This is a MapHist list message (when you hit 'reply' you're replying to the
whole list)
o + o + o + o + o + o + o + o + o + o + o + o + o + o + o + o + o + o + o +
John Delaney's response to my strongly-worded critique of the new
Princeton exhibition entitled Strait Through from Magellan to Cook & the
Pacific
does not get around the fact that he presents (intentionally or not) a
highly selective treatment of the issue of what the European explorers and
cartographers knew about the Pacific.
While he says he was not at liberty given certain institutional
constraints to ask for and include the New York Public Library's precious
Lenox globe, he reveals that -- at least to his credit -- he made a bow toward
the Waldseemueller world map by noting in some text that it visually
suggests the existence of the Pacific (W's globe gores actually shows as
southern water passage). And Delaney cites Magellan's claim about seeing a
strait on a Beheim map made for the Portuguese King Manuel as stated in
Pigafetta's account of the voyage of the Victoria. But nothing more!
I submit that regardless of whatever institutional chains that bound
him to what Princeton's itself owns, Delaney's exhibition remains a highly
selective presentation of the relevant evidence that bears on the question
of what the Europeans knew and when they knew it, which presumably is the
question or issue implicitly -- if not explicitly -- at the heart of his
exhibition's thematic which relates to knowledge of the Pacific and the
islands found therein.
Delaney's Demand for a Smoking Gun Map
Delaney's curt rejoinder to me that he is still waiting in
particular for the original map of the Portuguese explorer who discovered the
strait
or southern water passage to the Pacific before Magellan.
Implicit in his request is that if I or anyone has or finds such an
original map, then he would beg the powers that be at Princeton to give him the
permission to include such a smoking gun map in his exhibition.
We essentially heard this demand for a smoking gun original map
earlier on Maphist and I dealt with it on
Maphist.
First of all, as many will recall, I pointed out that any such map
would have been Ultra-Top Secret to the Portuguese who were well known for
their obsession with secrecy about all their discoveries during this
period. King Manuel forbade all depictions of the East coast of South America
below 7 degree latitude south as early as November 1504 as noted by Albert
Ronsin in his book on the Saint-Die project, Vespucci and Waldseemueller.
I emphasized on Maphist that few persons other than King Manuel
who tried to move Heaven and Earth to thwart Magellan's voyage in 1519 would
have had access to what would have been an ultra secret map given that if
it leaked out, it would have raised the question of a violation of the
Treaty of Tordesillas concluded with Spain in 1494. I joked (again on
Maphist)
that King Manuel might have taken such a precious map and any companion
logs/documentation with him to the grave -- a joke which was lost on some
persons who asked me privately about trying to find the King's royal tomb now.
But setting all joking to the side, there is more I wish to say on
this matter now in response to Delaney and as an additional important
reminder to those on Maphist.
As far as I know, we are all still waiting to see the original map
of Bartolomeo Diaz that proves conclusively that he rounded the Cape of
Good Hope in 1488 or the original map of Vasco
Da Gama that proves that he completed the circumnavigation of Africa in
1498. I am still waiting for Columbus' own original map that proves his
discovery, the first landfall in 1492. I am still waiting for the original
map from the hands of Cabral that proves he was the first to discover the
East coast of South America in 1500. And where is the original map or
documentation that proves conclusively that Balboa really saw the Pacific in
1513?
Actually we are all still waiting for all the original maps that
prove which specific European explorer discovered which portions of the
eastern coastline of the Americas -- both North and South -- as we see them
depicted in the Juan de la Cosa map of 1500, the Cantino map of 1502, the
Caverio map of 1504, etc. We do not have those explorers names. We do not
have
those original maps. Indeed, we have nothing in terms of any cartographic
evidence (as far as I know) between Martin Beheim's globe in 1490 and the
Juan de La Cosa map of 1500.
Now obviously we know or strongly suspect and in fact scholars have
long accepted as fact that these maps in question -- Cosa, Cantino,
Caverio, etc -- were not fantasy maps. But we reach this judgment or
conclusion
not based on the survival of a specific map that fell directly from the
hands of Diaz, Columbus, Da Gama, Cabral, Balboa, etc. for irrefutable
confirmation because no such maps have survived.
