Category Archives: South America

Mapping Guyana

Earlier this month, the Map Room was visited by Christina Kumar; a cartographic advisor to the President of Guyana. Over several years, Christina has created a large and highly detailed map of Guyana, and kindly donated a copy to the Bodleian Library during her visit.

Christina Kumar presents the map to Map Curator Nick Millea

The map, more than 1.5 metres in length, provides a detailed picture of the country’s land cover at 1:600,000, as well as its settlements and transport infrastructure. Christina explained how GIS software had been used to process satellite imagery in order to produce a map of this intricacy; including its detailed insets showing oil, mineral deposits, and carbon density. The map also features an attractive street plan of the nation’s capital, Georgetown.

Administrative map of Guyana (2024), H10 (143)

The Bodleian already holds a substantial collection of maps of Guyana, particularly from the British colonial era which officially lasted from 1831 until independence in 1966. The area had previously been in Dutch hands since 1627, with the exception of short-lived periods of French and British occupation. As a result, our collection also includes French and Dutch maps of the region from the late 18th and early 19th centuries; each map a window on the various attempts to understand and control these northern shores of South America. The 1803 British occupation of the Dutch Colony of Berbice (Kolonie Berbice) proved to be longer-lasting, ultimately leading to the formal establishment of British Guiana.

We were happy to show Christina a sample of these European maps, including this Dutch map from 1802, the final year before British occupation. The map shows land holdings along the Berbice River, and features an imaginative cartouche depicting the region’s flora and fauna, perhaps with some artistic license. Christina noted that the cadastral land numbering system still remains in use today and that, with the exception of a few variations in spelling, many of the place names included on the map remain unchanged.

Karte van de Colonie de Berbice gelegen in Bats. Guiana in America (1802), (E) H10:2 (3)

Christina’s new map becomes the most recent addition to this cartographic timeline of Guyanese history; distinctive in its presentation of the nation through local eyes, rather than from a European perspective. In an era when Guyana’s natural resource management and relations with its South American neighbours are high priorities, the role of maps in understanding and administering territory remains crucially important.

Overlooking a city

It’s not uncommon to see a map that makes you go “Wow!” at first sight. Generally the early printed and manuscript maps in the collection are most likely to inspire this response, but this recently acquired map of Buenos Aires, printed in 1950, had much the same effect when I first saw it.

More of a birds-eye view than a map, it almost gives the feeling of flying over the city. The layout of Buenos Aires in a regular grid pattern enhances the sense of perspective. Many features are shown pictorially including major buildings, parks, monuments and boats in the port in the foreground. The sea is coloured a beautiful dark blue. Overall the colour scheme is simple, the map being printed in black plus 5 colours. All along the bottom of the map is a view of the city.

It’s the work of Viktor Cymbal (surname sometimes rendered Tsymbal), a Ukrainian artist and designer who lived in Buenos Aires for much of his life from his late twenties, although he spent his final years in New York. More information can be found about him here.

The style is somewhat reminiscent of the work of Macdonald Gill, another artist whose work (like that of Cymbal) included both maps and illustrations for advertisements. In particular the simple colour scheme, pictorial elements, and the lettering style and yellow scroll devices as labels are interesting to compare. Gill featured in an earlier blog post focusing on a map made in 1941, just nine years before this one.

The map was made at a time when Argentina was flourishing under popular president Juan Domingo Péron and his even more popular wife Eva. The railway station at bottom right bears the president’s name.

El corazon de Buenos Aires/ Viktor Cymbal. Buenos Aires : Editores Peacock y Calegari, 950. H3:35 Buenos Aires (19)

A tale of two maps

The contrast between these two maps is striking, considering they are both the same.

The Bodleian has two copies of South America corrected from the observations comunicated to the Royal Society’s of London & Paris… by John Senex, and dating from 1710. The copy on the right is a single sheet which has been folded and then incorporated into an atlas of maps by Senex soon after printing. As can be seen from the image the colours are strong and there is no damage or staining on the sheet.

The copy on the left has just come into the library as part of a large donation of rolls. To protect rolled maps from damage they were often attached to a linen backing and then varnished, hence the frayed and stained appearance of the map. It is now hard to see too much detail on the map compared to its cleaner cousin.

This map has also had additional strips added to the sides and top, with the new title (at top of this blog) and then text on either side about the continent.

The unvarnished map has a beautiful cartouche, which as well as giving title and printing details also gives

 

an idea of a European viewpoint of South America, with an Amazonian warrior, decapitated head and cannibal feasts in the background. The warrior is a common symbol of America and is always shown with a bow and arrow and a crocodile.  Just above is a  representation of a Penguin, with descriptive text stating ‘In this icy sea there are many animals which are half fish, half fowl. They have a neck like a swan which they often thrust above water for air, the rest is allways under water’. To the right of the penguin is the inscription ‘ Here Cap. Halley found the sea full of ice’.  In 1699 Edmund Halley, astronomer and mathematician,  sailed on the Paramore across the Atlantic to carry on experiments on mapping the magnetic currents and flows of the World as well as mapping the Southern Hemisphere constellations and stars. On his return to England in 1700 he published the first magnetic declination chart of the World and then in 1703 he was appointed Savilian Professor of geometry at Oxford University. The map, made by John Senex, is dedicated to Halley. Senex was a prolific publisher of maps and atlases and was at one time cartographer to Queen Anne. He was elected to the Royal Society in 1728 and when he died in 1740 his wife Mary continued his work.

 

The Atlantic has been overly blessed with places that either never existed or have changed names completely. Pepys Island is one of the more celebrated of the ‘phantom islands’ of the Atlantic. Pirates in 1684 sailed close to the Sebald de Weerts Islands and marked this in the ships journal. Later this was heavily rewritten and published by someone keen to gain the favour of the Secretary of the Navy, Samuel Pepys, and named a new island after Pepys despite the original journal stating the island was part of the de Weerts group.  Pepys Island went on to feature in numerous maps up until the mid-1800s.  The Sebald de Weerts islands are now known as the Jason Islands. Just as strange is the naming of the southern part of the Atlantic as the Ethiopic Ocean, a name which dates back to classical times when most of Africa south and west of Egypt was called Aethiopia.

South America corrected from the observations comunicated to the Royal Society’s of London & Paris… by John Senex, 1710. Allen LRO 564.

From top to bottom

How do you map a long thin country like Chile? By making a long thin map of course. Chile’s length, at 2,690 miles, is ten times longer than its width. This map, published in 1990 in the United States by the Cultural Department of the Embassy of Chile to the United States has tourist information on both the front and back of the map as well as information on the Country and a historic background.

Chile, published by the Cultural Department of the Embassy of Chile…1990. H6 (147)