Cartographic Humanism

Shakespeare and European geographies: Borders and power

“…Indeed, this 'act of tracing arbitrary territorial lines, which was widely adopted in the early modern period and beyond, ultimately prepared the ground for cartographic decisions with dramatic global consequences, from […] 1494 to the Berlin Congo Conference in 1884-85and well into the present'. 18 Looking at the Shakespearean canon, the same arbitrariness seems to guide King Lear's notorious division of his land in the opening scene of Shakespeare's eponymous play. Lear asks for a map, and thus 'armed', he discloses the substance of his 'darker purpose' (1.1.35) 19 : the legal impossibility of dividing the land but also the king's body politic.…”

“…16 In the wake of Pope Alexander VI's bull, the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) had (in)famously established a line of demarcation, from pole to pole, that divided the newly discovered (non-Christian) lands between Spain's and Portugal's spheres of colonial influence. In that, 'a layer of abstract lines and dots, the equipollent map became the dominant interface through which the world was captured, measured, and contemplated', 17 while the human was excluded from the calculation. Indeed, this 'act of tracing arbitrary territorial lines, which was widely adopted in the early modern period and beyond, ultimately prepared the ground for cartographic decisions with dramatic global consequences, from […] 1494 to the Berlin Congo Conference in 1884-85and well into the present'.…”