A MAP OF COLONIAL NEW SPAIN

Ursula Ewald
1984 Jahrbuch für Geschichte Lateinamerikas – Anuario de Historia de America Latina  
Note on the Map Some strange discrepancy exists between the stress of the age of reconnaissance on the making of maps or the usefulness contributed to them and the reluctance of many modern scientists, be they historians, anthropologists or even historical geographers, to use maps as a methodological tool for presenting their research. On the background of the rapid general advances in the art of cartography the discovery and exploration of the New World brought forth a spate of manuscript and
more » ... f printed maps 1 . As for accuracy and scope of information, technical skill or aesthetic value, they all differ greatly from each other. The varying quality of the maps which accompany some of the famous "Relaciones Geogräficas" 2 of the later sixteenth century, from a comparative point of view, perhaps illustrate best the contrasts possible, although their authors were no professional map-makers. While their manuscript maps still stress the course of coast-lines, lagoons or spit heads, conspicuous features of relief or even of land use, as in the case of Meztitlan 3 , especially printed maps of the seventeenth century and later showed an ever increasing number of names feigning advances in information 4 while neglecting other data which might have been incorporated into cartographic representation. Since Alexander von Humboldt, with emerging scientific research on Mexico, maps tended *) The map is fitted into a pocket at the end of the volume. ') • Compare e.g.
doi:10.7788/jbla-1984-0118 fatcat:5cd3eelyuzcvvg24vusxi2hs7u