Author Archives: stuart

Italian maps from the Eastern front

We’ve written about Stalingrad before, maps showing different aspects of a battle which was a turning point in the Second World War, but a recent donation of maps to the library are of sufficient importance to warrant a new piece to add to these blogs on thematic mapping and name changes.

The maps are German army maps, mostly at 1:1,000,000 scale but almost all have manuscript annotations added to show the progress, positions and then retreat of the Italian 8th Army. The area covered is mainly northern Ukraine, generally from Crimea across to Stalingrad and north as far as Minsk. Front-lines, troop deployment, strength of remaining forces, depots and command centres are all shown, and as most of the maps are dated progress day by day can often be plotted.

German, Italian and Romania advances towards Stalingrad, 15th July 1942 (?), C40:6 (181) 1a

These maps are of historical importance. As well as Italian forces armies from Croatia, Hungary and Romania were on the Eastern Front but the main focus on Stalingrad has mostly been on the vast number of German troops that fought on the Eastern Front. These maps will go some way to shine a light on the other forces involved on the Axis side.

Soviet counterattacks and Stalingrad pocket, circa 9th Jan 1943, C40:6 (181) 1a

The maps are also amongst the most poignant in the collection. These maps show Axis forces advance from the Don with front-lines moving closer to the Volga before coming to a stop at Stalingrad. Then, with the launch of Operation Uranus in November 1942 Soviet forces push back Axis forces, and the front-line moves back towards the Don, the pocket around Stalingrad slowly diminishes along with the numbers of troops shown behind the retreating lines, until finally the pocket disappears and the words ‘Resti 6th Army‘ are crossed out in red pencil (Resti means ‘remains’ in Italian).

Stalingrad pockets, circa 13th Jan and 30th Jan, 1943. C40:6 (181) 1a

4th Feb 1943 C40:6 (181) 1

Maps such as these are rare in libraries such as the Bodleian. By their nature annotated maps made during war-time are often lost or irreparably damaged in the confusion of battle, especially when that battle involves a retreat such as the one involving the troops featured on the maps. We’re lucky to have such an important collection come to Oxford.

Good fences make good neighbours

In Robert Frost’s poem Mending wall two neighbours walk the shared boundaries of their properties, checking on the condition of the wall separating their land and making repairs where necessary. At one point the narrator teases his neighbour on the need for the wall, “My apple trees will never come across and eat the cones under his pines, I tell him”. The neighbour replies, simply and memorably, “Good fences make good neighbours”.

Frost loves the phrase so much that it’s repeated again, to close the poem*, and I’m reminded of this when looking at these two estate maps, of Down Manor from 1718 and Mowden Hall, 1762, both in Essex. Both are typical examples of an estate plan, are in manuscript form and show the holdings and field names of each estate (with sizes in acres, roods and perches). The connection with Frost comes with both showing boundaries in two different colours, according to ownership and according to responsibility of maintenance, to mark the outer boundaries of each estate. Any boundary dispute in the future would be easily settled with reference to the map. The importance of boundary fences are obvious, the need to keep animals out of certain fields and in others, as a way of separating good land from not so good and as a way of marking the limit of your land from your neighbour. The Down Manor map nicely calls the fencing surrounding the property ‘Out fencing’.

A by-product of this in both maps is that those neighbours surrounding both Down Manor and Mowden Hall are named, so for instance we can see that the wonderfully named Mr Grump owed land to the south-east of Mowden Hall and the equally well-named Thomas Clutterbuck owed land just north of Down Hall, giving us a connection with those alive at the time the map was made.

Estate maps show the land owned by the local manor or estate, and are almost always privately commissioned works, which often lead to beautiful one-off maps such as the Down Manor map. These maps are historically important as they give a pre-enclosure view of the landscape and a record of who farmed this landscape. One of the most famous of all the estate maps is held in the Bodleian, of Laxton in Nottinghamshire, from 1635. We tell its story here and we’ve blogged previously about estate maps here, here, and here.

