Maps dominate the modern sense of place and geography. Yet, so far as we can tell, maps were rare in the Greco-Roman world and, when mentioned in sources, are mistrusted and criticized. Today, technological advances have brought to the fore an entirely new set of methods for representing and interacting with space. In contrast to traditional 'topographic' perspectives, the territorial extent of economic and political realms is increasingly conceived though a 'topological' lens, in which the nature and frequency of links among different sites matter more than the physical distances between them. New Worlds from Old Texts focuses on the ancient Greek experience of space, conceived of in terms of both its literature and material culture remains, and uses this to reflect on modern thinking. Comprising twelve chapters written by a highly interdisciplinary range of contributors, this edited collection explores the rich array of representational devices employed by ancient authors, whose narrative depictions of spatial relations defy the logic of images and surfaces that dominates contemporary cartographic thought. The volume focuses on Herodotus' Histories-a text that is increasingly cited by Classicists as an example of how ancient perceptions of space may have been rather different to the modern cartographic view-but also considers perceptions of space through the lens of other authors, genres, cultural contexts, and disciplines. In doing so, it reveals how a study of the ancient world can be reinvigorated by, and in turn help to shape, modern technological innovation and methods.

Mapping the Germans explores the development of statistical science and cartography in Germany between the beginning of the nineteenth century and the start of World War One, examining their impact on the German national identity. It asks how spatially-specific knowledge about the nation was constructed, showing the contested and difficult nature of objectifying this frustratingly elastic concept. Ideology and politics were not themselves capable of providing satisfactory answers to questions about the geography and membership of the nation; rather, technology also played a key role in this process, helping to produce the scientific authority needed to make the resulting maps and statistics realistic. In this sense, Mapping the Germans is about how the abstract idea of the nation was transformed into a something that seemed objectively measurable and politically manageable. Jason Hansen also examines the birth of radical nationalism in central Europe, advancing the novel argument that it was changes to the vision of nationality rather than economic anxieties or ideological shifts that radicalized nationalist practice at the close of the nineteenth century. Numbers and maps enabled activists to "see" nationality in local and spatially-specific ways, enabling them to make strategic decisions about where to best direct their resources. In essence, they transformed nationality into something that was actionable, that ordinary people could take real actions to influence.

A book centring on late Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman canals may come as a surprise; it is generally assumed that no such things existed. Persuasive evidence has, however, been unearthed independently by several scholars, and has stimulated this first serious study of improved waterways in England between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries. England is naturally well-endowed with a network of navigable rivers, especially the easterly systems draining into the Thames, Wash, and Humber. The central middle ages saw innovative and extensive development of this network, including the digging of canals bypassing difficult stretches of rivers, or linking rivers to important production centres. The eleventh and twelfth centuries seem to have been the high point for this dynamic approach to water-transport: after 1200, the improvement of roads and bridges increasingly diverted resources away from the canals, many of which stagnated with the reassertion of natural drainage patterns. This new perspective has an important bearing on the economy, landscape, settlement patterns, and inter-regional contacts of medieval England. In this volume, economic historians, geographers, geomorphologists, archaeologists, and place-name scholars bring their various skills to bear on a neglected but important aspect of medieval engineering and economic growth.

Parks were prominent and, indeed, controversial features of the medieval countryside, but they have been unevenly studied and remain only partly understood. Stephen Mileson provides the first full-length study of the subject, examining parks across the country and throughout the Middle Ages in their full social, economic, jurisdictional, and landscape context. The first half of the book investigates the purpose of these royal and aristocratic reserves, which have been variously claimed as hunting grounds, economic assets, landscape settings for residences, and status symbols. An emphasis on the aristocratic passion for the chase as the key motivation for park-making provides an important challenge to more recent views and allows for a deeper appreciation of the connection between park-making and the expression of power and lordship. The second part of the volume examines the impact of park creation on wider society, from the king and aristocracy to peasants and townsmen. Instead of the traditional emphasis on the importance of royal regulation, greater attention is paid to the effects of lordly park-making on other members of the landed elite and ordinary people. These widespread enclosures interfered with customary uses of woodland and waste, hunting practices, roads, and farming; not surprisingly, they could become a focus for aristocratic feud, popular protest, and furtive resistance. Combining historical, archaeological, and landscape evidence, this ground-breaking work provides fresh insight into contemporary values and how they helped to shape the medieval landscape.

