The structuring of political territory in early printed atlases |
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Authors: | James R Akerman |
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Institution: | Assistant Director of the Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for the History of Cartography , Newberry Library , Chicago |
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Abstract: | Abstract The atlas emerged as a cartographic and bibliographic response to early modern Europeans’ search for geographical order in a rapidly changing world. In particular, atlases were mediators in the restructuring of European ideas about political territory which culminated in the emergence (by the end of the eighteenth century) of the territorial state and its progeny, the nation‐state. For more than two centuries atlases defined political territories ever more precisely for their readers and expressed hierarchical relationships among those territories, while giving form to the political territoriality and geopolitical orientations of particular nations. |
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Keywords: | Atlases Europe 1568–1800 atlas structure political geography boundaries on maps history of the book |
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