Early American Cartographies

Abstract

Maps were at the heart of cultural life in the Americas from before colonization to the formation of modern nation-states. The fourteen chapters in this book examine indigenous and European peoples' creation and use of maps to better represent and understand the world they inhabited. Drawing from both current historical interpretations and new interdisciplinary perspectives, this collection provides diverse approaches to understanding the multilayered exchanges that went into creating cartographic knowledge in and about the Americas. The introduction provides a critical assessment of the concept of cartography and of the historiography of maps. The individual chapters, then, range widely over space and place, from the imperial reach of Iberian and British cartography to indigenous conceptualizations, including “dirty,” ephemeral maps and star charts, to demonstrate that pre-nineteenth-century American cartography was at once a multiform and multicultural affair. The book not only highlights the collaborative genesis of cartographic knowledge about the early Americas; it also brings to light original archives and innovative methodologies for investigating spatial relations among peoples in the western hemisphere. Taken together, the chapters reveal the role of early American cartographies in shaping popular notions of national space, informing visual perception, animating literary imagination, and structuring the political history of Anglo- and Ibero-America.

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