Treasure Fleets week 19 – Maps and Cartography
Benjamin Schmidt, ‘Inventing Exoticism’
 The notions of the exotic derive from a particular context that lends recognisable shape to the vague concept of
the exotic. The observations of the exotic can be associated with geography in the Dutch republic circa 1700.
There was a burst of printing, mapping, publishing and producing images of the non European world
undertaken chiefly in the turn of the 18th century. Rumphius and Kaempfer were both involved in this process
as they gained useful knowledge of the world while working for the Dutch East India Company.
 The quantity of materials produced by the Dutch was impressive, there were many different types of
geographical goods, from literary works such as travelogues, learned geographies and natural histories of
cartographical resources including decorated maps, multivolume atlases and luxurious globes of visual
artefacts comprised of tropical paintings and inexpensive prints stream off presses in Holland.
 It occurred at a time when the Dutch were losing their overseas possessions and there was a reduction in the
republic’s activities abroad. Instead they marketed a version of the world that their geographers fashioned
which created an appeal in Europe for the exotic. The Dutch dominated the field in propagating images of the
non-west.
 Dutch work included traditional geographies which showed the lay of the world, regional studies, travel
narratives and literacy texts such as Dutch wonders of the world. Also there was an outpouring of
cartographical texts, as such the Dutch gained the enviable position as map maker to Europe. Production of
Dutch geography spanned many genres, forms and styles with many readers and consumers worldwide.
 Geography needs to be looked at in two ways, the place and time of production as well as place and time of
consumption. The Dutch emerged as the leading geographers in Europe at a critical moment for the
construction of the modern world. Europeans devoured geographical products as they began to colonise.
 Dutch geography was applied in profitable ways: they sold the actual wares of geography, books, maps,
painting, prints and artefacts which gained a considerable profit. Most of all though the Dutch sold the idea of
the globe and that idea made the non-European world so alluring. The world created by the Dutch was not
simply full of commodities, trade and potential profit but it was full of wonder.
 All of this was created by Dutch design; it was a marketing strategy with wide appeal.
Chandra Mukerji , ‘Cartography, Entrepreneurialism and Power in the Reign of Louis XIV’
 17th century France also an example of how maps were used for commercial purposes - Local political bodies
wanted to use engineering to enhance the landscape for politico-economic effect. The entrepreneurs who
built this infrastructure used maps and models to design their constructions, looking at how location would
affect their costs (proximity to raw materials, natural resources that could be useful). Engineers used measures
of elevation, distance, soil quality and topography (mapping techniques) to enhance building techniques.
 The Canal du Midi, built by Riquet and Colbert, linked the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean. This was
only possible because the region was well mapped.
 Cartographic skills and other means of representing the landscape were invaluable for this project, but less as a
source of information between bureaucrats and engineers than as tools in an ongoing system for learning
about and solving problems of land control.
 Growth of humanist geography in 16th and 17th centuries had already provided a rich set of cartographies in
Western Europe, emphasising human material achievements on the land (cities, wall systems, ports, canals,
roads, etc). Such images provided evidence that humans could rework the landscape for commercial and
political effect. In the case of the Canal du Midi, the problem with using these maps as guides was that they
were made by different sets of people with distinct ways of measuring, recording and acting on the land.
 There was a range of skills in geographical measurement available in France used for representing and acting
on the natural world. Measurement techniques for making elevation studies with precision were taken from
men of the Académie des Sciences; mapmaking repertoires developed by military engineers for planning battles
and building fortresses were used to manage the Canal du Midi’s incline, reservoirs, control water intakes, etc
 Military surveys were the most frequently employed forms of scientific cartography in France during the early
modern period. The maps were a clear form of political cartography, obsessed with details of the local
landscape that could affect the army’s ability to control it.
 Military cartographers learned to think primarily topographically. Topographical features of the landscape
were natural barriers and conduits, so they had vital strategic importance. Fortresses reconfigured the
topography artificially, using walls, ditches and canals to constitute a new terrain.