The Atlas of the Irish Revolution is a landmark publication that presents scholarship on the revolutionary period in a uniquely accessible manner. Featuring over 200 original maps and 300 images, the Atlas includes 120 contributions by leading scholars from a range of disciplines. They offer multiple perspectives on the pivotal years from the 1912 Home Rule crisis to the end of the Irish Civil War in 1923. Using extensive original data (much of it generated from newly-released archival material), researchers have mapped social and demographic change, political and cultural activity, state and non-state violence and economic impacts. The maps also portray underlying trends in the decades before the revolution and capture key aspects of the revolutionary aftermath. They show that while the Irish revolution was a 'national' event, it contained important local and regional variations that were vital to its outcomes. The representation of island-wide trends stand alongside street-level, parish, county and provincial studies that uncover the multi-faceted dynamics at play.The Atlas also captures the international dimensions of a revolution that occurred amidst the First World War and its tumultuous aftermath. Revolutionary events in Ireland received global attention because they profoundly challenged the British imperial project. Key revolutionaries operated transnationally before, during and after the conflict, while the Irish diaspora provided crucial support networks. The often neglected roles of women and workers are illuminated, while commentators consider the legacies of the revolution, including collective memories, cultural representations and historical interpretations. The Atlas of the Irish Revolution brings history to life for general readers and students, as well as academics. It represents a ground-breaking contribution to the historical geography of these compelling years of conflict, continuity and change.

Hundreds of exceptional cartographic images are scattered throughout medieval and early modern Arabic, Persian, and Turkish manuscript collections. The plethora of copies created around the Islamic world over the course of eight centuries testifies to the enduring importance of these medieval visions for the Muslim cartographic imagination. With Medieval Islamic Maps, historian Karen C. Pinto brings us the first in-depth exploration of medieval Islamic cartography from the mid-tenth to the nineteenth century. Pinto focuses on the distinct tradition of maps known collectively as the Book of Roads and Kingdoms (Kitab al-Masalik wa al-Mamalik, or KMMS), examining them from three distinct angles--iconography, context, and patronage. She untangles the history of the KMMS maps, traces their inception and evolution, and analyzes them to reveal the identities of their creators, painters, and patrons, as well as the vivid realities of the social and physical world they depicted. In doing so, Pinto develops innovative techniques for approaching the visual record of Islamic history, explores how medieval Muslims perceived themselves and their world, and brings Middle Eastern maps into the forefront of the study of the history of cartography.

People have always attached meaning to the landscape that surrounds them. In Storied Ground Paul Readman uncovers why landscape matters so much to the English people, exploring its particular importance in shaping English national identity amid the transformations of modernity. The book takes us from the fells of the Lake District to the uplands of Northumberland; from the streetscapes of industrial Manchester to the heart of London. This panoramic journey reveals the significance, not only of the physical characteristics of landscapes, but also of the sense of the past, collective memories and cultural traditions that give these places their meaning. Between the late eighteenth and early twentieth centuries, Englishness extended far beyond the pastoral idyll of chocolate-box thatched cottages, waving fields of corn and quaint country churches. It was found in diverse locations - urban as well as rural, north as well as south - and it took strikingly diverse forms.

For a British Empire that stretched across much of the globe at the start of the nineteenth century, the interiors of Africa and Australia remained intriguing mysteries. The challenge of opening these continents to imperial influence fell to a proto-professional coterie of determined explorers. They sought knowledge, adventure, and fame, but often experienced confusion, fear, and failure. The Last Blank Spaces follows the arc of these explorations, from idea to practice, from intention to outcome, from myth to reality. Those who conducted the hundreds of expeditions that probed Africa and Australia in the nineteenth century adopted a mode of scientific investigation that had been developed by previous generations of seaborne explorers. They likened the two continents to oceans, empty spaces that could be made truly knowable only by mapping, measuring, observing, and preserving. They found, however, that their survival and success depended less on this system of universal knowledge than it did on the local knowledge possessed by native peoples. While explorers sought to advance the interests of Britain and its emigrant communities, Dane Kennedy discovers a more complex outcome: expeditions that failed ignominiously, explorers whose loyalties proved ambivalent or divided, and, above all, local states and peoples who diverted expeditions to serve their own purposes. The collisions, and occasional convergences, between British and indigenous values, interests, and modes of knowing the world are brought to the fore in this fresh and engaging study.

