ces open forum 21: the beginnings of historical consciousness: historical atlases in the eighteenth...

8/11/2019 CES Open Forum 21: The Beginnings of Historical Consciousness: Historical Atlases in the Eighteenth Century

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ces papers - open forum

2014-2015

The Beginnings of

Historical Consciousness:

Historical Atlases in the

Eighteenth Century

author: dr. manuel schramm


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CES-

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Open Forum CES Paper Series

The Series is designed to present work in progress by current and former Center afliates andpapers presented at Centers seminars and conferences. Any opinions expressed in the papers are

those of the authors, and not of CES.

Editors:

Grzegorz Ekiert and Andrew Martin

Editorial Board:

Philippe Aghion

Peter Hall

Roberto Foa

Alison FrankTorben Iverson

Maya Jasanoff

Jytte Klausen

Michele Lamont

Mary Lewis

Michael Rosen

Vivien Schmidt

Kathleen ThelenDaniel Ziblatt

Kathrin Zippel


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ABSTRACT

ces papers - open forum # 21

Historical atlases came into being in the eighteenth century. This article discusses the view of

history in these early works, and especially their representation of non-European history. In contrast

to historical atlases of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, they did not consist primarily of maps

that portrayed changing territorial boundaries, but used a variety of different media to give a much

more varied picture of history. The traditional Christian view of universal history was reassessed,

but the break with tradition did not yet result in a new orthodoxy. Therefore, the representation of

non-European history varied: Some authors stuck to a basically unchanged Eurocentric view, others

put more emphasis on the history of Asian empires, but African and American history were mostly

neglected.

PD Dr. Manuel SchrammTechnische Universitt Chemnitz

Institut fr Europische Geschichte

D-09107 [email protected]


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The Beginnings of

Historical Consciousness:

Historical Atlases in the

Eighteenth Century

Historical consciousness is a difficult notion. Insome sense it may be said to have always existed.Historiography, the telling o past events, goes asar back in time as we have written sources andyet, the modern Western notion o history is di-erent. It encompasses much more than just theretelling o our oreathers deeds and accomplish-ments. In the nineteenth century, it is oen claimed,there arose a new relationship to the past, reerred

to as historicism. Ernst roeltsch (1865-1923)characterized historicism as the historicization oall our knowledge and experience o the spiritualworld.1 Tis development was not limited to,but included deeply held values, some o them oancient heritage. roeltsch, a theologian who re-garded historicism as a specific modern way othought, eared this would lead to the ultimate de-struction o all value systems, because historicalscholarship and thinking was inherently relativ-

istic, showing the rise and all not only o empires,but also o modes o thought, values and ideals.

Te development o historicism has oen been ar-ticulated in terms o proessional developmentwithin historiography. It typically encompasses di-erent stages, like the rise o critical methods toanalyze sources by Italian humanists o the fieenthcentury and French Maurists and Jesuits o theseventeenth century, the rise o enlightened his-toriography with its emphasis on progress andcivilization in the eighteenth century, and the ound-ing o the German historicist school by Leopoldvon Ranke (1795-1886) in the nineteenth century.2Interesting as this development may have been,it is only part o what roeltsch had in mind whenhe wrote about historicism.3 He argued thathistoricism represents a wholly modern (and West-

ern) point o view, unlike ancient, medieval oreven enlightened ways o viewing the past.4 Its de-fining characteristic was to emphasize change andevolution in history, not to look or the realiza-tion o either Gods plan, as in older Christianuniversal history, or human reason, as in enlighten-ment historiography.

Tis point needs some clarification, as it is in thisbroader field o historical consciousness and notin the more narrow and specialized field o histori-cal enquiry where historical atlases are situated. Itis important to keep in mind that our mod-ern view o history (or, or that matter, time ingeneral) is not universal. Most historians wouldargue that it presupposes a break with oldertraditions and the experience o acceleration,such as Western Europe experienced during theFrench Revolution o 1789 and the IndustrialRevolution o the late eighteenth and nineteenthcenturies.5 Tese developments helped to createa sense o distance rom the past, which enabledhistorians (proessionals and amateurs) to see thepast not only as a precursor to the present, but assomething undamentally different that has tobe understood on its own terms. Every epoch is

immediate to God, as Leopold von Ranke a-mously stated in 1854.6 Te value o an epoch,according to Ranke, was to be sought not in whatit ollowed, but in itsel. He explicitly rejectednotions o progress in history, which had eaturedprominently in enlightenment historiography.For most o human history, this approach to thepast was not sel-evident. While it would take acomplete book or more to cover this issue satis-actorily, one or two examples may suffice here. Acompletely different view o time can be oundin ancient Egypt. Tere, the view o history wasessentially cyclical, combining notions o conti-nuity with those o periodic crises.7 Tere wasthereore no radical break with the past and nolinear transition rom the past to the present anduture, but rather a continuous cycle o crises andtheir overcoming. Tis view ound expression in


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pectations, the rise o modern prognosis and thephilosophy o progress. It was especially in theyears between 1760 and 1780 that a philosophy ohistory suraced, or example in the work o JohannGottried Herder (1744-1803), which led to thediscovery o a specific historical temporality.13

Tis brings us back to the question o when thi

modern historical consciousness arose. While theexperience o the French and Industrial revolutions undoubtedly must have played a role, theintellectual seeds were sown much earlier, evenbeore the mid-eighteenth century. While it isalways possible to find even older antecedentsan appropriate starting place could be the timearound 1700, incidentally the time the first historical atlas was published. Intellectual historian PeterHanns Reill diagnosed a crisis o historical con

sciousness14 or this time, the overcoming owhich would ultimately be historicism. At the endo the seventeenth century, the traditional view ohistory had lost much o its appeal, partly becauseo the new natural philosophy o the seventeenthcentury, which is associated with the names oFrancis Bacon (1561-1626) and Ren Descarte(1596-1650), which occurred partly because thetraditional Christian view was static and could noaccomodate the experience o change. Intellectually, it proved barren, because it could not mediate

between the most general pattern o history andits specific details and tended thereore to be eitheran accumulation o countless acts or a sum omost general statements about universal history.15Such was the situation when, in the final decadeo the seventeenth century, the quarrel betweenancients and moderns broke out, sometimes reerred to as the battle o the books .16 Althoughhistoriography played only a subordinate role inthis event, it was to have proound effects on thedevelopment o historical consciousness.Looking at the arguments in this debate roma distance o 300 years, many o them seemastonishingly anachronistic, only corroborating a point made earlier: that modern historicaconsciousness had not yet evolved. Essentially, theintellectuals who argued in avor o the ancientsargued that the amous men (women were onlyrarely mentioned) o ancient Greece and Rome were

the symbol o the Ouroboros, a snake biting itsown tail.8 Troughout these cycles, however, therewas a cultural continuity maintained through lan-guage and monuments: In Egypt, the old remainedpresent; it never became alien in the sense o rep-resenting something le definitively behind, some-thing unrecoverable or irretrievable.9

While it may be granted that different cultureshad different concepts o time, it is important torecognize that even in Renaissance and BaroqueEurope, the view o the past was different rom ourown. It is striking, or example, how such a com-paratively modern thinker as Niccol Macchiavelli(1469-1527) employed historical examples inhis writings: in his amous Prince (1532), hediscussed political strategies o ancient Romanand Greek emperors and statesmen as i they werehis contemporaries, completely disregarding thechange in circumstances that had occurred in thepreceding millennium or so. For example, hemade a distinction between kingdoms that aregoverned by a prince and his servants on the onehand, and kingdoms governed by a prince andhereditary barons on the other. Te ormer, includ-ing both the empire o Alexander the Great andthe Ottoman Empire o Machiavellis own time,were harder to conquer, but easier to keep.10 For

Macchiavelli, as or his contemporaries, the presentwas not different rom the past, but simply an exten-sion o it, so lessons rom history could be deduceddirectly.

In a similar vein, in 1529, the German painter Al-brecht Altdorer depicted the warriors in one oAlexander the Greats battles against the Per-sians as sixteenth century knights and urks,respectively. o the modern mind, this lookslike an anachronism, but to Altdorer and his

contemporaries, the events o the ourth centuryB.C. were at once historical and contemporary. Itwas only 300 years later that observers like Fried-rich Schlegel (1772-1829) could distinguish thepainting both rom his own time and rom an-tiquity.11 Tis transormation o historicalconsciousness, which Reinhart Koselleck calledthe temporalization o history,12, had severalreasons or occurring: the end o millennial ex-


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still models to be upheld. In act, modern mencould at best strive to come close to, but never attaintheir achievements. Te moderns, on the con-trary, argued that modern achievements in the fieldso science, technology and the arts had come closeto or even surpassed the achievements o theancients. In both cases, the most common waywas a simple diachronic comparison, paralleling

achievements o the ancients and moderns in vari-ous fields o intellectual pursuit.17 However, as thedebate wore on, some participants and observ-ers realized that this way o comparison was ar toosimplistic. Te French writer Bernard Le Bovierde Fontenelle (1657-1757), who took the side othe moderns, reflected upon the very division be-tween ancients and moderns: o the Romans, theGreeks were ancient, while they themselves weremodern; however, at the time o de Fontenelles

writing, the Romans were placed with the Greeksin the same category as ancients. De Fontenellewent on to wonder what historians o later timeswould make o the respective achievements oancients and moderns, speculating that with thepassing o time, his own present would eventuallybe grouped with the ancients. Moreover, de Fon-tenelle speculated that what his own time saw asmistakes could in the uture be seen as an advan-tage and vice versa.18 Here we have a historisticconcept in a nutshell, arguing that aesthetic judg-

ments are relative and may change with the passingo time; de Fontenelle, however, did not draw the ob-vious conclusion that every epoch thereore has tobe approached on its own terms, as Ranke did in thenineteenth century.

