maps

maps can have political and military, as well as geographical, significance. They have been printed by governments wishing to claim territories. The islands named on British maps after Lord Falkland are shown on Argentine ones as Las Malvinas. For years Irish nationalists referred to Northern Ireland as ‘the six counties’. They have played a part in identifying nations, since it is not easy to have a strong sense of nationality if one does not know where one's fellow-nationals live or what the terrain is like. English map-making, not surprisingly, leapt forward in the Tudor period.

Roman Britain did not make use of maps. The early Roman conquerors must have relied upon native guides and interpreters. Once a road system had been developed, they used itineraries, numbering the routes and setting up milestones. The Antonine Itinerary of the Empire in the 4th cent. showed fifteen roads in Britain, and more than 100 place-names, with distances. Ptolemy's 2nd-cent. map showed the British Isles. Their juxtaposition to the mainland of Gaul was plausible, but Hibernia was too small, and northern Scotland tilted over to the north-east. Even if available it would have been no use to travellers or messengers.

Medieval map-makers began to fill in some detail. The Mappa Mundi (c.1280), now in Hereford cathedral, was as much theological as geographical, and centred on Jerusalem: Scotland was shown as an island and Ireland was divided by the Boyne. A much better map had been produced some 30 years before by Matthew Paris, showing recognizable details like the Cornish peninsula and East Anglia: it had no roads and some rather strange rivers. A century later came the Gough map (named after the 18th-cent. collector Richard Gough and now in the Bodleian), perhaps an official road map, good on England and with distances shown. By the Tudor period engraved maps of some accuracy were being produced, though Ireland and northern Scotland continued to give trouble. Mercator in 1564 offered a map of the British Isles, with information passed on by Lawrence Nowell, dean of Lichfield, perhaps through John Dee. Elizabeth's government in the 1570s gave assistance to Christopher Saxton, and in James I's reign John Speed produced famous maps, including the Realm of the Empire of Great Britaine (1611–12). Itineraries or strip-maps were still much in use for travellers and an important series was produced by John Ogilby in 1675.

By the 18th cent. county maps (some sponsored by the Royal Society of Arts), estate maps, and town maps were becoming common, as well as oceanic charts and harbour maps. Technological advances included a marked wheel for measuring distances accurately, a greatly improved theodolite, and the gradual elimination of picturesque but irrelevant detail. The Jacobite rebellion of 1745 gave an unexpected boost to map-making, since the absence of reliable maps of northern Scotland had proved an obstacle to the work of ‘pacification’. The Ordnance Survey began by surveying Scotland and then turned its attention elsewhere, producing from 1801 onwards a series of excellent county maps.

In the 19th cent. large-scale maps were produced, and cartographers turned to surveying colonial territories. In Britain, pocket-sized itineraries were being printed deep into the 20th cent., but with the vast increase in motor travel, particularly after 1945, road atlases became the best sellers, complete with distance charts, town maps, places of interest, and detailed indexes.

J. A. Cannon