![]() ![]() Here, colonists operated sugar, coffee, and indigo plantations that relied on the expulsion and servitude of indigenous populations and the labour of enslaved Africans. He toned the islands green and labelled them as “English” (Spanish-controlled territories were coloured in red). A colour-coded map by Herman Moll highlighted recent British incursions in the Caribbean, notably the conquests of Barbados in 1627, the Bahamas in 1629, and Jamaica in 1655. Image is in the Public Domain: Ĭartographic goods provided an image of European imperialism to the commercial public. Figure 4: Herman Moll, “A Map of the West-Indies” (1715) from The World Described (1732). In this regard, maps by Plancius functioned as promotional tools to entice would-be investors. These institutions also allowed private individuals to buy and sell stocks in trading corporations, which generated a secondary market in Europe that was physically detached from trade and colonisation (these operations gave rise to the boom-and-bust cycles of modern capitalism). In port cities like Amsterdam and London, stock exchanges provided venues for the market valuation of imported commodities. For the Dutch East India Company, the cartographer Petrus Plancius published a map of the Moluccas that showcased the nutmeg, mace, sandalwood, and cloves that mariners acquired through trade. Maps often advertised the riches to be gained by commercial expansion. ![]() Figure 3: Petrus Plancius, Insulae Moluccae, or The Spice Chart (1592). ![]() That Drake was a proponent of English colonisation in the Americas and a well-known trader of enslaved Africans illustrates the violence that adjoined early modern maritime exploration. These images fed the European imagination by giving visual form to places only known through traveller’s accounts and the growing body of literature on pirates and privateering (books by Richard Hakluyt, Theodor de Bry, Samuel de Champlain, Daniel Defoe, and Jonathan Swift, among others, were best sellers). Around the same time, the Italian cartographer Giovanni Battista Boazio engraved a series of maps that charted Sir Francis Drake’s voyages around the world, including many with fantastical sea creatures at the water’s surface. In Antwerp, the cartographer Abraham Ortelius’s published the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (1570), the first modern atlas of the world’s lands and seas. Increased exploration coincided with the increased popularity and commercialisation of cartographic goods. Figure 2: Giovanni Battista Boazio, Sir Francis Drake in Santo Domingo 1585 (1589). His maps, which exaggerated the geography at the poles (given that due north and south were evenly spread across the map’s top and bottom), distorted spatial reality for the purpose of shipping. His eponymous approach of cartographic projection, which flattened converging lines of longitude so that they sat parallel on a map, allowed them to draw a line of constant bearing as straight (or a globe, these lines spiral toward the poles). ![]() In the sixteenth century, the Flemish geographer Gerardus Mercator codified a technique to help mariners chart their voyages. The practical demands of marine navigation conditioned the early composition of maps and charts. Figure 1: Gerardus Mercator, New and more complete representation of the terrestrial globe properly adapted for use in navigation (1559). By looking closely at these objects, one also discerns period presumptions about faraway lands and seas as well as the troubling activities that adjoined marine navigation and trade, including European imperial expansion and human trafficking. Maps, atlases, and globes bolstered consumer interest in geography, globalism, and sea travel by visualising the maritime networks that fuelled economic prosperity at home. The importation of spices, sugar, coffee, furs, and other popular commodities incited the desire for all things global, including commercially produced cartographic goods. The early modern era, which roughly coincided with the so-called Age of Sail, witnessed the flourishing of European cartography as well the spread of trade and empire across the world. The mapping of the seas has long been a preoccupation of navigators, scholars, politicians, and business executives. ![]()
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