Historical Cartography Course

This short course follows the history of maps and teaches you how to interpret them. You will study what historical cartography is and its value as a documentary source; the first forms of spatial representation; the functions of maps in administration, navigation, politics, religion, trade and propaganda; the cartography of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome; Ptolemy and early projections; medieval T-O maps and mappae mundi; Islamic and Asian cartographic traditions; portolan charts; the nautical and cartographic revolution of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; imperial and colonial mapping; European atlases and schools; and the formal elements, projections, place names and visual language of historical maps.

What sets this course apart: a strong maritime thread, from portolans and medieval sea charts to the charts and sailing directions that made ocean control possible; a critical method that asks who made each map, for whom, why and how it circulated; the study of maps as instruments of power, legitimacy and territorial organization; comparison of maps from different periods to reveal territorial change and technical progress; and a final project in which you analyze and interpret a historically important map, atlas or chart.