Spanish mapping of empire with Dennis Reinhartz and Robert Clancy

Daniel Gleeson: Good evening to all of you. What a fantastic turnout we have for what will be a fantastic event. Maps are some of our most useful and visually appealing ways of organising information, and they provide a reference point that helps us to know our place in the world, and they can tell stories of exploration of conquest, colonisation, and empire. There is no better place than the National Library of Australia to host tonight's discussion, where our collection includes around 1 million different maps. My name is Daniel Gleeson and I'm the Director of Community Engagement here at the National Library.  

To begin, I would like to acknowledge Australia's First Nations people, the first Australians as the traditional owners and custodians of this land and give my respects to their elders, both past and present, and through them to all Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.  

We are thrilled to see so many people here for this event tonight. It's evidence of the power of maps to transport us in time and place, and of the enthusiastic map audience that we enjoy here at the Library. With us tonight is American cartographic expert, Emeritus Professor Dennis Reinhartz. Dennis is a professor of history in Russian at the University of Texas at Arlington. In a career of over 40 years, he has taught at Rutgers, the New Jersey Institute of Technology, James Madison University, Bridgewater College, the University of London and Oxford University, and holds several teaching awards. He has offered courses in world history, modern European history, Russian and East European history, modern Chinese history, transatlantic discovery and exploration, history of cartography and historical methodology and theory. He is the author or editor of 14 books and numerous book chapters and scholarly articles, related to his fields of interest. Professor Reinhartz's visit to Australia is supported by our colleagues at the State Library of New South Wales Foundation, and we thank them.  

Joining Professor Reinhartz later this evening is Emeritus Professor Robert Clancy. Aside from a distinguished career as a clinical immunologist, Robert has maintained a strong, longstanding interest in mapping related to the discovery and development of Terra Australis and the history of science and medicine with a focus on epidemics. He has written five books on histocartography and is a regular speaker on the topic of maps and has curated exhibitions and written numerous articles on this topic.  

Fantastic speakers, both of them. Tonight, Professor Reinhartz will deliver a presentation on Spanish mapping of empire, and following that presentation, he'll be joined by Professor Clancy for a discussion on Spanish maps and maybe some of the interesting things they've seen today in the libraries collection. Please join me now in welcoming Professor Dennis Reinhartz.  

Dennis Reinhartz: Thank you. Can you hear me? We're all right? Okay. Again, let me restate. I'd like to thank the New South Wales State Library Foundation for supporting my visit and  the visit of my wife, Judy to Australia. But I also want to thank Dr. Clancy and his wife, Christine, for being not only kind and gracious to host, but incredibly knowledgeable to someone who knew so little of your fine country. And they have taken incredible care of us and for which Judy and I will be forever thankful. Tonight, oh, I should put my glasses on. It took a while in the classroom for me to admit that I needed them. Vanity is all, but in any case, tonight what I'm going to do is look at about 300 years of Spanish mapping of this incredible empire that was created and we'll deal with it both with regard to sea charts and also with regard to land maps. And I'll try to take you to various parts of the empire and also be moving sort of back and forth, between the sea and the land.  

Now, I wanted to start though with a quote from Francisco de Quevedo. Quevedo was a Spanish writer, very prominent Spanish writer at the late, at the later part of the 16th and early part of the 17th century. And the quote has always struck me as being, you know, perfectly reasonable. He says, ‘those that were rags yesterday and thrown away by the cook are today documents that govern two worlds and threatened three others’. The rags he refers to were collected once paper making came to Europe. They were collected and sold any kind of old rag and some of them rather dirty, polluted, old rags, and they were then turned into the fine paper that allows for the documents from that far back to be so well preserved today especially the maps. Again, as I've said before, that if these maps that you have here in your collection and also ones I'll be talking about, were on wood pulp, they would've long ago disintegrated even with the finest curation because the acids in the wood pulp makes it consume itself. In other words, it sort of suicides by acid. Anyway, with regard to the quote, the rags he's talking about then that were thrown away, were turned into paper, and the documents he talks about are the documents of bureaucracy and also the documents of cartography, both of which are essential to a great world empire.  

Okay, so to begin with, let's see if we can do this yes. To begin with, I might point out that mapping is a, a sort of evolutionary process. We have very, very early maps on stone that go back, you know, a long period of time. We probably have earlier maps even in museums, but we don't recognise them as maps, because there's no way to tell us that they were or what they were saying. Man learned to draw before he learned to write, and man probably learned to map before he learned to write. Both became necessities, but the mapping necessity probably arose earlier.  

Any case, the Spanish inherited by the 15th century, the tradition of chart making of the Renaissance Italians in the Mediterranean area. And the first two maps I have are basically just to show you that legacy in Iberian maps. Now, this one is from a, it's a fragment from a world map. This happens to be the Pacific fragment by Fernanao Vaz Dourado, and it's located in Seville in the collection there at the Archive of the Indies. This map, the way it shows coastal detail over internal detail, the way it shows numerous coastal place names with regard to, as opposed to internal place names, the stylized pagodas on the Asian mainland, the European flags of exploration and conquest, the really pretty compass rows, all belie the tradition of the portal and chart that was the master work of the Mediterranean cartographers prior to the 15th century in the Renaissance.  

So to do the lines that you see emitted from the compass rows and other compass points, these are called rum lines or lines of rum, and they are generally thought to be coastal, thought to be generalised voyages, voyage lines. In other words, if you hooked onto one of these lines, you can then basically navigate. The rum lines also served as a sort of primitive system of longitudinal latitude and also perhaps as a copying device for these charts.  

