The Cartography of Western Travel Writers, 1750-1950

FAIN: FB-38699-03

Jordana Dym
Skidmore College (Saratoga Springs, NY 12866-1698)

No project description available

Associated Products

“The Familiar and the Strange: Western Travelers’ Maps of Europe and Asia, ca. 1600-1800 (Article)
Title: “The Familiar and the Strange: Western Travelers’ Maps of Europe and Asia, ca. 1600-1800
Author: Jordana Dym
Abstract: Europeans not only traveled extensively in the early modern period, they also wrote prolifically about their voyages on the familiar Grand Tour circuit to Italy, France and Germany as well as about excursions to more distant locations in Asia. While the more arduous overland and sea journeys to Asia remained the preserve of a more limited number of businessmen, adventurers and government officials in these two centuries, numerous travelogues describing Japan and, increasingly, India, also appeared on publisher’s lists throughout Western Europe. This paper argues that in this period, the convergence emerged not from increasing familiarity with distant countries, but from a conscious effort to find, or coax, the strange from the familiar. Examining over four dozen accounts written by elite and professional Britons, Frenchmen, Italians, Swedes and Germans who traveled to India, Japan, France and Italy between 1600 and 1800, what becomes clear is that the purpose of travel accounts describing these different regions influenced the author’s relationship with cartography more than the existence of geographic information. Such analysis undermines Henry Ashwood’s poetic distinction between geographers and travelers inserted at the front of Edward Terry’s seventeenth century voyages to India, that “Geographers present before men’s eyes/How every Land seated and bounded lies/But the Historian and wise Traveller, Decry what mindes and manners sojourn there.” The wise traveler might be as much geographer as historian, with the predilection to take geography into consideration increasing and expanding the more established the genre of travel writing became.
Year: 2004
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Philosophy & Geography 7:2 (2004): 155-191.

Travel Literature (Book Section)
Title: Travel Literature
Author: Jordana Dym
Editor: Michael Francis
Abstract: Scribners/Thomson-Gale, 2008.
Year: 2008
Publisher: Scribners/Thompson/Gale
Book Title: Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture.

Cartography (Book Section)
Title: Cartography
Author: Jordana Dym
Editor: Michael Francis
Abstract: An essay about colonial and nineteenth-century mapping in Spanish America.
Year: 2008
Publisher: Scribners/Thomson-Gale
Book Title: Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture.

Mapping Latin America: A Cartographic Reader (Book)
Title: Mapping Latin America: A Cartographic Reader
Editor: Karl Offen
Editor: Jordana Dym
Abstract: In Mapping Latin America, Jordana Dym and Karl Offen bring together scholars from a wide range of disciplines to examine and interpret more than five centuries of Latin American maps. Individual chapters take on maps of every size and scale and from a wide variety of mapmakers—from the hand-drawn maps of Native Americans, to those by famed explorers such as Alexander von Humboldt, to those produced in today’s newspapers and magazines for the general public. The maps collected here, and the interpretations that accompany them, provide an excellent source to help readers better understand how Latin American countries, regions, provinces, and municipalities came to be defined, measured, organized, occupied, settled, disputed, and understood—that is, how they came to have specific meanings to specific people at specific moments in time. The first book to deal with the broad sweep of mapping activities across Latin America, this lavishly illustrated volume will be required reading for students and scholars of geography and Latin American history, and anyone interested in understanding the significance of maps in human cultures and societies.
Year: 2011
Primary URL: http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo6225459.html
Primary URL Description: Publisher's website
Secondary URL: http://press.uchicago.edu/books/MappingLatinAmerica/index.html
Secondary URL Description: Related internet resources
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Type: Edited Volume
ISBN: 9780226618227

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