A History of the World in Twelve Maps

Throughout history, maps have been fundamental in shaping our view of the world, and our place in it. But far from being purely scientific objects, world maps are unavoidably partial and subjective, intimately bound up with the systems of power, authority and creativity of particular times and places. Mapmakers do not simply represent the world, they construct it out of the ideas of their age.

In this scintillating book, Jerry Brotton examines the significance of twelve world maps drawn from global history - from the mystical representations of ancient history to the satellite-derived imagery of today. He vividly recreates the environments and circumstances in which each of the maps was made, showing how each conveys a highly individual view of the world - the Jerusalem-centred Christian perspective of the fourteenth-century Hereford Mappamundi, the earliest Korean map showing the world including Europe, the first truly globalised world view of the Portuguese Diogo Ribeiro in the early sixteenth century, the Peters projection of the 1970s which aimed to give equality to 'the third world', and the earth according to Google. In each case, Brotton shows how the maps both influenced and reflected contemporary events and how, by reading these maps, we can better understand the worlds that produced them.

Although the way we map our surroundings is once more changing dramatically, Brotton argues that maps today are no more definitive or objective than they have ever been - but that they continue to recreate, shape and mediate our view of it. Readers of this book will never look at a map in quite the same way again.