Fontenelle may have been exceptional, but hewas not alone in producing what may be calledproto-historicism. Te Dutch classical scholar Ja-cobus Perizonius (1651-1715) in 1703 deendedthe style o the ancient Roman historian QuintusCurtius Ruus, on the grounds that every time andevery nation has their own style, and one couldnot legitimately use modern aesthetic criteria orjudging ancient historians. In a similar vein, Ba-ruch Spinoza (1632-1677) argued in 1670, to thedismay o many, that the Bible was written or aprimitive people and the moral lessons it containedwere thereore by no means universal.19 TeItalian scholar Giambattista Vico (1668-1744)

observed, like Fontenelle, that humans interpretthe past in light o the present and that ancientpeoples had even resorted to orgery in order to ap-pear older than they actually had been. Focusingon the then ashionable controversy between an-cients and moderns concerning Homer, who hadbeen criticized as immoral by the moderns, he ar-gued that Homers values were in line with his owntime, but not with present values. Tere is, ac-cording to Vico and contrary to the moderns, noreproach to be made, but the amous poet couldnot, contrary to the ancients, be regarded as a moralguide or the present. With these thoughts, Vicotried to bridge the gap between ancients andmoderns, and inadvertently discovered the relativityo values that would later become such a central teneto historicism.20

Tis is not to suggest that we should predate his-toricism by a century or so. Perizonius, SpinozaVico and Fontenelle should be regarded as precur-sors, illustrating what the most intelligent thinkerso the late seventeenth and early eighteenth cen-turies were capable o. Te historiographicamainstream o the eighteenth century, howev-er, did not ollow their lead, but rather remainedconfined to either the model o Christian uni-versal history or the enlightened idea o linearprogress.21 Nonetheless, the debates surround-

ing the amous quarrel between the ancients andmoderns may help to explain why historical con-sciousness became more prominent in the earlyeighteenth century, a development which led to thepublication o the first historical atlas in 1705.22

Beore we turn to this remarkable and oen ne-glected work, we have to answer one question: didhistorical atlases exist beore 1700? When wasthe first atlas published that we can designate ashistorical? Te answers, according to the litera-ture, differ widely. Some claim that the Parergonpublished by Abraham Ortelius (1527-1598) asan appendix to his Teatrum Orbis errarum in1579, has the right to claim precedence23; othersargue that prior to 1800, the historical atlas as wenow know it did not exist.24 In a way, both viewsare correct, depending on what one calls anhistorical atlas. Te ormer is based on the defi-nition o an atlas as a collection o maps, such as it

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is defined by many encyclopedias today. Howev-er, as we will see, an atlas was not always meant tobe just that. As or the latter classification, it is cer-tainly correct that the historical atlas gained itscurrent shape more or less around 1800. How-ever, this does not mean that there were no atlasesprior to this date.

Instead o proceeding rom an arbitrary definitiono what an atlas is, it may be more rewarding toenquire what the learned world in earlier centuriesthought it was. It is thereore appropriate to startan investigation into historical atlases not with thefirst collection o historical maps, but rather withthe first work that was called an historical at-las. Tis was the Atlas Historique, which waspublished in French by Chtelain in Amsterdamrom 1705 onwards.25

Te Atlas Historique (1705-39)

Judging rom its publication history, the atlas wasa major success. Te first edition was publishedin seven volumes between 1705 and 1720. Sub-sequent editions o volumes were publishedseparately throughout the years up to 1739, includ-ing a third edition o the first volume in 1721 anda last (ourth) edition in 1739.26 Te later editionscontained some corrections and new material, but

the basic structure o the work remained unchanged.Tere has been some disagreement about the au-thor (or rather general editor), as his name was notgiven (or rather, given as Mr. C***). Library cata-logues usually give the credit to a man calledHenri Abraham Chtelain, about whom not muchis known. Modern scholars attribute it rather tothe Huguenot publisher Zacharias Chtelain, orpreer to leave the question open.27 Te atlas was acollaborative project, however, and involved morethan one author. Te maps were drawn by theanonymous Mr. C***, whereas the genealogicaltables were provided by the well-known scholarJacob Wilhelm Imho (1651-1728) and by Ferdi-nand Ludwig von Bressler und Aschenburg (1681-1722). Te texts were written by the colorulFrench Protestant Nicolas Gueudeville (1652-172?)and, to a lesser degree, Henri Philippe de Lim-iers (?-1725).28 As becomes obvious rom thisenumeration, the atlas is not a simple collection o

maps, but rather embodies an approach to historythat today would be labeled as multi-media learn-ing. It comprises mainly five different elements:maps, texts (dissertations), genealogical tables(oen in the orm o amily trees), images andchronological tables. Te combination o these el-ements varied according to subject, as we will see.All o these different orms o representing his-tory have their own logic and their own history.29None o them were really new. However, to ar-gue that the Atlas Historique contained little newmaterial is probably unair. It was not meant to pres-ent new inormation; rather, it wanted to give aneasily accessible synoptic view o history. Teoriginality o the atlas lay more in the order andarrangement o material than in any specific ormas such.30

o the reader, the difference in tone and style be-tween Gueudevilles dissertations and the rest o thework is easily discernible. As the anonymous edi-tor wrote in the preace to the second edition, hesought to attain truthulness and impartiality, atleast in the maps and chronologies, whereas thedissertations were rom a better quill .31 Teir au-thor, N. Gueudeville, was a ugitive French monkwho had escaped to the Netherlands.32 Hemade little effort to hide his resentment o bothCatholicism, especially as it concerned the power

o the Pope and absolute monarchy. When writingabout the Roman emperors, he remarked that anhonest prince was a wonder o the world.33 At thebeginning o his dissertation about modern Rome,which is essentially a history o the Popes, heassures the reader that he wants to write rom aneutral, not a conessional, viewpoint. We willnever know i he really had this intention, but heobviously gets carried away during the course owriting and deends himsel in the end by admitting

that his account was partisan, but claiming he onlytook the party o reason.34

Looking at the contents, there is a striking incon-gruity in the Atlas Historique. On the one hand, theopening part o the first volume makes it very clearthat the general view o history was in line withthe Christian tradition. On the other hand, the or-ganization o content was not consistent with suchan approach. Te traditional view was based

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on an interpretation o the Book o David andessentially regarded history as the succession oour great empires, the last o which would be theRoman Empire. Although this theory had al-ready been rejected by Jean Bodin (1530-96) onempirical grounds, it was still the dominant viewaround 1700, when historians tried to combine

different elements and reconcile them with the our-empires-theory. Different versions o this theoryhave come orward in the last 1,500 years, butthe most influential o these identified the ourempires as the Neo-Babylonian, the Medo-Persian, the Greek and the Roman Empires.Alternatively, one could count the Median and Per-sian empires separately, or argue that the ourthempire was not the Roman, but one o Alexanderthe Greats successors. Regardless, there remainedquite a ew big empires, both past and present,

which did not fit into the scheme. Bodin mentionedthe Ottoman (urk), Goth, Arab and atar em-pires.35 Tese were only examples in the amiliarspace o Europe, West Asia and North Arica. othese, one might have added empires in EasternAsia or the New World. In the seventeenth centu-ry, Chinese history had come to the knowledge othe European learned world, basically throughtranslations rom Jesuits.36 Tis was why thetraditional doctrine o our empires looked increas-ingly old-ashioned to enlightened historians inthe eighteenth century, as Johann Christoph Gat-terer (1727-99) explained in 1767. He suggestedarranging universal history instead according to ei-ther nations or epochs.37

Gatterers own historical accounts adhered to thefirst principle, which is precisely what we find inthe Atlas Historique. Each nation was treatedindividually; sometimes (as in the case o theRomans) a distinction was made between ancient

and modern, but on the whole, this was a verymodern arrangement, couched in much tradi-tional rhetoric. Volume one contained sections onuniversal history, ancient Greece, ancient and mod-ern Rome, Naples, France, Spain and the UnitedProvinces o the Netherlands. Volume two to ourcontinued the survey on European history withsections on Germany, Prussia, Hungary, Bohe-mia (all in volume two), Great Britain, Ireland,Switzerland, Savoy, Lorraine, Venice (volume

three), Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Muscovy andEuropean urkey (volume our). Volume fiveshied the ocus to Asia (Assyria, Asia MinorArmenia, Georgia, urkey, the Holy Land, ArabiaPersia, artary, India, China, Japan, Siam), whilevolume six treated Arica and the America(Egypt, Barbary, Nigritia, Guinea, Ethiopia, Congo

Kaffraria and the Cape o Good Hope, CanadaLouisiana, Virginia, Mexico, Peru, Chile, BrazilMadagascar, the Philippines, the Antilles andCeylon). Volume seven was a supplement.