Most of the field names are explanatory, sometimes just size or use (Gravel Pit Field, Calves Pasture and so on) but some are more interesting. Great and Little Hungerdown in the Mowden map would suggest a poor field for growing crops on and needing much manure and feeding to make viable, while Bury Mead is a field near a moat or fortified building and Rushey pasture would be a poorly drained field, not much good for growing crops but ok for growing rushes, useful in chair making and hatching.

The Mowden map was first surveyed in 1723 by Daniel Halls, who is described in a dictionary of surveyors at the Bodleian as a Philomath in the year he surveyed the map. A Philomath is someone who loves learning. Halls’ map was then copied, the term used on the map is ‘diminish’d’, by Edward John Eyre in 1762. The owner of Mowden Hall, Brabezon Aylmer, also owed the paper mill near but outside his main land-holding. We can tell he owns the mill because the land included with the mill is delineated by the yellow line that the legend tells us ‘that the fence in the outward bounds of this map where it belongs to this estate is coloured with yellow…’.

A true map of the lands belonging to Mowden Hall together with a paper mill as they are situate lying and being in the several parishes of Ulting, Hatfield, Boreham & Little Baddow, Essex, belonging to Brabzon Aylmer, esq…1762. MS C17:28 (40)

Description of the Manor of Down Hall, situate and lying in the Parish of Rayleigh in the County of Essex. Containing altogether 170 acres, 1 rood and 2 perches being parcel of the possession of Edw. Downs Esq. and herein particularly measured in the year of our Lord 1718 by Will. Cole. 1718. MS C17:28 (88)

*Frost’s poem can be read here, it’s worth it Mending Wall | The Poetry Foundation

Mountain man

Of the three main ways that material comes into the library; legal deposit, purchase and donation, donations are usually the best. More often than not these are older maps, sometimes with annotations or with a good story attached (here). So it was exciting to get a box recently from an Oxford resident, of maps that belonged to her grandfather. The maps are a mixture of locations and dates, but most are of hilly and mountainous places.

Born in Florence in 1889 to a British family John Alfred Spranger (J.A.S from now on) was a man of many talents. A skilled photographer (examples of his work can be found here Fragmented Archives: an Example of the Photographs of J.A. Spranger in the SPHS Collection – British School at Athens ), an engineer and a cartographer. He also published works on Greek manuscripts and took part in the publishing of a version of the Greek New Testament. And he liked to climb mountains.

Inevitably the maps concentrate on his life in the mountains, and are mostly of areas close to Italy. Maps of mountainous regions, with the need to show relief and dramatic landscapes, are often beautifully engraved and as a result usually look wonderful (see the map at the end of the blog). Here’s a 1896 map of the Mont Blanc Massif, part of the Alps that J.A.S.started climbing in the years leading up to World War One.

La Chaine du Mont-Blanc, 1896, C21:44 (54)

J.A.S. took part in an Italian expedition led by Filippo de Filippi to the Himalayas, Karakoram and Eastern Turkestan between 1913 and 1914, finishing the expedition late into that most ominous of years. A book by de Filippi, published in 1932 and including a chapter and photographs by J.A.S., who did the majority of the surveying work on the expedition, concludes with this poignant last paragraph ‘So we had to part from our English colleagues, Wood and Spranger, who left for Salonika to embark for Brindisi. We Italians went to Budapest and on December 18th we crossed the borders of our country after more than sixteen months of absence’.

The collection is mainly made up of European mapping, with a number for the Mont-Blanc and Swiss Alps regions. There are also two beautiful photographic panoramas, one of which is of the Gornergrat region, in the Pennie Alps of Switzerland. The panorama is too long to show well, but here’s an extract that includes the Matterhorn

Zermatt, panorama vom Gornergrat, c1930, C39:7 d.1

In 1924 J.A.S. travelled to Canada, and started climbing in the Cariboo Mountain range in British Columbia. He seems to have been the first to climb a peak called Flat Mountain as, soon after, this peak was renamed Mount Spranger by the Canadian Survey Department. During his time in British Columbia J.A.S. bought some maps of the Cariboo area which are in the donation and, more importantly, used his cartographic skills to make a couple of manuscript maps of the area. Here’s the official 1973 1:50,000 map showing Mount Spranger

and here’s the manuscript map by J.A.S. of the same area, with Flat Mtn. at top left.