Stein's new book looks at American history through the lens of its borders, but, while "How The States Got Their Shapes" told why, this book gives the who. This book reveals the human dimension in the historical arc with figures from the well-known to the obscure.

Richard Halliburton (1900-1939), considered the world's first celebrity travel writer, swam the length of the Panama Canal, recreated Ulysses' voyages in the Mediterranean, crossed the Alps on an elephant, flew around the world in a biplane, and descended into the Mayan Well of Death, all the while chronicling his own adventures. Several books treat his life and travels, yet no book has addressed in detail Halliburton's most ambitious expedition: an attempt to sail across the Pacific Ocean in a Chinese junk. Set against the backdrop of a China devastated by invading Japanese armies and the storm clouds of world war gathering in Europe, Halliburton and a crew of fourteen set out to build and sail the Sea Dragon-a junk or ancient sailing ship-from Hong Kong to San Francisco for the Golden Gate International Exposition. After battling through crew conflicts and frequent delays, the Sea Dragon set sail on March 4, 1939. Three weeks after embarking, the ship encountered a typhoon and disappeared without a trace. Richly enhanced with historic photographs, Richard Halliburton and the Voyage of the Sea Dragon follows the dramatic arc of this ill-fated expedition in fine detail. Gerry Max artfully unpacks the tensions between Halliburton and his captain, John Wenlock Welch (owing much to Welch's homophobia and Halliburton's unconcealed homosexuality). And while Max naturally explores the trials and tribulations of preparing, constructing, and finally launching the Sea Dragon, he also punctuates the story with the invasion of China by the Japanese, as Halliburton and his letters home reveal an excellent wartime reporter. Max mines these documents, many of which have only recently come to light, as well as additional letters from Halliburton and his crew to family and friends, photographs, films, and tape recordings, to paint an intricate portrait of Halliburton's final expedition from inception to tragic end.

Christy Constantakopoulou examines the history of the Aegean islands and changing concepts of insularity, with particular emphasis on the fifth century BC. Islands are a prominent feature of the Aegean landscape, and this inevitably created a variety of different (and sometimes contradictory) perceptions of insularity in classical Greek thought. Geographic analysis of insularity emphasizes the interplay between island isolation and island interaction, but the predominance of islands in the Aegean sea made island isolation almost impossible. Rather, island connectivity was an important feature of the history of the Aegean and was expressed on many levels. Constantakopoulou investigates island interaction in two prominent areas, religion and imperial politics, examining both the religious networks located on islands in the ancient Greek world and the impact of imperial politics on the Aegean islands during the fifth century.

Reveals the little known history of one of history's most famous maps - and its maker Tucked away in a near-forgotten collection, Virginia and Maryland as it is Planted and Inhabited is one of the most extraordinary maps of colonial British America. Created by a colonial merchant, planter, and diplomat named Augustine Herrman, the map pictures the Mid-Atlantic in breathtaking detail, capturing its waterways, coastlines, and communities. Herrman spent three decades travelling between Dutch New Amsterdam and the English Chesapeake before eventually settling in Maryland and making this map. Although the map has been reproduced widely, the history of how it became one of the most famous images of the Chesapeake has never been told. A Biography of a Map in Motion uncovers the intertwined stories of the map and its maker, offering new insights into the creation of empire in North America. The book follows the map from the waterways of the Chesapeake to the workshops of London, where it was turned into a print and sold. Transported into coffee houses, private rooms, and government offices, Virginia and Maryland became an apparatus of empire that allowed English elites to imaginatively possess and accurately manage their Atlantic colonies. Investigating this map offers the rare opportunity to recapture the complementary and occasionally conflicting forces that created the British Empire. From the colonial and the metropolitan to the economic and the political to the local and the Atlantic, this is a fascinating exploration of the many meanings of a map, and how what some saw as establishing a sense of local place could translate to forging an empire.

