This is the first book to catalog comparative maps and tableaux that visualize the heights and lengths of the world's mountains and rivers. Produced predominantly in the nineteenth century, these beautifully rendered maps emerged out of the tide of exploration and scientific developments in measuring techniques. Beginning with the work of explorer Alexander von Humboldt, these historic drawings reveal a world of artistic and imaginative difference. Many of them give way-and with visible joy-to the power of fantasy in a mesmerizing array of realistic and imaginary forms. Most of the maps are from the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection at Stanford University.

One of the first new interpretations of West Virginia's origins in over a century-and one that corrects previous histories' tendency to minimize support for slavery in the state's founding. Every history of West Virginia's creation in 1863 explains the event in similar ways: at the start of the Civil War, political, social, cultural, and economic differences with eastern Virginia motivated the northwestern counties to resist secession from the Union and seek their independence from the rest of the state. In The Fifth Border State, Scott A. MacKenzie offers the first new interpretation of the topic in over a century-one that corrects earlier histories' tendency to minimize support for slavery in the state's founding. Employing previously unused sources and reexamining existing ones, MacKenzie argues that West Virginia experienced the Civil War in the same ways as the border states of Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware. Like these northernmost slave states, northwestern Virginia supported the institution of slavery out of proportion to the actual presence of enslavement there. The people who became West Virginians built a new state first to protect slavery, but radical Unionists and escaping slaves forced emancipation on the statehood movement. MacKenzie shows how conservatives and radicals clashed over Black freedom, correcting many myths about West Virginia's origins and making The Fifth Border State an important addition to the literature in Appalachian and Civil War history.

This study contains twenty-two essays by leading historians on the Tokugawa Period (1600-1868), eight of which have never before been published. The Tokugawa Period has long been seen as one of Eastern feudalism, awaiting the breakthrough that came with the Meiji enlightenment and the opening of Japan to the West. The general thrust of these papers is to show that in many institutional aspects Japan was far from backward before the Meiji Period, and that many of the preconditions of modernization were present and developing much earlier than has generally been believed. This collection will be particularly valuable to students and scholars of comparative and Japanese modernization. Originally published in 1968. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

In his 'Description of the Holy Land', written in Latin around 1283, the Dominican Burchard explores the land in a series of itineraries starting from Acre in the north, and then from Jerusalem in the south. His particular concern is to identify and describe towns and other sites mentioned in the Bible as an aid to pilgrims and biblical scholars. He treated the evidence of the Bible and other sources carefully, he used the evidence of place-names preserved from antiquity, and he knew the land from personal observation, not simply from the writings of his predecessors. His identifications (e.g., of Dan and Beersheba) are not always supported by modern archaeological evidence, but he understood the importance of it, as shown by his explanation of the survival below ground level of early Christian sites, and his discussion of the site of ancient Jerusalem. Burchard's work exists in both a longer and a shorter, abbreviated, version. This book contains the Latin texts, drawn from selected manuscripts, complete with apparatus criticus, and translations of both versions. Introductory chapters cover what is known of Burchard and his career, the manuscript evidence for his two versions of the Descriptio and their relationship, an account of the different printed editions of Burchard's work, a study of his presentation of the geography of the land, and a discussion of early maps showing knowledge of his work. Further chapters explore the churches visited by Burchard, and his use of scripture and other written sources. Burchard names over four hundred places; the identification of biblical places is central to his work. Consistency in the spelling of biblical place-names deriving from ancient Hebrew or Greek and handed down via Latin, Arabic, and through many biblical translations in different languages, is well-nigh impossible. This book includes a list of the Latin names used by Burchard, together with their English equivalents as commonly used by modern scholars, and also as found in the historical maps of the Atlas of Israel (2nd edition, 1970). Palestine Grid coordinates have been added for ease of precise location on the map. Eight maps have been included to illustrate Burchard's knowledge of the Holy Land and the Egypt described in his final chapters.

