Preface

Providing a survey of critical approaches to maps adopted by historians, bibliographers, and art historians, the preface emphasizes that, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, cartographic literacy was anything but a common competence. It was a skill and habit that had to be learned and practiced in order to become a major mode of communication. Because maps were also commercial goods, much of their value—be it informational, symbolic, or restorative—emerged during the social process of exchange. After describing the book’s method of inquiry adapted from visual studies, material culture, historical phenomenology, and economic history, the preface provides a short summary of the book’s main parts and chapters.