A History of the World in 12 Maps

Favourite Quotes

“When you see where a name has come from, you understand its meaning more quickly. For everything is known more plainly by the study of etymology” p. 100-101 - Isidore of Seville

“May your soul leave this world, traverse the heavens themselves, and pass beyond the stars until you reach God” - p. 112 - Anonymous 12th century Benedictine monk

“The paradox is that we can never know the world without a map, nor definitively represent it with one.” p. 445

Detailed Summary

Introduction

• the earliest known world map was from Babylonia (modern day Iraq) and dates to 700-500BC
  • this map includes elements of Babylonian creation myth; the battle between Marduk and Tiamat
• according to Mircea Eliade, archaic societies use rites and myths to create a ‘boundary situation’, which is the point where ‘man discovers himself becoming conscious of his place in the universe’. This creates a distinction between the realm of ‘orderly existence’ and the realm of the unknown, formless, and dangerous - p. 9
  • this is the classic Order and Chaos
• this distinction between the orderly and chaotic realms is a reenactment of the divine act of creation (shaping order out of chaos) and the mapmaker, since he’s part of the orderly realm, puts himself on par with the gods - p. 9

1: Science - Ptolemy’s Geography, AD 150

• Alexandria Egypt was founded by Alexander the Great in 334 BC - p. 17
• Alexandria became the capital of the Ptolemaic dynasty in ancient Egypt that ruled for 300 years - p. 17
  • it was the last dynasty before Egypt was incorporated into the Roman Republic in 30BC
  • Cleopatra was the final ruler of this dynasty
  • it was founded by Ptolemy the First, a close advisor to Alexander
  • this dynasty was responsible for spreading Greek ideas around the middle east
• Alexandria was a center for scholarship and learning, due to the fact that it was in the middle of important regions and trade routes - p. 18
  • The famous Library of Alexandria was founded during the Ptolemaic dynasty
• it was this context (library of Alexandria) that produced Ptolemy’s Geography
  • this was a massive work on compiled Greek thinking on the size, shape, and scope of the world
• Ptolemy’s Geography was considered the birth of the academics and scholarship behind modern map making- p. 19
• Ptolemy, like most Greek thinkers believed the earth was a round globe - p. 20
• the maps themselves are controversial; some believe they were added much later in the 13th century of Byzantine scribes
• in the 3rd Century BC, Dicaearchus, a student of Aristotle made this map:

• hardly any world maps survive from the Roman Republic or Empire era (post Greek Alexandria) - p. 38
  • maps in the Roman time were more practical: engineering, road maps, land division, military use, etc
  • It seems the Romans simply did not care about the more abstract concept of ‘entire world map making’
• As far as Vietnam was identified by Ptolemy - p. 45
• Ptolemy’s map was math-based, specifically based on the principles laid out by Euclid
• As opposed to maps prior to Ptolemy’s, his map had very little to do with cosmogony and myth

2: Exchange - Al-Idrisi, AD 1154

• Sicily was under Arab/Muslim rule for 100-200 years before 1072
• The ruler of a multi-cultural Sicily in 1130 was Roger II, whose closest confidant was Al-Idrisi
  • Roger II told Al-Idrisi to write a book on geography and maps

• Al-Idrisi’s map has south pointed up
• the direction that a map points reveals a lot about the context and culture
  • the east was commonly looked as a positive direction: the Christians regarded it as the Earthly Paradise, the polytheist revered it, etc
  • the west was the complete opposite; it was a sign of death and mortality
  • almost all Christian maps put east at top
  • the reason why Al-Idrisi’s and many Muslim maps had south at top was because most Muslims lived north of Mecca, so therefore their qiblah was south
    • The Zoroastrians also regarded south as sacred
  • Babylonia and China considered north to be sacred
• Baghdad and Iraq was the center of al-Ma’mun’s map - p. 61
  • as mentioned before, maps are a reflection of the people who wrote them, the culture they grew up in, their political affiliations, etc
• al-Ma’mun’s surveyors measured the circumference of the earth at just over 40k KM, which is within less than 100KM of the correct circumference of the earth measured at the equator! - p. 62
• Abu Zayd al Balkhi influenced map-making and geography greatly. He created the “Balkhi School of Geography”
  • he wrote Sustenance of the Soul!
• Similar to Al-Andalus, Sicily was a center of multi-cultural learning. Jews, Christians, and Muslim lived together in peace and scholars from all over came and studied. King Roger II was greatly invested in the cultural legacy of Sicily so he worked to ensure it remained a center of education - p. 70
• Idrisi’s Geography represents the first serious attempt to assimilate the scholarship of the Arabic, Greek, and Latin world - p. 73
  • in his introduction he says his sources are Ptolemy (Greek), Paulus Orosius (Christian), Ibn Khurradadhbih, and Ibn Hawqal - p. 75
• Idrisi was very neutral; although a Muslim, his own beliefs played no part in his Geography; he does not give superiority to one intellectual/religious tradition over another - p. 77
• Unfortunately, Idrisi’s work never became that famous. Reasons: - p. 79
  • Sicily soon fell to political disaster. He didn’t have support from his king.
  • Many Muslim scholars looked down upon Idrisi considering him a disbeliever
  • It was very neutral, didn’t pick any sides. It didn’t given credence to the Muslim or Christian worldview so both sides rejected it. Unfortunately religious belief triumphed over geographical description - p. 81