Canada 1:50,000 sheet 94 A/15, 1973, F4 (21) and Sketch map of Mitchell Lake, c1924, MS F4:11 (241)

Finally an extract from the ‘Theodulpass’ sheet of the Topographischer Atlas der Schweiz’ 1;50,000 sheet (1944, C39:28 (21)) showing the Matterhorn, one of the highest mountains in Europe and also one of the deadliest of all climbs in terms of deaths in attempt of any in the World. Proof, if still needed, of the beauty to be found in maps of mountains.

A change of address

In 1792 the noted engraver and cartographer John Cooke (1765-1845) moved from Drury Lane, London to Mill Hill. In a novel approach to a change of address card for existing and new clients Cooke made this map: ‘He has taken this method to inform them that he has removed from London to Mill Hill’.

A new map of the roads from London to Mill Hill & Barnet. By John Cooke, Engraver, at Mill Hill, Middx. 1792 Gough Maps Middlesex 46.

Cooke at this time must have been in his late twenties; he had left his apprenticeship some five years before. He had been apprenticed initially to bookbinder Mary Cooke (most likely a family connection) before transferring to the engraver William Wells and then John Russell, the latter an important cartographer and engraver of maps. Cooke had now embarked on what was to be a successful and productive career, with apprentices of his own and many works to his name. Although Mill Hill is today very much a suburb of London, at that time the area’s distance of eight or nine miles from Cooke’s previous base in the City would have seemed considerable. The map is very beautifully engraved, and serves to advertise the quality of Cooke’s work. Hills are indicated by delicate hachuring, and the hand colouring is sufficient to enhance the map without obscuring the fine engraving. The text panel explains that he has removed from London to Mill Hill, but that he is still at his customers’ service, since ‘the Mill Hill Errand Cart sets out every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday from the Bull Inn, Holborn at one, and at two o’clock from the Cock in Tottenham Court Road…’ Distances are noted with tiny numbers along the roads. The map demonstrates how easily communications may be carried between London and Mill Hill. Cooke’s trade card at the time also included a detailed map of the area around his house.

Cooke was to switch between the country around the city and London a number of times. By the end of the century he was back in central London and employed to engrave charts for the Admiralty and for numerous private publishers. But we can only conclude that London living did not suit Cooke, for by 1817 he had made what was to be a permanent move to Plymouth, Devon, where he spent the rest of his reasonably long life. This seems like a surprising choice considering how central to the publishing industry London was but a large amount of Cooke’s work was to do with navigation and shipping and after his move he made numerous maps on Plymouth as the area grew in importance with the building and developing of new or existing docks by the Navy.

Here’s Cooke’s map of the new Breakwater being built in Plymouth Sound, which in 1806 had an estimated cost of £1,170,000 (£88,000,000 at current rate)

Cooke’s guide to Plymouth Sound and Breakwater, 1806. G.A. Devon 8° 341 (9)

Cooke’s most famous work, The Universal Atlas, was published in 1802 when Cooke was in Howland Street, London. Cooke made the maps, ‘accurately delineated by an eminent geographer‘ while the Rev. Thomas Smith wrote the introduction and the descriptions. Along with maps of the continents and countries there are maps of the Solar System and a ‘geographical clock’ designed by Cooke which works by moving the marker on the inner dial to a location, which then makes this location noon, from there all the other times can be read (so here it’s noon in London, so 1am in the Great South Sea).

The universal atlas, and introduction to modern geography, 1802, Gough Gen. top. 202

Many of Cooke’s customers from his later career appear to have been based locally in the West Country, although he had previously worked for some of the major London mapmakers. He also appears to have branched out into copperplate printing.

With the Mill Hill map Cooke shows his skills as both a cartographer and an engraver and this is as much an advertisement of his abilities as a notice of the change in address. He also cleverly makes the best use of the area he wants to show by including the change in angle north of Finchley and Hendon to come up with this beautifully designed work, allowing for text and compass rose to be shown in opposite corners. This strip approach to mapping brings to mind John Ogilby’s ground-breaking road maps of almost a hundred years before (see Measuring distances, a wheel or a chain? | Bodleian Map Room Blog).

