Traditional Map History in the International Geographical Union

Map history was long a topic discussed in the International Geographical Congresses [IGC], the formal meetings of the International Geographical Union [IGU], since the first congress in Antwerp in 1871. For some decades, the IGU organized official commissions and working groups on map history. This work was resolutely traditional map history, i.e., the history of coarser resolution maps and charts that display a society’s accumulated geographical knowledge. The IGU commissions were uninterested in the kinds of maps and research questions studied by academic cartography (internal map history) and historical geographers (substantive map history).

The role of IGU and early maps remains somewhat confused. The basic literature is brief and unclear (esp. Skelton 1972, 98–99; Harley 1987, 18–19). Much more research is needed in the IGU archive (in the Royal Geographical Society) and in the papers of the last head of the map history working group, George Kish (in the Bentley Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor). A future project, for sure, especially in terms of how and why the IGU working group lingered and finally came to an end ca. 1990. For now, I’m taking advantage of a chilly and icy holiday weekend to write up what I have been able to glean from secondary sources and IGU publications I have at hand (Bagrow 1935).

Any and all information gratefully received!

Early Period

1871–1904: many presentations about early maps, but generally from the standpoint of the history of geography (discoveries and expeditions).

1908: Geneva – for Bagrow (1935) the IGC when an interest in early maps “awoke.”

• specific concern for the reproduction of early maps in proper color and at full size, leading at the proposal of a Swiss delegate, Charles Perron, to the appointment of a Commission for the Reproduction of Early Maps.

• the commission’s membership was: Gabriel Marcel (Paris); Konrad Miller (Stuttgart); Otto Nordenskjöld (Gothenburg); Eugen Oberhummer (Vienna); and Charles Perron (Geneva).

• the plan was for commission members to approach their respective governments for financial support.

1913: Rome IGC – Oberhummer reported on the difficulties and potential for the commission’s work (see Bagrow 1935, 65).

• given that it was not always necessary to reproduce early maps at size and in color “because scaled-down, single-color reproductions usually lose none of their scientific value,” and that many maps had already been reproduced in a manner sufficient for study, so the first task should be to compile a list of adequate facsimiles and then to identify those maps that had yet to be reproduced. Actual reproductions would be produced by local institutions as interest and funding permitted.

• with Marcel’s and Perron’s deaths, the IGC recreated the commission’s membership: Eugen Oberhummer, Franz von Wieser, Paul Graf von Teleki (Austria-Hungary); Jean Denucé (Belgium); H. Yule Oldham (Britain); Oskar Nachod, Taguji Ogawa, Giovanni Vacca (“Far East”); Lucien Gallois (France); Hermann Wagner, August Wolkenhauer (Germany); Roberto Almagià, Carlo Errero (Italy); I. E. Heeres (Netherlands); Ernesto Julio de Vasconsellos (Portugal); Benjamin Cordt (Russia); and Otto Nordenskjold (Scandinavia).

• the commission was renewed on this new program, but of course its work was immediately interrupted by the outbreak of World War I.

1925: Cairo IGC – first post-war IGC

• the Central Powers did not participate, so Oberhummer did not represent the commission to the congress and the commission was not discussed.

• Bagrow (1935) noted that several of the commission’s members had died since 1913: Wagner; Wolkenhauer; Oldham; von Wieser; Gallois; Herres; and Nordenskjöld.

1928: Cambridge IGC – featured many map historical talks, several exhibitions in Cambridge and London, and special publications

• the Central Powers again did not participate in the congress.

• Roberto Almangià presented his Monumenta Italiae cartographica (1929) to the congress and gave a lecture on the need for more such works. Congress accordingly created a new Commission on Early Maps, with Almagià as chair and with a two-part remit: first, each member to organize a catalog of maps of their country in their country’s public libraries and private collections; second, to form an expert sub-commission to select maps worth photographic facsimiles in the manner of Almagià’s new facsimile collection.