The only compact yet comprehensive survey of environmental and cultural forces that have shaped the visual character and geographical diversity of the settled American landscape. The book examines the large-scale historical influences that have molded the varied human adaptation of the continent's physical topography to its needs over more than 500 years. It presents a synoptic view of myriad historical processes working together or in conflict, and illustrates them through their survival in or disappearance from the everyday landscapes of today.

The history of archaeology is generally told as the making of a secular discipline. In nineteenth-century Britain, however, archaeology was enmeshed with questions of biblical authority and so with religious as well as narrowly scholarly concerns. In unearthing the cities of the Eastern Mediterranean, travellers, archaeologists and their popularisers transformed thinking on the truth of Christianity and its place in modern cities. This happened at a time when anxieties over the unprecedented rate of urbanisation in Britain coincided with critical challenges to biblical truth. In this context, cities from Jerusalem to Rome became contested models for the adaptation of Christianity to modern urban life. Using sites from across the biblical world, this book evokes the appeal of the ancient city to diverse groups of British Protestants in their arguments with one another and with their secular and Catholic rivals about the vitality of their faith in urban Britain.

This unique and delightful map of mainland Scotland and the Hebrides, from the collection of the National Library of Scotland, is a magnificent pictorial map of Scotland. Not just annotated with beautiful calligraphy, it also includes dozens of vignettes of famous Scottish places, from cities and towns to lochs to mountains and castles, as well as people and animals. It was originally published in 1931 by Pratts Oil, which was known as Standard Oil in the US and a few months later as Esso in the UK.

Was Gasoline, Texas, named in honor of a gas station? Nope, but the name does honor the town's original claim to fame: a gasoline-powered cotton gin. Is Paris, Texas, a reference to Paris, France? Yes: Thomas Poteet, who donated land for the town site, thought it would be an improvement over "Pin Hook," the original name of the Lamar County seat. Ding Dong's story has a nice ring to it; the name was derived from two store owners named Bell, who lived in Bell County, of course. Tracing the turning points, fascinating characters, and cultural crossroads that shaped Texas history, Texas Place Names provides the colorful stories behind these and more than three thousand other county, city, and community names. Drawing on in-depth research to present the facts behind the folklore, linguist Edward Callary also clarifies pronunciations (it's NAY-chis for Neches, referring to a Caddoan people whose name was attached to the Neches River during a Spanish expedition). A great resource for road trippers and historians alike, Texas Place Names alphabetically charts centuries of humanity through the enduring words (and, occasionally, the fateful spelling gaffes) left behind by men and women from all walks of life.

William John Burchell (1781-1863) is remembered for this outstanding geography of South Africa, published in two volumes in 1822-4 and later taken on Darwin's Beagle voyage. It covers the first year of Burchell's 4,500-mile expedition into southern Africa from 1811 to 1815, while 'botanist to the Cape Colony'. The author returned to England with 500 scientific and ethnographical drawings, many of them used as illustrations in the book, and about 63,000 natural history specimens including 120 animal skins and 265 species of bird. His preface emphasises that his journal is accurate, independent and free from prejudice; he also claims that unlike many travelogues, his contains no 'indelicacies ... offensive to decency'. Volume 1 focuses mainly on landscapes, and flora and fauna, often giving their indigenous names. It covers Burchell's trek to Klaarwater, which became his base for over a year, and a major side trip to the south-east.

Muskoka. Now a premier destination for nature tourists and wealthy cottagers, the region underwent a profound transition at the turn of the twentieth century. Making Muskoka uncovers the connections between lived experience and identity in rural communities shaped by tourism at a time when sustainable opportunities for a sedentary life were few on the Canadian Shield. This rocky section of Ontario was transformed from an Indigenous homeland to a settler community and a part-time playground for tourists and cottagers. But what were the consequences for those who lived there year-round?

