Mapping Difference and Distance: Indigenous presence on European maps of southern Patagonia in the early modern period.
Milwaukee, USA
Throughout the early modern period, sightings of and encounters with Patagonians and Fuegians were some of the most frequent European-Indigenous interactions to come out of Pacific voyages. Going through the Strait of Magellan or around Cape Horn was a pivotal moment in these voyages and the early interactions with local peoples, who already had semiotic baggage in the eyes of Europeans based on their first encounter with Magellan’s crew, were often offered with considerable detail in ship’s journals and printed accounts. How, then, were these encounters marked on the maps that accompanied these accounts or on separately published cartographic materials? What did mapmakers consider of enduring significance to use as representative of the region? Did this significance change over time? If so, how? This talk will answer these questions by looking at maps of southern South America from the late-sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth century.
Dr. Katherine Parker (PhD, History, University of Pittsburgh, 2016) is a historian specializing in Pacific history, the history of the book and the map, and the history of empires in the long eighteenth century. Her current book manuscript examines the production of Pacific geographic knowledge by European empires in the century prior to the voyages of James Cook. She is the Research Officer at Barry Lawrence Ruderman Antique Maps and a Teaching Associate at Queen Mary University of London. She serves as the Book Reviews Editor for H-Maps and the Administrative Editor of the Hakluyt Society.
This will be the 32nd “Maps & America” lecture, supported by an endowment created by Arthur and Janet Holzheimer.