The science of mapmaking that developed to assist sailors exploring for new trade routes.
The history of cartography as it pertains to the history of overseas trade in the West begins in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. While maps were used by ancient civilizations, from the ancient peoples of the Marshall Islands and their woven maps to Greek and Roman projections, the advent and consistent use of cartography deliberately in conjunction with trade is more of a modern phenomenon—namely, the rise of nautical cartography in the form of “charts” (the nautical term for maps) in the expanding commercial world of the thirteenth-century Mediterranean. Scholars know that charts existed before 1311, but their identified popularization and availability began after 1311, which is when professional cartographers such as Petru Vesconte started to regularly produce them and mariners began to use them.
The first charts were the by-products of the earlier written and oral traditions of mariners dating back to the earliest seafaring peoples, such as the Greek periplus, or coast pilot (the oldest surviving periplus is Hanno’s account of a southerly voyage from Gibraltar in about 450 B.C.E.). The introduction of a graphic component to the mariners’ lexicon was a natural and direct result of regularly voyaging beyond the coastlines of Europe after the introduction of the compass, since the compass provided the means for the accurate orientation of graphic aids.
However, maps have a much older history than charts, dating to the most ancient of cultures throughout the world. Still, as it pertains to trade, charts are a direct commercial derivative and maps are not. In addition, both the earlier European and Asian mapping traditions were more cosmological in nature, or, interested in surveying lands of rulers. For example, the mappaemundi of Europe are replete with socioreligious expressions. Of course, that does not mean that mapping traditions are not important to the history of trade. One of the most important moments in the history of cartography, alongside the development of nautical charts, was the rediscovery of Ptolemy, whence broader and more accurate projections of the Old World became available in 1400. Claudius Ptolemy of Alexandria compiled in the second century C.E. a wide-ranging list of approximately 8,000 locations by collating the known geographical information from travel itineraries, sailing directions, and existing topographical descriptions and applied meridians and parallels to define his world. His important scientifically informed work was lost to the West until the fifteenth century, though Arabic scholars used his studies as early as the tenth century; but its rediscovery helped infuse Renaissance cartography and explorers with basic scientific methodologies and a yearning to reach out to a newly “refined” world. While a mapping revolution soon followed Ptolemy’s rediscovery, his relative importance to the history of trade pales compared to the rise and spread of nautical cartography during the same period.
As the history of trade was revolutionized by the discoveries and explorations of the fourteenth through the eighteenth centuries, the dawn of globalism, too, was the history of cartography, as it simultaneously had to incorporate the rapidly expanding knowledge and activities of the age of discovery and exploration. Again, as has been noted elsewhere in this encyclopedia, the expansion of the West, and all of its causal components, in the early modern period was a basic defining moment in the history of the world since expanding commercialization brought about colonialism, capitalism, and various other monumental societal revolutions to all peoples of the planet. A vital part of the birth of globalism then, was the rise of nautical cartography charts in the late medieval and early modern eras and their subsequent development, as they were the means to consistently reach a newly expanded world. Thus, while the history of cartography dates to the earliest of times, its direct and verifiable impact on trade, specifically overseas trade, was later than its origins in the ancient world.
The first nautical charts are now called portolan charts, though their Italian makers called them charta or tabula. The name is a derivative of “portolano,” the Italian term for written sailing directions, an offshoot of the ancient periplus. The development of the portolan charts marks a complete break with previous European mapping traditions, since the portolan was informed by direct observations in conjunction with the mariner’s compass and allowed for relative position and distances at sea. The portolan chart is distinct in appearance and is instantly recognizable because it notes place names at right angles to the coast, consists of various compass roses, has rhumb lines (lines radiating from the center in the direction of compass points), and is highly decorative in appearance. Originating in the Mediterranean, the earliest portolan charts are divided into two branches, the Italian and Catalan. The Italian charts, mainly from Genoa, Venice, and Ancona depict, for the most part, Mediterranean and west European waters; while, the Catalan charts from Majorca and Barcelona reach to the Baltic shores of Scandinavia. Historicans cannot pinpoint when the portolan chart was first created, but it is obvious in the refined and relatively accurate projections of the first portolan charts of the late thirteenth century that their origins lie earlier in the century. Still, the importance of the portolan chart is unquestionable. Without the portolan chart, the commercial and maritime entrepôts of the Mediterranean could not have developed as effectively, efficiently, or as widely during the thirteenth century and, in turn, could not have helped spark the commercial revolution that was to enable further mappings and expansion in the fifteenth century.