This is a world map of over a hundred years later by Jose da Costa y Miranda, which by the way is in the state library in Sydney. And again, it's decorative nature, it's use of these lines of rum, again, go back to this renaissance tradition. On the other hand, the geography is fairly well up to date. In other words, for 1706, the picture of the earth here is fairly current. And I cite one example is your own country here in Australia, it's fairly well portrayed for 1706, oh, let me go back.  

Yeah now understandably, when the Spanish started charting and mapping, they started at their centre of their empire, which is the Atlantic Basin. In other words, the Americas and the Atlantic have always been a primary concern to the Spanish Empire, but also they then moved from there to map the North Pacific to their holdings there, such as in the Philippines and then also the South Pacific, along the South American coast and then as well in the area across the Pacific. Now a decade after Columbus's first voyage in 1503, the Spanish monarchy founded the Casa de Contratación, the house of the Trade with the Indies. Now for almost 200 years, the Spanish referred to their empire as Los Indies. That is the Indies, whether they were west or east, it was the Indies. And the Casa became then a clearing house for the most current and important information having to do with Spanish empire.  

You see here, and again, I cite this example from the State library in Sydney is, it's a memorial to the Casa and to the king, and it talks about a voyage that this captain, the author, Captain Fernandez de Queirós, was part of to the Pitcairn, Cook and Vanuatu Islands in search of Terra Australis in 1605, 1606. He not only talks about the voyage, but he's also looking for money for further schemes and voyages.  

Now, de Queirós is a sort of infamous fellow in that he wrote up to 70 of these memorials and became quite the pest to the council and the king. He also became even more so when he started infusing what was a peculiar radical form of Catholicism into these documents, Catholicism, that neither the king nor the church could tolerate. And so they sidelined him even more. He, by the way, had all of these 70 memorials published at his own expense, which again shows you what he was trying to get out of the Casa.  

Now the Casa also included a very large secretive mapping project called the Padrón Real and I stress secret and large, and that is the Padrón Real was a series of master maps that had the most current information about the Spanish Empire at any given time, well into the 19th century, that is till the time of the Mexican Revolution. And every time an expedition left from Spain to go out to the Indies, to the Empire, they were given the best maps and charts and information available. On their journeys they were then to follow those, augment them, comment on them based on what they found. When they returned, they then returned these maps and charts to the Casa, where they were then studied, edited, and integrated into the knowledge of these master maps.  

But it was all very top secret because the Spanish believed that this kind of information, if it got out, would give quarter to their enemies in Europe, particularly the French. And so the maps themselves become treasures. Some of them were stolen from Spain by spies. Some of them were stolen by thieves. Some of them came into other hands as a result of the taking of Spanish ships, by enemy ships and also by private tiers. These maps are today, for the most part, located in the Archive of the Indies in Seville, a huge archive on the empire and exploration, but some of them were lost. And as a result, historians like me are thankful sometimes for the piracy and the espionage because we do now have information in other sources.  

I cite one example in 1513, Admiral Piri Reis, who was the admiral of the fleet of the Great Sultan Suleiman, the Magnificent, drew a world map, and the information on the North American or American and Caribbean coastline is Columbus information, and that no longer exists anywhere except on Piri Reis map. And as a result, what we think is of course, that these were, this information came from maps taken by Turkish Corsair from Spanish ships. So this stuff can be convoluted and also, as I said, for me, very valuable.  

Now, what we have here is a map that was attached to a summary study required by the king of the Spanish Empire in 1601 by Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas. Today, Judy and I and Robert and Christine were given a very nice tour of some of the holdings here in the National Library. And they have here a copy of this report, and in the copy is in fact the map. Eventually the map became, shall we say, more important than the report. And so it was republished several times over between 1601 and 1622. But it shows a very good picture of the Spanish Empire at the time, you see. Of course in the Atlantic world, the Americas, and given what they knew in 1601 and also what they believed in 1601, not at all a bad portrayal. If you go out across the Pacific, you then see the Philippines and you can also see, for example, the Solomon Islands and what would become, I guess the Bismarck Sea.  

Now, the mapping of the Spanish Empire that is, is a global phenomenon, began primarily in North America and particularly where I come from, and that is the greater southwest of North America, because they believed, as did Columbus early on, that he had reached Asia. And they believed that the great centres of Asia, which Columbus could not find, such as the centres of India and China and Japan were somewhere to the northwest of Cuba. So if you landed on the mainland, you then only had to go northwest, and eventually you'd run into Indians or Chinese who would then be able to show you the way to these centres of civilization.  

But in the process of all this mapping, the Spanish then, and Empire created really what it was the first global economy, and that in this empire, they then tied Spain together with the Americas, together with Asia. And the traffic between these areas of the Spanish empire then formed this first global economy. The economy was first powered by the plunder of the Incas and the Aztecs. And when that ran out, it was silver and very importantly, silver mined in northern Mexico and in Columbia, and then also eventually Asian spices and Asian luxuries. And, but the foundation for all of it was silver.  

Now, when they got to the new world, and when they came to the part of the world where they thought Asia just lay beyond, they ran into a number of Indian civilizations, cultures, tribes, all of whom had long traditions of mapping. They mapped either mentally or physically, and they mapped real space and spiritual space often in combination. Such combination is called a cosmography and that is where you put essentially spiritual and real space together. Sadly, when there are no surviving documents or maps from this early period, that is first contact period in this area, that have not been contaminated by European influence. So in other words, there are no pure Indian maps from this, this period of contact. But the traditions of this kind of mapping have been passed on into the modern period and appear in more modern forms. And I put a couple together, just to give you some idea.  

