Color your own power maps from 1601 and 1478!
The 1601 map of Spanish "possessions" in the New World, which was included in a general history of Spain's empires, was purposefully left blank to keep information about Spanish activities in the Americas secret. It's an amazing example of how quickly cartography developed in the 16th century.
Lemme explain.
In 1436, Johannes Gutenberg developed a printing press for the Latin alphabet using movable type. The ability to mass-produce knowledge led to more accurate information; and, for Europeans, the world could be "read" from left to right. This also meant that maps could be read from left to right instead of from "up high," like the 1478 "Map of the World before Columbus."
For western Europeans who had consolidated their powers (the pope, the monarchs, and their minions), the world became a book, like this 1545 atlas.
1492 -- the year of Columbus's first voyage -- proved to be a pivotal year in human history. People in Europe recognized very quickly that the earth, which they already knew to be round, was much bigger; and between Europe and Asia lay a mass of land that would be exploited and mined to enrich their growing empires. This led to the people in the Americas being "introduced" to genocides by the Spanish conquistadors.
Wisdom came on the heels of the exploitation; by 1552, Bartolome de las Casas wrote "Destruction of the Indies" for the King of Spain, published on a Gutenberg printing press. It was re-published for further consumption and became a best-seller that condemned the genocides perpetrated in the name of the church and crown. The descriptions of horrors contained in this book led to reforms in Spanish dominions and African people becoming the replacement of forced labor in the New World.
All of this to say that books have power, and to be very vigilant of the reasons why some people in our current time frame are trying to ban them.
Links to the maps via Ruderman:
1478: "World Before Columbus"
I love maps and still use them. I like to know where I am not just where to turn next. Unfortunately, the younger generation doesn't have even a rudimentary knowledge of maps and geography.