Maps are inherently unnatural. Projecting three-dimensional realities onto two-dimensional surfaces, they are abstractions that capture someone's idea of what matters within a particular place; they require selections and omissions. These very characteristics, however, give maps their importance for understanding how humans have interacted with the natural world, and give historical maps, especially, the power to provide rich insights into the relationship between humans and nature over time. That is just what is achieved in Mapping Nature across the Americas. Illustrated throughout, the essays in this book argue for greater analysis of historical maps in the field of environmental history, and for greater attention within the field of the history of cartography to the cultural constructions of nature contained within maps. This volume thus provides the first in-depth and interdisciplinary investigation of the relationship between maps and environmental knowledge in the Americas-including, for example, stories of indigenous cartography in Mexico, the allegorical presence of palm trees in maps of Argentina, the systemic mapping of US forests, and the scientific platting of Canada's remote lands.

For more than twenty-five years, The Student Bible Atlas has been a trusted companion for Bible students of all ages and interests. Clear, concise, colorful, and priced for any budget, there are nearly 100,000 copies in print! All of the best features of The Student Bible Atlas are retained in this beautiful new edition. The table of contents remains the same, as does the tone and content. The layout, however, is beautifuly redone, with new maps that convey essential information in a crisp, up-to-date way. It's a great atlas, now made even better! The Student Bible Atlas contains thirty maps covering both Old and New Testaments, a helpful index of place names, and a guide to the major archeology sites of the Middle East. The Bible is full of places and journeys: Abraham's epic journey from Ur to the land of Canaan; the Hebrews' journey from slavery in Egypt to the Promised Land; Paul's pioneering series of missionary travels. All these and many more are covered in this invaluable and readily accessible Bible companion.

The most beautiful Victorian maps of England's counties and cities – in large format – by one of Britain's great cartographer's Thomas Moule.

Thomas Moule was one of the finest Victorian mapmakers and is regarded as the true follower of John Speed in the cartographic history of Britain. Moule’s beautifully observed county and city maps present a minutely detailed record of 19th-century England. They were first published in collectable parts between 1830 and 1837 and then published together in the extensive 2-volume masterwork The English Counties Delineated.

Moule celebrated the ‘ancientness’ and history of each county by including pastoral or monument views within the maps, all framed by cartouches, festoons and architectural ornament in a variety of historical styles. But underpinning this ancient vision is the hand of the British Industrial Revolution. Moule’s maps are deeply informed by the early technical work of the Ordnance Survey and record the unstoppable growth of the major cities and the unrelenting spread of the railways.

The maps have remained influential and highly collectable as both originals and as reproductions. For the first time in a generation this new large-format volume, comprising 55 county and city maps, presents the main body of Thomas Moule’s work alongside his original detailed text descriptions. The book’s Introduction explains Moule’s career as a writer and antiquary and sets his celebrated maps in the context of the technical cartographic revolution in which they were published. The book examines the wide-ranging artistic and cultural influences exhibited as Moule combines accurate cartography with highly decorative architectural frames and evocative, Romantic, pastoral views of the England he so cherished. In doing so it positions him alongside his fellow celebrated Victorian pioneers, including George Virtue, William Westall, Walter Scott, Charles Dickens, JMW Turner, Augustus Pugin, Edward Stanford and George Bradshaw.

In 1659, a vast and unusual map of China arrived in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. It was bequeathed by John Selden, a London business lawyer, political activist, former convict, MP and the city's first Orientalist scholar. Largely ignored, it remained in the bowels of the library, until called up by an inquisitive reader. When Timothy Brook saw it in 2009, he realised that the Selden Map was 'a puzzle that had to be solved': an exceptional artefact, so unsettlingly modern-looking it could almost be a forgery. But it was genuine, and what it has to tell us is astonishing. It shows China, not cut off from the world, but a participant in the embryonic networks of global trade that fuelled the rise of Europe - and which now power China's ascent. And it raises as many question as it answers: how did John Selden acquire it? Where did it come from? Who re-imagined the world in this way? And most importantly - what can it tell us about the world at that time? Brook, like a cartographic detective, has provided answers - including a surprising last-minute revelation of authorship. From the Gobi Desert to the Philippines, from Java to Tibet and into China itself, Brook uses the map (actually a schematic representation of China's relation to astrological heaven) to tease out the varied elements that defined this crucial period in China's history.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 was not just a world-historical event in its own right, but also struck powerful blows against racism and imperialism, and so inspired many black radicals internationally. This edited collection explores the implications of the creation of the Soviet Union and the Communist International for black and colonial liberation struggles across the African diaspora. It examines the critical intellectual influence of Marxism and Bolshevism on the current of revolutionary 'black internationalism' and analyses how 'Red October' was viewed within the contested articulations of different struggles against racism and colonialism. Challenging European-centred understandings of the Russian Revolution and the global left, The Red and the Black offers new insights on the relations between Communism, various lefts and anti-colonialisms across the Black Atlantic - including Garveyism and various other strands of Pan-Africanism. The volume makes a major and original intellectual contribution by making the relations between the Russian Revolution and the Black Atlantic central to debates on questions relating to racism, resistance and social change. -- .