Scholars have reached their conclusions based on the totality of
surviving evidence which goes way beyond surviving cartographic evidence
toward the domain of surviving contemporaneous written documentation which we
deem as being authentic, as being beyond reasonable doubt.
In sum, proof involves evidence that goes way beyond the question of maps
and on this score I would simply point to a famous log from 1492-1493 which
we are fortunate to have in the case of Columbus. Yet even here we do not
have the enough precise detail that would resolve the famous Landfall
dispute to everyone's satisfaction -- as we all know too well.
The appalling thing here is that Delaney makes his silly demand in
the face of the multitudinous
cartographic evidence supporting my contentions -- the nearly two dozen
pre-Magellan, even pre-Balboa maps. globes, globe gores -- that point to
European knowledge of a southern water passage and a distinct second, vast
ocean between European and Asia. My book entitled The Magellan Myth provides
(see Table A) a detailed index of all this pre-1520 cartographic evidence
including dates know or estimated, the name of the cartographer when known
and the current private or institutional owners of all extant examples.
This index of 22 items of cartographic evidence (just for starters)
bolsters my argument that Magellan was not a liar or charlatan or
bafoonish self-promoter when made his assertion that Beheim who died in 1506
in
Lisbon had produced a map showing a Strait. And why would Cristobal de Haro
who financed expeditions way down this coast before 1507 for King Manuel,
finance the entire Magellan's expedition in 1519 out of his own pocket, if he
even thought Magellan might be a liar or delusional?
Pointing to this kind of evidence again was not a knee-jerk response
to Delaney's exhibition. All this evidence and companion analysis was
tabled long before here and also elsewhere beginning as long ago as October
2002 in Exploring Mercator's World. (e.g. my proof of the high accuracy of
Waldseemueller's depiction of South America which is not something that can
be dismissed lightly although some defensively still insist it was just "a
mere coincidence").
The Portuguese Achievement and Toby Lester
Furthermore, I have cited as well not only cartographic maps and
the eyewitness account found in Pigafetta but also the writings of Ringmann,
Ludd, Waldseemueller referring explicitly to Portuguese sources for what
Waldseemueller depicted as a cone-shaped an island-like continent in 1507.
And to this we can add not only the cartographic creations of Schoener (his
globes in 1515 and 1520 ) and Glareanus (at least 5 pre-Balboa maps) but
even more revealing the written statement these two scholars about a
circumnavigation via a southern water passage -- a Portuguese achievement as
claimed each in their own way by those scholars at Saint-Die in 1507, by
Glareanus in 1510 and also by Schoener in 1515.
For his part, Glareanus who evidently gained access to
Waldseemueller's source material for his 1507 creations, is emphatic about the
so-called
"America" having a geographical end point (Finis Amerigis m't in un Austru
mer ad occidentu omnino lustrata y) on his Southern polar-centric map
(1510) and shows a western coastline as being explored and which he outlines
in
blue to back up his assertion. This particular map in question has been
in the possession of the John Carter Brown Library since 1912 when Henry
Stevens the Younger paid 510 pounds to Sotheby's in London for this map and 10
other Glareanus
maps based on those of Waldseemueller and Ruysch and owned for centuries
by the Zurich-based family named Ott.
Toby Lester who enjoyed a fellowship of sorts a the JCL while
working on his book entitled The Fourth Part of the World, knew all about
these
Glareanus maps but he remains silent about them perhaps in order not to
upset the Establishment, the members of which provided him so much assistance
in producing his book. However, Lester does suggest to his readers that
the scholars at Saint-Die perhaps "had access to now lost information about
knowledge of an early Portuguese voyage through the Strait of Magellan.
Perhaps Vespucci himself made such a voyage" (see page 366).
Where do you suppose Lester got that idea? From Peter Dickson
perhaps? The first sentence is a cogent summary of the theory I have
propounded
since 2002 and I hinted that Vespucci might well have seen the Strait in
my original essay in Exploring Mercator's World and offered it as chapter
one in my book which appeared in 2007.
Dr. Seymour Schwartz in his book on the Waldseemueller map in 2008
cites my research, analysis and claims but Lester provides no footnote back
to my book The Magellan Myth even though he informed me via email that he
had purchased my book and had read it -- and of course it was the first
book-length work on the Waldseemueller book ever published and based on 16
years of in-depth research especially at the Library of Congress.
