#commonwealth cartography

[vault81]

Map of the Commonwealth (11.12.87)

Featuring all (currently) known factions and their territories.

[thetruearchmagos]

Oh, thank you so very much! Glad you liked it, and it'll be a pleasure to answer your questions, though I can't promise my answers will be as coherent as the stuff in the post;

Maps Stuff

Generally speaking, I'm imagining that the cartography of the Warp would've been a process unfolding gradually over several generations, as disparate groups with varying degrees of communication picked away at the few specific routes they actually cared about. Basically, several dozen puzzle pictures of every size, detail, and reliability, overlapping and coexisting at the same time across the Worlds. Everyone who crossed the Warp, from gargantuan trading companies to great power navies, would've competed to make their own maps and keep them firmly in their own hands. Accurate maps could provide a crucial leg up for any mercantile or military venture, equalling in value a fleet of ships or a dozen skilled captains.

An actual, 'complete' map of all Transit Zones and the contours between them would, then, have been a fairly recent phenomenon, probably around or soon after the formation of the United Commonwealth.

As for the actual process of mapping the Warp, it's very much more the former example of yours than the latter. While death on the high seas was an expected risk, none of the above actors would've risked skilled crews and valuable equipment so recklessly. Also, if your ship gets lost in the Warp, there's not exactly any land to wreck on; anything that doesn't sink to the bottom generally gets pulled into a storm, to be devoured by it.

Now, to spitball on the actual process of mapping the Warp, it'll probably start by taking the most immediately obvious 'safe' routes from one known Zone to another; every contour starts and ends at a Transit Zone, but most will split or merge at various points along the way, with the main 'branch' being the widest passage and their branches thinning out from it. Most offshoots wind up just reconnecting somewhere 'downstream' but by an even longer route, but some actually cut down on travel time, or else connect two different 'main' contours together. Mapping, then, is an exercise in finding out the specific paths charted by every known contour and their branches to find the shortest distance from one Zone to another. As you might expect, this involves a lot of trial and error, but often proves worth it.

'Shifting'

Pretty glacial, to be honest. Over the course of a decade, the length and shape of a main contour might move a few hundred kilometres or so, but since they start and end where you were going anyways this doesn't do much beyond adding to or cutting travel time by the main roots.

Things get much more interesting for branch contours; unlike their stoic sources, these can last anywhere from mere days to a year or longer, coming into or out of existence in brilliant flashes of storm and thunder constantly. Thus, most of a cartographer's time would be spent keeping their list of branching contours as up to date as possible with the fickle whims of the Warp.

Ship Stuff

Well... the short answer is that the development of marine engineering technologies would've tracked pretty well with what happened IRL (since I've got IRL and the 12 Worlds pegged roughly to the same 'present day' because I'm lazy). Ships would be as austere or complex as their buyers ordered, with some pretty massive diversity in ship designs, methods, and uses. Ships designed to traverse the Warp would have an edge over 'Worlds-only' vessels in the sheer strength of their hulls, usually, and there's enough 'absolutely necessary' equipment to make the Warp nearly hospitable to crowd out a fair amount of luxuries (then again, for the right price...).

The long answer is that I haven't figured out the precise timeline of this tech but I would one day very much like to. There's plenty of curious economic or magical-technical details of the 12 Worlds which I'm sure would give me opportunities to develop a proper history of shipping innovation, but I just haven't done it yet.

Crystal Stuff

Hmm, don't usually think deeper for my Magic stuff than 'a crystal or crystal like thing does', but I'll try!

To clarify for the 12 Worlds at large, the border between Science and Magic doesn't really exist, kinda; for the most part, what counts as magic relative to the real world is just the natural laws that govern the reality of the 12 Worlds, as scientific and ironhard as the more realistic ones. Doesn't mean I actually know what all those rules are, if I'm honest, but in-setting they'll certainly act like they do.

To put it briefly, the ordered and regular internal structure of a 'magic' crystal, way above and beyond a common pretty rock, is what endows it with the ability to directly interact with the Underlay. I don't have any plans on differentiating between different crystals by any of their other (visual) properties at the moment, but as far as 'magic' goes the characteristic that lets these compass crystals be acted on by the Zones means they don't 'do' anything else; crystals are pretty much all single purpose.

Navigation Stuff

So, to briefly explain the 'Zones' again for this; across the otherwise indistinguishable expanse of the Warp, Zones form expansive patches of calm seas spread sporadically across its surface, each linked to a single World. Each exerts a slightly different force onto the Underlay, which different crystals can be attuned to and align themselves with. Once you're in a zone, there's nothing else to it; you can go from anywhere in a Zone to any of a World's own numerous Zones.

Now, it's important to note that aligning directionally is the only thing they do; AKA, you're not getting any distance information from just the one crystal. Which is fine if you know exactly which Zone you'd like to go to, but makes more complex navigation a little tricky.

And that's why most compasses have at least two!

BOO! MATH!

Basically, if you know the distance (from your Charts) between any two Zones, and you know the angle formed between two aligned crystals facing those two points (like I demonstrated in that other picture), then you can calculate with reasonable accuracy your own distance from those two points, and from there get your own position 'in general'. Finicky and requires high sensitivity for the absolute highest degrees of accuracy, but modern systems are up to the task of giving metre scale readings.

Navigators Stuff

Remember when I said I usually don't think deep for Magic? Yeah, this is where that happens.

So, I said most Magic basically operates on a scientific basis, but I've had an impulse in my mind to fudge that a bit when it comes to 'people magic', basically anything that the human mind can do on its own. The hand-wave generalisation here is that the manipulation and changing of the Underlay exists where particularly strong 'order' / complexity in reality emerges from the wider state of disorder, with magic crystals representing a high degree of order, and the conscious human mind and 'soul' having a very ordered character.

Now, for the actual Navigators stuff, at the moment I'm leaning towards them being absolutely necessary to enter the Warp at all. Step one is casting a protective bubble of frothing Warp-stuff into the world around the vessel in question, effectively immersing it with one foot on either end. Then, with a great crash of a torn reality, the ship steps through and collapses into the Warp. Safe to say, quite an intense process.

The analogy my brain uses is comparing 'Transiting' between Worlds and the Warp to solving a really, really convoluted maze with a rapidly shifting layout. Navigators not only carve that tunnel, but also guide their vessel within it to safety on the other side. This, though, is really hard, as is just being able to conjure the aforementioned bubble at all, so it takes years of training to turn anyone into a skilled enough Navigator to get a ship across intact and with a mostly living crew. Good Navigators, and I mean ones who've wandered the seas for decades, could pull a battleship through in seconds with barely a bit of turbulence, but those are few and far between.

I don't do this but I wanna start so

@akiwitch @verba-writing @littleshopofchaos @a-scaly-troublemaker

Tell me something about one of your WIPs (spoiler free) that you don't get to talk about as much as you'd like

Can be anything, characters, backstories, worldbuilding, anything as long as it's spoiler free

And feel free to pass on the sentiment and ask others the same!

