Category: History

Power Lines

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Out this month from Black Dog & Leventhal: Power Lines: Maps That Shaped the Way We See the World by Peter Keating. From the publisher:

Cover art for Power Lines by Peter Keating.

In this book, award-winning journalist Peter Keating has assembled dozens of the most significant maps in history. There is the map featuring the Treaty of Tordesillas meridian, which Spain and Portugal used to divide the whole of the Western Hemisphere in 1494. The map deployed by Western leaders at the 1884 Berlin Conference to carve up Africa. A map of Adolf Hitler’s speaking engagements in 1933 that looks like a rock concert tour poster. Maps of gerrymandering. Of redlining. Of military targets and of peace treaties. The map of the world—distortions and all—that hangs on thousands of classroom walls. And the polarizing red-and-blue election results maps that Americans are confronted with every two years. In striking images and riveting stories that span continents and centuries, Keating makes a compelling case for why, in the age of the internet, the power of maps—to define borders, to influence social policy, to enact political change—is unmatched, and is as potent as ever before.

Buy: Amazon (Canada, UK), Bookshop.

Boston in 50 Maps

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Out this week from Belt Publishing: Boston in 50 Maps by Andy Woodruff. From the publisher:

Cover image for Boston in 50 Maps

Covering four distinct categories (“The Making of Boston,” “The Lay of the Land,” “Getting Around,” and “People and Culture” ), Andy Woodruff’s newly created, original maps investigate all facets of Boston’s past and present. In unraveling the many complex layers that comprise the “real” Boston, some explorations are expected: sports championships, universities, and pothole complaints. Others, such as the former cow paths that predated downtown streets, are decidedly more hidden.

Dig into the city’s history with a guided tour through Revolutionary War sites, landmarks of nineteenth-century Black Boston, and notable “first in the nation” events (like the first recorded UFO sighting). Uncover the structural forces that shaped the social and lived experience of Boston, with maps showing the impact of redlining, urban renewal practices, and the busing crisis of the 1970s. Discover how the city’s boundaries evolved through annexation and landfill and how they’ll continue to change due to coastal flooding risks. Explore some of Boston’s most unique quirks through surprising revelations about the density of Dunkin’ locations, the distinctive architecture of three-deckers, and the spread of the infamous Great Molasses Flood.

Buy: Amazon (Canada, UK), Bookshop.

Andy previously co-authored the Bostonography site with Tim Wallace; in his page about his book he talks about what carried over from that project (only a few, actually) and what was new. Andy’s other work has been featured here several times before: start here.

This is the latest iteration of Belt’s 50 Maps series. Next up, scheduled for November, is The Twin Cities in 50 Maps by Jake Steinberg. Preorder: Amazon (Canada, UK), Bookshop.

Previously: Cincinnati and Columbus in 50 Maps.

Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, Second Edition

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

A new edition of the Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (the first edition was published in 2010) came out earlier this month from Yale University Press. From the publisher:

Cover for Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade

In the first edition of Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, two leading historians explored details of the 350-year history of African slave traffic to the New World. They showed, with nearly 200 original maps, where the captives came from, how long the journeys lasted, how many died on the voyages, and what the ports and destinations were. They also presented details about the trade itself, including the economics.

In this groundbreaking revised edition, 25 new maps locate the major language groups involved in the traffic and show the movement of Africans from the interior of the continent to the Americas, as well as from one part of the Americas to another. Accompanying the maps, as in the first edition, are revealing illustrations and contemporary literary selections, including poems, letters, and diary entries.

With up-to-date information drawn from the database Slave Voyages, with its records of more than 36,000 voyages, the atlas provides the fullest possible picture of the extent and inhumanity of one of the largest forced migrations in history.

Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, 2nd ed., by David Eltis, David Richardson and Philip Misevich. Yale University Press, 7 Apr 2026, $65. Amazon (Canada, UK), Bookshop.

The Peoples of North America in 1776

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
The Peoples of North America in 1776: a map from the Utah Historical Society showing the location of indigenous groups and colonial communities.
Utah Historical Society

Classroom materials and maps produced by the Utah Historical Society for the State of Utah’s commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States include this rather interesting map of the peoples of North America in 1776. It shows “colonial communities” alongside Indigenous language groups. [John Garrison Marks]

Londonist Asks ChatGPT to Draw Maps

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

“The shortcomings and possibilities of generative AI are, of course, well chronicled across a million op-eds. I could write at length about the dangers or opportunities the technology presents,” writes Matt at Londonist. “But this is a newsletter about London, and I’m still in a silly holiday-season mindset. So all I’m going to do today is ask AI to draw some historical maps of the capital, and then take the p*ss out of them. Popcorn at the ready . . . ” It goes about as well as you’d expect: “terribly,” with results “as crazy as a yacht of numbats,” with labels “so bizarre that I don’t know where to begin.”

