayed in the inset maps. 25 Liebers, Westermanns Welt Atlas, p. 108. 26 Original: ‘Deutschhands Welthandel und Weltverkehr’. Lange-Diercke Schulatlas Lange-Diercke Schulatlas Lange and Diercke, Lange-Diercke Schulatlas, pp. 46-47; see also Herders Welt und Wirtschaftsatlas, pp. 13-14 and Eggers, Deutsches Land, pp. 70-71.

Flow Mapping through the Times 

Interwar maps: Schematic cartography Gradually, flow maps became a visual rhetoric. Map-makers started to simplify the iconography of the map with fewer symbols and colours, exaggerating the widths of the flows, and most importantly excluding references to the meaning of those widths. For example, the second and third maps of the Practical Atlas of Modern Geography (1931) are rainfall and wind maps.27 Both maps have only four colours to reflect the rainfall amounts in different territories and a single symbol, a black arrow, to mark the wind trails. Although the arrows are differentiated by size and width, the symbolization is never explained or elaborated upon. Although each map has a long caption, verbally describing its content, the text only explains the seasonal weather and not the map symbology. This minimalistic cartography enabled atlas publishers to portray the world as borderless, thus facilitating the smooth transition of capital around the world, forming a new type of imperialism, commercial imperialism. The Welthandels Atlas (1927), for example, is not explicitly a colonial atlas, since its maps are extremely minimalistic and do not show political borders. The atlas only consists of maps that show global import, export, and the production of various commodities related only to Europe (Figure 22). Three maps are drawn for each commodity, one describing world production and trade flows, and two smaller inset maps focusing on North America and Europe. The various maps have only two distinct symbols, wide arrows depicting flows and circles representing centres of production. The use of colour is also limited. Land surface is not coloured, while flows and location of production are coloured red. The maps in this atlas are very scientific in their verbal methodology; each symbol is described, the sizes of circles and arrows are in direct proportion to their relative part of global trade of a specific commodity, and the sources from which the information was gathered is noted. However, flows are now the sole element of the maps. While maps in the nineteenth century show trade flows alongside winds and ocean currents, thus relating human movement to the natural world, and maps at the turn of the twentieth century show flows as another consequence of European colonialism, flows in these maps are important in themselves. The world was reducible to human traffic, most importantly European traffic. Similarly, the Deutsches Land, Deutsche Volk und die Welt (1937) includes a map entitled Völker und Kulture. Staaten, Handel und Verkehr (‘People and Cultures: States, Trade and Traffic’).28 The map itself is a typical interwar colonial flow map, which simultaneously shows the colonial division of the world, the production 27 Stamp, The Practical Atlas. 28 Eggers, Deutsches Land, pp. 70-71.

95

96

Zef Segal

Figure 22: ‘Gerste’, in: Walther Schmidt and Georg Heise, Welthandels-atlas: Produktion, Handel Und Konsum Der Wichtigsten Welthandelsgüter (Berlin: Columbus-Verlag, 1927). Published with the permission of the Library of Congress.

centres, and the major trans-oceanic ship routes with changing widths. Although Germany is in the centre of this map, it is not emphasized in any other way. However, four inset flow maps on the bottom of the same page, which follow the question Woher kommen die wichtigsten Handelsgüter, die wir einführen müssen? (‘From where do the most important goods, which we must import, come?’), construct the centrality of Germany.29 These maps show the major import routes into Germany of ten different commodities. The German territory is coloured black in an otherwise uncoloured world, the flows are coloured blue, orange, red, and light brown, and are the only elements drawn on the map besides for the borders of the continents. The world constructed by these maps has a singular centre, Germany, which is both the centre of a borderless static world and the centre of the dynamic world of flows. The use of flow maps as persuasive cartographies was not an innovation of the 1920s and 1930s. Harness, Belpaire, and, most notably, Minard repeatedly used such maps to influence their readers.30 However, the original flow maps remained rich 29 Eggers, Deutsches Land, pp. 70-71. 30 Rendgen, The Minard System, pp.24-25.

Flow Mapping through the Times 

with different types of data, and the pioneers were consistent in their motivation to use the method as an exact representation of quantitative values. Furthermore, the world seen through the early flow maps is not meant to be reducible to flows, and unlike flow maps of the 1930s, which will be discussed consequently, the resulting image was not intended to be propaganda. Schematic flow maps with a nationalistic agenda became popular in British and German atlases from the early 1930s. The Practical Atlas of Modern Geography (1931), for example, includes a schematic flow map entitled ‘The British Empire and the Main Ocean Routes of the World’.31 The map contains very few symbols and has no key to explain them. The British Empire is coloured red while the rest of the world is uncoloured and without borders, except for the borders of the continents. Black stripes of varying widths connect Britain to the world thus marking its centrality in world flows. Much like the German map of 1937, Britain is both the centre of the static world, with its dominant red colour, and the centre of the dynamic world, through its flows.

Interwar maps: Goode and American flow maps Unlike British and German cartography, American atlases tended to be far less international, and much more focused on the American continent.32 However, the growing importance of global trade and economic geography in the early twentieth century forced the USA to be placed in the global framework rather than seeing itself isolated and superior.33 Flow maps were still a rare sight in American cartography as a result of its focus on political world maps, and on place names rather than movement.34 In 1923, the chief cartographer of Rand McNally John Paul Goode, who was extremely critical of the American style of cartography, edited an atlas that was meant to change the landscape of atlas production in America.35 His atlas is innovative in many cartographic aspects, one of which is the inclusion of flow maps (Figure 23); a pioneering effort in the otherwise static worldview reflected by American published maps. The first flow map is a polar projection of the northern hemisphere showing cyclone tracks circling the Earth. The tracks are sketched as dotted lines and not stripes, but the multiplicity of these lines manifest the frequency and volume of the cyclones, thus operating as width. The next page contains a map of ocean cables, operating in a similar way. Each line signifies a submarine cable and their 31 Stamp, The Practical Atlas, p. 6. 32 Schulten, The Geographical Imagination, p. 21. 33 Domosh, ‘Geoeconomic Imaginations’, p. 948. 34 Dent, Cartography, p. 192. 35 Goode, Goode’s School Atlas, pp. 12-13; Schulten, The Geographical Imagination, p. 194.

97

98

Zef Segal

Figure 23: Three Types of Flow Maps Published in John P. Goode, Goode’s School Atlas (New York: Rand McNally, 1923). Published with the permission of the Library of Congress.

multiplicity reflects the volume of traffic. On the bottom of that same page, Goode includes a map entitled ‘The Flow of Commerce’. This map is a classic flow map, with red stripes of varying widths marking the flows, and an explanation defining the width as ‘proportional to the flow of commerce.’ Unlike contemporary European examples, these maps emphasize global trade and global flows, rather than national flows. State borders are not included or even mentioned, and the three maps are centred on the North Pole, Britain, and the Pacific Ocean, respectively. In addition, Goode deliberately avoids creating a global centre by changing map projections in each map.36 However, the influence of European map-making is still prevalent in the schematic nature of these maps. Each map has a single symbol, notating the relevant type of flow, and a single colour, marking that specific movement. The land surface is not coloured, except for a pink tint marking commercially developed lands in the map of ocean cables. Goode’s maps did not affect other American mass-market atlases, which refrained from adding flow maps. American atlases were cautious of adding innovative maps since they were wary of confusing the consumer public. Rand McNally, for instance, continued to publish the Goode’s World Atlas, but marketed it primarily 36 More on Goode’s criticism of the Mercator projection in Schulten, The Geographical Imagination, p. 192.

Flow Mapping through the Times 

for schools. The globalized worldview of Goode’s 1923 flow maps was slightly altered in a reproduction published in Rand McNally World Atlas (1935), which was also edited by Goode.37 The reproduced map shows Goode’s unique holomographic projection and the same flow routes. The map is less schematic than Goode’s map but still contains very few symbols; seven colours distinguish between regions of economic activities, small black dots mark mines, and red flows mark shipping routes. The main difference is the centre of the map. The map projection is altered in order to situate the American continent in the centre, because like British and German flow maps, American flow maps had also become nationalized.

The late 1930s and racial flow maps As we have seen, most flow maps in commercial atlases were devoted to transoceanic world trade. Even the emerging national tendencies of the early twentieth century did not change this. However, the combination between schematic flow mapping and the racial agendas of the Nazi party in Germany introduced new types of flow maps with explicit racial and nationalistic content, which had little to do with global trade. This was part of a larger process, in which the German Right became increasingly aware of the persuasive power of maps.38 Arnold Hillen Ziegfeld, one of the leading figures of the German school of suggestive cartography, stressed the importance of cartographically depicting dynamic aspects of life and movement.39 During the 1930s, this type of cartography was a tool of propaganda and among its graphical elements arrows as well as flows were used repeatedly to emphasize the dynamic nature of the German territory. These maps intentionally connect two contradicting worldviews, a world divided into discrete and isolated racial groupings and a world described by movement. This contradiction is emphasized in flow maps that show movement of races and nations. The purpose of these flow maps was not to depict a world of free movement but rather a world of growing tension. A map entitled Volk ohne Raum (‘A People without Space’) was published in Deutsches Land, Deutsche Volk und die Welt (1937). 40 The map shows the locations of Germans worldwide by red colours and their migration routes by red stripes with varying widths. The red flows are not explained and are used primarily as a rhetorical device. This map does not 37 ‘Economic Activities’, in Goode, Rand McNally World Atlas. 38 Herb, Under the Map of Germany, pp. 76 and 134. On the insignificance of suggestive cartography in the German Left, see Herb, Under the Map of Germany, pp. 152-153. 39 Ziegfeld, ‘Kartengestaltung’. 40 Eggers, Deutsches Land; see also ‘Die Erde, Verbreitung der Deutschen’ in Herders Welt und Wirtschaftsatlas.

99

100

Zef Segal

Figure 24: ‘The Races of the Modern Times’, published in: Bernhard Kumsteller, Werden und Wachsen, (Braunschweig: Westermann, 1938). Published with the permission of the Library of Congress.

distinguish between the static geography of places and the dynamic geography of flows. It is part of a political argument, mentioned in the map’s title: Germany needs to grow and its current borders are irrelevant for this growth. Flows had become a sign of struggle and contest over land. The Werden und Wachsen atlas (1938), for example, includes a number of flow maps that show racial movement. 41 The first shows ‘the races of the modern times’ and divides the world into four groups, European races, other Caucasian races, Black races, and Mongol races (Figure 24). Large brown arrows emerge from the brown European continent and spread across the world. These arrows have varying widths but are not explained, except for a side note stating ‘the passion for travel of the northern people.’ This flow map merges depictions of static territories and dynamic flows into what looks like a single organism that occupies the world. Two other maps show ‘The Northern Race and the Germans as Culture Bearers’ and ‘The Spread of the Jews in Europe’, and provide larger scale maps of movement than those we have seen previously. 42 These illustrate the historical routes of Germans within Europe and Jews into Europe, respectively. Different colours and types of arrows depict the movement in various time periods. The arrows do not have varying widths, but their depiction as wide stripes resembles that of flows 41 Kumsteller, Werden und Wachsen. 42 Original: ‘die nordische Rasse und die Germannen als Kulturträger’, and ‘Ausbreitung des Judentums in Europa’. In general, cartographers during the Nazi period turned their attention to the homeland, see Heske, ‘Political Geographers of the Past’, p. 278.

Flow Mapping through the Times 

rather than arrows, which are usually narrow lines with an arrowhead. The purpose of these maps is not to reflect the historical movement of Germans or Jews within Europe, nor is it to depict their current locations, but rather to illustrate the state of conflict between the races. The same atlas uses flow mapping and its relation to the static depiction in two different ways: the first combined flows and territories into a single brown surface, while the second showed the contradiction between flows (Jewish immigration) that supposedly infiltrate and harm the integrity of the European territory. On the one hand, flow maps had returned to the original large scale of the 1830s, focusing on states and on Europe, but, on the other hand, they had changed drastically from the scientific intent of their innovators.

Conclusion Flow maps were invented by three engineers, who sought a way to visualize and solve state-centric problems that involved personal and commercial inland traffic. However, their source of motivation and themes were not replicated in commercial atlases. In fact, flow maps only began appearing a few decades later, in response to the growing world trade and the extending European imperialism. Much like other types of late nineteenth-century maps, flow maps made the complex imperial project visible and comprehensible. The scale of these maps is much smaller than the pioneering flow maps, as they deal with the whole world, and the basic flow is always trans-oceanic traffic, which connects Europe and the world. Ongoing changes and trends in the study of geography, from physical geography to economic geography and later geopolitical geography, changed the content and context of the flow maps. Winds and ocean currents, colonial demarcations, and territorial hierarchies were added and removed as the trends shifted. Flow maps gradually became a way to emphasize specific types of movement. Instead of being a sophisticated visual tool, accurately and objectively reflecting a scaled representation of spatial relations, they had become a simplified visualization used for the sake of national agendas. This reached its apex in German cartography of the late 1930s, as flow maps became a significant component in Nazi propaganda, showing the dynamism of the German territory and people. Denis Cosgrove states that ‘the thematic map reveals the presence of phenomena that are beyond our normal bodily senses.’43 This was the initial intent of Harness, Belpaire, and Minard. However, a map is also ‘a creative process of inserting our humanity into the world and seizing the world for ourselves.’44 This creative process 43 Cosgrove, Geography and Vision, p. 168. 44 Ibid.

101

102

Zef Segal

was reflected in this chapter through the changing roles of flow maps. These maps are used to represent colonial, imperialistic, nationalistic, and later racial worldviews, none of which had to do with the initial maps that depicted mainly individual railway travel.

Bibliography T.J. Barnes, ‘“In the Beginning was Economic Geography” – A Science Studies Approach to Disciplinary History’, Progress in Human Geography, 25 (2001), pp. 521-544. T.J. Barnes, ‘Inventing Anglo-American Economic Geography, 1889–1960’, in A Companion to Economic Geography, ed. by E.S. Sheppard and T.J. Barnes (Malden: Blackwell, 2000), pp. 11-26. J.G. Bartholomew, Atlas of Commercial Geography (Cambridge: University press, 1889). J.G. Bartholomew, Atlas of the World’s Commerce (London: G. Newnes, 1907). H. Berghaus, Allgemeine Welt-Karte (Gotha: Justus Perthes, 1869). D. Cosgrove, Geography and Vision: Seeing, Imagining and Representing the World (London: IB Tauris, 2012). B.D. Dent, Cartography: Thematic Map Design (Boston, MA: WCB/McGraw-Hill, 1999). M. Domosh, ‘Geoeconomic Imaginations and Economic Geography in the Early Twentieth Century’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 103 (2013), pp. 944-966. W. Eggers, Deutsches Land Deutsche Volk und die Welt, (Berlin: Deutsche Buch-Gemeinschaft, 1937). F. Faure, ‘France’, in The History of Statistics, their Development and Progress in Many Countries, ed. By J. Koren (New York: Macmillan, 1918), pp. 215-330. M. Friendly, ‘Milestones in the History of Data Visualization: A Case Study in Statistical Historiography’, in Classification: The Ubiquitous Challenge, ed. by C. Weihs and W. Gaul (Berlin: Springer, 2005), pp. 34-52. M. Friendly and D. Denis, ‘The Early Origins and Development of the Scatterplot’, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 41 (2005), pp. 103-130. F. Galton, ‘On the Construction of Isochronic Passage-Charts’, Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, 3.11 (1881), pp. 657–658. H. de Beltgens Gibbins, Atlas of Commercial Geography (Edinburgh: WAK Johnston, 1892). J.P. Goode, Goode’s School Atlas (New York: Rand McNally, 1923). J.P. Goode, Rand McNally World Atlas (New York: Rand McNally, 1935). G.H. Herb, Under the Map of Germany: Nationalism and Propaganda 1918-1945 (London: Routledge, 2002). Herders Welt und Wirtschaftsatlas (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1932). H. Heske, ‘Political Geographers of the Past III- German Geographical Research in the Nazi Period: a Content Analysis of the Major Geography Journals, 1925–1945’, Political Geography Quarterly, 5 (1986), pp. 267-281.

Flow Mapping through the Times 

B. Kumsteller, Werden und Wachsen (Braunschweig: Westermann, 1938). H. Lange and C. Diercke, Lange-Diercke Schulatlas (Braunschweig: Westermann, 1932). A. Liebers, Westermanns Welt Atlas (Braunschweig: Westermann, 1926). H.J. Meyer, Meyers Hand-Atlas (Hildburghausen: Bibliographischen Instituts, 1867). B.R. Mitchel, International Historical Statistics Europe 1750-1988 (New York: Stockton, 1992) M.S. Monmonier, Mapping It Out: Expository Cartography for the Humanities and Social Sciences (Chicago, IL: The university of Chicago Press, 1993). G. Philip, Cassell’s New Atlas (London: Cassell, 1932). G. Philip, Putnam’s Economic Atlas (London: G. Philip, 1925). S. Rendgen, The Minard System: The Complete Statistical Graphics of Charles-Joseph Minard, From the Collection of the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussees (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2018). A. H. Robinson, ‘The 1837 Maps of Henry Drury Harness’, The Geographical Journal, 121 (1955), pp. 440-450, A.H. Robinson, ‘The Thematic Maps of Charles Joseph Minard’, Imago Mundi, 21 (1967), pp. 95-108. S. Schulten, The Geographical Imagination in America, 1880-1950 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2001). A. Scobel, Handels-Atlas zur Verkehrs und Wirtschaftsgeographie (Leipzig: Velhagen & Klasing, 1902). E.C. Rea Stamp, The Practical Atlas of Modern Geography (London: G. Gill & Sons, 1931). E. Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (Cheshire: Graphics Press, 2001). U. Wardenga, ‘German Geographical Thought and the Development of Länderkunde’, Inforgeo, 18/19 (2006), pp. 127-147. A.H. Ziegfeld, ‘Kartengestaltung – Sport oder Waffe?’, Zeitschrift für Geopolitik, 12 (1935), pp. 243-247.

About the Author Zef Segal is a lecturer of history, mathematics, and digital humanities at the Open University of Israel. His research has focused on movement, communication, and cartography in nineteenth-century Europe, as well as the implementation of computational research tools in the study of history. His current research project is the network of Hebrew journals in the second half of the nineteenth century. Segal’s latest book, The Political Fragmentation of Germany (2019), explores the spatial processes that construct national and territorial identities, within the context of nineteenth-century German states.

103

4. The Tensions of Heterochronicity on Cartographies of Imperial Motion in Japan Radu Leca

Abstract This chapter analyses the ways, in which intersections between historical narratives and cartographic design shaped the spatial imaginary of Japanese audiences. It follows early modern, modern, and contemporary visualizations of two narratives of imperial movement in Japan: the eastward march of the legendary first Emperor Jinmu and the Korean campaign of the equally legendary Empress Jingu. The study cases show how cartography was enlisted for a range of purposes, from confident depictions of exemplary movements to dynamic trajectories that accommodated multiple points of view. The study thus provides an example of the diagnostic value of historical motion maps as a litmus test for the agendas to which historical and geographical knowledge were employed by different ideological positions. Keywords: Japan; heterochrony; imperial; narrative

Introduction1 Just like a mountain climber, the historian needs detailed and accurate maps. The mountain climber can fortunately search and obtain the superb maps produced

1 A preliminary version of this paper was presented under the title ‘Temporal Fluidity on Historical Maps in Japan’ as part of the Kyoto Asian Studies Group lecture series in February 2018. I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to Niels van Steenpaal, Bradford Houdyshel, and the members of the audience for their perceptive feedback. I also thank Kären Wigen and the two anonymous reviewers for constructive feedback and suggestions. Research for this paper has been supported by the International Institute for Asian Studies, the Scaliger Institute and the Kyoto Institute, Library and Archives.

