For several hundred years, the term "Tartary" - or its Latin version, Tartaria - appeared on European maps, usually floating somewhere between Eastern Europe and China. This post explores the etymology of the place name and the various regions to which it referred.
In the early years of the Maryland colony, Lord Baltimore's name referred to his estates, an entire county, and a port town that would one day become the third largest city in the United States... 30 miles northeast of its current location.
Learn about the purpose and variety of terrestrial and celestial printed globe gores. Globe gores are strips of paper containing printed maps in the sizes and shapes needed for globe construction.
Join us online May 2, 2024, for a Spring Presentation with two conversations on indigenous cartography. At 3:00pm Lauren Beck, Canada Research Chair in Intercultural Encounter and Professor of Visual and Material Culture Studies at Mount Allison University, Canada, will discuss Extractive Place Naming Practices in Early Modern North America. At 5:00pm S. Max Edelson, …
Copperplate printing was a major method of map production for several hundred years. This post explores the history of printing maps with engraved copper plates, featuring several example maps and photographs of copper plates from the Geography and Map Division collections. This is the first post in a new series about map printing and creation, Fabricating the World.
Historically, maps have been used to promote political ideologies. The Dutch mastered the technique during the 16th and 17th centuries, making the Low Countries (present-day Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg or Benelux Countries and Northern France) appear in the form of a lion, called Leo Belgicus.