Ancient Ocean Crossings paints a compelling picture of impressive pre-Columbian cultures and Old World civilizations that, contrary to many prevailing notions, were not isolated from one another, evolving independently, each in its own hemisphere. Instead, they constituted a "global ecumene," involving a complex pattern of intermittent but numerous and profoundly consequential contacts. In Ancient Ocean Crossings: Reconsidering the Case for Contacts with the Pre-Columbian Americas, Stephen Jett encourages readers to reevaluate the common belief that there was no significant contact between the emerging civilizations of Eurasia and Africa and peoples who occupied the terra incognita beyond the great oceans. More than a hundred centuries separate the time that Ice Age hunters are conventionally thought to have crossed a land bridge from Asia into North America and the arrival of Columbus in the Bahamas in 1492. Traditional belief has long held that earth's two hemispheres were essentially cut off from one another as a result of the post-Pleistocene meltwater-fed rising oceans. These oceans, along with deserts and mountains, formed impermeable barriers to interhemispheric communication. This viewpoint implies that the cultures of the Old World and those of the Americas developed independently. Drawing on abundant evidence to support his theory for significant pre-Columbian contacts, Jett suggests that many ancient peoples had both the seafaring capabilities and the motives to cross the oceans and, in fact, did so repeatedly and with great impact. His deep and broad work synthesizes information and ideas from archaeology, geography, linguistics, climatology, oceanography, ethnobotany, genetics, medicine, and the history of navigation and seafaring, making an innovative and persuasive multidisciplinary case for a new understanding of human societies and their diffuse but interconnected development.

Four hundred years ago, indigenous peoples occupied the vast region that today encompasses Korea, Manchuria, the Mongolian Plateau, and Eastern Siberia. Over time, these populations struggled to maintain autonomy as Russia, China, and Japan sought hegemony over the region. Especially from the turn of the twentieth century onward, indigenous peoples pursued self-determination in a number of ways, and new states, many of them now largely forgotten, rose and fell as great power imperialism, indigenous nationalism, and modern ideologies competed for dominance. This atlas tracks the political configuration of Northeast Asia in ten-year segments from 1590 to 1890, in five-year segments from 1890 to 1960, and in ten-year segments from 1960 to 2010, delineating the distinct history and importance of the region. The text follows the rise and fall of the Qing dynasty in China, founded by the semi-nomadic Manchus; the Russian colonization of Siberia; the growth of Japanese influence; the movements of peoples, armies, and borders; and political, social, and economic developments-reflecting the turbulence of the land that was once the world's "cradle of conflict." Compiled from detailed research in English, Chinese, Japanese, French, Dutch, German, Mongolian, and Russian sources, the Historical Atlas of Northeast Asia incorporates information made public with the fall of the Soviet Union and includes fifty-five specially drawn maps, as well as twenty historical maps contrasting local and outsider perspectives. Four introductory maps survey the region's diverse topography, climate, vegetation, and ethnicity.

This volume is a compendium of the rich archeological and literary evidence on the Iranian world in its larger sense, comprising part of what is now Soviet Central Asia and Afghanistan as well as Iran proper.

Originally published in 1984.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The region of Campania with its fertility and volcanic landscape exercised great influence over the Roman cultural imagination. A hub of activity outside the city of Rome, the Bay of Naples was a place of otium, leisure and quiet, repose and literary productivity, and yet also a place of danger: the looming Vesuvius inspired both fear and awe in the region's inhabitants, while the Phlegraean Fields evoked the story of the gigantomachy and sulphurous lakes invited entry to the Underworld. For Flavian writers in particular, Campania became a locus for literary activity and geographical disaster when in 79 CE, the eruption of the volcano annihilated a great expanse of the region, burying under a mass of ash and lava the surrounding cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Stabiae. In the aftermath of such tragedy the writers examined in this volume - Martial, Silius Italicus, Statius, and Valerius Flaccus - continued to live, work, and write about Campania, which emerges from their work as an alluring region held in the balance of luxury and peril.

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.