Te question remains, however: how much othe material in this atlas is really historical in ourmodern sense, i.e., dealing with developmento the past? Especially or the non-Europeancountries, large parts were filled with general descriptions o people, their habits and customs, o

amous buildings, making the atlas sometimereminiscent o a travel guide. Nevertheless, it is notrue, as some would have it, that it was simply ageographical description o the world.38 In manyparts it was a combination o both geography andhistory. However, the treatment o the individuacountries varied. Tere did not seem to be a general scheme, but rather a loose combination o text(one or more dissertations), maps, chronologiesgenealogical tables and illustrations. o give anexample, the section on ancient Rome consisted o(1) a nine-page dissertation; (2) three maps: oneo Italy beore the Roman conquest, one o the Roman Empire in its greatest extension and one othe city o (ancient) Rome; (3) a chronology o Roman kings, consuls and emperors, giving eachname and short remarks about his years o reign(4) a chart o the Roman emperors with a smalportrait o each.39 Te series o emperors wascontinued up to the present, both or the WesternEmpire and the Eastern, where the urkish sul

tans took the place o the emperors rom 1453

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able 1: Atlas Historique: Breakdown o Content.

Te breakdown shows that there was a signifi-cant amount o text in the Atlas Historique, whilemaps filled only 10-20 % o its pages. Images wereespecially important or the volume on Asia, butalso the one on Arica and the Americas. ak-en together, text and images (excluding maps)comprised ca. 80% o the content o volume fiveand six. In volume one, they were counterbalancedby the large number o pages devoted to (mostlychronological) tables.

Te concept o history that was supposed to un-derlie all this was made explicit at the start o theatlas. As previously mentioned, the authors re-mained ully within the boundaries o the traditionadoctrine o the our empires. In the preace to vol-ume one, the author emphasized how good it wasto live in an enlightened century, where the artsand sciences have come to the throne. Te atlas wasmeant to be a wise guide through history, or theyoung to learn rom and the elder to remember. 41Trough the medium o history, the dissertationon universal history explained, the living strike adeal with the dead: the ormer receive wisdomand olly, good and bad examples rom which theycan learn, while the latter receive praise and repri-mand. History could be divided into the sacred andproane, with the ollowing chart supposed to be apasse-partout42 or history.

Essentially, the chart portrays two strands o historyin the orm o a amily tree. Note, however, that boththese charts have to be read rom the top down, i.e.the oldest are at top o the page. Te chain o sacredhistory begins with Adam and Eve and leads via Jesusto the Popes. Te chain o proane history visualizesthe doctrine o the our empires, beginning with theAssyrian Empire and leading to the Roman Empire

Text Images Maps Charts Tables

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

Europe

Asia

Africa/America%

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able 2: Te chain o history (rom the Atlas Historique).



it must have been around 4.000 B.C.; howeverto establish an exact date was more complicatedTe chronology o the Irish Archbishop JamesUssher (1581-1656) was or the most part acceptedas orthodoxy. It dated the Creation to the year4.004 B.C. Still, the dating o the Deluge varied by alarge margin, having taken place between 1307

and 2262 years aer the Creation.45 Another set oproblems was the integration o non-Europeantraditions. Both Chinese and Egyptian historyseemed to go back beore the Deluge or even theCreation, according to indigenous sources. Teclaim that China had already been populated beore the Deluge, however, was too much to swallowor many learned Europeans. Instead, scholars likeGeorg Horn (1620-70) tried to reconcile Chineseannals with the Biblical tradition by identiying Chinese emperors with persons rom the Old

estament (e.g., Fu Hsi as Adam, Yoa as Noah etc.).46As or the Egyptian dynasties that purportedlypre-dated not only the Deluge, but even the Creation itsel, Gerardus Vossius (1577-1649) ound anelegant solution by claiming that these dynasties had not ruled consecutively, but partlysimultaneously.47

In the Atlas Historique, chronology was not uniorm throughout. In the beginning, universal historywas divided into ourteen different epochs, thelimits o which were defined by either Biblicaevents or amous kings.48 In modern times, thesewere wholly European: the last three epochs lastedrom the coronation o Charlemagne in 800 tothe French King Saint Louis IX (1214-1270), romthere to the death o William III o England (1702and rom there to the present. Te years in thichronology are counted both rom the beginningo the world (dated 4004 B.C.) and beore or aethe birth o Jesus.

Te ourteen epochs, however, did not structurehistory in the atlas, as each country had its ownchronology according to its rulers. In most casesthe years were counted in reerence to the birth oJesus, sometimes in combination with the years othe world (i.e., since the Creation). In the case oancient Rome, the number o years counted romthe ounding o Rome was also added.49 Herehowever, a mistake seems to have been made in

and the states that came into being as a result o itsdemise. Tis chart is meant to provide a rough sketcho history, as well as a means or memorizing it.

Universal history was also portrayed in a mapcalled Plan de lhistoire universelle. It was a mapo Europe, Asia and Arica, with a small map insert

showing America. It exhibited the boundaries othe Greek and Roman empires. For the other twoempires, the inormation about their extension wasnot sufficient. Te map does not appear very pre-cise, but rather like a rough sketch. Te boundarieso the Roman Empire are wrong, comprising Per-sia and Poland. Below, it contained small images othe Seven Wonders o the World. Around the maptables were placed with inormation about theour empires and the principal states, both ancientand modern.

Te description at the bottom o the map praisedEuropes role in the world: even though it was thesmallest continent, it was still the most importantand not just or its arms, but or other aspects thatmade people happy. It had a mild climate and thearts and sciences blossomed there, providing allother parts o the world with its new discover-ies. Tis claim provided a legitimation or theconcentration on Europe in volumes one to our.Tere is, however, a certain tension between thisEurocentrism and the doctrine o the our em-pires, because two o them, the Assyrian or Neo-Babylonian and Persian empires were clearly Asian,whereas the Greek and Roman empires, whilethey may have had their power bases in Europe,extended over three continents, as the map madeclear.

Another part o the section on universal history ad-dressed the problem o chronology. For a number

o reasons, this was a difficult problem at the time.Te system amiliar to most modern readers is tocount the years beore and aer the birth o JesusChrist (BC and AD). Tis method was already inuse around 1700, but had not been universally es-tablished. In historiography, it was more commonto count rom the beginning, i.e. rom Creationonwards. Tis led to the complicated question owhen exactly the earth had been created. Most schol-ars agreed, on careul exegesis o the Bible, that

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the count o the years o the world, because theounding o Rome, conventionally set at 753 B.C.,is dated in the year o the world 3300 and not in3251, as it should be. In the preace to the sec-ond edition, the editor admitted this mistake, butargued that an error o orty years or so was notthat much, given the large number o years sincethe Creation.50

Te chronological problems presented by Chineseand Egyptian rulers lists were solved accordingto the predominant teaching o the time. Te (leg-endary) Chinese Emperor Fu Hsi (Fohi) wasidentified with Noah and thereore, Chinese chro-nology did not contradict the Holy Scripture. Yetthe chronology dated the beginning o his reignback to 2952 BC, or year o the world 1052, sixcenturies beore the Deluge!51 As or the Egyptian

kings, matters were more complicated. Te editorollowed the suggestion that in early times, our dy-nasties ruled simultaneously. Even so, their exactorder appeared too uncertain to be included andthe chronology started with Alatis (Salitis), whobegan to rule in the year o the world 1920(2084 BC). Te Egyptian state was ound-ed in 1760, about a century aer the Deluge.52

Because most o the chronologies were based onthe ruling years o sovereigns (princes, kings,

emperors, or Roman consuls), they had a distinct-ly elitist flavor, and regarded history rom a topdown perspective. Indeed, as most sovereigns camerom noble amilies, the chronologies combinedwith the genealogical tables gave history, at leastEuropean history, a distinctly dynastic bias. Tisimpression is reinorced by the inclusion o a ge-nealogical table at the very beginning o volumeone, showing the royal amilies o Europe thatwere related to the ruling French dynasty placed atthe center.53 Next to France, it showed the rul-ing amilies o Spain, Portugal, England, Denmark,Sweden and Savoy. Other, less important dynas-ties were placed underneath. Te Holy RomanEmpire is somewhat hidden in the bottom-le corner.