[polgeonow]

The Gambia rejoined the Commonwealth of Nations last month, four years after quitting. New PolGeoNow article explains what happened and why it matters.

[boomhealers]

what about the male companions (or at least deacon, mac, and danse) getting dragged out into the glowing sea with sole to find Virgil, but sole is horrible at using their map and the companion is starting to get radiation sickness but sole hasn’t even noticed

I love this an extreme amount because you are describing my exact experience with this perfectly WYAGWCWYSVWGSC (seriously though i smiled so much when i saw this in my inbox!!!!)

Fallout 4 Men Companions React To Sole Getting Lost In The Glowing Sea While They All Get Radiation Sickness That Sole Ignores

Deacon

“Hey uh I think your pipboy’s upside down or something. Mind if I take a look? You know, before we turn into fleshy glowsticks?” He wants to be polite so bad since Sole does this kind of thing a LOT but they were supposed to find virgil and its been three hours and Sole is still lost. Deacon jokes a bit during the first hour but by hour 4 he’s like Give me your pipboy now :).

Nick

Oh god he knows that look on Sole’s face. The “don’t worry I got this dont interrupt me” look. Happened on the trip to goodneighbor and it’s happening here. Nick knows that he will be fine but Sole??? Brother in christ this is the glowing sea now is not the time!!!! By hour two Nick sighs and says,”Oh give me that!” And yoinks their arm to look at the map. Sole is absolutely not allowed to walk ahead and if they even think about it Nick gives them a disapproving look which mentally kills them because disappointing Nick Valentine hurts more than 23 stab wounds.

Danse

Every time Sole insists they lead the way anywhere, Danse dies a bit on the inside. He wants to respect them but by god he is dying so much on the inside. Thankfully they both have power armor but its hour 6 and they’re still not there and power armor can’t save them forever. Danse looks them in the eye and says something like,”I Respect You. I Really Do However We Are Going To Die If You Don’t Give Me The Map.” Nothing but the sound of Sole’s shameful power armor THUMPTHUMPTHUMP and Danse’s cool power armor THUMPTHUMPTHUMP is heard until they reach Virgil.

Preston

The map expert. After all, he’s always marking settlements on your map(i couldn’t help myself its too perfect for this sorry). Ok but Preston would know a lot about cartography actually. He’d spend his free time making maps himself and they’re super nice looking. When this quest comes, he lets Sole take the map because they asked nicely. However he did not know that Sole gets lost super easily and also cannot read a map(Preston was always the one holding them and leading the way after all). Preston so desperately is trying to give them hints on how to properly read it but Sole is not picking up at all. Makes a few stern but polite comments about the radiation. Eventually he awkwardly goes “hahahahaha you wanna learn how to read a map? right now? please” and tells Sole how to read it as he’s leading the way.

Maccready

He was already not thrilled by the idea of coming here given the. You know. Radiation and horrors. Sole was super excited oddly enough. They fucking LOVED exploration even if they couldn’t read maps for shit. However this isn’t some random field in the commonwealth this is the glowing sea. Maccready would firmly tell Sole that “Look, I know you’re excited and whatever but try not to wander too far off the trail. It’s just…very dangerous in the glowing sea and I think it would be best to get in and out as fast as we can. Trust me. Anyways, that was all I wanted to say. Lead the way.” He wants to be nice about it because Sole is his best friend/and or partner but he prefers his best friend/and or partner very alive and not dead from radiation poisoning. After 15 minutes he takes the map and starts leading them. He is not patient wyetwfwtsgacwg

Codsworth

Oh he is so patient about the whole ordeal. He suggested they take a lot of extra rad-x and radaway before they went into the glowing sea (he offered to carry it all too). He knows Sole is really bad at reading maps and whatnot (Sole has gotten lost at the park pre war so much. The amount of times he found Sole in increasingly bizarre places due to this…). Codsworth gently taps their shoulder every so often, offering even more radaway and rad-x. Occasionally he’ll make comments about how he’s General Atomics Finest(tm) and how he is really good at navigating terrain and reading maps. Eventually Sole does admit they’re lost (probably around hour 10) and lets Codsworth lead the way.

Hancock

Hancock loves taking in the scenery alongside a nice bath of radiation as much as the next guy but uhhhh he is very worried about Sole by the first hour. Are they. Are they okay??? They’re glowing a bit uhhhh he should stop them. Says something like “Hey [nickname] why don’t ya let me lead the way, yeah? Just kick back and stroll while I do all the work.”

Strong

He looks at Sole like what the FUCK are they doing. Human glow, no sight of cave. Strong lead way. Human is bad at navigating terrain!

Bonus:

Gage

Gage stares straight into Sole’s face like,”Boss, we’ve both seen some shit but I’m going to shoot you in the head if you think I’m just gonna stand here twiddling my thumbs while we get fuckin microwaved by the earth. Give me the damn map.”

[m-u-n-c-h-y]

Exploration

I always had the headcanon that Preston could do cartography and made a lot of maps of the Commonwealth over the years.

As a side note the style of this piece is based on the work of Moebius!

[studyglassesblog]

History 1: Philippine History

Course Syllabus Part 2

I. Introduction to History: Meaning, Method and Usage Historical Concepts Examining the Types of Sources Historical Interpretations Significance of and Problems in the Study of History II. The Philippine Archipelago: Geological and Geographical Underpinnings Geology based on Myth Geology based on Science Geography and History III. Peopling of the Philippines (250,000 B.C. – 1,000 B.C.) Based on Oral Tradition: Epic, Legend, and Folktale Based on Linguistic Tradition Based on Archeological and Other Scientific Studies IV. The Early Settlements(1,000 B.C. – 1565) Political Aspect: Barangay and Sultanate Economic Aspect: Agriculture, Maritime Raid (Pangangayaw), Trade, and External Relations Cultural and Social Aspects: Tradition, Ritual, Arts, and Music of the Various Ethnolinguistic Groups The Filipinos Amidst Change (1565-1872) V Peopling of the Philippines (250,000 B.C. – 1,000 B.C.) Based on Oral Tradition: Epic, Legend, and Folktale Based on Linguistic Tradition Based on Archeological and Other Scientific Studies IV. The Early Settlements(1,000 B.C. – 1565) Political Aspect: Barangay and Sultanate Economic Aspect: Agriculture, Maritime Raid (Pangangayaw), Trade, and External Relations Cultural and Social Aspects: Tradition, Ritual, Arts, and Music of the Various Ethnolinguistic Groups Uprisings The Philippines during the 18th Century Reducción and Christianization Political, Economic, and Social Changes 1.From the End of Galleon Trade to World Commerce 2.Education, Science and Colonial Institutions 3.Environment, Disease, and Disaster VI. The Formation of Nationalist Consciousness (1872-1913) Secularization and Reform Katipunan and Revolution Philippine Republic Filipino-American War VII. The Nation Amidst Imperialism (1913-1945) American Imperialism: Monroe Doctrine, White Man’s Burden and Benevolent Assimilation Filipino responses: Millenarian movements, e.g.,Dios-dios, Pulahanes, Sakdal; Class-based organizations Filipinization through the Commonwealth Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere and Japanese Propaganda in Asia Life in the Time of War

