Prussia
Title
Description
This 17th century map from Gerard Mercator’s Atlas sive cosmographicae meditationes depicts the region of Prussia along the Baltic Sea (modern day northeastern Poland and parts of Lithuania and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad). The map is oriented with north at the top. An uncolored Baltic Sea labeled ‘Mare Balticum’ in italic lettering frames the region in the north, giving the land against the coast a sense of shape. There is a neatly decorated and colored cartouche over the Baltic Sea which depicts a green fruit running along its perimeter. In the middle of the cartouche is the label for the map: ‘PRVSSIA’ (Prussia). Underneath the cartouche is a scale bar with 5 segments of equal length, each of which represents the size of a German mile. On the orange framing of the map, there are lines of latitude ranging from 53 degrees to 55 degrees on the left and right as well as lines of longitude ranging from 40 degrees to 46 degrees on the bottom and top.
The territory on the map is divided politically by the use of color. The colors are most prevalent along the borders between regions, forming thick lines in order to distinguish between said regions. The interior of each region is a much lighter shade of the color that appears on its borders. The most prominent color that appears is yellow, with it serving to delineate the political territory of the Duchy of Prussia as it existed in the late 16th to early 17th century. Along with color, larger regions of the map are separated through italic labels, which are consistent in size and type across the map. In the top right of the map, for instance, the region in green is labeled ‘Samogitiæ Pars.’ On the eastern edge of the map, with pink borders in the larger region labeled ‘Lituaniae Pars.’ This corresponds with the location of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, a kingdom which Prussia was a vassal of at the time.
Zooming in on some of the smaller pictorial details of the map, some cities are depicted as small hollow circles each with a label naming the cities. Other cities are depicted with small illustrations of towers and castles. It is unclear from any description whether the cities illustrated with towers and castles are more important than the cities with hollow circles. There is also natural geography on the map that fills much of the actual space: mountains are brown and mostly triangular shaped, rivers are blue and squiggly lines varying in degrees of thickness, forests are in green with small illustrations of trees, and lakes are circular shaped and a richer shade of blue than the ocean.
This map of Prussia was created by Gerard Mercator (1512-1594) and published posthumously by Jodocus Hondius in the 1611 version of Mercator’s Atlas sive cosmographicae meditationes. Mercator was a 16th century cosmographer who introduced the Mercator projection, a way of mapping the world that we still use today. Mercator also worked extensively on collecting and compiling maps for books, such as his Atlas sive cosmographicae meditationes de fabrica mundi et fabricati figura, which was first published in 1595. Notably, this would be the first book of maps to have the word ‘atlas’ in its title, and would serve as the inspiration and model for many future atlases going forward. Gerard Mercator died in 1594 and his son Rumold Mercator took over the publishing of his father’s works until his own death in 1599. At this point, there were no members of Mercator’s family left who wanted to continue his work, and they sold his collection to other cartographers. The collection eventually found its way into the hands of Jodocus Hondius, a Dutch and Flemish engraver and cartographer, who updated the atlas in 1611 and added new maps previously in Mercator’s collection, such as this one of Prussia.
Many of the atlases that were published during this period at the end of the 16th to 17th centuries were unique from previous medieval maps in the fact that they emphasized political boundaries and a division of territory. Previously, maps had mainly focused on natural geography, with mountains and rivers taking up much of the space instead of arbitrary borders. This map of Prussia is interesting, then, with how it includes both natural geography and political borders. Given that this was still relatively early in the tradition of depicting political borders in color (some of the first maps we see with colored political borders are in the 1570 Ortelius atlas), the map can be interpreted as being representative of a transitional period in mapping between a medieval world where borders were less important and the early modern era where they were far more important in the European psyche.
In addition, it is important to note in any study and usage of this map that it is making a political statement in where it draws the borders and how it labels the regions. Looking at other maps of Prussia and the area around Brandenburg in our “Mapping the World Before Mercator (2023)” collection will reveal that there are differences in how the borders are being represented. Further analysis of why the borders are drawn where they are is only possible if we ask questions like who the mapmaker is and what perspective they are coming from.
(Nicholas Spezia-Shwiff '24) (Hali'a Buchal '25)
Creator
Source
Format
Date
Medium
Contributor
Language
Type
Spatial Coverage
Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia
Southwestern Lithuania
Baltic Sea
References
Akerman, James R. “The Structuring of Political Territory in Early Printed Atlases.” Imago Mundi 47, no. 1 (1995): 138–54. https://doi.org/10.1080/03085699508592817.
Egmond, Marco van. “The 'Atlas' by Mercator and Hondius.” Utrecht University, April 25, 2022. https://www.uu.nl/en/special-collections/collections/maps-and-atlases/world-maps-and-atlases/the-atlas-by-mercator-and-hondius.
Harley, J. B., David Woodward, Mark S. Monmonier, and Mary Sponberg Pedley. The History of Cartography. Edited by J. B. (John Brian) Harley, David Woodward, Mark S. Monmonier, and Mary Sponberg Pedley. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
Kagan, Richard L., and Benjamin Schmidt. “Maps and the Early Modern State: Official Cartography.” History of Cartography, vol. 3. https://press.uchicago.edu/books/HOC/HOC_V3_Pt1/Volume3_Part1.html.
Lukosevicius, Viktoras. “Lithuania Minor and Prussia on the Old Maps (1525-1808).” Geodesy and Cartography (Vilnius) 39, no. 1 (2013): 23–39. https://doi.org/10.3846/20296991.2013.786872.
Taylor, Andrew. The World of Gerard Mercator: The Mapmaker Who Revolutionized Geography. New York, NY: Walker & Co., 2004.