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A review by uhambe_nami
A History of the World in Twelve Maps by Jerry Brotton
5.0
From the first known world map engraved on a cuneiform clay tablet to Google Earth's interactive three-dimensional image of the world, History of the World in Twelve Maps is a wonderful introduction to the history of cartography. As the title suggests, Jerry Brotton picked twelve maps and placed them in their historical context, dedicating one chapter to each map. At first sight, his choice may seem arbitrary enough - why pick the Hereford map and not the Ebstorf map, or Pietro Vesconte's map, or Fra Mauro's Mappamundi? - but it all becomes clear when reading through the chapters. Since the earth cannot be comprehensively mapped onto a flat surface, maps are necessarily a distortion of reality and, Brotton argues, shaped by the worldview of their makers. Each of the twelve chosen maps represents a worldview of a particular time in history and each of them has an interesting story to tell.
Read this if you'd like to know why, in medieval times, maps by Islamic mapmakers tended to face south while Christian maps faced east and Chinese maps faced north (which, incidentally, made the latter ones look surprisingly modern); how Mercator was arrested and imprisoned for heresy and why his 1569 world map has been unfairly labelled as the ultimate symbol of Eurocentric imperial domination over the rest of the globe; or why Arno Peter's "equality map" was so highly criticised by the cartographic community and yet so popular with development aid organisations such as Oxfam and UNDP.
Brotton being a professor of Renaissance Studies, it is not surprising that his narrative comes most alive when describing the maps that were being made when Europeans started to explore entire continents that were previously unknown: the Waldseemüller map which was the first to name and describe America, Diogo Ribeiro's map as an attempt to claim the riches of the Indonesian spice islands for the Spanish crown, Mercator's projection for navigators, Joan Blaeu's atlases for the VOC and the wealthy merchants of Holland. These "Renaissance chapters" are really excellently done.
Having worked with maps for most of my adult life, these Twelve Maps and the stories behind them weren't new to me, but some of the observations were. Although Eratosthenes is generally thought of as the father of geography, Brotton pointed out that the description of the shield of Achilles fashioned by Hephaestus in Homer's Iliad is actually the first account of what we would now call geography: "…at its centre were the earth, and sky, and sea, the weariless sun and the moon waxing full, and all the constellations that crown the heavens. Moving out, the shield portrayed two fine cities of mortal men, one at peace, one at war; agricultural life showing the practice of ploughing, reaping and vintage; the pastoral world of straight-horned cattle, white-woolled sheep; and finally the mighty river of Ocean, running on the rim round the edge of the strong-built shield…", and this prompted me to read the Iliad again - a fine translation by Robert Graves.
All in all, this book is a fascinating overview of mapmaking throughout the history of humankind. I loved it.
Read this if you'd like to know why, in medieval times, maps by Islamic mapmakers tended to face south while Christian maps faced east and Chinese maps faced north (which, incidentally, made the latter ones look surprisingly modern); how Mercator was arrested and imprisoned for heresy and why his 1569 world map has been unfairly labelled as the ultimate symbol of Eurocentric imperial domination over the rest of the globe; or why Arno Peter's "equality map" was so highly criticised by the cartographic community and yet so popular with development aid organisations such as Oxfam and UNDP.
Brotton being a professor of Renaissance Studies, it is not surprising that his narrative comes most alive when describing the maps that were being made when Europeans started to explore entire continents that were previously unknown: the Waldseemüller map which was the first to name and describe America, Diogo Ribeiro's map as an attempt to claim the riches of the Indonesian spice islands for the Spanish crown, Mercator's projection for navigators, Joan Blaeu's atlases for the VOC and the wealthy merchants of Holland. These "Renaissance chapters" are really excellently done.
Having worked with maps for most of my adult life, these Twelve Maps and the stories behind them weren't new to me, but some of the observations were. Although Eratosthenes is generally thought of as the father of geography, Brotton pointed out that the description of the shield of Achilles fashioned by Hephaestus in Homer's Iliad is actually the first account of what we would now call geography: "…at its centre were the earth, and sky, and sea, the weariless sun and the moon waxing full, and all the constellations that crown the heavens. Moving out, the shield portrayed two fine cities of mortal men, one at peace, one at war; agricultural life showing the practice of ploughing, reaping and vintage; the pastoral world of straight-horned cattle, white-woolled sheep; and finally the mighty river of Ocean, running on the rim round the edge of the strong-built shield…", and this prompted me to read the Iliad again - a fine translation by Robert Graves.
All in all, this book is a fascinating overview of mapmaking throughout the history of humankind. I loved it.