VIII. Independence and National Policies (1945-1972)

Neocolonial Policies and Key Political Events: Cold War: SEATO, MAPHILINDO and ASEAN, and Military Bases

Economic Policies and Agreements: Bell Trade, Laurel-Langley Agreement, Filipino First Policy, Agrarian Reform

Social and Political Movements: Huk Rebellion, CPP-NPA-NDF, DilimanCommune, FQS, etc. IX. The Nation Under the Dictatorship (1972-1986) Martial Law Declaration Mechanisms of Dictatorship Movements Against Dictatorship: People Power, Communist Movement, MNLF, and Other Anti-Dictatorship Groups The EDSA People Power X. Contemporary Philippines and the Path Towards the Future (1986 – present) Return (or the Failure) of Democratic Spaces Challenges in the Changing Political Formation The Philippines in the 21st Century: Environment, Technology, and Filipino Culture

REFERENCES Primary Sources Historical events of the Philippine Islands by Antonio de Morga; published in Mexico in 1609 recently brought to light and annotated by Jose Rizal; preceded by a prologue by Ferdinand Blumentritt, Chapter VIII. Manila: National Historical Institute, 2008. Quirino, Carlos. Philippine Cartography: 1320-1899, Leovino Ma. Garcia (pat.). Quezon City: Vibal Foundation, c2010. “Philippine Constitutions,” nasa Official Gazette. http://www.gov.ph/constitutions/ Eugenio, Damiana (pat). Philippine Folk Literature: The Epics. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2001. “Boxer Codex,” The Lilly Library Digital Collections, http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/digital/collections/items/show/93 Laguna Copper Plate, Tapayang Manunggul, at Bangang Calatagan Aduarte, Diego et.al. “Insurrections by Filipinos in the 17th century,” nasa Emma Helen Blair at James Alexander Robertson, mga pat. at tsln. The Philippine Islands, 1493–1898, Volume 38. Cleveland: The Arthur and Clark Company, 1903–1909. Blancas de San Jose, Francisco, Sermones, edited by Mario Francisco, SJ. Quezon City: Pulong Sources for Philippine Studies, 1994. Dumol, Paul A., translator, The Manila Synod of 1582. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2014. Pineda, Sebastian de. “Philippine Ships and Shipbuilding,” nasa Emma Helen Blair at James Alexander Robertson (pat. at tsln.), The Philippine Islands, 1493–1898; Volume XVIII. Cleveland: The Arthur and Clark Company, 1903–1909. “Royal Decree Establishing a Plan of Primary Education in Filipinas. December 20, 1863,” nasa Emma Helen Blair at James Alexander Robertson (pat. at tsln.), The Philippine Islands, 1493–1898, Volume XLVI. Cleveland: The Arthur and Clark Company, 1903-1909. Bonifacio, Andres. Ang Dapat Mabatid ng mga Tagalog. Jacinto, Emilio. Kartilya ng Katipunan. Rizal, Jose, The Indolence of the Filipinos. Del Pilar, Marcelo H. Frailocracy in the Philippines. Leonor Agrava, trans. Manila: National Historical Institute, 1996. Mallat, Jean. The Philippines: History, Geography, Customs, Agriculture, Industry, and Commerce of the Spanish Pura-Santillan-Castrence (tsln.). Manila: National Historical Institute, 1983. “Mores of Sons of the Country, Mestizos, and Chinese,” p. 334-343 and “Mores of the Whites in Manila,” p. 344–353. Richardson, Jim. The Light of Liberty: Documents and Studies on the Katipunan, 1892-1897. Quezon City, Philippines: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2013. “Benevolent Assimilation Proclamation, December 21, 1898,” nasa James Blount, American Occupation of the Philippines. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1913. Agoncillo, Teodoro A. Fateful years: Japan's Adventure in the Philippines,1941-45.2nd ed. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2001. Henson, Maria Rosa L. Comfort women: slave of destiny. Pasig City: Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, c1996. Ignacio, Abe et al. The Forbidden Book: The Philippine-American War in Political Cartoons. San Francisco: T’boli Pub and Distribution, 2004. Kintanar, Thelma et.al. Kuwentong bayan: noong panahon ng Hapon: everyday life in a time of war. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, c2006. “Diosdado Macapagal, Third State of the Nation Address, January 27, 1964,” nasa Official Gazette. http://www.gov.ph/1964/01/27/diosdado- macapagal-third-state-of-the-nation-address-january-27-1964/ “Message of President Garcia on the occasion of the opening of the SEATO Seminar on Countering Communist Subversion, November 26, 1957,” nasa Official Gazette http://www.gov.ph/1957/11/26/message-of-president-garcia-on-the-occasion-of-the-opening-of-the-seato-seminar-on- countering-communist-subversion-november-26-1957/ Schirmer, Daniel and Stephen Rosskamm Shalom (pat.). The Philippines reader: a history of colonialism, neocolonialism, dictatorship, and resistance. Chapter 4. Quezon City: Ken, c1987. “Speech of President Carlos P. Garcia during the Inaugural Program of the 6th National Convention of Filipino Businessmen, in Baguio City, at 9:30 a.m., March 3, 1960,” nasa Official Gazette. Na-acess