Segal, Z. and B. Vannieuwenhuyze, Motion in Maps, Maps in Motion: Mapping Stories and Movement through Time. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020 doi 10.5117/9789463721103_ch04

106 R adu Leca

by the Land Survey Department of the [Japanese] Imperial Army. But where is the historian to search for such maps?2

This is the beginning of an encomiastic review of a 1935 historical atlas in a Japanese newspaper. The argument relies on the contrast between maps produced by professional cartographers3 and those made for the use of historians. But these apparent opposites also share structural similarities that rely on shared assumptions. The first is the assumption of a stable object of study such as the history of Japan. Since the 1960s, this has been challenged both by insights into the social constructedness of history, and, in the case of Japan, by unpacking the variability of the term ‘Japan’ itself.4 The second assumption is that of the constancy of time and space as epistemological categories whose reality is to be captured by maps. However, it is now increasingly clear that history is constituted by overlapping ‘heterochronicities’, or ‘multiple temporalities’.5 This renders problematic attempts at mapping a universal time frame. The case of East Asia is especially poignant, since it developed autonomous temporal and spatial categories that, in their turn, evolved over time.6 For example, when Jesuit scholars brought back news of Chinese chronology to Europe in the seventeenth century, European historiography had to reconsider its much shorter Bible-based chronology. However, East Asian chronologies were not monolithic and developed local variations, such as the case of Japan discussed here. Furthermore, the intersection between East Asian historiographies and cartographic images has not been sufficiently considered. The study of such confluences is especially relevant since the sexagesimal cycle in East Asia applied equally to time and to space. Western geographical studies have come to recognize the mutually interdependent relationship between space and time.7 This interdependency was integral to East Asian chronologies, and their cartographic solutions and uses can offer insights for contemporary geographers and historians. This chapter addresses how history and the flow of time were perceived over different periods in the history of Japan. The focus is on the ways in which the 2 Original text: 歴史家は登山家の如く精密・正確な地圖を必要とする。登山家は幸に參課本部陸地 測量部から発行される廉儨にして優秀な地圖を直ちに求め得られるが、歴史家はそれをどこに求めた ら良いのであろう(Yoshida, review of Dainihon dokushi chizu, p. 170). 3 The Land Survey Department of the Imperial Army was instituted in 1888, and its origins go back to 1871. It produced a variety of survey maps for both military and civil use. For a discussion of the sample map catalogues of the Land Survey Department, see Nagaoka, ‘Rikuchi’. 4 Amino, ‘Deconstructing’, p. 123. 5 Bourriaud, Altermodern, [p. 2], discussed in Moxey, Visual Time, pp. 2-3. 6 For a cross-cultural discussion of chronologies, see Sato, ‘Comparative Ideas’. The encounter between European and East Asian chronologies in the seventeenth century is analysed in Standaert, ‘Jesuit Accounts’. 7 See for instance Berry’s time-space matrix discussed in Harrower, ‘Time’, p. 1529.

The Tensions of Heterochronicit y on Cartogr aphies of Imperial Motion in Japan 

intersections between historical narratives and cartographic design shaped the spatial imaginary of Japanese audiences. Starting with the eighteenth century, I follow the visualizations of two narratives of imperial movement in Japan: that of the legendary first Emperor Jinmu 神武天皇 and that of the equally legendary Empress Jingu 神功皇后. For this I draw on a wide range of sources: historical atlases; school manuals; popular science books; single-sheet woodblock prints; postcards and digital animations. Many of the images under discussion combine cartographic elements with a visual narrative, and can therefore be defined as ‘history maps’.8 Rather than aiming for a comprehensive study of history maps in Japan, the selected images offer representative examples of how cartographic elements function as matrices narratives that are meant to provide grounding for diverse ideological agendas.9 In this way, this study outlines the role of mapped historical movement within a ‘spatial vernacular’ in which the meaning of space is negotiated by each agent that appropriates it.10 The examples discussed can be broadly assigned to three historical periods: early modern; modern; and contemporary. From the seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century, Japan was a feudal society with a historical tradition based on the Confucian precedent and the divine origin of its imperial institution. Since there were no professional cartographers in Japan until the 1810s, maps were produced either by professional illustrators or by scholars, the majority of whom had been trained in the neo-Confucian tradition. After 1868, the Japanese polity shifted to a rapidly modernizing empire with an expansive foreign policy and a vigorous historiographical school. As seen in the opening quote, history maps now became counterparts to the official survey maps produced for the expansion and administration of the empire. Finally, having been defeated in World War II, the Japanese nation had to reconcile the demise of its historical narratives with new scientific insights. Although focused only on Japanese examples, this chapter makes a larger point about the ways in which history maps blend spatial with temporal narratives. These blends function in different contexts as ‘mnemonic devices’ that seek solutions to the juxtaposition of two shifting domains of knowledge: interpretations of history and understandings of geographical space.11 In this sense, the phenomena under discussion are very similar to those discussed by Mikhail Bakhtin under the concept of the chronotope, by which he described the persuasive meshing of time and space within a novel`s narrative.12 Nevertheless, I will also show that the complex 8 Vannieuwenhuyze, ‘Reading History Maps’, p. 296. 9 For matrices narratives, see Jacob, L’empire des cartes, p. 360. 10 Yonemoto, ‘The “Spatial Vernacular”‘. 11 Carlton, ‘The World Drawn from Nature’, p. 24. 12 Bakhtin, ‘Forms of Time’.

107

108 R adu Leca

visual assemblies in which history maps were embedded allowed the coexistence of multiple timelines, or heterochronies.

Period I: History Maps in Early Modern Japan Before the eighteenth century, most history maps in Japan appeared in two contexts: as visualizations of the route of the Buddhist monk Xuanzang 玄奘 through the Indian subcontinent, which evolved in a Buddhist equivalent of a medieval mappaemundi;13 or as variants of Ming-period Chinese maps, essentially compendia of memorable toponyms and names of dynasties throughout the history of the Middle Kingdom. The latter genre informed the cartographical activities of the Neo-Confucian scholar Nagakubo Sekisui 長久保赤水 (1717-1801). Although working in the Neo-Confucian tradition of the study of precedent and propriety, Sekisui’s overall work stands out for the depth and resilience of his investigation of the past through cartography.14 His major project was the deep mapping of the knowledge space of China, which he began by producing his own version of a seventeenth-century Chinese map. He developed this further into the 1790 ‘Historical Atlas of China’ comprising thirteen political maps of Northeast Asia throughout succeeding dynasties (Figure 25).15 Sekisui’s meticulous scholarship is applied to a non-linear model of historical evolution. Time is portioned into stable intervals corresponding to political configurations that are rigid in their configuration. This is reflected in the lack of movement within the maps: though terrestrial and naval routes marked in red crisscross the territory, stretching all the way to Japan, the lack of directional markers signals that the mapmaker’s concern is not with visualizing movement, but with topological relationships. The atlas is a demonstration of erudition in a Sinocentric intellectual tradition more conducive to coagulations of historical references than to representations of dynamic developments. The intellectual authority of the Sinocentric tradition was such that it was only after the mid-eighteenth century that visualizations of Japan’s past were produced. This is also due to the influence of the taste for antiquarian objects, including maps, that started in the eighteenth century and kept developing in the nineteenth century.16 It was not until 1815 that the territory of Japan became the main feature in the multicolour ‘Historical Atlas of Our Realm Through the Ages’ authored by 13 Moerman, ‘Japan’. 14 Sekisui explored various forms of cartography: he published a map of the world and one of the Japanese archipelago. 15 Original title: Tōdo rekidai shūgun enkaku chizu 唐土歴代州郡沿革地図; see Unno, ‘Nagakubo’. 16 Uesugi, ‘Kozu’.

The Tensions of Heterochronicit y on Cartogr aphies of Imperial Motion in Japan 

109

Figure 25: Nagakubo Sekisui 長久保赤水, Daishinkoku dōtei zu (‘Road map of the Great Qing’), from Tōdo rekidai shūgun enkaku zu 唐土歴代州郡沿革図 (‘Historical Atlas of China’), 1789, colour woodblock print, National Diet Library, Tokyo.

Hiyama Tansai 檜山坦斎 (1770-1842), a Confucian scholar also versed in painting connoisseurship.17 An array of colour-coded chess maps was used to illustrate the dynamics of various provincial lordships from the period of the Ōnin War (1184) until the Genna period (1615) when Japan was unified under Tokugawa rule. Historical change is quicker here in comparison with Sekisui’s atlas, and the narrative of coagulating political authority implies the flow of linear time. However, time is still portioned into stable chunks that freeze temporal change until the beginning of the next period. On a visual level, the diversity of colours used to illustrate the various provincial powers creates an initial impression of fragmentariness and shifting political configurations. But the historical flux is suspended on the last 17 Original title: Honchō ōko enkaku zusetsu 本朝往古沿革図説.

110 R adu Leca

double-spread by the uniform purple rule of the Tokugawa regime. This strong pro-establishment message is reinforced by the subtitle of the entire work: Bansei taihei zusetsu 萬世泰平圖説 (‘Illustrated Exposition of Eternal Peace’). Eight years later, Tansai used the same woodblocks for a similar but differently styled atlas. The emphasis shifted to configurations of imperial rule over the Japanese archipelago between the reigns of Emperor Jinmu 神武天皇 and of Emperor Junna 淳和天皇 (r. 823-833). The precise thousand-year interval between the latter reign and the book’s publication suggests an anniversary. But again, the notion of a continuous year count was not yet common in the East Asian cultural context where the count would begin again with each new emperor. It is also worth considering that unlike the case of the Middle Kingdom where imperial dynasties changed regularly, in Japan the imperial rule remained largely unchanged. Therefore, the specific periods illustrated in this newer atlas are much more of an editorial choice that constructs a curated narrative. For example, rather than a thousand-year anniversary it is more probable that Emperor Junna was chosen because his reign coincided with the widest expanse of the ancient Japanese empire. The succeeding double-spreads unfold the narrative of the growing reach of imperial authority – in yellow – extending towards Ezo and Edo. If one were to flip the pages quickly, one could visualize a speeded-up timeline of the Japanese empire. The double spread in Figure 26 shows the Japanese archipelago in the time of Emperor Jinmu’s reign and describes his eastward expedition from his base in Kyushu island to the Yamato plain in Honshu island. The accompanying text indicates that the toponyms are taken from a number of historical sources, chief among them being the historical account Nihon shoki 日本書紀 (‘Chronicles of Japan’). The source is significant because the author was a scholar of Kokugaku 国 学 (‘School of National Learning’) and would be therefore expected to reference the more imperial-centred account in the alternative chronicle Kojiki 古事記 (‘Record of Ancient Matters’). Although this history map frames a narrative of imperial movement, the direction of the movement is not visualized. At this point, I would like to make a detour from the main topic of this contribution, which is the heterochronicities of history maps within Japan. This detour is motivated by the biography of the particular copy of Tansai’s publication of which a double-spread is reproduced in Figure 26: it was brought by Philipp Franz von Siebold from Japan to Leiden. There it was used both for the publication of Siebold’s book on Japan,18 while the double-spread in Figure 26 was annotated in ink by Johann Joseph Hoffmann (1805-78), the first professor of Chinese and Japanese studies outside Japan. Indeed, ‘motion of the map is no less important than motion 18 Another double-spread from this book provided the base map for a lithographed map in Siebold’s Nippon III Tab. VI.

The Tensions of Heterochronicit y on Cartogr aphies of Imperial Motion in Japan 

111

Figure 26: Hiyama Tansai 檜山坦斎, Jinmu Tennō tōkyoku zu 神武天皇登極圖 (‘Map of Emperor Jingu’s Accession’), from Honchō kokugun kenchi enkaku zusetsu 本朝国郡建置沿革図説 (‘Historical Atlas of Provinces of Our Realm’), 1823, colour woodblock-print, 58 by 56.5 cm, Leiden University Library.

on the map,’19 and in this case these types of motion were correlated. Hoffmann was a thorough scholar who followed the accompanying texts closely and was aware of the original texts from which Tansai’s text is sourced. Hoffmann’s annotations were therefore exact renderings of the historical narrative described in the text, an example of philological motion mapping. This was prompted by the potential narrative of the map, acting as a counterpart to the text in the same way that an island map would illustrate a narrative such as that of Robinson Crusoe’s.20 Here is therefore an example of the three types of cartographic movement described in the Introduction to this volume: 1) change in space and time, the larger context of visualizing historical movement in early nineteenth-century Japan; 2) the interaction of the Japanese and then Dutch user with the successive cartographies of political change; and 3) the book itself being used as a textual and visual reference for the

19 See Monmonier’s chapter in this volume. 20 Collington, ‘The Chronotope’.

112 R adu Leca

historiography of Japan.21 The accumulation of and interaction between these facets of cartographic change within one cartographic item also shows that historical narratives are difficult to circumscribe to a single culture or region.

The Challenge of Heterochronicity It is worth pausing here to consider the challenges posed by the mapping of toponyms from ancient chronicles onto the geographical space of the Japanese archipelago. The first is the challenge of design: how to coordinate and overlay a geographical space with historical records? As a researcher of Japanese history, Hoffmann was trying to do precisely that: to map historical motion on geographical space. There is no obvious solution: in many cases, the exact location of ancient toponyms remains unknown, and the only reliable method is to approximate from the location of ancient shrines that also feature in historical texts.22 The other challenge that informs Tansai’s original design is that of ideology. Since the narratives in the Atlas concern ancestors of the current imperial line, their cartographic visualizations risked conflicting with the de facto rule of the Tokugawa regime. The challenge of ideology is most visible in another double-spread that illustrates the belligerent expedition of Empress Jingu 神功皇后 to subjugate the Silla kingdom 新羅 in the Korean peninsula (Figure 27). Again, Tansai is drawing on the text of Nihon shoki to trace Empress Jingu’s route, but edits out her movements prior to sailing off from a port in Northern Kyushu. This time, the author visualized the narrative of conquest by tracing a return route in the original woodblock design. However, the doubled line creates its own complex movement: the return route switches focus from the Empress to the ‘ascent to the capital’ of her new born son who would become emperor Ōjin 応神天皇.23 The equivalency with the contemporary political situation in Korea is stressed: while Empress Jingu’s destination is given as Silla, a nearby colophon indicates its correspondence to the contemporary Choson kingdom’s Gyeongsang province 慶尚道. This echoes the list, placed next to the map’s title, that equivalates the first year of Empress Jingu’s reign 皇后摂政元年 with the sixth year of the reign of the Emperor of the Late Han 後漢, the thirty-sixth year of Emperor Chogo 肖古王 of the Baekje 百濟 Kingdom and the fifth year of the reign of Emperor Sansang 山上王 in the Goryeo 高麗 Kingdom. The heterochronicity of East Asian historical space is thus laid 21 See the introduction of this volume. 22 These shrines would later be co-opted into visual narratives of motion, as seen in Figure 29. 23 The route winds through the Setonaikai inner sea until Naniwa Bay, where the Empress and her son part ways, and then rejoins southwards in Iki province before advancing towards the Yamato area.

The Tensions of Heterochronicit y on Cartogr aphies of Imperial Motion in Japan 

Figure 27: Hiyama Tansai 檜山坦斎, Map of Empress Jingu’s Routes from Honchō kokugun kenchi enkaku zusetsu 本朝国郡建置沿革図説 (‘Historical Atlas of Provinces of Our Realm’), 1823, colour woodblock-print, 58 by 56.5 cm, Leiden University Library.

out, explicating the historian’s dilemma when called upon to construct a viable cross-regional narrative.

Period II: New Narratives of Empress Jingu during the Meiji Period Cartographies of imperial action would gain prominence during the Meiji period (1868-1912), when the emperor was refashioned as the head of a modern state. One of the ways this was achieved was by inventing the tradition of an unbroken line

113

114 R adu Leca

of imperial rule that now became the backbone of historical accounts in Japan.24 Effectively, a new chronological system was invented, that of Kōki 皇紀 (Imperial Era), which counted the years from the purported year of the enthronement of Emperor Jinmu, equivalent to 660 BCE. Moreover, the day of the enthronement was celebrated nationwide every year from 1873 on Kigensetsu 紀元節 (‘Anniversary of the Founding of the Empire’).25 Furthermore, narratives of early emperors took a visual turn as they were co-opted into the iconography of the modern Japanese nation state: for example, portraits of the Meiji emperor started to be accompanied by invented portraits of his ancestor, Emperor Jinmu.26 The figure of Empress Jingu also enjoyed a renewed popularity as testified by the plurality of her representations on votive tablets, banknotes, or woodblock prints.27 Besides the centrality of imperial figures, this renewed popularity can also be attributed to the sustained Japanese interest in Korea during this period. The most heated foreign policy debate during the early years of the Meiji state revolved around the modalities of invading Korea, and Empress Jingu served as a precedent for the pro-invasion camp that promoted a centrifugal vision of the Japanese empire.28 Then, in 1875, the warship Un’yō, officially on a surveying mission, provoked a Korean attack that resulted in the unequal Kanghwa Treaty between Korea and Japan. Included was a clause allowing unhindered surveying of Korean coasts and the compilation of maps thereof. The Japanese Navy quickly proceeded to survey strategic gulfs that would later become battle sites during the 1894-1895 Sino-Japanese War. By then, maps of Northeast Asian waters had been integrated into tabletop war-gaming at the Naval Staff College.29 Meanwhile, the Land Survey Department of the Japanese Imperial Army – mentioned in this study’s opening quote – repeatedly produced survey maps of the entire territory of the Korean peninsula starting from 1882.30 This was accompanied from the 1880s 24 For more on this system called Kōkokushikan, see Nishino, Changing Histories, p. 131 and Gluck, Japan’s Modern Myths, p. 142. 25 Gluck, Japan’s Modern Myths, pp. 85-86. 26 Dower, ‘Throwing Off Asia I’. 27 For votive tablets, see Anderson, ‘Jingū Kōgō “Ema”‘, pp. 257-258. For banknotes and other iconographies, see Trede, ‘Banknote Design’, pp. 57-62, which also discusses the gender element. The same woodblock print illustrator could produce different depictions of Empress Jingu: compare the 1878 print by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi 月岡芳年 Kōkoku rekidai kinnō kurabe 皇国歴代勤王競 (‘Contest of Generations of Our Imperial Nation’s Loyal Ministers’; available online at https://www.harashobo.com/ukiyoe/ukiyoe_detail. php?print_id=23714) with the same illustrator’s 1879 print (available online at http://www.britishmuseum. org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=778455&partId=1). 28 Anderson, ‘Jingū Kōgō “Ema”‘, pp. 254-256. This was not the f irst time Empress Jingu had been invoked for a campaign against Korea: it had previously been used to legitimate the late sixteenth-century expeditions of Toyotomi Hideyoshi against the Choson state; see Elisonas, ‘The Inseparable Trinity’, p. 265. 29 Evans and Peattie, Kaigun, p. 40. 30 Kobayashi, ‘Japanese Mapping’, pp. 13-17.

The Tensions of Heterochronicit y on Cartogr aphies of Imperial Motion in Japan 

by the vast expansion of commercial ship traffic between Korean ports and the ports of Moji and Shimonoseki in Northern Kyushu, close to the legendary site of Empress Jingu’s departure.31 This period’s examples of confluences between cartography and Empress Jingu’s narrative in vernacular media are equally multifaceted. School manuals, for example, would often juxtapose the portrait of Empress Jingu in martial dress with warships and with maps of Korea whose hachures and compass arrows resonated with copperplate-printed survey maps produced by the Land Survey Department.32 Such modern maps had become one of the symbols of the period’s spirit of ‘civilization and enlightenment’, while the role of the Navy was promoted with the slogan kaikoku Nippon 海国日本 (‘maritime Japan’). A more complex iconographic solution is included in a richly illustrated history manual from 1917 (Figure 28). This version portrays a more demure Empress Jingu in the manner of a sculpture of a Shinto deity.33 Although the naval route of the conquering expedition is fully shown with directional arrows, it competes for visual attention with two other narratives: the first is the presentation of the Confucian Analects and the Thousand-Character Classic by the Korean scholar Wani 王仁 to Emperor Ōjin, marking the beginning of the Chinese writing system in Japan. The second narrative is that of the wise actions of the imperial advisor Takenouchi no Sukune 武内宿禰.34 Thus, in the wake of Japan’s annexation of Korea in 1910, Empress Jingu’s conquering expedition was offset by a centripetal imperial agenda, with an emphasis on the cultural capital brought back from overseas. Cartography was enlisted here for the purpose of grounding diverging narratives by overlapping ancient imperial history onto the contemporary space of the expanding Japanese Empire. However, the other visual elements rendered the overall image unstable, vacillating between the martial role of Empress Jingu and a more subdued emphasis on civilizational progress.35 31 Phipps, ‘A Two-Timing Map’. 32 For the illustration of an 1887 example see Trede, ‘Banknote Design’, pp. 94, 96. 33 Guth, Shinzō, p. 38. Judging by the breakneck pace at which new editions were printed off – as many as six per year – this was a commercially successful and intensely circulated publication. 34 The pairing resonates with an iconographic theme of votive tablets that shows the Empress under a tree advised by Takenouchi to choose ‘prudence and restrained diplomacy’ (Anderson, ‘Jingū Kōgō “Ema”‘, p. 258). There are also ukiyo-e woodblock prints where the two characters are given equal visual prominence (an example is available online at http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O69277/the-empressjingu-and-the-woodblock-print-utagawa-kunisada-i/). A one-yen banknote with a portrait of Takenouchi no Sukune had been issued in 1889, with a very similar layout as the Empress Jingu banknote designed by the same Edoardo Chiossone. A new edition had appeared in 1916, the year before the publication of the historical atlas; see Tsurezure, Shihei. 35 The downplaying of Empress Jingu’s conquest narrative also resonates with the Japanese imperial court that re-shaped its own historical narrative. A 1926 edict excluded Empress Jingu from the line of reigning emperors, and defined her only as a consort relevant for giving birth to the now fifteenth emperor, Ōjin.

