Mapmakers

Huguenot Pirates on the Barbary Coast and the Mapping of New Amsterdam

October 5, 2020 by Jaap Harskamp Leave a Comment

Huguenots were followers of Jean Calvin’s teachings for which they were persecuted in Catholic France. Many were forced to leave the country and settled in the Netherlands, Switzerland, England, and South Africa.

Nicolas Martiau was one of a number of refugees who made their way to America (Virginia) via England. A surveyor and engineer in the service of Henry Hastings, 5th Earl of Huntington, he was an ancestor of George Washington. [Read more…] about Huguenot Pirates on the Barbary Coast and the Mapping of New Amsterdam

Mapping Empire in the Chesapeake

September 25, 2019 by Liz Covart Leave a Comment

How do empires come to be? How are empires made and who makes them?

What role do maps play in making empires?

Christian Koot is a Professor of History at Towson University and the author of A Biography of a Map in Motion: Augustine Herrman’s Chesapeake (NYU Press, 2017). Christian has researched and written two books about the seventeenth-century Anglo-Dutch World go better understand empires and how they are made. He joins us in this episode of Ben Franklin’s World to take us through his research and to share what one specific map, Augustine Herrman’s 1673 map Virginia and Maryland, reveals about empire and empire making. [Read more…] about Mapping Empire in the Chesapeake