Historical Atlases: The First Three Hundred Years, 1570-1870 (review)

In the sixteenth century, European cartographer-publishers produced a profusion of new maps, and they also copied each other's maps. Eventually these were bound in compendia called atlases; the first is generally considered to be Abraham Ortelius's Theatrum orbis terrarium (1570). While Ortelius considered his maps to be "the eye of history," almost all of them represented contemporary geography, not the geography of historical epochs. Historical maps as such, and atlases of historical maps, developed much more slowly and haphazardly than did general atlases. Although the history of atlases is well-studied, the historiography of historical atlases is surprisingly sparse.

These earliest historical atlas makers lived in what was to them a modern era, beyond which they recognized a classical era that ended with the fall of the western Roman Empire. The millennium in between was, over modern time, retroactively constructed as the Middle Ages. Walter Goffart is a noted medievalist who, in pursuit of that story, became intrigued with the plethora of little-known and barely cataloged historical maps—maps for history, as he calls them—to be found in antiquarian and cartographic archives. For want of a standard history of historical atlases, Goffart has produced an extremely important, albeit vexingly difficult, reference volume.

This is literally two books in one: the odd-numbered chapters discuss maps and specific map collections that Goffart considers milestones in the evolution of historical atlases from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth, while the even-numbered chapters analyze specific maps which, in his view, illustrate "moments and themes for later-than-classical history" (p. 8) that constitute the historiography of "medievalism" itself, meaning the changing views of the medieval past as constructed in modern times. As the work is of a piece, however, the reader interested in either the history of historical atlases alone, or the evolution of the medieval as such, will find the going a bit arduous. Merely skipping the even- or odd-numbered chapters as indicated won't suffice.

Goffart has also expended considerable energy on a 112-page catalog and index (pp. 463–575) referencing almost eight hundred maps and atlases that he discovered in many dozens of archives in Europe and the United States. He says that he hopes the reader will find his center of gravity in the catalog—but, alas, finding much of anything easily in the catalog is a great challenge. While on a research visit at the American Geographical Society Library archives in Milwaukee, I asked the expert staff members there to try his system. On the one hand they found it baffling, but on the other hand they soon discovered that they possessed an uncataloged copy of Edward Quin's Historical Atlas that they had not realized was in their collection. Goffart's rediscovery of Quin's 1830 masterpiece (an image from it is featured on the cover) is perhaps alone worth the price of the book.

Quin's brilliant graphic conceit was to present a series of historical world maps at different time periods, drawn on the same projection. Dense clouds of a wondrously dark carbon-black pull back to display the world—as it was experienced, or believed to have been, by Europeans. The first map reveals a tiny clearing in the weather over the Garden of Eden, shortly before the serpent hissed. In successive maps, the clouds roll back away from the Holy Land to northern Europe, then away from everywhere, as Europeans ventured outward or invaders ventured in. The whole set of maps is a perfectly revealing stop-frame animation of Eurocentrism in its essence.

Goffart ends his survey in 1870, in part because Jeremy Black's Maps and History: Constructing Images of the Past (1997) concentrates on historical maps from the years since. Still, given the atlas treasures still undiscovered or little known, and given what efficiencies might obtain should Goffart consult with map collection specialists on better cataloging methods, one can only look forward to further...