Armed with the knowledge of Ptolemy and portolan charts, and with the various socioeconomic factors of the fifteenth century, Portuguese mariners sailed out into the Atlantic searching for Asian spices and African gold. While few charts of the Portuguese fifteenth-century discoveries exist today, the surviving charts reveal that the portolan style persisted. The earliest extant Portuguese chart is dated approximately at 1471, many years after the initial Atlantic forays of the Portuguese. Used in conjunction with sailing directions, the fifteenth-century charts helped affix relative position and chronicle the southerly discoveries of Africa. The salient points about the Portuguese fifteenth-century voyages and charting is that by 1500, with Bartolomeu Diaz rounding the Cape of Good Hope, Vasco da Gama’s landing in India, and Pedro Álvars Cabral’s discovery of Brazil, a southeast passage to the Indies was possible and charted, as was a passage to South America. Quickly following in the sixteenth century was the capture of Melaka in 1511, contact with the Melakans in 1512, and Magellan’s circumnavigation of the globe from 1519 to 1522.
The cartography of the world had been radically augmented and the beginning of colonialism clearly asserted. In regard to charts, mariners by the close of the fifteenth century in Portugal were required to return their charts to a hydro-graphic office, more a repository in actual fact, to ensure that master copies of charts could be updated. Furthermore, the hydrographic office, in principle the state, hoped to regulate the new cartographic knowledge by centralizing its storage. The chief officer of the Almazem (the building where the hydrographic office was located) called the almoxarife, a post held by Diaz wherein he helped outfit da Gama’s 1498 voyage. By 1547, a new office entitled the cosmografo-mor, first held by Pedro Nunes until his death in 1578, incorporated the oversight of nautical cartographic knowledge and began teaching navigation. It was Nunes who, during the height of Portuguese cartography, lamented the inability of plane charts to adequately compensate for the curvature of the earth, solved decades later by Gerardus Mercator in 1569. In terms of charts and commerce, the 1519 chart most likely by Nunes or Jorge Reinel—the two most prominent Portuguese chart makers between 1500 and 1572—which was not for use at sea because of its overt decoration, easily symbolizes both the expansion of knowledge and the commercial relationship thereof since Amer-indians in Brazil are depicted harvesting logwood for export (logwood was used as a dye and is now called mahogany).
Spain, much like Portugal, also institutionalized its cartographic exploits, after the early phases of its Atlantic expansion. Clearly, Spanish endeavors began with Christopher Columbus’s first voyage in 1492 and his discovery of Caribbean islands and his subsequent three forays. Only one chart by Columbus survives, a sketch of Northwest Hispaniola made in December 1493. Still, we know that an Italian cartographer, Paolo dal Toscanelli, was a source for Columbus and that the cartographic interchanges between Portuguese and Italian mari ners and chart makers were extensive. The distribution of cartographic knowledge throughout the sixteenth century, despite alleged attempts at secrecy by modern-day historians, was in fact broad. Cartographers and mariners throughout the European world exchanged their thoughts and information readily as various manifestations of Portuguese and Spanish information appeared in Holland, England, and Germany throughout the century.
In terms of Spanish charts, the Portuguese influence is undeniable, especially in light of considering the discussions between 1493 and 1529, when the division of the globe was determined. By 1503 in Seville, the Spanish founded the Casa de la Contratación to deal with questions concerning the “Indies.” By 1508, a hydrographic office was established to supervise charts and to produce a continually updated pardon real, or general map. The pardon real was to serve as the basis for all charts issued to ships and other purposes, and, under the oversight of the pilot-major, the Casa’s pardon real would be updated. The first three pilot-majors are noteworthy for various reasons: Amerigo Vespucci, Juan Solis, and Sebastian Cabot. Under the auspices of the Casa, Spanish nautical cartography charts were continually expanded and updated to incorporate information from both voyages and colonization. Sadly, no official version of the pardon real exists today; however, the surviving works of Diogo Ribeiro, who coincidently came from Portugal, are considered to be small-scale versions of the pardon real. Of particular note is his surviving 1529 world chart housed in the Vatican that includes Magellan’s voyage.