1931: Paris IGC – including several exhibitions

• the key decision by the congress re map history was that the commission’s expert subcommittee should meet separately to develop plans for Monumenta Europae cartographica. The subcommittee met in Paris in May 1932: Roberto Almagià; Charles de la Roncière; F. C. Wieder; Yves M. Goblet; and Charles du Bus. Using the collections of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, this committee developed plans for a first volume of 65 renaissance maps.

1934: Warsaw IGC – the Germans and Austrians participated in this congress, the first since World War I

• Bagrow (1939) noted that the congress perpetuated the commission, which tried to have a business meeting in June 1935, but this could not be arranged. No work was accomplished.

1938: Amsterdam IGC – several map historical papers and exhibitions (Bagrow 1939)

• Only two of the commission’s members were able to be present, not including the chair, Almagià; Almagià sent a dispirited report, which Bagrow recollected as comprising a series of questions about the need to revise the outline for the Monumenta Europae cartographica and to raise funding for it. To prevent the congress from eliminating the commission, Bagrow made a proposal to publish a facsimile collection for the IGU. Congress ended up re-upping the commission, but both Almagià and Wieder withdrew from it (Bagrow 1939).

Later Period

1949: Lisbon IGC – the first IGC since the outbreak of World War II

• The commission on early maps was slated for disbandment, but survived as the Commission for the Bibliography of Early Maps in line with a new proposal by Almagià that a thorough, international bibliography of early maps was needed to establish the priority of eventual facsimile reproductions.

• the initial plan was for a bibliography of manuscript maps, pre-1500 to be completed by the time of the next congress in 1952, thereafter to be extended in stages and with the collaboration of member countries, all to serve as the basis for an eventual program of facsimile production (Skelton and Codazzi 1949; Almagià 1952, 5).

1949–64: Almagià’s post-war commission made some headway with this strictly traditionalist agenda. It published Almagià’s report to the 1952 congress in Washington, D.C. (Almagià 1952), laying out plans for a two-part catalog of manuscript and printed maps surviving from before 1500. In his report, Almagià (1952) explained the expansion of the project to four volumes: mappaemundi, marine charts, regional maps, and all printed maps. Most of the report, however, comprised example entries for the first catalog, mostly by Marcel Destombes (world maps in Macrobius’ commentary on Cicero’s Dream of Scipio; fourteenth-century Catalan charts) and G. R. Crone (Richard of Haldingham’s mappamundi in Hereford Cathedral) (Destombes 1952a). At the same time, the commission also published a preliminary checklist, also by Destombes, of early printed maps (Destombes 1952b).

Work continued well (Almagià 1959) and led to the publication by Nico Israel in Amsterdam of Destombes’ catalog of mappaemundi from before 1500; this work was accomplished in large part through Destombe’s personal commitment to the project, not to the active support of the IGU. Destombe’s book was the first—and last—volume of the intended series, Monumenta cartographica vetustioris aevi (MCVA) (Destombes 1964).

1964–ca. 1990: Ironically, at the same time as Destombes was finishing his catalog of pre-1500 mappaemundi, the 1964 IGC in London voted to downgrade the commission to a working group. By this point, Almagià having died in 1962, the group was under the chair of R. A. Skelton. The same congress was also the occasion for a “symposium on the history of cartography” organized by Crone at the Royal Geographical Society.” Harley (1987, 19) suggested that the downgrading of the commission was the result of the then-changing intellectual status of “the history of cartography”; certainly, this symposium featured a mix of scholarship, including internal and substantive map historians, that did not mesh well with the IGU’s concerns and that led to the formation of the International Conferences on the History of Cartography (Sims and Krogt 1995).