The Pueblo people who are, in fact, our neighbours in New Mexico, believed that all the world exists on the back of a great desert tortoise. And this great desert tortoise plies its way slowly through time and space. The Cherokee, for example, also believed that this world exists on the back of a turtle, but it's a sea turtle that then emerges and as the land, as the turtle emerges, the land emerges from the oceans. But anyway, here you see the desert tortoise on a mural, a contemporary mural at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Centre in Albuquerque. And here it's emerging from a Pueblo sacred space, the Kiva, which are usually underground areas of religious worship.  

The major people in this part of the world are, that is in this northern part of the world, the Aztecs are the major ones to the south, the Navajo or the Dine. By the way, the term Dine only means people. Most Indian tribes, groups refer to themselves in names that mean the people. And so Dine means the people.  

In any case, what we have here, well, let me go back. The earliest tradition that we get coming up to the present from the Dine or the Navajo are sand paintings. And these sand paintings are of a religious nature, spiritual nature, and they are used in religious ceremonies. Usually they have curative powers. They are ephemeral, very much so because if you are a healer, a hatani, once you've carried out the ceremony and whatever it was for, you are required to erase it. So you literally kick it apart. So it doesn't remain.  

But the Navajo tradition of mapping continues in contemporary weaving such as this one. And this one shows the Dinetah or the Navajo land. And you see here four mountains, four sacred mountains that include the Navajo land. They are in colours designating cardinal directions. The L shapes in the middle are land features, perhaps canyons. In the very middle, that's the cartographer himself, Keenan King. And on the right side, you then see the Rio Grande River coming down as part of the boundary.  

Another form of Navajo cosmography is to be found in their traditional buildings, their traditional housing and religious structures, the Hooghan, and I took this picture in Monument Valley of Arizona and Utah, and if you have not been there, I recommend it highly. It's a sort of other worldly place to begin with. But the Hooghan then is a cosmography in itself. The doorways are always to the east to catch the morning sun. Inside are four posts holding up the roof, designating the sacred mountains and the cardinal directions. Now, the Navajo believed that this world was stacked in the middle of a number of worlds, and some will say this is the third world. Some will say it's the fourth, but in any case, the fire pits and the floors of these dwellings represent the passageway that first man and first woman entered this world. And the smoke hole in the roof is the way that the people will eventually exit this world into the next.  

Now, the reason I spent a little bit of time on this is because in the Americas and Asia, the Spanish often used local artists, local talent and local traditions as part of their maps. And to show you, and this is one of my favourite maps, and this is a map, an early 17th century map of northern Mexico. It's an estate map and it's very European in its presentation. Up in the corners, a major discussion of what the estate is about and its boundaries and so on and so forth. If you look at the buildings portrayed, they are distinctly European. If you look at the way the fields are laid out in nice straight lines, that's distinctly European. Indian fields by our standards would be chaotic. And that's though about where it ends. If you look at the flora, it's very much done in the Indian fashion. If you look at the Indian housing, it's very much done in the Indian fashion, as is the plaza over here with the buffalo in it, that is the centre of their ceremonial area. So, and even the palette applied here is probably more Indian than European, but I might take it one step further. Look at the roads here, and on the roads you will see footprints. And these footprints are used to designate roads as opposed to rivers.  

Now what we have here is a pre-Columbian glyph of the Aztec God of commerce, Yucatecuhtli. And again, if you can't say it, don't worry about it. Nawat is an impossible language except for the Nawats. And he, as appropriate for the God of commerce, is bearing on his back, on his shoulders a crossroads. And you'll notice the crossroads have footprints in them. And this is before the Europeans came. Also today we begin to really get more sophisticated about these footprints. Maybe they're just not designators, but they might also be distance markers, as in you have, for example, on mediaeval European maps.  

Now the first Spanish contact in this area, or first map, we have a Spanish contact in this area, is this 1519 map of the Gulf of Mexico, part of a reconnaissance carried out by Alonzo Alvarez de Pineda. And this map's in Seville, in Spain. And what you see then is Cuba, and then north along the coast of Florida, North America, in North America, and that is what is the United States. Then coming around to the South Mexico, what would be Mexico, the oversized Yucatan Peninsula and then South America.  

Also in 1719, there began under Hernán Cortés the conquistador, the conquest of Mexico, the conquest of the Aztecs. And it lasted to 1521 when the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan fell to the Spanish. In 1524 in the Nuremberg Chronicle, there appeared a series of letters by Columbus, I mean Cortes, about the conquest, and they cover any number of different aspects. And this map, which is called a Cortes map, because it's associated with those letters, it may not have been done by Cortes, but on the left side, you see that an updated version of the Pineta map, except it's oriented to the south. So what will be on the United States is on the bottom, Mexico on the top and South America, then trailing off.  

But the map next to it is the map of Tenochtitlan. That is the Aztec capital, which would become Mexico City, which by the way is estimated by historians, as I pointed out, to be at the time of the conquest, possibly the largest city in the world. And anyway, it's clearly a European map, but it was probably based on Aztec prototypes. Cortes also went beyond Tenochtitlan or ordered out of Tenochtitlan, the first exploration of the Pacific Coast of what is today, Mexico and the United States. And for example, establishing a foothold at what would be Acapulco on the Pacific coast.  

Now, between these conquests and the end of the Spanish Empire, the Spanish gradually came to learn that Asia was not the Americas. And they gradually came to learn that the Americas, particularly North America, was far more vast than imagined. They also came to learn that Asia was actually less still. In other words, it was smaller than imagined. And yet they, in this area of the Greater Southwest, they explored, further explored, they settled, they manned and tried to figure out what was there so they could hold onto it.  