Tis dynastic view o history presents a strikingcontrast to Gueudevilles dissertations, in which hemade little effort to conceal his republican sympa-thies. He criticized the ancient Roman emperors

or trying to erect a universal monarchy, becauseGod did not want humans to live under only oneruler. Te right o universal domination, statedGueudeville, belongs to God alone.54 Freedom neveflourished as much as it did in the Roman Repub-lic and never was servitude more contemptible thanin the Roman Empire.55 Lucky was the country where the government regarded its citizens a

riends. Only one country came close to this idealwhich was the Netherlands.56

Gueudeville certainly was no proto-historicist. Heregarded history as a collection o examples, bothgood and bad and highlighted the learning potential that history held. He did not hesitate tocastigate rulers when they ailed to live up to hisideals and did not have any qualms about applyingthe ethical standards o his own time even to an-

cient rulers. Alexander the Great, the reader watold, was a drunkard, superstitious and probablyinsane, because he claimed to be Jupiters son.57 Inthe same vein, he did not have a problem withjudging peoples outside o Europe by his own(Christian and republican) standards. Predictablyhe showed a lot o respect or Asia as a cradle ogreat empires and world religions.58 He did noexhibit many sympathies or Islam, though. Hecriticized what he regarded as anaticism anddenounced the miracles o the prophet as big

stupidities, nonetheless believed by the majority o humans. Reflecting on the act that there weremany more Muslims in the world than Christian(he claims a ratio o 1,000:1), he concluded oneshould call the human the credulous animal.59 According to Gueudeville, the Ottoman Empire waounded, like many others, on usurpation and injustice and Mehmet II was a barbarous monster.60Te Persian kings were tyrants61; China, the darling o enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire62was also censured. Tis ormerly wise people, sostated Gueudeville, had given itsel to atheism andsuperstition and had become enemies o reasonand horrors o nature.63 He ound much commonsense, surprisingly perhaps, in the laws o the ar-tar Emperor Genghis Khan. He especially praisedhis religious tolerance and his laws against idleness.64

In Arica, Gueudeville reserved his praise or theEgyptians, who were an exception in a continen

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whose inhabitants were cruel, wild, deceitul, greedyand rude, amongst other things. Te Egyptianswere on the whole pleasant and witty, but adheredto religious superstition by adoring turnips andonions. He did not find Arican kingdoms worthmentioning, except o course Egypt; there weremany small rulers, Gueudeville writes, who thought

o themselves as great kings, but had neithermeans nor troops.65 Te ancient Egyptians werenot good warriors either, but they made the arts andsciences flourish. Women were not excludedrom government, a rule the author welcomed.However, the modern Egyptians had degenerated,being ignorant, misers, thieves and hypocrites.66

Table 3: Map of France (detail, from the Atlas Historique).

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As for America, Gueudeville unequivocally con-demned the treatment of indigenous peoples byEu-ropeans. Columbus had no right to claim the land forthe Spanish crown; God had already given it to itsinhabitants. As such, the discovery of America was

a disaster for the native population.67 On the otherhand, Gueudeville did not revive the myth of the no-ble savage. Americas native inhabitants were rather

described as wild, aggressive and deceitful. Beforethe Europeans arrived, the devil ruled undisturbedover America.68 The only kingdoms of the continentwere Mexico and Peru.69 The history of pre-colonialMexico was ambivalent: the ancient Mexicans ruledwith terror over other peoples, but some of theirkings were just; and even Moctezuma (Montezuma)II had some good characteristics.70 SurprisinglyGueudeville praised the rule of the Inca: the found-er of their religion must have been a Jew, and their

laws separated the legislative and judicial powers.71



The maps in the Atlas Historique are not always his-torical in a strict sense. Sometimes they are just simplygeographical and political, showing the most importantphysical features like mountains (in the shape of molehills) and current political and administrative bound-aries. There are maps, however, that give interesting

additional information. The map of France is a casein point.72 Even if it is not readily apparent, it is anhistorical map, because it contains a lot of informationabout historical events. So the places where famousbattles took place are marked, as are the birthplaces offamous persons. As the following table demonstrates,this has a rather curious effect: Because the map as-sembles information from several centuries, and be-cause military events are marked more often than civilones, nearly all of France looks like a big battleeld.

Te maps or other parts o the world contain differ-ent types o inormation. In Arica, or example, it isnot the battlegrounds that are marked, but rather thecharacteristics o the native peoples. Te reason or thismay be lack o inormation about historic sites, or thewish to make unamiliar territory more amiliar.

Predictably, this resulted in some stereotypical de-scriptions, as the ollowing map shows, where theinhabitants o the kingdom o emian were describedas cannibals. Other kingdoms were characterized interms o natural (including human) resources such asgold, jasper and slaves. Te map, thereore, resemblesmodern economic maps.

Another very interesting map was given in volume6, concerning America.74 It is unusual in that it iscentered on the sea rather than on the land. It is titledSouth Sea, even though it contains large parts o thenorthern seas as well. Te continent o America issituated in the middle, with north on top; on the lethe map covers the Pacific Ocean up to East Asia; onthe right, the Atlantic Ocean up to Western Europeand Arica. It also contains the main shipping routeso European discoveries. It also eatures inserted im-

ages, such as portraits o the most important discov-erers on top o the map, but also scenes rom nature(beavers, fishery) and history (the landing o Pizar-ro). Modern historical atlases, influenced by the newglobal history75, pride themselves on putting theconnections between the continents at center stage. Asthis map shows, this is not an invention o the twenti-eth century. Moreover, it was not the only map to showmovement. A map o ancient Greece, or instance, high-lighted Alexander the Greats military campaigns. 76

Table 4: Map of Barbary, Nigritia and Guinea (detail from the Atlas Historique).

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a robe and one o his aides holding a scimitar (able6), three emblematic eatures o urks in the European imagination.80 urkish rule appears here noonly as highly personalized, in contrast to the moreprocedural, rational European government; the ruling persons appear exotic and alien, adding to the dierences between Europe and Asia.

More oen, however, the images on o non-Europeancountries were not concerned with government orpolitics. Most o them were are rather ethnographicand depicted motis taken rom religion, everydaylie (ood, drink, habit), flora and auna, etc. Whether this inormation was really particularly useul tothe reader or mainly included or entertainment, i

As noted above, the atlas also contains images (otherthan maps). Tese differ in distribution and content.In volume one, there are hardly any images: they fillonly 5% o the pages, compared to 27% in volumefive (Asia) and 15% in volume 6 (Arica and Amer-ica).77 Images in volume one are mostly concernedwith government, showing either important build-ings or constitutional organs such as parliaments or

councils, like the French parlements or the Romanconclave.78 able 5 is a typical example: the imageshows an orderly assembly o men, either standingor sitting, who do not exhibit any recognizable indi-vidual eatures. Te prince or king usually stands outthrough his position in the room or the size o hischair. Sometimes a legend is added to explain the di-erent office-holders. Te emphasis is on the rationaland orderly procedure o the body.

able 5: Te Conclave (rom the Atlas Historique).

Contrast with this the illustration o the Ottomangovernment in volume 5 o the atlas.79 It combinesour portraits o high officials in ceremonial gear:the sultan, the grand vizier, the head o the janissar-ies and another officer. Te emphasis here is obvi-ously more on those persons who are recognizableand whose names are partly given. At the same time,their habit is exotic, the sultan wearing a turban and

Table 6: The Sultan (from the Atlas historiqueHistorique).

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difficult to establish. However, it reinorced the dis-tinction between Europe and the other continents bymaking the latter appear strange and, exotic, at timesmaybe even bizarre.

Te general thrust o this impressive, i flawed, work,should be clear. Te overall view o history was dy-nastic. Te princes or republican rulers made history,

at least the so-called proane history. Tereore, gene-alogies o the ruling amilies, and chronologies struc-tured according to kings and princes were o primeimportance. Even i the volumes treated countriesindividually, these were not seen as nation -states asthey would be in the nineteenth century, but ratheras dynastic states. Next to political history, the atlascovered military history and the history o religion.o this, one may add some aspects o cultural history,or example in the description o amous buildings, or

o Roman triumphs.81 In principle, the atlas tried tocover all known regions o the world, and the treat-ment o non-European history was not different, inprinciple. However, lack o genuinely historical inor-mation made the ethnographic element stronger inthe description o other continents, which tended, asin the choice o images, to reinorce existing stereo-types.

Te view o history cannot be described as proto-historicist. Tere was no reflection about the relativ-

ity o values, neither toward past societies nor towardnon-European peoples. All were judged accordingto the same, apparently universal, enlightened stan-dards. Te Christian view o history, embodied in thedoctrine o the our empires, was kept in orm only.In practice, the atlas went ar beyond the confines othe traditional view, in geography as well as in chro-nology. It is or this reason that the Atlas Historiqueshould be remembered, despite its eclectic and maybeunoriginal content.