 Also during the reign of Louis XIV, Colbert stimulated and set apart scientific cartographic work when he
established the Académie Royale des Sciences and the Observatoire to promote the sciences in France. Unlike
the military surveyors the mathematicians of the academy reduced all lands to planar measurements in order to
increase the accuracy of simple measures, not try to account for geographical complexity.
 Least studied was the kind of simple measuring done for plot plans, resource assessments or civil engineering
projects. This genre of mapmaking had become a routine political tool under Henri IV. This political approach
had put great emphasis on knowing the countryside as a repository of natural resources. However, the politics
of this ‘mesnagement’ were revived by Colbert in the period of Louis XIV to serve state-based absolutism.
 Because the engineer François Andréossy was a good cartographer, he could represent the proposed Canal du
Midi and its relationship to the region in which it would be laid. Thus he made the canal project seem
conceptually viable and strategically visible in ways important to gaining the confidence of the king.
Nicholas Thomas, ‘Discoveries: The Voyages of Captain Cook’
 There were cartographic engraver-publishers and nautical printer-booksellers in London. Maritime publishers,
like Mount and Page in London, and books like ‘The Mariner’s New Kalendar’, ‘The Seamen’s Daily Assistant’.
 Cook’s own ‘Directions for Navigating on Part of the South Coast of Newfoundland’ reported measures,
bearings and distances rather than reports on discoveries. He was made surveyor on the ship Grenville in 1763.
 Cook’s geography was mathematical and uncommunicative, trusting solely in techniques and instruments.
 His maps were precise graphic documents, 6ft or 10ft aside, but with intricate features, lines & inscriptions.
 The chart is the opposite of the traveller’s tale; a simple and absolute record derived from voyages,
sometimes showing a ship’s track but none of its transactions.
 Later on, Cook’s maps acquire a part in his biography. In popular accounts of his life they were regarded as
proofs of his increasing ability as a surveyor.
 Equally, his maps were advances in a North American maritime story. They weren’t only printed as individual
sheets but also in compilations and portfolios. They gave coasts, rocks etc., definite shapes and locations.
Ships’ masters would henceforth have a better sense of where they were and future voyages would be safer.
 Like other 18th century technicians and scientists, Cook produced accurate knowledge that showed up his
predecessors’ efforts for their amateurishness. It tipped a wavering balance in favour of mariners and against
the hazards of the sea. It also gave the Europeans a decisive advantage globally over natives they encounterd.
 Thanks to the printing press, Cook’s findings could be synthesised, reproduced and sold.
Daniel Headrick, When information came of age
 Improvements in maps can be measured in three ways. First changes that reflect an increased knowledge of
the world. In this respect, no period can compare to the 15th and 16th centuries when map makers produced,
in Arthur Robinson’s words, “a reduced image of the real world,” rather than “symbolizing spiritually based
metaphysical concepts. Second is precision, by increasing maps’ information density. The third is accuracy:
making maps represent more closely the true location of their elements, which required advances in geodesy,
astronomy, surveying, and their associated instruments. Scientific aspect of cartography.
 In 1666, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, chief minister to Louis XIV, founded the Academy of Sciences and the Paris
Observatory specifically to advance cartography and produce the maps needed for commerce, road building,
navigation, and the military.
 To staff the Academy, Colbert recruited two of the most famous scientists of his time. Chrisitan Huygens, a
mathematician, astronomer (inventor of the pendulum clock) and Jean-Dominique Cassini.
 In 1669 Jean Picard measured the arc of the meridian between Paris and Amiens using triangulation, a
method invented by the Dutch mathematician Willebord Snell in 1615. Abandoned by Louis XIV as too costly.
 The French Revolution revived cartography and the first revolutionary governments willingly subsidized the
completion of the map of France. The Cassini map was redrawn to show new boundaries and was nationalized.
 The English lagged behind the French 50 years in mapping the country. Having a less centralised government
they left cartography to local notables and commercial publishers. Their scientists and cartographers were
more concerned with mapping the oceans than the land.
 Government sponsored map making spread beyond France and Britain as most “enlightened” Eurpean states
undertook cartographic projects for purposes of taxation, military strategy, road building, i.e. modernising
Laura Hostetler, Qing colonial Enterprise: Ethnography and Cartography in Early Modern China
 Aim of book is to show that Qing China “was not isolated from global changes during the early modern period,
nor was it simply a recipient of European knowledge; it was an active participant in a shared world order.”
