HY469      One Unit
Maps, History and Power: The Spaces and Cultures of the Past

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

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How did past societies and cultures understand the world around them? How did those societies use maps to represent physical, social and imaginative spaces? Do maps merely reflect particular mentalities and social practices, or do they actively shape the experience and perception of the world? Maps, History and Power addresses these and other questions by exploring mapping practices and spatial thought in several European and non-European contexts from the medieval to the modern periods. The course explores how past societies have used maps to serve a number of practical and ideological purposes: to express religious belief, to aid navigation and commerce, to assert cultural superiority, and to enable state formation or imperial control. Alongside readings in history and cartography, the course will make extensive and innovative use of the latest digital resources, allowing students to view and discuss historical maps from the world’s great research libraries and collections.

2 hours of seminars in the Spring Term.
20 hours of seminars in the Winter Term.
20 hours of seminars in the Autumn Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Autumn and Winter Term.

Students will be required to submit two formative essays (one per term). They will also have the opportunity to sit a mock exam.

• J. H. Andrews, Maps in Those Days:  Cartographic Methods before 1850 (Dublin:  Four Courts, 2009)
• Jordan Branch, The Cartographic State:  Maps, Territory, and the Origins of Sovereignty (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2014)
• Jerry Brotton, A History of the World in Twelve Maps (London:  Allen Lane 2012)
• David Buisseret, The Mapmakers’ Quest: Depicting New Worlds in Renaissance Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003)
• Denis Cosgrove (ed.), Mappings (London: Reaktion, 1999)
• J.B. Harley, The New Nature of Maps: Essays in the History of Cartography (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001)
• Christian Jacob, The Sovereign Map: Theoretical Approaches in Cartography throughout History, trans. Tom Conley, ed. Edward H. Dahl (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2006)
• Mark Monmonier, How to Lie with Maps (Chicago: Chicago University Press, second ed. 1996)
• Denis Wood, The Power of Maps (London: Routledge, 1993)

Exam (100%), duration: 180 Minutes in the Spring exam period