How Did Early Modern Scholars Study Early Maps?

Abstract

Skelton (1972), followed by Harley (1987), invented “the history of cartography” as a field of study with deep historical roots, giving the field an origin deep in the Renaissance, perhaps even in the Middle Ages. In doing so, Skelton imposed modern scholarly practices onto early modern scholarship, without regard for contemporary knowledge practices. This essay counters the invented tradition by exploring how early modern scholars engaged with maps from the contemporary past (“early maps”). It identifies three distinct sets of scholars whose variant agendas led them to work with early maps in markedly different ways. First, Classical historians used the Peutinger map and Ptolemy’s Geography to identify locations of ancient places to improve their comprehension of Classical texts. Second, some geographers wrote histories of voyages and travels that related past routes to contemporary maps, and others wrote historical narratives of the compilation of encyclopedic texts and maps of world and regional knowledge. (This analysis requires a reconceptualization of early modern “geography.”) Third, antiquaries opportunistically described and at times reproduced a variety of maps, charts, and plans that came to their attention, but without actively searching for early maps. Overall, this essay demonstrates that before 1775 there was neither a systematic approach taken to the study of early maps nor any hint of the core methodology that would be adopted by the first historiographical mode of map history as it developed after 1830.