By the early sixteenth century, the plane chart, that is, the traditional portolan-like style on charts, had become problematic for cartographers and navigators since it did not account for the curvature of the earth. Mercator addressed this problem for mariners with his 1569 Nova et accurate orbis terrae descriptio ad usum navigantium emendate accommo-data, though it took time for mariners to embrace this new projection. The projection that Mercator proposed in this work has since borne his name and remains the basis for sea charts today. Mercator’s projection increases the distance between parallels with increasing latitudes, allowing any two points on the map to be joined by a straight line, a so-called loxodrome, which cuts all meridians at the same angle. Effectively, the Mercator projection creates scale while maintaining shape and direction at the expense of increasing distortion toward either pole. Yet, it was not until an English mathematician, Edward Wright, in 1599 published Certaine Errors in Navigation that the instructions for the construction and use of the Mercator projection became available. Mercator and Ptolemy are perhaps the two most important people in the history of cartography; their importance lies in the ability to more accurately portray the globe and thus traverse it, with trade being a primary factor.
As the sea routes connecting the Mediterranean and Iberian shores to the beyond were first being charted and consistently visited, other regions began to develop their cartographic traditions. It must be noted that the maritime traditions of the south and north European sailors varied. While the southern sailors had begun to embrace portolan charts by the early fourteenth century, their northern counterparts did not do so for some time. Namely, the French, Dutch, and English were still depending on written sailing directions at the turn of the sixteenth century. The sailing directions—Seebuch in German, leeskaart in Dutch, rouiter de mar in French, and the French derivative rutter in English—were like the Italian portolanos, though by the latter fifteenth century the north European sailing directions did begin to incorporate coastal profiles, that is, landmarks as viewed form the sea. The introduction of graphicacy, the ability to read graphic aids, evolved throughout the sixteenth century in these three nations in regard to charts.
With the addition of coastal profiles to their sailing directions, northern mariners then were primed for the introduction of charts. The first northerly transference of cartographic knowledge was to France. Portuguese chart makers, much like they had in Spain, moved to France and took their skills and knowledge with them, and the subsequent influence of the Portuguese charting tradition is evident. Focusing in Normandy, and particularly in Dieppe, French nautical cartography began and flourished in the sixteenth century. Surprisingly, some of their work from the 1540s, namely, by Nicolas Desliens and Jean Rotz, survives in excellent condition. By midcentury, Dutch nautical traditions and their nascent charts represented one of the next great leaps forward in cartography.
The emergence of Dutch nautical prowess rests firmly on the publication of the De Spieghel der Zeevaert in 1594 by Lucas Janszoon Waghenaer. Not only does this mark the competency of the Dutch, its publication also represents a monumental moment in nautical cartography. The Spieghel der Zeevaert is the first printed sailing direction with accompanying sea charts. Subsequently, its printed publication helped to reduce copyists’ errors; in addition, it introduced various symbols to represent soundings, hazards, anchorages, and other navigational data (some of the symbols first printed in the Spieghel der Zeevaert are still used today). The Spieghel der Zeevaert was quickly translated and often reprinted and updated throughout the ensuing decades. The most notable translation was in English; the Mariners Mirrour published in 1588 was at the direct behest of the government and proven to be a superior instrument in the hands of English mariners, wherein it speedily helped to spread graphicacy. With its publication, Dutch publishers quickly became the leading chart makers in Europe, and as the Dutch sailed to the East, so too did their charts reflect their commercial interests. The success of the Spieghel der Zeevaert was widespread and started over a hundred years of Dutch cartographic dominance.