Our Cooke, John, was one of a number of Cooke’s active in London at this time. His brother Stephen (1768-1854) was an apprentice to John in the 1780s. He remained in London and also had a long map engraving career, employed by such well known map publishers as William Faden and Laurie & Whittle. The brothers William Cooke (1778-1855) and George (1781-1834), no relation to john and Stephen, both worked with map-makers such as Arrowsmith as well as non-map engraving work.

Four seasons

Dating from circa 1670 this is a map from the Dutch Golden Age, when ships set out from the Netherlands to trade and set up colonies. The Dutch East India Company had trading posts throughout the Indies, controlled the spice trade and, for a time, was the only nation to have a trade link with Japan, while the Dutch West India Company were doing similar in South America. Trade and cartography went hand-in-hand, with high quality maps by the leading cartographers of the day helping in the exploration and navigation of these far-off places.

Nova orbis tabula, in lucem edita…F. de Wit, c1670. Map Res 110

Frederick de Wit’s Nova Orbis Tabula… is a lovely though fairly typical example of a World double-hemisphere map, but what is of interest are the wonderful representations of the seasons in each corner. These insets also feature, in three of the four, representations of the continents* as well.

Spring is represented by a maiden, often Persephone, the symbol of spring growth. To her left is a bull, the animal symbol along with a horse for Europe.

Summer is Ceres, Goddess of the harvest who represents Earth’s natural abundance. She’s also the mother of Persephone. Ceres often appears on maps and her control of the growth, harvest and dying back of plants during the year reflected human existence on earth. The lion is a symbol for Africa, and the scorpion in this case is one of the animals associated with Ceres.

With the harvest done Autumn is a time to celebrate, Bacchus represents this season, drinking wine and supported by a pair of satyrs, themselves representations of lust and mischief. Another scorpion, this time for Africa.

Finally Winter, whose symbol is an old King wrapped up against the cold. No animal representation for America, which is usually a crocodile or armadillo but the male goat can also be used as a symbol for winter, when they are generally more active as this is when female goats come on heat. Which leads to fertility, which leads us back to spring, and growth and abundance, and the cycle goes round again.

Symbolism is an important and fascinating part of cartography. At the very least these allegorical pictures fill what would be empty spaces but at the time the audience for the maps would have understood both the meaning and the message. The seasons seem an obvious topic for a map, as they signify not just the changes in the weather and the time of the year but mark the earth’s progress in space and around the Sun. But people would have also understood how this connection with time through the year was also linked with our journey through life, it’s no coincidence that Spring is shown as a young maid, Summer an Earth Goddess, Autumn an older man and finally an old man in Winter.

This is also a blog about people, with a strong connection to Oxford and the Bodleian. De Wit’s map seems to be a smaller version of larger World map with the same title from 1660. The map is the first in a collection of maps which have been bound together at some point, in an unknown hand the title is given as ‘The first volume in a collection of more than one hundred maps of all the Kingdoms and Provinces in Europe by severall authours…1691′. The connection with Oxford, and the probable reason for the volume ending up here at the Bodleian is that the atlas once belonged to William Charles Cotton, brother of Sarah Cotton. Sarah married Sir Henry Acland, one-time physician to the Prince of Wales (the future Edward VII, see this blog ) and Librarian of the Radcliffe Science Library. Acland wrote a report in 1854 about cholera epidemics in the city, which included one of the earliest disease maps published in Britain (more on this map here) .