sa http://www.gov.ph/1960/03/03/speech-of-president-carlos-p-garcia-during-the- inaugural-program-of-the-6th-national-convention-of-filipino-businessmen-in-baguio-city-at-930-a-m-march-3-1960/ People Power II: Lessons and Hope. Pasig: ABS-CBN Pub., c2001. Secondary Sources Carr, Edward Hallett. What is history? New York: Knopf, 1962. Marwick, Arthur. The nature of history. New York: Knopf, 1971. Scott, William Henry. “Kalantiaw: The Code That Never Was,” nasa William Henry Scott, Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino. Quezon City: New Day Publishers, 1992, pp. 159-170. ________________. Barangay: Sixteenth Century Philippine Culture and Society. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1994 After Wolfe, J.A. “Origin of the Philippines by Accumulations of Allochtons,” nasa Philippine Geologist 17 (July-September 1983). Punongbayan, Raymundo et al. Kasaysayan: The Story of the Filipino People. Volume 1 “The Philippine Archipelago.” Hong Kong: Reader’s Digest and Asia Publishing Company Ltd., 1998. Bellwood, Peter. “The Austronesian Dispersal and the Origin of Languages,” nasa Scientific American (July 1991). Jocano, Felipe. “Questions and challenges in Philippine prehistory,” nasa Santillan, Neil Martial Santillan at Conde, Ma. Bernadette (pat.), Kasaysayan at kamalayan: mga piling akda ukol sa diskursong pangkasaysayan. Quezon City: Palimbagan ng Lahi, 1998. Abinales, Patricia N. at Donna J. Amoroso. State and Society in the Philippines. Chapter 2 “The Philippines in the Maritime Asia to the Fourteenth Century.” Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2005, pp. 19-40. Abrera, Maria Bernadette. "Seclusion and Veiling of Women" nasa Philippine Social Sciences Review.vol. 60-61, nos. 1-2, Jan.2008-Dec.2009, pp. 33-56. Arcilla, Jose A. Kasaysayan: The Story of the Filipino People. Volume (3), “The Spanish Conquest.” Hong Kong: Reader’s Digest and Asia Publising Company Ltd., 1998. Bevoise, Ken de. “Cholera: The Island World as an Epidemiological Unit,” nasa Agents of Apocalypse Epidemic Disease in the Colonial Philippines. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1995. Agoncillo, Teodoro. Revolt of the Masses: the story of Bonifacio and the Katipunan. Quezon City: University of the Philippines, 1956. Bankoff, Greg. “In the Eyes of the Storm: The Social Construction of the Forces of Nature and Seismic Construction of God in the Philippines,” nasa Journal of South East Asian Studies 35, no. 1 (February 2004): 91-111. Friend, Theodore. Between Two Empires: the ordeal of the Philippines, 1929-1946. Manila: Solidaridad Pub. House, c1969. Golay, Frank. Face of Empire: United States-Philippine relations, 1898-1946. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1997. Abinales, Patricio and Donna Amoroso. “21st Century Philippine Politics,” State and Society in the Philippines. Quezon City: Anvil Publishing Inc., 2005. Bello, Walden. The future in the balance: essays on globalization and resistance. Quezon City: University of the Philippines, 2001 ​Selected Textbooks Agoncillo, Teodoro. History of the Filipino People. Quezon City: Garotech Publishing, 1990. Constantino, Renato. The Philippine: A Past Revisited. Quezon City: Tala Publishing, 1975. Corpuz, O.D. Roots of the Filipino Nation. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 1989. De La Costa, Horacio. Readings in Philippine History. Manila: Bookmark, 1965. Kasaysayan Series Tomo 1-10. Hong Kong: Asia Publishing Company Limited, 1998.

[verecunda]

The ancient history tag

Tagged by @pythionice. Thankee, dear! :) This has been sitting half-done in my drafts for ages - sorry! x__x

1. The Stone Age: One of the first books you ever remember reading.

The first one that springs to mind is this huge book of nursery rhymes. I can’t remember the exact title or who collected them, but each one had really fantastic illustrations. Every page was so bright and colourful. And now I think about it, Bobby Shaftoe looked suspiciously Nelson-like. ;)

2. Ancient Greece: Your favourite myth inspired book.

Right now, I’m gonna have to say Sword at Sunset by Rosemary Sutcliff. She does such a masterful job of paring away the later medieval trappings of the Arthur legend and setting him in the immediately post-Roman period. Despite going for a gritty, realistic take, without Merlin and the fantasy elements, she imbues the story with so much raw folkloric symbolism that it still feels like great myth all by itself. (Admittedly, a lot of this symbolism is drawn from older theories ie. Margaret Murray, which are largely discredited today, but in terms of the cosmology of the fictional universe, it’s so expertly woven in and coherent, and resonates so wonderfully through the story, that it works.)

3. Roman Empire: A book that features an impressive Empire or a Kingdom.

I'm not long after finishing Cinder by Marissa Meyer (a rec from my sister @fandom-butterfly). It’s a sci-fi retelling of Cinderella, set in the futuristic Eastern Commonwealth, a conglomerate of former Asian nations ruled by an emperor based at New Beijing. There’s also a kingdom on the moon, ruled by mysterious beings (evolved humans? I’m not quite sure yet) who have the power to manipulate human minds.

I enjoyed it a lot. The characters are cute, there’s some good banter, the anime influence is very present (the author’s notes at the end indicate that Meyer is/was in the Sailor Moon fandom, and it shows!), and the fairytale elements are woven in nicely to the sci-fi setting. There’s a good amount of intrigue too, which I imagine is only going to get thicker, since this book is the first in a series.

There’s also a major subplot about a deadly global pandemic, which... yeah. 

4. The Middle Ages: A book that is an absolute bummer (positive or negative).

I had to wrack my brains a bit for an answer to this, because I don’t generally read books that look set to be a bummer. Tragic, yes. Devastating, absolutely, but I’m not a fan of books that just make you go :| What’s the point of that?

That said, coming back to Rosemary Sutcliff, I’m going to say The Shining Company. You know what the end is going to be, but even when it comes, I felt the book lacked Sutcliff’s usual poignancy - that theme of hope and healing despite great loss and pain, of the lantern being carried forward into the dark, that usually makes her books so emotional. I think, too, the fact that I never got hugely attached to any of the characters meant that the final twist wasn’t as devastating as it should have been. So it was pretty much just a bummer.

(As you can probably tell, this is my least favourite Sutcliff novel.)

5. Renaissance: A book that you have learned a lot from OR a book that made you think a lot.

This is a strangely hard one to answer! I read and mine through lots of history books for research purposes, so I’m always learning some new fact or anecdote or other. But books that have rocked me to the core and made me re-evaluate fundamental truths... um... nothing recent springs to mind. (Which probably tells you everything you need to know about the sort of literature I consume, but... ehhhh.)

So - a history book rec it is! The Victorian House, by Judith Flanders. It’s a lovely big doorstopper absolutely crammed full of fascinating stuff. She takes you round a typical Victorian terraced house room by room, and by doing so explores how Victorian daily life, upstairs and downstairs, was acted out in these rooms. It’s a brilliant book, eminently readable, full of fascinating information about how domestic life was theorised and compartmentalised in the Victorian mind. It’s great stuff.

6. The Enlightenment: A book about knowledge, science, discovery, or exploration.

Admittedly it’s been a while since I delved into this particular corner of the Age of Sail, but as I recall, Richard Hough’s biography of James Cook was really good for this, setting his life and voyages in the context of the scientific history - advances in geographical and astronomical knowledge, development of accurate measures of timekeeping, cartography, navigation, etc., etc. (which in turn spirals out into the history of trade- and empire-building, etc.) Just... yeah, there was a lot going on in that book.

7. The Industrial Revolution: A book featuring an invention or a concept that you would love to have in your own life.

Gosh, I don’t know! I hardly read any sci-fi, so I can’t think of any books featuring technology or anything that I really wish existed in my own life.