They found it, as I said, Acapulco in 1531; Santa Fe, where I live, in 1608, El Paso in 1659 and San Antonio in 1718. But the process of manning this area and exploring it became ever more expensive. And it also became with diminishing returns. In other words, it might have been an important part of the empire, but it wasn't making money for the empire. And the sources of the this problem is first of all, the Indians. The Indians were constantly a trouble to the Spanish in this area, partly their own fault for slaving and for forced conversion, the Catholicism. But also there were new and more vigorous Indian bands coming in like the Comanche. And then also Spain's European rivals were coming into the area again, primarily the French at first, and they were stirring up the Indians against the Spanish. And lastly, Spain was engaged in a number of very, very costly wars in Europe, which they didn't win. And as a result, they expended, exhausted the Aztec and Inca treasure they had, and thereby had to find new sources to support the empire. And I mentioned Mexican silver or South American silver, and then also Asian spices.  

Now in the History Museum of New Mexico collection in Santa Fe, there are two Buffalo Hide maps known as the Segesser Hides, and they both deal with contact between the Spanish and the Indians in the early 18th century. It is Segesser II here that concerns us, which shows a battle that took place between the Spanish and the French in the area of the Platte River, what is today, Colorado and Nebraska in our country in 1720. Now, the French and their pony allies massacred this Spanish expedition, which was made up of Spanish and Pueblian allies. And this map then was carried out of the battle somewhere between 1750 by a priest who survived the battle, but using Indian artists. And so you can see then again here, a battle map would be very much European, but the way the battle is depicted, the characters and even the palette show something of the Indian artisans at work.  

Now, one of those wars that Spain did not do well in was the War of the Spanish Succession. And being a loser in that war meant that Louis XIV and the French got to impose a Bourbon dynasty on Spain. And it turned out this was one of the best things to happen to the Spanish empire because this new dynasty was imbued by the principles of the Enlightenment. And they were really desperate to understand, to rationalise their empire and also to see how it could be administered much more efficiently and economically.  

King Philippe, the V authorised in 1711 to this end, the creation of the Royal Corps of Engineers. And he also created in Barcelona, the Royal Academy of Mathematics. These soldier navigator engineers that then came to map the empire were either trained engineers already, or they were officers who were then given special training in mathematics, surveying, navigation, and map making. They not only mapped the empire thereafter, but they also designed public buildings and fortifications.  

Now this is a part of a 16 series set plan for a Spanish New Orleans, and it is a hospital. Now, at the end of the Seven Years War in 1763, the Spanish came to secure Louisiana from the French. At the same time, the British secured Canada, and as a result, France was effectively eliminated from the new world, the first European power to be so removed.  

Now, here we have a plan for a fortification in Vera Cruz carried out by, probably carried out by Tomas Lopez y Chavez. And again, this would be typical of the fortification plans that were produced for all over the Spanish Empire. Again, this happens to be part of the collection at the State Library in New South Wales.  

Now, to ensure accuracy, the Spanish engineers came to map mostly what they could see, and thereby what they could measure. They began to exclude local hearsay information. This then led to high quality scientific mapping, but it also excluded the locals from their land. In other words, it was a good way to land grab at the expense of the locals.  

The maps that were produced by the engineers often were done in with assistance by Churchmen who went with these expeditions. Franciscans, Dominicans, Jesuits often had good training in mathematics and science, and so they could help map. At the same time, they also interacted better with local artisans, local converts, then did the engineers who after all were also soldiers.  

Now, if I might, this is a fairly famous map done by the Jesuit missionary, Mateo Ricci. And you see him portrayed there on the side of the map. He put himself on the map, so to speak. Never let it be said that the Jesuits lacked for knowledge, but they neither did they lack for ego. It's the Franciscans that had humility, not the Jesuits. In any case, this map, which is very European in its style, is based on Chinese sources. And also was done in collaboration with Chinese cartographers.  

Now in the 16th century, the Spanish began to launch a number of expeditions from the west coast of South America, from ports such as Guayaquil and Ecuador, Acapulco in Mexico and San Blas in Mexico. And they then launched these expeditions either for exploration and empire across the Pacific or across the Pacific, North Pacific, specifically to trade not only in the Philippines, but also in Asia via the very famous Manila Gallions.  

Now here you see it, a chart done by Joseph Manuel, the Morvado Immataro in 1774. And it shows then the coastline of South America where these expeditions left from. And you see then as insets a number of the islands that they made contact with and in some cases hoped to add to the empire. And then also up in the corner, you then have a discussion of all that's going on. Now, way up at the top the size of the South American coastline, there's this notch, and that is the very important Port of Guayaquil in Ecuador.  

And here you have a map of the environs of Guayaquil done in 1774. And I say in environs, let's see if this works yeah, 'cause these are the environs. Guayaquil is actually located here up these estuaries here. So this is then what was one of the most important ports for the purposes of Spanish trade and exploration across the Pacific into the Indian Ocean and so on.  

Now, these maps, as you can see, these charts that you can see really produced or rather established, a standard of scientific mapping by the 18th century that well went well into the 19th century. Let me show just a few more examples. And this again, is from our part of the world.  

This is a map of the province of New Mexico, done in 1758 by the engineer Captain Bernardo Miera y Pacheco. He is one of the most important Spanish map makers in the Americas in the middle of the 18th century. Now, this map is basically an oil painting. It's oil paint on canvas with the inserts written in pen and ink. There are four known copies, two in Spain. The one on the left is in the History Museum of New Mexico in Santa Fe. So I get to see with it, see it and work with it almost as much as I want. And then the one on the right is in the national collection of Mexico City.  

