Trading Territories: Mapping the Early Modern World (Picturing History)

Trading Territories

For Rachel Holmes

Published by Reaktion Books Ltd 11 Rathbone Place, London WI P 1 DE, UK First published 1997 Copyright © Jerry Brotton 1997 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publishers. Designed by Humphrey Stone Jacket designed by Ron Costley Photoset by Wilmaset Ltd, Wirral Colour printed by BAS Printers, Hants Printed and bound in Great Britain by BiddIes Ltd, Guildford and King's Lynn British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data: Brotton, Jerry, Trading territories: mapping the early modern world. (Picturing history) I. Early maps 2. Cartography - History 3. Discoveries in geography - Maps 4. Cartographers - History I. Title 912'.09 ISBN 1 86189011 7

Contents

Acknowledgements Introduction 2

3

4

7

17

An Empire Built on Water: The Cartography of the Early Portuguese Discoveries Disorienting the East: The Geography of the Ottoman Empire

87

Cunning Cosmographers: Mapping the Moluccas 119

S Plotting and Projecting: The Geography of Mercator and Ortelius

6

Conclusion

180

References

187

Bibliography Index

203

197

lSI

46

Acknowledgements

Thanks go to all the following friends and colleagues who in a variety of ways have helped in the completion of this book: Peter Barber, Maurizio Calbi, Jess Edwards, Bok Goodall, Lorna Hutson, Adam Lowe, Jessica Maynard, Miles Ogborn, Stephen Orgel, James Siddaway, Burhan Tufail, Shobha Thomas, Evelyn Welch and Richard Wilson. Particular thanks go to Roy Porter for encouraging me to publish the project in the first place, and to everyone at Reaktion Books. I am grateful to the School of English at the University ofLeeds for providing me with the institutional assistance to complete the current work. I am also particularly indebted to Catherine Delano Smith for offering me intellectual space and learned advice, and Denis Cosgrove for a wealth ofastute observations and incisive suggestions on the entire project, as well as generously allowing me access to his own work on globes and globalism. Friends and comrades in South Africa have been a constant source ofsolace and inspiration, and for this I would like to thank Zackie Achmat, Dhiannaraj Chetty, Mark Gevisser, Jack Lewis and Hugh McLean. Rob Nixon and Anne McClintock helped at crucial times, and have been wonderfully supportive friends and allies. Kenneth Parker appreciated what I was trying to do before virtually anyone else, and I am profoundly grateful to him for his unstinting support and friendship, as well as his wicked sense of humour, which helped me through some ofthe more difficult moments. Palmira Brummett's brilliant and extremely important work on early modern Ottoman history has been a consistent source of illumination and inspiration to me, and I would like to thank her for all her astute comments and encouragement. Guy Richards Smit watched me complete this book from afar, but still remains 'the wind beneath my wings'. Lisa Jardine has seen this book develop over the last few years, and gave me the courage to breach intellectual boundaries with it at every turn. Her dynamism and intellectual stimulation have been a consistent source of inspiration to me; working with her has been, and continues to be, a truly rewarding experience. Finally, but most importantly, I would like to dedicate this book to Rachel Holmes. Without Rachel, I would never have got round the Cape, in more ways than one. 7

I Bernard van Orley, Earth Under the Protection ojJupiter andJuno, c. 1520-3°, gold, silver, silk and wool. Patrimonio Nacional, Madrid.

9

Detail of the terrestrial globe, from illus I.

2

3 Martin Behaim, terrestrial globe, 1492, vellum on plaster mounted in metal meridian. Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg.

10

4 Fra Mauro, world map, 1459, ink on parchment. Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice.

"

5 Anon, 'Cantina Planisphere', c. '502, vellum. Biblioteca Estense, Modena.

12

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6 World map from Ptolemy, Geographia c. 1466, vellum. Biblioteca Nazionale, Naples.

I

7 Portrait of Ptolemy from his

Ceographia, c. 1453, vellum. Biblioteca azionale Marciana, Venice.

8 Anon, Takiyiid-

din alld his colleagues at work, c. 1580, vellum.

Istanbul University Library.

15

9 Piri Reis, map of Crete, from the Kitiib-i ba~riye,

16

1521,

vellum. Topkapi Saray Museum.

I

Introduction

A Wealth ofTerritory: Mapping the Early Modern World In 1525 Catherine ofAustria married Joao III ofPortugal in a union aimed at cementing an alliance between two of the most powerful royal houses in sixteenth-century Europe. The first was the House ofHabsburg presided over by Catherine's brother, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, and the second the Portuguese House of Avis, ruled by Joao III, self-styled 'Lord of Guinea and of the Conquest, Navigation and Commerce of Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia and India'. I To commemorate the union Joao commissioned a series of lavish tapestries entitled The Spheres from the renowned tapestry workshops ofBrussels. They were a particularly appropriate symbol of the union between Joao and his prospective wife, who arrived in Lisbon armed with an impressive array ofher own collection ofFlemish tapestries as well as illuminated manuscripts, assorted family jewellery, furniture and an extensive wardrobe, objects of aesthetic magnificence designed to em2 phasize her political importance. Attributed to the designs ofthe Flemish painter Bernard van Grley, the Spheres series culminated in a final tapestry depicting a terrestrial globe which, flanked by the Portuguese king and his new wife Catherine, vividly portrayed the territories to the south and east of Portugal to which its sovereign Joao claimed entitlement (illus. I). This remarkable tapestry portrays the two newly married sovereigns as Jupiter and Juno, majestically presiding over the terrestrial and celestial worlds which they survey. The symmetry of the composition, which suspends the terrestrial globe between the sun above and the moon below, enhances the centrality and authority of Joao and Catherine as rulers of not only the terrestrial sphere but also a celestial sphere from which emanates an image of symmetrical perfection and, by implication, global harmony. However, it is the terrestrial sphere which occupies the symbolic centre ofthe composition (illus. 2), and it is upon this thatJoao regally rests his royal sceptre, and to this that Catherine gestures with her right hand. Whilst the celestial iconography of the tapestry seeks to confer legitimacy and authority upon the imperial line personified by the union between Joao and Catherine, it is the terrestrial globe which becomes the primary focus for the ratification of this legitimacy and authority. Joao's sceptre