Te contemporary reviews were divided about theatlas quality. Some reviewers praised the organiza-tion o the material and recommended it as a worko reerence. Te dissertations o Gueudeville weremet with more reservation. A reviewer noted thatthey were not very instructive and made laugh onlythose who thought like the author.82 As noted above,however, the maps and chronologies did not escapecriticism, mostly or their mistakes in detail, so muchso that the editor elt obliged to include a lengthy de-

ense o the work in the preace to the second editionOn the other hand, there was enough positive eedback to motivate the editor to continue the work ormore than thirty years.83

Johann Georg Hagelgans

Although historical atlases were not as common in

the early eighteenth century as they are now, the AtlaHistorique was not the only one o its kind. In 1718an Atlas Historicus was published by a Germantheologian, archivist and polymath named JohannGeorg Hagelgans (1687-1762). Not much is knownabout his biography. For most o his adult lie, rom1729 to his death, he served the Prince o Nassau (asmall principality in south-west Germany) as archivist and Schultheiss (sheriff ).84 He published manybooks on a wide range o issues, e.g., questions on

theology, universal history, astronomy, politics, a register o universities and also some poems. Tis doenot mean that his areas o interest were separate romone another. He made no effort to conceal his religious convictions, which were probably influencedby Pietism.85 In his astronomical writings, he triedto show that Copernicus system did not contradicthe Bible. Tere, God used the words that humanswould understand at the time, so the Bible was noto be taken literally in every respect.86 However, hebelieved in the Christian view o universal history

i.e., in the doctrine o the our empires and the endo the world. In a chronology o the world he pub-lished in 1751, he explained that the Bible was to beregarded as the most reliable source or the earliestimes. Te sometimes conflicting claims o othercivilizations (he mentions Egypt, but probably meanChina as well) were oen contradictory, he claimedand attempts at clarification led rom one labyrinth toanother. Hagelgans wished to see these chronologiebanned to the junk room.87 He was certain that thworld would last about 7.000 years, in analogy withthe seven days o Creation as told in the Book o Genesis, because the number seven embodied the sacredorder.88 Although he declined to give exact dates othe Creation and the end o the world, he adhered tothe then common view that the world must have beencreated around 4.000 BC. Te end o the sixth millennium would see, according to the Book o Revelationthe return o Christ and the beginning o a millenniaempire o peace. He expected this to happen in 2034give or take a ew years. 89

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In general, the Book o Daniel (next to the Book oRevelation) seemed to hold a certain ascination orHagelgans. He even had himsel portrayed as theprophet Daniel on a medal, along with the inscrip-tion amicus dei (riend o God) and inimicusmundi (enemy o the world).90 Tis may be a signor his Pietist worldview, which involved a certain

extramundane orientation. But it may also have hadmore concrete implications. In his hometown o Id-stein, Hagelgans was or years involved in a long andprotracted struggle with the local bailiff. Te reasonseems to have been a disagreement over a maid, butthe animosities persisted or more than ten years.91

Hagelgans gives no inormation why he chose topublish an historical atlas at this time, other than itshould help the memory and the use o historicalbooks.92 It consisted o eight large tables, each cov-

ering a different period o time. aken together, theyportrayed the complete history rom Creation until1700. Te epochs were divided in the ollowing man-ner: the first lasted rom the Creation to the all oroy; the second until the destruction o Persian su-premacy in Asia; the third, until the birth o Jesus;the ourth, until the division o the Roman empire;the fih, until the resurrection o the Western Empire(800); the sixth, the ollowing our centuries (until1200); the seventh, the ollowing three centuries untilthe discovery o the new world; the eighth, the lasttwo centuries, which Hagelgans considered modernhistory. In a later edition, a table or the time up to1750 was added.93

wo aspects o this periodization are worth mention-ing. First, Hagelgans obviously combines elements osacred history (Creation, birth o Jesus Christ) withothers taken rom proane history, especially the ourempires. Up to the resurrection o the Western Em-pire with Charlemagne, he remained well within the

traditional Christian view o history. However andthis is the second remarkable aspect aer this theperiodization becomes surprisingly secular, orientedtowards centuries rather than key events, with thenotable exception o the age o discovery. Tere isa certain tension here: Hagelgans, with his intimateknowledge o the Book o Daniel, wants to structurehistory according to the prophets vision, but he ailsto produce a convincing periodization on these termsor the Middle Ages and the modern period.

Tis tension between writing truly universal historyand remaining within tradition can also be seen ingeographical terms. His tables are structured in asimple way: the lines mark the years (or rather centu-ries) and the columns the countries. While the ordero the columns ollows a certain scheme, their num-ber is not fixed, but varies according to period. Te

tables proceed rom Western Europe on the le, start-ing with Portugal and Spain, eastward, covering cen-tral, northern and Eastern Europe, West Asia, PersiaIndia, China and Arica. Later, rom the ninth cen-tury onward, American history is portrayed as wellTe resulting numerous boxes are filled with namesand dates, but above all with pictures and symbolsIn his map key, Hagelgans uses no less than seventy-seven symbols, denoting either rulers (kings, emper-ors, etc.), events (conquests, plagues, earthquakes)or kinship. As i this was not conusing enough, the

tables are illustrated with miniature pictures o im-portant events, mostly wars and battles. Anotherdistinction is introduced according to the degree ocertainty. Te symbols are drawn in contours i theevent is only legendary, in hatching i it is in doubtand in ull i it is true. An impression o the resultcan be gained rom able 7, showing history rom theCreation to the all o roy.

As or chronology, the tables denoted time accord-ing to different systems that were current at the timeamong them Greek (years beore the first OlympicGames in 776 BC), Roman (rom the oundation oRome in 753 BC), the Julian Period counting 7980years and oen used in astronomy, beore and aerthe birth o Christ and different versions o the yearssince Creation.94 Hagelgans did not take a definiteposition on when the world was created; rather, he in-ormed the reader o the different theories o his timegiving the dates as 3949, 3947, or 4004 BC. Te prob-lems with Egyptian chronology, mentioned above

were completely ignored. Te pharaohs were firstmentioned aer 1950 BC. For the ancient Chineserulers, he employed a different solution. He markedEmperor Fohi as predating the Deluge (dated at 2292BC). In contrast to the Atlas Historique, he was notthe same person as Noah, but rather a legendary fig-ure, as can be seen in able 7. By banning the earli-est Chinese rulers into the realm o myth, Hagelganscould leave his Christian chronology intact.

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able 8: Johann Georg Hagelgans, Atlas Historicus, able 1 (detail)

As its author explained, the atlas concentrated onpolitical history.97 Te history o arts, sciences andchurches were to be dealt with in a separate publi-cation, which was never published. Tereore, mucho its space is filled with kings, armies, battles, mili-tary expeditions, etc. A critic has remarked that allthe people (Germany, Romans, Indians, etc.) look thesame, rendering the atlas in act ill-suited at repre-senting historical variety.98 However, this is not the

case, as able 9 makes clear. It shows the violent con-rontation between the Saracen and Byzantine troopsduring the reign o Justinian II. Even though theirscimitars are missing, the Saracens are clearly rec-ognizable as different rom the Christian soldiers bytheir turbans and robes. Likewise, the Native Ameri-cans were portrayed as semi-naked with a loinclothand, though not always, a warbonnet.

O course, the Biblical figures like Adam, Eve, Noahand others were portrayed as historical, not legend-ary.

Hagelgans thought his atlas was sel-explanatory 95,but this is only the case i the reader is very amiliarwith history. An example rom Chinese history maysuffice. able 8 shows the story o King Wu Yi (WuYi,

Vu-Je) o the Shang (Yin) Dynasty in twelh centuryBC, who, according to Chinese historian Sima Qian,challenged the gods by playing chess with an idol andridiculing the gods or losing, as well as shooting aleather bag ull o blood and calling it shooting atheaven. Appropriately, he died aer being struck bylightning.96 Hagelgans depicts all the vital ingre-dients o the story: a chessboard, a dripping leatherbag, a person lying dead, the lightning. However, itis impossible to assemble them into a coherent story

unless one has heard o it beorehand.

able 7: Johann Georg Hagelgans, Atlas Historicus, able 1 (detail).

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able 9: Johann Georg Hagelgans, Atlas Historicus, able 5 (detail)

It is not quite correct to say that only political andmilitary history was portrayed. Rather in contrastto its authors statement the atlas covered catastro-phes like earthquakes, amous buildings (the empleo Salomon, the castle o Versailles), or sometimesthe arts and sciences (the invention o movable typeprinting by Gutenberg, or the geodesic mission bythe Paris Academy o Sciences). However, it is truethat these were not the most prominent eatures; theywere exceptions rather than the rule.

o most events, only small space was devoted; butsome were portrayed in a different ashion, or ex-ample by inserting a larger picture or a map. Tesewould oen dominate visually on a given table. It isinteresting to note which elements o history Hagel-gans chose to highlight. Tey are nearly always eventsrelating to European or West-Asian history. In an-cient history, these are mostly taken rom Greek, Ro-man and Biblical histories, such as the all o roy,

the building o the emple o Salomon, the birth oChrist, Roman triumphs, etc.99 Especially promi-nent are pictures o animals that illustrate the visiono Daniel. Each o the our animals was supposed torepresent one empire.100 Te birth o Christ, in-terestingly, is combined with the caption Regnummeum non est mundanum (my kingdom is not othis world). In the Middle Ages, there are more por-trayals o persons and events relating to Asia, suchas Attila, amerlan or Mohammed.101 Scenes rom

the lie o the Prophet are depicted, such as the Hijra

or Mohammed designating Ali as his successor; however these scenes resemble secular events and havein no way the same religious pathos as the birth oChrist (able 10).

able 10: Te birth o Jesus Christ (rom Johann Georg HagelgansAtlas Historicus, able 4)

For the modern times, the relative absence o largerimages is striking. able 8 shows Habsburg EmperorJoseph and the Ottoman Wars, as well as the all othe Ming Dynasty in China. In able 9, the Reormation Jubilee o 1719 gets special attention, makingHagelgans conessional allegiance very clear.

