{"title":"The Politics of the Isolario: Maritime Cosmography and Overseas Expansion During the Renaissance","authors":"George Tolias","doi":"10.12681/HR.287","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Assessed as a series of narrative geographical constructs, isolarii reflect the diverse political and strategic agenda of the societies that produced and made use of them. Considering the geographical range covered by each isolario, their successive structure and contents, the article attempts to evaluate them as eclectic maritime cosmographies that sustained and supported the various workings of Western European overseas expansion from the early fifteenth century to the early seventeenth. The isolario is a cartographic encyclopaedia of islands, a particular genre that flourished during the Renaissance exploration of the maritime horizons. The isolario is a maritime cosmography, an erudite effort to chart the seas through the detailed cartographic presentation of sole fixed positions in the maritime flux: the islands. As a cultural construct, the isolario reflects the challenges of early modern cosmography, due to European expansion towards the east and west and the resulting altered perception of the world.1 It processes and promotes an alternative spatial system, varied and fragmentary, situated after the familiar continental frontiers. The isolario could be considered as a Humanistic project, an early modern echo of the ancient insular peregrinations narrated by Homer, Virgil and Apollodorus. It constitutes yet another combination of learned approach and empirical inspection. In fact, the isolario reflects a meeting among the various forces of rising modernity: the notions of connectivity imposed by merchants and navigators on the scattered image of the world; the political and economic prospects of maritime expansion; the development of long-distance communication networks; Humanism’s curiosity about geography, natural history and ethnography; the growing faith of the learned in tested and positive information; and the urge to provide administrators and men of action with useful, practical tools. The isolario is an artefact of early modern geographical culture, a Renaissance project that did not survive into the Age of Enlightenment, nor was it transmuted into another descriptive and cartographic geographical 1 See Frank Lestringant, “Le monde ouvert”, in Gérald Chaix (ed.), L’Europe de la Renaissance, 1470-1560, Nantes: Éditions du Temps, 2002, pp. 9-26 (especially pp. 18-19). The Historical Review / La Revue Historique Department of Neohellenic Research / Institute of Historical Research Volume IX (2012)","PeriodicalId":40645,"journal":{"name":"Historical Review-La Revue Historique","volume":"1 1","pages":"27-52"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2013-01-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"8","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Historical Review-La Revue Historique","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.12681/HR.287","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"HISTORY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 8
Abstract
Assessed as a series of narrative geographical constructs, isolarii reflect the diverse political and strategic agenda of the societies that produced and made use of them. Considering the geographical range covered by each isolario, their successive structure and contents, the article attempts to evaluate them as eclectic maritime cosmographies that sustained and supported the various workings of Western European overseas expansion from the early fifteenth century to the early seventeenth. The isolario is a cartographic encyclopaedia of islands, a particular genre that flourished during the Renaissance exploration of the maritime horizons. The isolario is a maritime cosmography, an erudite effort to chart the seas through the detailed cartographic presentation of sole fixed positions in the maritime flux: the islands. As a cultural construct, the isolario reflects the challenges of early modern cosmography, due to European expansion towards the east and west and the resulting altered perception of the world.1 It processes and promotes an alternative spatial system, varied and fragmentary, situated after the familiar continental frontiers. The isolario could be considered as a Humanistic project, an early modern echo of the ancient insular peregrinations narrated by Homer, Virgil and Apollodorus. It constitutes yet another combination of learned approach and empirical inspection. In fact, the isolario reflects a meeting among the various forces of rising modernity: the notions of connectivity imposed by merchants and navigators on the scattered image of the world; the political and economic prospects of maritime expansion; the development of long-distance communication networks; Humanism’s curiosity about geography, natural history and ethnography; the growing faith of the learned in tested and positive information; and the urge to provide administrators and men of action with useful, practical tools. The isolario is an artefact of early modern geographical culture, a Renaissance project that did not survive into the Age of Enlightenment, nor was it transmuted into another descriptive and cartographic geographical 1 See Frank Lestringant, “Le monde ouvert”, in Gérald Chaix (ed.), L’Europe de la Renaissance, 1470-1560, Nantes: Éditions du Temps, 2002, pp. 9-26 (especially pp. 18-19). The Historical Review / La Revue Historique Department of Neohellenic Research / Institute of Historical Research Volume IX (2012)
作为一系列叙事地理结构来评估,孤岛反映了产生和使用它们的社会的不同政治和战略议程。考虑到每一个孤立图集所涵盖的地理范围,它们的连续结构和内容,本文试图将它们作为一种折衷的海洋宇宙学进行评估,这种宇宙学维持并支持了西欧从15世纪初到17世纪初的各种海外扩张活动。isolario是一本关于岛屿的地图百科全书,是文艺复兴时期对海洋地平线的探索中蓬勃发展的一种特殊类型。isolario是一种海洋宇宙学,通过详细的地图呈现海洋流动中唯一固定的位置:岛屿来绘制海洋。作为一种文化建构,孤立主义反映了早期现代宇宙学的挑战,这是由于欧洲人向东方和西方的扩张以及由此产生的对世界的看法的改变它处理和促进了一个不同的空间系统,多样而零碎,位于熟悉的大陆边界之后。孤立主义可以被认为是一项人文主义工程,是对荷马、维吉尔和阿波罗多罗斯所讲述的古代孤岛旅行的早期现代回应。它构成了另一种学习方法和经验检验的结合。事实上,孤立状态反映了不断上升的现代性的各种力量之间的相遇:商人和航海家强加给分散的世界形象的连通性观念;海上扩张的政治和经济前景;远距离通信网络的发展;人文主义对地理、自然历史和民族志的好奇有学问的人对经过检验和肯定的信息日益增长的信心;以及为管理者和实干家提供有用、实用工具的冲动。isolario是早期现代地理文化的人工产物,是一个文艺复兴时期的项目,没有存活到启蒙时代,也没有转变为另一个描述和制图地理1见Frank Lestringant,“Le monde ouvert”,见g rald Chaix(主编),L 'Europe de la Renaissance, 1470-1560, Nantes: Éditions du Temps, 2002,第9-26页(特别是第18-19页)。《历史评论》/《新希腊研究部历史评论》/《历史研究所》2012年第9卷