Single-volume histories of cartography are very much a twentieth-century phenomenon.

Mark Denil has been using me as a punching bag. I punch back. Here’s an image of weary people looking at a map (of the Chicago World’s Fair 1893)

A translation of Arnold Heeren’s prospectus for a new field of study … map history!

Challenging the received wisdom about the 1797 facsimile of a fifteenth-century mappamundi made from metal with enamel inlay proves not to be as easy as I had thought, and I hit the limits of the study of digital images. So, something of a cautionary tale.

Jerry Brotton and I talk about the 1662 world map by Joan Blaeu, commercial mapping in 17th century Amsterdam, the History of Cartography Project, women and mapping, and how I got interested in early maps!

When maps of oceans are not actually charts (the converse of early maps of continents that are called charts!)

Time for the annual list! (Image is open-source stock.)

FEers do an experiment …

Interpreting the great continent of “Jave le grande” to deride James Cook.