In 1839 Cotton was ordained a priest and in 1841 he sailed to New Zealand to be Chaplain to the newly appointed Bishop of New Zealand. He was also a noted apiarist, and wrote a number of books on bee-keeping (including the wonderfully titled ‘My Bee Book’, published in 1842 and written when he was a student at Christ Church in Oxford). Cotton spent seven years in New Zealand before returning to Britain. At the front of the atlas are a letter and a note from Cotton. The hand-writing for both is very hard to read, and parts of the letter have lines written over lines at right-angles, but both are to Henry Coxe, Bodley’s Librarian, in 1878 offering the collection of maps to the library, or ‘if not wanted to be returned to Mrs. Acland’. The Acland’s lived at numbers 39-41 Broad Street which in a remarkable coincidence was one of the houses knocked down for the building of what is now the Weston Library, part of the Bodleian Library, and where the maps are stored (and from where I’m writing this piece).

* Since this blog went live a colleague in Theology has pointed out an alternative view of some of the figures represented, which makes more sense, and that is that the signs of the Zodiac are represented. So in Spring the bull also represents Taurus and the ram Aries. In Summer the scorpion is more likely a lobster, which would represent Cancer and the lion Leo. In Autumn the scales represent Libra, the lion Leo and the archer Sagittarius. Finally Winter, with the fishes Pisces and the goat Capricorn.

If that’s not enough, how many other maps feature someone being sick from too much drink?

How to make a map Soviet style. Part two.

We often tend to look on maps, and by extension all other forms of art or literature, as a finished thing. This is done without any thought but in doing so we miss out on the skill and work that goes into the making. We’ve blogged about the making of maps, the science of cartography, by both the Austrian military and the Soviet cartographic department before, and a recent donation to the library has added more material to this fascinating field.

Some map-makers maps are distinctive due to style or choice of colours, and that is certainly the case with this set of four educational maps at different scales, published by the Glavnoe Upravlenie Geodezii i Kartografii pri Sovete Ministrov SSSR, (Main Directorate of Geodesy and Cartography under the Council of Ministers of the USSR, otherwise known as the GUGK). The use of soft pastel colours is instantly recognizable as from the GUGK and seems in contrast to the impression we have of a Soviet style of brutalist architecture and politics, but does allow for a beautiful map design (more on Soviet mapping can be found here and here).

Of the four maps in the pamphlet, the one at 1:50,000 is the most informative. Around the edge are instructions on surveying, depicting relief and profile and making grids. Part of the relief instructions shows heights above sea levels in profile.

The maps date from 1987, an important time in the history of the Soviet Union. Despite the appointment of Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985 and a new era of openness and more freedom than previously allowed under the concept of glasnost, the explosion and release of a radiation cloud over northern Europe from the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant in 1986 showed how weak and secretive the Soviet Union was (we blogged about Chernobyl here). Four years later, the Soviet system collapsed, bringing in a new, post-communist, Russia.

Despite the convincing topography these maps show imagined locations. The maps start at 1:100,000 then gradually focus on a smaller area as you go down through scales, like a cartographic set of Russian dolls. So the town of Snov (Снов) gets gradually bigger with each increase in scale down to 1:10,000 (1:100,000 top, 1:50,000 2nd, 1:25,000 3rd, 1:10,000 bottom).

This set will go into the O section of the map storage area, drawers full of maps of imaginary lands. Produced by the Soviet State to help their cartographers make maps of both the Soviet Union and many other countries, this set will lie in a drawer with maps of Middle Earth, the Island of Sodor and Ambridge.

Uchebnye topograficheskie karty, 1987. O1 (42)

The Summer Solstice

A short blog to mark a long day.

A curved line is a beautiful thing. Especially when it is both convex and concave, inward and outward, especially when it shows something as magical as the journey of the Sun across the Earth. This path is called the ecliptic. Today is the Summer Solstice*, the day of the longest amount of sunlight for those in the Northern Hemisphere. We blogged, here , about the Spring equinox, using a beautiful Dutch double hemisphere map of the World from an atlas by Claes Janszoon Visscher. In that blog we highlighted the straight line of the Equator, crossed by the Sun twice in a year to give us the Spring and Autumn equinoxes, days of equal day and night.

