Book description
Jerry Brotton is the presenter of the acclaimed BBC4 series 'Maps:
Power, Plunder and Possession'. Here he tells the story of our world
through maps.
Throughout history, maps have been fundamental in shaping our view
of the world, and our place in it. But far from being purely
scientific objects, world maps are unavoidably ideological and
subjective, intimately bound up with the systems of power and
authority of particular times and places. Mapmakers do not simply
represent the world, they construct it out of the ideas of their age.
In this scintillating book, Jerry Brotton examines the significance
of 12 maps - from the mystical representations of ancient history to
the satellite-derived imagery of today. He vividly recreates the
environments and circumstances in which each of the maps was made,
showing how each conveys a highly individual view of the world -
whether the Jerusalem-centred Christian perspective of the 14th
century Hereford Mappa Mundi or the Peters projection of the 1970s
which aimed to give due weight to 'the third world'.
Although the way we map our surroundings is once more changing
dramatically, Brotton argues that maps today are no more definitive or
objective than they have ever been - but that they continue to make
arguments and propositions about the world, and to recreate, shape and
mediate our view of it. Readers of this book will never look at a map
in quite the same way again.
Jerry Brotton is Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary
University of London, and a leading expert in the history of maps and
Renaissance cartography. His most recent book,
The Sale of
the Late King's Goods: Charles I and his Art Collection
(2006), was short-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize as well as the
Hessell-Tiltman History Prize, and led to him being short-listed for the
THES Young Academic Author of the Year Award. He has appeared on various
British TV programmes, including 'Leonardo' (BBC1), 'The Medici'
(Channel 4) and 'Great British Islam' (Channel 4), and he was the
presenter of the BBC4 series 'Maps: Power, Plunder and Possession' in
2010.
