Dennis Reinhartz

The Caribbean Cartography of Samuel Fahlberg

Swedish born in Halsingland and educated in Stockholm, Dr. Samuel Fahlberg (1758–1834) came to the Caribbean to the island of St. Barthelemy (“St. Barths”) in 1784 as a physician and Government Secretary when it was relinquished by France to Sweden. Two years later, he became the Provincial Medical Officer and the Customs Inspector and Cashier, and in 1803 he also became the Director of Survey of the tiny colony and mapped it extensively for the Swedish West India Company. But because of the ongoing problems between Sweden and France over the island and his too close an association with the island’s pro-British faction, Fahlberg eventually was forced to flee under threat to “lose his life, honour, and property” to the neighboring Dutch islands of St. Eustatius (1810–1816 and 1829–1834) and St. Maarten in (1816–1829). He remained in St. Maarten and St. Eustatius (“Statia”) as a doctor, surveyor, cartographer, architect, and artist for most of the three remaining decades of his life until his death in St. Eustatius in 1834. During these years, Fahlberg produced several excellent and important maps of these Caribbean islands and their towns, plantations and estates, and fortifications.

Modernity and Its Other: The Encounter with North American Indians in the Eighteenth Century

This is yet one more volume, albeit from a somewhat different perspective, added to a considerable historical literature on the contact between European colonists and Native Americans, primarily in British North America in the eighteenth century. The author, Robert Woods Sayre, is a professor emeritus of English and American literature and civilization at the University of Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée, and this publication is a revision of his French edition of 2008. Sayre examines colonial-Indigenous interaction through the analysis of over a dozen relatively well-known British and French texts from the period. He makes a point of insisting that he is not engaging in ethnohistory, which he is not. Under the influence of Marxist historiography, he establishes a modern vs. premodern model, with the “capitalist” colonists representing modernity, and themore traditionalNativeAmericans premodernity.His thesis is that in the eighteenth century, there was a shift in power from the Native Americans to the colonists, particularly exemplified by the Native Americans’ loss of many of their lands east of the Mississippi River to the Europeans. A part of this process consisted in casting theNative Americans as the colonists’ “other,” as reflected in the travel accounts called upon by Sayre. There is really nothing new in this argument. After a sound introduction, in which the distinctions between the British and French approaches to the Native Americans and some of the reasons for them are indicated, the book is divided into two major sections followed by an epilog. The first section, “Views of Modernity: Internal/External Discovery,” consists of a review of works by Saint-John de Crèvecoeur, Philip Freneau, and Moreau de Saint-Méry, all of whom have strong French roots. Sayre stresses the importance of the influence of the American and/or French revolutions on these men. The longer second section, “Views of the Other: Travels in ‘Indian Territory’,” examines the writings of individuals who spent time among the Native Americans, willingly or otherwise. The first group is from the period of the French and Indian War and includes several who are quite negative toward theNative Americans. Others, such as the French adventurer Louis-Armand, Baron de Lahonton, and the North American-born explorer Jonathan Carver, adopt a more positive perspective. In this second section, Sayre’s favorite is clearly the Quaker botanist William Bartram. Although Bartramwas not a full-blown advocate of the idea of the “noble savage,” he respected the Native Americans and saw them as being at home in nature. The section closes with the narratives of the fur traders Alexander Mackenzie and Jean-Baptiste Trudeau. Throughout, Sayre offers contrasting European views of the Native Americans, but he also points out that even those who saw them more positively still cast them as various versions of the “other.” In the epilog, which is one of the best segments of the book, Sayre transposes his story and themes onto the nineteenth century andwest of theMississippi where he sees them continuing and even accelerating. Here, he considers the text and graphics of only one man, the American artist George Catlin. Sayre holds that Catlin’s work is defensive of the Indigenous peoples and reflects the pressures on them to give up their lands. Sayre also believes that even with his written and artistic pleas, Catlin nevertheless contributes to the view of the Native Americans as the “other,” thereby ultimately making it easier to evict them from their traditional holdings. This volume is not exceptional within its genre, but it is substantial. It is even-handed in its presentation of some significant texts, well-structured, and clearly written. The thesis of the book is effectively established, though the flirtation with a somewhat superficial understanding of Marxist historical theory is not very helpful to achieving this end. This volume should nonetheless prove appealing and even valuable to those interested in North American frontier history and some of its travel literature sources prior to the opening of the Trans-Mississippi West.