115

116 R adu Leca

Figure 28: Tsumaki Chūta 妻木忠太, Chōsen hantō no fukuzoku to bunbutsu no denrai 朝鮮半島の服属と文物の 傳来 (‘The Subjugation of the Korean Peninsula and the Transmission of Writings’), from Saishin Nihon rekishi kaisetsu 最新日本歴史解釈 (‘Japanese History Explained According to the Latest Sources’), 1917, colour copperplate print, available from http://whisper-voice.tracisum.com/?eid=516.

Emperor Jinmu and Imperial Expansion The same historical atlas also contains an illustration of Emperor Jinmu’s eastward route (Figure 29).36 This newer image is more visually complex than that in Figure 26: a media cocktail of photography, cartography, and commercial illustration are enlisted to overlay reinvented ancient rituals with geography and cultural history. The accumulation of pictorial information heightens the image’s veridicity. 36 The trajectory of the route is uncannily similar to Hoffmann’s annotation in Figure 26.

The Tensions of Heterochronicit y on Cartogr aphies of Imperial Motion in Japan 

Figure 29: Tsumaki Chūta 妻木忠太, Jinmu Tennō no sōgyō 神武天皇の創業 (‘Emperor Jinmu’s Founding’), from Saishin Nihon rekishi kaisetsu 最新日本歴史解釈 (‘Japanese History Explained According to the Latest Sources’), 1917, colour copperplate print, available from http://whisper-voice.tracisum.com/?eid=510.

117

118 R adu Leca

Furthermore, details such as the rolling edges of the inset map suggest materiality and performativity: this is a visual demonstration of precedents of imperial authority over the geographical space of Japan. The performative aspect is reinforced by the prominence of ancient shrines: Emperor Jingu is depicted officiating at the temporary shrine of Tomiyama in the fourth year of his reign, thereby setting a precedent for Shinto rites that were underpinning the ideology of the modern Japanese empire. In this way, the visual authority of cartographic visualizations is intertwined with the historical grounding offered by ancient shrines and with the ideology of imperial Shinto. The imbrication of the practice of history with the emperor-centred political agenda intensified in the interwar period. In a 1920 postcard, for instance, a lithographed portrait of Emperor Jinmu was collaged with an embossed outline of the Japanese archipelago suspended amidst stylized wave motifs (Figure 30). Around it there is an accumulation of imperial paraphernalia: the emperor’s portrait is flanked with magatama beads – one of three Imperial Regalia; an inset photograph shows one of the bridges of the Imperial castle; earthenware from the Jomon period (c. 14000-1000 BCE) refers to imperial tombs and the civilizing role of Emperor Jinmu. Tellingly, there are no indications of movement – Japan’s geo-body is represented as an ahistorical entity inextricably bound with imperial authority. While history maps are in the past tense, this image seeks to permanentize the geographical space of Japan into an eternal present.37 The postcard is emblematic of the enlisting of archaeological studies and of historical studies in general to a state-controlled historical narrative. This phenomenon would reach its peak after 1926 due to the silencing of any historical research contradicting the emperor myth.38 Accordingly, a 1934 instruction manual for history teachers accompanied a map of Emperor Jinmu’s Eastern Advance with the following explanation: Emperor Jinmu’s objective was the pacification of local chiefs that brought grief to the people, and not territorial expansion or the subjugation of enemies. The Emperor’s aim was guided by concern for the people. It was for the same reason that the military clique in Manchuria was driven away and a land with flowering trees was provided for thirty million people.39

37 These are called ‘aorist’ maps in Wood and Fels, The Power of Maps, p. 112. 38 Young, The Location of Yamatai, pp. 162-165; see also Brownlee, ‘Why Prewar Japanese Historians’, pp. 351-55. 39 Original text: 人民を苦める尊長どもを平定することであって、決して今日云ふ所の領土の擴張や 敵國の征服では無い。 『人民を案ずる』ことが注目的なのであった。満州の軍閥を追ひ拂つて三千萬 の人民に棠土を建設せしめたのも同じ傾旨である (Nishiki, Gutaika, p. 7).

The Tensions of Heterochronicit y on Cartogr aphies of Imperial Motion in Japan 

Figure 30: Author Unknown, Emperor Jinmu and Map of Japan, 1920, collotype, colour lithograph, ink and metallic pigment on card stock, 13.8 by 8.8 cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, available from https://www. mfa.org/collections/object/emperor-jinmu-and-map-of-japan-419788.

119

120 R adu Leca

Despite the weight of ideology, considerations over the design of history maps still surfaced in other works of the period that discuss the proper use of cartography in the teaching of history in primary and secondary education. For example, the map of Emperor Jinmu’s eastern advance is given as an example of a ‘route’ type of history maps in a 1931 work. 40 The explanation goes on to consider the denotative role of cartography: A map inserted in the text makes one understand the location of those places and their approximate distances. One can acquire an intuitive understanding of the route, and realize the difficulty of leading a fleet over such a long distance in the ancient past when navigation was not yet developed. Thus, recalling the emperor’s great heart and extraordinary feats, one will comprehend for the first time the meaning of the phrase “the emperor reached Naniwa after many months and years had passed”. 41

The discussion continues with a consideration of whether modern maps are adequate for describing historical sites. Again, Emperor Jinmu’s eastern advance is given as an example: the Enomiya shrine 埃宮, which was near the seashore when Emperor Jinmu rested there en route, ‘is nowadays more than 4 km away. For that reason, side-by-side maps of past and present are necessary for the practical teaching of history.’42

Period III: Post-war Oscillations The situation changed after the end of World War II. The Showa emperor’s renunciation of his divine status in an imperial rescript broadcasted on 1 January 1946 was among the developments that weakened the confidence in the imperial narrative.43 Historical atlases reflected this loss of confidence. A 1956 example compresses the results of decades of archaeological research that had not previously been circulated 40 The original term is 行路を表すもの.　 41 Original text: 其の地位がどこでその距離が凡そどの位であるといふ事などよく挿入の地圖上で理 解せしめ、ご順路を直観すると共に斯くの如く太古航海交通の便も未だ進んで居なかつた時代に、か ゝる遠方の所を舟師を率ゐて進ませ給ふことの御困難の一方でないことを悟らせ、その大御心とご偉 業を偲ばせることによつて始めて、本文の「多くの年月を経て浪速につき給へり」とある意味もよく知ら しめ得るのである (Kawahara, Kokushi, p. 439). 42 Original text: 神武天皇の御東征の時の安藝の埃宮は當時海岸であつたらしいのが現在では其處 から海岸までは一里の上もある。故に國史を實に学習するに當つては必ず古今対象の地圖が必要で […] (Kawahara, Kokushi, p. 442). 43 Bix, ‘The Showa Emperor’s “Monologue”‘, pp. 318-21.

The Tensions of Heterochronicit y on Cartogr aphies of Imperial Motion in Japan 

Figure 31: Nishioka Toranosuke 西岡虎之助 and Hattori Shisō 服部之総, Dai Nihon rekishi chizu 大日本歴史地図 (‘Historical Maps of Japan’), 1956, Leiden University Library.

outside specialized publications (Figure 31). It combines frontal mapping of the spread of various stages of monumental tombs with dance mapping of routes of continental envoys from the Tang court. The layout is dense, with many overlapping routes of historical movement, including those of coastal trade. There are no directional markers among this complex assembly of diverse data sets. The exceptional feature is the affixing of question marks to many of the toponyms, illustrating the difficulty of correlating historical texts with modern geographical knowledge. 44 The most notable is the country of Yamatai 邪馬台国, a toponym central to the narrative of Emperor Jinmu, featured six times on the map followed by question marks. This indeterminacy is due to the fact that the plotting of Emperor Jinmu’s route varies significantly depending on two different interpretations of the original text: the first reads the description of the route as sequential, from Yamatai in the Yamato plain; the second is a topological reading: it takes the place name 44 The vacillation echoes the arguments raised by Kobayashi Yukio, the most influential historian of the 1960-1970s, see Edwards, ‘In Pursuit of Himiko`, pp. 61-65.

121

122 R adu Leca

Ito 伊都 in Northern Kyushu as a fixed reference for all other directions given in the text, which results in all toponyms being located on the island of Kyushu.45 Although the limits of such text-based mapping had been known before, this is one of the first instances of a design solution that incorporates speculation and uncertainty. The image is inserted in an introductory-level history book, but this is no longer the clear and confident narrative of ancient Japan presented in the preceding decades. More than a presentation of critical thinking, this design solution exposes post-war historians’ self-doubt in their own discipline. Nevertheless, despite the visibility of historical uncertainties, the visual message throughout the book is that the Japanese archipelago was well-connected to the larger East Asian sphere, a theme that would go on to gain visibility in direct proportion to Japan’s increasing post-war economic power.

Period IV: A History Map for the New Millennium Each cartographic visualization seems to have echoed and sometimes preceded the external policy of the Japanese polity. Tansai’s early nineteenth-century atlas embedded imperial histories into a heterochronous East Asian political space, paralleling the diplomatic network of the Tokugawa regime. The same narratives were reinforced by their deployment in the mythology of the modern Japanese state that insisted on the exceptionality of the Japanese imperial line at the expense of heterochronicity. This prefigured the territorial expansion of the Japanese empire that sought to impose its own time-space matrix on the rest of Asia. When that expansion was halted in 1945, cartographies of imperial movement fell back onto a plurality of possible timelines. Could cartography thus offer a hint of forthcoming political attitudes? To verify this, let us look at a contemporary chess map of the world that visualizes world history according to the chronology of Japanese imperial eras.46 Although still structured in chunks of historical periods according to state formations, the accelerated timeline creates the impression of movement within a time-space continuum. From a design point of view, an important feature of the map is firstly the adaptation of the visualization of history to the possibilities of a new technology, in this case the Adobe Flash file format. The element of interaction is introduced through a rough timeline slider that allows the user to navigate back and forth through time.47 That element of interaction, however, was already present in the flipping of the pages 45 See also the diagram of these two interpretations in Edwards, ‘In Pursuit of Himiko’, p. 59, in itself an attempt at solving the challenges of juxtaposing different ideas about spatio-temporal movement. 46 The map is entitled Rekidai tennō to sekaishi chizu 歴代天皇と世界史地図 (‘Map of Japanese Emperors Over the Ages and World History’; available online at http://tncs.world.coocan.jp/TENNOWH.html). 47 For a definition of cartographic interaction, see Roth, ‘Interactive Maps’, pp. 63-67.

The Tensions of Heterochronicit y on Cartogr aphies of Imperial Motion in Japan 

of Tansai’s historical atlases. Furthermore, the embossing of Japan’s geo-body in Figure 30 afforded a form of haptic interaction comparable to that with current touch screens. In this sense, the media cocktails employed in many analogue history maps offer examples of remediation, that is the repackaging of heterogenous forms of media into a multi-media package.48 These resonate with current developments in digital cartography, and can inform further developments: the Timeline feature of Google Maps, for example, has been criticized due to privacy concerns, but its framework could be repurposed to visualize various past movements. 49 From an ideological point of view, this latest digital history map depicts the Japanese territory as a stable entity in contrast with the rapidly changing territories of other political formations throughout history. This is achieved with a very broadstroke handling of historical facts. For instance, although the Japanese state did not have a strong hold on the island of Hokkaido before the 1870s, this map depicts Japan as extending its reach over Hokkaido from the 1830s onward. Furthermore, the map revives the Meiji-era chronology that originated with Emperor Jinmu’s reign. 2015 CE, for example, is given as 2675 Imperial Era. Overall, these accommodations resonate with a revival of nationalistic theories based on apocryphal accounts of ancient Japanese history.50 The current right-wing policies of the Japanese government make such nationalistic tendencies more probable in the future.51 Nevertheless, the map presents an alternative historical frame that challenges the authority and prevalence of the Western-based Christian chronology.

Conclusions The inherent struggle between keeping true to historical record and also to geographical space surfaced visually throughout the history of Japan. Cartographic narratives of motion had to reconcile visualizations of space with the shifting agendas of the practice of history. In the case of Japan’s imperial narratives of motion, that agenda amalgamated in varying degrees intellectual interests, cultural antecedents and expansionist imperial policies. If considered in terms of Mikhail Bakhtin’s chronotopes, these images exposed a dialogical interaction between imperial chronicles, historical science and the contemporary reality of the Japanese 48 For a discussion of remediation in new media, see Bolter and Grusin, Remediation. 49 Cain, ‘Google Maps Timeline’. For an example of repurposing of digital cartography platforms see Parker, `Using Google Earth`. 50 Among them is a parahistorical text attributed to the son of the imperial advisor Takenouchi no Sukune, featured in Figure 28. see Morrow, The Sacred Science of Ancient Japan, especially chapter 4. 51 For an overview of neonationalist uses of history in contemporary Japan, see Saaler, ‘Nationalism and History’.

123

124 R adu Leca

polity. In the Meiji period, a renewed centrifugal impulse led to the re-use of emperor narratives for the construction of the imperial imagination. And after World War II, history maps show how an initial self-questioning gave way to a more confident nationalistic vision of Japan’s past. Overall, there is no easy solution for mapping historical time onto space, as each of these two dimensions can disaggregate the visual message. In this sense, the visual medium does not appear to fit neatly with Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of the chronotope. Although in a text it is nearly impossible to tell two diverging stories at once, visual assemblies such as those in Figures 28 and 31 rally parallel plot lines that contradict the linear narrative of a single ideological viewpoint. Each of the sources discussed in this contribution shows ingenuity and complexity in the visualization of historical movement over geographic space. Cartography was enlisted for a range of purposes, from conf ident depictions of exemplary movements to dynamic trajectories that accommodated multiple points of view. This chapter provided an example of the diagnostic value of historical motion maps as a litmus test for the agendas to which historical and geographical knowledge were employed by varying ideological positions.52 Moreover, some of the features now being recommended for increasing the storytelling potential of maps were already present in history maps in Japan.53 Just like a mountain climber, the historian as well as the geographer is always on the move – and while the challenges of design and ideology still remain, a better understanding of past examples can propel current debates on better map design and use.

Bibliography Y. Amino, ‘Deconstructing “Japan”‘, East Asian History, 3 (1992), pp. 121-142. R.W. Anderson, ‘Jingū Kōgō “Ema” in Southwestern Japan: Reflections and Anticipations of the “Seikanron” Debate in the Late Tokugawa and Early Meiji Period’, Asian Folklore Studies, 61 (2002), pp. 247-70. M. Bakhtin, ‘Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel’, in The Dialogic Imagination. Four Essays (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1981), pp. 84-258. 52 A similar case is that of Zheng He 鄭和, the Ming period commander of a fleet that sailed to the African coast. A comparison with the way his travels have been visualized would be revealing both in terms of design and of ideology. For an early visualization, see Mao Yuanyi (1594-1640), 1644, Wubei zhi (‘Treatise on Military Preparations’; available online at http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.gmd/g7821rm.gct00058). An example of an academic visualization is in Park, Mapping the Chinese and Islamic worlds, p. xxviii. For the significance of Zheng He to China’s current maritime policy, see Holmes, ‘“Soft Power’’ at Sea’. 53 For example, integration of time, focus and nimbus, dynamic elements or atmosphere, as discussed in Mocnik and Fairbairn, ‘Maps Telling Stories?’, pp. 14-18.

The Tensions of Heterochronicit y on Cartogr aphies of Imperial Motion in Japan 

H. Bix, ‘The Showa Emperor’s “Monologue” and the Problem of War Responsibility’, The Journal of Japanese Studies, 18 (1992), pp. 295-363. J. Bolter and R. Grusin, Remediation – Understanding New Media (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000). N. Bourriaud, Altermodern (London: Tate Publishing, 2009). J. Brownlee, ‘Why Prewar Japanese Historians Did Not Tell the Truth’, The Historian, 62 (2000), pp. 343-56. Patrick Cain, ‘Google Maps Timeline: Why a little-known Google feature tracked me for months’, Global News, 11 June 2016, available online at https://globalnews.ca/ news/2746703/google-maps-timeline-why-a-little-known-google-feature-tracked-mefor-months/ [last accessed 5th November 2019]. G. Carlton, ‘The World Drawn From Nature: Imitation And Authority In Sixteenth-Century Cartography’, Intellectual History Review, 24 (2014), pp. 21-37. T. Collington, ‘The Chronotope and the Study of Literary Adaptation: The Case of Robinson Crusoe’, in Bakhtin’s Theory of the Literary Chronotope: Reflections, Applications, Perspectives, ed. by N. Bemong (Ghent: Academia Press, 2010), pp. 179-210. J. Dower, ‘Throwing Off Asia I – Woodblock Prints of Domestic ‘Westernization’ (1868-1912)’, in MIT Visualizing Cultures (https://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/21f/21f.027/throwing_off_asia_01/ toa_essay03.html) . W. Edwards, ‘In Pursuit of Himiko. Postwar Archaeology and the Location of Yamatai’, Monumenta Nipponica, 51 (1996), pp. 53-79. J. Elisonas, ‘The Inseparable Trinity: Japan’s Relations with China and Korea’, in The Cambridge History of Japan. Vol. 4: Early Modern Japan, ed. by J. Whitney Hall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 235-300. D. Evans and M. Peattie, Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887-1941 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1997). C. Gluck, Japan’s Modern Myths: Ideology in the Late Meiji Period (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985). C. Guth, Shinzō: Hachiman Imagery and Its Development (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985). M. Harrower, ‘Time, Time Geography, Temporal Change, and Cartography’, in The History of Cartography. Volume Six: Cartography in the Twentieth Century, ed. by M. Monmonier (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2015), pp. 1528-1531. J. Holmes, ‘“Soft Power’’ at Sea: Zheng He and China’s Maritime Diplomacy’, Virginia Review of Asian Studies, 2 (2007), pp. 1-10. C. Jacob, L’empire des cartes: Approche théorique de la cartographie à travers l’histoire (Paris: Albin Michel, 1992). K. Kawahara 川原国松, Kokushi kyōju no shinkenkyū 国史教授の新研究 (Tokyo: Kōbunkaku, 1931).

