The Art of the Map

240 Pages·2012·57.955 MB·English

by  Dennis Reinhartz

THE ART OF THE

THE ART OF rfl-IE
DENNIS REINHARTZ
FOREWORD BY
JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
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ix
xiii
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Index
Picture Credits 218
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FOREWORD
ho has not n ol e other­
unfolded, u r l d. or
wise spread out a and felt all its
map
promise of journeys ahead, planned or
only imagined? Who has not asked a
map to point the way? To the other side
of the river. or the o nta n To the shore. or lands beyond borders
m u i .
and deep waters. Who has learned from a map one's place in the
not
world. some sense of here in relation o
t there?
Joseph Conrad understood the feeling behind such questions.
Heart of Darkness, Conrad has Marlowe say: "Now when I was a
In
little chap had a passion for maps. would look for hours at
I I South
America. or Africa. or Australia, and lose myself all the glories
in
of exploration. At that time there were many blank spaces the
on
earth, and when saw one that looked particularly on a map
I inviting
(but they all look that) would put my finger on it and say,
I 'When I
grow up I will go there."'
Many of us no doubt can single out a moment of discovering
the fascination of maps, their power and indispensability. I recall
that I was a little chap of eight. in the third grade, when I made the
discovery. was a momentous date. December 7, 1941. To President
It
Franklin D. Roosevelt. it was "a date which will live in infamy." This
surely means war for us. heard my parents say, and radio news­
I
casters agreed with equal gravity. For me, the surprise
bombing
attack by Japanese aircraft Pearl Harbor raised for the first time
011
urgent geographical questions that only a map could answer with
graphic efficie cy had never heard of Pearl Harbor and not much
n . I
about Hawaii, except that pineapples grow there. We were then a
country of forty-eight states. confined to the North American
conti­
f I had been in the third grade 1914. I suppose I would have
nent. I in
been just as bewildered over the news of a Hapsburg archduke's
assassination at Sarajevo.
Jan Huygen van Linschoten. Typus
Orarum Mantimarum Gu1neae .
Amsterdam. 1596.
IX
Anyway, as this was before television, much less Incas made elaborate relief maps of stone and
the Internet. the first news reached us without clay and Pacific islanders prepared maps of sticks
informative maps. We had no adequate atlas at lashed together with fibers to depict prevailing wind
home. only gas-station road maps (of Kentucky, and wave patterns. with shells or coral inserted to
Tennessee. and nearby states) and a jigsaw puzzle represent islands.
with pieces in the shape of the individual states. by
Writing in The History of Cartography, an ongoing.
which I had learned their names and capitals. My
authoritative multivolume work (1987-present).
mother or father suggested that look up Hawaii
I one of its editors. Brian Harley. observed. "There
in the encyclopedia. The entry. though skimpy, did
has probably always been a mapping impulse in
include a small map of the islands. with an inset
human consciousness. and the mapping experi­
showing their relation to the American West Coast.
ence-involving the cognitive mapping of space­
In other volumes. maps showed the Pacific Ocean.
undoubtedly existed long before the physical arti­
It was a relief to see how far away Japan seemed,
facts we now call maps."
even Hawaii.
Judging by reactions to my book. map enthu­
We eventually got a world map. and I faithfully
siasts are many and varied. Maps are sources of
clipped maps of military operations out of newspa­
pleasure as guides to travel and idle dreaming. and
pers and magazines. Through war and maps, well
objects of aesthetic value among collectors. They
before I might normally have. was learning world
are instruments of exploration and navigation in
I
geography. I know that reading and listening to war
the air and outer space. on land. and on sea. They
news influenced my choice of a career in journalism.
both inspire and illustrate scientific insights. as
And I suspect this also was the source of my long in the drifting continents and seafloor spreading
interest in maps and the inspiration to write The of plate tectonics. They are a metaphor in the
Mapmakers. a history of cartography. hands of generals and admirals "mapping their
campaigns." Historians. as Dennis Reinhartz notes
We are told that no one knows when or where
in the preface to this book. look to maps to "show
or for what purpose someone got the first idea to
where historical events unfolded and how those
draw a map. was presumablJ; thousands of years
It places were perceived during past eras" and help
ago. before written language, and it most likely
explain "why events in history happened as they
occurred independently among different peoples
did, where they did."
in separate parts of the world. All the great ancient
civilizations-Egypt. Mesopotamia. and China­ Dr. Reinhartz. a historian of cartography, has
evolved the map idea at early stages. The earliest been working with maps for more than forty
known world map, after a fashion. is a Babylonian years In this book. he concentrates on maps as
clay tablet from the sixth century BCE. Long before informative art forms. emphasizing the most
that. prehistoric Europeans drew sketch maps on important visual elements of cartography used
their cave walls. And before European contact. the by Europeans in the fifteenth to the nineteenth