8. World War I. and II.: Your favourite historical fiction book featuring either of the world wars.

I love Carrie’s War - I reread it last year and it was just as great as I remembered! - but even though I don’t think it technically counts as historical fiction, the WW book that has had the most enduring effect on me is definitely All Quiet on the Western Front. There are so many scenes and passages that I remember so clearly (often more clearly than I’d like).

9. Present day: A book you think everybody should read in present day.

I really don’t know what this means. I don’t think there’s such a thing as one book that everybody should read. Apart from like, Shakespeare. Everyone should try Shakespeare at some point. On your own, out of school. 

Not sure how many people I’m meant to tag, but here goes: @themalhambird, @drusilla-951, @vicivefallen, @bryndeavour, @ciceros-ghost, @seaglassandeelgrass.

[warninggraphiccontent]

29 January 2021

Tragedy and statistics

The UK marked a grim milestone this week, recording more than 100,000 Covid deaths by every measure.

Various versions of the famous quote have it that one death is a tragedy, many merely a statistic. Newspapers tried to avoid that and humanise the sombre statistic in different ways. The front pages of The Times and the i focused on the individual tragedies, photographs highlighting the human beings behind the numbers.

Beyond their front pages, both tried to visualise the impact. The i used its paper form to give a double page spread to 100,000 dots, each representing a death. Online, The Times combined the human stories with a different use of dots and a 'narrative scroll', the act of having to move down the page helping illustrate the extent of the tragedy. It put me in mind of Ampp3d's story from 2014 (no longer online, analysis here and here) visualising migrant worker deaths in Qatar. The New York Times took a different approach to scrolling , using the density of dots to show how the pandemic unfolded in the US.

The FT, meanwhile, kept things simple, using a line chart to show the different measures of deaths all exceeding 100,000, and a simple bar chart to compare the UK's mortality rate to others.

Different approaches, but all important attempts to communicate the human cost of Covid and examples of how data visualisation can help make sense of tragedy on such a large scale, when words might fail us.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

In other news:

It's Data Bites this Wednesday at 6pm. Come!

Congratulations to my erstwhile IfG colleagues on the latest (terrific) edition of Whitehall Monitor. Read it here (some more links below), sign up for next week's launch event here.

I had a great time at this year's (virtual) UKGovCamp last week - thanks to the campmakers for making it work so well online. I made it to sessions on public trust; the state of (open) data; every move you make, every word you type...; data in regulation; silos beyond government; data service design; and digital exclusion. I ran a session on whether some sort of annual report on the state of government data could work and if so, what it should include - the notes are here, Jamboard here, and rest assured it's a subject I'll be returning to... Full grid of events and notes here.

The Atlantic had a rather good piece on narratives about the pandemic this week, and how a successful vaccination programme could dispel memories of 'a catastrophic failure of governance': 'The pandemic disaster that might not happen'. I wonder if focusing on how politicians can drive their own narrative overshadows the role of society's storytellers - the media - in shaping and questioning narratives, and absolves them of agency to hold the government to account. Not dissimilar to some narratives around data and technology that seem to forget the decisions around them are made by humans.  

Have views on vaccine passports? Tony does. A reminder that the project I'm working with the Ada Lovelace Institute on is taking evidence until 19 February.

And I forgot to post this last week... President Biden's inaugural address grappled with some of the same tensions between unity and dissent in a democracy that some of the founding fathers did in The Federalist. I'm a particular fan of Alexander Hamilton's fourth and fifth paragraphs here, the fourth eloquent on the need to respect our opponents, and the fifth eloquent on the exact opposite ('no, not these opponents').

Have a good weekend

Gavin

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Today's links:

Graphic content

Macabre milestones

Boris Johnson ‘deeply sorry’ as UK’s Covid death toll passes 100,000* (FT)

How the UK reached 100,000 Covid deaths* (The Times)

100,162 lives (The i, via Matt Butler)

UK official Covid death toll has always undercounted fatalities, analysis shows (The Guardian)

How the world reached 100 million coronavirus cases* (New Statesman)

Covid-19 cases pass 100m* (The Economist)

How 425,000 Coronavirus Deaths Added Up* (New York Times)

Vax populi

Covid-19 vaccine tracker: the global race to vaccinate* (FT)

Vaccine nationalism means that poor countries will be left behind* (The Economist)

Vaccination rates in England are lower for older non-white people, study shows* (FT)

Viral content

UK Covid lockdown starting to work, say scientists* (FT)

Home page for an experimental website displaying COVID-19 statistics

New UK and South Africa Covid variants may spread more easily, so what does this mean for the fight against coronavirus? (The Guardian)

The Amazonian city that hatched the Brazil variant has been crushed by it* (Washington Post)

The march of the coronavirus across America* (The Economist)

See Covid-19 Risk in Your County and a Guide for Daily Life Near You* (New York Times)

We are now sharing previously hidden weekly COVID-19 state profile reports with the public (Cyrus Shahpar, White House COVID-19 Data Director)

Covid-19 Pandemic Could Be Source of Global Crises for Years: WEF* (Bloomberg)

US

Putting Kamala Harris as VP into perspective (Melissa Shusterman)

How popular is Joe Biden? (FiveThirtyEight)

Joe Biden is taking executive action at a record pace* (The Economist)

Full List: Where Every Senator Stands on Convicting Trump* (New York Times)

How The Frost Belt And Sun Belt Illustrate The Complexity Of America’s Urban-Rural Divide (FiveThirtyEight)

Our Radicalized Republic (FiveThirtyEight)

This is one of the most harrowing pictures I have seen about how we lost an entire generation (@marcusjdl)

UK

Whitehall Monitor 2021 (IfG)

Launch event next week (IfG)

Three ways that the coronavirus crisis has changed government (Alice for IfG)

Ministers overrode official advice more than ever in last year’s crisis* (Tim for Times Red Box)

We’ve calculated ward level EU Referendum estimates in England/Wales (James Kanagasooriam)

In data: the benefits squeeze* (Prospect)

Who's furloughed? (Resolution Foundation)

Cities Outlook 2021 (Centre for Cities)

Global

The uncounted: How many women die at the hands of their partners? We simply don’t know – and that needs to change* (Tortoise)

La Niña Roars, Unleashing Fire, Drought and Floods Worldwide* (Bloomberg)

How the Arab spring engulfed the Middle East – and changed the world (The Guardian)

Pessimism and Distrust Could Sway Elections Around the World* (Bloomberg)

Poland’s coal-fired home heating creates widespread pollution* (The Economist)

#dataviz

How to work with Facebook population density data (Alasdair Rae)

Check out this interesting cartography decision! (Gretchen Peterson)

Sport

How green are Premier League clubs? Tottenham top sustainability table (not entirely convinced by this graphic, BBC Sport - and not just because Spurs are top)

When GOATs meet: Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers, by the numbers* (Washington Post)

Everything else

The frenzied rise of GameStop* (The Economist)

Data Archeogram: mapping the datafication of work (Autonomy)

