Robert Born, The Ottoman Expansion and the Development of Cartography in East-Central Europe (15th–18th Centuries)

Robert Born - Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe, Leipzig
TOME LV 2017
p. 121-152
Online publication date: 
02/05/2024
Keywords: 
Ottoman Frontier Europe, Cartography, Mehmed II, Lazarus Secretarius, Johann Haselberg, Nicolò Angielini, Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli.
Abstract: 

During the half century between the Second Siege of Vienna in 1683 and the peace treaty of Belgrade in 1739, the Habsburg Empire reached its largest ever territorial expansion. The border with the Turkish “arch-enemy”, as Habsburg propaganda had it, thus shifted dramatically from the Vienna city walls to the central Balkans peninsula and, respectively, the Lower Danube. These territorial movements were accompanied by intense cartographic campaigns which scholars have recognised as forming decisive stages towards the emancipation of cartography as discipline in this part of Europe. This paper addresses the specific features in the evolution of cartography against the background of the Ottoman Expansion in Europe in a longue durée perspective with selected characteristic examples starting from the 15th century. The visualisation of borders between the Ottoman and the Hungarian resp. Habsburg realms are discussed as well as the propagandistic function of the early modern maps.

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