In the mold of the Portuguese and Spanish institutionalization of cartography, the Dutch similarly institutionalized their cartographic endeavors, but under the corporate aegis of the East and West India Companies, respectively. Dominated by a series of great cartographic houses, Dutch cartography in the seventeenth century represented a pinnacle in style and accuracy—it was their mapping style that was copied as they soon remade the Portuguese style into their own. From training to administration, Dutch cartography instilled a degree of accuracy and beauty that remains inspiring today. Many notable cartographers existed and worked under the golden age of Dutch cartography, men like Hessel Gerristz, the Bleaus, and the Vingboons. The standardization of knowledge that Dutch cartographers instituted by their administrative and educational oversight cannot be understated, especially under Hessel Gerristz. Moreover, rather than being controlled by the Crown, cartographic knowledge was now under the auspices of the great overseas companies, as a tool for greater commercial wealth before 1620. Effectively, the Dutch Indies companies used maps and charts as both directional aids and management tools; by doing so, they codified the role of cartography and trade.
After 1620 and with the Bleaus firmly in control of nearly all the data coming in from Dutch overseas exploits and amid less interest in secrecy, the Bleaus, and subsequently the Dutch, were able to become nearly monopolistic in their influence on nautical cartography. Though the Bleaus were at first more interested in making upscale atlases for elite clients, the Dutch did turn to producing late in the seventeenth century similarly informed sea atlases. Yet, the result of the Bleaus and the Vingboons focusing more on the elite, rather than on producing navigational manuals, helped to allow the infantile English cartographic tradition to slowly develop and eventually emerge as a cartographic power in the eighteenth century.
The English came late to nautical cartography, but during their haltingly expansionistic seventeenth century, they learned to master the sea by first learning graphicacy, developing accompanying charts, and creating new and improved navigational aids. It is traditionally thought that the English are a nation of mariners, but this is not so. While the Portuguese and Spanish explored and settled distant lands, the typical English mariner was a coastal sailor. In fact, the establishment of Trinity House in 1514 was a direct attempt to help train and improve inshore navigation techniques by English pilots and sailors. During the sixteenth century that changed, in large part by attempts to establish direct trading routes outside the tumult of the Netherlands and through the rise of a navy. Yet, it was not until the seventeenth century that the English can be said to have developed a nautical cartographic tradition, commonly referred to as the Thames School—a collection of over thirty master-apprentice relationships that spans from 1590 to 1715 whose charts are distinctly similar.
More often than not, the Thames School was a collection of copyists, not cartographers, who transferred and updated information on mariners’ charts and mainly produced manuscripts, not print charts. Despite its secondary role in the history of cartography in light of the Dutch, the Thames School is a direct result of the continuing attempts and eventual rise of English overseas trade throughout the seventeenth century. Its charts were taken to express English commercial interests most readily. Yet, unlike the Dutch companies, the Thames School was never solely part of a corporate or Crown institution. By the end of the century, Thamesmen like John Thornton were tied to the British East India Company, but he and his stylistic compatriots were not a function of an overt institutionalization of knowledge. For the English, the institutionalization of knowledge came in the eighteenth century under the auspices of the Broad of Admiralty, Hydrographic Office.
After the mid-seventeenth century, however, the English did start to print sea atlases. One of the most notable Thamesmen was John Thornton, who after the initial criticism of John Seller’s print sea atlas the English Pilot (1672), purchased the plates and started to publish the English Pilot anew (1701). Eventually comprising five parts, each part addressing a certain regional trade route, the English Pilot was maintained and updated throughout the eighteenth century. The initial criticism of Seller’s English Pilot also prompted the eventual publication of Greenville Collins’s Great Britain’s Coasting Pilot in 1693. Commissioned by the king and granted Trinity House’s assistance, Collins plotted Britain’s coastline and headlands and provided their exact latitude. While Collins called for Trinity House’s role to be expanded to include the regular updating of charts, it was not until much later that a regularized body existed to amend British charts. But it would be the French who first challenged Dutch cartographic prowess when in 1693 La Neptune francais was published. As a direct result of French attempts to map and chart their lands, French mathematical and astronomical sciences converged to provide the scientific advances necessary to produce highly accurate maps, all of which was under the aegis of the Ingenieurs du Roi (Engineers of the King) starting in 1666. By 1753, the Depot de Cartes et Plans de la Marine had supplanted the previous agency and republished an updated La Neptune francais. By 1800, La Neptune francais had been significantly expanded and updated to now appear in an eleven-volume regional collection of charts covering the world.
