The Silk Road is a route from the edges of the European world to the central plains of China. For thousands of years, its history has been a traveller's history, of brief encounters in desert towns, snowbound passes and nameless forts. It was the conduit that first brought Buddhism, Christianity and Islam into China, and the site of much of the 'Great Game' between Victorian empires. Jonathan Clements guides the reader through the trackless wastes of the Taklamakan Desert, its black whirlwinds and dead lakes, its shimmering mirages, lost cities and mysterious mummies, but also its iconic statues and memorable modern pop songs. He explains the truth behind odd tales of horses that sweat blood, defaced statues and missing frescoes, and Marco Polo's stories of black gold that seeps from the earth.

In the age of MapQuest and GPS, we take cartographic literacy for granted. We should not; the ability to find meaning in maps is the fruit of a long process of exposure and instruction. A ""carto-coded"" America - a nation in which maps are pervasive and meaningful - had to be created. The Social Life of Maps tracks American cartography's spectacular rise to its unprecedented cultural influence. Between 1750 and 1860, maps did more than communicate geographic information and political pretensions. They became affordable and intelligible to ordinary American men and women looking for their place in the world. School maps quickly entered classrooms, where they shaped reading and other cognitive exercises; giant maps drew attention in public spaces; miniature maps helped Americans chart personal experiences. In short, maps were uniquely social objects whose visual and material expressions affected commercial practices and graphic arts, theatrical performances and the communication of emotions. This lavishly illustrated study follows popular maps from their points of creation to shops and galleries, schoolrooms and coat pockets, parlors and bookbindings. Between the decades leading up to the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, early Americans bonded with maps; Martin Bruckner's comprehensive history of quotidian cartographic encounters is the first to show us how.

To sail the oceans needed skill as well as courage and experience, and the sea chart with, where appropriate, the coastal view, was the tool by which ships of trade, transport or conquest navigated their course. This book looks at the history and development of the chart and the related nautical map, in both scientific and aesthetic terms, as a means of safe and accurate seaborne navigation. The Italian merchant-venturers of the early thirteenth century developed the earliest 'portulan' pilot charts of the Mediterranean. The subsequent speed of exploration by European seafarers, encompassing the New World, the extraordinary voyages around the Cape of Good Hope and the opening up of the trade to the East, India and the Spice Islands were both a result of the development of the sea chart and additionally as an aid to that development. By the eighteenth century the discovery and charting of the coasts and oceans of the globe had become a strategic naval and commercial requirement. Such involvements led to Cook's voyages in the Pacific, the search for the Northwest Passage and races to the Arctic and Antarctic. The volume is arranged along chronological and then geographical lines. Each of the ten chapters is split into two distinct halves examining the history of the charting of a particular region and the context under which such charting took place following which specific navigational charts and views together with other relevant illustrations are presented. Key figures or milestones in the history of charting are then presented in stand-alone story box features. This new edition features around 40 new charts and accompanying text.

Over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the increasing accuracy and legibility of cartographic projections, the proliferation of empirically based chorographies, and the popular vogue for travel narratives served to order, package, and commodify space in a manner that was critical to the formation of a unified Britain. In tandem with such developments, however, a trenchant anti-cartographic skepticism also emerged. This critique of the map can be seen in many literary works of the period that satirize the efficacy and value of maps and highlight their ideological purposes. Against the Map argues that our understanding of the production of national space during this time must also account for these sites of resistance and opposition to hegemonic forms of geographical representation, such as the map. This study utilizes the methodologies of critical geography, as well as literary criticism and theory, to detail the conflicted and often adversarial relationship between cartographic and literary representations of the nation and its geography. While examining atlases, almanacs, itineraries, and other materials, Adam Sills focuses particularly on the construction of heterotopias in the works of John Bunyan, Aphra Behn, Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe, Samuel Johnson, and Jane Austen. These "other" spaces, such as neighborhood, home, and country, are not reducible to the map but have played an equally important role in the shaping of British national identity. Ultimately, Against the Map suggests that nation is forged not only in concert with the map but, just as important, against it.