VIEW THE ARMADA MAPS (National Museum of the Royal Navy)

Spanish Armada maps 'saved for the nation' (BBC News)

Meta data

ICO baby

Our session with Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham (Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee)

Tory party illegally collected data on ethnicity of 10m voters, MPs told (The Guardian)

Covid contracts: Extend FoI act to cover private companies making millions says Information Commissioner (Evening Standard)

Adtech investigation resumes (ICO)

Information commissioner’s term extended to allow successor recruitment (Public Technology)

Shaking that pass

Exclusive: Tony Blair calls on Boris Johnson to lead drive for global vaccine passport* (Telegraph)

Vaccine passports and ID Cards (Phil Booth)

Tech companies are racing to build smart vaccine passports. But technology isn't the only problem (ZDNet)

Viral content

What Covid revealed about government’s legacy IT, and what to do next (Civil Service World)

What can wastewater tell us about COVID-19? (COG-UK)

Digital government

Our Syllabus: Here to help you teach Digital Era Government (Teaching Public Service in the Digital Age)

Respecting users’ privacy on GOV.UK accounts (Inside GOV.UK)

Two GDS projects to watch : GOV.UK Accounts and “Forms discovery” (David Durant)

Government Gateway at 20 – looking back at the UK’s most successful digital identity system (Computer Weekly)

No digital postal vote application service before May elections (Public Technology)

"Find your NHS number" (Tom Read and others)

Open government

The Path to the Future (Audrey Tang for CommonWealth)

We are thrilled to announce that #OpenGovWeek will take place May 17-21, 2021! (Open Government Partnership)

RECOMMENDATIONS TO STRENGTHEN CANADA’S RESPONSE TO NEW DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY AND REDUCE THE HARM CAUSED BY THEIR MISUSE (Public Policy Forum)

FOI* (Peter Geoghegan for the LRB)

AI got 'rithm

Government by Algorithm: The Myths, Challenges and Opportunities (Tony Blair Institute for Global Change)

What's your go-to document or paper that defines different types of algorithmic bias? (Rumman Chowdhury)

AI review: Transforming our world with AI (UKRI)

New – Amazon SageMaker Clarify Detects Bias and Increases the Transparency of Machine Learning Models (AWS)

Who Is Winning the AI Race: China, the EU, or the United States? — 2021 Update (Center for Data Innovation)

The City of New York has released an inventory of algorithms in use (Rumman Chowdhury)

A New AI Lexicon: Responses and Challenges to the Critical AI discourse- Call for Contributors (AI Now Institute)

Independent auditors are struggling to hold AI companies accountable (Fast Company)

Media

Fix information failures or risk lives: the Full Fact Report 2021 (Full Fact)

Facebook News feature launches in UK (BBC News)

How Participatory Media Promote Coverage of Social Movements (Nieman Reports)

‘It’s a reality’: Google threatens to stop search in Australia due to media code (Sydney Morning Herald)

Privacy

Exploring Design and Governance Challenges in the Development of Privacy-Preserving Computation (Nitin Agrawal, Reuben Binns, Max Van Kleek, Kim Laine, Nigel Shadbolt)

How Europe’s privacy laws are failing victims of sexual abuse (Politico)

Inside India’s booming dark data economy (Rest of World)

We're exploring the role of privacy enhancing technologies (PETs) in enabling secure and trustworthy use of data (CDEI)

#DataProtectionDay

#DataPrivacyDay

Everything else

Microsoft is one of the largest contributors to the members of Congress who tried to subvert the Democratic process (Judd Legum)

Why does Big Tech want us to feel nostalgic?* (New Statesman)

Census 2021 will be taking place March 21 (ONS)

Opportunities

EVENT: Data Bites #16 (IfG)

JOB: Chair of Geospatial Commission (Cabinet Office)

JOB: Head of Open and Innovative Government Division (OECD)

JOB: Head of the Evaluation Task Force (Cabinet Office)

JOB: Product Manager (360Giving)

And finally...

Lady Gaga as diagrams about AI systems (thread). (Miles Brundage)

Infosec sea shanties (Rachel Tobac)

[eeveevie]

✅🤝 🧟‍♂️ player's choice as always!

Okay, I went with my flower girls + Mads (poor Mads, no flower name for her, sorry babs). 

✅ What are their tag skills?

Rosie: Science, Medical and Repair = possible mad scientist? No, just your local Vault nerd, looking for a book to read. 

Mads: (Even though tag skills are non existent in Fallout 4) Speech, Lock-Picking, Repair = charismatic tinkerer here to steal your shit.  

Daisy: Guns, Barter, Unarmed = bring a knife and a gun to a gun fight

🤝 Are they a member of any factions?

Rosie: For the sake of reclaiming the purity, she aligned herself with the Brotherhood of Steel, but never formally joined. After Project Purity, she slowly distances herself, noticing the subtle changes in the politics she wants nothing to do with. It’s a small faction, but she is part of Reilly's Rangers, if only to help with the cartography of the Capital Wasteland. 

Mads: Miss Hardy managed to charm her way into all the major factions (Railroad, BoS and Minutemen), though, this didn’t really bode well after a certain amount of time. She ended up spending most of her time with the Railroad and Minutemen. After being banished from the Institute, she was helped by the Minutemen to destroy them once and for all. Tensions aren’t the greatest in the Commonwealth since the remaining factions are still at odds with one another, but she does her best to keep the peace. 

Daisy: Not any of the major factions. She does wrangle up the support of the minor factions around the Mojave while still deciding on if she wants to support House or not...then decides to smack that popsicle over the head with a golf club and rule New Vegas herself (with Yes Man). Though, it was fun to string the NCR and the Brotherhood along for the ride. 

🧟‍♂️ What is their opinion on ghouls/super mutants/other mutants?

Rosie: Growing up in the vault, she was educated on the potential threats that lingered on the surface, but a lot of it was fear mongering. Despite this, her father’s teachings of respecting people prevailed and she knows better than to treat non-feral ghouls with disrespect. That being said, the sight of ferals (especially in the Metro system) are downright terrifying for her, as are super mutants. 

Mads: Since she is from before the war, Madelyn had no idea what to expect when it came to traversing the wasteland and the kinds of enemies she’d face. Though, she’d seen her share of B-movies and horror flicks, so at first she thought feral ghouls were zombies. The reality was far worse. When she met her first non-feral, she was intrigued more than anything, relieved to have met somebody that knew what it was like before the war. Super mutants? Yeah, terrifying. 