3: Faith - Hereford Mappamundi, AD 1300

• mappa = Latin word for tablecloth or napkin
• mundus = Latin word for world
• mappamundi became the term to describe the Christian earth or map
  • it includes theological, political, and historical aspects
• the Hereford Mappamundi is arguably the greatest of the 1000s of mappamundi produced over the years
  • it’s still a mystery though: we don’t know when it was made exactly, or why it was found in a small cathedral town in the middle of nowhere, nor what function it played in the cathedral
  • it was made of animal skin
  • east points upwards on this map (as opposed to south in Idrisi’s map)
  • the map is very strange looking, no one today would be able to intuitively figure out what is what
  • the best way to describe this map is that it is described by theology, not geography
  • the map contains lots of theological aspects. It has identified biblical events, etc
• Isidore of Seville relied on etymology to understand geography - p. 101
  • he said Libya must be older than Europe for Europe was a daughter of a king of Libya; Africa was named after Afer, a descendent of Abraham; Assyria takes its name from Assur, son of Shem
• overall, the various Christian mappamundi were heavily based on Christian theology and less about realistic geography

4: Empire - Kangnido World Map, AD 1402

• The Kangnido map was made by a team of astronomers led by Kwon Kun, a neo-Confucian reformer who worked for the new Korean regime
• Features of Kangnido map:
  • north is on top
  • Africa has a huge lake in the middle of the continent
    • the author says this could represent the Sahara desert… but it’s drawn on the map the same way a lake would be, so this is quite interesting
  • Africa is tiny. China is huge.
  • names are Chinese transcriptions of the Arabic place names
    • this shows how much Arabic/Islamic map-making had an impact on the East Asians
  • some elements like names and shapes of Africa and Europe are influenced by Ptolemy
• while the western world was influenced by Roman and Greek heritage, East Asia was influenced by China
  • China was viewed as the center of legitimate imperial authority and the ruler of the entire civilized world
• maps served many functions in ancient East Asia: a precious relic, administrative and imperial use, etc

5: Discovery - Martin Waldseemuller, World Map, AD 1507

• this was the first map in history to call America ‘America’
• it was purchased by the US Library of Congress for $10 million
  • it took them a long time to buy it cause of so many obstacles
• this map is considered American’s ‘birth certificate’. That’s why the US tried so hard to purchase it
• this map along with others during its time were some of the first to have north at the top
• the 1500s had a boom in map making, largely due to the printing press - p. 158
• They called it American because it was discovered by Amerigo - p. 166
• some copies of the map label America as “Terra incognita”
  • ‘America’ is often assigned to the landmass down south, i.e. South America
• ‘America’ was chosen not because it was agreed Amerigo discovered it, but because it was a politically neural name and politically acceptable - p. 179
• there’s still lots of controversy regarding this map and whether or not it truly was the first map to name America - p. 185

6: Globalism - Diogo Ribeiro, World Map, AD 1529

• this time period had a lot going on:
  • Columbus ‘discovered’ America
  • The Portuguese established trade routes via ships to India
  • the whole world was basically connected via shipping routes. Goods were being shipped everywhere
  • Portugal became an economic powerhouse: they were the ‘empire of the waters’, while everyone else was still vying for land. So they made a fortune in two ways: - p. 189
    • transporting Indian goods quicker and cheaper via ships than anyone else did via land
    • collecting tariffs and taxes from trade moving through their overseas possessions throughout the Indian Ocean
• The Venetians also wanted in on these trade routes, so they stole a map from Portugal - p. 190
• Ferdinand Magellan was the first to circumnavigate the entire earth in 1522 - p. 193
  • he was killed after reaching the Philippines so he technically didn’t circumnavigate it himself, but his crew did - p. 197
• Martin Behaim was a German merchant. He was the first person in history to create a terrestrial global of the earth (not a map or chart) in 1492 - p. 194
• Magellan, when he first went into the Pacific ocean, called it “Mare Pacificum” (peaceful sea). That’s where the name comes from! - p. 196
• maps were heavily used by the kingdoms of Portugal and Castile to handle their border disputes
  • Ribeiro’s maps were simply a political tool. He worked for Castile. His maps favored Castile to have control over the Moluccas (Indonesia)
• Portugal and Castile’s fight over the Moluccas set a precedent in Europe: colonial policy, specifically claiming that a land thousands of kilometers away from yours is your land. And maps had a big role to play. - p. 217

7: Toleration - Gerard Mercator, World Map, 1569

• Gerard played a major role in modern map making
  • he first used the term ‘atlas’
  • he made the first modern maps of Europe