By the end of the eighteenth century, English maritime expertise had supplanted the Dutch and all others. After having published many charts by 1774, Murdoch Mackenzie published his Treatise on Maritime Surveying, wherein he systematically described his highly accurate methods that had already been widely recognized. Of course, the most famous English surveyor is James Cook, who first created charts of the newly acquired Gulf of St. Lawrence and Nova Scotia in 1760. When Cook sailed east in 1769, he was experienced and was prepared to chart the distant waters of the Pacific. Of course, what made Cook’s second and third voyages so successful, in terms of charting, was the addition of John Harrison’s chronometer, which ensured accurate measurements of longitude.
In 1795, after years of providing material to chart makers, the British Admiralty Board appointed a hydrographer to the Admiralty, Alexander Dalrymple. Dalrymple, who had previously been the hydrographer to the British East Indies Company, had established his reputation on previous publications, such as his A Collection of Plans of Ports, etc., in the East Indies (1774) and his Essay on Nautical Surveying (1771). By 1808, the Hydrographic Department was reorganized and grew to become the world’s foremost chart-producing organization.
After 1823, nautical cartography entered a new phase as the charts of British Admiralty ceased to be a protected commodity and became available to the public. In addition, Britain, France, Denmark, Russia, and the United States all began regularly exchanging cartographic knowledge, clearly a sign that the importance of clear and safe commerce was paramount to the leading maritime nations. The invention of steamships, which were highly maneuverable, allowed surveyors to concentrate more readily on navigational hazards, and the level of detail on charts throughout the nineteenth century rapidly ex panded. Charts, which had in the eighteenth century marked coastlines and soundings and only could provide details of harbors and anchorages, now were able to address all hazards. Isolated rocks, buoys, shoals, and tidal streams all became feasible to chart. The advances of charting in the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries were all a part of the age of sail; steamships provided a degree of accuracy that was unfathomable to earlier mariners. When combined with the lighthouse movement that seemed to ripple across the world in the nineteenth century as well, oceanic navigation, and thus commerce, became markedly safer and more profitable.
The modern chart was slowly refined from its origins in the thirteenth-century portolan charts through Portuguese exploration, Dutch maritime skills, French scientific inquiry, and coalescing in the British Admiralty. The British, who by the nineteenth century were far and away the unrivalled maritime masters of the world, were able to apply and mainstream the hard-found nautical sciences into a consistently reliable published charting tradition that remains to this day. The development of the steamship and Britain’s maritime capability ensured this, and even more so was demanded by Britain’s mercantile sector. Of course, as time has passed other technologies have greatly improved our cartographic knowledge: the introduction of radio waves, aerial photography, echo soundings, and global positioning systems has led to highly accurate charts of all waters of the planet and even of the ocean floor. At a conference in 1919, the standardization of symbols occurred and the duplication of charts by various national authorities was agreed to, and in 1970 the concept of an International Chart was adopted to create greater uniformity on all nautical charts.
The history of cartography and the history of trade are analogous in many ways. Neither can fail to mention the birth of globalization that started to ferment in the thirteenth-century Mediterranean and slowly expand over six centuries to include nearly the entire planet. Neither can the histories fail to mention the effect of the nineteenth century Industrial Revolution and its acceleration of events. The history of cartography is old; it dates to the earliest times, but describing its relationship to trade, other than tangentially, is difficult. The rise of consistent maritime trade, however, offers a concrete position from which to discuss the emergence, importance, and convergence of the history of cartography and trade. The consistency and reliability of maritime trade could not have been possible and thus could not have developed as greatly and as importantly to a nation’s well-being unless a charting tradition emerged. Yet, charts are more than mere direction finding aids, more than a means to ascertain position; they are themselves reflections of desire and knowledge, more often than not, reflections of commercial interests—why else would locations have been charted if not to go there to get something? In sum, the history of nautical cartography is the history of commercial expansion.
Alistair Maeer
See also: Exploration and Trade.
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