Daisy: A child of the wasteland, Daisy is indifferent to ghouls and super mutants, since she grew up learning about them and encountering them frequently in her travels from Arizona to Nevada. Nightkin are probably worse than regular muties anyways. 

fallout OC meme

[omniatlas]

Australasia 34 years ago today: Breaking with Britain (10 Jul 1985) https://buff.ly/2G0sUMn As late as 1941, British dominance in Australasia and the South Pacific was unchallenged. By the 1970s this era was over, with Britain joining the European Community and abandoning almost all its remaining colonies. Australia and New Zealand responded by reinventing themselves, revamping their economies, and, in the case of N.Z., adopting a fierce anti-nuclear policy which irritated both the United States and France. #australasia #history #welovehistory #welovemaps #map #1980s #20thcentury #modernhistory #1985 #australianhistory #july #july10 #kiribati #nzhistory #newzealandhistory #solomonislands #tuvalu #commonwealth #britishempire #vanuatu #maps #todayinhistory #historytoday #historyteacher #historybuff #historygeek #historynerd #worldhistory #cartography #geopolitics (at Honiara, Solomon Islands) https://www.instagram.com/p/BzuwcB8AdUf/?igshid=1kt4xz7wamciw

[vault81]

Map of the Commonwealth (25.12.2287)

Featuring all (currently) known factions and their territories

[roadtripnewengland]

The Commonwealth of Connecticut. Vintage map by Amy Drevenstedt around 1926 #maps #vintagemap #cartography (at Connecticut) https://www.instagram.com/roadtrip_newengland/p/CZK4TZlFpJz/?utm_medium=tumblr

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

I’m on a Revolution kick right now, so hear me out

This map doesn’t make any goddamn sense.  The Monroe Republic follows state borders from Wisconsin to Kentucky, but then it just takes most of Virginia and a chunk of North Carolina for no reason; it looks like they wanted it to follow the South Carolina border, the shape is right, but it’s too far up, it’s like they drew this without looking at the actual state boundaries.

Also, why does the Monroe Republic follow the Wisconsin state border instead of the Mississippi river into Minnesota?  The show runners probably thought the Mississippi emptied into Lake Superior.  You think Texas and the Georgia Federation follow the Mississippi because they cut Louisiana in two, but no, the river turns east towards New Orleans, it doesn’t continue south that like.

The Great Salt Lake is huge! And the Plains Nation just arbitrarily juts back and forth in Utah and Idaho and Montana.  It looks random, it doesn’t follow any natural borders like rivers or mountains.  Neither does the California Commonwealth; you can see they have a chunk of Arizona on the far side of the Colorado River, then the border just shoots up through Nevada?  Texas-Plains Nation border roughly follows the Arkansas River, but again it looks like they drew it freehand,

Texas has taken a chunk of Mexico, but in the show there’s an entire episode about them going into Mexico itself, so we don’t even know how far south it extends.  And why is Canada blank?  Are there no political powers in Canada after the apocalypse?  Is Ontario just empty?  The border between the Plains Nation and the-void-formerly-known-as-Canada doesn’t follow the 49th parallel; if you kept following it straight you’d end up much further south, in the middle of Washington State near Seattle.

I do like that the Monroe Republic has taken New Brunswick and southern Quebec; that makes sense, it follows the St. Lawrence River, it’s honestly how the continent should have been divided when the colonies split away from the rest of British America back in the 1770s (no offense to Canada, it just makes more sense to base a border on a river than to have it arbitrarily cut through land  with straight lines like it does today)

I hate the names, they’re so unoriginal, so uninspired!  They sound like factions in a Fallout ripoff, not real sovereign states.  The Monroe Republic is named after its dictator, but even that’s a stretch; Carthage didn’t go to war with the Julius Caesar Republic, World War II wasn’t fought against the Third Hitler, despots know enough not to name countries after themselves.  If anything, he’d call it Monrovia, that’s a real place name, and it invokes themes of colonization because it’s the capitol of Liberia, named after US President James Monroe.

The Georgia Federation would almost certainly have been a new Confederate States; there’s no way the Deep South would all let themselves fall under the name Georgia.  “Confederate States 2: Racism Boogaloo,” it would be nothing like the utopia seen in the show; they have steam engines, a navy, communication with Europe.  Poppycock.

The Plains Nation evokes Native tribes, so it would have made more sense for THIS to be called the Federation.  Plains Federation, made up of Pawnee and Sioux and Crow and Cheyenne.  We barely spend any time there in the show.

I can see California claiming the whole coast under it’s name, though Washington and Oregon would have something to say about that.  More likely they’d call themselves the California Republic than the Commonwealth (the show runners just liked how the alliteration sounded, I guess), because it’s already written on their state flag!

Wasteland?  Really?  Moving on.

I loved this show as a kid, and I really wanna love it now, but it hurts!  The blatant ignorance of cartography and interstate geopolitics hurts!  I can believe expansionist Texas and California, I can believe a reunited south, but I don’t for one second believe the Monroe Republic’s capitol would be in Philadelphia when New York, Chicago, Boston, Detroit, etc. are all still alive and kicking.  yeah, it makes sense from a pre-apocalyptic standpoint, it’s an important city in American history, would probably have been the government’s national redoubt if the Confederacy had taken DC during the Civil War, but in the post-apocalypse I think municipal pride would bind people together into city states rather than large nations like this.

I would have loved to see an exploration of the political situations, but that would probably make for unwatchable television.  NBC, I will pay money to watch a 12-hour Ken Burns documentary about how each of these powers came to be!  I bet the writers didn’t even think about it too much.  Their loss.

[afishtrap]

This chapter explores the rise of official cartography in sixteenth- and seventeenth- century Europe, paying particular attention to state-sponsored mapping and the role of maps in the rise of the state. It also attends to the place of geography in propagating early modern regimes, whether by means of official court geographers—common especially in France, Spain, and the German and Italian states—or by means of commercial mapmakers, who had more prominent parts to play in the cartographic business of the Low Countries and Britain. Our approach to the subject is comparative. It is also necessarily selective, and, following the work of Harley, it focuses on the ceremonial, ideological, and political uses of maps, while other chapters in this volume address more particularly their administrative and strategic uses.

Richard L. Kagan and Benjamin Schmidt. “Maps and the Early Modern State: Official Cartography.” David Woodward, ed. The History of Cartography, Volume 3: Cartography in the European Renaissance. University of Chicago Press: 2007.