8: Money - Joan Blaeu, Atlas Maior, 1662

• Joan Blaeu is considered the greatest Dutch mapmaker in the history of cartography
• His maps are on the floor of the Amsterdam Town Hall built in 1655
• his map was the first in the world to show the west coast of Australia and Tasmania
• his map was a representation of political independence
  • Netherlands became independent around this time and could practice their Calvinist religion in peace
• his map was the first to represent the heliocentric theory into a map of the world
  • heliocentric is the idea proposed by Nicolaus Copernicus that the earth resolves around the sun
  • this is in opposition to the dominant theory in Ancient Greece and Christianity that we live in a geocentric world, i.e. the sun + everything else revolve around the earth
• this map represented a shift in the philosophy of Europe, that the earth and humanity were no longer the center of the universe - p. 263
• around this time, mapmaking started to become a profitable business
• a big buyer of maps was the Dutch East India Company. They were in the business of trade with Asia and around Indonesia.
• Mapmakers gained a lot of political influence and wealth
• Joan Blaeu’s father was a mapmaker and so was his son. It was a ‘dynasty’ of map makers
• during this time the main purpose of maps was to make money. So the goal was to make your map as desirable as possible to make a profit - p. 293
  • people cared more for decorative value than geography

9: Nation - The Cassini Family, Map of France, 1793

• Jean-Dominique Cassini’s map of France was the first modern map of a nation using innovative scientific surveying methods to comprehensively represent a single European country - p. 295
  • it was 12 x 11 meters big
  • it as the first general map of an entire nation based on geodetic and topographical measurement - p. 333
• Cassini’s map was used as the template for all nation state maps for the next 200 years - p. 296
• The Cassini’s were not interested in world maps
• the rest of the chapter goes over the scientific methods of the making of the Cassini map, the surveying of France, and the history of the Cassini multi-generational mapmaking family
• The Cassini maps were heavily used during the time of Napoleon for military means - p. 330 - 331
• Cassini’s map took the study of mapmaking to the next level. It introduced a verifiable science, pursuing a standardized, empirical, and objective method that could be extended right around the earth - p. 333

10: Geopolitics - Halford Mackinder, ‘The Geographical Pivot of History’, 1904

• a lot happened in the 1800s:
  • the rise of ‘geographical societies’, i.e. clubs/groups of experts, travelers, mapmakers, etc, devoted to the study and learning of geography
  • the invention (or rather discovery) of lithography: using limestone to duplicate graphic images. This method was a lot cheaper and quicker and easier to duplicate images which of course led to an increase of published maps - p. 339
  • the coining of the term cartography to denote the science of mapmaking
• Mackinder, born in 1861, was a influential figure in the world of geography. He advocated for the study of geography all over England. He taught some of the first geography courses at Oxford
• Mackinder was heavily invested in geopolitics. He talked about the threat from the Russian empire in central Asia, etc. - p. 362
  • he believed that only through the study of geography could you understand international politics - p. 364
• The rest of the chapter covers Mackinder’s ideas and theories about geopolitics
  • largely around the idea of ‘the heartland’ = Eurasia (central Asia, middle east)
  • whoever controls the heartland controls the world - p. 367
• Mackinder transformed geography as an academic discipline, and he defined a whole new field of study: geopolitics - p. 369 - 370
• even today, Mackinder’s idea that Eurasia is the heartland holds true.
  • The US, the world’s superpower, is ever-involved in the middle east
  • Russia and China are also increasingly becoming more involved there

11: Equality - The Peters Projection, 1973

• then 1900s witnessed the use of maps in political propaganda - p. 374 - 376
  • the Nazis used maps
• Arno Peters in 1973 made a ground-breaking world map. It was a true, equal, ‘unbiased’ world map and didn’t place focus on Europe, i.e. wasn’t Eurocentric - p. 379
  • in previous generations, mapmakers often had some sort of bias like political or religious affiliation. They often made their homeland the center of the world or the biggest.
  • it became super famous and sold a lot
• Although Peters’ map gained a lot of support from the UN, UNESCO, UNICEF, and various NGOs, the scholarly community hated it - p. 380
  • they pointed out all the mistakes that it had
• the Peters map raised a lot of controversy for the next few decades. But all this proved one thing: every map, in some way shape or form, is political
  • it raised questions like can a map even be scientifically objective or ideologically neutral?
• in summary, a map can never be truly accurate or scientifically objective. There is also an underlying bias, belief, or ideology

12: Information - Google Earth, 2012

• mainly skipped
• just goes over the history of online mapmaking and history of the internet

Conclusion

• “maps offer a proposal about the world” - p. 438
  • this book overall shows that maps really are a subjective undertaking. The mapmakers culture, religion, and upbringing all come into play when creating a map
• even today there is no consensus on ‘the best map’
• the pursuit of creating a universally accepted map of the world, which has been a goal of mankind for 3000+ years, is simply an idealistic fantasy - p. 444

Main Idea of the Book

The author takes us through the history of world maps, going back to the 3rd century BC.

His overall message is that a true ‘scientific’ map that is universally accepted cannot exist. Maps are infected with bias, politics, ideology, belief, and many other things.

Reflections

I never really thought about the idea that a true scientifically accurate, universally accepted, map does not exist nor can ever exist. Mapmaking is a subjective undertaking at its core.

There is no single mention of ancient ‘controversial’ maps like those that depict lands that don’t exist, or no longer exist. At the very least I’d expect some discussion on that.