In this article, I argue that a late seventeenth-century Spanish derrotero-believed to have been seized by English buccaneers in the Pacific-is instead an English-made copy. My proposed re-attribution of the Huntington Library's Derrotero general del mar del sur (MssHM 918) challenges its earlier identifications as the 'Rosario derrotero' and the 'Morgan derrotero.' Drawing from material, visual, and documentary evidence, including the study of watermarks, paper, spelling errors, scribal style, and early auction catalogues, I demonstrate that-despite its dateline of Panama 1669-the atlas was not produced in the Spanish Americas by Spanish American navigators or chart makers. Instead, the Huntington derrotero appears to be one of at least two English copies identified thus far, raising questions about the role that English copies of stolen Spanish sea charts played in England's imperial ambitions.
This article provides a case study of how a national mapping agency, the Swiss Federal Office of Topography (swisstopo), transitioned from analogue to digital mapmaking between 1965 and 2008. Transition from analogue to digital mapmaking began with use of computers to make geodetic calculations and digital elevation models in the 1960s. In the late 1990s, digital processes replaced negative scribing on glass, which was the last analogue cartographic craft practiced at the Federal Office of Topography. Technological innovations like raster scanning, digital photogrammetry, and computer-aided design (CAD) made this technological revolution possible. The interest groups pushing for digitisation began with the military during the early days of digitisation, expanding to administrative, scientific, and private users throughout the 1980s. The digitisation of Swiss state cartography that resulted from a combination of feasibility and demand intertwined closely with the analogue world it emerged from. The essay documents the development of an analogue-digital hybrid system which finally ceded to CAD as the principal form of map production at swisstopo.
This article examines the making of Alexander Keith Johnston's Physical Atlas: the 1848 first edition, the second and enlarged 1856 edition, and the intermediate reduced edition of 1850. In examining the editions of the Physical Atlas attention is paid to Johnston's personal papers and unpublished correspondence to reveal how he worked, with whom, and to what end. The article draws upon work in processual map history, the history of science, and the connections between book history and map history to examine the collaborative authorship in the atlas's maps and letterpress text, and to illustrate the ways in which Johnston promoted his own authority as he also depended upon that of others in using the atlas to promote physical geography and the sciences in the mid-nineteenth century.
The 'Descripcion de Mexico' by physician Diego de Cisneros is the oldest known map printed in the Americas. Engraved in New Spain on copper by Flemish artist Samuel Stradanus, it was included in Cisneros's Sitio, naturaleza y propriedades de la ciudad de Mexico (1618), a treatise on Hippocratic-Galenic medicine published during a time of debate in the viceregal capital over astrological determinism. The map supports the author's medical theses, which highlight the influence of environmental conditions on human health above astrological factors and reject the supposed effects of birthplace on individual abilities, particularly of American-born Spaniards. However, these meanings were lost when the map was copied and circulated independently of the book. Through analysis of the materiality and context of known versions of this map, including extant copies and apocryphal attributions, this article corrects misattributions and recovers understanding of the 'Descripcion de Mexico' as a visual instrument for scientific debate and an intervention in seventeenth-century Mexico's political, social, and astrological discussions.
