Contributions to Map History
Matthew H. Edney
The PDFs collected here constitute chronologically arranged “volumes” comprised of my more substantive blog posts at www.mappingasprocess.net. I have decided to reconfigure the blogs in this manner for three reasons:
• the archive and search functions that came with the web service have proven to be intermittent, so I cannot guarantee that they will be working whenever someone needs to follow the general URL to a cited blog post;
• to create a consistent format for the posts that permit them to be easily cited (as vol: pages) without having to cite each post individually with long URLs;
• given that the website will eventually disappear, the collected volumes create a more sustainable format for the posts that will outlive the blog itself, whether in a university’s digital collections or as hard-copy print outs.
This page lists the contents of each volume, with some further comments; a link to download each volume is at the end of the list of volume contents. I have excluded from the PDFs those posts that, at time of compilation, a) represent thoughts and ideas from particular moments in time that have not held up well as I have continued to work; b) are being superseded by properly peer-reviewed published essays; and c) deal with minor matters (announcements and the like).
I have made some interventions in the entries. By and large I have kept the text as it existed on the site as of the time of compilation, but I have made small corrections to fix grammar and spelling errors encountered in the compilation process, and also to update terminology that has changed. Figures have been relocated as necessary and numbered, and call-outs inserted into the text. I have converted notes to actual footnotes.
Each “volume” contains posts from a set period. I had thought to create a single large file, but it became significantly unwieldy. It seems easier to organize the posts in smaller files, each referenced as a volume of the whole. This means that the entire document can be easily cited:
Edney, Matthew H. 2023. “Contributions to Map History.” 7 vols. https://www.mappingasprocess.net/contributions
Vol. 1. Contributions to Map History, 2017–2018 (prepared in 2023)
1 / This Is Not a Map (14 December 2017) – on the supposed map from the neolithic settlement of Çatalhöyük
14 / Why I Don’t Like Thematic Maps (15 January 2018) – the hopeless ambiguity of “thematic” map, and why I prefer “analytic” map
29 / A Self-Explanatory Map? Come for the Satire, Stay for the Fun (16 February 2018) – on Mark Twain’s gloriously absurd 1870 map of the fortifications of Paris
60 / First Steps towards a Partial Genealogy of the Compass Rose (14 March 2018)
67 / Maps, Semiotics, and History (5 May 2018) – a response to Casti (2018)
84 / Squaring the Cartographic Circle (24 May 2018) – a response to Groarke (2018)
90 / A Flat Earth? (28 June 2018) – on the Flat Earther (FEer) phenomenon
99 / A Partial, Essentialist, and Incorrect Etymology for “Map” (29 November 2018)
103 / A Misunderstood Quatrain (15 December 2018) – on Jonathan Swift’s 1733 quatrain, “So geographers in Afric-maps…” and its incorrect deployment by map historians
123/ The First International Map of the World? (19 December 2018) – on Christopher Colles’ 1794 ambitious “Geographical Ledger”
Vol. 2. Contributions to Map History, 2019 (prepared in 2023)
1 / More FErs (9 March 2019) – Flat Earthers strike again
3 / The History of Cartography in a Brief Poem (6 May 2019) – by Karl Peucker (1902)
4 / “A Handsome Exhibit of the Land” (10 May 2019) – on the Plan of Part of the District of Main produced in London in 1793 as part of William Bingham’s land speculation
31 / Early Colonial Property Mapping in Poetry (12 August 2019) – a poem on an 1859 facsimile of a 1730 property map; was it on the original?
35 / The Magnetic Compass and North Orientation (12 September 2019)
38 / For Indigenous Peoples’ Day (15 October 2019) – comments on a map of indigenous groups in Wisconsin from 1960s
43 / An 1826 Plan for Rational Place Naming (14 November 2019) – Stedman Whitwell’s 1826 idea to create toponyms from latitude and longitude
Vol. 3. Contributions to Map History, January–June 2020 (prepared in 2023)
1 / “Cartograph” (23 January 2020) – on the back-formation and its use by practitioners and map historians
10 / A Roman Map of Britain? (12 April 2020) – Charles Bertram faked a Roman map of Britain in 1757; William Stukely believed him!
16 / Maps in Fantasy Books (25 April 2020) – a list of works talking about the role maps play in fantasy novels
18 / The Map’s the Thing (9 May 2020) – the difference between originals and facsimiles, with the example of Adrian Block’s “figurative map” of Nieu Nederlandt (1614)
30 / Who Was Matthäus/Martin Brazl? (11 May 2020) – a tale of evidentiary corruption
34 / What a Difference a Caption Makes (27 May 2020) – on the importance of reading map titles and captions carefully
Vol. 4. Contributions to Map History, July–December 2020 (prepared in 2023)
1 / Early Histories of Geodesy (20 July 2020) – how astronomers and mathematicians write the history of geodesy before 1720 (see vol. 5:61 for follow up)
7 / Here Be Dragons (23 July 2020) – on that phrase
11 / The Venetian Discovery of the New World before Columbus? (28 July 2020) – on the Zeni and Antonio Vincenzo Formaleoni’s arguments
18 / An Early Narrative of Map History (16 August 2020) _ Rufus Blanchard’s 1876 map of the USA for the US Centennial
34 / A Little-Known Facsimile (19 August 2020) – Ramón de la Sagra and his 1837 facsimile of Juan de la Cosa’s 1500 world map.