Cincinnati and Columbus in 50 Maps

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Book covers for Cincinnati in 50 Maps and Columbus in 50 Maps.

Two more books from Belt Publishing came out this week, both part of their “50 Maps” series, each focusing on an Ohio city: Cincinnati in 50 Maps, edited by Nick Swartsell and with cartography by Andy Woodruff; and Columbus in 50 Maps, edited by Brent Warren and with cartography by Vicky Johnson-Dahl. They join Cleveland in 50 Maps (2019) and other books in the series that aren’t about Ohio cities. Columbus-based independent news outlet Matter has a feature on Columbus in 50 Maps.

  • Cincinnati in 50 Maps ed. by Nick Swartsell; cartography by Andy Woodruff. Belt, 2 Dec 2025, $30. Amazon (Canada, UK), Bookshop.
  • Columbus in 50 Maps ed. by Brent Warren; cartography by Vicky Johnson-Dahl. Belt, 2 Dec 2025, $30. Amazon (Canada, UK), Bookshop. 

Related: Map Books of 2025.

300,000 Kilometres of Roman Roads

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Itiner-e is a comprehensive digital atlas and dataset of the Roman Empire’s entire road network, based on fieldwork, existing maps, published data and remote sensing. It’s an attempt to provide more granular detail than past atlases of Roman roads such as the Barrington Atlas (the iPad edition of which I reviewed in 2013), and expands the known Roman road network to nearly 300,000 km. The flip side is that less than three percent of it is known precisely. The dataset rates the certainty of each road segment, and a lot of them are marked as conjectured or hypothesized (i.e., there is evidence that there was a road here somewhere). It’s meant to be refined over time with additional research. More at the article published in Scientific Data; news coverage at La Cartoteca, Euronews and Gizmodo.

A Street Map of Early Modern Europe

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Viabundus is an online map of medieval Europe.

Viabundus is a freely accessible online street map of late medieval and early modern northern Europe (1350-1650). Originally conceived as the digitisation of Friedrich Bruns and Hugo Weczerka’s Hansische Handelsstraßen (1962) atlas of land roads in the Hanseatic area, the Viabundus map moves beyond that. It includes among others: a database with information about settlements, towns, tolls, staple markets and other information relevant for the pre-modern traveller; a route calculator; a calendar of fairs; and additional land routes as well as water ways.

Viabundus is a work in progress. Currently, it contains a rough digitisation of the land routes from Hansische Handelsstraßen, as well as a thoroughly researched road network for the current-day Netherlands, Denmark, the German states of Lower Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein, Thuringia, Saxony-Anhalt, Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Hesse and North Rhine-Westfalia, and parts of Poland (Pomerania, Royal Prussia, Greater Poland). The pre-modern road network of Denmark will be added soon; the inclusion of other regions is currently being planned.

What features would an online map service have, if online map services existed in early modern Europe? Something like this. I tried the route calculator: I found that it would take me approximately 20 days to get from Frankfurt to Antwerp on horseback in 1500. (It’s about four and a half hours by car today, per Google Maps.) People who write historical fiction set Europe in this time period ought to be all over this. [MetaFilter]

A Short Course on Maps as Historical Sources

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Historic Maps: Interpreting Stories of Place is a three-day short course on using maps as historical sources is being offered by the Institute of Historical Research in London from January 28 to 30, 2026.

Although maps have long been a part of historical research, they are subjective and should always be analysed in the same way as any other primary source. This dynamic 3-day Historic Maps Discovery Training will include lectures, one-to-one consultations, library tours, visits to our special collections and opportunities to explore our digital resource Layers of London. Together, we will learn about the different types of historic map, from the evolution of cartography to the simple digital tools you can use for comparison and analysis in your own projects. 

It costs £240; no prior expertise or experience required. Via Katie Parker, who’s one of the instructors.

The Big Map of Kent’s South End

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Jennifer Mapes created a large corkboard map to illustrate the history of Kent, Ohio’s South End, a neighbourhood inhabited by railroad workers, immigrants, and African Americans moving north during the Great Migration.

I purposefully created this project as something that could be done cheaply, as a form of “analog” GIS, where students are asked to think spatially and consider how regional and national history played out in their own community. I am particularly interested in showing South End kids how the people who lived in their current homes contributed to Kent’s past.