125

126 R adu Leca

S. Kobayashi, ‘Japanese Mapping of Asia-Pacific Areas, 1873–1945: An Overview’, CrossCurrents: East Asian History and Culture Review, 2 (2012), pp. 1-38. F.-B. Mocnik and D. Fairbairn, ‘Maps Telling Stories?’, The Cartographic Journal (2017), pp. 1-19. M. Moerman, ‘Japan, Cartography, and the Art of World-Making’, in Global Dimensions of Japanese Art, ed. by M. Trede and others (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming). A. Morrow, The Sacred Science of Ancient Japan: Lost Chronicles of the Age of the Gods (Rochester, NY: Bear & Company, 2014). K. Moxey, Visual Time: The Image in History (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013). M. Nagaoka 長岡正利, ‘Rikuchi sokuryōbu hakkō chizu wo chūshin to shite mita shōwa zenki no chizu jijō to sono chizu mihon’ 陸地測量部発行地図を中心として見た昭和 前期の地図事情とその地図見本, Chizu 地図, 34 (1996), pp. 30-34. M. Nishiki 西亀正夫, Gutaika seru shōgaku kokushi kyōzai to kyōjuhō: jinjō gonen’yō 具体 化せる小学国史教材と教授法 : 尋常五年用 (Tokyo: Kōseikaku, 1934). R. Nishino, Changing Histories : Japanese and South African Textbooks in Comparison (1945-1995) (Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2011). H. Park, Mapping the Chinese and Islamic worlds: Cross-cultural Exchange in Pre-modern Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). Joel D. Parker, ‘Using Google Earth to Teach the Magnitude of Deep Time’, Journal of College Science Teaching, 40-5 (2011), pp. 23-27. S. Saaler, ‘Nationalism and History in Contemporary Japan’, The Asia-Pacific Journal, 14 (2016), pp. 1-17. Ch. Phipps, ‘A Two-Timing Map’, in Cartographic Japan: A History in Maps, ed. by Kären Wigen, Sugimoto Fumiko, and Cary Karacas (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2016), pp. 178-181. R. Roth, ‘Interactive Maps: What We Know and What We Need to Know’, Journal of Spatial Information Science, 6 (2013), pp. 59-115. M. Sato, ‘Comparative Ideas of Chronology’, History and Theory, 30 (1991), pp. 275-301. N. Standaert, ‘Jesuit Accounts of Chinese History and Chronology and their Chinese Sources’, EASTM, 35 (2012), pp. 11-87. M. Trede, ‘Banknote Design as a Battlefield of Gender Politics and National Representation in Meiji Japan’, in Performing “Nation” – Gender Politics in Literature, Theater, and the Visual Arts of China and Japan, 1880-1940, ed. by D. Croissant, Catherine Vance Yeh, and Joshua Scott Mostow (Leiden: Brill, 2008), pp. 55-104. M. Tsurezure 徒然漫歩, Shihei kara kiete itta kodaishi no shuyakutachi No.2 Takenouchi no Sukune 紙幣から消えていった古代史の主役たち Ｎｏ.２ 武内宿禰(http://manpokei1948. jugem.jp/?eid=121). K. Uesugi 上杉和央, ‘Kozu no aru fūkei’ 古図のある風景, in Kinsei kankō Osakazu shūsei 近世刊行大阪図集成, ed. by Wakita Osamu 脇田修 and others (Osaka: Sogensha, 2015), pp. 70-76.

The Tensions of Heterochronicit y on Cartogr aphies of Imperial Motion in Japan 

K. Unno 海野一隆, ‘Nagakubo Sekisui no shinazu oyobi sono hankyō’ 長久保赤水のシ ナ図およびその反響, in Tōyō chirigakushi kenkyū Nihon hen (Osaka: Seibundō, 2005), pp. 522-548. B. Vannieuwenhuyze, ‘Reading History Maps – The Siege of Ypres Mapped by Guillaume du Tielt’, Quaerendo, 45 (2015), pp. 292-321. D. Wood and J. Fels, The Power of Maps (New York: Guilford Press, 1992). S. Yoshida 吉田小五郎, Review of Dainihon dokushi chizu 大日本讀史地圖, Shigaku 史 学, 14 (1935), pp. 170-71. M. Yonemoto, ‘The “Spatial Vernacular” in Tokugawa Maps’, The Journal of Asian Studies, 59 (2000), pp. 647-666. J. Young, The Location of Yamatai: A Case Study in Japanese Historiography (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1958).

About the Author Radu Leca is a historian of art and cartography in Japan. After a BA in Japanese literature in Kanazawa University, he completed his MA and PhD in History of Art at SOAS, University of London. He then undertook surveys of collections of maps of Japan in the UK, The Netherlands, Japan, and the US, which have resulted in a forthcoming critical catalogue entitled Enduring Encounters: Maps of Japan from the Leiden University Library Collections. Leca is currently a postdoctoral research associate at the Institute of East Asian Art History at Heidelberg University.

127

5.

A School Atlas as a History Machine: The Bosatlas Online Ferjan Ormeling

Abstract In principle, a school atlas presents the status quo at a given moment, but when it is regarded as a serial work regularly updated, and when, thanks to digital technologies, the same maps in consecutive atlas editions can be compared one to another, then movement over time is visualized. With a customized tool, one may pick one particular map in the nth edition of the atlas and then compare it to the same map in the previous or the next edition on a shared screen, to find out what changes occurred within a specific time frame. Examples of possible applications at different scales show that each map type (because of the kind of symbols used) and each scale level have their own types of stories unfolding. Keywords: Atlases; Bosatlas; geography; history; functionality; usability

Introduction In principle, a school atlas presents a status quo at a given moment, although by doing so it links thousands of stories: countries that achieved their independence, railways completed against all odds, or river valleys whose population was displaced in order to allow for the construction of reservoirs. Sometimes, it may contain references to single events, like a flood or a wildfire that happened at a specific point in time, but as they detract from the main purpose of a school atlas, i.e. to show long-term developments and durable situations, such remarks on the map are short-lived, and seldom survive the next edition. The map detail in Figure 32, taken from the 1921 edition of the Bosatlas, a famous school atlas edited and used in the Netherlands, offers a comment on the collapse of a river dyke following the flooding of the Meuse River in January 1920 (Doorbraak Jan. 1920). This event caused the town of Kuik (Cuyk) to be inundated. This comment was dropped again in the next edition.

Segal, Z. and B. Vannieuwenhuyze, Motion in Maps, Maps in Motion: Mapping Stories and Movement through Time. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020 doi 10.5117/9789463721103_ch05

130 Fer jan Ormeling

Figure 32: Detail of the Noord-Brabant provincial map in the 1921 edition of the Bosatlas with a caption about the breaching of the Meuse dykes [size 4x7cm] (Noordhoff).

When a school atlas is regarded as a serial work that is annually or biannually updated, and when, thanks to digital technologies, the same maps in consecutive atlas editions can be compared one to another, then we are mapping movement through the times.1 Hence the choice of the expression ‘history machine’ here: by comparing the maps, one can perceive changes of colour or texture, the reduction or growth of areas – e.g. in the case of Poland – changes in location, shape or size of point symbols, and networks being extended or reduced. When properly symbolized, using graphical variables that suggest order (sequence in time), such as differences in size or in colour value, change or movement can even be suggested by single maps.2 Consequently, an adequately designed digital environment can transform static analogue maps into an interactive storytelling device, capable of telling different types of stories, dependent on the map scale, as this chapter intends to show. The Bosatlas, first edited by Pieter Roelfs Bos in 1877, and later named after him, is an icon in the Netherlands, as it has had a virtual monopoly for the last one hundred years. In 2017, the first 36 editions of the atlas, published between 1877 and 1939, were scanned and made available on a website hosted by the Utrecht University Library.3 The website is equipped with a special functionality: a customized tool 1 Ormeling, ‘Turning a School Atlas’. 2 Bertin, Sémiologie Graphique; for a systematic description of cartographic procedures for mapping change or for cartographic animation, see Kraak and Ormeling, Cartography, Visualization of Geospatial Data or Kraak, Mapping Time. 3 The website, to which the author contributed, can be accessed at http://bc.library.uu.nl/bos-atlasesmapping-world-1877-1939 (accessed 12 November 2019).

A School Atl as as a History Machine: The Bosatl as Online 

131

33a

33b

33c

33d

33e

Figures 33a to 33e: Detail of the administrative map of Europe, as shown on consecutive editions of the Bosatlas a: 1919; b: 1921; c: 1922; d: 1923; e: 1924 (Noordhoff).

132 Fer jan Ormeling

that enables picking a particular map in a particular edition of the atlas and then comparing it to the same map in the previous or the next edition on a shared screen. By simply clicking a button, the next sequence is shown, as in Figures 33a to 33e. The tool allows students and scholars to discover any changes that have occurred on the map of a specific area within a specific time frame, and subsequently interpret the reasons for these changes. This can be done in a restrictive way: just pick a single mapped theme (e.g. population density) or phenomenon (e.g. the tramway network) and see how it changed within a single area in consecutive editions of the atlas, study how the overall representation of a particular country (like Greece) has changed over time, or look at the growth of the railway network, the construction of reservoirs, or the distribution of cities with over one million inhabitants worldwide. By spotting the differences from one map to the next – the cartographic equivalent of ‘reading between the lines’ – one is forced to seek an explanation. Hence a story will unfold that leads to the present state of the area concerned. Yet, not all areas and scale levels lead to similar stories. The scale and thus the level of detail and the subject matter of the maps influence the kind(s) of story that can be unravelled. The graphical density of the maps also affects the projected stories: as the number of objects rendered on the map increases, spotting differences becomes more difficult. That was one of the reasons a school atlas was used for this digital application. In general, the content of a school atlas is restricted to a rendering of the most important features. This chapter offers a number of examples of possible applications of this map comparison tool developed by the Utrecht University Library, resulting in different stories and sub-stories. The examples represent different scale levels: a) the world traffic map at 1: 100,000,000; b) Peru and Bolivia rendered at 1: 25,000,000 (from the administrative map of South America); c) the Istria peninsula displayed at the scale 1: 2-3,000,000 on the map of the Alps and at 1: 3.7,000,000 on the map of the Danube countries; d) the Zuiderveld region in Drenthe province in the Netherlands, displayed on the provincial map, initially at 1: 500,000 and ending at 1: 400,000; and finally, e) the Rotterdam port area initially mapped at 1: 32,500, and ending at 1: 40,000.

World traffic map, 1899-1961 The world is a colonized place on the Bosatlas’ world traffic map of 1899: Latin America is the only exception. All other continents consist of either colonized or colonizing countries. For European states – apart from Scandinavia and AustriaHungary – having colonies was the norm. The atlas’ editor recognizes that Russia and Turkey were also colonizing their Asian, African, and European provinces. The

A School Atl as as a History Machine: The Bosatl as Online 

map renders the main shipping lines, and amongst them the Dutch ones stand out in red, serving the Dutch colonies, New York, and the Gulf of Mexico (Figure 34). The main shipping companies are listed next to the map. Similarly, the main long-distance rail connections are shown: the transcontinental railways in North America; the Trans-Siberian under construction; and the Trans-Caspian railroad to Samarkand. In addition, caravan routes are displayed in China and Africa. The shortest route to travel around the world is also shown (in blue) – it took 64 days in 1899. The mapped transport routes are supplemented with numbers that indicate the number of days it took to follow these tracks. The story that unfolds through the following editions is that of the extending global rail network: the Hejaz railway (finished 1918) and the Baghdad railway in Turkey; the Trans-Siberian railway (finished 1918); the Trans-Caspian; the Central Asian and the Turksib (1930) railway lines in Russia; the railway building programme in China, starting in Manchuria and gradually linking the cities on the eastern seaboard Peking, Shanghai, Wuhan in the interior and finally Canton. One is made aware of the railway building programmes in French Indo-China (in 1936 from Saigon north to Yunnan), the link from Chiangmai in Thailand to Singapore in the British Straits Settlements, and in Iran between the coasts of the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf. For their part, most Indian railroads had already been constructed prior to the atlas’ inception. It was the only railway system outside Europe and North America already present on the map in 1877. The 1899 map shows two railroad systems in Africa: one in South Africa and one from Oran to Tunis in the north, which was extended in the 1920s to Fez, Casablanca, and Marrakesh. In addition, the continent only has feeder routes that link port cities to markets in the interior. However, in Southern Africa, a system gradually emerged beyond South Africa’s borders, linking the copper belt in Rhodesia and Katanga’s mining province to South African, Portuguese colonial, and Belgian Congo ports. After 1918, this system also integrated the Southwest-African network. Similarly, feeder line heads in Nigeria’s interior were gradually linked and a Northwest-African railway from Djibouti on the Red Sea coast finally reached Addis Ababa in 1936. In South America, the tin, copper, and nitrate mines needed links to the coast or to the navigable stretches of the Amazon River, and these feeder lines were gradually integrated: La Paz was linked to both the Chilean Pacific ports Arica and Antofagasta, as well as the Peruvian port of Mollendo in the 1920s. In 1936, Argentina and Bolivia were linked by railway, through the extension from Jujuy to La Paz. In the 1930s, the atlas map began depicting rail links between Montevideo, Santos, Sao Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro, although such links already existed for some time. In Canada, a new transcontinental railway line was built in 1910, north of the existing one, between Prince Rupert and Quebec. In 1918, a rail track was laid out in the waterless Nullarbor Plain in Australia, from Perth to Adelaide. On the

133

134 Fer jan Ormeling

Figure 34: Detail from the world map on colonies and traffic from the 1899 fourteenth edition of the Bosatlas (Noordhoff).

A School Atl as as a History Machine: The Bosatl as Online 

135

136 Fer jan Ormeling

eve of the First World War, the shortest travel time for a trip around the world had been reduced to 41 days. As their colouring stands out, territorial changes are much easier to spot than network extensions. The orange colour bands along the Red Sea coast, denoting Turkish control, are gradually receding, as Egypt became a British vassal and the Mahdi’s Sudan reverted to Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. The German colony Cameroon was extended, to the detriment of French West- and Equatorial Africa, as parts of Ubangi and French Congo were transferred to Germany, in exchange for German acquiescence over the French/Spanish takeover of Morocco. In 1938, Abyssinia was conquered by Italy. In addition, the number of countries without colonies continued to decrease. In the 1915 Bosatlas edition, Japan was finally recognized as a colonial power and rendered as such, since it had conquered Formosa (1895), Sakhalin (1905), and Korea (1906). China, on the other hand, continued to be sliced up: Tanna Tuva and Mongolia were detached from it, as was Manchuria under the name of Manchukwo or Manchutikwo in the 1930s. In 1919, Germany and Turkey were deleted from the list of colonial powers, as their former possessions were taken over by the Allied victors. In the Middle East, Britain and France divided the former Turkish Arab-speaking, and potentially oil-bearing areas amongst themselves in 1919, and created Palestine, Syria, Iraq, and Transjordan. At the same time, Russia lost Finland, Poland, and the Baltic states. In 1947, Japanese colonies reverted to China or became independent, like Korea. The former Italian colonies were rendered as independent (e.g. Ethiopia) or remained under temporary military control of the Allies. Germany’s boundaries in Europe were adjusted to their present ones, Austria and Czechoslovakia re-emerged, and the boundaries of the Soviet Union shifted westwards. In 1956, the title of the map changed to ‘Overseas Possessions and Traffic’, but countries without overseas dependencies were depicted with the same nondescript colour. Former Italian Somaliland was still indicated as Italian and Italy still as a colonial power, but that had been adjusted by the time the next edition was published. As the Soviet Union no longer seemed to be regarded as a colonial power, it now belonged to the non-colonial world and the overall picture of the world changed accordingly: colonial areas now constituted a minor part of the inhabited world.4 Almost all of Asia had now been decolonized, apart from French Indochina, Malacca, and Hadhramaut. In 1959, the title of the map became ‘World States and Traffic’. Countries without colonies no longer shared the same colour, although countries belonging to the British Commonwealth or to the French Communauté were all depicted in pink and purple colours, respectively. The colonial era was over.

4

Ormeling, ‘Colonialism in the Bosatlas’.

A School Atl as as a History Machine: The Bosatl as Online 

In sum, the sequence of 1: 100M world traffic maps in subsequent Bosatlas editions shows changes in administrative dispensation and highlights colonizing countries and their overseas possessions. It also shows the gradual extension of the network of overseas shipping lines and the position of Dutch shipping companies worldwide. But the pattern of all the shipping lines on the seven seas is rather intertwined and therefore difficult to interpret. By contrast, the extension of the overland transport facilities is easier to follow over time, experiencing a classical development of feeder routes into inland networks. Even so, much time was invested in keeping the representation of the global shipping networks up to date. Apparently, there was a sense of noblesse oblige; since the Netherlands was still a major shipping nation, the Dutch main school atlas should keep abreast of developments in this field. Having colonies was initially presented as normative. Countries without colonies did not merit a specific colour, but were rendered with some nondescript hachures. The area being colonized actually increased until 1940, partly because of the conquests by Italy and Japan in the first half of the twentieth century. The colonized area only decreased after 1945, but at this point change was rapid – in 1960 hardly any colonies were left. The major story behind these maps is the establishment of a global communication network against the background of the rise and fall of colonialism.

Peru, Bolivia, and Paraguay on the administrative map of South America 1877-1947 As the geographical information on South America in European school atlases is rather restricted, the infrastructure is less dominant. Consequently, territorial changes are much easier to perceive. The cut-out in Figure 35 has been selected as the most dramatic visualization of the struggles between the poorest Latin nations and their stronger neighbours, starting in 1877. In that year, a series of conflicts over resources started that would change the map of South America significantly. We call them the War of the Pacific or Guano War, the Rubber War, and the Chaco War, which was fought over oil. As these conflicts also involved access rights, railway lines again played an important role. However, the depiction of the extension of the rail network is far less conspicuous than that of the territorial changes. In 1877, Bolivia was not landlocked, since it had Antofagasta and Cobija as Pacific ports (Figure 35a). A railway line was being built to link Antofagasta with Placilla in the interior. Peru possessed most of the Atacama Desert, and Iquique and Arica were Peruvian Pacific ports. The Lake Titicaca region was connected to the Pacific through the Puno-Arequipa-Mollendo railway line, which was opened in 1871 and extended to Cuzco in 1876. The Chincha Isles off southern Peru (Figure 35b) were

137

138 Fer jan Ormeling

Figures 35a and 35b: Part of South America in the 1877 (above) and 1936 (below) editions of the Bosatlas (Noordhoff). The lines linking Pacific ports on the right are telegraph lines, constructed by American or British companies.

A School Atl as as a History Machine: The Bosatl as Online 

immense guano deposits that Spain and its former South American colonies had previously gone to war over. In 1879, the so-called War of the Pacific started as a result of Bolivian taxes levied on Chilean companies that were mining or transporting guano and nitrate in the Atacama Desert. As Peru and Bolivia had a treaty of mutual defence against Chile, the latter declared war on both countries and defeated them in naval and land campaigns. In 1881, Chilean forces even occupied the Peruvian capital Lima. In the 1883 Bosatlas edition, the results of the Pacific War are shown. The coastal province of Bolivia (Antofagasta plus the Transandine railway) is now portrayed as Chilean territory, as is the Peruvian province Tarapaca. Peru also agreed to temporal occupation by Chile of its Arica and Tacna provinces. Only Tacna province was returned to Peru, in 1929. The War of the Pacific officially came to an end in 1904 following the ratification of peace negotiations between Chile and Bolivia. One of these peace conditions, the construction of the rail link between Antofagasta and La Paz, was completed in 1917. In 1899, the ‘Acre or Rubber war’ started between Brazil and Bolivia. The Acre region, rich in rubber trees, had been invaded by Brazilian rubber collectors who refused to pay the rubber tax imposed by the Bolivian government in 1899. A Republic of Acre was proclaimed by the rubber barons, and later taken over by Brazil. This takeover was ratif ied by the Treaty of Petropolis in 1903. The 1915 Bosatlas edition shows a railway line that had been built in Brazil along the Madeira River between Guajara Mirim and San Antonio, to bypass the rapids between Porto Velho/San Antonio and the Bolivian border and to facilitate transports from north-eastern Bolivia to the Atlantic Ocean via the Amazon River system. Called the Madeira-Mamoré railway, it was built by Brazil between 1907 and 1912, in exchange for the Acre territory. In 1932, the ‘Chaco War’ erupted between the two poorest, land-locked countries in Latin America, Bolivia and Paraguay, as both parties expected the Chaco area to contain vast quantities of oil. Although a ceasefire was arranged in 1935, the truce was only signed in 1938 – and its effects therefore are not yet visible in Figure 35b. Moreover, the final peace was only signed in 2009! But in the atlas the de facto situation (Paraguay had conquered most of the Chaco area) was only correctly portrayed from the 1947 edition onwards. Since then, the din of arms in this continent had more or less subsided. In this case, the limited number of map details on Peru and Bolivia at 1: 25,000,000 proves to be helpful in discerning territorial changes. The gradual but slow extension of the rail network contrasts sharply with the sudden consequences of the territorial conflicts over resources, such as the ‘War of the Pacific’, the ‘Acre or Rubber War’ and the ‘Chaco War’, which was fought because of the expectation of oil strikes in the area. Even so, the territorial changes agreed on in the peace treaties were directly linked to infrastructural works that guaranteed access to the sea to the losing party.

