Cartographic Communication

Paper Summary:

This paper reviews and analyzes the early maps of the Americas, the men who created them, the institutions that produced and promoted them based on data and rough maps brought back to Europe by explorers, and the purposes - especially their communicative capabilities - they served in terms of the development of colonial properties for Spain, England, and Portugal among other European nations.

Outline:
Thesis Statement
Introduction: Incomplete Communication in Some Maps
Literature Review: History of Maps and the Age of Discovery

From the Paper:

"Certainly the leaders in Portugal and Spain, among the most active early exploring nations, had volumes of logs, notes, journals and other historical records of discoveries made by their intrepid sailors. But, according to Monica L. Smith, writing in Annals of the Association of American Geographers (Smith, 2005), "...the visual stimulus of a map may be more powerful than the scholarly text that accompanies it." Smith explains. Indeed, by providing a visual image "the map gives another dimension to the image it represents," Smith states in her article, "and restricts, or even overtakes, the freedom of its reader to create an image of his own." There are implications of "linguistics" within the creation of a map, Smith asserts, through the process of the cartographer's "consciously created and manipulated" images. But Smith, a professor of anthropology at UCLA, believes while ancient maps do communicate dimensions that are extremely useful to historians, "the understanding of maps as interpretive documents" has had little or no affect on portrayals of the "premodern past." That is due to the fact that scholarly illustrations of historic lands and cultures "tend to be of the absolutist variety." Smith believes the use of maps in textbooks too often communicate a narrow and shallow picture of early cultural groups. One map in a text "implies that a state or empire was always growing toward its eventual borders in a kind of long-term manifest destiny."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Casa de Contratacion (2005). La Casa de Contratacion (The House of Trade), Retrieved May 26, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casa_de_la_contracion.
• Harley, J. B., & Woodward, D. (1991). An alternative route to mapping history. Americas, 43(5), 6-14.
• Hebert, John R. (2002). The 1562 Map of America by Diego Gutierrez, Library of Congress, Retrieved May 25, 2007, from http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/gmdhtml/gutierrz.html.
• McIntosh, Gregory C. (2000). A Tale of Two Admirals (early world maps). Mercator's World, 5(3), 18-27.
• Smith, Monica l. (2005). Networks, Territories, and the Cartography of Ancient States. Annals of The Association of American Geographers, 95(4), 832-849.

More papers on Cartographic Communication:

• Research Paper # 98702 : "Cartographic Relief Representation"
• Persuasive Essay # 142244 : "Listening as a Communication Skill"
• Essay # 137570 : "Communication: Culture, Boundary Crossings, and Presenting Reality"

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