Richard W. Unger - Ships on Maps. Pictures of Power in Renaissance Europe [2010][A]

Book Description
Release date: September 15, 2010 | ISBN-10: 0230231640 | ISBN-13: 978-0230231641
Ships on maps in the sixteenth century were signs of European conquest of the seas. Cartographers commemorated the new found dominion over the oceans by putting the most technically advanced ships of the day all over oceans, estuaries, rivers, and lakes on all kinds of maps. Ships virtually never appeared on maps before 1375. The dramatic change from medieval practice had roots in practical problems but also in exploration and new geographical knowledge. Map makers produced beautiful works of art and decorated them with the accomplishments which set Europeans apart from their classical past and from all the other peoples of the world. Ships on Maps investigates how, long admired but little understood, the many ships big and small that came to decorate maps in the age when sailors began to sail around the world were an integral part of the information summarizing a new age.

About the Author
Richard W. Unger trained as an economic historian and has published widely on ships and shipping before 1800, brewing from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century and on energy use and its impact in pre-modern Europe. He has taught history at the University of British Columbia for more than four decades.