Cameron Saneii, Caitlin Keane, Michael Lamkin - Map Museum

Map 1: 16th-18th century non-European Map

Cameron Saneii

AP World

A map of Japan was created by Francois Valentyn, a minister of employ in the Dutch East India Company, between 1724 and 1726. Francois constructed his map in Dutch for his higher ups at the company. This map illustrated the trade routes between Nagasaki and Edo (present day Tokyo), which explains a lot about how the map is laid out. The map depicts Japan noticeably shorter and wider than the Japan we accept on the map today. The map ends at Edo, and does not include the entire north section of the island and the separated island of Hokkaidō. This is most likely due to the fact that the Dutch had simply never been there, so they did not record it. The map shows the trade routes between Nagasaki and Edo that the Dutch used, so they most likely never went any further north on the island than Edo. Also, Japan was made wider than it is, which is most likely due to a simple lack of technology. The 18th century Dutch most likely did not have the technology to create a map with completely accurate measurements. Thus, the coasts and width of Japan were not correct in measurements. With that being said, however, the map depicts the sections of Japan that the Dutch did know with impressive accuracy for the time. Another interesting thing about this map is that it is clearly divided into different feudal kingdoms, or daimyos. At the time that this map was made, Japan was in the Tokugawa Shogunate. During this period of Japanese history, the Tokugawa shoguns headed the many daimyos of Japan. These daimyos are presented in the map with clear borders, implying that there was power in the land and every lord made it very clear what land was his.

Map of Europe

Caitlin Keane

Block : G (AP Euro)

This general map of Europe was created by the cartographer Johannes Stumpf. This map was published in a book in the year 1548 to the general public in Germany. It was created due to Johannes Stumpfs interest in his father-in-laws work. His father-in-law wrote a chronicle of Switzerland. Johannes studied the scripts and then began compiling a history and topographical description of Switzerland of his own. His efforts produced this general map of Europe. His efforts are noteworthy for this map was painstakingly produced on a woodblock and contains great intricacy and artistic attributes. Such artistic attributes include land features. Natural features include, mountains, forests, lakes, rivers, as well as labeled seas and oceans. Regions are labeled as well as towns that are marked with drawn houses. This map as well includes other unnatural features as well. Mythical creatures can be seen swimming in the oceans as well as ships sailing along many coasts. The map is written in German and includes a sort of saying located on the middle right hand side along with a title at the top. One of the issues with this map is that its orientation is backward to most maps. Meaning, the South is located at the top of the map and the North at the bottom. This is not clearly stated as well, for this map does not have a compass or any type of measurement system for scaling. Johannes Stumpf captured the time period by his orientation and perspective, the amount of land each nation possessed and the estimates of how large those regions were, artistic theme of that time, and the ideas of mythology is his artistry.  All and all a truly beautiful map.

Map predating 1492 and Columbus’ voyages

Michael Lamkin

AP World

The original cartographer of this map that I had studied was Ptolemy in the year 1482. Although this map had appeared in other locations around the world as it was distributed in books, this map was specifically produced in Florence by a man named Nicolo Todescho and could have been engraved by Francesco Rosselli. Francesco was later known in 1506 as the first man to engrave a printed map of America. The audience of this map is the general population of Europe at that time in order to get people to know the structure of the world and to get a general idea of where everything is located according to their position which is near the center of the map showing how he made it according to their location. The map was made in Latin as that was the original language that Ptolemy had learned to write and was the main language during his time. This map reflects the time period in the sense that America isn't on the map and it was seen that Antarctica wasn't there either and it was just Indian Ocean because people had not discovered these land masses yet. This map does have rivers, oceans, and lakes mapped out which seems complicated for that time period to know where each of these would be put on the map, so their map making was fairly advanced for that time. I found it fascinating that around the map there are 12 heads blowing wind on the map and this signifies the 12 apostles which shows how important religion, more specifically Christianity, was to anything including map-making. What strikes me most about this map is the shape of each continent and how only 3 continents are shown in the entirety if the map which shows how much of the world is needed to be discovered and mapped for Europeans. India seemed to have been mixed with Asia in this map and there is no distinct difference between anything in Asia, It’s just a giant land mass which shows that Ptolemy was only looking for the shape of the world and its landmark instead of seeing the different kinds of cultures and people with distinct empires and nations.