The map is 60″×60″ and includes 350 3D printed transparent houses representing 25 different house styles in Kent’s South End. I’ve wired the map to light up based on answers to questions about the history [of] each house’s resident based on census records.

The map is currently on display at the Kent Free Library.

The Big Map is up in the Kent Free Library! This is a project highlighting the history of our South End, a neighborhood of immigrants, Black southern migrants, and railroad workers. communitygeography.kent.edu/index.php/20…

— Jen Mapes (@mapesgeog.bsky.social) 2025-08-21T22:55:50.379Z

The Yellowhead Treaty Map

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Screenshot from the Yellowhead Treaty Map website, showing areas covered by treaties with Indigenous peoples in Canada.

The Yellowhead Treaty Map is an interactive map of the various treaties between the state and Indigenous peoples in Canada. “Covering every Canadian treaty from 1763 to the present, The Treaty Map aims to challenge the commonly held view of treaties as land surrenders and offers a comprehensive, interactive learning and teaching tool, grounded in Indigenous perspectives of treaties.” [Ian Mosby]

Historical Maps of London

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Tudor London: The City and Southwark in 1520. Historic Towns Trust.

Londonist does a good job introducing us to two maps of old London published by the Historic Towns Trust a few years ago—a map of medieval London (1270-1300) published in 2019, and a map of Tudor London (1520) published in 2018 (and updated in 2022). The Historic Towns Trust publishes many maps of British towns and cities—historical maps, not reproductions of old maps (in fact, Londonist points out that no maps of London prior to about 1550 currently exist). The Trust’s London maps are also available as overlays on the Layers of London online map: Tudor, medieval. Some maps from the Trust’s British Historic Towns Atlas, which began publishing in 1969 and the earliest volumes of which are out of print, are also available as PDF downloads; here’s the page for London.

Indian Residential Schools Interactive Map

Published on by Jonathan Crowe
Indigenous Services Canada (screenshot)

The Canadian government has launched an interactive map of former Indian residential schools. “The Indian Residential Schools Interactive Map allows users to visualize the location of the 140 former residential school sites recognized in the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement as well as provide information on the current status and historical context of the site. The map has a search, filter, measurement and imagery slider to help users with analysis.” The map makes use of historical aerial photography to pinpoint the locations of schools that are no longer standing; many of the sites have since been redeveloped.

The purpose of the map is grim: to determine the potential locations of additional school gravesites. Generations of Indigenous children were forced to attend residential schools in Canada: many were subjected to physical and sexual abuse, and thousands died of disease or neglect. In the past few years, unmarked graves have been found at several residential school sites across Canada, and searches are under way at many others. This map makes available to searchers imagery that was otherwise difficult to access. (The imagery is also available as a dataset.) More at the CBC News story.

A Book Roundup: Recent New Publications

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Book cover: A History of the World in 500 MapsWriting for Geographical magazine, Katherine Parker reviews A History of the World in 500 Maps by Christian Grataloup (Thames & Hudson, 13 Jul 2023), which was originally published in French in 2019. “[E]ven with 500 maps, there’s a selection process at work that may leave some readers wanting for specific trajectories and topics. For example, although there’s a continual emphasis on economics, commerce and migration, the impact of the Transatlantic slave trade is only lightly addressed. Similarly, Indigenous perspectives are present, but not abundant. However, such critiques of lacuna in subject coverage are inevitable in any book that attempts to include all of human history.” Note that the maps are modern maps of history created for this book, not old maps. UK-only publication. £35. Amazon UK.

Book cover: Esri Map Book Volume 38The 38th volume of the Esri Map Book (Esri, 5 Sep 2023) came out earlier this month. Like the NACIS Atlas of Design (previously),1 it’s a showcase of maps presented at a conference—in this case, maps from the Map Gallery exhibition of Esri’s International User Conference. The Esri Map Book website has a gallery of maps presumably from this volume, and given the number of pages in the book (140) and the number of maps in the gallery (65), it may actually be complete (assuming a two-page spread per map). $30. Amazon (Canada, UK), Bookshop.

Book cover: The GlobemakersPeter Bellerby, of bespoke premium globemaker Bellerby & Co. fame, has written a book: The Globemakers: The Curious Story of an Ancient Craft (Bloomsbury) is out today in hardcover in the UK, and in North America on October 17; the ebook is available worldwide as of today. From the publisher: “The Globemakers brings us inside Bellerby’s gorgeous studio to learn how he and his team of cartographers and artists bring these stunning celestial, terrestrial, and planetary objects to life. Along the way he tells stories of his adventure and the luck along the way that shaped the company.” £25/$30. Amazon (Canada, UK), Bookshop.