In Capitalism and Cartography in the Dutch Golden Age, Elizabeth A. Sutton explores the fascinating but previously neglected history of corporate cartography during the Dutch Golden Age, from ca. 1600 to 1650. She examines how maps were used as propaganda tools for the Dutch West India Company in order to encourage the commodification of land and an overall capitalist agenda. Building her exploration around the central figure of Claes Jansz Vischer, an Amsterdam-based publisher closely tied to the Dutch West India Company, Sutton shows how printed maps of Dutch Atlantic territories helped rationalize the Dutch Republic's global expansion. Maps of land reclamation projects in the Netherlands, as well as the Dutch territories of New Netherland (now New York) and New Holland (Dutch Brazil), reveal how print media were used both to increase investment and to project a common narrative of national unity. Maps of this era showed those boundaries, commodities, and topographical details that publishers-state-sponsored corporate bodies-and the Dutch West India Company merchants and governing Dutch elite deemed significant to their agenda. In the process, Sutton argues, they perpetuated and promoted modern state capitalism.

The dramatic and stunning Welsh coastal landscapes of the island of Anglesey are documented in this beautiful pictorial record of the history of Anglesey's coast, from prehistoric times to the present day. The fact that Anglesey is an island has been crucial to its history, its coast the scene of prehistoric fishing and oyster catching, Neolithic tombs and Bronze Age round barrows, Roman influenced villas, Irish incursions, a Norman motte and the last of the great Edwardian castles to be built at Beaumaris, the development of Holyhead into its main port in the nineteenth century, and the growth of sustainable energy in the form of wind turbines in the twentieth. The photography taken by Mick Sharp and Jean Williamson is supplemented by text by Frances Lynch who introduces each chapter and provides detailed captions describing and providing background information to the photographs. This is the Welsh language edition of the book.

This folded map (890mm x 1000mm) pictorially illustrates the history London, it what is now the heart of London. With historical locations and events illustrated pictorially in the form of charming cartoon vignettes, the map is surrounded by the armorial crests of London. The map was drawn by Leslie Bullock and first published 1969 - 1971 by Collins Bartholomew as a fold-up map. This popular map from its time has now been re-digitized and republished in association with the Collins Bartholomew Archive using the latest printing technology. The print media used is 90 gsm "Progeo" paper which was specially developed as a map paper. It has high opacity to help reduce show through and a cross grain giving it greater durability to as the map is being folded.

Told for the very first time, this is the story of the adventure that shaped the world.

By knowing the shape of our earth we can create maps, survive the oceans, follow rivers, navigate the skies, and travel across the globe. This is the story of our world, of how we discovered what no one thought possible - the shape of the earth.

A thrilling and page-turning account of the first major expedition by data gatherers and qualified observers to interior Peru, to discover the shape and magnitude of the earth. Until humanity discovered this it would be impossible to produce accurate maps and sea charts, without which thousands of lives would be lost, and exact locations of cities, roads and rivers would never be known. This fascinating and dramatic story weaves scientific rigour, egos, funding crises and betrayal with sea voyages, jungles and volcanoes.

William Bartram's journeys around North America in the late 18th century crossed through much of what was then Native American territory. In the 1790s when this book was first published, the United States was newly formed and was expanding beyond its original thirteen colonies. However, American settlement into the distant lands beyond the Appalachians was limited and gradual. The vast expanse of land was unknown, and much was inhabited by Native American tribes. Determined to traverse and discover the lands of North America, William Bartram set out from the city of Philadelphia, making his way toward the south of the continent. Along his way he describes the wilderness terrain, rivers, landscape and peoples he meets. Many of the Native American tribes he encountered were welcoming, viewing Bartram as a strange curiosity. He would join the natives to eat at feasts, observing their lives and customs, learning their dialects and eventually gaining their trust and friendship.

