Cartographies of Time, Ch. 4
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Cartographies of Time Published by Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Princeton Architectural Press Rosenberg, Daniel, 1966– 37 East Seventh Street Cartographies of time / Daniel Rosenberg and Anthony Grafton.—1st ed. New York, New York 10003 p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. For a free catalog of books, call 1.800.722.6657. ISBN 978-1-56898-763-7 (alk. paper) Visit our website at www.papress.com. 1. Chronology, Historical. 2. Chronology, Historical—Maps. 3. History— Philosophy. I. Grafton, Anthony. II. Title. D11.5.R64 2009 © 2010 Princeton Architectural Press 902’.02—dc22 All rights reserved 2008052892 Printed and bound in China 13 12 11 10 4 3 2 1 First edition Cover image: Historical and Biographical Chart of the United States, David Ramsay, 1811. Courtesy of the American Philosophical Society. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without Managing Editor: Jennifer Thompson written permission from the publisher, except in the context of reviews. Project Editor: Wendy Fuller Designer: Jan Haux Every reasonable attempt has been made to identify owners of copyright. Errors or omissions will be corrected in subsequent editions. Special thanks to: Nettie Aljian, Bree Anne Apperley, Sara Bader, Dorothy Ball, Nicola Bednarek, Janet Behning, Becca Casbon, Carina Cha, Penny (Yuen Pik) Chu, Carolyn Deuschle, Russell Fernandez, Pete Fitzpatrick, Clare Jacobson, Aileen Kwun, Nancy Eklund Later, Linda Lee, Laurie Manfra, John Myers, Katharine Myers, Dan Simon, Andrew Stepanian, Paul Wagner, Joseph Weston, and Deb Wood of Princeton Architectural Press —Kevin C. Lippert, publisher Chapter 4: A New Chart of History For all of the advances in chronological scholarship in the and return to with pleasure. In it, the world is familiar: we early modern period, the graphic ambitions of the chronol- see the world’s peoples; we measure distances at a glance of ogers proved hard to fulfill. The textbooks said over and over an eye or with a compass in hand; we trace the contours of again that chronology and geography were the two eyes of the map so deeply in our imagination that they can never be history. But if this were the case, the early modern history fully erased. The same cannot be said for chronology, a field student was liable to end up with serious problems of depth so dry, difficult, and thankless that it offers nothing more to perception. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the spirit than a multitude of ugly dates that overwhelm and geographical maps became more sophisticated and pre- frustrate the memory and are then easily forgotten.1 cise, as cartographers abandoned the venerable and durable form of the Ptolemaic map for new conventions and added This from a man with a passion for historical dates. vast amounts of previously unknown information. Even before the coming of the printing press, chro- Like cartography, the study of chronology changed nology was a book-heavy field, dependent on the collec- rapidly in this period. Early modern chronologers employed tion and organization of many precise and discrete pieces new techniques from fields as disparate as astronomy and of information. Print technology facilitated the storage, numismatics and labored tirelessly to incorporate into their reproduction, and dissemination of information in many schemes new information drawn from all over the world. forms, but it was particularly well suited to the needs of But, until the eighteenth century, the field of chronology did chronology, where exact reproduction was a necessity, the not undergo a visual revolution comparable to the one that accumulation of data was paramount, and big, overstuffed took place in geography. The contrast was so striking that, reference books were in high demand. In the fifteenth and as late as 1753, French physician and amateur chronologer sixteenth centuries, new dating techniques led to significant Jacques Barbeu-Dubourg could still write, advances in chronology—Apianus, for example, sought to establish firm chronological footholds by correlating data Geography is a pleasant and gratifying study. It places before from astronomy with received historical accounts—but us an image of the world entire, which we may traverse quickly many of the most striking advances of the period relied Cartographies of Time 96 on innovations in information organization. And, in the Though it would be decades before Rou’s approach following two centuries, the impact of such innovations was attempted again in France, in England, it was taken intensified. In contrast to the type-dominated chronology up almost immediately in A View of Universal History by books of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, seventeenth- Francis Tallents, a nonconforming minister and teacher in century chronologies relied heavily on fine engraving, the provincial town of Shrewsbury in the West Midlands which enabled greater and greater feats of data compres- near the border of Wales. Through Tallents’s