Map Commentaries

Map Commentaries

  • “The World Map with Explanations of Lands and Oceans”

    The anonymous Bankoku yochi sankai zusetsu [“The World Map with Explanations of Lands and Oceans”] was published in Japan in about 1850. It features a world map, on an oval projection, descriptive text, and a globe. It is one of many similar worl...

  • Mapping U.S. History in the Early Republic

    Publishers in the early U.S. republic drew extensively on European sources to supply Americans' rapidly growing appetite for printed matter. Without international copyright agreements, U.S. publishers were free to reuse European books . . . and maps....

  • “The Most Important Map in U.S. History”

    John Mitchell (1711-1768) was born in Virginia and educated at Edinburgh University in Scotland; he practiced as a physician back in Virginia before retiring to London in 1745. A botanist, Mitchell was soon adopted as an expert on exotic plants by th...

  • Mapping the Entire Cosmos: Heavens and Earth

    Joan Blaeu included this wonderfully ornate world map ~ Nova et accuratissima totius terrarum orbis tabula ("New and most accurate map of the whole world") ~ in the first volume of his eleven-volume Atlas Maior, published in Amsterdam in 16...