Comparative Map History and "The History of Cartography": Methodologies, Institutions, and Idealizations

by Matthew H Edney

Overview

The apparently centuries-old field of “the history of cartography” was invented after 1950 through incomplete historiographies by leading map historians. This monograph uses an empirically grounded analysis of the ways in which early maps have been systematically studied since the early 1800s to offer an innovative account of the practices and institutions of comparative map history in support of Western imperialism and nationalism, and of how the field was reconfigured as the core of a newly idealized discipline of “the history of cartography.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789004742680
Publisher:	Brill Academic Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	07/31/2025
Series:	Brill Research Perspectives in Humanities and Social Sciences
Pages:	152
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 1.25(h) x 9.00(d)

About the Author

Matthew H. Edney, Ph.D. (1990), Osher Professor in the History of Cartography (University of Southern Maine), directs the History of Cartography Project (Wisconsin). Recent books are Cartography: The Ideal and Its History and Cartography in the European Enlightenment (edited with Mary Pedley).

Table of Contents

Contents
Acknowledgments
List of Figures and Tables
Abbreviations
 Introduction
 1 Writing the History of Map History
 2 Methodologies and Threads of Comparative Map History
 3 Comparative Map Historians: Map Librarians, Antiquarians, and Academics
 4 Inventing the Deficient Discipline of “the History of Cartography”
 5 Fixing the Conceptual Deficiencies of the History of Cartography
Bibliography