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Maps exist both as inserts in the tables and as separatesheets. O the first variety, a simple map o the hemi-spheres is remarkable because it shows the spread othe human population over the world. According tothe Book o Genesis, all humans can be traced backto one o Noahs sons: Ham (or Cham), Sem and Ja-phet. Tere had long been a tradition in Europeanthought that identified the descendants o Ham

(Hamites) with Aricans, the Semites with Asiansand the descendants o Japhet with Europeans. Aerthe discovery o America and the Native Americans,the scheme had to be modified. Te Spanish scholarBenedictus Arias Montanus (1527-98) suggested thelatter were descendants o Sem, identiying someunspecified mountains mentioned in the Bible withthe Andes.102 Hagelgans, however, did not concur.Unortunately, he gave no explanation or why hethought that Northern Americans were descendants

o Japhet and thereore o Europeans, whereas South-ern Americans are descendants o Ham in the East,and o Sem in the West. Maybe geographical proxim-ity played a role, but this does not explain why he didnot think that North American settlers came romEast Asia (as indeed they did, according to moderntheories).103 In his amous history o the Indies, theSpanish scholar Jose de Acosta (1540-1600) had sug-gested that North America had been populated viaa landbridge either in the North or the South o theContinent.104 Another option would have been to

postulate the existence o Pre-Adamites, i.e., o hu-mans who had already existed beore the Creation oAdam. Te French scholar Isaac de la Peyrre (1596-1676) had argued this point in 1655, but it was re-used by orthodox Christians as contradicting theBiblical account.105

Apart rom the inserts, the atlas included our mapso Europe: one showing Europe in antiquity beorethe rise o the Roman Empire, one covering the pe-riod rom Augustus to Charlemagne, one showingthe Barbarian invasions and one or the time aerCharlemagne. For the most part, the maps are notnoteworthy. Tey contain no color and the boundar-ies are marked only with thin lines. It can be assumedthat their primary unction was to indicate the geo-graphical locations o certain places and countries.However, the map showing the Barbarian invasions(or migrationes gentium) has been praised as thefirst attempt to show dynamic processes on an histor-

ical map.106 It shows movements o peoples over aperiod o 2,500 years, rom Greek colonization to theMongol invasions o the later Middle Ages, with dotted lines and arrows (able 11). However, it should benoted that this was not as original as it may seem. TeAtlas Historique, as we have seen, also included mapswith lines showing movements.

able 11: Migration o Peoples (Johann Georg Hagelgans, Atla

Historicus, Map 3, detail).

Te maps underline the general impression thatHagelgans atlas, despite its vast scope, was still Eu-rocentric. Tis was largely due to his adherenceto the doctrine o the our empires, which led himto emphasize the history o Europe and West Asia

Tere was a certain tension between his traditionaChristian chronology and his geographically universal reach, because even the non-European parts othe world that were treated in greater detail, such asChina, ollowed the chronological structure derivedrom elsewhere. Within these limits, however, it isnoteworthy that the reader learned more about someparts o the world than others. For example, Chinesehistory was airly well represented, but the history oIndia was not covered as well. In able 4, rom 0 to

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ca. 400 AD, there is not a single entry in the Indi-an column. 107 On the other hand, the history oNative Americans was better represented than onemight have expected. It started long beore Colum-bus with the epaneca, around 900 AD.108 Tis wasroughly in line with Jos de Acostas (1540-1600) ac-count, which dated the arrival o the Nahuatlaca, o

which the epaneca ormed a part, in Mexico at 902AD. As first people he mentions the allegedly primi-tive Chichimeca, which Hagelgans did not include.109 As or Arica, there is a lot more inormationabout the northern part, especially Egypt, than aboutSouthern Arica.

Te tables, Hagelgans principal medium, do not lendthemselves easily to the demonstration o global con-nections. Tat they were nonetheless important tothe author becomes clear when looking at the Middle

Ages, where not only Marco Polos amous trip toChina is represented, but also the legendary voyageo the Welsh prince Madoc to America in the twelhcentury.110 Again, the lack o explanation is to be re-gretted, because it is possible that Hagelgans belie inthe Madoc myth led to his depiction o North Ameri-ca as settled by the descendants o Japhet (Europeans).In short, the myth states that a Welsh colony was es-tablished in North America and some white NativeAmericans (the Mandans) survived until the time oColumbus. Modern scholarship has shown that thereis no evidence o a Welsh medieval prince who trav-elled to America; even a prince named Madoc couldnot be verified. Even though a olk legend had prob-ably existed earlier, the story was largely abricatedby English scholars o the late sixteenth century whowanted to add some legitimacy to Britains challengeo the Spanish colonial empire.111

As Hagelgans atlas was ocused on tables rather thanmaps (with the exceptions mentioned), it was diffi-

cult to present the voyages o exploration by Colum-bus or Vasco da Gama, because the location o de-parture was in a different and not even neighboringcolumn rom the location o arrival.112 As such, hechose to represent both the departure o the explor-ers in the European columns and their arrival in therespective overseas columns. Tat meant, o course,that the voyage itsel was not represented and thereader had to jump rom one column to the other toget the ull story.

Hagelgans atlas has to be seen as part o a broadertradition. Te table is a orm o representation thatgoes back to ancient Mesopotamia and Greece, andas a orm o historical representation it ound itsclassical orm with church ather Eusebius (260/65339/40) in the ourth century AD, with the arrange-ment o kingdoms in columns and years in lines.113However, it acquired central importance in the sev-enteenth and eighteenth centuries, the age o ratio-nalism, when, as Michel Foucault puts it, the epis-teme o Western culture had opened up an area toorm a table over which it wandered endlessly, romthe calculable orms o order to the analysis o themost complex representations.114

Especially the eighteenth century has been describedas the heyday o tables.115 For historical scholar

ship, tables were supposed to provide diffuse historical knowledge with rational integrity.116 Most tabulated histories by European scholars in the eighteenthcentury included sections on China and India, butnot on other parts o the world outside the traditionaclassical theater o Europa, West Asia and North A-rica. Te reason or this neglect is that only the EastAsian cultures were considered to be on equal oot-ing with European civilization.117 Hagelgans goesone step urther by including pre-Columbian American history. Tis appears very modern. On the other

hand, what is true or the tabulated historical workso the early modern period in general is also true orthe Atlas Historicus: the plurality o history is sub-ject to an authoritative order, in this case the order oChristian universal history.118

Johann Matthias Hase (Hasius)

Te relative popularity o historical atlases is con-tinued in mid-century (1750) by the German math-ematician Johann Matthias Hase (1684 -1742). Teatlas was published posthumously and it is unclear ihe ever intended to publish it in this orm. It was hispublishing house (Homann in Nuremberg) that ar-ranged previous works o Hase and edited them under the title o Atlas Historicus.119 Hase had earnedhimsel a reputation in cartography and his maps aretoday still seen as a milestone, or even a paradigmshi, in historical cartography.120

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Hase was born in 1684 in Augsburg, Germany, as theson o a mathematics teacher.121 He studied theol-ogy and mathematics at the universities o Leipzig andHelmstedt. Aerwards, he worked as a teacher, untilhe became a proessor o mathematics in Wittenbergin 1720. He was interested in cartographical projec-tions, about which he published a book in 1717.122

His mathematical Ph.D. thesis, however, was devotedto the megaphone.123 Later, he published both mapsand books on history and geography, parts o whichwere later included in his atlas. His theological educa-tion may have helped him with his work on ancientgeography.124 In 1742, he published an outline o ahistory o big empires125, which he could not elabo-rate on urther due to his death. As a mapmaker, heworked with the cartographic publisher Homann inNuremberg and drew maps o regions near and ar, in-

cluding Swabia, Silesia, Russia and Arica.

Te historical atlas o 1750 comprehended six earlierworks by Hase:126 first, a universal history o mon-archies in tables; second, a chronology in tables; third,nine tables with twenty-eight maps o the biggest em-pires; ourth, seven maps on the Roman-German Em-pire at different periods; fih, six maps o the HolyLand; sixth, eight tables with plans o large cities inworld history, including some amous monuments.Tis is obviously a rather erratic collection, assembled

by the publisher rom the material at hand.

Tereore, one should not jump to conclusions aboutHases view o history. Given the content, it seems asi Hase emphasized political history, especially impe-rial history, at the expense o all others. However, hewas well aware that this ormed only part o broaderhistory.

Te first part o the atlas contained three introductorysections covering definitions, terminology and the di-visions o history. Here, Hase upheld the traditionadistinction between political (or civil) and ecclesiasti-cal history, to which he added the categories o privateand literary history. Political history was urther sub-divided into universal and particular. Universal politi-cal history contained Hases avorite subject, the bigempires, but also sacred political history (that is thehistory told in the Old estament, rom the Creationto the destruction o Jerusalem by the Romans) andthe history o kingdoms and republics (see able 12)As such, the history o empires is only one part o uni-versal history among others. O itsel, it no longer heldany privileged position as it used to in the doctrine othe our empires.

