Novi orbis pars borealis, America scilicet complectens Floridam, Baccalaon, Canadam, terram Corterialem, Virginiam, Norombecam, pluresque alias provincias

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This is a map entitled “Novi Orbis Pars Borealis America” by a mapmaker by the name of Matthias Quad. It was done in or about 1600 and was, like so many maps of the day, an effort to understand what the North American continent was all about using very, very limited information. Despite these limits, Quad was working with some important feedback and information from some of the great explorers of the day. They included Jacques Cartier, Sebastian Cabot, Giovanni Verrazano, and Sir Walter Raleigh, among others. The depiction of North America is, of course, very squashed and, to the modern eye, not at all realistic. But it is quite comprehensive, including that portion of the map that is today the United States and that portion of the map which is today Canada, identified almost throughout as “Francia Nova.”

Perhaps the most interesting and curious feature of the map is the long strip of sea that goes from East all the way to West. Here, the mapmaker was speculating. There was a great deal of hope on the part of many in Europe that there would, in fact, be a passageway – a so-called “Northwest Passage” – that would go transversely across the North American continent, providing an opportunity for European ships to reach the Orient directly without having to go all the way down around the bottom of South America and travel up along and across the sometimes-violent Pacific Ocean. So, in this particular case the wish became the fact, and Quad depicts a Northwest Passage that, in fact, did not exist. I think it’s interesting that in today’s modern times, with the enhanced ability of ships to traverse the Arctic region, ships are once again imagining regular commercial traffic through the icy waters of the Artic and, perhaps today, there is some version of a Northwest Passage that is actually shaping up.[1] [1] “Until 2009, the Arctic pack ice prevented regular marine shipping throughout most of the year. Arctic sea ice decline has rendered the waterways more navigable for ice navigation.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Passage Accessed 24 Mar. 2021.

 

 

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Carte du Golphe du Méxique et des isles de l’Amérique

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This map is a map by a French mapmaker by the name of Bellin. This particular map is a map of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean islands entitled Carte du Golphe du Méxique et des isles de l’Amérique. It was done in 1754 and as one can see by looking at it, not all of the land masses are shaped just the way they are today. Florida, for example, looks fairly much like a rectangular peg, as does the Yucatan peninsula. Nevertheless, Bellin’s work was important work, and he was the Chief of Cartography, of the so-called Depot de La Marine, which was the French cartography service that was so prominent in the middle of the 18th-century. In fact, it was the work of that group of cartographers, led by Bellin, that gave France much of its world power, because it had, at the time, the best maps that were available to anybody of many if not all of the – many parts, if not all, of the world. This particular map again was made in 1754 is nicely colored, is pleasing to the eye, and gives a snapshot of the way in which the world looked at that time.

 

 

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Carte De La Partie Meridionale du Royaume de Suede avec une Table des Provinces et des Villes Principales

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This is a map by Guillume de L’Isle, reflecting the Baltic Sea and a variety of the lands surrounding it. To the right of the Baltic are the small republics including Estonia, what was then called Livonia, soon-to-become Lithuania, countries which have as we know from modern history, been shaped and reshaped and re-reshaped as warring parties and empiring nations take them over and dictate new geography. Even today, the Baltic republics are regularly threatened by the existence of a very large Russian neighbor. Above them, across the Gulf of Finland, is Finland itself and then across to the left are depictions of both Norway, in green, and Sweden, in pink. Right in the middle of the Baltic is the island of Gotland, with the city of Visby, well-known because it was from Visby that a great mercantile trading arrangement was created and ran commerce throughout the Baltic region for many, many years. Down to the left we see Denmark, and a portion of what was to become Germany, but which still at the time of this map in 1719, is a series of small duchies and kingdoms not yet gathered together into the great country of Germany. So, this map is dramatically colored and tells a wonderful story of the way in which those lands were arrayed and what their loyalties and national associations were back in the early 18th century.

 

 

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Ierusalem : niewlicks uyt de Schriften Iosephus

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This is a map of the city of Jerusalem, but it is a highly selective map of the city of Jerusalem – most of the features simply do not appear. So it’s mostly a curiosity, but it does show how a variety of the features of this famous, old, walled city – one of the most famous, of course, in the world – how they relate to one another and how they were seen in the early 17th century.