book, Rou’s sion, a more fluid mixture of image and text, and nearly format passed into wider use, especially in the English dis- unlimited variations in script, layout, and proportion. As senting academies, institutions established from the end of a result, during the second half of the seventeenth century, the seventeenth century to serve students excluded from the precedent of Jean Boulaese, who attempted to condense Oxford and Cambridge on religious grounds. (And it was much of Eusebius into a single chart, was widely pursued. in these very academies that Joseph Priestley, the famous Among the most influential of the synoptic works of scientist and theologian who would revolutionize the field the later seventeenth century were the Tables historiques, of chronography in the 1760s, first encountered them.)4 chronologiques, & généalogiques (Historical, chronological, Eventually, in 1729, the abbé Nicolas Lenglet du and genealogical tables) published in the 1670s in two vol- Fresnoy, author of numerous pedagogical treatises— umes by the French protestant lawyer Jean Rou.2 [ fig.1 ] The including the popular Méthode pour étudier l’histoire work comprised a series of engraved tables that condensed (Method for studying history)—published a similar work huge amounts of chronological and genealogical information in France, the Tables chronologiques de l’histoire universelle on several oversized pages. Influential as they were to become, (Chronological tables of world history).5 To Lenglet du Rou’s charts were not immediately imitated in France. His Fresnoy, the need to push the boundaries of synoptic rep- first volume, on ancient history, was a great success, but his resentation seemed urgent. By the early eighteenth century, second volume on modern history, including the period of the field of published historiography was huge and rapidly the Reformation, proved so controversial that it was banned, growing: he estimated that it had already surpassed 30,000 and Rou was forced to take refuge in the Netherlands.3 volumes. Calculating on the basis of his own prodigious Chapter 4: A New Chart of History 97 Cartographies of Time 98 [1] _______________________________ In 1672 the first volume of Jean Rou’s elegantly engraved Tables historiques, chronologiques, & généalogiques on ancient history was received with acclaim in Paris, but after his modern history tables appeared in 1675, his works were banned for their perceived Protestant content. In 1682 the philosopher Pierre Bayle lamented that Rou’s tables had become almost impossible to find. Chapter 4: A New Chart of History 99 speed and endurance in reading—he sometimes read for subject matter messy enough that many people might like fourteen hours a day—Lenglet du Fresnoy estimated that to have a small chronological cheat sheet to use while they a diligent student could not hope to read more than 1,800 read. Heavy tomes on chronology were all well and good, works of history without making unacceptable sacrifices in but what use were they to the regular reader? memory and comprehension. And, to assure good value for Parsons’s chronography was finely tuned to the con- the intellectual labor, he recommended reading no more temporary uses of books. [ figs. 5–7] For his first edition of than 1,200 such works in a lifetime, a number which might 1689, he commissioned forty-three plates from the engraver allow a person to think “a little about what he reads.”6 John Sturt, simplified Marcel’s complex layout and sym- Lenglet du Fresnoy was among the greatest eighteenth- bolic scheme, and reduced its size even further. As Parsons century promoters of the study of chronology, but in his hoped, his new format was a commercial success, and many work, we can already detect its declining status. Even as editions followed, selling 4,000 copies in about a decade.8 he emphasized the importance of chronology, Lenglet du Though Parsons prized miniaturization, he noticed that in Frensnoy lamented that it was so little valued in relation to some ways the tiny first edition sacrificed too much to con- the prestigious field of history.7 siderations of size. The paper was too thin to write on easily, During the late seventeenth century some chronog- and there was precious little space in which to add annota- raphies grew; others shrank. [ figs. 2–4] Fine engraving tions. He chose thicker, higher quality paper for his second techniques made tiny fonts practical, and by the 1680s the edition and printed on only one side of each page, leaving French writer Guillaume Marcel was publishing politi- the reverse free for notation. cal and ecclesiastical chronologies in pocket size. Marcel’s The importance of new printing and engraving tech- model was copied across Europe. In England, it was adopted niques in the chronographies of the later seventeenth cen- by William Parsons, a former officer in the invading army tury is evident too in lavish productions such as the charts of the Prince of Orange now an entrepreneur who saw a from the Lumen historiae sacrae (Illuminations of sacred potential money-maker in this clever, portable object.