Jerry Brotton is Senior Lecturer in Renaissance Studies, Queen Mary, University of London. He is the author of The Renaissance Bazaar.
"Brotton clearly shows the commercial and political pressures that made mapmaking so important during the 1600s ... The book excellently tells the story of mapmakers' progressing from servants whose maps distorted kings' territories to independent scholars whose maps' political neutrality and geographical accuracy were rewarded by private companies... Map buffs and those interested in early world exploration should enjoy this one."-Booklist "This important book not only treats the ways early modern geographers defined the world's spaces but also makes significant contributions to the history of cartography, printing, and cultural exchange and diversity. Brotton ... stresses that Renaissance explorers ventured across the Atlantic and Pacific not out of curiosity or to pursue new intellectual horizons but to seek the goods Europeans lacked and markets for European products. Early-16th-century map production aimed not so much at scientific accuracy as at justifications for wide national authority and territory, often making crucial Western reliance on Ottoman cartography... Recommended for geographical and historical collections."-Library Journal "Brotton successfully examines the function and role of chart, map, and globe from the Middle Ages to the 16th century... A well-produced book. Recommended for all levels."-Choice "The precise arguments and materials here are quite distinctive and novel... In showing that maps actively constructed as well as represented the new spaces opened up by exploration, Brotton also significantly reinforces the claim of those who decry the simple empiricist position that maps always came 'after territory' rather than, more often than not, prefiguring what was and was not 'discovered.' It is this point of view that makes maps so important ... as sources for detecting the complex motivations and understandings that drove European commercial and territorial expansion in the first place."-John Agnew, Journal of Modern History "Jerry Brotton is part of that exciting new world of interactivity between disciplines that would, until not long ago, have been regarded as separate and impermeable... His is an outstanding achievement of meticulous research and scholarly rigour, yet animated by a method of enquiry that is enriched by being accustomed to reading texts according to literary protocols... Brotton's study takes us beyond the limits of physical voyages of discovery into what Andrew Marvell described as 'far other worlds and other seas', regions of mind and imagination."-Christopher Wortham, Parergon "Jerry Brotton brings a literary critic's eye for textual nuance to the rapid developments within European cartography in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. There are plenty of fresh, insightful readings in this book... Fresh or contentious ideas appear on virtually every page and the book repays careful reading and rereading."-James Robertson, Sixteenth Century Journal "Brotton succeeds admirably in looking at maps and mapping in original and provocative ways. He uses a wealth of materials to produce a small book that bristles with interesting ideas and perspectives."-Larry Wolff, Boston College "In this outstanding study of maps and mapping, Jerry Brotton reveals a dynamism in the transaction between East and West beyond anything we have previously appreciated."-Lisa Jardine, Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London
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