Over the Santa Fe Trail to Mexico: The Travel Diaries and Autobiography of Dr. Rowland Willard

Wilkie addresses the pros and cons of using the first person narrative, citing other examples such as Colm Toibin’s biography of Henry James (The Master) or in Carolly Erickson’s Bloody Mary (Queen Mary I) and shares many other scholarly opinions on the subject. He argues his book conforms to what “Marie Callegari would have told us if she had the opportunity” (p. 335) and he has convinced this reader, for one. There is no index but the period maps and illustrations are well chosen. As no portrait of Madame Callegari is known to exist, Wilkie substitutes that of a famous French actress of the day, Rachel, whom Marie was said to resemble. An interesting choice and one that seems in keeping with his less conventional approach to the study of history.

Mapping the Four Corners: Narrating the Hayden Survey of 1875

The survey conducted under the leadership of Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden was one of the most consequential of such assessments in the history of the opening of the American West. Hayden, who had conducted previous surveys in Montana and Wyoming, initiated his canvass of the Southwest in Colorado, in 1873, and concluded it in the Four Corners region of Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico in 1875. Mapping the Four Corners, edited by Robert S. McPherson, a professor of history at Utah State, Eastern, and Susan Rhodes Neel, an associate professor of history at Utah State, Eastern, richly details the final phase of this focal survey Hayden directed (albeit mainly from Washington, DC and Denver). The book is subtitled Narrating the Hayden Survey of 1875 for it is largely composed of a first-rate compilation of carefully selected excerpts from field notes, diary entries, correspondence, and newspaper accounts by the expedition members. This United States Geological and Geographic Survey team was chiefly composed of cartographers, geologists, and other scientists, but also one of its key members was the prominent photographer William Henry Jackson, some of whose pictures the editors have included to help illustrate this volume. As part of his visit to the Hopi mesas, Jackson even met and photographed the later famous potter Nampeyo (her picture appears on p. 148). Beyond being scientists, many of the participants were also seekers of gold and other economic opportunities for themselves. In total, the party was composed of almost 40 individuals, broken up into seven specific groups, each with their own responsibilities and tasks to perform. The chapters of the book generally reflect the work of the separate groups. Beyond the actual survey, a dominant sub-theme of this text concerns the circumstances of the Indians of the area, especially the Utes. The editors, for example, have identified selections dealing with the Indians and illustrating the expedition members’ often less-than-positive opinions of them. But they were after all men of their times. The attitudes of the expedition members emerge especially in the graphic descriptions of the reservation allotments of food such as livestock, flour, and other essentials to the Utes every 10 days or so and to what the expedition members interpreted as the Utes’ almost animal-like responses to these allotments. Although this was not one of the expedition’s stated intents, the Utes also perhaps correctly feared the survey and that it could ultimately lead to a loss of reservation land, by establishing rigid boundaries for the area. After approximately two months, just as the work was coming to an end, part of the expedition even came under attack by Indians. The sixth chapter, “‘Something Serious Has Occurred’: La Sal Mountains to Parrott City, August 15-19,” very effectively chronicles the almost 200 mile long-gun battle retreat of the combined parties led by engineer and surveyor James Terry Gardner and geographer Henry Gannett from a band of renegade Utes, Paiutes, and Navajo. This edited collection provides a very good rendering of the final segment of the Hayden Survey and its southwestern environment. The document selection is quite sound, though perhaps somewhat slanted toward the conditions of the Indians at the expense of the actual day-to-day nitty gritty of surveying. The editors’ “Introduction” and “Conclusion” are excellent and absolutely essential to the book. In addition to pulling the volume together, they set the stage especially for readers who are less familiar with the ways and significance of western surveys and their consequences, respectively. Similarly, readers will find the explanations in the notes, along with the maps, photos, and other illustrations, exceptionally helpful. The interest for this book easily should extend well beyond those captivated by surveying and mapping to anyone fascinated by the history of the American West.

Inventing Exoticism: Geography, Globalism, and Europe’s Early Modern World

plants and animals with them and reshuffled the location of many species. This theory is known as vicariance biogeography and postulates that the dispersal of plants and animals are the results of the movement of the continental plates. This theory dominated the field of biogeography through the 1970s and 1980s. The problem with vicariance biogeography along with all the previous theories is that it did not fit the evidence particularly well. Vicariance is an elegant theory that connects cause and effect into meaningful patterns. But the appearance of techniques of molecular clock dating provided approximate dates for biological divergences and dispersals that were much too young for continental drift to be responsible. As a result, oceanic dispersal of the Darwinian and New York type arose again. That is the approach that Queiroz supports. He provides a series of case studies of how plants, frogs, and monkeys, along with other plants and animals, made their way from one continent to another via accidental drift voyages across the seas. DNA evidence and molecular clock dating show that such oceanic dispersals had to have occurred. As Queiroz points out, such voyages were accidental and the chance of the plants and animals surviving was infinitesimally small, but over the course of hundreds of millions of years, millions of accidental drift voyages could have occurred. If only the tiniest portion were successful, it still amounts to hundreds or even thousands of oceanic dispersals. It is a process akin to a lottery. The chance of winning is extremely low, but there is always a winner. Queiroz, in outlining the history of the debates about biogeography, points out that in the context of Thomas Kuhn’s description of scientific revolutions, biogeography has been in the pre-paradigm phase. It has not yet developed a grand theory. Such a phase of scientific debate is a dialog of the deaf with no progress and occasionally characterized by acrimony. For readers of Terrae Incognitae, Queiroz has provided some food for thought from the world of natural history for historians as we contemplate human drift voyages in the distant past and their hyper-diffusionistic implications. It encourages us to contemplate the possibility of human drift voyages with a bit more of an open mind, although if such voyages occurred, there is still very little evidence that they were culturally significant.