Additionally, Hase modified the traditional arrange-ment o empires somewhat. In his tabulated universalhistory, he distinguished between six mostly ancient

and eight mostly recent major empires. In the first

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Table 12: Classication of history according to J.M. Hase. 127



group, the reader finds the amiliar our empires: theAssyrian-Chaldean, the Persian, the Greek and theRoman; however, in contrast to other authors, Hasegrouped the Median Empire with the Assyrian em-pire. Furthermore, two empires were added: in thebeginning, the Egyptian Empire and in the end, theFrankish-Roman-German Empire.128 Te enumer-ation ended with Emperor Charles VI (1685-1740).

Te last one may be regarded as a continuation o theRoman Empire (although, interestingly, Hase did notseem to think so) and thereore its inclusion did notrepresent a decisive break with tradition; the inclu-sion o the Egyptians, however, seems more o an in-novation.

He then proceeded to list eight mostly recent em-pires:129 first, the Partian-Persian Empire; second,the Arab-Saracen Empire; third, the artar and Mon-

gol empires; ourth, the imurid or later Mongol Em-pire, including the Mughal Empire o India; fih, theOttoman Empire; sixth, the Russian Empire, whichstarted with Peter I. (1672-1725); seventh, the Chi-nese Empire, which Hase dated back to the Qindynasty. He mentioned the legendary King Fohi aswell, but as an elected king rather than an emper-or.130 Eighth, several Arican empires: the Almorav-id, the Nigrite (Songhai), and the West Arican Shariempires. In general, or each empire, only the mostimportant rulers were given , and the names o at-

tached kingdoms added.

Tere were some inconsistencies in Hases enumera-tion o empires. First, the dividing line between thefirst and the second group was not made clear. Whilehe maintained that the first group was mostly ancient,and the other mostly recent, there were exceptions,and time in general did not seem to be the definingcriterion. Otherwise, the Parthian-Persian empireEmpire would have to be included in the first group.Rather, it looked like the first group was seen as themore important group o empires. Second, it is un-clear why a distinction was made between the earlyand the late Mongol Empire. Te Persian Empire wasmentioned twice, as well. Tird, the Arican empireswere not a single empire, but three, though they werecounted only as one.

Hase does not explain how he arrived at the numbero ourteen empires. However, he distanced himsel

rom the traditional doctrine o the our empireswith a the rather curious remark that he disliked thecommon opinion o our empires, but reserved tospeak about the reason in oral communication.131Aer his death, his publisher tried to deend him bypointing out that he was not the first to rearrange thetraditional order, and that he did not intend to denythe doctrine o the our empires, but only sought to

explain it in a different way. Tat he ound more thanour empires had to do, the argument went on, withhis knowledge o oriental history.132 Tis rather eeble attempt at apology showed that it was still consid-ered dangerous to diverge rom the traditional canonin the mid-eighteenth century.

Te number o ourteen empires was not written instone, even or Hase himsel. In a later work, posthu-mously published in 1750 and concerning his maps

o the great empires, he counted only twelve empiresTe difference lay in the treatment o the atar-Mon-gol Empire(s), which were counted as one and noas two and the neglect o the Chinese Empire.133o illustrate his universal history o great empiresHase had drawn thirty-two maps, only twenty-eighto which were included in the atlas. Tey basicallyollowed the structure o the twelve (or ourteenempires outlined above, but did not include mapso the Arican and Chinese empires.134 Te representation o the remaining eleven empires was un-

equal. While a certain bias towards the Roman Em-pire (three maps) and the Frankish-Roman-GermanEmpire (five maps) may not be surprising, the Asianmonarchies were also well represented: five maps onthe Arab-Saracen Empires, and three on the Otto-man and atar-Mongol Empires, respectively. In geo-graphical terms, while many empires obviously con-tained parts o different continents, there clearly wasa certain Eurasian bias. Te native Arican empireswere missing and America was not represented at allIn terms o epochs, ten o the twenty-eight imperiamaps were devoted to antiquity, twelve to the MiddleAges and six to the modern period. 135

Te style o Hases imperial maps can be seen romable 13. Te maps are very detailed, but the moststriking eature is the use o color. Hase always pre-sented the empire in ull color and the neighboringstates in outline colors. Tis, he explained, was sup-posed to show the size ratio.136 Sometimes the empire is not shown in a uniorm color, but its different

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Table 13: Johann Matthias Hase, the Russian Empire under Pe-ter I (1689-1725).

parts have different colors. Te physical geography(rivers, mountains, etc.) is also shown, but it takesa closer look to identiy particular eatures, becausethe colors and thereore the political geography, aredominant.

Te series o twenty-eight small maps on the uni-versal history o empires was completed with sevenlarger maps on the history o the Frankish-GermanEmpire rom Charlemagne to Charles VI. Although

the maps partly covered different periods rom thoseo the smaller maps, a certain degree o redundancywas inevitable. As a result we find here another mapo Charlemagnes empire and another map o theempire at the time o Charles VI. Five o these sevenmaps covered the medieval period.137 He includedthe kingdom o Poland in the medieval empire o thethirteenth century, which historical atlases nowadaysno longer do. Te problem, o course, is that the rela-tions o the kingdom o Poland and the Holy Roman

Empire in the Middle Ages are ar rom clear. In general, scholars emphasize that medieval kings ruledover people rather than territory and that the exac

boundaries o entities such as the kingdom o Polandwere fluid and hard to determine.138

Another problem was a certain anachronism in thesemaps. For economic reasons, the maps o one empirewere all printed rom the same plate and the colorswere added later. Tat meant, however, that the nameso rivers, mountains, towns and cities were always thesame, which made cities appear on the map at a timebeore their oundation (e.g., Alexandria beore Alexander, or Berlin at the time o Charlemagne). It i

interesting to note that Hase was aware o this anachronism and apologized to his readers or it. 139 Tiis proo o a growing historical consciousness thatried to understand the past on its own terms.

As noted above, Hases imperial maps have been calleda paradigm shi in historical cartography.140 Teywent beyond the maps o ancient and sacred geography that had dominated historical cartography since

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Abraham Ortelius (1527-98). Tey included most oAsia and were more precise than older maps aboutthe time span they purported to cover. Tey were alsomore precise in a topographical sense, because Hase,as a mathematician, took great pains to ensure theaccuracy o his maps. Most importantly, the mapsemployed color to mark territorial changes o politi-cal entities and (though not always) were arranged

in a chronological sequence, so the reader could ol-low political-territorial history by simply turning thepage. Tese maps look very modern indeed, muchmore so than the ones in Hagelgans or Chtelainsatlases. Tis is due to the act that the use o mapsbecame predominant in the nineteenth century andis still very common in historical atlases today. Hasewas a pioneer in this respect, but his inclusion o Po-land in the Holy Roman Empire also shows the dan-gers o this approach. Te political allegiances in me-

dieval Europe, let alone other parts o the world, wereoen complex. Te drawing o clear boundaries onmaps may suggest more coherence o an empire, or astate, than there really was.

Yet, it would be wrong to conclude that Hases atlaswas the first truly modern historical atlas. It includ-ed, as we have seen, elements that were typical o theeighteenth century, like tables. Even his maps werenot all like the imperial maps discussed above. Ohis six maps o the Holy Land, three showed territo-

rial boundaries, the first under David and Salomon(tenth century BC), the second at the time o the Se-leucid and Ptolemaic dynasties (around 300 BC) andthe third at the time o Herodes (37-4 BC). More in-terestingly, however, are his three other maps, whichshow the near East and West Asia rom Asia Minorto the Indus, respectively. Tere he added distancesbetween cities and towns, derived rom ancient itin-eraries.141 Originally, Hase had combined thesemaps with tables giving the longitudes and latitudeso ancient cities and the distances between them.142In the atlas, the latter were not included.

Although these maps themselves did not show move-ments, they could help to understand geographicalmovements in ancient times. Tis type o map wasvery rare in Hases time, as it still is today.

