Geography of Impertinence: Using Historical Maps to Explore a Spanish Treatise on Piracy

In recent volumes of Literary and Linguistic Computing,
Martyn Jessop has considered digital visualization as a
scholarly practice (2008b), and argued, in particular, for
the expanded use of geographical information in digital
humanities scholarship (2008a). These approaches hold
much promise for literary and cultural studies, where attention
has recently been given to such topics as “prose
cartographies” (Padrón, 2004), the “cartographic imagination”
(Smith, 2008), and a broad spectrum of other
intersections between cultural production and physical
space (both real and imagined), and especially within
contexts of migration, conquest and colonialism (Arias,
2002; Brückner, 2007; Michelet, 2006). With A Geography
of Impertinence, I hope to contribute to these discussions,
raising questions about the visualization of geographical
material in a seventeenth-century Spanish text,
relationships between textual data and historical maps,
and the potential for employing place names as a mechanism
to facilitate cross-textual readings.
This project has grown out of my doctoral dissertation
(currently in progress), an edition of Piratas y contrabandistas
de ambas Indias (Pirates and Smugglers of the
East and West Indies) by Spanish navigator and privateer
Francisco de Seyxas y Lovera (1650-c.1705). A Geography
of Impertinence responds to three central problems I
face in the editing of this text.
The second question driving A Geography of Impertinence
is the relationship between Seyxas’ text and a
1630 atlas by the Portuguese cartographer João Teixeira
Albernas. In Piratas y contrabandistas, Seyxas discusses
this book, which he possessed for several years before
presenting it to Charles II and the Council of Indies. The
maps themselves contain Seyxas’ handwritten additions
and annotations, and include a rendering by Seyxas himself,
disputing Teixeira’s portrayal of Tierra del Fuego
and the Straits of Magellan. Seyxas even inscribes himself
in this geography, designating his own chain of islands:
the “Islas de Seyxas.” While these images could
be used as illustrations, their close relationship to the text – a relationship that is, in a sense, reciprocal – suggest
that a “one-way” navigation from text to map is unnecessarily
limiting. Jessop describes a visualization as being
a “parallel (rather than subordinate) rhetorical device”
(2008b, 283); certainly Teixeira’s maps can serve this
function in relation to Piratas y contrabandistas. Indeed,
the interaction between map and text is a compelling
question on its own, apart from all geographical considerations.

Lastly, I seek to understand Seyxas’ book within a larger
corpus of printed works dealing with issues of exploration
and imperial competition. Just as Piratas y contrabandistas
is tied to Teixeira’s maps, it contains references
to over 70 Spanish, English, Dutch and French
books, mostly historiographical treatises and expeditionary
journals. These include documents produced in
the travels of individuals like Jacob Le Maire, Joris van
Speilbergen, Bartholomew Sharp and John Narborough,
as well as two volumes on nautical matters by Seyxas
himself, printed in 1688 and 1690. These represent, of
course, only a fraction of the enormous output of such
books in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. While
the intertexual bonds between these works go far beyond
a common geography, place names provide a useful
mechanism for exploring their differing geographical visions.
For instance, the ability to navigate between these
writings on the basis of toponyms may help us evaluate
the role national or cultural bias plays in the imagination
of place.
My presentation will demonstrate a prototype application
which seeks to address the concerns outlined here.
Built around a collection of place names, this application
has much in common with a digital gazetteer, and thus
draws upon work done by such projects, including the
Alexandria Digital Library Gazetteer. The instances of
a given place can be either textual or cartographic, and
exploration of the collection can begin either at the index
or within the texts or maps themselves. The model
allows for the inclusion of a scholarly apparatus, as recommended
by Jessop (2008b, 291) and as encouraged by
the principles for documentation discussed in the London
Charter for the Computer-Based Visualization of
Cultural Heritage (8-9). This apparatus is implemented
using an object-oriented approach, enabling the sharing
of editorial material across textual and cartographic
objects, and facilitating different levels of granularity in
annotation, depending on the context of a given place
instance. The model permits multiple names for a given
place, and allows for annotation in multiple languages. I
offer as test cases some of the most problematic places
mentioned by Seyxas, and include in my textual corpus
a sampling of passages by authors cited in Piratas y contrabandistas.
References
Alexandria Digital Library Project. (1999-). Gazetteer
Development. Available from: http://www.alexandria.
ucsb.edu/gazetteer (accessed 12 March 2009).
Arias, S. & Meléndez, M., eds. (2002). Mapping Colonial
Spanish America: Places and Commonplaces of
Identity, Culture, and Experience, Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell
University Press.
Brückner, M and Hsu, H., eds. (2007). American Literary
Geographies: Spatial Practice and Cultural Production,
1500-1900, Newark: University of Delaware Press.
Jessop, M. (2008a). The Inhibition of Geographical Information
in Digital Humanities Scholarship. Literary
and Linguistic Computing, 23(1), 39-50.
Jessop, M. (2008b). Digital Visualization as a Scholarly
Activity. Literary and Linguistic Computing, 23(3), 281-
293.
The London Charter (2009). London Charter for the
Computer-Based Visualization of Cultural Heritage
(Draft 2.1). Available from: http://www.londoncharter.
org (accessed 12 March 2009).
Michelet, F. (2006). Creation, Migration, and Conquest:
Imaginary Geography and Sense of Space in Old
English Literature, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Padrón, R. (2004). The Spacious Word: Cartography,
Literature, and Empire in Early Modern Spain, Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Smith, D.K. (2008). The Cartographic Imagination in
Early Modern England: Re-writing the World in Marlowe,
Spenser, Raleigh and Marvell, Aldershot, UK:
Ashgate.