William Dampier and the Wreck of the Roebuck off Ascension Island in 1701

William Dampier’s well-documented travels around the world brought him to the south-Atlantic island of Ascension where he and his crew were marooned. This short article explores the events leading up to and following the unhappy ending of the Roebuck.

Syevyernaya i vostochnaya Tartariya, vklyuchayuahchaya oblasti, racpolozhyennyye v syevyernoy i vostochoy chastyakh Yevropy i Azii. [North and East Tartary.] By Nicolaas Witsen. (Dennis Reinhartz)

the Academia de Matemáticas (Madrid, 1582), an institution whose mission was to promote understanding in this branch of knowledge. In the fifth and final chapter, having reached the end of Habsburg rule, the author laments that a complete geographical description of the country had yet to be produced. However, various peripheral regions, endowed with institutions and identities that the process of political integration had been unable to erase, had created their own geographical archives, some of great value, all of which boasted their own cartographic descriptions. The best known of these projects was the one undertaken by Juan Bautista Labaña in Aragon (1610–1620), the fruits of which encouraged Philip IV to commission a similar description of Spain. This project was to involve cartographers such as Pedro Texeira and others whom we can barely identify, but their efforts were to prove largely fruitless. The final paragraphs of the chapter show how, on the threshold of the new century (1700), the main outcome of this activity was the archaic maps in volume 10 of Joan Blaeu’s Atlas Mayor (1672). The book concludes with an extensive list of the manuscript and printed sources consulted and a useful index of names and places. The author has tackled an enormous and highly ambitious subject, for which documentary evidence is limited. This has inevitably forced him to frequent speculation, the results of which he prudently qualifies as provisional. The most prominent geógrafos are paraded through the chapters of the book, accompanied by others with whom historians of geography and cartography will be less familiar. Yet the author presents the findings of the geógrafos in a wellconstructed discourse that is clear and readable, supported by a wealth of notes and bibliographical references: this study has been expertly edited. It is to be regretted, therefore, that the book’s black andwhite illustrations are not on a parwith the text and the published volume in general. An introduction to the subject and some final reflectionswould also have been welcome. In short, Los geógrafos del rey is a valuable contribution that usefully summarizes the results of recently published research.

Mapping Europe's Borderlands: Russian Cartography in the Age of Empire. By Steven Seegal