Let's look at the one on the right for a minute, as I say, because I think it's easier to see. Now running up the middle of the province, as of the state today of New Mexico is this central mountain chain, what we call the Central Spine. And in these mountains, which are the southern most extension of the Rocky Mountains, there are then the headwaters of numerous rivers, a fairly important one of being the Rio Grande that is portrayed running here down toward the Gulf of Mexico. Now to the east of the mountains, you have the Great Plains and you can see them populated by Buffalo and Indians, among them the Comanche. And to the west of the mountains, you have the domains of the Puebloans and the so-called Civilised Indians. And there you can again see some of them portrayed as part of the Carthusians.  

Now this central mountain chain with its rivers, then that is in pre-Colombian times, in Spanish times, and contemporarily accounts for where most of the population of New Mexico is, was and is located. We have about 6 million people and about two thirds of 'em are located along this central spine. Now we're a big state, so that's a long distance.  

Here you have a map of the province of Nuevo Santander. And again, to help orient you a little bit. This is the Rio Grande emptying into Gulf of Mexico, north of it would be Texas today, south of it is Mexico. And it's done by the Franciscan priest, Francisco Haro, in about 1770. Now, its decorative nature points to it being a presentation piece, but in this area down here, it actually portrays the results of some reforms suggested by an expedition of 1757, 1758, which produced a very, very large map by Haro and the commander of the expedition, Lieutenant Colonel Augustine Lopez, one of the most famous engineers, eventually became a general headed up all of the engineers. Anyway, this large map is located in the British Library in London. Interesting story, which I don't have time for how it got there, but you can imagine.  

Now here we have what looks like a fairly simple map, but a fairly important one. And that is Derrotero of 1778, done by Luis Bertucat and Franciscan Friar Augustin Morfi. And Morfi was later to become a very important historian of the Spanish Southwest. But anyway, Derrotero means root. So this is a root map. It's the root of a 2100 mile expedition of a 1777, an expedition of inspection that then went from Durango up in the northwest across to the new Texas capital of San Antonio de Béjar then down to Chihuahua and back to Durango. It's a good example of engineering mapping. You see here, they have really accurately mapped the root and its media environments, but everything beyond there that they couldn't see or measure is blank.  

Now these maps are incredibly important because if you take a bunch of these and put 'em together, you get a really good picture of a larger area. Now, across the bottom of this one, there is then a gazetteer which then talks about the places that the expedition went, whom they made contact with, and what was in these places with regard to populations, animals, and so on and so forth. That is domesticated animals and so on and so forth.  

Now, just to make a point, this is a derrotero of the same expedition. And if you look at it, whoops, go back. If you look at it, where's my, I'm having, yeah, you can see here the route down here and then back up to here. Same route but what has happened here, because this is probably a presentation piece of some sort, the map makers, and that is Captain Jose de La Bercanda and again, this time a Jesuit Father Pedro De Ornedo, have filled in the white space with decorative land forms that mean nothing except their land forms.  

Now I want to end on one more wonderful engineer map. And this is from the collection at the State Library of New South Wales. And it is the work of one Joseph Camacho Imbrenis. And it is a map of Guayaquil; this time, not the environs, but rather the estuary with the city up on top. Now, in the late 17th, early 18th century Guayaquil, was one of the most plundered cities in the Pacific, primarily by British and Dutch privateers. And what they would do, what these privateers would do, or for that matter, rather regular naval fleets, all you had to do was seize the estuary. You didn't have to go up to the city, you seized the estuary, you didn't have to fight the city. You sent up your emissary instead. We're not going anywhere and you're not getting any commerce, anything whatsoever until you pay X. And thereby they went away. Now that saved Guayaquil from being destroyed and rebuilt and destroyed and rebuilt, but it also cost them dearly, and it did inhibit growth.  

But anyway, end here by pointing out that this is a wonderful example, not only of the engineer's work, but of enlightenment cartography. You see, first of all, the enlightenment believed decoration took away from subject matter and the enlightenment stressed in mapping particularly that the picture was more important than the frame, and that the information was paramount and not all of the other accoutrements that you might find. And you see that here it is first of all incredibly scientifically done, and it does have some really nice discussion of what's going on here. But again, the emphasis on subject matter.  

On, I guess the first, I'll be doing a presentation at the annual meeting of the Australian New Zealand Map Society on a British enlightenment cartographer, where again, I'll be talking about some of this, but I thank you for your attention. And... And if you have any questions, I'll let Robert answer them. Meanwhile, I'll sit back and enjoy. Now, Robert and I will try to deal with questions as best you might have them.

Robert Clancy:  Well, I ask them and you answer them.

Dennis Reinhartz: Well, let's first see if there are any from out there.

Robert Clancy:  Well, it's terrific to be down here. This is one of the two great libraries in Australia. And every time I come down here, you get a fantastic audience. I think it says a lot for Canberra and people interested in wide ranging areas and asking questions.  

Dennis Reinhartz: I said last night, every time I used to teach in a room this large, and I did on occasion, first thing I did was see if it fit my ego, you know, was it big enough? Not for the class, but for my ego.

Robert Clancy: I always taught in a very small room. What do you think we should talk about? Look, I'm only gonna ask questions and then let's see if we can broaden 'em, because I'm sure you have much more important questions than I can ask, but I've always been intrigued by Spanish mapping in the Pacific, interested in the mapping of Australia. And I'd really like your thoughts and views on the impact and influence, even though the Spaniards were not immediately around Australia, they took control of the area that the British sort of came into after the seven year war in the 1750s. And there were Mandana and de Queirós were two quite extraordinary Spaniards that came across. And what they did, they were further south as they came across the Pacific. And of course, many of you be aware of a very interesting impact that de Queirós certainly had. His maps, as far as I know, the ones that came from the New Hebrides and his discoveries there were brought up, they were published in I think the 1800s and then picked up in the Hecklick Society of the de Queirós Memorials. And I think there were about five of them. And he of course focused on the New Hebrides which was going to be the new Jerusalem strong religious, powerful religious impact of populating this.  

