Mapping world history

Porcelain, sealskin, powder-horn, buckskin, silk, and parchment: these are what history is made of. Celestial histories — subway, radio, or Internet histories. Histories found in stick charts and ordnance surveys. From the Paleolithic Period to digital age, maps have illustrated and recorded history and culture: detailing everything from wars and colonization, to religious and jingoistic worldviews, to the textures of the heavens and the earth. Illustrated in the slideshow below are just a few maps from The Oxford Map Companion by Patricia Seed, which present some of the diversity of cartography and map-making across the centuries and across the globe.




MAP 88
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Soviet Georgia, from the first Russian Atlas, 1937-1939. Part of the first atlas created in either Russia or the Soviet Union, this economic map is characterized by its unique design in which industrial production is indicated by circles, and energy use is noted by stars.

MAP 33
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Jain World Map. At the center of this map is Mount Meru, which Jains, Hindus, and Buddhists believe to be the center of the world.

MAP 69
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Gyoki Map on a Porcelain Plate, c. 1830. Gyoki maps, such as the one depicted here, are named after the map Gyoki (668-748 CE) who is popularly associated with Japan’s conversion to Buddhism.

MAP 41
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Waldseemüller ‘s Map of the World, 1507. Best known for a famous mistake—incorrectly naming the Western Hemisphere “America”—this map displays ignorance of many features that had been well known and correctly drawn by nautical map makers for decades, and in some cases, centuries.

MAP 67
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The Vale of Kashmir, 1836. Though it does not include measurement or scale, as a cultural portrait of Kashmir, this map is extraordinary.

MAP 58
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The Cedid Atlas, 1803. From the first printed Ottoman atlas, showing Asia.

MAP 74
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Geological Map of Southwestern England, 1815. William Smith’s portrayal of Britain is the first ever geological map of an entire country (shown here is detail of Southwest England and part of Wales).

MAP 68
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The Eight Provinces of Korea, c. 1850. Employing hanja-- Korean writing with Chinese characters—this map blends traditional Chinese styles with ones that are uniquely Korean.

MAP 63
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Dutch Polder Map, 1750. The peat mounds visible on this map are still maintained by the Delfland Water Board.

MAP 46
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Europe, from the first atlas, published by Abraham Ortelius in 1570.

MAP 26
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Medieval Islamic Map of the World, ca. 1300 CE. South lies at the top in this medieval Islamic world map.

MAP 75
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1851 Whale Chart. More than just a whale chart, this map graphically shows the global search for new energy sources in the 19th century.

MAP 27
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Turkish Map of Central Asia, c. 1072 CE. Earliest known map drawn by a Turk.

MAP 26
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Medieval Islamic Map of the World, ca. 1300 CE. South lies at the top in this medieval Islamic world map.

MAP 25
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World Climate Map. Earliest known sketch of the world according to climate zones.

MAP 22
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Gough Map of Britain, c. 1360 CE. This is Britain’s first transport map.

MAP 20
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Map of the Mediterranean, c. 1065 CE. An early example of a nautical chart, the circles represent islands in the eastern and central Mediterranean. The two rectangles on the right are Sicily (top) and Cyprus (bottom).

MAP 19
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The Indus River, c. 1065 CE. The backwards S-shaped green line is a mirror image of the actual course of the Indus River.

MAP 7
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First Maps of the Greek Constellations, Persia, 964 CE. The Library of Congress. The best known and most widely imitated star map of the Greek constellations came from a Persian scholar and Sufi, Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi.

MAP 6
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Arabic Star Lists, c. 1065 CE. The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. The earliest compilation of Ptolemy’s constellations became codified only in the 9th century CE, after it was published in Arabic.

Patricia Seed is Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine. She is the author of several books including The Oxford Map Companion, American Pentimento: The Pursuit of Riches and the Invention of “Indians” (2001) and Ceremonies of Possession in Europe’s Conquest of the New World, 1492-1640 (1995). In recent years, Seed has been intensively involved in research on old and new questions in cartography. She bring her skills in the use of digital imaging technologies (GIS and graphic design software) to the study–not only to reformulate the questions of the history of map making–but to offer historical and comparative scholarship new tools of analysis and new ways of representing the knowledge that it produces.

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