Planisphærium Terrestre sive Terrarum Orbis…from Atlas Minor by Claes Janszoon Visscher, c1705. Map Res. 85

Here we follow the curved line, showing the Sun’s journey through the Heavens, the ecliptic. When the Sun is at its most northern point, today, it reaches the Tropic of Cancer, and marks our Summer Solstice. It’s both obvious and amazing that it’s not the Sun though making this curved journey. The Sun stays where it is within the Solar System, even though, along with all the other objects in the Solar System we’re travelling at 450,000 miles per hour around the Milky Way. It’s the Earth that moves, tilting on it’s axis throughout the year and it’s this variation of tilt towards the Sun that produces this curved path in relation to the Earth, and from this our seasons.

Here’s a diagram from a 1909 edition of ‘Bacon’s popular atlas of the World’, showing the workings of the Solar System. ‘Astronomical diagrams’ shows not only the seasons but also a diagram showing the difference in the spread of the Sun’s rays at the two solstices, a concentrated 15° on June 21st (or 20th in this year) and a wider and hence weaker 28° a the winter solstice. Surely this though depends on whereabouts on the Earth you are?

Bacon’s popular atlas of the World, 1909. G1.B1.52

Bacon’s atlas uses the Patent thumb-index, which the publisher claims has been ‘invented specially for this work’. Along the right-hand edge of the atlas the margin gradually gets cut away as you journey through the atlas. This allows you, with a sliding motion up with your thumb, to open up the atlas at any of the general maps you want, Africa for instance, and from there see a list of maps of Africa and the countries therein, followed by the country maps of that area. Bacon promises, ‘This important improvement, it will be seen, has thus been effected without disfiguring the edge of the book’. Probably helps here to have reasonable finger-nails.

*This year’s solstice is the earliest since 1796. It’s because 2024 is a leap year, which means the solstice is 18 hours earlier than in a non-leap year. That it’s as early as it is is due to some complex maths based on how the Georgian calendar tries to fit in leap years over the course of centuries.

Time zones

In the September of 1881 Sandford Fleming, a Scots born inventor, gave a paper to the International Geographical Congress in Venice. Entitled ‘The adoption of a prime meridian to be common to all the nations. [And] the establishment of standard meridians for the regulation of time’, the paper was to address the pressing need for a universal time, set from one location, in a World increasingly linked by communication and transport. In the speech Fleming alludes to the difficulties in selecting just one meridian, ‘Repeated efforts have been made to gain general concurrence to the adoption of one of the existing national meridians, but these proposals have tended to retard a settlement of the question by awakening national sensibilities, and thus creating a barrier difficult to remove’. Fleming’s hopes for an outcome to this problem were soon answered, in 1884 at an International Meridian Conference in Washington delegates agreed to Greenwich being the prime meridian, 0ᵒ, the place where everywhere else takes its measure.

One of the consequences of this idea of a global time was the creation of time zones, the important way of keeping time in relation to the position of the Sun. A system of 24 time zones was first suggested by the Italian mathematician Quirico Filopanti but it was a proposal by Fleming in 1876 of a 24 zone system, which each zone 15 degrees longitude that has been gradually adopted, and feature in these two zone maps.

Planisphère des fuseaux horaires, 1917. B1 (1749)

This map is from the Ministère de la Marine, the department in the French Government dealing with the navy and colonies that in its original form dates back to the 1600s. The map shows 24 time zones with duplication at either end and includes both the ‘Méridien international de Greenwich‘ and, halfway between the two Greenwichs shown, the ‘Antiméridien de Greenwich‘. A French map showing the World like this was only recently possible as the country had only agreed to the Greenwich Meridian as the prime meridian in 1911. The simplicity of the design can’t hide though the complex exemptions across the World due to sizes of some countries and old rules in place. Take the Netherlands, which ran on Amsterdam Time, 20 minutes ahead of Greenwich up until the Second World War.