 

 

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Poli Arctici Et Circumiacentium Terrarum Descriptio Novissima

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This map is by Hendrik Hondius of the North Pole – “Poli Arctici.” It is incomplete, as was the knowledge of the day. And so, one sees at least the outline of a portion of the landmass as you approach the pole, but, of course, the pole had not yet been reached by human beings at that time. One of the wonderful features of this map is the material that shows up in each of the four corners –  graphics of what was known about that part of the world, that chilly northern part of the world.

 

 

For more details, view the catalog record: https://library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/1691559

Linguistic Stocks of American Indians North of Mexico

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This is a map depicting the linguistic stocks of American Indians north of Mexico. It is based on the exploration and work of a famous explorer of the 19th Century, John Wesley Powell, who had many explorations, of course, particularly in the west, and this map is some record of where the several Indians were located in the North American continent before some, unfortunately, were probably already being pushed to one side by the arrival of the colonists and the expansion that was going on already in the early 19th Century. But you see the areas that were occupied by people speaking a language called Muskhogeon, then there is Iroquoian – the great Iroquois Nation, of course, both in the Mid-Atlantic area and also up in the Pennsylvania, New York, and Great Lakes vicinity. And off to the west are still more smaller areas reflecting what was spoken in those areas as well. This map, therefore, tells a story. It tells a story of who were the peoples, the Indigenous peoples of the Americas in the early-to-mid 1800s.

 

 

For more details, view the catalog record: https://library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/1935561

Carte des Antilles Françoises et des isles voisines

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This is a map by Guillaume de L’Isle, a famous French cartographer, reflecting most of the Windward Islands, that is the islands of the Caribbean that front the Atlantic Ocean. Most of these islands were, at the time the map was prepared in the early 1700s, were possessions or controlled by France and therefore they are gathered together as a group of the French Antilles. The map being designated Carte des Antilles Françoises et des isles voisines, and the neighboring Isles. Off to the right, we see Barbados, which is an English possession, but virtually all of the others – Martinique, St Lucie, St Vincent, et cetera – are most all of them French at the time. So it’s a single-purpose map, but a nice depiction and a very nice compass rose, and lots of detail for all of those French islands.

 

 

For more details, view the catalog record: https://library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/1936471

 

Typus orbis terrarum, ad imitationem universalis Gerhardi Mercatoris

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This map is a marvelous effort to capture what the whole world looked like. It is after the much larger and very famous map[1] by Gerard Mercator, and among its many wonderful features are its effort, again, to portray what the New World looks like. It had been known for roughly seventy years, but the explorers of the world were still trying to make sense of it. You’ll see at the very very bottom, a large continuous landmass that seems to go on forever. It’s one of the many terras incognitae[2] that you will find on older maps, and that large landmass was posited by mapmakers, in part, because there was so much landmass on the northern side of the equator and there was at least some theorizing that without a large landmass on the bottom, the globe was in danger of tipping over, so it was speculated that, of course there had to be a large landmass – and there it is, whether it really is- existed or not. Another interesting feature of this map is the medallion showing Jesus in the upper left-hand corner. Some people think that this medallion was placed there strategically because, while there was a hope there would be a Northwest Passage above and around the North American continent, they weren’t quite sure. And so at least one theory here is that Jesus and his medallion were strategically put at that location, so the mapmaker did not have to make a definitive choice.

[1] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercator_1569_world_map Accessed 23 Mar. 2021.
[2] “When Roman mapmakers drew a land area that no one had yet explored, they often labeled it “Terra Incognita”—that is, “Unknown Territory”—and the term continued to be used for centuries afterward.” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/terra%20incognita Accessed 30 Mar. 2021.

 

 

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America Septentrionalis

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This is a map by Tobias Lotter. Lotter created this map in about 1760 and it depicts virtually all of North America and the Caribbean. However, one of its most distinguishing features is that there is all blank space above what is called “Nova Mexico” and west of what is called “Canada” or “Nova Francia.” So, in this particular case, Lotter decided not to speculate and consciously simply left the upper left-hand portion of the map un-filled in altogether. Like so many of the maps of the period, it has a glorious cartouche in the upper left-hand corner, and Lotter pays due respect, something that mapmakers never- or frequently failed to do, to a mapmaker by the name of De L’Isle, whose geographic work, cartographic work, preceded that of Lotter, and Lotter clearly made considerable use of it.

[1] “Cartouche, in architecture, ornamentation in scroll form, applied especially to elaborate frames around tablets or coats of arms. By extension, the word is applied to any oval shape or even to a decorative shield, whether scroll-like in appearance or not.” Encyclopaedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/art/cartouche Accessed 9 Mar. 2021.

 

 

For more details, view the catalog record: https://library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/1935559