Mapping the World: a history of world maps from the Greeks to Google Earth

纵观历史，一系列不同的文化将世界的图像投射到地图上，并产生了各种社会和政治上的重要结果。在摄影和太空探索时代之前，不同的团体制作了世界地图，这些地图融合了政治、科学、艺术和想象力的冲动，创造了地球在特定历史时刻的时间锁定图像。本项目研究了12幅这样的历史世界地图。它从托勒密地理学的古典世界开始，然后对中世纪地图的关键例子进行深入研究；早期伊斯兰地图；利用印刷、科学和旅行方面的新发现绘制的早期现代欧洲地图；18世纪的国家调查预测了新的“想象的”国家社区；乌托邦式的朝鲜地图，19世纪和20世纪的地图，代表了全球欧洲殖民的影响。报告最后介绍了在线地理空间应用，这些应用正在改变人们对不同文化如何定义、理解和使用地图的基本认识。测绘领域目前正在经历彻底的历史和理论重新评估。这个项目在一定程度上是对当前关于地图学的历史和定义的研究背景和辩论的回应和对话（例如，参见正在进行的芝加哥地图学历史系列）。它认为有必要通过一种跨学科的方法来扩大对世界制图的概念和历史解释，这种方法可以更灵活地理解制图学的定义。被分析的这12幅地图都是在特别关键的历史时刻绘制的，当时它们的制作者做出了重要的决定，决定他们希望以何种方式以及表现什么样的地理现实。这种绘制世界地图的方法的背景来自于当前人文和社会科学领域的争论，这些争论将全球化视为我们这个时代的决定性社会政治动态。该项目旨在提供这种全球想象的历史，从它们最早的表现形式到最近的虚拟、数字、在线地图技术。它的目的是解释一系列的地球地图是如何创造出新的世界图景的，这些地图不仅让观众相信世界是什么样子的，而且让他们相信世界为什么存在，以及他们自己在其中的位置。每张地图都包含了一个特定的想法或问题，这些想法或问题定义了它们的制造者如何理解世界，从知识的经典定义到宗教、文化交流、发现、全球主义、测量、种族、国家、乌托邦、经济、政治，最后是民主。最后的目标是确定三个中心和持久的因素，这些因素似乎统一了分析中的地图：它们对普遍地理代表性的先验要求；它们作为指导方向的实际或精神指南的应用；以及他们百科全书式的知识全面性。最终，该项目旨在解释各种文化对绘制世界地图的持久渴望，以及世界的投影形状如何随着时间和空间的变化而变化。该项目的好处和应用有三个方面：首先，显著发展正在进行的跨地理、历史、文学研究和思想史的测绘史跨学科研究；其次，提供一个独立的、全球性的替代方案，以取代更成熟的、进步的、以欧洲为中心的地图学历史；第三，提供一个重要的知识转移，在制作一本书，传播和有效地沟通学术研究的主题，广泛的，知情的一般读者。

Throughout history, a range of different cultures have projected images of the world onto maps with a variety of socially and political important results. Before the age of photography and space exploration, which allowed hitherto impossibly accurate images of the earth, different communities produced world maps that fused political, scientific, artistic and imaginative impulses to create time-locked images of the earth at specific moments in history. This project examines twelve such historical world maps. It begins with the classical world of Ptolemy's Geography, and proceeds to provide in-depth studies of key examples of medieval mappaemundi; early Islamic maps; early modern European maps that utilise the new discoveries in printing, science and travel; eighteenth-century national surveys projecting new 'imagined' national communities; Utopian Korean maps, nineteenth and twentieth-century maps representing the impact of global European colonization. It concludes with online geospatial applications which are transforming the basic understanding of how cultures define, understand and use maps. The field of mapping is currently undergoing radical historical and theoretical reassessment. This project is partly a response to and dialogue with current research contexts and debates about both the history and definition of cartography (see for instance the ongoing Chicago History of Cartography series). It argues for the need to broaden the conceptual and historical interpretation of world mapping through an interdisciplinary approach that provides a more flexible understanding of the definition of cartography. The twelve maps under analysis were created at particularly crucial historical moments, when their makers took significant decisions about how and what kind of geographical reality they wished to represent. The context for such an approach to world mapping emerges from present debates in the humanities and social sciences that regard globalisation as the defining socio-political dynamic of our time. This project aims to offer a history of such global imaginings, from their earliest manifestations to the most recent virtual, digital, online mapping techniques. Its objective is to explain how a range of maps of the whole earth created new visions of the world that convinced their audience of not just what the world looked like, but of why it existed, and of their own place within it. Each map encapsulates a particular idea or issue that defined how their makers understood the world, ranging from the classical definition of knowledge, to religion, cultural exchange, discovery, globalism, measurement, race, nationhood, utopia, economics, politics, and finally democracy. A final objective is to identify three central and enduring elements that appear to unify the maps under analysis: their transcendental claims to universal geographical representation; their applications as practical or spiritual guides to orientation; and their encyclopaedic claims to intellectual comprehensiveness. Ultimately, the project aims to explain the enduring desire of a range of cultures to map the world, and how the projected shape of the world has changed through time and across space. The benefits and application of the project are threefold: firstly, to significantly develop the ongoing interdisciplinary study of the history of mapping across geography, history, literary studies and the history of ideas; secondly, to offer a discrete, global alternative to more established progressive and Eurocentric histories of cartography; thirdly, to provide a significant piece of knowledge transfer in producing a book that disseminates and effectively communicates academic research on the subject to a broad, informed general readership.