rests upon the city of Lisbon, the home of the Portuguese House of Avis, since the early fifteenth century the point ofdeparture for Portuguese seaborne voyages down the west coast of Africa and, from the tum of the sixteenth century, the starting point for maritime initiatives deep into the Indian Ocean. With incredible geographical accuracy the globe triumphantly records in both its nomenclature and its flags flying the arms of Portugal those territories claimed by the Portuguese maritime empire by the time ofJoao's ascent to the Portuguese crown in 1521. Moving south and eastwards from the king's sceptre, the globe portrays West Africa, the Cape of Good Hope, East Africa, the entrance to the Red Sea, the mouth of the Persian Gulf, Calicut in southern India and, at the furthest reaches of contemporary geographical knowledge, on its easternmost extremity, Malacca and the spice-producing islands of the Moluccas, all territories putatively under the sway of Joao and his new queen Catherine. In one breathtaking visual conceit the globe visualizes Joao's claim to geographically distant territories, whilst also imbuing his claims with a more intangible access to esoteric cosmological power and authority reflected in the celestial iconography which surrounds the central terrestrial globe. It is the geographical scope ofthe Spheres tapestry and the ways in which it envisages claims to political power and authority over distant territories which forms the basis of this study of the ways in which princes, geographers, diplomats, sailors and merchants mapped the diverse spaces of the early modern world. The sweep ofterritory and ocean stretching eastwards through Africa, the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia, curving back towards Europe through the Red Sea and into the Mediterranean world and Central Asia, is the focus of this analysis, not only in terms of how such geopolitical spaces came to be mapped by the geographers of the early modern world, but also in terms of the ways in which the encounters and exchanges carried out across these territories came to define the space of Europe itself as a social and cultural entity. The most resonant visual and material object which traces this geographical and social process is the map itself, the global geographical representation of the shape of the world as it appeared to sovereigns likeJoao III and Charles V, the changing shape of which is traced in this study. The history ofthis mapping ofthe early modern world inevitably invokes scientific narratives ofthe development ofthe discipline ofgeography as an increasingly objective and definitive account of the relations of points and features on the earth's surface to each other. Historians ofboth science and cartography have provided illuminating accounts of the part played by fifteenth- and sixteenth-century geography in shaping subsequent scientific traditions which pursued the ideals of objective, verifiable and disinterested enquiry.3 However, these accounts have invariably imposed a 18

retrospective logic upon the development ofcartography and geographical knowledge, which establishes a teleology of progress upon such material where little exists. They have also tended to reify world maps and globes as protoscientific objects divested of any wider social significance, and have limited the ways in which these objects came to be utilized both practically and imaginatively within a range of social situations. It is this utilization of maps and globes which I am concerned with throughout this book. To take the reproduction of the terrestrial globe within the Spheres. The tapestry is itself an apparently unfamiliar context within which to represent such a highly specific image. However, in many ways the reproduction of the globe within it is highly appropriate in terms of the cultural status accorded to maps and globes more generally as valuable material objects which were enhanced by their ability to function at different levels ofsocial life. Like the tapestry itself, they were often utilized by sovereigns such as Joao III for their ability to ratify their owners' claims to imperial authority, to symbolize, or more often than not speculate on, the size, extent and potential enlargement of specific territorial domains. However, such world maps were not simply tools of imperial administration. Like the Spheres tapestry, which mediated a diplomatic rapprochement between the royal households of Habsburg and Avis, they also operated within an elaborate diplomatic economy of gift exchange. To proffer the gift of geographically precise and aesthetically magnificent maps of the world established not only the indebtedness of the receiver, but also emphasized the power and authority of the giver, who could subsequently be seen to command an unprecedented level of political authority, purchasing power and access to the arcane skills involved in map production. As with the terrestrial globe at the centre of the Spheres tapestry, such maps invariably privileged the territories to which their eventual owner laid claim. They expressed the wonder and excitement of such exotic, commercially tantalizing distant territories whilst also offering a reassuringly sanitized vision of long-distance travel, whose deleterious effects were quietly occluded within lavishly illustrated maps of the known world. The social value accorded to world maps and globes throughout the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was therefore not predicated on their scientific accuracy alone. Whilst they were valorized for their demonstration of learning, they were also valued for their ability to operate within a whole range of intellectual, political and economic situations, and to give shape and meaning to such situations. In his highly influential treatise De principis astronomiae et cosmographiae published in 1530 (illus. 10), the Habsburg-sponsored geographer Gemma Frisius was in no doubt as to who benefited from the increasingly fashionable globes of the type reproduced in the Spheres tapestry, arguing that:

lI,

GEMMA DE SIVS

PHRY~

10 Frontispiece to Gemma Frisius, De principis astronomiae et cosmographiae, 1530.

British Library, London.

PRINCIPIIS A.STRONQ.

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