Maps from the age of exploration 1475 to 1899.

It’s a rare being who is not fascinated by maps. Tourists and visitors, walkers, fans of epic fantasy, students and readers of self-help books with mind-maps all appreciate a bit of good cartography, and the modern virtual world is awash with them as the options on any search engine will demonstrate. Their function is to be informative of course, but they can also be works of art in their own right and items of interest to antiquarians, collectors, lawyers, historians and a whole host of other specialists. Not forgetting any old Tom, Dick or Harriet now profiting from this general availability online — just as in the Renaissance period a rich middle class were profiting from more easily acquired maps due to the invention of printing.

New Worlds is a collection of some one hundred and twenty printed maps spanning four and a quarter centuries, in full colour, each example with its own set of notes. The earliest dates from 1475, a schematic diagram still reliant on the medieval concept of the mappa mundi, with Jerusalem plumb centre and literally oriented with the east at the top. Soon, however, maps were being printed based on the writings of Ptolemy in the 2nd century, much closer to modern conceptions in having north at the top and rudimentary outlines of Europe, North Africa and parts of Asia. What lingers from the medieval mindset is the use of representational images, such as anthropomorphic zephyrs providing winds from twelve different directions. The discovery of the New World in the last decade of the 15th century meant that new ways of representing a spherical world on a two-dimensional plane were urgently needed.

In the early 16th century there were experiments with various projections, most notably with cordiform and double-cordiform (heart-shaped) maps, in an effort to incorporate details of both eastern and western hemispheres as they became known. Unfortunately, in their zeal to fill up all the available space much creativity was employed. Not just decorative cartouches were in evidence but also figurative illustrations — benighted natives from exotic climes were very popular, as were exotic beasts, both imaginatively and usually inaccurately portrayed. Worst of all, geographical details were invented. Typically these included a postulated southern continent which somehow incorporated all of Antarctica and Australia, and an Arctic continent which Gerard Mercator depicted surrounding a physical North Pole in an inland sea from which four rivers flowed in Biblical fashion. Swift excoriated much of the cartography of the period with a famous rhyming jibe (which the authors quote) and even included such idiosyncrasies in his Gulliver’s Travels.

So Geographers in Afric-maps / With Savage Pictures fill their Gaps; / And o’er uninhabitable Downs / Place Elephants for want of Towns.

But as time went on accuracy improved even as the pictorial elements remained to enliven the publication and attract buyers. Unlike later atlases these maps were largely for display purposes, and needed to draw the eye. That visual appeal meant that we have bird’s eye or panoramic views of settlements and towns in potential colonies; troop dispositions at key battles; coats of arms of leading families in English county maps; fantastical sea creatures, mythological figures and sailing ships in those huge expanses of oceans; and local scenes — real or imagined — for maps of exotic places. Everywhere there are cartouches, explanatory sections contained within a scroll- or shield-like border which also served the purpose of hiding lands unknown. Above all the huge sweep of European expansionism — for better or worse — is emphasised again and again.

We are also introduced to novelty maps — allegorical delineations of countries such as a harp for Ireland, whimsical 'Maps of Matrimony', and playing card maps. But my favourite aspects of these maps are features that could come straight out of The Dictionary of Imaginary Places. Sheer inaccuracies or anachronisms abound that lend these early maps a huge fascination for me. These include California as a island, even when earlier maps show it clearly as a peninsula; phantom islands in the Atlantic such as Frisland, Estotiland, Brasil and the Island of St Brendan; and a river that flows unimpeded from the west to the east coast of Africa — or possibly the other way round.

It’s difficult to do more than give a flavour of this book. Like its subject it’s visually attractive in its guise as a coffee-table book, but it also has the detail that reveals the authors know whereof they speak. Included are the expected contents list and introduction, with a bibliography, index and picture credits at the back. Sandwiched in between are those maps in chronological order so that developments in cartography can be appreciated as well as changes in styles of presentation. It’s also worth having a magnifying glass at hand to appreciate the finer detail, but the sheer gorgeousness of the individual examples is what impresses each time the book is opened.

http://wp.me/s2oNj1-maps ( )

While I enjoyed New Worlds and particularly the maps contained in it, I found myself wishing for additional background and descriptive text related to the maps. I'm afraid that I usually have just the opposite reaction to most books on early cartography and desire more maps comprising the subject matter. Apparently, there is no satisfying me.

As to the maps, they are lovely and interesting to view. Many are works of art and some are works of a more whimsical or political nature. Some of the early maps were amazing for the general accuracy of what had recently been terra incognita or even unknown unknowns shortly before publication. By the 16th century some cartographers had, courtesy of the explorers of their day, a pretty fair idea of global relationships and the shapes of the continents with a good helping of detail. Some details, of course, are wildly inaccurate such as land masses being congregated at the poles, That's part of what makes these maps so interesting.

