refusal to house him during his exile—including the Dutch holdings overseas. He gave the task of taking their American holdings to his brother James, the Duke of York. Hopelessly outnumbered, the Dutch surrendered in 1664 without firing a shot. Speed’s map shows to the victors go not only the spoils, but also the geography. His map is almost a perfect copy of Jansson’s map, with one major difference: New Amsterdam and New Netherlands have both become New York ( Figure H ).
The maps Smiley found reflected other changes in the development of cartography as well. As richly illustrated as they were, the Dutch maps were only as accurate as their source maps, which were wildly inconsistent. As the Renaissance became the Enlightenment, however, a more scientific form ofmapmaking began in France, where Louis XIV established the first royal academy of science in 1666. One of his first decrees was to make a new topographical map of France, and scientists took up the challenge, dragging a chain from Paris to Amiens to determine the exact length of a degree of latitude, and using the moons of Jupiter to determine longitude. By the time the Académie finished its survey of the coast in 1684, it had determined that even the best current maps were more than thirty miles off the mark.
Using this as a beginning, Gian Domenico Cassini and family triangulated distances from a central meridian to complete the first modern topographical map, a feat that took more than one hundred years and three generations of Cassinis to complete. But the new scientific techniques were used right away. Cartographers including Nicolas Sanson, Guillaume De L’Isle, and J.B. Bourguignon D’Anville led the way in applying the Cassinis’ methods to create successively more accurate maps of both Europe and the New World. By the turn of the eighteenth century, the Dutch maps began to feel antiquated.
By then, the new scientific techniques had also crossed the English Channel to the country of Isaac Newton and Roger Bacon. Britain’s first great mapmaker, John Speed, used mostly Dutch source material for his maps. But after the Restoration and the ensuing war with the Netherlands, it became a matter of national pride for the English to have their own maps—especially across the Atlantic. How could it fend offencroachments of the Dutch, French, and Native Americans on its territory if it didn’t know what that territory was? The same applied at sea. Until the late 1600s, English navigators relied primarily on Dutch sea charts by Lucas Janszoon Waghenaer, whose name became anglicized to the point that all pilot books became known as “waggoners.” One cartographer namedJohn Seller, however, envisioned a thoroughly modern, thoroughly English sea atlas, and he fought to make it a reality—even if he personally received little credit for it during his lifetime.
—
“SO COMPLETELY DID the Dutch mapmakers of the 17th century dominate the sale and distribution of cartographic material, that little attention has been given by the public to efforts made by their English speaking neighbors across the sea,” begins a 1986 article in the antiquarian trade magazine
AB Bookman’s Weekly.
It continues:
So beautifully produced are the Dutch atlases, with their lovely engravings, rich color and elegant binding, that we are reluctant to close their covers and open those of a contemporary English volume. But if we do, we are rewarded. We perceive the map trade in its swaddling clothes, intriguing experiments within a wide open market, the efforts of men and women who risked their livelihoods to advance the art and fill the needs of an every expanding empire. And when we turn their pages to the maps and charts of America, we are met by extraordinary records of an empire at work, and documents of England’s struggle to settle a continent 200 times her size, and far across a threatening sea.
With such lofty prose, E. Forbes Smiley III began his article “The Origins
The maps Smiley found reflected other changes in the development of cartography as well. As richly illustrated as they were, the Dutch maps were only as accurate as their source maps, which were wildly inconsistent. As the Renaissance became the Enlightenment, however, a more scientific form ofmapmaking began in France, where Louis XIV established the first royal academy of science in 1666. One of his first decrees was to make a new topographical map of France, and scientists took up the challenge, dragging a chain from Paris to Amiens to determine the exact length of a degree of latitude, and using the moons of Jupiter to determine longitude. By the time the Académie finished its survey of the coast in 1684, it had determined that even the best current maps were more than thirty miles off the mark.
Using this as a beginning, Gian Domenico Cassini and family triangulated distances from a central meridian to complete the first modern topographical map, a feat that took more than one hundred years and three generations of Cassinis to complete. But the new scientific techniques were used right away. Cartographers including Nicolas Sanson, Guillaume De L’Isle, and J.B. Bourguignon D’Anville led the way in applying the Cassinis’ methods to create successively more accurate maps of both Europe and the New World. By the turn of the eighteenth century, the Dutch maps began to feel antiquated.
By then, the new scientific techniques had also crossed the English Channel to the country of Isaac Newton and Roger Bacon. Britain’s first great mapmaker, John Speed, used mostly Dutch source material for his maps. But after the Restoration and the ensuing war with the Netherlands, it became a matter of national pride for the English to have their own maps—especially across the Atlantic. How could it fend offencroachments of the Dutch, French, and Native Americans on its territory if it didn’t know what that territory was? The same applied at sea. Until the late 1600s, English navigators relied primarily on Dutch sea charts by Lucas Janszoon Waghenaer, whose name became anglicized to the point that all pilot books became known as “waggoners.” One cartographer namedJohn Seller, however, envisioned a thoroughly modern, thoroughly English sea atlas, and he fought to make it a reality—even if he personally received little credit for it during his lifetime.
—
“SO COMPLETELY DID the Dutch mapmakers of the 17th century dominate the sale and distribution of cartographic material, that little attention has been given by the public to efforts made by their English speaking neighbors across the sea,” begins a 1986 article in the antiquarian trade magazine
AB Bookman’s Weekly.
It continues:
So beautifully produced are the Dutch atlases, with their lovely engravings, rich color and elegant binding, that we are reluctant to close their covers and open those of a contemporary English volume. But if we do, we are rewarded. We perceive the map trade in its swaddling clothes, intriguing experiments within a wide open market, the efforts of men and women who risked their livelihoods to advance the art and fill the needs of an every expanding empire. And when we turn their pages to the maps and charts of America, we are met by extraordinary records of an empire at work, and documents of England’s struggle to settle a continent 200 times her size, and far across a threatening sea.
With such lofty prose, E. Forbes Smiley III began his article “The Origins
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