38 / River Names (26 August 2020)
42 / I Have Located a Town … (12 September 2020) – identifying a town(ship) in Maine from an early plan
50 / The Growth of Map History in the Nineteenth Century (6 November 2020) – how three bibliographies trace the growth of comparative map history
59 / Jomard vs Santarém (6 November 2020) – rethinking the debate between the supposed founders of map history (hint: they weren’t!)
71 / Unknown Early Disciples of Humboldt and Santarém (16 November 2020) – the map historical work of Xavier and Adèle Hommaire de Hell
96 / Rethinking Maps and Mapping and How They Have Developed and Evolved (7 December 2020) – should one refer to “develop” rather than “evolve” in the emergence and change of maps and mapping?
119 / Harley’s Understandable, but Misplaced, Criticism of Bagrow’s “History of Cartography” (18 December 2020) – problematizing a revealing statement about the proper scope of the field of map history
Vol. 5. Contributions to Map History, January–June 2021 (prepared in 2023)
1 / What is a ‘Planisphere’? (9 January 2021) – the several meanings of the term
14 / Comparative Cartography (19 January 2021) – on the foundational methodology of comparative map history
20 / Bauhaus and Map Collecting (24 January 2021) – Hans Wertheim’s comments on the changing attitudes to early maps as decorative items
24 / Irene Jean Curnow (Active 1921–30) (31 January 2021) – a barely acknowledged geographer and map historian
31 / A ‘Radically Different’ World Map? (17 February 2021) – on the stupidity of the claim to have created the most accurate world map
40 / Perfecting the World Map? (21 February 2021) – more on the aforementioned stupidity
45 / From an Art to Science (How Mapping Acquired Its Fiber) (13 March 2021) – on a history of silk and mapping as the transformation from an art to a science
50 / Cognitive Maps in Bemazed Rats, and Humans (5 April 2021) – on Tolmen’s experiments with rats in mazes, and the extrapolation to humans
55 / An Early Color Facsimile: Hand-Applied or Printed? (18 May 2021) – on the use of chromolithography for a 1856 facsimile of a map of Jave-le-grande from the Dieppe school
58 / Suppositions of Location and of Similitude (28 June 2021) – core acts of comparison behind comparative map history
61 / Modern Histories of Geodesy and Surveying (30 June 2021) – how practitioners and historians of science have written the history of geodetic and topographical surveys since 1720 (see vol. 4:1 for previous period)
Vol. 6. Contributions to Map History, July–December 2022 (prepared in 2023)
1 / Triangulation ... it's not just “doing things with triangles” (14 July 2021)
4 / More on the Fetishization of Triangulation (and on the Possible Schizophrenia of Recent Map History) (21 July 2021)
9 / Some Thoughts on Jacques Bertin’s “[Carto]graphic Semiology” (20 August 2021)
12 / Reworking the Founding Disciplinary Narrative along Cognitive Lines (23 August 2021) – on the arguments of Barbara Petchenik and Henry Castner re the emergence of analytic mapping
19 / It’s a Fake—for real this time (2 September 2021) – the “Vinland Map” is not real, and the great exhibition at Mystic Seaport.
26 / Constructing a Feminized Landscape (13 September 2021) – Beverly Hills was laid out as a woman!
28 / The Control-Freakness of an Early Map Collector (30 October 2021) –John Innys on the organization of a large map collection in the early eighteenth century
34 / Reading the “Blathwayt Atlas” of Colonial North America (30 November 2021) – looking at the structure of Blathwayt’s atlas from the 1680s and the pattern of the sources of the individual items
Vol. 7. Contributions to Map History, 2022 (prepared in 2023)
1 / A Case of Mistaken Identity and Severe Historical Confusion (20 February 2022)–on Gerardus and Rumold Mercator and their different map projections that are hopelessly conflated!
6 / Comparative Map History in the International Geographical Union (20 February 2022)
12 / A Curious Implementation of Copper-Plate Printing (14 June 2022) – an atlas printed from a single copper plate
20 / The Perils of Literality (6 December 2022 – somehow someone thinks that Robinson Crusoe was a real person who made maps …
Vol. 8. Contributions to Map History, 2023 (prepared in 2023)
In preparation
