Mapping History

At the Historical Novel Society earlier this month, there was a session called “Research methods on a budget: What to do when you can’t go there.” This was particularly timely considering the economic climate in which people everywhere have lost  their travel budgets and a lot more. The best solution, which comes as no surprise, is using maps. Any maps of the area you are interested in will be helpful, but of course if you can find a map from your target time period you are golden, and quite possibly better off than being there because the landscape you might find today could bear little resemblance to what it looked like way back when.

In my case I’ve used a lot of maps. Some came in books about my topic, others from when I toured Ireland. I have not found a map (yet) that depicts the west of Ireland in detail in the 1650s. Maybe if I could scour the library in Cork I would find it, but for now I’ll have to be content with what I have. For the island of Montserrat, I came upon the report of an archeological dig at a sugar plantation that had existed around my time period, so this was enormously helpful, not only because of the maps but because of what they found during the dig. And it helped confirm my idea of what the plantation house would look like. (Thanks, University of Washington Library!)

Some resources recommended during the conference:
Yahoo directory for historical maps
Perry Castaneda Library map collection

And, the Pallas guides – these are paperback guidebooks to particular areas. You can find them on amazon.com.

Here's a pretty cool map I found of Dublin, 1610.