 Shown through examination of cartography and ethnography of Qing period.
 Early modern period for Subrahmanyam (used by Hostetler) = a time wherein there was “momentous changes
in conceptions of space and thus cartography” that seemed to manifest itself in the quest for universal empires.
 We see the Qing, Peter the Great in Russia, France and Britain attempt to map the scale of their empires.
 This convergence in mapping activity, techniques, and even in the network of specific historical figures
involved, can best be explained as independent yet interrelated responses to global conditions similarly
affecting these world powers.
 Increasingly accurate descriptions of people and territory had become crucial aspects of early modern empire
building - both for the Qing and in Europe.
 Traditional ideas on Chinese cartography: Chinese=Traditonal vs. West=Modern/Scientific. Therefore the
question has become ‘does Chinese mapping get more scientific (western) over time?’ - not right question
 Both European and Chinese maps were unscaled and pictorial for a long time, did not show national boundaries.
I.e. this Map
 Cartography and ethnography were much more closely linked in C16th and
C17th, “common to see indigenous peoples pictures in their own lands” as their
unfamiliarity gave the maps their value and interest.
 Coastlines were marked cartographically but the interior of unfamiliar lands
was depicted more pictorially.
By C18th pictures had disappeared - Hostetler suggests that this shift in
modes of representation in cartographic practice is related to the new ways
in which the state came to be conceptualised during the early modern
period. I.e. Formation of nation states meant that marking boundaries over
land was more important:
 “The land took on a value separate and distinct from those who occupied it.”
 Done through cartography, both Europe and China (Kangxi emperor’s Atlas 1708-1718) - “China had no
monopoly on ‘traditional maps’ nor did ‘scientific’ cartography develop uniquely in early modern Europe.”
 Elman and Henderson argue that geography was a key subject for the Qing and the importance of its accuracy
“had implications for Confucian statecraft that began to be felt a century before the forced introduction of
western technology into China.”
 For many, adoption of scaling and the graticule was seen as a departure from the traditional Chinese methods.
 However, Hostetler says that the standardisation of map scale, usage of longitude and latitude, loss of text
and pictures was actually “departure from premodern to early modern forms of representation”.
I.e. Difference not in terms of geographical location but in terms of techniques used and priorities for the
making of maps.
 Newer maps different to maps of premodern times because they used “a system of communication which had
come to transcend national languages and closed cultural systems.”
 Linked to the new idea of nation state and finite nature of earth’s space; states needed to “stake out their
territory against competitors” thus maps needed to be standardised and accurate, depicting fixed borders.
This specialisation of cartography and ethnography “is related to modern rather than specifically European
ways of thinking about space and people.”
 Qing decided to engage in and use the same techniques of its colonial competitors in order to govern an
expanding empire.
 “cartographic depiction of territories and ethnographic depictions of a given region’s inhabitants were
indispensable tools in the process of Qing empire building.”
Secondary Sources
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Headrick, Daniel R., When information came of age : technologies of knowledge in the age of reason and
revolution, 1700-1850 (Oxford, 2000)
Hostetler, Laura, Qing Colonial Enterprise. Ethnography and Cartography in Early Modern China
(Chicago, 2001)
Mukerji, Chandra, ‘Cartography, Entrepreneurialism and Power in the Reign of Louis XIV’, in Smith and
Findlen, Merchants and Marvels (New York, 2002), pp. 248-277
Schmidt, Benjamin, ‘Inventing Exoticism’, in Smith and Findlen, Merchants and Marvels (New York,
2002), pp. 347-369
Nicholas Thomas, Discoveries: The Voyages of Captain Cook (London, 2004)
E-Resources
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National Maritime Museum Website - http://www.nmm.ac.uk/
Map of the Strait of Malacca (London, 1806)
Map of the Moluccas (Amsterdam, 1640)
http://www.nmm.ac.uk/collections/
Chart of islands between Borneo and Banca (London, 1767)
Les Iles Moluques (Leiden, 1707)