La Mondiale riforma del tempo coi 24 fusi… c1894. B1 (1750)

Simplicity isn’t a term you could use to describe our second map. ‘La Mondiale riforma del tempo coi 24 fusi e loro 24 simboli orari : Di Creazione ed Organizzazione definitiva del Prof. D. Errico Frassi Comense’, is a wonderfully confusing series of diagrams explaining the different proposals for zonal systems between 1873 and 1894. As well as a 24 zonal southern view of the World (top right) there are also two hemisphere maps at the bottom showing a more conventional zonal view of the World. At top left is a guide to the 24 time zones but the text is near impossible to read due to size and fading. The map is a jumble of information, and the confusion isn’t helped by the lettered order of the zones, which isn’t alphabetical but according to the areas or locations the zone goes through, so for example zone XIII is S, for the Sandwich Islands (an old name for Hawaii), while zone XIV is Y for the Yukon and XV is C for Colombia.

One of the earliest attempts to introduce a time common to all was called railway time. Introduced by the Great Western Railway company in 1840 railway time was designed to standardize time across Britain, which up until that point was set by local clocks, working at different speeds according to time set, condition and weather. As railways increased along with railway journeys the need for a standard set time according to one precise clock became paramount, without this in place coordinating rail journeys would be impossible and the risk of accidents due to inaccurate timetables would only increase. Soon the other train companies adopted this fixed time, and other countries followed the practise from the 1850s onwards. The introduction of railway time, along with the increased connectivity of the World through the telegram and telegraph*, paved the way for what we now call Coordinated Universal Time. The inset shows the first of a series of timetables by the firm Hotson’s, from 1863. Inside are a series of timetables showing the times of stops at each station along a route.

*This blog was written on the 24th May 2024, the 180th anniversary of the first telegraph message, sent by Samuel Morse from Washington to Baltimore.

The Carnation Revolution

Today, April the 25^th, is the fiftieth anniversary of the Carnation Revolution*, when a military coup by left-leaning officers in the Portuguese army overthrew the Estado Novo, the anti-liberal, anti-socialist nationalist party that had been in power since 1933.

Il Portogallo…, c.1974. C32 (211)

This map hints at the Fascist style of art prevalent in Italy and Germany around the Second World War but the text around the helmet, ‘Il Portogallo non sara’ il Chile d’Europa’ (Portugal will not be the Chile of Europe), is anti-fascist, this was the slogan of the revolution and refers to the hope that this mostly peaceful coup (4 were killed on the 25^th by government forces) wouldn’t run the same course as the take-over by forces loyal to Augusto Pinochet in Chile the year before, which resulted in deaths, disappearances and executions in the thousands.

This way of using a part of the body to portray something separate is called anthropomorphism. Considering the shapes of many countries and the amount of maps with some sort of allegory in their cartouches (see here and here) it’s surprising that there aren’t more maps like this. One notable example is Europa Prima pars Terrae in forma Virginis which comes from Heinrich Bunting’s Itinerarium et chronicon ecclesiasticum totius sacræ Scripturæ, a book of woodcut maps first published in 1581 of the Holy Land. Despite appearances this Queen represents Mary the Virgin, not the Virgin Queen Elizabeth.

From Itinerarium et chronicon ecclesiasticum totius sacræ Scripturæ, 1597. B 7.3. Th

The use of women to depict the four known continents was a common cartographic motif, with each continent represented by an idealized version of a female. Europe, as was the thinking of the time, is often depicted as the dominant continent, often portrayed as being above the rest, though that’s not the case in this dramatic example from Joan Blaeu’s Grand atlas, from 1663-67.

From Grand atlas, by Joan Blaeu. 1663-67. Map Res. 45

Here Europe is the figure in the blue and red dress, centre left, and carrying a sceptre. America stands behind her, Asia is in pink with Africa behind. All four have their associated animals; Europe leading a horse, Asia a camel, Africa an elephant and America an armadillo, which usually narrows down this figure to Mexicana. The figure in green is Cybele, the Greek Goddess of the Earth, symbol of eternity. Her crown is made of the walls of a city and she is often shown holding a key sitting in a chariot drawn by lions, who are themselves symbols of imperial power (we bloggged about lions here). Cybelle is also the protector of cities, hence the crown made up of city walls, she appears in an earlier blog in this guise here

Here’s a lovely variation on the theme, this time the four continents represented by putti, winged spirits that were often found on maps. Here Europe faces us holding a crown, behind is Africa holding a scorpion, Asia has his back to us with an incense burner and America peeps out from behind the pillar. This image comes from Carel Allard’s Atlas Contractus from 1703, and it is Allard we see confidently staring out of this frontispiece while pointing at the map he has made

From Atlas Contractus, 1703. Map Res. 18

*So called because of the carnations handed out to soldiers by the people on the streets

The U.S.S. Jeannette

Two different versions of the same map, separated between editions not only by 14 years, but also by differences in quality. The later map also includes fascinating additional manuscript text showing the ‘Probable drift of articles from the “Jeannette”‘.