139

140 Fer jan Ormeling

Istria and its surroundings, 1877-1951 The 1877 atlas map shows the Istria peninsula with its two main ports, Trieste, linked to Vienna by rail, and Fiume, linked to Budapest. Italy’s north-eastern border is circled by the Austrian rail network. Just beyond Karlstad on the Fiume-Agram (Zagreb)-Budapest railroad, Asia loomed, as Bosnia was still a Turkish province. The Karst area is displayed prominently on the map, which also notes the location of Adelsberg (Postojna), famous at the time for its caves, a great fin-de-siècle tourist attraction. According to the ethnographic inset map on the same atlas spread, the coastal population of Istria was Italian speaking. A dotted line indicates the boundary between Cis- and Transleithania, the two (Austrian and Hungarian) parts of the Habsburg empire. The story unfolding here is a mixed one: on the one hand, the struggle between the multi-ethnic Habsburg empire and a number of new nation states (a conflict also expressed through place names); on the other, the story of emerging tourism in a continent where leisure was being discovered. Consecutive editions of the map gradually show more rail links that gave Vienna and Budapest faster access to the sea, mainly for trade but later also for tourism. In 1885, Austria acquired control over Bosnia. In the 1893 edition, star-shaped symbols were added to indicate fortresses or fortified towns, a feature copied from the Stieler atlas, the foremost reference atlas at the time. In 1899, the Abbazia (Opatija) resort was added on the coast of the Gulf of Fiume. In the 1906 edition, the scale of the map of Austria-Hungary changed from 1: 3,700,000 to 1: 3,250,000. A special inset map on the Karst area was included, with its natural wonders such as caves and subterranean rivers. In Croatia, the town of Goltschee was added, the centre of a German-speaking enclave, as can be seen on the neighbouring ethnographic map. On Luzin Island, on the Adriatic Sea’s east side, two towns are indicated, Lussin Piccolo and Lussin Grande. In the nineteenth century, Lussin Piccolo was the third shipbuilding centre of Austria-Hungary. With the advent of iron ships, it could not maintain its position, but tourism took over, and both towns became famous as Kurorte. In 1908, a scenic railway line was constructed from Klagenfurt to Trieste, round the Triglav massif and along the Isonzo River, tunnelling through the Karawanken and also the Julian Alps (Figure 36). The new 1912 map of the Alps at a scale of 1: 2,250,000 shows northwest of Trieste, on its gulf, the town of Prosecco, renowned today for its sparkling wine. But then the idyll ends: the Doberdo plateau, south of Gradisca and close to Monfalcone, both of which appeared on the 1915 map, was one of the bloodiest battlefields on the Alpine front of the First World War, especially during the sixth battle of the Isonzo. Its name was not reflected on the map, but in the 1916 Bosatlas edition the place Tolmein is included on the atlas map of the Alps. During the war,

A School Atl as as a History Machine: The Bosatl as Online 

it was the main starting point of the Austrian offensives, in particular the battle of Caporetto (1917), which forced Italian troops to retreat behind the Piave River. The 1919 edition of the map shows the new boundary between Italy and Austria: South Tyrol had become Italian. The frontier between Italy and Yugoslavia was not decided yet and was portrayed with a dashed line, reflecting two options. The Klagenfurt area (South Carinthia) would be decided upon by a plebiscite: on 10 October 1920, the inhabitants voted to stay with Austria. The Carinthian Kanal Valley and the city of Tarvis were ceded to Italy as well as the Slovene-speaking valleys south of the Karawanken mountains. Austria and Hungary, the two core states of the former Austro-Hungarian empire, decided to separate, although they did not agree about their border: the former border between Cis- and Transleithania was not accepted by the Austrians, as German-speaking areas extended over it. Austria claimed and was allocated the German-language zone of Western Hungary, now called Burgenland. Hungary held a plebiscite on Burgenland’s capital, Sopron (Ödenburg), in which two thirds of the voters decided to stay with Hungary, and this is shown in the 1921 edition. In this 1921 edition, Fiume is demarcated as a special area: at the treaty of Rapallo on 11 November 1920, Italy and Yugoslavia agreed that Fiume/Rijeka would be an independent free state. As its administration was in continuous turmoil, the area of the free state was divided at the treaty of Rome in 1924: Italy got Fiume proper and Yugoslavia the eastern part, with the town of Šušak. It took more than a decade for the Dutch school atlas to acknowledge the changing place names in the area.5 In the 1934 edition maps of the Alps and of Italy, the toponym Brixen became Bressanone, the first acknowledgement of Italian sovereignty over South Tyrol, and Meran and Bozen changed to Merano and Bolzano. After the Second World War, the editor’s reaction in the atlas was much quicker: in the 1951 edition, all former Italian names on the Yugoslavian coast had been slavicized. Tourism resumed, but in a new toponymic coat. With regard to the 1: 3,000,000 maps of Istria and its surroundings, the gradual build-up of connections between the hinterland and the ports of Venice, Trieste, and Fiume on both sides of the Italian-Austrian boundary is visualized. But other stories can be read from the maps: military preparations leading up to the First World War, emerging tourism with a focus on seaside resorts on the Adriatic Sea, and national movements that wanted to be freed from the benevolent tutelage of the multi-ethnic Habsburg state. It took the Dutch atlas editors rather a long time to come to terms with the post-First World War situation, and the emancipation

5 The editor’s only political comment ever in his editorial forewords referred to the incorrect fact that Italy was rewarded with South Tyrol.

141

142 Fer jan Ormeling

Figure 36: Detail of the map of the Habsburg Empire from the 1912 edition of the Bosatlas [11x15cm] (Noordhoff).

of the Slavic nations, especially regarding place names. The maps also reflect the lack of interest of non-belligerents in the First World War killing fields.

The Zuiderveld part of the 1: 500,000 provincial map of the Netherlands, 1881-1947 On the 1881 map, Zuiderveld is an area in the southern part of Drenthe province, with a glacial moraine (Hondsrug) in the east, sparsely populated by Dutch standards, with mixed farming, defined by the subsoil: sandy glacial deposits (yellow and pink), purple peat soils and brownish high moor peat (the area is dissected by sand ridges). The network of rivulets that drained the area had been extended by canals, dug in order to export the peat: the so-called compagnonsvaarten, i.e. canals built by peat digging firms. These vaarten are central in a network of smaller canals or ditches, called wijken, which could just about accommodate small barges for transporting the newly dug peat. The story told here is about the opening-up of the countryside and its consecutive exodus. Between 1870 and 1920, population density in the rural Netherlands reached its peak, but this changed due to mechanization and agricultural crises. This labour reservoir was tapped by emerging industries such as strawboard, potato flour, and dairy factories, which initially led to extensive commuter traffic.

A School Atl as as a History Machine: The Bosatl as Online 

Later, however, the labourers decided to move to factory towns, depopulating the countryside. This was still irrelevant in 1881. New mechanized equipment and artif icial fertilizers allowed for the draining and exploitation of the high peat marshes, and their change into arable fields. The names on the map reflect that it was a newly colonized area, e.g. Hollandsche veld, Nieuw-Amsterdam, Nieuw Dordrecht, or Erica. The Dedemsvaart canal in the south, and the more northerly Hoogeveensche vaart and its extension, as well as the Oranjekanaal, were intended to export the peat. The railway lines (Zwolle)-Meppel-Groningen (1870) and Meppel-Leeuwarden (1868) traverse the area. The villages Frederiksoord, Willemsoord, and Wilhelminas Oord, rendered in the area where the provinces Overijssel, Drenthe, and Friesland meet, are ‘colonies of benevolence’, i.e. places where urban paupers were supposed to be re-educated as farmers to enable them to provide their own subsistence. The canal system used for exporting the peat and importing urban waste as fertilizer was gradually extended and upgraded. In 1887, the first regional tramway was planned, and completed in 1890, originating in the more industrial Twente area. In 1896, tramways from Groningen in the north tapped the area, at Ter Apel. That same year, the Bosatlas editor changed the appearance of the map as he opted for a soil-type base map instead. This base map would be maintained for the next 65 years, with yellow for sand, purple for peat soils (laagveen), pink for high moor peat (hoogveen), and green for clays. In 1897, the province maps were completely overhauled (Figure 37): the structure of the settlements was delineated, symbols for dunes and sand drifts were added, and all the small canals and ditches used for the winning of peat were rendered on the map, thus characterizing the landscape. One can almost see on the map the peat areas being drained, cleared of peat, and being turned into arable land. New villages were built in the opened-up land, and many of them had the generic simplex -veen (peat) in their name. From 1899 to 1919, the area was covered by an increasingly dense system of regional tramways, with Coevorden, Stadskanaal, and Hoogeveen as its regional centres. In the 1904 Bosatlas edition, the difference between high moor peat and cut-up peat was indicated (the dug-up areas had a less intense pink colour) for the first time, so that the extent of the high moor peat, still to be exploited, could be easily recognized. Meanwhile, the regular rail network was also extended throughout the area, with the Coevorden-Emmen-Stadskanaal-Delfzijl and AssenStadskanaal railway lines. The peat-digging activities disturbed the water balance in the area and caused flooding downstream. As a result, drainage canals had to be constructed. Consequently, one finds, over time, an extension of these canals towards the lowest point, at the Groningen coast. In 1929, the symbols for the small peat-digging canals and the symbol for built-up areas were removed; it had proved to be too time-consuming to keep them up to date.

143

144 Fer jan Ormeling

Figure 37: Detail of Drenthe province in the 1897 edition of the Bosatlas (Noordhoff).

In 1936, depopulation had set in, and most regional tramways were abandoned and thus removed from the map, with the exception of the Coevorden-Assen link. Bus companies were taking over. The same fate befell the railway lines. In 1939, both the Assen-Stadskanaal and the Emmen-Stadskanaal lines were halted, and in 1947 the Groningen-Delfzijl line. By that time, the countryside looked as bare or bald on the map again, as was the case in the 1881 edition. In sum, the 1: 500,000 regional maps show that the formerly inaccessible peat bog area of the Zuiderveld was drained and colonized, through the building of canals, both for drainage and for exporting the peat as combustible material for the western part of the country. The consequent population increase was served by an increasingly dense network of regional tramways next to the canals, coupled by a similar development of a rail network. In the 1920s, this development peaked, and hereafter the demand diminished (also because of depopulation) or took another form: both the tramway and railway networks partly collapsed and were taken over by motor coach companies. A special aspect of these subsequent regional maps is the depiction of the landscape through the rendering of settlement and drainage structure. Although this was extremely informative, it proved to be too time-consuming to keep it up to date and it was therefore discontinued. For similar reasons, the regional tramway network was not updated. Ultimately, the maps were devoid of all the networks added over time.

A School Atl as as a History Machine: The Bosatl as Online 

Rotterdam port, 1902-1960 The close-up map of the port of Rotterdam was first incorporated in the fifteenth edition of the Bosatlas from 1902, and it continued to feature until the present 55th edition from 2015. Yet, as the port extended, it became necessary to render a larger area, and thus it had to be represented at a smaller scale. It started in 1902 at a scale of 1: 32,500, and in the 29th edition this had changed to 1: 40,000 in order to incorporate the harbour basins in the satellite towns along the Meuse River, Schiedam and Vlaardingen. As one of the pet maps of consecutive atlas editors, it was continually updated (as was the overseas network of Dutch shipping companies). At the time, the Dutch were still proud of their merchant fleet, the fourth in the world, and this feeling was also propagated by the school atlas. The Rotterdam port map presents a story of urbanization and gradual incorporation of the fishing and shipping centres along this mouth of the Rhine River, a complete overhaul of the landscape as a reaction to the larger and deeper ships the port wanted to accommodate. The story is interrupted for a few decades, after the Second World War, but then resumes as Rotterdam became the largest port in the world in the last quarter of the twentieth century, although now surpassed by ports in China. In the Rotterdam of 1902, the Central Station was still located at the edge of the city; it was called Delftse Poort and belonged to the Holland Iron Railway-Company (HIJSM), one of the private railway companies that transported its patrons from Rotterdam to The Hague and Amsterdam. In addition, the State Railways connected the town to Dordrecht and Antwerp from the Beurs station, and to Utrecht from the Maas station. From the eighteenth edition onwards, the South Holland Electric Railway Company (ZHESM) transported passengers to The Hague and Scheveningen from the Hofplein station (visible through its symbol). The map was clearly derived from a topographic map, probably drawn by an employee of the Dutch topographic survey. The functions of the harbour installations and the owners and directions of the railway lines are indicated by labels. Petrol storage, shipyards, dry docks, cranes and coal tips, gas works, water companies and projected harbour extensions are indicated, as well as built-up areas, locks, and ferry terminals. The water quality must still have been adequate, since swimming facilities in the Meuse River and a couple of salmon fisheries (when the mapped area is extended westwards in 1908) can be found. On the Petroleum etablissement on the Nieuwe Maas, the storage facilities of the American Petroleum Company and of the related Deutsch-Amerikanische Petroleum Gesellschaft are located, both of which would eventually become subsidiaries of ESSO. In subsequent editions, one perceives the gradual merging of the towns north of the Nieuwe Maas River, and the continuous construction, mostly on the south bank, of a number of harbour

145

146 Fer jan Ormeling

basins. In the 1904 edition, construction of what was to become the residential area Afrikaanderbuurt appears on the Hille polder. Influenced by a strong anti-British sentiment triggered by the Boer War, all the streets are named after Boer generals: Cronjé, Botha, Joubert, Retief, De Wet and De la Rey. In 1906, soundings were added to the map, to show the depth of the river and harbour basins. The routes of the intercity steam trams are drawn in, from their starting point at the Steam tram Station on the Koningshaven port. As the harbours extended westwards, so did the railway lines that had to serve the quays: a Havenspoorweg (harbour line) north of the Nieuwe Maas, and one to the south of it, with their accompanying railway yards. In the 1929 edition, the spit between the recently completed Sint-Jobshaven and the Parkhaven is named the Müller quay, where the transport and trading firm of Wilhelm Müller had its premises.6 Warehouses were constructed on both sides of the Maashaven. On 13 June 1907, Rotterdam municipal council decided to construct the Waalhaven harbour basin, which required the expropriation of the Robbenoort and Plompert polders. The excavation started in 1907 and was only finished in 1924. On the 1910 map (Figure 38), one finds a quarantine station located next to the petrol storage area. At the south side of the Schiehaven, the name Rotterdamse Lloyd is mentioned, the shipping company that transported the author of this chapter four times between 1948 and 1955 between the Netherlands and Indonesia. In this respect, these port maps also unfold a personal story. Prior to the First World War, plans for harbour extensions on the northside of the Nieuwe Maas between Delfshaven and Schiedam are indicated, also used for industries such as the municipal gas works, which were realised in 1915. The port and its associated industries demanded large numbers of workers and the population of Rotterdam increased sharply and new city wards continued to be necessary. Some of the new wards were constructed just in-between the harbour basins, minimizing the necessity of travel for the workers. In 1919, the municipal council decided to construct an aerodrome south of the Waalhaven basin, and on 26 July 1920, the first aeroplane landed there, from London. Waalhaven airport became the second civilian airport in the Netherlands. In the 29th edition, published in 1924, the continued extension westwards of the harbour basins necessitated a change of scale from 1: 32,500 to 1: 40,000, and the east-west extent of the mapped area changed from 8 to 14 km. An inset map of the Hook of Holland port was added. Because of the westward extension of the map, the planned expansions of the towns of Schiedam and Vlaardingen could be rendered. In addition, relevant company names were added: those of shipyards and engineering works, of drydocks and 6 His daughter and son-in-law, the Kröller-Müller couple, later donated their art collection to the state, on display in the museum named after them.

A School Atl as as a History Machine: The Bosatl as Online 

petrol companies, the Holland America line and the Koolhoven aircraft factory. In 1924, the not yet built-up area in-between Delfshaven and Rotterdam was prepared for construction: the grounds for the Museum Park and Dijkzigt hospital were laid out, while another part was to become a recreation ground. Part of the area was dredged in order to become the Coolhaven basin, and plans were made to link this new basin to the Parkhaven basin. In 1932, a new phase of harbour development started with the creation of the first and second oil port in IJsselmonde, where Shell (BPM) and Esso would build their storage tanks. The quarantine station was relocated to the Heijplaat in 1934, and a tugboat harbour was created in its former place. The construction of the new quarantine premises was an unemployment relief project during the 1928-1934 crisis. On the riverside there was a wooden landing, where ships could berth. Traffic queues on bridges were the inevitable problem of a city on both sides of a busy river. Initially, a car ferry between the head of the Maashaven and the Park was instituted to try to alleviate the congestion on the Willemsbrug and Koninginnebrug bridges. In 1935, the first exploratory drilling took place in the Park with a view to building of a tunnel beneath the Nieuwe Maas. It was completed in 1942 in the midst of the Second World War. In 1938, the commercial and state railways merged in the Netherlands, so all references to individual companies along the rail tracks disappeared from the map. On the 1939 map, the Feijenoord soccer stadium is prominently displayed; it dates from 1937, as does the new Rotterdam Zuid railway station adjacent to it. In the next edition after 1939, published in 1947, one can see that the street pattern in Rotterdam’s city centre has remained, but the red colour denoting a built-up area has disappeared, the result of the German bombing of Rotterdam in May 1940 (Figure 39). The rest of the map had not yet changed, despite the fact that many transformations had occurred: updated maps were simply not available. The Hook of Holland inset map also remained unchanged. In fact, more than two thirds of that village was levelled in order to build bunkers as part of the Atlantic Wall; the western village core in 1941, the eastern one partly in 1943. In May 1940, the Waalhaven aerodrome was conquered by German parachutists, and was subsequently heavily attacked by Dutch and British bombers; Dutch artillery bombarded the runways for days and, after their surrender, the German troops continued to make it unfit for landing. After the Second World War, the airport was not rebuilt. An industrial zone now lies on the location of the former airport. Comparison of the subsequent 1: 32,500 Rotterdam port area maps shows how the need for port facilities for deeper and larger ships translated into the building of larger and more seaward situated harbour basins. As the extent of the port area increased, the scale of the map had to decrease. Apart from the harbour basins, the rail infrastructure had to be kept up to date, and the industrialization required

147

148 Fer jan Ormeling

Figure 38: Rotterdam Port as rendered in the nineteenth edition of the Bosatlas, published in 1910 (Noordhoff).

A School Atl as as a History Machine: The Bosatl as Online 

149

150 Fer jan Ormeling

Figure 39: Detail of the Rotterdam port map from the 37th edition of the Bosatlas, published in 1947 (Noordhoff).

a continuous extension of the residential areas, through which the towns of Rotterdam, Delfshaven, Schiedam, and Vlaardingen gradually merged. This gradual development, the pace of which changed with the world economic situation, was marred by the Second World War and the bombardment of the centre of Rotterdam and five years of inactivity took their toll.

Conclusion The subsequent Bosatlas maps covering different themes, representing various regions, and drawn at different scales, all have their own unfolding stories. However, infrastructural aspects play an important part on all five scale levels discerned. The inclusion of these aspects was necessitated by scale and by the different purposes of the maps. For a world traffic map, rail and shipping connections are requisite. Administrative aspects reign on the smaller scale maps and are less relevant on city maps or provincial maps. The viability of maintaining networks is much more relevant for the larger-scale maps. The lack of viability, however, forced many provincial networks out of business and also necessitated the seawards expansion of port areas.