Over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the increasing accuracy and legibility of cartographic projections, the proliferation of empirically based chorographies, and the popular vogue for travel narratives served to order, package, and commodify space in a manner that was critical to the formation of a unified Britain. In tandem with such developments, however, a trenchant anti-cartographic skepticism also emerged. This critique of the map can be seen in many literary works of the period that satirize the efficacy and value of maps and highlight their ideological purposes. Against the Map argues that our understanding of the production of national space during this time must also account for these sites of resistance and opposition to hegemonic forms of geographical representation, such as the map. This study utilizes the methodologies of critical geography, as well as literary criticism and theory, to detail the conflicted and often adversarial relationship between cartographic and literary representations of the nation and its geography. While examining atlases, almanacs, itineraries, and other materials, Adam Sills focuses particularly on the construction of heterotopias in the works of John Bunyan, Aphra Behn, Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe, Samuel Johnson, and Jane Austen. These "other" spaces, such as neighborhood, home, and country, are not reducible to the map but have played an equally important role in the shaping of British national identity. Ultimately, Against the Map suggests that nation is forged not only in concert with the map but, just as important, against it.

Renaissance Galway is the next ancillary publication from the Irish Historic Towns Atlas. The subject of the book is the remarkable 'pictorial map' of Galway, which was produced in the mid-seventeenth century. It offers a bird's eye view of Galway city at this time and presents insights into the cultural, sociopolitical and religious outlook of the local ruling elite - the so-called 'tribes' of Galway. Originally intended as a wall hanging, it was produced to impress and remains a centrepiece of Galway's visual history. Only two copies of the original printed map are known to exist and it is the well-preserved version from Trinity College, Dublin that is reproduced in Renaissance Galway. Following the format of previous map-guides from the Irish Historic Towns Atlas, the book presents carefully selected extracts from the pictorial map, each accompanied by a commentary. These range from descriptions of particular buildings or areas, to aspects of everyday life that are revealed in the map. In an introductory essay, the author ponders the many mysteries that continue to surround the pictorial map of Galway - its origins, compilers and purpose. Together the map extracts and accompanying texts offer a new perspective - a window into the culture and mindset of Galway's mid-seventeenth century ruling Catholic elite. The modern viewer is invited to inhabit the world of 'Renaissance Galway'. The Irish Historic Towns Atlas is a research project of the Royal Irish Academy and is part of a wider European scheme. www.ihta.ie

The long history of transatlantic movement in the Spanish-speaking world has had a significant impact on present-day concepts of Mexico and the implications of representing Mexico and Latin America more generally in Spain, Europe, and the world. In addition to analyzing texts that have received little to no critical attention, the book examines the connections between contemporary travel, including the local dynamics of encounters and the global circulation of information, and the significant influence of the history of exchange between Spain and Mexico in the construction of existing ideas of place. To frame the analysis of contemporary travel writing, the book examines key moments in the history of Mexican-Spanish relations, including the origins of narratives regarding Spaniards' sense of Mexico's similarity to and difference from Spain. This history underpins the discussion of the role of Spanish travelers in their encounters with Mexican peoples and places and their reflection on their own role as communicators of cultural meaning and participants in the tourist economy with its impact-both negative and positive-on places.

The long history of transatlantic movement in the Spanish-speaking world has had a significant impact on present-day concepts of Mexico and the implications of representing Mexico and Latin America more generally in Spain, Europe, and the world. In addition to analyzing texts that have received little to no critical attention, the book examines the connections between contemporary travel, including the local dynamics of encounters and the global circulation of information, and the significant influence of the history of exchange between Spain and Mexico in the construction of existing ideas of place. To frame the analysis of contemporary travel writing, the book examines key moments in the history of Mexican-Spanish relations, including the origins of narratives regarding Spaniards' sense of Mexico's similarity to and difference from Spain. This history underpins the discussion of the role of Spanish travelers in their encounters with Mexican peoples and places and their reflection on their own role as communicators of cultural meaning and participants in the tourist economy with its impact-both negative and positive-on places.

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.

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.