A full colour map, where the city in about 1480 is shown against a background of a detailed Ordnance Survey of the early 20th century. In 1480, a high-ranking official called William Worcestre revisited his native city of Bristol and wrote a detailed description of all the streets and their buildings and the activities that went on there. Worcestre's description, combined with archaeological information and historical research, has allowed the recreation in map form of the city at that time. It was a prosperous and growing city, already trading extensively with Europe and poised to start a new trade with the Americas. Its merchant houses, churches and largely vanished city walls show a town that was easily one of the top five in England in the late Middle Ages. The map's cover has a short introduction to the city in 1480 and an explanation of who William Worcestre was. On the reverse is an illustrated and comprehensive gazetteer of Bristol's main sites of medieval interest. Produced in association with the University of Bristol.

Down the ages, war epidemics have decimated the fighting strength of armies, caused the suspension and cancellation of military operations, and have brought havoc to the civil populations of belligerent and non-belligerent states alike. This book examines the historical occurrence and geographical spread of infectious diseases in association with past wars. It addresses an intrinsically geographical question: how are the spatial dynamics of epidemics influenced by military operations and the directives of war? The term historical geography in the title indicates the authors' primary concern with qualitative analyses of archival source materials over a 150-year time period from 1850, and this is combined with quantitative analyses less frequently associated with historical studies. Written from the viewpoints of historical geography, epidemiology, and spatial analysis, this book examines in four parts the historical occurrence and geographical spread of infectious diseases in association with wars. Part I: War and Disease, surveys war-disease associations from early times to 1850. Part II: Temporal Trends studies time trends since 1850. Part III: A Regional Pattern of War Epidemics, examines grand themes in the war-disease complex. Part IV: Prospects, considers a series of war-related issues of epidemiological significance in the twenty-first century.

This open access book uses an interdisciplinary approach that not only focuses on social organization but also analyzes how societies and ecological settings were interwoven. How did early modern indigenous Sami inhabitants in interior northwest Fennoscandia build institutions for governance of natural resources? The book answers this question by exploring how they made decisions regarding natural resource management, mainly with regard to wild game, fish, and grazing land and illuminate how Sami users, in a changing economy, altered the long-term rules for use of land and water in a self-governance context. The early modern period was a transforming phase of property rights due to fundamental changes in Sami economy: from an economy based on fishing and hunting to an economy where reindeer pastoralism became the main occupation for many Sami. The book gives a new portrayal of how proficiently and systematically indigenous inhabitants organized and governed natural assets and how capable they were in building highly functioning institutions for governance.

This valuable reference work examines native South American agriculture. Its focus is on field types and field technologies, including agricultural landforms such as terraces, canals, and drained fields which have persisted for hundreds of years. A picture emerges of indigenous farming practices in rain forests, savannas, swamps, rugged mountains, and deserts, providing unique techniques and some basic principles for farming difficult environments.

The English geographer and hydrographer Alexander George Findlay (1812 75) had observed that navigators of his time had to consult a considerable number of documents to gather the information they needed to sail the Pacific Ocean safely. Not only was this highly impractical, it also exposed seafarers to conflicting information that could lead to their demise. First published in 1851, this two-volume nautical directory, compiled by Findlay from reputable sources, provided seamen with a single comprehensive and authoritative reference work. This first volume covers the shores of the Pacific and is a collection of nautical coordinates, sailing instructions and detailed descriptions of the topography of the coastlines, as well as the winds, currents and tides affecting them. An invaluable resource for navigators of the nineteenth century, this work remains of great interest to geographers and scholars of nautical history.

The Nile, the world's longest river system, has figured prominently in historic events over millennia. This book views the Nile as both the stage on which these events occurred and as an actor in its unfolding history. It examines the intersection of natural forces and human intervention to take readers on a series of historical journeys along the river, from its sources to the Mediterranean Sea. Nezar AlSayyad explores the histories of important individuals who played significant roles in the development of settlements and nation-states along the Nile, and engages with space and built form as the primary units of analysis, anchoring specific events in the cities of the Nile.

This is a significant contribution to the engaging and enduring theme of landscape creation and environmental adaptation in North America, which challenges established theories about native agriculture. Richly illustrated with over 200 maps, drawings, and photographs it contains a wealth of information for both scholars and students and is likely to be the standard reference work on the topic for many years to come.