The map illustrations, some up to 600 years old, are so vivid and apparently in very good condition in most cases that it's somewhat difficult to believe that they haven't been graphically enhanced. A few words on that subject might have been illuminating.

Bottom line though, what is there in the way of text is interesting and the maps are well worth the price of admission. ( )

A beautiful collection of maps from the 1500s to about 1900. The title is a bit misleading, "New Worlds: Maps from the Age of Discovery," implying that these are just "explorer's maps" or maps of colonies, of Europeans in the New World, Africa, and the Orient. However, there are several maps of Europe and other places. The choice is wide-ranging and interesting, and the huge book format allows most to be read and enjoyed quite easlity, the glossy paper helps too. The commentary is short and insightful. May Quercus print a million of these books, I will keep buying them at Borders for $19.99! ( )

This collection of maps, dating from the mid 15th to later 19th Centuries, is guaranteed to fascinate and delight even those who do not give a toss for cartography.

While it is beautiful enough to be a mere coffee table book- providing your coffee table is big enough - the text is so interesting the book would be worth reading for that alone, without the added aesthetic attraction of the maps.

Even today, with satellites and images which can be computer generated with absolute accuracy, the map of the world as we have come to know it is distorted to give dominance to the traditionally powerful Northern Hemisphere. Few question the familiar proportions of the Mercantur projection, despite the wealth of more reliable information now available.

Early maps were inaccurate, as can be expected, but they were often deliberately skewed toward an even greater and completely partisan inaccuracy, one that served an agenda. This was done not out of ignorance but as a cynical act of propaganda.

The centre of the world usually, fortuitously and coincidentally, coincided with the centre of power: centuries under first Roman and then early Christian dominance, that centre was Rome. But the best cartographers of the Age of Discovery were the Protestants, who unified their diverse and widely spread co-religionists by placing the centre in Jerusalem, and concentrating on the geography of the Holy Land in their determination that the Bible be interpreted as the literal truth, in accordance with their beliefs.

But world maps are of limited interest once the differing projections have been considered because bar the odd continent and sea monster, they are still with us: far more compelling are the types of maps we don’t see today – Curiosity Maps, City Maps, and Battle Maps. Well, okay, we have a sort of modern equivalent but as far removed from the intimate blood and guts of the originals as a featureless modern office block is from a Gothic Cathedral.

Early maps were more illustrative than diagrammatical, and the most fanciful of all were the so-called ‘Curiosity Maps’: these range from [the Protestant] Buntings 1581 world map in the shape of a three leafed clover, the leaves consisting of the three major continents of the Old World centred around Jerusalem, to the 1899 map of Europe, called Angling in Troubled Waters, a serio-comic map by Fred Rose in which boundaries are depicted as caricatures of European leaders of the day, from Czar Nicholas of Russia to the unmistakably English John Bull.

Pity the poor traveller who tried to navigate Bohemia armed only with a 1677 map showing the country in the shape of a rose, the National symbol, or who relied on Claus Jantsz’s 1611 map of the Low Countries, rendered in the shape of a lion.

City maps were generally more reliable, as well as being of greater artistic and historical significance: London is a city that inspires cartographers, and we have delicately rendered pictures detailing the streets for many centuries. A Stuart Map shows it as it was before the Plague and the Great Fire which destroyed most of Medieval London: a later map reflects the ambitious rebuilding under the supervision of Christopher Wren.

Venice, Paris, and Amsterdam are other cities that have their histories laid bare by exquisite town plans which are little more than meticulous illustrations those towns at a certain date, captured in amber, complete with all the buildings.

Early city maps showed the various details of all the buildings, the streets and the bridges, the modes of transport, the fine and the humble churches, the palaces and the slums. The ubiquitous but featureless birds-eye view of today may be more accurate, but offers none of the charm or attraction of its original.

Now, while one would never dare to claim that only nerds are interested in military strategy and the history of battles, everything about the conduct of war, from those huge oil paintings showing famous victories or heroic defeats to the dry diagrams in which glorious, suicidally brave charges are symbolised by a mere arrow, is generally guaranteed to elicit little more than a yawn.

But these battle maps are different. Possibly the very first of their kind could be said to be cave paintings showing fights, then the Egyptian battle murals, the Greek Vase Paintings depicting the Trojan War, even the great Bayeaux Tapestry.

Because many of the maps showing battles are actually artistically and technically excellent drawings, executed with great attention to detail but without the poetic licence afforded to the painters of huge and romantic canvasses glorifying heroism and war.

In these drawings, the men, [knights and mere cannon-fodder], the horses, the camps [both shacks and pavilions], the armaments, the landscape, and the surrounding towns, all are detailed, and we see a charge by actual men on horses, not a mere arrow.

These kinds of maps are still created today, but they are called illustrations, and over-looked in favour of that drear and lifeless computer-generated stuff. Yes, accuracy is important, but would it be the end of the world if modern cartographers included the odd discreet ship, sea serpent and allegorical symbol in their charts? ( )