Want to know how to get from here to there? Open Maps on your phone, type your destination, and follow the blue line. In Mapping Travel, Jordana Dym narrates the history of this seemingly self-evident line. We learn that “linear journey maps” (Dym's own overarching term) are not at all self-evident. Before early modern times, itineraries mostly consisted of textual lists of places and directions, and travelers found their way by asking around. Dym subsequently sees medieval pilgrims as “ahead of their time” (34) when they drew pricked or red lines on their manuscript connecting places where they had been. She places the tale of lined journey maps in the fifteenth or sixteenth century. For the subsequent period, Dym's book demonstrates how journey maps became increasingly common and complex during early modern and modern times: from dotted to red or blue lines, from page to screen.
Apart from the first two chapters on definitions and historiography, the book follows a chronological course, covering “a thousand years of European travel writing and map-making” (1). The chronology, however, is sometimes a bit confusing, jumping back and forth in time, and skipping most of the twentieth century. “European” can be questioned as well. The several American maps in the last chapters are definitely not European. While they can possibly be filed under “Western” (in the title of the book), this does not apply to references to Maya cave painting (13) or Islamic manuscripts (26–28). In a way, this points to the most problematic characteristic of the book: the source corpus is nowhere demarcated or defined.
Dym's argument is convincing, sometimes quite speculative, but also compelling and beautifully illustrated. It is, however, not completely clear if the maps under scrutiny are illustrations, or primary evidence of her thesis. So much more was produced in the past millennium, that the examples cannot be but eclectic, to say the least. Why, for example, Drake and Dampier instead of many other circumnavigations? Occasionally, it seems completely random, worse in the last chapters, where, for example, Harry Potter, Indiana Jones, and Luke Skywalker are put on stage.
This does not mean this book makes no sense or should not be read. On the contrary, I hope this eclectic overview will become the prelude or inspiration for much more map research in which lines referring to places visited, and routes taken are analyzed, problematized, and contextualized. Most insightful is the distinction between roads and routes, Mapping Travel dealing with the latter: “the personal and individual rather than the permanent and collective” (33). Addressing this contrast is helpful for map historians, for example while examining annotated maps.
That the book is eclectic is not surprising when its form is considered. Bringing together a thousand years of mapmaking in a little more than one hundred pages, from thirteenth-century navigation handbooks to twenty-first-century films, is quite an achievement. The author herself tells this is a spin-off of her forthcoming book on travel mapping. The form is a bit confusing, halfway between a book and an article, issued by Brill Research Perspectives in Map History, a book series that used to be a journal. On a sidenote, the book's orange-and-white cover is rather simple (and quite ugly), even though maps make such beautiful cover illustrations.
Personally, I wished Mapping Travel was not only a short book or a long article, but an exhibition catalogue as well, since this theme would make a beautiful show if these pages and screens were put up next to each other. The book features almost fifty illustrations, while the text describes many more maps not shown, leaving the reader sometimes a little frustrated. This is definitely not a reproach; it just demonstrates that the text evokes curiosity. I caught myself several times expanding my thumb and index finger on the page, wishing to zoom in. If this theme can be translated into an exhibition, featuring these and/or other objects, that would tell a wonderful story, providing a history to the blue line on the maps on our phones we all follow.