A School Atl as as a History Machine: The Bosatl as Online 

Place-names become more important in the stories derived from the comparison of medium- and large-scale maps. Commercial interests, such as the names of shipping companies, factories, and railway companies, are relevant for dedicated traffic maps at all scales and for large-scale urban maps. Pictorial references, such as the photographs of salmon fisheries and soccer stadiums, are only relevant for large-scale maps on which these premises can actually be located, as there they would contribute to the stories. Global stories are told by comparing maps at scales around 1: 100,000,000, conflicts over resources need a larger scale, like the 1: 25,000,000 for South America. The tourist or military build-up was portrayed for Istria on the scale 1: 3-4,000,000. Land development, emerging agro-industry, and the ensuing rural exodus, as well as the associated collapse of the transportation infrastructure, were portrayed by the provincial maps at scales of around 1: 500,000. Stories of urban growth, at least for the Netherlands where no megacities exist as yet, are told by comparing maps at scales of between 1: 30,000 and 50,000. Thus, again it is by comparing maps at specific scales – in addition to their topic, of course – that different kinds of stories can be told. Cartography not only encompasses the production of maps, but also their use. From a map-user’s point of view, therefore, the comparison of administrative maps, where countries are represented by distinct colour patches, is much easier than the comparison of networks of shipping lines or railway networks. The seawards extension of harbour basins is also much easier to discern than the extension of the railway and tramway networks. As cartographic labour became more expensive, the upkeep of the super-detailed representation of the settlement pattern or the systems of small canals to drain the moors on provincial maps was no longer viable, and these renderings were dropped from the atlas. It is thus not only the kind of map symbol that would decide the ease with which the map stories unfold, but also the viability of their portrayal. It takes a keen eye to see the differences between two subsequent editions of a map. Fortunately, the tool developed by the Utrecht University Library allows for zooming in on the same particular area in subsequent maps, making it much easier to discern changes between them.7 Once found, these changes, and the reasons why they were inserted by the editors, spin their own story.

Bibliography J. Bertin, Sémiologie Graphique (The Hague: Mouton, 1967). 7

Van Egmond, ‘Een beeld van de wereld’.

151

152 Fer jan Ormeling

M.-J. Kraak, Mapping time (Redlands: Esri Press, 2014). M.-J. Kraak and F.J. Ormeling, Cartography, Visualization of Geospatial Data (Boca Raton: CRC Press, 2020). F.J. Ormeling, ‘Turning a School Atlas into a History Atlas: The Bosatlas online 1877-1939’, in Proceedings International Cartographic Conference (Washington, DC: International Cartographic Association, 2017a). F.J. Ormeling, ‘Colonialism in the Bosatlas’, in Dissemination of Cartographic Knowledge. 6th International symposium of the ICA CHC in Dubrovnik, 2016, ed. by M. Altic, I. Demhardt and S. Vervust (Berlin: Springer Verlag, 2017b), pp. 235-257. M. van Egmond, ‘Een beeld van de wereld tussen 1877 en 1939: de vooroorlogse edities van De Bosatlas online’, in Caert-Thresoor, 36 (2017), pp. 39-44.

About the Author Starting as an assistant atlas-editor with the Wolters-Noordhoff publishing firm (1961-1968), Ferjan Ormeling held the chair of cartography at Utrecht University between 1985 and 2009 and is now a member of the Explokart research group at the University of Amsterdam, where he specializes in atlas cartography and the history of mapping the Indonesian archipelago.

6. Facebook Cartographies and the Mapping of Local History Storied Maps from the American Middletown Jörn Seemann

Abstract Place-related data from social media platforms are still awaiting further exploration in mapping and map-making and are useful to stimulate a debate on how to visualize cartographically this type of subjective and unstructured information. The example of a Facebook group on local history from a town in the American Midwest is used to discuss potentials and limitations of visually capturing historical events and processes. Variations of online story maps are presented as cartographic exercises of deep mapping, in order to point out the relationship between the digital humanities, historical GIS, and historical cartography. The text makes a plea for a narrative cartography of everyday life based on the experiences and values of ordinary people. Keywords: Cartographic storytelling; digital humanities; deep map; Facebook; local history; Muncie, Indiana

Introduction Historical maps are powerful storytelling devices for revealing facts, worldviews, and knowledge from the past. In the early 1990s, J.B. Harley stressed the complexity of cartographic representations as multi-layered documents and sources of information and wrote that the fascination of maps ‘lies in their inherent ambivalence and in our ability to tease out new meanings, hidden agendas, and contrasting world views from between the lines of the image.’1 He conceived maps as cultural texts that had to be read within the context of the society in which they were produced. 1

Harley, ‘Text and Context’, p. 4.

Segal, Z. and B. Vannieuwenhuyze, Motion in Maps, Maps in Motion: Mapping Stories and Movement through Time. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020 doi 10.5117/9789463721103_ch06

154

Jörn Seemann

In order to understand maps and their messages, the reader must take into account the three Ms that accompany the cartographic representation in the mapping process: modes (what); methods (how); and moments (when and where).2 This entails questions about the contextualization of mapping practices, alternative and innovative methodological approaches to studying maps, and the importance of events and stories in cartographic history. This conception of cartography counters traditional forms of mapmaking that have replicated old certainties, focusing on areas, scales and themes, deploying rather tired existing ways of imagining the world and simply applying these to interactive, animated and multimediated contexts, instead of exploring the full potential of new contexts, styles and technologies.3

These thought-provoking ideas for map reading have triggered a fruitful, controversial, and ongoing debate about cartographic theory and interpretation strategies, inviting cartographers, historians, and geographers to rethink the map. 4 Thirty years after the publication of Harley’s influential paper ‘Deconstructing the Map’ and its plea to link cartography to critical social theory,5 mapping has shifted from static and frozen paper maps to digital forms of representation that are online, interactive, and ‘on-the-move’. In fact, the emphasis is now on mappings (processes) instead of on maps (products).6 These trends are also evident in historical cartography. On the one hand, maps from the past are increasingly used as spatial narratives to reconstruct events, periods, and contexts. Cartographic history provides insights into specific moments and broader historical processes. On the other hand, new online tools and digital apps help to spatialize and visualize what has happened in history, resulting in ‘new visualizations of past landscapes.’7 The map can be both a starting point and an outcome of a composition or compilation of historical information translated and transformed into a visual and visible format. Alluding to Paul Klee’s famous quote about art, cartography ‘does not reproduce the visible but makes visible,’ taking into account what the cartographers Arthur Robinson and Barbara Petchenik in a somewhat different

2 Dodge, Perkins and Kitchin, ‘Mapping Modes’, p. 220. 3 Ibid., p. 239. 4 Wood, The Power of Maps; Crampton and Krygier, ‘An Introduction to Critical Cartography’; Rethinking Maps. 5 Harley, ‘Deconstructing the Map’. 6 Rundstrom, ‘Mapping, Post-Modernism, Indigenous People’. 7 Wickens Pearce and Hermann, ‘Mapping Champlain’s Travels’, p. 33.

Facebook Cartogr aphies and the Mapping of Local History 

context observed in the mid-1970s: ‘Anything that can be spatially conceived can be mapped.’8 ‘Anything’ means any type and form of information from census data and spatial statistics to geotagged photos on Instagram to random place-based comments on a website. With the development of increasingly sophisticated information technologies, the volume of space-related historical data has reached new dimensions. Widely ignored primary data sources for map-making are social media websites like Twitter, Pinterest, and Facebook. These ‘webworks’ (a combination of websites and networks) host millions of users who post and share opinions, photos, links, and other references online, creating something that may be called qualitative big data, a data grey zone that is still awaiting a cartographic rendering. Those who sign up for these platforms can join specif ic groups that address a wide variety of topics, post their comments, contest others, or commence a new thread of discussion. The aim of this chapter is to establish a dialogue between social media and mapping endeavours and to reflect on how to visualize this type of data in the context of history and cartography in order to point out potentials and limitations. At the same time, these reflections are an attempt to explore links between historical maps and unconventional data sources like tweets or Facebook posts. For this reason, the chapter is not exclusively about historical maps, but also about the visualization of historical data produced in the present. An empirical example will serve to ‘read between the lines’ of morsels of information posted by members of a Facebook group that deals with the history of a town in Indiana in the American Midwest, nationally known under its fictitious name Middletown. The more than 25,000 members of Lost Muncie have been posting, questioning, and contesting historical facts about the town for almost a decade and have created a continuous database of local histories, with an emphasis on the second half of the twentieth century, which can serve as a starting point to create an online story map of Muncie’s past. At the same time, the Facebook comments reflect personal spatial memories and opinions that appear as individual layers of information that are corrected, denied, or confirmed. The chapter is divided into four parts. In the f irst section, I will provide insights into mappings based on humanistic values resulting in ‘deep maps’. These theoretical reflections are followed by a brief history of the study area and some of its cartographic representations. A reflection on social media as big qualitative data and a story map exercise for Lost Muncie are the focus of the remaining parts. 8 Respectively, Klee, Notebooks, p. 76 and Robinson and Petchenik, The Nature of Maps, p. 15; see also Bodenhamer, ‘Making the Invisible Visible’.

155

156

Jörn Seemann

Mapping deeply In the last decade, scholars at the interface between cartography and the humanities have been paying increasing attention to the power of maps as storytelling devices in two different ways: as tools to spatialize narratives and as visual plots from which contexts, events, and (hi)stories can be extracted.9 In other words, ‘the potential of maps to both decipher and tell stories is virtually unlimited.’10 In this mapping process, it is crucial to ask how sense of place and spatial narratives can be mapped. Humanistic scholars have brought up the idea of ‘deep maps’ or ‘deep mapping’, which is characterized ‘by the interaction of a plethora of stories, of all types – individual, collective, fictional, documentary, and even mythical – in order to understand “quintessential” aspects of a place.’11 Thus, deep mapping is not a plain survey of what is where in space, but also addresses personal values, emotions, and how people relate to places. Figure 40 shows a word cloud based on the definitions of the term deep map given by the participants of the Advanced Institute on Spatial Narratives and Deep Maps in summer 2012.12 Words that were more frequently mentioned (up to thirteen times) refer to the spatial dimension (place) and the narrative, content-driven character, and human(istic) meaningfulness of these maps (e.g. experiences, open-ended, and multiple in the sense of pluralism) that seek to ‘dig deep’ into human experience. The purpose of story maps is not very different from medieval mappaemundi and their multivocal time-space narratives that consist of illustrated histories on a geographical background.13 These maps do not aim to define exact locations, determine coordinates or measure distances, but seek to tell and stimulate stories from different places and times, turning them into ‘visual encyclopaedias’.14 Though medieval maps are primarily on a global scale, twenty-first-century online story mapping projects are based on a similar reasoning, expressed in the frequently cited definition of maps by Harley and Woodward that emphasizes the cultural context of cartography and the importance of maps as visual means of communication in a broader sense: ‘graphic representations that facilitate a spatial understanding of things, concepts, conditions, processes, or events in the human world.’15 A prominent example of late medieval deep mapping is the story map of the world drawn by the Italian monk Fra Mauro around 1450. In a recent journalistic 9 Rossetto, ‘Theorizing Maps’; Mocnik and Fairbairn, ‘Maps Telling Stories?’. 10 Caquard and Cartwright, ‘Narrative Cartography’, p. 101. 11 Caquard and Dimotrovas, ‘Story Maps & Co’, p. 18. 12 The Institute was financed by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Definitions are available online at http://polis.iupui.edu/index.php/defining-deep-maps/ (accessed on 30 November 2019). 13 Woodward, ‘Medieval Mappaemundi’. 14 Barber, ‘Visual Encyclopaedias’. 15 Harley and Woodward, ‘Preface’, p. xvi.

Facebook Cartogr aphies and the Mapping of Local History 

Figure 40: A word cloud of the definition of ‘deep map’ (image by author).

article, Fra Mauro was described as the Google Earth of the fifteenth century and a pioneer of crowdsourcing.16 He gathered information from a large number of travellers (eye-witnesses and written accounts such as Marco Polo’s travels) who provided a detailed account of their voyages to foreign places. Mauro drew the conclusion that his map was not a simple location device, but a pictorial record of human experience, which could only be visualized insufficiently in the limited physical space of a map. He asked himself how to represent emotions, poetry, or the heat of fire on a piece of paper: How am I to include a set of odes written by some anonymous Persian poet who happened to befriend a dervish? Is it possible to render affliction as fire, knowing full well that its combustible nature can cause so much damage? I have no wish to see my efforts reduced to cinders.17

16 Kessler, ‘The 15th-Century Monk’. 17 Cowan, A Mapmaker’s Dream, p. 110. This quote and the following one in footnote 18 are based on Cowan’s own translation of Fra Mauro’s journal that he found in the Mechitar Library on the island of Saint Lazarus in the Venetian lagoon. It is not clear to what extent this is a true or an invented account. Cowan himself wrote: ‘I make no case for the veracity of Mauro’s observations. They are his as much as they are mine. He and I have linked arms across time and, in a way, each of us has influenced the other. He has made me a part of his time as I have made him a part of mine. This, surely, must be the real significance

157

158

Jörn Seemann

In addition to this, for both medieval mappaemundi and story maps, the biggest values do not lie in the contents, but in the inspiration that they provoke: The map represents none other than the transformation of a whale’s tooth into a unicorns’ horn. It is not its origin that counts but what it inspires. The craftsman’s task is to extract a form from what has been given to him, and to make of it something that appeals to the heart as well as the mind.18

The two quotes above address a real challenge to conventional map-making that is tackled in the medieval maps and in modern-day deep mapping: How to include invisible or even unmappable phenomena, processes, and stories? How to express values, worldviews, and emotions on a smooth, odourless surface, i.e. a paper or screen? These maps are not different from any other map as far as their appearance or form are concerned. What distinguishes them is that they focus on storytelling rather than representation. Potentially, any map, from an ordinary topographic sheet to a historical map of the Amazon River, could gain new meanings and functions, based on how someone looks at the map and what contents a map-maker wants to include.

The history and cartography of Middletown In this section, I will contextualize the geographical and historical setting of Muncie, the place selected for this story mapping experience. The city of Muncie in East Central Indiana has the trajectory of a typical rustbelt town, the de-industrialized region in the Midwest of the United States that has been suffering from economic depression, population loss, and urban decay in the last decades. The first European settlers arrived in the region around 1820 after the original indigenous population had been forced to move further to the west with the signature of the Treaty with the Miami Indians in 1818. Munseetown, later Muncietown, and then Muncie, was officially platted in 1827. Figure 41 is a hand-drawn map of the settlement of 1826 showing the geometrical pattern of the blocks, subdivided into numbered lots with the name of their owners, turning it simultaneously into a grid map (appearance) and story map. Gharky, H. Eber or Kilgore are more than words on a map. They not only express the ownership of lots, but also serve as spatial references to tell the story of families in Muncie. of history: that it allows us the opportunity to reach back into the past, tinker with its images, and so transform it into our own.’ (Ibid., p. 151). 18 Ibid., p. 111.

Facebook Cartogr aphies and the Mapping of Local History 

Figure 41: Muncietown, Laid out in the Year 1826 by Act of Legislature (Anonymous, 1826). The map is available online at http://libx.bsu.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/HistMaps/id/183/rec/76.

Due to its central position between Indianapolis and the cities of Ohio and Michigan, Muncie became an important road and railway nodal point in the 1850s. The town prospered as an agricultural centre. After the Civil War, further transportation improvements contributed to a swift economic development that attracted commerce and industry.19 The discovery of natural gas in the last decades of the nineteenth century, though short-lived, turned Muncie into an economically prospering town that gained further development input through new industries such as metal manufacturing, steel mills, and, in the 1920s, automobile production (batteries and transmissions). The latter branch attracted migrant workers from parts of the American South, mainly Tennessee, who were moving northwards to the industries in the Midwest. Muncie gained national fame in the 1920s and 1930s, when Robert and Helen Lynd, a couple of anthropologists, selected the place (under the pseudonym Middletown) 19 Sturgeon Jr., Muncie & Delaware County; Sturgeon Jr., Muncie at the Millennium.

159

160

Jörn Seemann

to study the daily life of an average American town.20 The Second World War boosted the economy further, but in the last quarter of the twentieth century, signs of the economic decline became visible and resulted in the closing of factories, the abandonment, demolition, and decay of properties, and the gradual decrease of the population. Writings on the local past emphasize a feeling of nostalgia for the stable economic times and the high quality of life in the past. Cartographically, the historical trajectory of Muncie is reasonably well documented, entailing nineteenth-century hand-drawn county and township maps and plats, a county atlas, Sanborn fire insurance maps of the urban area (1883-1923), and more recent development plans. Figure 42 is a bird’s-eye view of Muncie from 1872. This map is part of the panoramic map frenzy in the United States that resulted in the production of more than 2,400 city views between post-Civil War and the early decades of the twentieth century. The Muncie map is signed by the Ohioan artist Oakley Hoopes Bailey, who produced about 374 recorded city views, mostly in black and white with a single tone added.21 The oblique view depicts the checkerboard portion of the town of about 80 projected blocks that are framed by the White River on the bottom (Northwest) and branches of the railway with gently undulating hills on the top (Southeast). Fourteen important landmarks are indicated by numbers, including public schools, lumberyards, hotels, mills, machine factories, the courthouse, and the jail. The town centre can be identified as a concentration of larger multi-storey buildings. The further away from the centre and its main avenues, the sparser the occupation. The artist/map-maker surveyed street by street and house by house, even smaller buildings or sheds in the centre of the blocks. It remains questionable whether the trees on the map reflect their true distribution or whether they are merely symbolic. The updated version of 1884, with darker greyscale tones is far more sophisticated in its appearance, pointing out that panoramic maps not only serve as pictorial location devices, but also as marketing tools.22 In the newer map, the list of local references includes sixty places and seven detailed photo-style vignettes showing businesses such as the Boyce & Co Bagging and Handling Factories and W.T. Davis Hub and Spoke Factory, the high school building, and the residences of prominent local citizens. The mapping process routinely happened in the following fashion: first, the artist arrived in the town, frequently accompanied by his agent or even his publisher 20 Lynd and Lynd, Middletown; Lynd and Lynd, Middletown in Transition. 21 Reps, Views and Viewmakers, p. 163. 22 O.H. Bailey, Muncie, Indiana (Boston, O.H. Bailey & Company, 1884). The map is available online at http://libx.bsu.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/HistMaps/id/352.

Facebook Cartogr aphies and the Mapping of Local History 

161

Figure 42: O.H. Bailey, Bird’s-Eye View of Muncie, Ind. (Cincinnati, Strobridge Lithographing Company, 1872). The map is available online at http://libx.bsu.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/HistMaps/id/351.

to promote the project. Then, during a week or two, the artist sketched buildings and their locations and presented a first rough draft to the population who could sign up for the purchase of a lithographic copy. After several months, the agent would return to the town with the completed map orders, with a few spare copies in hand.23 The sales strategy aimed to sell as many copies as possible by appealing to the feeling of a local identity and presenting the maps as tools to advertise one’s business, wealth, or status: ‘With orders for more than a certain number might come a free listing in the legend or business directory at the bottom of the print, or the agent might charge a fee for the privilege of having one’s business or profession recognized in this manner.’24 This may also explain the detailed vignettes of specific residences and businesses. Wealthy people and industrialists paid extra money to promote and visualize their home or factory and purchased additional copies of the map. 23 Reps, Birds Eye Views, pp. 9-10. 24 Ibid., p. 10.

162

Jörn Seemann

Figure 43: Muncie, Indiana, Sanborn Map, Sheet 9 (New York: Sanborn Perris Map Company, 1896). The map is available online at http://libx.bsu.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/SanbrnMps/id/141/rec/43.

Another example are the so-called Sanborn fire insurance maps, which were produced for more than 12,000 American towns and cities and published and updated between 1867 and 1970.25 Figure 43 shows parts of downtown Muncie in 1896. Building structures are colour-coded: orange stands for wooden frames; pink indicate brick buildings (e.g. the high school in the upper left); and blue are structures made of stone (Presbyterian Church on the right, with a wooden dome). 25 Library of Congress, Fire Insurance Maps.

Facebook Cartogr aphies and the Mapping of Local History 

For each building, there are details on the location of entrances and the thickness of walls. Businesses are either labelled with the name of the owner or with the branch of economic activity (e.g. fruit, drugs, livery, plumbing, bicycles, etc.). The details on the map permit the reconstruction of how downtown Muncie’s economy looked like more than one hundred years ago and could be a primary source for an urban historical GIS.26 Maps of Muncie published after the first decades of the twentieth century never reached the same richness of information and were mainly restricted to the grid of the streets and principal landmarks and references for the occasional tourist and traveller. Different from the panoramas and the fire insurance maps, these city plans do not invite to read the stories that they may convey at first glance. As ‘cold’ grid maps, they are not immediately linked to personal memory of living people, though any kind of map can be a potential trigger for storytelling. For this reason, alternative mapping strategies are necessary to deal with the more recent past based on memories and personal experience, since eyewitnesses can directly provide information on places.