To be honest, I am quite unclear as to the history of the working group. After Skelton’s death in 1970, the chair passed to Crone (Kish in Campbell 1987, [vii]) with the main task of finishing off the catalog of map incunabula. This work was finally completed by Tony Campbell (1987) with the financial support of a coterie of US special collections libraries (James Ford Bell, Kansas University Libraries, Clements Library [Michigan], Newberry Library, and Universtiy of Virginia Library). [n1] One of these was the Newberry Library: in my own work on the history of the Nebenzahl Lectures, I found several references through the later 1960s to somehow involve the IGU in the creation of a research center in map history at the Newberry (Edney 2022). The financing of Campbell’s catalog suggests however that the eventual relationship went in the opposite direction than had been anticipated by the Newberry’s president, Bill Towner: the Newberry ended up giving money to the IGU! Crone died in 1982 and I think Kish then took over as chair of the working group; Kish died in 1989.

The IGU’s working group in the history of cartography seems to have faded away.

Notes

n1. There’s a further catalog of early map works that I once thought was part of the work of the IGU’s map history commission/working group, specifically Ena Yonge’s (1968) catalog of early globes in the USA. In her introduction ([v]), she wrote that this had begun life as a contribution to an “international catalog of early globes” to be prepared specifically for the IGU. However, she misidentified the sustaining institution: what had met in Washington, D.C. in 1952 and that agreed to this globe catalog, reacting to a 1951 proposal by Skelton, was the International Union of History of Science (IUHS), established in 1947, and its Commission des Instruments Scientifiques (today the Scientific Instrument Commission) established in 1952.

Works Cited

Almagià, Roberto. 1929. Monumenta Italiae cartographica. Florence: Firenze Istituto.

———. 1952. “Rapport au XVIIe congrès internationale, Washington, 1952.” In Rapport de la commission pour la bibliographie des cartes anciennes, 1: 5–20. 2 vols. [Paris]: Union géographique internationale.

———. 1959. “Commission de bibliographie des cartes anciennes.” Bulletin de nouvelles de l’Union gógraphique internationale / The IGU Newsletter 10, no. 1: 32–34.

Bagrow, Leo [attrib.]. 1935. “Übersicht der Tätigkeit Internationaler Geographenkongresse auf dem Gebiete der Geschichte der Kartographie.” Imago Mundi 1: 65–68.

———. 1939. “16th International Geographical Congress, 1938.” Imago Mundi 2: 100–2.

Campbell, Tony. 1987. The Earliest Printed Maps, 1472–1500. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Destombes, Marcel, ed. 1952a. “Contributions pour un catalogue des carte manuscrits, 1200–1500.” In Rapport de la commission pour la bibliographie des cartes anciennes, 1: 21–63. 2 vols. [Paris]: Union géographique internationale.

———, ed. 1952b. “Catalogue des cartes gravées au XVe siècle.” In Rapport de la commission pour la bibliographie des cartes anciennes, 2: 3–95. 2 vols. [Paris]: Union géographique internationale.

———, ed. 1964. Mappemondes A.D. 1200-1500: Catalogue prepare par La commission des cartes anciennes de l’Union Geographique Internationale. Amsterdam: N. Israel.

Edney, Matthew H. 2022. “Of Maps, Libraries, and Lectures: The Nebenzahl Lectures and the Study of Map History.” Journal of Map & Geography Libraries: pre–print online.

Harley, J. B. 1987. “The Map and the Development of the History of Cartography.” In Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, ed. J. B. Harley and David Woodward, 1–42. Vol. 1 of The History of Cartography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Sims, Douglas W., and Peter van der Krogt. 1995–. “The International Conferences on the History of Cartography: A Short History and Bibliography of Papers.” http://www.explokart.eu/ichc/.

Skelton, R. A. 1972. Maps: A Historical Survey of Their Study and Collecting. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Skelton, R. A., and Angela Codazzi. 1949. “International Geographical Congress, Lisbon, 1949.” Imago Mundi 6: 93–95.

Yonge, Ena L. 1968. A Catalogue of Early Globes Made Prior to 1850 and Conserved in the United States: A Preliminary Listing. New York: American Geographical Society.