As mentioned, the atlas contained not only maps,but also tables. Te tables that present an outline o

the universal history o empires have already beendiscussed. Tey were joined by chronological tableswhich had been taken rom the same work, first published in 1743.143 For Hase, as or many o his contemporaries, the discoveries o ancient Chinese andEgyptian chronologies presented a serious problemor they seemed to contradict the Biblical stories oCreation and Deluge. Like Hagelgans, Hase admitted

that he ound the Bible more trustworthy than theheathens accounts, which, in contrast to Hagelganshe did not discard. He regarded the first Egyptian dy-nasty (the dynasty o Gods) as mythical, because itwould go back to a time beore Creation. Apart romthis, however, the Egyptian chronology could bebrought into accord with the Biblical account.144 othis end, Hase had to pre-date Creation somewhatbecause according to the widely accepted accounby Ussher, the first historical Egyptian king, Menes

would have ruled beore the Deluge and accordingto Joseph Justus Scaligers (1540-1609) account, hewould have been contemporaneous. Tereore, Hasechose to ollow a different version o the Bible, name-ly the Samaritan Pentateuch and arrived at the year4651 BC as the beginning o the world. He dated theDeluge to 2995 BC and Fohi, who was not identicawith Noah, as ruling more than a hundred years laterAs or the pharaohs, even the dynasty o Gods couldbe accommodated by this time rame, should it reallyhave existed.145

Te chronology covered in sixteen tables the timerom the beginning o the world to Hases time. It isarranged in the amiliar Eusebian ormat with yearsin lines and kingdoms or regions in columns. Tecountries covered varied according to period, but ingeneral, the European and Asian empires were welrepresented. America was completely missing. Eventhe European kingdoms outside the (Holy) RomanEmpire were not represented. Tere is no columnor Spain or Portugal and the discoveries o Colum-bus and others were not even mentioned. Te Ari-can empires (other than Egypt) were also missingIn terms o content, most entries comprised rulersdynasties, or wars, so the chronology was skewed towards political history. However, in some tables therewas a column or miscellanies, which provided spaceor cultural history, such as, or example, amous poets.146

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Te last part o Hases atlas was devoted to a compari-son o ancient and modern cities. Here, Hase placedhimsel in the tradition o comparative ancient andmodern geography, a genre that flourished in theeighteenth century ollowing the quarrel o the an-cients and moderns.147 On eight tables, Hase showedtwenty-three city maps at a uniorm scale.148 welveo these cities were in Asia, ten in Europe (including

Constantinople) and only one in America (Lima). TeEuropean city maps contain considerably more detail.Te maps o Asian cities were oen very sketchy. How-ever, Hase wanted to show the relative proportions ocities and not the details. In his opinion, ancient Baby-lon was still the largest city o all time, even i its sizehad been overestimated by ancient historians.149 Onone page, he compared Palimbothra (today Patna),Mespila (Mosul), Paris and ancient Syracuse. No ex-planation was given or this arrangement.

o his city maps, Hase added drawings o amousbuildings or monuments, such as the ower o BabelOn one table, there is another interesting interculturacomparison, not o cities, but o pyramids. Hase con-trasts Egyptian pyramids with their Mexican (Maya)and Scythian counterparts, both in size and in geo-metrical shape.150 However, all o them are dwaredby the ancient monument o Ninive (able 14).

Tis was probably the amous tomb o Ninus, whichwas allegedly built by Semiramis. Te Greek writerXenophon (fih and ourth century BC) claimed tohave seen a big pyramid adjacent to the city, but didnot identiy the building, nor did he compare it to theEgyptian pyramids. Diodorus Siculus (first centuryBC) told the story o a large mound that Semiramiserected in Ninive to commemorate her deceased hus-band Ninos, but did not give any inormation about

its shape.151 Regardless, in his comparison o citiesHase obviously sided with the ancients. o him, Bab-ylon was the biggest city ever and Ninive possessedthe largest pyramid. However, it is not quite clearwhat conclusions he drew rom this. In his chronol-ogy, he rejected the Biblical account o the our em-pires and his imperial maps showed more medievalthan ancient empires. As such, Hases atlas combinedtraditional and modern elements. It has to be kept inmind, however, that he probably never intended topublish the atlas in this orm, and thereore any in-

terpretation o its composition is risky. Hase was welaware, or instance, that the history o empires wasonly a part o universal history. Likewise, his atlas didnot, unlike nineteenth century historical atlases, con-sist o only maps, but rather ollowed the traditiono combining various elements such as tables, mapsand images. What defines his approach was his math-ematical rigor and his Asia-centric view o historyCertainly, his emphasis on empires goes some waytoward explaining his preerence or Asian historyor many empires in history were Asian or EurasianHowever, there is still a curious neglect o Arica, theAmericas and even some European empires, such asthe Spanish and Portuguese.

We do not know much about the reception o Hasesatlas. Apparently, it was well received aer publica-tion, a review praising the amount o knowledgegathered in the book.152 Even though it is hard tofind in libraries nowadays, the publisher kept it in

Table 14: Johann Matthias Hase, Comparison of the biggest cities.

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stock until at least 1814, when a map o Napoleonsempire in 1813 was added.153

Marcellinus Reischl

Te longevity o Hases atlas may be due to the ab-sence o any better alternative. Te second hal o theeighteenth century was not a good time or the pro-

duction o historical atlases, it seems, though it is notclear why. o be air, in 1758 another Atlas Histori-cus was published in Augsburg, Germany. Its authorwas a Benedictine monk o the Bavarian monasteryo Ettal named Marcellinus Reischl (1697-1763). Hepublished quite a ew books rom the 1730s throughthe 1750s, partly religious pamphlets, introductoryworks to mathematics and physics, and Aristotelianphilosophy. His Atlas Historicus was written inLatin and contained only text, apart rom two tables

illustrating genealogy and heraldry. Basically, it was atraditional account o the our empires and Genesis,dating the Creation at 4000 or 4004 BC.154 Te pre-ace emphasized the glory o Gods wisdom, whichthe reader could learn rom history.155 Te use ohistory existed in the moral and intellectual lessonsone could draw rom, and in the deense o the trueCatholic aith.156 Te first part o the atlas intro-duced several auxiliary sciences, among them geog-raphy, chronology, genealogy , and heraldry. Te sec-ond part gave an account o history rom the Creation

to the present. Te periodization was taken rom theBible, but aer the birth o Christ it was structuredin centuries. Te chronological problem o how to fitin ancient Chinese history was completely ignored;as or Egypt, their first king (Apis) was dated at ourcenturies aer the Deluge.157 America was popu-lated by the descendants o Noah, either through aland bridge or by sea.158 However, as the accountwas based on the theory o the our empires, it washeavily skewed towards events connected to the Ro-man Empire or later, the Roman-German Empire,and the history o the Catholic Church. Even eventsin the history o West Asia, such as the rise o Islam,the Ottoman Empire, etc., were mentioned only inpassing. Te same is true or the voyages o discoveryin the fieenth and sixteenth centuries.159

Johann Christoph Gatterer

While Reischls atlas was one o the last examples otraditional Christian universal history, Johann Chris-

toph Gatterer (1727-1799) belonged to the intellectual movement we call enlightenment. Te son o anilliterate non-commissioned officer, Gatterer studiedfirst theology, then languages, philosophy and mathematics at the University o Altdor (Germany).160Later, he worked as a teacher. His academic reputation was established through a genealogical workthat was published in 1755.161 In 1759, he became

proessor o history in Gttingen, where he remainedor the rest o his lie. oday, he is considered one othe ounding athers o history as an academic disci-pline.162 He ounded an historical institute in Gttingen in 1766 and worked as editor o two histori-cal journals. His own fields o specialization were theauxiliary sciences on the one hand and universal history on the other.

Gatterer elaborated on his view o universal history

in an extended essay published in 1767.163 Terehe criticized the separation o the history o religionarts, sciences and nature rom the history o nationsand states. I the ormer were treated separately, thelatter would consist only o a chronological register o princes with a description o battles and warsIn contrast, universal history worthy o the nameshould comprise all times, all countries and all note-worthy acts. Such a history, he admitted, had notbeen written yet.164 Contemporary textbooks weretasteless, he opined, because they limited themselves

to memorizing acts. As or the structure o univer-sal history, he regarded ollowing the our empiresthrough time as too old-ashioned. Tere were onlytwo possible solutions: either a structure accordingto epochs or one according to nations. Both optionspresented problems, so Gatterer resolved to structurehis universal histories according to nations to avoidcutting history into small incoherent parts; he alsomade the decision to add synchronic tables. o himthe representation o synchronicity in history was thebiggest problem or the universal historian.165

O course, one could not present the history o allnations in a single work, so the easiest solution wasto structure the account according to the ruling na-tions in a particular time, o which there were nomore than eight in history: the Assyrian-MedianPersian, Greek, Roman, Parthian-Persian, Frankish-German, Arab and atar (Mongol) nations. Tereare obvious parallels both to the traditional doctrine

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o the our empires, which Gatterer reused and toHases enumeration o empires. As or the ormer,Gatterer made a distinction between the Persian andthe Parthian-Persian empires, as well as between theRoman and Frankish-German empires. In addition,he added the Arab and Mongol empires to the list,as Hase had done beore him. Te latter, as we haveseen, counted even more empires that did not seem

important enough or Gatterer to be classified as rul-ing nations, namely the Egyptian, Ottoman, Russian,Chinese and Nigrite empires. Indeed, Gatterers ne-glect o East Asian, Arican and American historyis striking. Arican, American, Japanese and Indianhistory were to be treated only in the context o Co-lumbus and the age o discovery, whereas China wasdealt with in the context o the Barbarous invasions,which he believed were caused by Chinas destructiono the Huns Asian empire.166

Gatterer wrote several works on universal historyand was not always consistent in the treatment onon-European history. In his Handbuch der Univer-salgeschichte (1761/64) he ignored ancient Chinesehistory, treating modern Chinese history extensively,because only then China was becoming importantto Europe.167 In his Versuch einer allgemeinenWeltgeschichte (1792) he divided

ces open forum 21: the beginnings of historical consciousness: historical atlases in the eighteenth...

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