Maps of Malaya and Borneo: Discovery, Statehood and Progress The Collections of H.R.H. Sultan Sharafuddin Idris Shah and Dato’ Richard Curtis by Frederic Durant and Richard Curtis (review)

‘Where would we be without maps? The obvious answer, is of course, ‘lost’, but maps provide answers to many more questions than simply how to get from one place to another’

Jerry Brotton, A History of the World in Twelve Maps

Mapping has been described as a basic and enduring human instinct. Through maps we glean what we cannot experience of the world at large and over time gain an understanding of peoples and places that we may never actually meet and visit. Beyond meeting the fundamental human need for information, maps provide accurate and unambiguous information of occurrences on the surface of the earth. As the cartographer and map curator Vivian L. Forbes wrote: ‘A well drawn map is more than a reduction of the area being studied; it is a carefully designed graphics that records, analyses and displays the inter-related factors of the area in their true relationship to each other.’¹

In other words, a history of maps and mapmaking is therefore also a history of the evolution and development of a particular geographical area and the various environmental, physical, social, economic and human elements within it, as suggested in the title of this book.

In the first section of the book Durant and Curtis focus a great deal on the history of maps and mapmaking and how Malaya and Borneo, and subsequently Malaysia, have been depicted in maps over time. Sans our own mapping and map-making traditions, it could be assumed that this section of the book is intended to describe the ‘discovery’ of our country, albeit from a Western cartographical viewpoint. In this instance this section of the book is comparable in a limited way to another fascinating book of maps, Mapping Colonial Conquest: Australia and Southern Africa edited by Professor Norman Hetherington of the University of Western Australia (2007), although the latter is more analytical and explicit in its description of the relationship between colonialism, trade and cartography.

The second section of the book delves deeper into the extensive collection of maps and charts from the collection and is arguably the raison d’être of the book. It is here that the book displays its strength. The collection of maps published here is extensive, and the corresponding write-ups informative. As a researcher in maritime affairs, I was particularly interested in the nautical charts; the authors do not disappoint in the efforts taken to include the historical charts dating back to the seventeenth century. One point worth noting is the significance given to charts prepared by the British hydrographer James Horsburgh, who also gave his name to the Horsburgh Lighthouse on Pedra Branca/Pulau Batu Puteh, once the subject of territorial and sovereignty dispute between Malaysia and Singapore. From a research standpoint, though, the sub-section could have delved deeper into the history of navigational chart production in Malaya and Borneo, and eventually Malaysia, from the seventeenth century to the present-day ‘MAL’ series of charts produced by the Hydrographic Directorate of the Royal Malaysian Navy since 1972, following the departure of the British Hydrographic Service in 1964. However, this in itself could be the subject of a new book.

The final section of the book is akin to an addendum which includes descriptions of surveying techniques and instruments, compass roses, map production techniques and, interestingly, cartographical errors and mythical sea creatures which are no doubt intended to show the seas as untamed and dangerous. While the cartographical errors shown in the book are to be taken light-heartedly, others are known to have grave implications, unintentionally perhaps, on the sovereignty of a country—as in the dispute between Thailand and Cambodia over the temple of Preah Vihear where maps published by Thailand...