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  1. Dartmouth Libraries
  2. Research Guides
  3. Dartmouth Libraries Guides
  4. Cartography/History of Cartography
  5. History of cartography

Cartography/History of Cartography

This research guide will help you find books, print journals and other resources about Cartography. Cartography studies the history of maps and mapmaking and interpretation of maps.
  • Introduction
  • Understanding maps
  • Finding books
  • Finding journals & magazines
  • More cartographic resources
  • History of cartography
    • United States
    • South America
  • Projections
  • Geovisualization
  • Art & cartography
  • History through maps
  • Societies, etc.
  • Digital mapping
  • Animated maps
  • Map humor
  • Web mapping This link opens in a new window
  • Google Earth & Maps
  • Map Mashups
  • Citing cartographic information
  • Geographic Information Systems This link opens in a new window
  • Maps & Atlases This link opens in a new window
  • Scholarly communication This link opens in a new window

Finding articles and journal titles

You can find articles on the history of cartography in many publications. You can look at specific journals, use an article index or the search box at the top of the page. Below is a short list of journal titles of interest.

  • Issue cover artImago Mundi by International Society for the History of Cartography
    • On Campus or VPN
    Call Number: Electronic journal
    Imago Mundi is an English-language journal devoted to the study of early maps in all their aspects. Full-length articles, with abstracts in English, French, German and Spanish, deal with the history and interpretation of non-current maps and mapmaking in any part of the world. ...
  • Journal logoE-perimetron
    • Open Access Icon
    Call Number: Electronic journal
    This electronic journal aims to combines issues on history of cartography and maps with a variety of possibilities offered by the new digital information and communication technologies.

Internet resource(s)

  • The History of Cartography
    • Open Access Icon
    • E-Book
    On this site the University of Chicago Press is pleased to present the first three volumes of the History of Cartography in PDF format. Navigate to the PDFs from the left column. Each chapter of each book is a single PDF. The search box on the left allows searching across the content of all the PDFs that make up the first six books.

Keeping up with Cartography/GIS journal literature

Want an easy way to keep up with the journal literature for Cartography or GIS? And do you use a mobile device? You can install the BrowZine app and create a custom Bookshelf of your favorite journal titles. Then you will get the Table of Contents (ToCs) of your favorite journals automatically delivered to you when they become available. Once you have the ToC's, you can download and read the articles you want from the journals for which we have subscriptions.

You can get the app from the App Store or Google Play.

Don't own or use a mobile device? You can still use BrowZine! It's also available in a web version. You can get to it here. The web version works the same way as the app version. Find the journals you like, create a custom Bookshelf, get ToCs and read the articles you want.

Introduction

2. The study of the ontological and epistemological bases of maps and the history of map making and use. People have been producing and using maps for thousands of years. Some academics have even argued that mapping processes are culturally universal, an innate human activity evident across all societies (e.g., Blaut, et al. 2003), although the resulting cartographic representations are very diverse. It was only in the Renaissance, however, that cartography as a codified form of knowledge emerged. Prior to this, knowledge of the geographical world was parochial and documented from multiple perspectives to no formal, universal standards. Areas that were unknown were literally off the map, filled with religious cosmology and figures of myth and imagination. Maps were understood more as reminders or as spatial stories, than as scientific representations of the world based on surveyed data.

Rogers, A., Castree, N., & Kitchin, R. (2013). Cartography. In A Dictionary of Human Geography. : Oxford University Press. Retrieved 3 Nov. 2020

In the library's collections

  • cartography history
  • cartography united states history
    To find the cartographic history of a specific nation, include the name of the country in your search.
  • cartography europe history
  • cartography africa history
  • cartographers
  • women cartographers

Introductory reading(s)

  • Cover artThe history of cartography by Harley, J. B.; Woodward, David; Lewis, G. Malcolm, eds.
    • Open Access Icon
    • E-Book
    Call Number: eBook
    ISBN: 9780226316352
    On this site the University of Chicago Press is pleased to present the first three volumes of the History of Cartography in PDF format. Navigate to the PDFs from the left column. Each chapter of each book is a single PDF. The search box on the left allows searching across the content of all the PDFs that make up the first six books. ...
  • Cover artThe history of cartography by J.B. Harley and David Woodward, eds.
    • Book
    Call Number: Baker-Berry GA 201 .H53 1987
    A multi-volume set covering the history of Cartography by region and time.
  • Cover artMapping the world: an illustrated history of cartography by Ralph E. Ehrenberg
    • Book
    Call Number: Evans Map Room GA 201 .E35 2006
    ISBN: 9780792265252
    Mapping the World is a one-of-a-kind collection of cartographic treasures that spans thousands of years and many cultures, from an ancient Babylonian map of the world etched on clay to the latest high-tech maps of the earth, seas, and the skies above. With more than one hundred maps and other illustrations and an introduction and running commentary by Ralph E. Ehrenberg, this book tells a fascinating story of geographic discovery, scientific invention, and the art and technique of mapmaking. ...
  • Cover ArtThe world through maps: a history of cartography by John Rennie Short
    • Book
    Call Number: Baker-Berry GA 201 .S46 2003
    ISBN: 9781552978115
    The history of mapping from prehistoric times to the present. This book explores how maps were developed and why they reveal as much about the people who created them as they reveal about the world. Throughout the ages, maps have reflected religious beliefs, disseminated propaganda, expressed cultural attitudes, and promoted new theories. Through accessible text and color images, the book traces the fascinating history of cartography. ...