Facebook as a big qualitative data source Social media platforms are still an underexplored source for historic data mining. Potentially, services like Twitter, Snapchat, Tumblr, Facebook, and Instagram are data production machines for billions of shared online comments, images, and sounds. However, the users of these platforms do not necessarily consider this possibility since they use them to communicate with friends, search for information (e.g. looking up a restaurant), or share and exchange experiences (e.g. impressions from a recent holiday trip). It would be adequate to define this type of data as involuntary geographic information (iVGI) or even unintentional data production, taking into account that they do not intend to ‘maintain a dataset for their own geodemographic profiling by third parties.’27 However, it must be pointed out that not all data has geographical attributes so that geoinformation must be extracted and filtered. Many of these sources are freely accessible on the internet for any kind of use or even abuse, from personal data retrieval for marketing and commercial advertising (spam mails) to grounded academic research.28 26 For a discussion on the use of large-scale maps for an historical urban GIS, see Vannieuwenhuyze, ‘Pixels or Parcels’. 27 Fischer, ‘A New and Delicate Data-Source’, p. 46. 28 Legislation on privacy and data protection is not universal. In the European Union, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which aims to give more control to the individuals, came into effect in 2018. For the United States, a large variety of laws on federal and state-level addresses privacy issues, but did not lead to the formulation of a country-wide regulation.

163

164

Jörn Seemann

Besides serving as an online tool ‘to bring the world closer together’ by creating social networks,29 Facebook is also a potential forum for the discussion and sharing of local history and memory, replacing the far more formal e-mail discussion lists. A simple search for the keyword ‘local history’ brings up a number of groups with different backgrounds, motivations, forms of participation, and membership growth (Table 1). Table 1: Examples of Facebook pages dealing with local history (consulted on 15 July 2018). Group

Aim

Members Created

Barnwood Local History, UK

‘Exchange of information on the history, people and past events of the Parish of Barnwood,’ along the Roman Road (A417) from Cirencester to Gloucester. ‘A group dedicated to talking about, learning and sharing of local history in Cass and St. Joseph counties in Michigan.’ ‘Les membres de la Commission d’Histoire recherchent des documents (photos, coupures de journaux, livres…) évoquant le passé de Hannut et de ses villages.’ No description given.

108

6 May 2014

1835

16 December 2017

337

14 December 2016

1

11 December 2017

5580

19 July 2013

17,224

15 August 2009

25,099

19 April 2009

18,396

24 March 2015

Bob’s Local History Club, USA Commission d’Histoire locale de Hannut, Belgium

Covered Bridges of Indiana Local History of Sullivan ‘Limited to local history of the area known as Sullivan County, New York since its County, New York founding in 1809, formerly part of Ulster County.’ Local Kansas City ‘For anyone interested in the rich but History Buffs, USA often under-appreciated history of greater Kansas City.’ Lost Muncie, USA ‘Dedicated to saving and sharing Muncie, Delaware County, and Indiana history.’ Madras Local History ‘Sharing the history of the city we love and Group, India live in.’

Group administrators are usually local and regional historical societies, amateur historians, or even individuals researching their family’s genealogy. These groups are public, and joining them depends on the acceptance of the owner. The focus can be regional (a place) or thematic (e.g. monuments and buildings or specific economic activities). For example, Bob’s Local History Club is dedicated to ‘talking about, learning and sharing of local history in Cass and St. Joseph counties in Michigan’ and has more than 1800 members at present; 5580 people have joined the Facebook 29 Zuckerberg, ‘Bringing the World Closer Together’.

Facebook Cartogr aphies and the Mapping of Local History 

group on the local history of Sullivan County, New York; there are more than 17,000 history buffs in Kansas City; and the Madras Local History Group in India counts on the contributions of more than 18,000 members. Activities and input can vary considerably. Covered Bridges of Indiana was created in December 2017, but never went beyond the one-member status (i.e. the group founder herself) and an initial post. The same person created another group called Indiana Covered Bridges on 20 June 2018, presently counting four members. The focus of this study is Lost Muncie, a group dedicated to ‘saving and sharing Muncie, Delaware County, and Indiana history,’ according to the description on its webpage.30 Founded in April 2009 by the librarian Jeff Koenker and the history teacher Larry Broadwater, the initiative started as a small group with a handful of members sharing their memories and has since grown into a buzzing online site for discussions, questions, and stories about the town’s past, passing the 25,000-member mark in June 2018 (Figure 44), which is impressive for a town of only 70,000 inhabitants.31 Lost Muncie can be considered a remarkable, yet representative example of a Facebook group that discusses local places and history through the spontaneous posting of space-related comments. Among the group members are not only locals of all ages, but also former residents who moved to a different place and who want to refresh their childhood memories, though some of them state that ‘they had no wish ever to live in Muncie again, but that apparently didn’t stop them from revisiting their old hometown in memory and online.’32 Frequently, the thread of a post initiates either as a general question (e.g. ‘What was your favourite restaurant?’) or as a reference to a specific place (‘Who remembers the Pixie Diner?’). Most of the messages provoke instantaneous ‘likes’ and replies, some of them with hundreds of comments as in the case of the Madison Avenue railway underpass built in 1937 and still subject to serious flooding during heavy rainfall. The group administrators preserve the right to accept or reject new members or posts, if the intentions and contents do not follow the established rules and etiquette. In addition to the written responses, group members post a large number of photos and even some videos related to the local past. Messages that directly address the more recent past (the last thirty or forty years) stimulate the memory of the users more than historic events from the nineteenth century and the beginning of the 30 The Lost Muncie page is accessible at https://www.facebook.com/groups/158496695087/. The quotes in this section are extracted from Facebook without any orthographic or grammatical corrections. 31 Possible explanations for the popularity of the Facebook group are the informality and easiness of posting in the group and the nostalgia of baby boomers from Muncie who either want to relive the past or reconnect with it after they moved away from the town. See Gibson, ‘Facebook Page Lets Muncie Residents’. 32 Ibid.

165

166

Jörn Seemann

Figure 44: Screenshot of the Lost Muncie Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/groups/158496695087/).

Facebook Cartogr aphies and the Mapping of Local History 

twentieth century that were not witnessed personally. Pictures include photos of buildings, streets, and persons that are either retrieved through the internet – sometimes without the necessary reference – or uploaded by the members themselves. One example, among hundreds of others, is the post on John’s Awful Awful Drive-In from November 2017. It includes the restaurant’s menu from decades ago (supposedly the 1960s or 70s), advertising the Awful Awful Burger, ‘double portion of fresh ground beef on toasted double deck bun, with melted cheese and topped with shredded lettuce, pickle, and our own sauce,’ for 55 cents, claiming in capital letters that the burger is ‘AWFUL BIG – AWFUL GOOD’. Places like this peculiar restaurant resurface in the group discussion from time to time, and the process starts over again. In previous threads, group members uploaded old meal order forms, an add from 1966 (‘Serving Muncie’s finest food to Muncie’s finest people’), a matchbook, photos of the original street sign, and the detailed drive-in policies asking the customers to flash their lights or sound their horn for service and requesting them not to loiter (leave after placing the order) or race the motor. Alcoholic beverages, improper language, and any other kind of misconduct were prohibited. The restaurant opened in the 1950s and closed in 1978, when the owner decided to change directions by converting his eating place into the One Accord Mexican restaurant, which is another frequently discussed topic on the Facebook page (‘The taco salads were the best’; ‘My husband and I had our first date there as teenagers!’). A simple look at these entries reveals a long list of places that can be pinned down on a map since the comments usually mention the location or address. However, when the exact place is not always clear, a lively discussion on the correct location and its history takes place. For example, Babe’s Truck Stop was located ‘somewhere’ on State Road 28 and could not be identified with certainty since ‘apparently in the wilds of Delaware County, most places didn’t have street addresses.’ The building of the establishment, which was ‘more than a truck stop’ (in other words, a brothel), does not exist anymore, and group members continue speculating about the correct location, as in the following conversation initiated on 26 July 2013. Someone asked about pictures of Babe’s Truck Stop and received hundreds of replies making guesses about its spot and telling stories about the people who lived or worked there, frequently related to the personal life of the Facebook group member: ‘Dad could tell ya some stories about Babe’s Truck Stop’n.’ ‘I heard a lot of stuff about babes truck stop and none of it good.’ ‘good memory lol’ ‘Only thing left is some of the gravel & a couple big trees. A guy I knew from Borg Warner his sister ran it yep it was more than a truck stop.’ ‘Babe was my great aunt. Her real name was Viola Swartz. She was arrested over 50 times through the years but never spent a day in jail until she was finally

167

168

Jörn Seemann

charged in federal court for tax evasion. She had paid off many police officers and politicians in Muncie to remain open and not in jail. While her choice of “business” was questionable, she was a wise businesswoman who made a lot of money.’

More than three years later, in a post from 12 September 2016, the discussion on the correct location still remained vague: ‘out on wheeling and 28 or out by Kmart south?’ ‘It was out on 28 and west of Wheeling’ ‘I think it was more towards Highway 28 and 600 West before you got to I-69.’ ‘East of wheeling ave.’ ‘Close to elevator, feed mill.’

There are no photographic records and no certainties about the exact place, only a pamphlet informing that the owner ran for office in the local sheriff’s elections in 1974, and a photo of two memorabilia: a pocket knife with the embossed name of Babe’s Truck Stop and a match book with the picture of a sparsely-clad woman and a more precise address: ‘7 Miles E. Interstate 69 on Hiway 28’. The data on the Facebook page does not have a hierarchical structure. No message is more important than others, and there is no right or wrong piece of information, only raw data. Even emoticons are part of this database. Posts are a continuum of comments and ideas that rarely stay focused since the directions of the discussion constantly change the topic. Unfortunately, Facebook does not facilitate the browsing through group webpages. Different from an online search engine like Google, it is only possible to scroll down manually in the list of posts. Users may apply general filters such as search by keyword, month, and year and according to the relevance of the post (‘top posts’ or ‘most recent’), but the complete and exact sequence of the messages is not accessible and reconstructable, as is the case with written sources and archival records. There is yet another important aspect that must be taken into account. Despite the impressive number of posts, Lost Muncie reflects not only a selective past, but also a selective geography and cartography. The focus of the entries is on iconic places, public features, and commercial areas rather than on residential areas. A striking silence is the sparsity of data on the African American community in town. Based on the locations mentioned on the webpage, there are not many posts on ethnic diversity. On 8 March 2016, a group member wrote: I may be rude in saying this but I really would like to see some more pictures of Lost Muncie from the Black Community. These pics that have been posted are nice and all, but to me all they are saying is that not a lot of attention was payed

Facebook Cartogr aphies and the Mapping of Local History 

in persevering memories of the blk community. I’m not saying that they are not there, they are but to my eyes not enough.

The post resulted in more than 120 replies, including memories about African American commercial establishments in town, a few photos, and a brief, but somewhat heated, discussion on ethnicity.

Finding Lost Muncie33 The posts of more than 25,000 members and ten-year existence of the group on the internet have resulted in a gigantic database on local history that reflects not what the official discourse prescribes (History with a capital H), but what local people actually know and think about Muncie’s past (histories and reminiscences). Due to the volume of information, Lost Muncie can be considered a receptacle of qualitative big data, subjective, unorganized, partial, incomplete, contested, repetitive, and messy, unlike ‘clean’, unambiguous statistics. As a result of these uncertainties, any attempt to organize and represent this data will always be arbitrary and selective, not very different from Fra Mauro’s mappaemundi, a patchwork of stories and personal impressions. The central question is how can this data be mapped? What kind of map would result from this? Or, more precisely, ‘[a]t what point can online story mapping applications deal with the spatiotemporal complexity of stories?’34 A paper map would not be sufficient for a data assemblage to express the multiple layers and opinions and does not allow constant updates, taking into account the open structure of the data source since members continue posting on the page. The attraction of Lost Muncie is to post spontaneous comments, share memories and stories, and explore photographic material, without any formal intention to convert the information into a map. An online GIS map may handle the database, but navigation through the data may not be user-friendly for people without much knowledge of technology and online mapping, especially due to the fact that the main aim of the resulting story map is not an academic study, but the creation of a local mappaemundi, or mappaeurbis. A limited number of online mapping tools is available. In a recent study, six different story map applications were tested and analysed according to their technical and content-related features, e.g. inclusion of a geocoding tool, import 33 Due to the word limit for this text, I do not address the crucial issue of participatory mapping. The Finding Lost Muncie project aims to stress the participation of the local community, not only as data providers on Facebook, but also as active mappers engaged in the updates of the story map. 34 Caquard and Dimitrovas, ‘Story Maps & Co’, p. 18.

169

170

Jörn Seemann

options for databases, cartographic design, data integration, communication of ‘spatial and/or temporal vagueness’, combination and comparison of different stories, representation of time, and collaborative map production.35 Among the applications, ESRI Story Maps is the most common tool with a wider range of options, especially for design and interactivity. These story maps can combine images and videos with an interactive map (tour), visualize stories in a scroll-down mode (journal and cascade), present a set of thematic maps (series), compile a list of noteworthy places (shortlist), and compare maps and images of different periods (swipe and spyglass).36 What kind or type of story map would be adequate to map the complexity of the Facebook entries? Different from common online maps, the emphasis should be on people and what they say and not on technical issues. Stories in maps may have a sequence, but they do not have a hierarchy or structure in the form of layers or thematic subdivisions. They should represent a flow of narratives that would allow the user to ‘jump in’ anywhere, different from the structure of regular storylines that emphasize a sequence with a beginning and an end. The original idea for the Muncie story map was to create an open-ended list of places with no limit to the number of entries. New locales would be added with further data mining on the project webpage.37 Space-related entries were filtered out of the Facebook group page and added to an attribute table. Each entry included the name of the place, followed by a short description and a direct quote, decimal degree coordinates, and the link to a photo of the place.38 The playful name for the Finding Lost Muncie project was inspired by historian Douglas Seefeldt, and transmits the idea of the past that does not come back and the possibility to make it alive again visually and virtually. Among the different options, the map tour structure initially seemed to be the best fit to project the stories on a screen. The map tour option allows the user to see the entries ‘on a string’; that is, there are thumbnails for each place that are linked to the main page of each entry (text and high-resolution image) and a zoomed-in map or satellite image of its location (Figure 45).39 However, a severe limitation 35 Ibid., p. 21. 36 The ESRI Story Maps website (https://storymaps.arcgis.com/en/) provides a gallery with hundreds of examples, including topics related to historical cartography, history of cartography, and historical GIS, e.g. architectural tours through Old Havana and New Orleans, places in the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, trajectories on Route 66, Japanese internment camps during World War II, spyglass maps of nineteenth-century New York, Chicago and San Francisco, and an overview of ‘hand-drawn treasures from the Harvard Map Collection’. 37 I would like to give my acknowledgments to the ten students of the GEOG341 class (geography) at Ball State University who worked on the entries during the spring semester and helped feed the database. 38 Due to online storage limitations, all the photos were uploaded on Dropbox. 39 The map can be consulted at https://arcg.is/1SDiO5.

Facebook Cartogr aphies and the Mapping of Local History 

Figure 45: Finding Lost Muncie: Screenshots of map tour entry (image by author).

of this map type is the number of points in the tour, which is limited to 99. 40 As a result of this restriction, the story map tour cannot expand and the mapmaker is forced to make a pre-selection of the places that are judged relevant for inclusion.41 The shortlist app permits more than 99 entries. Figure 46 shows a screenshot of this map in progress that, at present, counts more than 500 entries. 42 On the left side, the user can scroll down the list of thumbnails of the entries and click on specific places. Each green position mark on the zoomable satellite image on the right gives access to information of a specific spot. One of the drawbacks of the shortlist is that it does not automatically zoom in to each place. When clicking on a specific image on the list, the image is not adjusted to a larger scale. Though the shortlist allows an infinite number of entries, the opening of the page takes more time since more thumbnails have to be loaded. In the light of these limitations, the app permits the embedding of story maps in other story maps, either as a link or a feature. Data can also be organized as a ‘map journal’ by dividing the entries thematically in ‘tabs’ or separate pages, e.g. for 40 I addressed this problem in an e-mail to the software developers and was told that ‘when it comes to telling a story hardly anyone, except perhaps the author, would go through 500 tour stops. It just makes for a tedious experience, and one that very few will ever do.’ The app creators argue that the aim of a story map is to simplify rather than to complexify. 41 Entries for the map were selected according to completeness, quality of the data (identifiable location, available photo and meaningful comment), and the availability and visibility of the material during data mining. Put in different words, the data collection and selection of entries was arbitrary since the aim was not to choose specific topics or places. 42 The map can be consulted at http://arcg.is/XDLGi.

171

172

Jörn Seemann

Figure 46: Finding Lost Muncie: Screenshot of Story Map Shortlist (image by author).

restaurants, stores, schools, or places for leisure activities. However, these solutions make it impossible to gain an instantaneous complete idea of the mapped area and the entries of the database. Pre-selection and thematic divisions diminish the surprise effect of the map, taking into account that the aim is to ‘stroll’ through the narratives and get ‘lost’ in the map, and not to consult it as a database. Is there any map solution to represent the density and multi-layered nature of Facebook data in the form of posts and comments? In fact, Transforming stories into maps is particularly challenging due to the tension between the blurry, personal, and emotional dimensions of stories and the characteristics of fixity, hierarchy, and quantification inherent in conventional cartographic representations. Deep mapping cannot be reduced to simply geolocating points associated to a list of the toponyms mentioned in a story onto a Google map, with associated photos, videos, or passages of text. It first requires a rigorous process of identifying and characterizing places. 43

There is no ideal story map strategy for this type of data. Paraphrasing the oftenquoted vignette on the exactitude of science by the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, the impossibility of creating a map is not in the size of the territory (a map as large as the area it represents), but in the multi-layered and multivocal data. 44

43 Caquard and Dimitrovas, ‘Story Maps & Co’, p. 19. 44 Borges, Collected Fictions, p. 325.

Facebook Cartogr aphies and the Mapping of Local History 

Story maps are a potential form of visualization, but they do not reflect all the stories told by the members of Lost Muncie.

‘Make cartography exciting again’ The aim of this chapter was to open up a debate on the potential of social media platforms for historical studies and how to visualize this type of data. Though this cartographic exercise remains inconclusive, a blurring of the boundaries between historical cartography and GIS, online mapping tools, and human experience of place has become evident. The result of this study is not a ‘new’ historical map, but the reconstruction and visualization of the past in the light of a humanistic approach to mapping that takes into consideration ephemeral, subjective, and unstructured data. Historical maps can tell stories, but they are frequently from an unreachable past. However, with the memory of living people, the map may become material and alive. For this purpose, it is necessary to broaden the idea of historical cartography, going beyond the pre-computer-era paper map and paying more attention to stories and processes. This evokes Harley’s plea for a narrative cartography ‘that tells a story and portrays a process at the same time as it is revealing the interconnectedness of humanity in space.’45 These cartographic stories encompass two important components: rescue geography and restorative cartography. The former refers to place affection and place building and captures ‘how people feel about an area, the socio-cultural values that they associate with the spaces themselves.’46 The latter engages with the cartographic expression of ideas and aims to create restorative techniques that allow to convey the multiple experiences of place. 47 This mapping experiment served to show how social media and digital technologies are changing the ways we map the world and how we conceive maps. Facebook as a source for mapping is a challenging and slippery customer due to the unintentionality, randomness, and subjectivity of the produced information that does not fit into the scientific idea of geographical data. 48 However, personal comments and posts in this form of crowdsourcing build the backbone of deep maps that are closer to human experience than cartographic representations. At the same time, these mappings bring together or even merge map-maker and map user. 45 Harley, ‘Historical Geography’, p. 88. 46 Jones and Evans, ‘Rescue Geography’, p. 2322. 47 Pearce and Hermann, ‘Mapping Champlain’s Travels’. 48 In July 2019, Facebook announced the release of ‘machine learning-powered tools to help create maps of the world’ (Metha, ‘Facebook Releases AI-Powered Tools’), in partnership with OpenStreet Map. Though Map with AI is primarily a set of apps for disaster and community mapping and putting previously unmapped spaces onto the map, there is a high potential to use these tools for historical projects.