And the interesting thing was that right through the 18th century, a number of French cartographers thought that de Queirós had actually found the eastern coast of Australia. And with great French, I loved the French flair and imagination, they simply just joined it 'cause you, you saw that right in that first map that you were shown, the wonderful important one and with Australia down in that right hand corner without an eastern coast. But that didn't actually trouble the French. They had no trouble just joining up the de Queirós, New Hebrides.  

And the interesting thing that I always intrigued about was that one of the great historians here was a chap called Manning Clark, who was based here at the ANU in Canberra, and Manning Clark taught history, Australian history from, I think it was four, maybe five different themes. One of them was the Catholic Protestant conflict that went through and probably was residual right up to the middle of the 20th century. It's no longer an issue, but it certainly was then.  

And around 1900, the history books written in Australia for the Catholic schools actually had a picture of, I think it was a map around 1750s of Australia with this fabricated eastern border adjoining up to the New Hebrides. And the Catholic children were taught that it wasn't the the Protestant Cook that discovered the East coast, but the Catholic de Queirós. But what I'd really be interested in, Dennis, would be your idea, what sort of impact that all of this might have had. Certainly de Queirós and Mandana came further south than most of the Gallions, which were travelling much further to the north with the winds that took them. And yet Cook was able to come further south. What sort of influence do you think this might've?  

Dennis Reinhartz: As a good historian, let me go further back.

Robert Clancy: I'm off the hook.

Dennis Reinhartz: Yeah, no, I'll try to be as brief as I can. First of all, you have to consider that when Spain began moving toward empire, let's say with Columbus, it was a small backward country of Europe. It had just thrown off the last vestiges of Islam. And it had also, at the same time, Columbus's ships were sailing, ships full of Jews were being kicked out. And these Jews, many of them were not only wealthy, but they were part of the intellectual elite of Andalusia, that is the Muslim area of Spain. Yet they, between Columbus in 1492 and then beginning with Cortes and his seeking of fortune and glory and the great treasures of the Aztecs, and then eventually the treasures of the Incas, they created this incredible empire in part motivated by the same forces that helped them throw off Islam, but also motivated by the faith that is the Catholic faith and even though I made light of it in one or two places, it's incredibly important. And these arrangements that were reached between the Catholic church and the Spanish monarchy are very important.  

For example, this whole idea of a tithe, the Spanish monarchy was supposed to pay a tithe of all the wealth of the new world and beyond, but they reached an arrangement with the church. And that is that the Spanish monarchy would use that money to proselytise. That is to spread, spread the faith. And so this is an absolutely amazing event. I mean, it is just an amazing surge.  

Now getting to this business of the South Pacific, de Queirós in part is responsible for that connection because he kept saying he'd reached Terra Australis one island after another. And if you read some of these memorials, he's basically saying to the king, gimme one more chance. You know, it's just another island or two away. And you know, it's interesting, he was very much in the spirit of the Spanish Empire, in the spirit of the conquistadors, even though I wouldn't have called him one. But certainly in the spirit of trying to go even further and further and thereby, you know, this movement across the South Pacific.  

With regard to the French, let me emphasise a little bit, Robert said, the French, oh, until the early 18th century, of course portrayed in my part of the world, California is an island and they are one of the most important, shall we say, enhancers of that myth that California was an island on their maps. There are actually four different images of the island of California that are all traceable to French cartography. So connecting a few islands, not a problem. They created or furthered the myth of this great island off of the US. Now, I might point out, as a New Yorker, I would perfectly be happy if California were an island and sailed off...

Robert Clancy: I think it is.

Dennis Reinhartz: Into the sea. No, seriously, but, so there are lots of complexities in these portrayals. A good amount of information about Western Australia eventually, of course is forthcoming from the English. You mentioned Cook, but even before Cook, people like the Dan Pietre, Woodes Rogers and others. And it's, it's interesting, one of the ways that I tend to date maps is by certain areas and where Australia is portrayed, I try to use the image of Australia to tell me something of the date of the map.

Robert Clancy: It's interesting, that wonderful map by Herrera that you showed with the line of Tordesillas that was where the Pope in 1492, I think it was-

Dennis Reinhartz: 1494.

Robert Clancy: '94 divided the unknown world into two, half Portugal and half Spain. Very democratic. But when they started coming down south beneath the equator and further to the west, they had to extend the line a little bit further. And of course the more western one, which was a little bit shaky 'cause longitude wasn't easily identified was a conflict between Portugal and Spain. And they shifted it according to their need. But the fascinating thing is that if you kept running it down, it runs down exactly where, basically very close to the western Australian border. And if you look at these early Australian maps as Holland essentially displaced Portugal to the west, and England started taking control in the Pacific region. When Holland discovered the western part, from a European perspective, the western part of Australia, New Holland went up to this line of, extended line of Tordesillas. They didn't wanna upset the Spaniards, because they had enough problems. And then when Cook came and called his discovery New South Wales, it went up to this same line. And of course the line became essentially the line of Western Australia.  

Dennis Reinhartz: The line in the Atlantic was much better established. It ran through South America yielding Brazil to the Portuguese, which had already become part of Portugal and then the Americas to Spain and then Africa to the Portuguese. But in the Pacific, the line was a lot more or less stable. When Robert said it was democratic, I would argue it was very pragmatic because first of all, the papacy didn't want the two Catholic powers fighting each over empire and for various reasons, but one reason being the treasure that would be lost to the church that would be spent in these wars. The second reason was also the Pope was eventually really on board 'cause he was bribed by the Spanish.

Robert Clancy: Nothing's new. There must be some terrific questions from the audience. Yep.

Staff member: Can you just wait until the mic comes to you?  