Selected book title(s)

  • Cover artThe king's two maps: cartography and culture in thirteenth-century England by Daniel Birkholz
    • On Campus or VPN
    • E-Book
    Call Number: eBook
    ISBN: 9780203505427
    While a culture may have a dominant way of "mapping," its geography is always plural, and there is always competition among conceptions of space. Beginning with this understanding, this book traces the map's early development into an emblem of the state, and charts the social and cultural implications of this phenomenon. This book chronicles the specific technologies, both material and epistemological, by which the map shows itself capable of accessing, organizing, and reorienting a tremendous range of information.
  • Cover artKorea: a cartographic history by John Rennie Short
    • On Campus or VPN
    • E-Book
    Call Number: eBook
    ISBN: 9780226753645
    The first general history of Korea as seen through maps, Korea: A Cartographic History provides a beautifully illustrated introduction to how Korea was and is represented cartographically. John Rennie Short encapsulates six hundred years of maps made by Koreans and non-Koreans alike. ...
  • Cover ArtThe mapmakers by John Noble Wilford
    • Book
    Call Number: Baker-Berry GA 105.3 .W49 2000
    ISBN: 9780375409295
    John Noble Wilford recounts the history of cartography from antiquity to the space age. Wilford brings the story up to the year 2000 as he shows the impact of new technologies that make it possible for cartographers to go where no one has been before, from the deepest reaches of the universe (where astronomers are mapping time as well as space) to the inside of the human brain. ...
  • Cover artMaps and civilization: cartography in culture and society by Norman J. W. Thrower
    • On Campus or VPN
    • E-Book
    Call Number: eBook
    ISBN: 9780226799742
    In this concise introduction to the history of cartography, Norman J. W. Thrower charts the intimate links between maps and history from antiquity to the present day. A wealth of illustrations, including the oldest known map and contemporary examples made using Geographical Information Systems (GIS), illuminate the many ways in which various human cultures have interpreted spatial relationships. ...
  • Cover artMap worlds: a history of women in cartography by Will C. van den Hoonaard
    • On Campus or VPN
    • E-Book
    Call Number: eBook
    ISBN: 9781554589333
    Map Worlds plots a journey of discovery through the world of women map-makers from the golden age of cartography in the sixteenth-century Low Countries to tactile maps in contemporary Brazil. Will C. van den Hoonaard examines the history of women in the profession, sets out the situation of women in technical fields and cartography-related organizations, and outlines the challenges they face in their careers. ...
  • Cover artProducing the Pacific: maps and narratives of Spanish exploration (1567-1606) by Mercedes Maroto Camino
    • On Campus or VPN
    • E-Book
    Call Number: eBook
    ISBN: 9789042019942
    This volume offers the reader an interdisciplinary reading of the maps, narratives and rituals related to the three Spanish voyages to the South Pacific that took place between 1567 and 1606. These journeys were led by Alvaro de Mendana, Pedro Fernandez de Quiros and Isabel Barreto, the first woman ever to become admiral of and command a fleet. Mercedes Maroto Camino presents a cultural analysis of these journeys and takes issue with some established notions about the value of the past and the way it is always rewritten from the perspective of the present. ...
  • Cover ArtThe red atlas: how the Soviet Union secretly mapped the world by John Davies; Alexander J. Kent
    • Book
    Call Number: Baker-Berry G 1046 .B7 D3 2017
    ISBN: 9780226389578
    Nearly thirty years after the end of the Cold War, its legacy and the accompanying Russian-American tension continues to loom large. Russia's access to detailed information on the United States and its allies may not seem so shocking in this day of data clouds and leaks, but long before we had satellite imagery of any neighborhood at a finger's reach, the amount the Soviet government knew about your family's city, street, and even your home would astonish you. Revealing how this was possible, The Red Atlas is the never-before-told story of the most comprehensive mapping endeavor in history and the surprising maps that resulted. ...
  • Cover artRemapping modern Germany after National Socialism, 1945-1961 by Matthew D. Mingus
    • On Campus or VPN
    • E-Book
    Call Number: eBook
    ISBN: 9780815635383
    Located in the often-contentious center of the European continent, German territory has regularly served as a primary tool through which to understand and study Germany's economic, cultural, and political development. Many German geographers throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries became deeply invested in geopolitical determinism--the idea that a nation's territorial holdings (or losses) dictate every other aspect of its existence. Taking this as his premise, Mingus focuses on the use of maps as mediums through which the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union sought to reshape German national identity after the Second World War. As important as maps and the study of geography have been to the field of European history, few scholars have looked at the postwar development of occupied Germany through the lens of the map--the most effective means to orient German citizens ontologically within a clearly and purposefully delineated spatial framework. ...

Other library resource(s)

  • Resource logoHistory of cartography from Oxford Bibliographies Online by Matthew H. Edney
    • On Campus or VPN
    Call Number: Electronic resource
    ISBN: 9780199874002
    Until the 1980s, the study of the history of cartography was defined by two idealizations: (1) that maps are strictly factual statements and (2) that cartography is an innately progressive science that serves as a surrogate for Western civilization as a whole. Then, the recognition that maps are actually cultural texts made for specific functions transformed map history into an exciting, interdisciplinary field of study. ...
  • << Previous: More cartographic resources
  • Next: United States >>
  • Last Updated: May 14, 2025 12:07 PM
  • URL: https://researchguides.dartmouth.edu/cartography
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Tags: art and cartography, digital_mapping, geovisualization, map projections, map_making, mapping, Social Sciences

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