173

174

Jörn Seemann

In conclusion, strengthening the dialogue between cartography, the social sciences, and the digital humanities does not mean that traditional paper maps will be neglected or discarded, but can only enrich the world of maps and ‘make cartography exciting again.’49 Whatever the form or format, maps will always have stories to tell.

Bibliography P. Barber, ‘Visual Encyclopaedias: the Hereford and other Mappae Mundi’, The Map Collector, 48 (1989), pp. 3-8. D.J. Bodenhamer, ‘Making the Invisible Visible. Place, Spatial Stories and Deep Maps’, in Literary Mapping in the Digital Age; ed. by D. Cooper, Ch. Donaldson and P. MurrietaFlores (London: Routledge, 2016), pp. 207-220. J.L. Borges, Collected Fictions (London: Viking, 1998). S. Caquard and W. Cartwright, ‘Narrative Cartography: From Mapping Stories to the Narrative of Maps and Mapping’, The Cartographic Journal, 51 (2014), pp. 101-106. S. Caquard and S. Dimitrovas, ‘Story Maps & Co. The State of the Art of Online Narrative Cartography’, M@ppemonde, 121 (2017), pp. 1-31. J. Cowan, A Mapmaker’s Dream. The Meditation of Frau Mauro, Cartographer to the Court of Venice (Boston, MA and London: Shambhala, 1996). J. Crampton and J. Krygier, ‘An Introduction to Critical Cartography’, ACME, 4 (2006), pp. 11-33. M. Dodge, Ch. Perkins and R. Kitchin, ‘Mapping Modes, Methods and Moments: A Manifesto for Map Studies’, Rethinking Maps. New Frontiers in Cartographic Theory, ed. by M. Dodge, R. Kitchin and Ch. Perkins (London: Routledge, 2009), pp. 220-243. F. Fischer, ‘A New but Delicate Data-Source: VGI as Big Data’, Geoinformatics, 15 (2012), pp. 46-47. R. Gibson, ‘Facebook Page Lets Muncie Residents Revisit Past’, The Washington Times, 4 May 2015 (available at https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/may/10/facebookpage-lets-muncie-residents-revisit-past/, accessed 25 March 2020). J.B. Harley, ‘Deconstructing the Map’, Cartographica, 26 (1989), pp. 1-20. J.B. Harley, ‘Historical Geography and the Cartographic Illusion’, Journal of Historical Geography, 15 (1989), pp. 80-91. J.B. Harley, ‘Text and Context in the Interpretation of Early Maps’, in From Sea Charts to Satellite Images: Interpreting North American History through Maps, ed. by D. Buisseret (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1990), pp. 3-15.

49 Harley, ‘Historical Geography’, p. 88.

Facebook Cartogr aphies and the Mapping of Local History 

J.B. Harley and D. Woodward, ‘Preface’, in The History of Cartography. Volume 1: Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, ed. by J.B. Harley and D. Woodward (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1987), pp. xv-xxi. Ph. Jones and J. Evans, ‘Rescue Geography: Place Making, Affect and Regeneration’, Urban Studies, 49 (2012), pp. 2315-2330. A. Kessler, ‘The 15th-Century Monk Who Crowdsourced a Map of the World’, available at https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/fra-mauro-map (accessed 17 September 2018). P. Klee, Notebooks. Volume 1: The Thinking Eye (London: Lund Humphries Publishers, 1961). R.S. Lynd and H.M. Lynd, Middletown: A Study in Contemporary American Culture (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1929). R.S. Lynd and H.M. Lynd, Middletown in Transition: A Study in Cultural Conflicts (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1937). I. Mehta, ‘Facebook Releases AI-Powered Tools to Map the World’, available at https:// thenextweb.com/apps/2019/07/24/facebook-releases-ai-powered-tools-to-map-the-world/ (accessed 1 December 2019). F.-B. Mocnik and D. Fairbairn, ‘Maps Telling Stories?’, The Cartographic Journal, 55 (2017), pp. 36-57. M.W. Pearce and M.J. Hermann, ‘Mapping Champlain’s Travels: Restorative Techniques for Historical Cartography’, Cartographica, 45 (2010), pp. 32-46. J. Reps, Views and Viewmakers of Urban America. Lithographs of Towns and Cities in the United States and Canada, Notes on the Artists and Publishers, and a Union Catalog of Their Work, 1825-1925 (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1984). J. Reps, Birds Eye Views: Historic Lithographs of North American Cities (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1998). Rethinking Maps. New Frontiers in Cartographic Theory, ed. by M. Dodge, R. Kitchin and Ch. Perkins (London: Routledge, 2009). A. Robinson and B. Petchenik, The Nature of Maps. Essays toward Understanding Maps and Mapping (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1976). T. Rossetto, ‘Theorizing Maps with Literature’, Progress in Human Geography, 38 (2013), pp. 513-530. R. Rundstrom, ‘Mapping, Postmodernism, Indigenous People and the Changing Direction of North American Cartography’, Cartographica, 28 (1991), pp. 1-12. W.W. Sturgeon Jr., Muncie & Delaware County. An Illustrated Retrospective (Woodland Hills, CA: Windsor Publications, 1984). W.W. Sturgeon Jr., Muncie at the Millennium (Muncie, IN: Muncie Newspapers, 1999). B. Vannieuwenhuyze, ‘Pixels or Parcels? Parcel-Based Historical GIS and Digital Thematic Deconstruction as Tools for Studying Urban Development’, in Mapping Landscapes in Transformation. Multidisciplinary Methods for Historical Analysis, ed. by Thomas Coomans, Bieke Cattoor, and Krista De Jonge (Leuven: Leuven University Press), pp. 217-235. D. Wood, The Power of Maps (New York: Guilford Press, 1992).

175

176

Jörn Seemann

D. Woodward, ‘Medieval Mappaemundi,’ in The History of Cartography. Volume 1: Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, ed. by J.B. Harley and D. Woodward (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1987). M. Zuckerberg, ‘Bringing the World Closer Together’, available at https://www.facebook. com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/bringing-the-world-closer-together/10154944663901634/ (accessed 17 September 2018).

About the Author Jörn Seemann teaches Cartography and Cultural Geography at Ball State University, United States. He is particularly interested in the relations between maps and society, with an emphasis on cartographic theories, methodologies and histories, creative approaches to mapping, and cultural ways of perceiving and representing space and place.

7.

‘Change-of-State’ in the History of Cartography Mark Monmonier

Abstract Five static graphic strategies support the transition from one spatial pattern to another. Chess maps, as a telling sequence of instantaneous views, use a common geographic framework to narrate a geographic story. By contrast, rate-of-change maps use numerical measurements to describe spatial variation in the rapidity or slowness of change. A third type, the dance map, mimics the step-by-step footwork of rehearsed choreography, analogous to the movements of troops, materiel, and intelligence in a military campaign (A highly focused dance map, the centrographic map, treats a spatial-temporal narrative as a statistical summary.) Additional strategies include flow maps and frontal maps, a military/meteorological analog. Dynamic cartography and the interactive manipulation of history maps afford new insights as well as alternative interpretations. Keywords: Dynamic cartography; graphic sequences; historical narrative; story map; typology

As the foregoing chapters indicate, a recurring theme in map history is the graphic portrait of change from one spatial pattern to another. A geographic ‘change of state’, to borrow a term from chemistry and atomic physics, might be as cartographically straightforward as when an election alters power relationships and produces a new pattern of local or regional electoral dominance. The simplest case is the juxtaposition of two maps, to show the old and the new, or the before and the after. If provincial boundaries are static, these maps are akin to chessboard diagrams depicting the locations of queens, bishops, and other chess pieces at different stages of a game, which makes it appropriate to call them chess maps. This chapter attempts to codify narrative cartography by identifying a set of distinctive types of change-of-state maps. It concludes with a few suggestions for further research.

Segal, Z. and B. Vannieuwenhuyze, Motion in Maps, Maps in Motion: Mapping Stories and Movement through Time. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020 doi 10.5117/9789463721103_ch07

178

Mark Monmonier

Although a mere pair of chess maps can describe a noteworthy shift, three or more maps representing the outcomes of successive elections can sustain a longer, more interesting narrative such as a story of progressive, far-reaching change or an oscillation of control, as when a political party achieves dominance, falters and loses control, and then rebounds. Arranged in temporal order like a series of snapshots, chess maps can emphasize a simple explanation or introduce a potentially richer story in which a verbal narrative is supplemented by statistical graphics, photographs, and other maps. Historical atlases focused on a single nation can provide a largely comprehensive, usefully instructive narrative of a country’s evolution, and, as Ferjan Ormeling demonstrates in his examination of the Bos school atlases (Chapter 5), a series of routinely revised atlases can constitute a valuable geographic narrative. A second basic change-of-state map is the rate-of-change map, which requires quantitative data for two different times. Rates such as the percentage rate of population change between successive censuses can differentiate gains from losses as well as distinguish rapid increase from comparatively sluggish increase. Rate-ofchange maps are distinct from static rate maps, such as maps of population density (persons per square-kilometre) or the infant death rate (deaths of persons less than one year old divided by number of live births). National atlases often demonstrate the complementarity of the two types of rate maps by juxtaposing a normalized map of population density with a map showing the rate of population change. The National Atlas of the United States usefully juxtaposed separate rate-of-change maps for the country’s total, rural, and urban populations.1 A third common change-of-state map is the dance map, analogous to an instructional diagram depicting the correct sequence of steps of a dance partner (male or female) in a waltz, foxtrot, or any other ballroom exercise.2 Dance map is an apt term for a cartographic narrative depicting the movement of discrete entities like explorers, armies, or low-pressure centres. Although the term might have a frivolous connotation, maps portraying stepwise events can be highly engaging. A particularly informative variant of the dance map is the centrographic map, which summarizes a numerical geographic distribution, such as population counts or manufacturing output, with a single point positioned using weighted averages of the latitudes and longitudes of geographic data units such as provinces or counties. Although average location can be based on either mean or median coordinates, a median centre is more easily understood as insofar as its median parallel divides the population into two parts, one half to the north and the other half to the south, while the median meridian separates the eastern half from the western half. For a single 1 2

U.S. Geological Survey, National Atlas of the United States of America, p. 244. Monmonier, ‘Strategies for the Visualization’, pp. 36-37.

‘Change- of-State’ in the History of Cartogr aphy 

Figure 47: Julius Hilgard’s centrographic map in the 1874 Statistical Atlas of the United States used the mean center of population to describe the westward advance of the country’s population near the northern 39th Parallel (Public Domain).

census, the mean or median centre is especially useful when computed separately for subsets of the total population such as persons characterized as aged, high-income, or employed in manufacturing. When successive censuses or surveys provide a temporal series of centres, a single map affords a concise summary of a long-term trend, as exemplified in Figure 47, compiled by Julius Erasmus Hilgard (1825-1890) for the 1874 Statistical Atlas of the United States.3 Although Charles Joseph Minard had plotted a centre of mass for the Paris population in 1865, Hilgard demonstrated the narrative prowess of centrography by juxtaposing mean population centres for the nine censuses between 1790 and 1870: a motion that implies momentum and destiny. 4 The US Census Bureau continues to confirm the technique’s value by publishing an updated centrographic map after each decennial census. A fourth basic change-of-state map is the frontal map showing the stepwise movement of a spatial phenomenon like an army, a settlement frontier, a plague, or an air mass. In a military or meteorological context, the front is a boundary or line of contact between unlike entities; it typically advances but can also retreat or dissolve. In the context of settlement or epidemiology, a front’s advance reflects a contagious process that controls or alters areas it has incorporated. Although not 3 The 22.3 × 12 cm map is from p. 6 of the article in ‘Progress of the Nation—1790–1870’, included in ‘Part II – Population, Social and Industrial Statistics: Memoirs and Discussions’, in Walker, Statistical Atlas of the United States (articles and sections are paginated separately). 4 Hilgard, ‘The Advance of the Population of the United States’; Palsky and Pumain, ‘Centrography’.

179

180

Mark Monmonier

all territorial or biological conquest occurs along distinct fronts, if the position and movement of a phenomenon’s leading edge can be portrayed graphically, these maps can be deeply meaningful, especially during wars fought largely along shifting battlefronts. Newspaper maps showing a front’s movement since the last major installment – if not distorted by censors – were dramatic statements of where a nation’s military was winning or losing.5 A fifth basic type is the flow map, which describes the direction and magnitude of movements of people or commodities. Minard’s famous 1869 map of Napoleon’s ill-fated 1812 Russian campaign (Figure 48) relies on four of graphic theorist Jacques Bertin’s six retinal variables: size; shape; value; pattern; hue (i.e. wavelength or named colour); and direction.6 Direction, shown directly by the flow line for the army’s movement across the map, is reinforced by the light orange hue for the army’s advance and the morbid black value for its retreat, with the flow line’s size, or thickness, underscoring the tragic shrinkage of the Emperor’s original cohort of nearly half a million troops. Map history includes a much wider variety of flow maps, as discussed in Chapter 3 by Zef Segal, who examines the flow line’s prowess in depicting railway traffic, commodity flows, shipping routes, telegraph and submarine cable lines, and ocean currents as well as racial movements, an obsession of Nazi map-makers. Before animated films and computer animation, map-makers eager to portray movement have had to rely on graphic artifices like chess maps, rate maps, dance maps, frontal maps, and flow maps. From the 1920s, film animation allowed more engaging and fully dynamic presentations by rapidly displaying a lengthy series of chess maps, each incrementally different from its predecessor.7 By century’s end, computer animation had given map authors impressive zoom and pan effects as well as dramatic flyovers epitomized by Google Earth, which empowered viewers to interact with a virtual camera in space.8 As Radu Leca observes in his penetrating analysis of history maps of Japan (Chapter 4), interactive manipulation of digital history maps affords new insights and supports alternative interpretations of the national narrative. In recent years, geographers, historians, and other educators and scholars have adopted the term story map for a cartographic genre in which geospatial technology fosters the dynamic integration of maps, images, text, and numerical displays. This usage been encouraged by Esri, the dominant force in the geospatial industry, which appropriated the term for its ‘Esri Story Maps [which not only] let you combine 5 Monmonier, Mapping It Out, pp. 200–202. 6 Bertin, Semiology of Graphics, pp. 69–97. 7 Caquard, ‘Cinema and Cartography’. 8 Goodchild, ‘The Use Cases of Digital Earth’.

‘Change- of-State’ in the History of Cartogr aphy 

181

Figure 48: The Carte Figurative des pertes successives en hommes de l’Armée Française dans la campagne de Russie 1812-1813, showing the successive losses of French soldiers during the Russian Campaign in 1812-1813 (Wikimedia Commons, see https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Minard.png).

authoritative maps with narrative text, images, and multimedia content [but also] make it easy to harness the power of maps and geography to tell your story.’9 As Jörn Seemann reports in Chapter 6, the online story map for Muncie, Indiana, demonstrates how a dynamic crowd-sourced application can promote community engagement in a collective storytelling enterprise enriched by a diversity of images and text. Must all narrative maps be change-of-state maps, as outlined above? Not if one accepts the examples presented here by Djoeke van Netten and Bram Vannieuwenhuyze, in Chapters 1 and 2. Joan Blaeu’s small-scale world map usefully ‘invites the onlooker’s eyes to wander and wonder,’ and Abraham Hogenberg’s 1604 large-scale bird’s-eye view of Sluis is far more evocative than a more abstract battlefront map. Though the pre-social media era offered little opportunity for a map to ‘go viral’ in the present-day sense, vivid maps like these were more likely to enjoy whatever enhanced circulation their content and mode of use might have allowed. Indeed, ‘motion of the map’ is no less important than ‘motion on the map’. Going forward, map historians might attempt a broader, more inclusive typology of narrative/story maps within a scope that encompasses both author and audience. These inquiries might usefully consider the goals of both parties and the importance of text accompanying the map. A case in point is the Souvenir Weather Map used by the US Weather Bureau to publicize its successful forecast 9

See the Esri Story Maps homepage: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/en/ (accessed 27 October 2018).

182

Mark Monmonier

Figure 49: Souvenir weather map for the evening of 27 May 1896, distributed by the US Weather Bureau, to publicize its successful forecast that morning of an outbreak of ‘tornadoes and violent local storms,’ marked with red crosses. Faint patches of red squares and triangles are read-through images of warning signals printed on the opposite side (Public Domain, US Weather Bureau).

‘Change- of-State’ in the History of Cartogr aphy 

of severe storms south and west of Chicago (Figure 49). As the text below the map touts, ‘Weather maps similar to the foregoing, containing in addition to the weather conditions the forecasts for the ensuing thirty-six hours, are published for distribution each morning […] at Washington, D.C., and seventy-three other Weather Bureau stations, the total daily edition at all stations being about 12,500.’10 The preceding paragraph attempts a concise explanation of the map symbols within the grasp of intelligent citizens, who needed to be told that this costly, far-flung endeavour was working for their protection. Like the story embedded in the map’s symbols, the story of why the map was made depends on both words and graphics.

Bibliography J. Bertin, Semiology of Graphics: Diagrams, Networks, Maps, trans. William J. Berg (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983). S. Caquard, ‘Cinema and Cartography’, in The History of Cartography, Volume Six: Cartography in the Twentieth Century, ed. by M. Monmonier (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2015), pp. 226-227. M.F. Goodchild, ‘The Use Cases of Digital Earth’, International Journal of Digital Earth, 1 (2008), pp. 31-42. J.E. Hilgard, ‘The Advance of Population in the United States’, Scribner’s Monthly 4 (1872), pp. 214-218. M. Monmonier, How to Lie with Maps, 2nd ed. (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1996). M. Monmonier, Mapping It Out: Expository Cartography for the Humanities and Social Sciences (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1993). M. Monmonier, ‘Strategies for the Visualization of Geographic Time-Series Data’, Cartographica: The International Journal for Geographic Information and Geovisualization, 27 (1990), pp. 30-45. W.L. Moore, ‘Souvenir Weather Map’ (Washington, DC: US Department of Agriculture, Weather Bureau, 1896). National Atlas of the United States of America (Washington, DC: US Geological Survey, 1970). G. Palsky and D. Pumain, ‘Centrography,’ in The History of Cartography, Volume Six: Cartography in the Twentieth Century, ed. by M. Monmonier (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2015), pp. 212-215. F.A. Walker, Statistical Atlas of the United States Based on the Results of the Ninth Census, 1870 (Washington, DC: Jules Bien, lith., 1874).

10 Moore, ‘Souvenir Weather Map’.

183

184

Mark Monmonier

About the Author Mark Monmonier is Distinguished Professor of Geography at Syracuse University. His teaching has focused on map design and environmental cartography, and his current research project is the Clock System maps of John Byron Plato. Monmonier has authored 20 books, including How to Lie with Maps and Connections and Content: Reflections on Networks and the History of Cartography (2019). His research in the 1970s and 1980s demonstrated the potential of optimization methods for improving map design, and in the 1990s he turned to the political, rhetorical, and social impacts of maps and geospatial technology and to the history of cartography.

Motion in Maps, Maps in Motion argues that the mapping of stories, movement, and change should not be understood as an innovation of contemporary cartography, but rather as an important aspect of human cartography with a longer history than might be assumed. The authors in this collection reflect upon the main characteristics and evolutions of story and motion mapping, from the figurative news and history maps that were mass-produced in early modern Europe, through the nineteenthand twentieth-century flow maps that appeared in various atlases, up to the digital and interactive motion and personalized maps that are created today. Rather than presenting a clear and homogeneous history from the past up until the present, this book offers a toolbox for understanding and interpreting the complex interplays and links between narrative, motion, and maps. Zef Segal is a lecturer in modern history at the Open University of Israel. Bram Vannieuwenhuyze holds the Explokart chair of historical cartography at the University of Amsterdam.

ISBN: 978-94-6372-110-3

AUP. nl 9 789463 721103