This is a survey of how Highland society organised its farming communities, exploited its resource base and interacted with its environment from prehistory to 1914. There has long been a view that the farming communities to be found in the Highlands prior to the Clearances were archaic forms. The way in which they were organised, the way in which they farmed the land and the technologies which they employed were all seen as taking shape during prehistory and then surviving relatively unchanged. Such a view first emerged first during the late 19th century and found repeated expression through a number of studies thereafter. However, its entrenchment in the literature was despite the fact that many ongoing studies have highlighted aspects of how the region changed from prehistory onwards. This study confronts this conflict over the question of continuity/discontinuity debate through an analysis of the cultural landscape. Starting with prehistory, it examines the way in which the farming community was organised: its institutional basis, its strategies of resource use and how these impacted on landscape, and the way in which it interacted with the challenges of its environment. It carries these themes forward through the medieval and early modern periods, rounding off the discussion with a substantive review of the gradual spread of commercial sheep farming and the emergence of the crofting townships over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Throughout, it draws out what changed and what was carried forward from each period so that we have a better understanding of the region's dynamic history, as opposed to the ahistorical views that inevitably flow from a stress on cultural inertia. It provides a one stop text for the long term history of the Highland countryside. It synthesises a great deal of work on the Highland farming community during the medieval and early modern periods in terms of its institutional organisation, resource exploitation, landscape impacts and interactions with environment. It introduces new ideas and arguments that have not been treated or previewed in other published work. It provides the most substantive review of the continuity/discontinuity debate in the Highland landscape currently available.

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.

The Gold Rush era was an amazing time in our country's history. California had just been occupied during the Mexican-American War and wasn't officially a U.S. territory yet when gold was discovered in 1848. Suddenly the whole world was electrified by the news and tales of men digging vast amounts of wealth out of the ground, even finding gold nuggets just lying around. Within five years, 250,000 miners dug up more than $200 million in gold--about $600 billion in today's dollars."Gold "offers a feel for what it was like to live through the heady days of the discovery and exploitation of gold in California in the mid-1800s through firsthand accounts, short stories, and tall tales written by the people who were there. These eyewitness accounts offer an immediacy that brings the events to life.

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?

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.

Explore the social and cultural history of 100 of the world's most important cities. From the first towns in Mesopotamia to today's global metropolises, cities have marked the progress of civilisation. Written in the form of illustrated "biographies", Great Cities offers a rich historical overview of each featured city, brought to vivid life with paintings, photographs, timelines, maps, and artefacts. This history book provides a fascinating insight into the events, movements and people throughout history who have shaped the cities where we live. Inside the pages of this visual guide, discover: - The story behind each city - how it was established, critical moments in its development, and why it is considered historically significant - The different types of cities, from the centres of ancient and lost civilisations and great river cities to planned cities and modern metropolises - Beautiful illustrations with large-scale reproductions of paintings, photographs, maps, and other artefacts - Stunning images of city life and key moments in history are complemented by close-ups of revealing details and feature panels that provide additional context From the ancient to the modern, get under the skin of what made cities like Persepolis, Paris, Vienna, Prague, Amsterdam, Tokyo, and Dubai tick. This lavish book is about more than history - it explores the art, architecture, commerce, and politics of the great civilisations throughout history. Great Cities provides a unique window into how cities have become markers of human progress. Explore which ancient civilisation founded the precursor to Mexico City, why Venice was the gateway to the East, what the Belle Epoque was, and who the first city to build sewers was. It's the perfect gift for armchair explorers interested in history, geography, and the arts.

This volume explores the lives and activities of people of African descent in Europe between the 1880s and the beginning of the twenty-first century. It goes beyond the still-dominant Anglo-American or transatlantic focus of diaspora studies to examine the experiences of black and white Africans, Afro-Caribbeans and African Americans who settled or travelled in Germany, France, Portugal, Italy and the Soviet Union, as well as in Britain. At the same time, while studies of Africans in Europe have tended to focus on the relationship between colonial (or former colonial) subjects and their respective metropolitan nation states, the essays in this volume widen the lens to consider the skills, practices and negotiations called for by other kinds of border-crossing: The subjects of these essays include people moving between European states and state jurisdictions or from the former colony of one state to another place in Europe, African-born colonial settlers returning to the metropolis, migrants conversing across ethnic and cultural boundaries among 'Africans', and visitors for whom the face-to-face encounter with European society involves working across the 'colour line' and testing the limits of solidarity. Case studies of family life, community-building and politics and cultural production, drawing on original research, illuminate the transformative impact of those journeys and encounters and the forms of 'transnational practice' that they have generated. The contributors include specialist scholars in social history, art history, anthropology, cultural studies and literature, as well as a novelist and a filmmaker who reflect on their own experiences of these complex histories and the challenges of narrating them.