Suppositions of Location and of Similitude

Key tests in the assessment of old maps

I have briefly mentioned George Collingridge for his 1907 world map centered on Australia, to which I was drawn via his work on Java and Jave-le-grande. Let’s talk about that work more, especially as it pertains to the suppositions of location and similitude as widely deployed by traditional map historians. The supposition of location has the following logic:

X is in this location on an early map,

on modern maps, this location is occupied by Y, therefore

X == Y.

The supposition of similitude has a similar logic featuring the visual form of features on old and modern maps:

X looks like this on an early map,

on modern maps, Y also looks like this, therefore

X == Y.

The two suppositions have been widely applied. They are most apparent when people with little understanding of the nature of maps have looked at old maps. One instance of the supposition of similitude was the argument by Charles Hapgood (1966) that the presence on early maps of a circumpolar terra australis that rather looked like Antarctica was proof that Antarctica had been mapped well before the Renaissance (and indeed before the formation of the ice sheets). From that conviction, Hapgood had to build up a huge superstructure of conjecture and fancy to account for the fact that the location of Antarctica was not actually the same as the terra australis on early maps.

Collingridge’s work suggests that appeals to similitude and location were strategic rather than principled. He was committed to the argument, contra Australia’s burgeoning nationalistic origin story, that Australia had been “discovered” not by the Dutch but by the Portuguese, and indeed perhaps by still earlier peoples from the West.

In one essay, Collingridge disputed the standard identification as Japan of Marco Polo’s Zipangu (or Cipango). Setting aside what he thought were spurious etymological similarities—without any linguistic expertise—he argued that this identification rested only on the coincidence of the islands’ locations “on maps” (Collingridge 1894, 404, original emphasis). That is, the argument rested only on the supposition of location; unsupported by other evidence, the equivalency must be dismissed. Of course, other scholars (as Oldham 1894) thought the linguistic evidence solid and therefore the supposition of location valid.

At the same time, Collingridge (1895) followed the equivalency drawn of many scholars—starting with a tangential note by Alexander Dalrymple (1786, 4n) and continuing in a more critical manner with such authorities as Conrad Malte-Brun (1810–29, 1:509–11) and R. H. Major (1859, xxvii–xxxv}—between Australia and Jave-la-grande, the large landmass extending southwards from Asia on maps from the sixteenth-century Dieppe school. Collingridge sustained the equivalency of Australia with this large land mass with appeals to both suppositions.

The difference in Collingridge’s application of the supposition of location, adhering to it in his own study but disagreeing with it in someone else’s, stemmed from the need to present Zipangu as Java, so that that island could be isolated and distinguished from Marco Polo’s Java major, which Collingridge took to be the much larger Jave-la-Grande. At the same time, Collingridge argued that the presence on Jave-le-grande of Portuguese toponyms indicated that the mapped knowledge had to have derived from otherwise unrecorded Portuguese voyages that had independently discovered Australia well before the “official” Dutch encounter with its western coast in 1606.

See the works of Bill Richardson below for a sustained argument against Collingridge and later persistent scholars. Richardson, a professor of Spanish and Portuguese, conducted careful linguistic analyses and demonstrated that all the placenames in Jave-la-grande were of known places in the East Indies and had nothing to do with Australia. See Richardson’s own bibliography for more information and for his more general statements concerning map analysis.

References

Collingridge, George. 1894. “The Early Cartography of Japan.” Geographical Journal 111: 403–9.

———. 1895. The Discovery of Australia: A Critical, Documentary and Historic Investigation Concerning the Priority of Discovery in Australasia by Europeans before the Arrival of Lt. James Cook, in the ‘Endeavour,’ in the Year 1770. Sydney: Hayes Brothers.

Dalrymple, Alexander. 1786. Memoir Concerning the Chagos and Adjacent Islands. London: George Bigg.

Hapgood, Charles H. 1966. Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings: Evidence of Advanced Civilization in the Ice Age. Philadelphia: Chilton.

Major, R. H. 1859. Early Voyages to Terra Australis, Now Called Australia: A Collection of Documents, and Extracts from Early Manuscript Maps, Illustrative of the History of Discovery on the Coasts of that Vast Island, from the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century to the Time of Captain Cook. Works issued by The Hakluyt Society, 1st ser., 25. London: Hakluyt Society.

Malte-Brun, Conrad. 1810–29. Précis de la géographie universelle, ou description de toutes les parties du monde, sur un plan nouveau d’après les grandes divisions naturelles du globe; précédée de l’histoire de la géographie chez les peuples anciens et modernes, et d’une théorie générale de la géographie mathématique, physique et politique; et accompagnée de cartes, de tableaux analytiques, synoptiques et élémentaires, et d’une table alphabetique des noms de lieux. 8 vols. Paris: Fr. Buisson and Aimé-André.

Oldham, H. Yule. 1894. “The Early Cartography of Japan.” Geographical Journal 4: 270–71, 276–79.

Richardson, W. A. R. 1983. “Is Jave-la-Grande Australia? The Linguistic Evidence Concerning the West Coast.” Globe 19: 9–46.

———. 1989. The Portuguese Discovery of Australia: Fact or Fiction? National Library of Australia, Occasional Lecture Series, 3. Canberra: National Library of Australia.

———. 2006. Was Australia Charted before 1606? The Jave la Grande Inscriptions. [Canberra]: National Library of Australia.

———. 2011. “Terra Australis, Jave la Grande and Australia: Identity Problems and Fiction.” In European Perceptions of Terra Australis, ed. Anne M. Scott, Alfred Hiatt, Claire McIlroy, and Christopher Wortham, 83–109. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate.