: For Students, Faculty, and Staff 
Earlier this year, an historical op-ed by Stephanie Leitch appeared in several news outlets:
“Will Google Maps have regrets about America?”
Since Professor Leitch was the recipient of the William Reese Company Fellowship at the Bell Library in 2023, I thought her essay would be of interest to friends of the Bell Library and readers of this blog as well.
Stephanie Leitch, Professor of Art History at Florida State University, publishes books about the history of early modern printmaking. Her books include Early Modern Print Media and the Art of Observation: Training the Literate Eye (Cambridge University Press) and Mapping Ethnography in Early Modern Germany (Palgrave).
“Can we expunge history by changing names on a map? Borders on our current world map have shifted in the past in response to new geo-political realities, some reaching back into old vocabulary to name the new realities. Such changes make our world globes feel hopelessly outdated. For example, the fading Rand McNally globe in my living room embarrassingly dates itself with the yellowing territory of the German Democratic Republic to the right of West Germany and casts the net of the USSR over former Soviet republics. Today’s updates to the cartographic world view respond to treaties and armistices, but most importantly, they represent consensus among world powers.
Casting about too rashly for new names, however, makes for a hasty pudding. After mapmakers in 1507 first attached the label America to a massive world map printed in France, they began to have serious misgivings about their choice of words. A mere six years later, that same print shop ceased printing maps using that title. Unlike Columbus who had sailed before him, the Florentine merchant Amerigo Vespucci seemed alert to the fact that he had bumped into a world new to Europe, a fourth part of the world. It was his understanding of this previously unmarked territory as a “new” continent that pushed Vespucci ahead of Columbus on the printmaker’s list of eligible candidates for names. But the rash decision to name a spit of land in the Atlantic after Amerigo was a choice difficult to undo. Words on maps, it turned out, had sticking power.
A map of the Gulf of Mexico, circa 1524. (Courtesy of the Newberry Library, Chicago)
The earliest chart printed in Europe of the Gulf formerly known as Mexico didn’t give that inlet a name. In the document that features it, the semicircular squiggle is hardly recognizable as the gulf we know today from maps. We recognize the tip of Cuba that intervenes between the peninsulas of Florida and the Yucatan. Almost eclipsed by the intricate image to its right, the rudimentary sketch of the gulf appears as mere appetizer to the entrée provided by the aerial view of Mexico City next to it. The primary objective of the gulf chart is to show us a region newly surveyed by Europeans as an area of interest for empire building.
The city in the center of the so-called “Cortés map of Tenochtitlán” both projects an ideal view of the Aztec capital prior to its 1521 destruction and foreshadows Habsburg claims on the territory. This fantasy was printed in Nuremberg in 1524 as part of a letter addressed to Charles V from Hernán Cortés, a conquistador steeped in delusions of grandeur. Cortés included this map in the letter to stroke the ego of the emperor and proclaim this territory for himself and for Spain. It was a vision built on a program of shamelessly co-opting other peoples’ possessions.
Paradoxically, the map showcases Aztec ingenuity in building temples, sculptures, canals, causeways, expansive plazas to tout its magnificence. The exotic menagerie of the Aztec emperor Moctezuma, as well as his grand villa, are pictured here as if frozen in time. For, over this orderly and stable city, a Habsburg flag waves to announce the dawning of a new era of ownership, matching the claims that emerge in the inscription over the gulf: “This world, once outstanding and most glorious, has been subjected to Caesar’s rule.”
This map from the Bell Library, dated 1511, shows Cuba and the island of Hispaniola in surprising detail. The gulf is sketchily depicted since the surrounding land was still completely unknown to European cartographers at this time. The land shown to the north of Cuba is almost certainly part of the islands now called the Bahamas. Pietro Martire d’Anghiero, Opera (Seville, 1511). Bell Call # 1511 fAn.
As Google renames the Gulf of Mexico, it reprises the older map’s negotiation of fact and fiction, a liminal state that modern cartography strives to avoid. While major land-grabs certainly have been recorded in maps of the past, modern maps are documents that represent multilateral consensus, not a space to rehearse rebranding efforts. We invest transnational authority in our modern maps, we bring them to the table for treaties, teach our children geography with them, and perhaps most importantly, use them to navigate. Do the name-givers understand that arbitrary decisions will flummox school children, confuse scholarship, and bedevil cartographers for some time to come? Do they aim to amplify the regrets that many already have about the naming of the Americas? There are icebergs here; we should proceed with caution.”
After reading Stephanie’s essay, I started looking for the oldest maps I could find in the James Ford Bell that labeled the Gulf of Mexico. So far, the oldest I’ve found in an atlas is from 1560; the oldest flat map is from 1566. Both were published in Venice. However, I’m quite sure there are earlier examples, and when I find them, I’ll update this post.
“Mondo Novvo” (New World) – handwritten on the back of the map of America in the Camocio Atlas (Venice, 1560). Bell Call # 1560 fCa.
This map was created by Giacomo Gastaldi for the Camocio Atlas. Dated 1560, it is the oldest map in the Bell collection, that I have found so far, that labels the Gulf of Mexico: “Colfo Mexicano et della Nova Spagna” (Gulf of Mexico and of New Spain). Follow this link to Umedia for a zoomable image of this map and others from the Camocio Atlas. Bell Call # 1560 fCa.
This 1566 map of North America, by the Italian cartographer Zaltieri, is the oldest flat map in the Bell collection that shows the gulf labeled “Colfo Mexicano.” The full title is: Il disegno del discoperto della noua Franza, ilquale s’è hauuto ultimamente dalla nouissima nauigatione dè Franzesi in quel luogo, nel quale si uedono tutti l’Isole, Porti, Capi, et luoghi fra terra chein quella sono (Venice: Antonio Lafreri, 1566). Bell Call # 1566 mZa. Visit Umedia to look at this map in greater detail.