Robert Clancy: Oh, good.  

Audience member 1: Prof Dennis. The Spanish touching the Western Australian coast and getting information. Did any information come back about first contact with aboriginal people there?

Dennis Reinhartz: No. No, no. And again, some of the Spanish information was probably also taken from the Dutch and the English who were in this area, but certainly the Dutch, in other words, just the way Spanish maps were valued, so were Dutch in their own way. So it's, you know, the Spanish contact in this area is minimal. It was never given priority either. I mean, the priority was always in the area of what would be the Bismarck Sea and in the area of the Philippines, because the Philippines produced, oh, almost from Magellan's time on, produced a good deal of wealth for the Spanish Empire.  

Staff member: Gentlemen, we've got a question from YouTube from our live stream. Did the Spanish have detailed maps of the East Coast? An early map of the presentation had quite good detail of the West Coast. And following up, it's probably better to ask when they had more detail, more detailed maps, and if it had a specific focus, for example, trade or military, et cetera.

Dennis Reinhartz: Meaning the East Coast of Australia?

Staff member: I think they might've talking, I'm not sure.

Dennis Reinhartz: Or of the Americas.

Staff members: I think the Americas.

Dennis Reinhartz: Oh, okay. Yeah, they had, well, remember the Spanish domains in North America fairly rapidly moved down to Florida, but it was an extended Florida. In other words, the Spanish Florida went well up into what is today, Georgia and the Carolinas, and went very well west through Alabama and Mississippi, what is today, Alabama and Mississippi. So that whole southeastern quadrant of what would become the United States.  

And then of course, for many, many years they had the Caribbean to themselves. And it's during this time of course that a good deal of damage was done to the Caribbean through slavery, through disease and so on and so forth. Also, when they began, I was saying to someone today, when they began building fortifications of the Caribbean, the building of those fortifications devastated the environment in various areas and whole forests disappeared on islands because they were needed to move the stone or to harden the stone for the fortresses. And so yeah, and certainly in South America they had to, but where they were in charge in North America, they had very good maps.

Staff member: I've just had clarification. They actually were talking about Australia, so.

Dennis Reinhartz: That's what I thought. That's what I thought. 

Staff member: The questioner has kind of given us a little bit more detail and said, I'm interested, as I recently found a South American map of trade routes to Australia, but it didn't mention Sydney, but rather Newcastle late 19th century, early 20th century.

Dennis Reinhartz: Well by that time, in other words, the business of the Casa and its secretiveness and its functioning as it did prior, ended in the early 19th century with the revolutions. In other words, first and foremost Mexico, which of course was inspired by France and the United States, and then one by one as the Spanish colonies, you know, revolted. All of this ended. And even in the 18th century, second half of the 18th century while out in the empire, you've got wonderful mapping going on in Spain. Everything is beginning to change rather drastically.

Robert Clancy: I guess it's important to remember that Spain had this incredible control of so much of the globe for just on 300 years. I mean, this was not an evanescent quick and come and go was it?  

Dennis Reinhartz: And remember how small Spain was in comparison to its empire. But for example, the first waves of treasure that came into Spain from the Aztec and from the Inca not only changed Spain forever, but it changed Europe forever. The first thing you had in Europe was a massive inflation as a result of these precious metals and gems coming into Europe. And so again, the impact of this very small country was tremendous. At the same time it was always trying to keep the balls in the air to make the empire work. Exactly that which is so spectacular about the empire. There's this small country with a big empire, also made the empire hard to manage.

Robert Clancy: There's a sort of pattern there. I mean England was a pretty small country.  

Dennis Reinhartz: Exactly. Exactly or the Netherlands.

Robert Clancy: Or the Netherlands, yeah, absolutely. Yes a question.

Audience member 2: Professor, of the maps you've shown us, are any print maps or are they all hand drawn? You mentioned the secrecy that the Spanish attached to discovery and so on. The Dutch are producing atlases left, right, centre in the sixties.

Dennis Reinhartz: The Tordesillas map was printed, that is the one of the whole empire. But the maps I showed, the sea charts and so on of the Pacific and that, they're all manuscript maps.

Audience member 2: At what point did the Spanish start to publish atlases, if at all?

Dennis Reinhartz: Oh, they did, for example, I again was talking to somebody yesterday about this Louis Lopez Ecamacho, and he was Spain's most important commercial cartographer of the 18th century. And his credentials are exceptional. As a cartographer, he studied in France under the finest and set up this business in Madrid and published any number of atlases, both small pocket atlases and then fairly large atlases with two sheet maps in them. The one problem with Lopez's maps was that even he could not get the information from the Archive of the Indies to be absolutely up to date and accurate.  

So if you wanted, for example, an accurate map of perhaps one part of the empire, you might start with his atlas, but you would probably go to the French or the English for a more accurate picture. And that's when the last part of this Spanish secretiveness began to play out. And Lopez himself has a number of comments throughout his work that ‘this could could be better if’, ‘this could be better but’, and we know more than, so this is fairly common. Sure, they published atlases as early as the late 17th century. But certainly in the 18th century.

Robert Clancy: I think it's interesting the point you make that there were very few printed maps that we get from Spain, very few from Portugal. And those interested in collecting maps know that there are a lot of Dutch maps, a lot of French maps, a lot of English maps, Italian maps, even Swedish maps. But you don't see too many maps with information coming from Spanish and Portuguese discoveries that hasn't been stolen or secreted. So they were very good at controlling the information. The Dutch tried it-

Dennis Reinhartz: Published maps, for example, in my part of the world of my part of the world, Spanish ones just aren't there.

Robert Clancy: Yeah.