Nord-Polar-karte, 1905. M1 (173)

The pages come from Adolf Stieler’s Handatlas, first published in 1817 and going through numerous editions with contributions from some of Germany’s leading cartographers, including Hermann Berghaus, who designed the 1905 Arctic map, and Augustus Petermann, who will play a further part in this story. An interesting and complex character as well as an outstanding cartographer, here’s a link to an earlier blog about the man.

Nord-Polar-karte (with manuscript additions), 1891. M1 (172)

The map, especially the later coloured version is good in itself, giving a high birds-eye view of the top of the World with insets showing a more traditional approach to topographical representation at the edges and two gridded circular maps at the bottom corners showing ocean currents and coverage of the Northern Lights (see inset). But it’s the manuscript additions that make the earlier map more interesting, despite its condition. The Jeannette was originally a Royal Navy ship called the Pandora, one in a long line with that name, the first being the ship sent to capture the Bounty mutineers in 1790. In 1879 she was sent on an expedition to the North Pole. The main aim of the expedition was to follow the Kuroshio Current, a warm current system in the Pacific similar to the Gulf Stream which it was believed, incorrectly, to flow through the Bering Strait and then into the ‘Open-Polar Sea’, an imagined sea set in the Arctic Sea free of ice. This sea was mapped by Mercator in 1569 but believed to exist even before Mercator’s famous map of the World. It was Petermann, a firm believer in the existence of the warm sea current theory, that proposed the expedition that would lead to the Jeannette setting sail in 1879.

Polus Articus, from Atlas Minor, by Gerardi Mercatoris, 1621. Map Res. 100

This map of the Polar region comes from a 1621 edition of Mercator’s Atlas Minor. Mercator went further than most in his views on the Pole, believing that not only that there was an ice-free sea but that the Earth was hollow and the ocean flowed through holes at the Pole into the Earth.

Leaving San Francisco in July the Jeannette passed through the Bering Strait in late August and continued her journey towards the Pole, but by the 7th of September she became trapped in ice, and spent the next 21 months drifting according to the currents and movement of the ice until finally the pressure put on the ship caused it to break apart and sink in June, 1881.

This extract from the earlier map shows two islands discovered as the ship was trapped, Jeannette and Henrietta, with a further island, Bennett, discovered as the crew tried to reach land after the ship sank. The map dramatically shows the location of the ship’s final moments, ‘Untergang [doom] d. Jeannette, 13 Juni 1881’ and the manuscript additions show the path taken by the ‘articles’ of the ship, the remains left on the ice after the ship went down, which slowly floated on currents down the east coast of Greenland before beaching on the southwest of the island.

Stanford’s map of the countries around the North Pole, 1875. M1 (107)

This beautiful map of the North Polar region was published 4 years before the voyage of the Jeanette by Stanford’s, the famous map publishers and sellers out of 55 Charing Cross. This map highlights the hardship faced by Polar explorers, with vast areas of the Arctic labelled ‘Unexplored Polar Region’. It’s to the credit of these intrepid explorers that there is so much red text and lines on the map, indicating what the map calls ‘chief Arctic worthies and the dates of discovery’. The inset from the map shows the same area as shown earlier in this blog, with the group of islands round New Siberia before the discoveries made by the Jeanette.

It’s a story reminiscent of Shackleton and the Endurance in the South Pole, with one crucial difference. Like the Endurance the Jeannette’s crew survived the hardships of the ship’s entrapment. But 20 of the crew of the Jeannette perished in the attempt to reach safety, including the captain, George Washington de Long, although 13 of them did survive.