Following Maps to Study History and Become Stronger Students

Following Maps to Study History and Become Stronger Students

On the first of five visits to Special Collections & Archives this semester, first-year students in the seminar Maps, Territory, and Power in Asia leaned over large tables to peer at maps of the Bowdoin campus. Some of the yellowing sheets had tattered edges, or deep creases from fold lines. Many were drawn by hand in ink.

The oldest map they looked at was made in 1846-a detailed rendering of every residence and structure, including College buildings, in central Brunswick. Others were drafted in 1886, 1932, 1947, 1958, 1979-all the way to present day.

Each presented a different aspect of campus-e.g., underground steam tunnels, campus lighting, trees, or even the best party spots (thanks to the Growlers' 1932 and 1947 "Guide to Bowdoin for Benefit of Inexperienced Houseparty Guests."

Although Associate Professor of History and Asian Studies Sakura Christmas focuses her class on Asia, she asks students to examine Brunswick and Bowdoin cartography early in the semester to develop the practice of critically reading maps.

The Department of Special Collections & Archives at Bowdoin can easily facilitate this activity because it has hundreds of maps of Bowdoin, ranging from the 1820s to the latest iteration of the admissions map.

A Lab for the Humanities

One aspect of Marieke Van Der Steenhoven's position as Special Collections Education and Engagement Librarian is to collaborate with faculty who want their students to engage with historical materials from the Special Collections & Archives. In this capacity, she has partnered with Christmas to teach her map-based sessions.

Scrolling through Bowdoin's History: Campus Maps from 2015 to 1898.

Showing maps of Bowdoin from the past two centuries to students who either know the campus well, or who will get to know it well, makes for an engaging introduction to map reading, said Van Der Steenhoven. "Studying maps of Bowdoin is like reading a cookbook-you can have an immediate visceral reaction because you're familiar with it, and the familiarity with the place allows you to navigate the map much more easily," she said. "You can quickly orient yourself, so you can do this quick calculation, 'What is the same and what is different?'"

They then move quickly to the crux of the exercise. "By putting together all of these diverse representations of Bowdoin from the 1840s to 2000-something-with some maps about trees versus utilities, versus admissions, versus partying-it allows students to see how things change over time and also the strong perspectives that have shaped each map."

To prepare for their first lab on the topic, students read Mark Monmonier's How to Lie with Maps. They are then asked to consider why and for what audience a map was created and the point of view of the mapmaker.

"One of the points of the class is to disabuse students of objectivity, since all maps have some sort of argument they're seeking to make, even while some are using scientific objectivity to make those arguments," Christmas said.

Collier Zug '28, a first-year student in the class, said he signed up for the seminar because he loves history and wanted to learn more about a part of the world he didn't know much about. He's since grown to also appreciate maps. "I love learning about the different historiographical techniques of making maps, and about the ways in which maps have been used to further empire building and nationalist ideas-how maps are used to further the ends of rulers who create them," he said.

Another student in the class, Maya Salter '28, said she was drawn to the seminar because she's one of those people who loves maps. "As someone who hikes, I find topographic maps interesting, and I am interested in art and have a visual interest in maps." Yet, while she said she likes looking at "cool maps," even more valuable to her has been learning how to clearly express her ideas in writing, as well as developing the patience and endurance to work through challenging texts.

First-year writing seminars are meant to prepare new students at Bowdoin for college-level writing, reading, and studying. Additionally, these seminars are an opportunity to spark a student's interest in a major and for them to acquire the skills for upper-level classes in that discipline, Christmas said. "What better way to do that for history then to get students into Special Collections multiple times, so they can work with the materiality of their sources?" she said.

Maps of India, from Special Collections. Click here for their sources.

More Maps, Territory, and Power in Special Collections

For each of the visits Christmas's class makes to Special Collections, Van Der Steenhoven delivers a dozen or so maps from the archives.

The many maps used for the class's labs derive from diverse sources that have found their way to Bowdoin's library along different pathways. Some are from the library of Donald MacMillan, the famous Arctic explorer who graduated from Bowdoin in 1898 (the same year the map shown above, "Land Now and Formerly Owned by Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine," was printed). Others come from the collection of James Bowdoin III, who bequeathed his library to the College in 1811. Many of the maps are bound in books, including travel narratives published in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Others, particularly of campus buildings and utilities, are part of the official record of the College.

For the class's third lab, in late October, Van Der Steenhoven presented nine maps of India-or, rather, of the land that eventually became India. The oldest was from 1625, showing "Indostan," in Samuel Purchas's Purchas his Pilgrimes, contayning a history of the world, in sea voyages, & lande-trauells by Englishmen and others. "The map is framed around the Mughal empire before it began its expansion southward," explained Christmas. "It's a conception of what India might be."

As the students studied the other maps-from 1790 to 1904, all published in British or American books-they discussed the emergence of India from before the Mughal empire, through British colonization, to nationalism and independence. Though none of the maps they looked at were made by a local cartographer, they "can teach students about Orientalism and the ways in which Europe portrayed much of Asia during this period of time," Christmas said.

However, one of the elements students searched for on the maps was a sign of indigenous knowledge. A student pointed to a map legend showing kos units, an ancient form of measurement in the Indian subcontinent that marked the farthest distance from which you could hear a person's call. Cartographers began to standardize kos measurements during the British period.

The students moved around the room, discussing the history they saw written and drawn on the map, in its legends, land boundaries, names of regions and landforms, and iconography or in the images of symbols, people, animals, and scenes.

At the end of the lab, the students could visualize the trajectory of modern-day India and the role that empires, global trade, and mapmakers played in its development. Maps are singular in how they allow us to peer back into time from a unique vantage that helps us better understand both where we have been in the past and where we are today.

"They allow us to understand our position in accessing historical sources-to ask what do we know now? Maps force curiosity and inquiry," Van Der Steenhoven said.