State mapping arose in conjunction with shifts in state government, especially newly developing notions of the space of realm and rule. Central to the emergence of official cartography was the concept of territorial sovereignty: the idea of the state as a precisely defined and delimited geopolitical unit. Aspects of this particular concept of statehood could be found in the classical world, especially in Rome at the time of Augustus. By the Middle Ages, however, territorial sovereignty was all but forgotten, for sovereignty had become a fundamentally legal construct, the equivalent of imperium or majestas, terms that had less to do with territory than with the power to make and enforce law. Sovereignty in medieval Europe was power over people, not place, and only gradually did it begin to encompass ideas of territoriality. In France, for example, the symbolic turning point occurred in 1254, when the royal chancellery, which had previously referred to the monarch as rex francorum, or king of the Franks, officially adopted the title of rex franciae, king of France. Such language was purely ceremonial, to be sure, yet it augured the emergence of a more territorialized notion of monarchy and, by extension, a more cartographic approach to governance itself. As early as 1259, the French monarch Louis IX, in the course of a dispute with the neighboring county of Champagne, attempted to learn about “the beginning and ends of the lands of this kingdom and of the country of Champagne”; he sought, in other words, to map his realms.6 In general, however, this shift toward a more territorialized vision of sovereignty occurred only gradually. Late medieval jurists continued to think of sovereignty as essentially a human, as opposed to a territorial, construct; even in the seventeenth century, Thomas Hobbes could write about the commonwealth without reference to boundaries or frontiers. As Sahlins has pointed out, the idea of territorial sovereignty was only a secondary consideration when, in the Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659), the king of France sat down with his Spanish colleague in an effort to fix a linear border between their respective domains. Traditional jurisdictional considerations weighed more heavily than purely geographical ones, and the treaty that was ultimately drafted defined the area annexed by France simply as the “countries, towns, castles, boroughs, villages, and places” that comprised Roussillon and Conflent.7 The result was a border that was, and remains, idiosyncratic.

Despite the particular failure of this treaty to address territorial sovereignty more directly, by the end of the fifteenth century Europe’s rulers did show signs of being territorially conscious—and map savvy—in ways their medieval counterparts were not. The sources of this consciousness were many. To begin with, the translation from Greek into Latin (ca. 1406 –10) of Ptolemy’s Geography contributed to what has been called the “geometrization” of space, the view that land could be measured and described in precise, mathematical terms.8 As in the case of many other humanist “discoveries,” not everyone was at once affected by this development, and for centuries most maps and views were produced without recourse to triangulation, plane tables, theodolites, and the other surveying instruments equated with the rise of Ptolemaic, or “scientific,” cartography. Nevertheless, by the end of the fifteenth century the ideas of Ptolemy and his many followers competed with, and ultimately challenged, at least two prior concepts of mapping: the Aristotelian notion of describing the land primarily in terms of its utility for humans and the Christian approach of delineating the moral boundaries of space, as was typically done in biblically inspired mappaemundi. Both of these strategies did persist, yet they increasingly gave way to Ptolemaic plotting. For example, new ideas of space worked their way into jurisdictional disputes, which soon sparked the development of a “juridical cartography,” Dainville’s term for maps designed solely to assist judges in resolving disputes.9 These juridical conflicts and their resolutions further contributed to the idea that sovereignty, traditionally conceived in terms of contractual relationships between lords and vassals, could also represent power over particular spaces whose boundaries needed to be measured and mapped. As early as the 1420s, Florence and Milan attempted to resolve a boundary dispute through the use of a map, and by the 1450s a series of jurisdictional disputes with ecclesiastical authorities led the dukes of Burgundy to commission new maps describing the territorial limits of their domains.10 Territorial consciousness of a somewhat different sort prompted Pier Maria Rossi, condottiere-prince of Parma, to record his gains in Emilia by decorating his castle at Torchiara with frescos that showed the fortresses and countryside he had recently conquered (this ca. 1460).11 And one of the most telling signs of the rise of territorial consciousness occurred in the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, where Pope Alexander VI divided the non-Christian world between the Spaniards and the Portuguese by drawing a north-south line—the so-called Line of Demarcation— 370 leagues to the west of the Cape Verde Islands. According to the terms of the agreement, all lands to the east of the line belonged to the Portuguese, while those to the west went to Castile. The discovery of the Philippines and other Pacific islands by Ferdinand Magellan sparked a nearly century-long quarrel between the Iberian powers over control of the western Pacific. Nevertheless, the Line of Demarcation offers evidence that by this time even the pope had begun to view the world in territorial, as opposed to strictly jurisdictional (or even religious), terms.

[...]

By contrast, defense against ambitious warlords drove the Italian city-states to map their territories during the conflict-riven fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Or, to put it in Burckhardtian terms, just as Italian condottieri took the lead in the art of war, laying intricate sieges and constructing expert fortresses, walls, and other defenses, so did Italian engineers take the lead in the art of mapping, which well served their princes in the never-ceasing battles of the day.14 War, first in Italy and later elsewhere in Europe, contributed appreciably to the rise of territorial consciousness. It also spawned a class of individuals, soon to be called surveyors and engineers, who developed the mathematical and charting skills necessary to plot out a city’s defensive requirements in the form of ground plans or maps. It follows that some of Europe’s first ground plans—a sure sign of territorial consciousness— came from northern Italy. An early example is the plot of Milan, produced for the Sforzas around 1430; another is that of the Po Valley town of Imola, attributed to Leonardo da Vinci and completed around 1484 as part of the town’s fortification strategy.15 Like the contemporary plans of dikes and polders in the Netherlands, these texts were working documents, executed for practical purposes. Yet they contributed all the same to the concept of sovereignty as it came to be understood in later years: official control over space rather than people.

[...]

To be topographically wise, as rulers were plainly counseled, is not quite the same as to be in control of one’s realms; knowing the discipline of geography is not the same as disciplining the land. Yet the two trends tended to run in conjunction around this time, and the first half of the sixteenth century witnessed numerous and varied attempts to rein in the land (or sea), graphically no less than politically. Once again, certain Italian precedents stand out. Venice, following its colonial expansion by the early fifteenth century to the mainland, or terra firma, and in the wake of the growing French threat following the 1494 invasion of the peninsula by Charles VIII, instituted a policy of producing surveys and commissioning regional maps to enable it effectively to manage its growing resources. A prominent map of the “state of the Serenissima” (now lost) decorated the doge’s palace.22 The Venetian project offers early evidence of state-sponsored cartography. It may well have been such Italian influences that prodded the centralizing regime of Tudor England toward a similar strategy of mapping. Yet what Barber has called “the Henrician cartographic revolution” (“a profusion of plats . . . by military engineers”) probably grew out of the more particular circumstances of the 1530s, by which time the pope had excommunicated Henry VIII, and an attack by François I of France (aided by Charles V) did not seem out of the question.23 Whatever the stimulus, the English monarchy seized on the device of maps “as tools in the processes of government and administration,” suggesting that Thomas Cromwell well understood the link between cartography and statecraft. 24 The back-and-forth conflicts between Sweden and Denmark may well have instigated the respective Scandinavian crowns to sponsor projects for mapping their realms; there is even talk of a Konglischen Schule of cartography in Copenhagen.25 And in the Holy Roman Empire the crisis of the Reformation may likewise have intensified cartographic undertakings, including, for example, Tilemann Stella’s great surveying project—which, if never fully realized, did produce an important map of Germany in 1560.26

[hunnapprinthouse]

Antique Map of Melbourne| Pictorial Map of Melbourne| 1938 Melbourne City Map| Vintage Australia Map| Victoria| Commonwealth Map

[windyism237975-blog]

Pine Mountain Range Ski Dive 2013.

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