In any case, it was entirely legitimate for me to question Lester's
suggestion that Matthias Ringmann
was essentially a mere poet-dreamer who seduced Waldseemueller against his
better judgment and Lester's apparent conclusion that the Waldseemueller
map was merely a recycling of the Cantino/Caverio maps. Was that out of
line? Hardly, And neither was my attack against Lawrence
Bergreen for his sweeping denigration of all pre-Magellan cartographic
evidence that show a southern water as mere "provocative geographical
cartoons". Bergreen is not a serious scholar and Lester devoted only a 11
percent
of his book to a direct discussion of the Waldseemueller map -- perhaps
enough for the general reader which was his primary goal as he told me in an
email, but not nearly enough in-depth analysis to be touted at the LOC as
the best book on the subject.
Conclusion: Delaney's Double Standard
Setting Lester to the side, the bottom line here is Delaney for his
part is having recourse to a double standard in his reply to me. Putting
the issue in its broadest terms, it is not intellectually acceptable
for those we might describe as Establishment types to endorse the Cosa,
Cantino and Caverio maps as solid, as non-fantasy maps and also accept the
attribution of discoveries/achievements to Diaz, Columbus, Da Gama, Cabral,
and Balboa without producing their original maps, and then in a two-faced
manner turn around and explicitly dismiss or implicitly suggest that the
entire mass of contemporaneous evidence of unimpeachable authenticity (both
written documentation and cartographic) that I have put on the table is still
merely the product or reflection of speculation or wild imagination or
fantasy or delusion.
To be blunt, this kind of game is duplicitous. The demand for a
smoking gun original map as a threshold which is not applied elsewhere (as I
have shown above) but which Delaney demands in this case is a bogus
argument designed to dodge a substantial dossier of solid evidence that
totally
undermines the conventional wisdom and by extension the thrust of the
Princeton exhibition concerning what the Europeans knew and when they knew it.
Despite the clarification the Princeton Exhibition's narrower focus
which Delaney has explained and justified in his own mind, I was not
remiss in getting out in front in tabling my strongly-worded critique
when and as I did. There was nothing in Delaney's original Maphist
posting on July 3 that indicated to me that he was going to play it Strait with
regard to all the evidence out there, his claim that his hands were tied in
an institutional sense notwithstanding.
Be that as it may, I see no reason to retract anything that I have
advanced orally or in writing going back all the way to my initial essay and
also rejoinder to James Kelley in the issues of Exploring Mercator's World
for Nov-Dec 2002 and for March-April 2003 which proved unfortunately to be
the last issue of that excellent publication.
As this point, it is a shame that Delaney could not add an extra
segment to his exhibition and fairly present the cartographic evidence
(originals or facsimiles) that proves that Magellan was a truthful man.
That would have been nice even if Delaney were pressured to assemble all
that evidence under a display title or banner saying "Provocative
Pre-Magellan Geographical Cartoons" to parrot Bergreen's dismissal of the
Schoener
globes of 1515 & 1520 and by implication the Lenox Globe, the Rosselli map of
1508 and Waldseemueller's creations as well.
At least this still would have given interested scholars and the
general public at large some chance to decide for themselves about the crucial
issue of European knowledge of the Pacific -- assuming of course that
Delaney would have been fair and made quite clear that these roughly 22
pre-Balboa and/or pre-Magellan maps are not fake maps created in the
20th-century
like the Vinland map.
In conclusion, I regard Delaney's rejoinder and defense of his
exhibition as limp, unimpressive. I am sorry that I cannot sugar coat this
situation. Those who are fair-minded and willing to closely scrutinize all
the
evidence I have placed on the table should come readily to the same
conclusion.
Peter Dickson
Arlington, Virginia
Telephone (703) 243-6641
Email: [email protected]
_______________________________________________
MapHist: E-mail discussion group on the history of cartography
hosted by the Faculty of Geosciences, University of Utrecht.
The statements and opinions expressed in this message are those of
the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the University of
Utrecht. The University of Utrecht does not take any responsibility for
the views of the author.
List Information: http://www.maphist.nl
Maphist mailing list
[email protected]
http://mailman.geo.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/maphist