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.

A uniquely collaborative analysis of human adaptation to the Polynesian islands, told through oral histories, biophysical evidence, and historical records Humans began to settle the area we know as Polynesia between 3,000 and 800 years ago, bringing with them material culture, including plants and animals, and ideas about societal organization, and then adapting to the specific biophysical features of the islands they discovered. The authors of this book analyze the formation of their human-environment systems using oral histories, biophysical evidence, and historical records, arguing that the Polynesian islands can serve as useful models for how human societies in general interact with their environments. The islands' clearly defined (and relatively isolated) environments, comparatively recent discovery by humans, and innovative and dynamic societies allow for insights not available when studying other cultures. Kamana Beamer, Te Maire Tau, and Peter Vitousek have collaborated with a dozen other scholars, many of them Polynesian, to show how these cultures adapted to novel environments in the past and how we can draw insights for global sustainability today.

The Histories of the Life and Deeds of the Admiral Christopher Columbus, attributed to his son Fernando Colon (1488-1539), is one of the most important first-hand sources for Columbus's voyages, and for the intellectual and political context in which they occurred. Originally written in Spanish, it was published in Venice in 1571 in an Italian translation by Alfonso de Ulloa. Drawing on different sources from those used by Las Casas and Oviedo in their contemporary narratives, it provides a comprehensive view of the entire Columbian enterprise, and forms a fitting conclusion to the Repertorium Columbianum.

"Imperial Geographies in Byzantine and Ottoman Space" opens new and insightful vistas on the nexus between empire and geography. The volume redirects attention from the Atlantic to the space of the eastern Mediterranean shaped by two empires of remarkable duration and territorial extent, the Byzantine and the Ottoman. The essays offer a diachronic and comparative account that spans the medieval and early modern periods and reaches into the nineteenth century. Methodologically rich, the essays combine historical, literary, and theoretical perspectives. Through texts as diverse as court records and chancery manuals, imperial treatises and fictional works, travel literature and theatrical adaptations, the essays explore ways in which the production of geographical knowledge supported imperial authority or revealed its precarious mastery of geography.

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.

Bartolome de Las Casas is certainly the most controversial figure in the long and troubled history of Spain's overseas empire. The fierce 'defender and apostle to the Indians', as he become known, Las Casas dedicated most of his adult life to describing the atrocities which the Spaniards had perpetrated against the indigenous inhabitants of the Americas. He was also, however, the man who perhaps did most to chronicle the life of the 'discoverer' of America, Christopher Columbus. For Las Casas, Columbus was the key figure in Las Casas's own prolonged conception of the Spanish presence in America and his interpretation of what had taken place there since 1492. This volume of the Repertorium Columbianum presents Las Casas's accounts, drawn mainly from the Historia de las Indias, of the events which preceded Columbus's first voyage and which occurred during his second and fourth voyages. Thus, it complements volume 6, A Synoptic Edition of the Log of Columbus's First Voyage, which contains Las Casas's description of the first voyage. Nigel Griffin's entirely new transcription of the original material is accompanied by this graceful and accurate English translation of the text, which for the most part has not been previously translated. The well-known Lascasian scholar Anthony Pagden introduces the volume, carefully placing Las Casas's account of the deeds of Christopher Columbus within the context of his entire life's work.

The story of the first stage of Europe's expansion into the Americas usually focuses on the personal actions of Christopher Columbus. Nevertheless, the enterprise of the Indies was a collective endeavour. Between Columbus's first voyage in 1492 and 1504 when he returned to Spain for the last time, thousands had sailed from Spain to the Americas. Their voices have largely been forgotten, but they have not been lost. The testimony those witnesses made, duly recorded and preserved, is the focus of this volume. The material has been available in the Spanish archives since the sixteenth century. Some historians used it in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and beginning in the nineteen sixties a group of Spanish scholars led by Antonio Muro Orejon published a definitive Spanish-language version. That is the basis of this edition, the first and only English-language version available. The dispositions of the individual witnesses provide evidence that the traditional picture of Columbus needs re-examination. This volume offers fascinating and unfamiliar information about the first voyages.