Descriere: In 1400 Europe lagged far behind much of the world in its understanding of the use of maps. And yet, by 1600 the Europeans had come to use maps for a huge variety of tasks, and were far ahead of the rest of the world in their appreciation of the power and use of cartography. The Mapmakers' Quest illuminates the forces behind this development--not only to tease out the strands of thought and practice which led to the use of maps, but also to assess the ways in which such use affected European societies and economies.
David Buisseret is one of the most eminent historians of cartography, and in this striking volume he offers a fresh and compelling approach to the cultural history of early modern Europe, revealing how the development of maps shaped and was shaped by larger movements. Taking as a starting point the question of why there were so few maps in Europe in 1400 and so many by 1650, the book explores the reasons for this and its implications for European history. It examines how mapping and military technology advanced in tandem, how modern states' territories were mapped and borders drawn up, the role of maps in shaping the urban environment, and cartography's links to the new sciences.
Autori: David Buisseret (Author) | Editura: OXFORD UNIV PR | Anul aparitiei: 2003 | ISBN: 9780192100535 | Categorie: History
Thomas Albert Howard (Author)
Broken Altars: Secularist Violence in Modern History
9,A sweeping history of the violence perpetrated by governments committed to extreme forms of secularism in the twentieth century A popular truism derived from the Enlightenment holds that violence is somehow inherent to religion, to which political secularism offers a liberating solution. But this assumption ignores a glaring modern reality: that putatively progressive regimes committed to secularism have possessed just as much and often a vastly greater capacity for violence as those tied to a religious identity. In Broken Altars, Thomas Albert Howard presents a powerful account of the misery, deaths, and destruction visited on religious communities by secularist regimes in the twentieth century. Presenting three principal forms of modern secularism that have arisen since the Enlightenment--passive secularism, combative secularism, and eliminationist secularism--Howard argues that the latter two have been especially violence-prone. Westerners do not fully grasp this, however, because they often mistake the first form, passive secularism, for secularism as a whole. But a disconcertingly more complicated picture emerges with the adoption of a broader global vision. Admitting ...
Ayukepi J. Ayukekbong (Author)
Africanitis: A Provocative and Critical Analysis of Issues and Opportunities for Africa
Africa is a continent that has been traumatized from the period of slavery and colonization and c
Laura Hobson Faure (Author)
9, The first comprehensive study of Jewish children's flight from Nazi Germany to France--and their subsequent escape to America from the Vichy regime At the eve of the Second World War, an estimated 1.6 million Jewish children lived in Nazi-occupied Europe. While 10,000 of them escaped to Britain in the Kindertransport, only some 500 found a new home in France. Here they attempted to begin again--but their refuge would all too soon become a trap. For the first time, Laura Hobson Faure brings to life the experiences of these children, and the Jewish and non-Jewish organizations who helped them. Drawing on survivors' testimonies as well as children's diaries, letters, drawings, songs, and poems, Who Will Rescue Us? re-creates their complex journeys, including how some of them eventually found safety in America. Hobson Faure paints a moving portrait of these children and their escape, uncovering their agency in the flight from Nazism--and knits together the network of the many who aided them along the way.