Visualizing Abundance: Promotional Cartography in the Hands of the East India Company and the Virginia Company (1600–1626)

Abstract

AbstractAdvanced doctoral students whose dissertations are substantially concerned with the history of cartography are invited to contact the editor of this section (Dr Elizabeth Baigent, elizabeth.baigent@wycliffe.ox.ac.uk) to discuss the submission of a short article. For a list of doctoral theses in progress see http://www.maphistory.info/futurephd.html. Notes1 This abstract is based on my forthcoming doctoral thesis entitled ‘Visions d’abondance: la cartographie de propagande des Compagnies de la Virginie et des Indes Orientales (1600–1626)’ (Visualizing abundance: promotional cartography at the hands of the East India Company and the Virginia Company (1600–1626)) to be submitted in 2024. It is carried out under the supervision of Professor Ladan Niayesh at Université Paris Cité and is funded by the École Normale Supérieure de Paris–Saclay.2 The Dutch, with whom the English competed overseas, adopted a similar model in March 1602 when they established the Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (known in English as the ‘Dutch East India Company’).3 For example, see Susan Schmidt Horning, ‘The power of image: promotional literature and its changing role in the settlement of early Carolina’, North Carolina Historical Review 70 (1993): 365–400.4 P. D. A. Harvey, Maps in Tudor England (London, Public Record Office and the British Library, 1993), 15.5 John Smith and William Hole, Virginia (Oxford, Joseph Barnes, 1612).6 William Baffin and Thomas Roe, Map of the Mughal Empire (London, Thomas Sterne, 1619).7 Robert Johnson, Nova Britannia: Offering Most Excellent fruites by Planting in Virginia (London, Samuel Macham, 1609); Sir Dudley Digges and Sir Thomas Smith, The Defence of Trade: In a Letter to Sir Thomas Smith Governour of the East India Companie &c. from one of that Societie (London, William Stansby for John Barnes, 1615).8 Benjamin Tatton and Gabriel Wright, Nova et rece terraum et regnorum Californae, nouae Hispaiae Mexicanae, et Peruviae (np, 1600).9 John Speed, A Prospect of the Most Famous Parts of the World (London, George Humble, 1626).10 Laurence Worms, ‘The London map trade to 1640’, in The History of Cartography, vol. 3: Cartography in the European Renaissance, ed. David Woodward (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1987), part 2. 1693–1721.