more than two centuries as few other places in the world. How was the ‘idea of Greece’ given visual shape? Through which processes did it come to be conceived as a region of Europe and to be represented as such? In addressing these basic questions, Tolias is faced with two main challenges. The first is how to map this story on a pre-existing set of maps (basically those from the Samourkas collection, although others are included as well). The second is how to tell the story. As Matthew Edney and others have eloquently shown, the premodern history of Western cartography is far from being a linear monolithic enterprise. It is, rather, a complex polyphony of different mapping genres paralleling (and often converging into) one another. In order to convey such complexity, Tolias follows a somewhat unconventional pattern, letting cartographic materials guide his narrative, rather than the other way around. The book is therefore arranged by mapping genre, instead of chronologically or topographically. In Chapter One the reader is taken through Ptolemaic mappings, medieval mappaemundi and portolan charts. The treatment of Greece throughout the chapter, however, is rather marginal. The various sections broadly outline the three cartographic traditions, reducing mappings of Greece to an ‘instance’ rather than a narrative thread. On the whole, the chapter tends to summarize rather than add to current scholarship on Western pre-modern cartography. As onemoves on, the focus of the book becomes clearer, although occasionally obscured by, in my opinion, far too long digressions on the various mapping genres per se. Chapter Two discusses the emergence of the conceptualization of Greece as a region in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The author thus returns to Ptolemaic mappings and introduces the reader to Italian isolarii (mainly featuring Aegean islands). We are subsequently taken to atlases, including classics such asMercator’s and Ortelius’s, as well as to less famous maritime handbooks (Chapter Three), to seventeenthand eighteenth-century military and ‘topic’ maps with special emphasis on Venetian ‘colonial mappings’ of Crete and the Peloponnese (Chapter Four), then, once again, to island books and atlases featuring these regions, and finally to French antiquarian academic projects and Russian nautical charts. Chapter Five focuses on antiquarian maps of Greece, sometimes re-engaging with previous materials (for example, Ortelius) but from a different angle. While successfully capturing the complexity of the cartographic panorama, this arrangement nevertheless generates inevitable repetitions. As a result, the narrative is often tiring and several opportunities to show links between the various mapping genres are missed. Except for occasional imprecisions (for example, Fra Mauro’s mappamundi becoming a ‘fresco’), sources are carefully researched. Map historians will appreciate the attention paid to maps’ usages and audiences, and will find discussions about lesser known mapmakers of particular interest. While the engagement with the images from the Samourkas collection varies from chapter to chapter, it is usually descriptive rather than interpretative. Iconographic engagement with the individual maps is often given up in favour of general descriptions of the works they come from and the type of information they convey (especially place-names). Likewise, contextualization is usually limited to historical background, avoiding indepth discussions of relevant cultural and philosophical movements. In this sense, Mapping Greece ultimately remains a book written by a meticulous historian, rather than by an imaginative art historian or a cultural geographer. It is essentially two books in one in that it presents the reader with parallel texts: Tolias’s textual narrative and the visual narrative of the Samourkas collection. The two are not always clearly intertwined, hence the reader often has to flip back and forth several pages to connect references in the text to the relevant image. This said, Tolias’s mighty tome presents a wealth of understudied cartographic gems, and any map lover will find sheer delight just leafing through it. The volume is printed on glossed paper and profusely illustrated with wonderful high-resolution colour reproductions (definitely worth the price!). Appendixes, including a catalogue of the maps in the collection with short biographies of their makers, are provided at the end, easing navigation. Overall, the text is accessible to a general audience, though at times it tends to get a bit too technical for a readership of non-experts and a bit too taken-for-granted for specialists. Mapping Greece is not the sort of book to read all at once. It is rather a precious reference text to explore at ease and to return to over and over again, like the antiquarian maps it discusses.

Vaganova: A Dance Journey from Petersburg to Leningrad

West-East oppositions, the indefinite nature of the eastern frontier, and the unifying role of culture. Le Goff then presents eight chapters to illustrate his thesis. In the first chapter, “Preludes,” Le Goff identifies four ancient legacies that were transmitted to the Middle Ages, isolating influences from the Greek world, the Romans, the Bible, and the trifunctional IndoEuropean societal ideology bequeathed to the medieval world as oratores, bellatores, and laboratores. The remainder of the work follows a chronological format. In “The Conception of Europe” Le Goff examines European history from the fourth to the eighth centuries. In this chapter, he shows how these centuries provided Europe with a common Christian culture, new heroes in the forms of saints and martyrs, new political institutions and laws, and the notion of the East as “other,” either in reaction to Byzantium during the iconoclastic controversy or to Islam. In “An Aborted Europe: The Carolingian World,” he explores Europe from the eighth to the tenth centuries, highlighting Charlemagne’s role in monastic and legal unification-the latter of which “afforded a glimpse of the possibility of European legal unity” (33). Le Goff also views the Treaties of Verdun (843) and Minden (844) as the origins of a France/Germany axis so integral to the stability of the European Union today. In “The Dream of Europe,” he surveys Europe circa the year 1000, describing the integration of the Scandinavians, Slavs, and Hungarians, the incipient Peace Movements, and European consolidation. “Feudal Europe” examines Europe in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. In this chapter, Le Goff covers a wide range of material including the growth of feudal monarchies, the development of a common courtly culture, and the Crusades-which Le Goff argues were not an early manifestation of European Colonialism. The longest chapter in the book, “The ‘Fine’ Europe of Towns and Universities,” surveys the thirteenth century, while “The Autumn of the Middle Ages or the Spring of a New Ages” argues that the trials of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries shook but not did not destroy Europe’s medieval structures. Le Goff has produced a fine survey of medieval Europe that will benefit both specialists and non-specialists alike. He incorporates the most recent secondary scholarship into this work and has added both a useful chronology and a selective thematic bibliography.

Yugoslavia as History: Twice There Was a Country

Introduction: the search for viability 1. Empires and fragmented borderlands, 800-1800 2. Unifying aspirations and rural resistance, 1804-1903 3. New divisions, Yugoslav ties and Balkan wars, 1903-1914 4. The First World War and the first Yugoslavia, 1914-1921 5. Parliamentary kingdom, 1921-1928 6. Authoritarian kingdom, 1929-1941 7. World war and civil war, 1941-1945 8. Founding the Second Yugoslavia 1946-1953 9. Titos Yugoslavia ascending, 1954-1967 10. Titos Yugoslavia descending, 1968-1988 11. Ethnic politics and the end of Yugoslavia.