Dennis Reinhartz: If you begin to get them under Mexican independence, and that is when the Mexicans take over the Spanish territory, they then actually begin publishing maps. And in fact, many Mexican cartographers were beholding to the Spanish predecessors, but they came public with it and they published this stuff. Many of them also came to French and European archives to do research to put on their maps as well.  

But the problem with Mexican mapping is it's very brief. In other words, Mexican Revolution began in 1821 and by 1848, they had lost most of what was Spanish territory, north of the Rio Grande to the United States. The United States provoked this Spanish, this war with Mexico, clearly out of grounds of imperialism and manifest destiny. And they, you know, took over all of this territory. Trust me, I'm living there. I don't object to it a bit, but I mean we have to tell the history the way it is. So the Mexicans, while they inherited a lot of the Spanish tradition, so did the American mappers, American military mappers and took right over from the Mexicans and from the Spanish. There's a great scholar in Mexico City, he's now sadly passed, but his name was Mancado Maya and did such beautiful work, not only on the later Spanish engineers, but then this transition into the Mexican mapping.

Robert Clancy: Come on Canberra. We got now, I'm just saying what an intellectual lot you are.  

Dennis Reinhartz: Well, as I said last night-  

Robert Clancy: There's one more question.  

Dennis Reinhartz: In Sydney I'm not that good. You must have questions.

Staff member: Probably have time for one more question. 

Audience member 3: I assume Asia was mapped by Spain before the Americas.

Dennis Reinhartz: Asia?

Audience member 3: Hang on just a moment. So to map Asia, did they sail around Africa and to map the west coast of the Americas, did they sail around the bottom of South America?

Dennis Reinhartz: Oh sure, sure. The first real expeditions though came across essentially Mexico and they, Veracruz was the linchpin, the first Spanish linchpin on the East Coast. But then they came to Mexico or came across Mexico and set up harbours and also ship building facilities fairly quickly in places like Acapulco and so on. And eventually you don't hear much about it 'cause it's later, but the great port of San Blas.  

Robert Clancy: Well I'll just say, 'cause I think we're at the end, what a terrific treat to have Dennis come. We've been so lucky over recent years. We've had a series of great historic cartographers historians and, you know, the people, male and female don't seem to be around so much. But I was telling Dennis that he's a bit of a fossil because in the nicest of ways... 

Dennis Reinhartz: In many ways-  

Robert Clancy: Because he's such a generalist and we could sit here and talk about any aspect of history that I've enjoyed with interacting with Dennis over the last week or so and we'd get profound and deep intellectual response. So I think it's been a, you've seen some evidence of that tonight. And from my perspective, it has been just wonderful.

Dennis Reinhartz: I mean the history of cartography is really blooming. When I first got into it, we were a lonely bunch. And then my friends, David Woodward and Brian Harley started the Great History of Cartography project and beyond creating a series of reference books, it was always intentional to stimulate the broader appreciation of maps. And that's happened, that's happened, but in the process people have concentrated in pockets and so on and so forth. And unless you're like me, where I each semester taught either undergraduate or graduate courses in the history of cartography and had a wonderful collection, the Virginia Garrett Library of Cartographic History to work out of, it's harder to become a generalist. And it's also not really the trend anymore. I think sadly so. But you know, if I have to nail myself down, I'm a Russian East European historian, first and foremost, I'm an 18th century historian, first and foremost. But given the responsibilities at the university for over 40 years, you can't do that. Particularly not with undergraduates.

Robert Clancy: I'll probably give you a job here, Dennis.

Dennis Reinhartz: No, I am retired.

Daniel Gleeson: Thank you so much, Dennis, and thank you, Robert.

Dennis Reinhartz: Thank you.

Daniel Gleeson: Before we share our applause for you, I just have a few final messages. So if you enjoyed tonight's talk, there are a few more related events coming up. Dennis and Robert will also be speaking at a one day symposium at the State Library of New South Wales in Sydney on Wednesday, the 1st of May, organised by the Australian and New Zealand Map Society. The symposium explores the cartography of the Indian Ocean world reflecting on its role in shaping human knowledge, culture, and history from antiquity to the present. Places, including lunch and teas are still available, which you can book online at A-N-Z-M-A-P-S.org, anzmaps.org. The symposium is followed on Thursday, the 2nd of May by a workshop "Looking Slowly at Early Modern Maps" and then a public lecture "Frames That Speak: An introduction to Cartographic Cartouches," both given by another American cartographic historian, Chet Van Duzer, which can be booked through the State Library of New South Wales's website.

Dennis Reinhartz: I highly recommend him. He's a good friend and I highly recommend him.

Daniel Gleeson: There's also events going on in Perth with a separate public lecture and workshop on Thursday the 2nd and Friday the 3rd of May, organised by the University of Western Australia, which explores the history and legacies of the Dutch East India Company in the Indian Ocean world. Just on the topic of ANZ Maps, our bookshop has a range of back issues of their journal, which is called The Globe, and they're on sale tonight up in the bookshop. So if you go up the stairs, just turn right and you can't miss it.

One final plug from us here at the Library. If there are any PhD candidates here in the audience or online, you may be interested in applying for a 2025 National Library of Australia Scholarship. These scholarships are each worth $6,000 and they offer PhD candidates the opportunity to spend six weeks with us in Canberra researching at the National Library. We'll give you a lovely space to spread out all your maps. There are nine scholarships available, but the Dr. Benny Ng scholarship specifically supports research using our map collection from early European charts to the current maps of Australia in both print and digital form. Applications for the National Library of Australia Scholarship Programme open next Monday on the 29th of April, and you can find the details on our website. We hope to see all of you here at the Library again soon. Please join me once again in thanking Professor Dennis Reinhartz and Professor Robert Clancy.