Posted on , Last updated by Michael Buehler of Boston Rare Maps
thematic map
“Thematic map” and “thematic cartography” are phrases that get tossed around a bit casually. To put things drily, though, a thematic map uses design elements to depict the distribution of one or more phenomena across a geographic area. Despite the dry definition, though, thematic maps are one of the most interesting emerging areas of map collecting.
Thematic mapping dates back at least to the late 18th century, as with this early economic map of Europe. Arguably it goes back even further, to the earliest sea charts that showed phenomena such as depth soundings. But the field really took off in the 19th century, when the mutually-reinforcing requirements of growing government bureaucracies and science–including the social sciences–stimulated both demand for data and the development of means for gathering, collating and depicting it.
Pretty much anything can be the subject of a thematic map: Here at Boston Rare Maps, for example, we have handled thematic maps of weather in the Indian Ocean, the spread of cholera, the Antebellum cotton trade, and camps of the Soviet Gulag. Despite the obvious differences, what all have in common is that they depict some phenomenon that can be both located and counted.
Moving from the relatively straightforward depiction of place names, topographical features, roads and so on to the presentation of thematic data can present the mapmaker with all sorts of graphic design challenges. The best thematic maps combine intellectual clarity, visual efficiency and aesthetic appeal to create compelling, even unforgettable images such as this map using simple geometric figures to encodes data for the color, range, frequency and sweep of dozens of British lighthouses.
A rare and fascinating thematic map of northeastern North America by a French artist, printer, anatomist and crackpot geologist, remarkable also as an early example of color printing. A former pupil of Jacob Christoph Le Blon, and a pioneer in color-printing, Jacques Fabien Gautier D’Agoty (1717-1785) improved on the methods of his teacher by developing […]
A scarce volume of early American medical history. With an important article by Valentine Seaman featuring two all-but unknown thematic maps of yellow fever outbreaks in Manhattan, generally accepted as the earliest published epidemiological maps and preceding Snow’s work on cholera by half a century. The Medical Repository was the first American medical journal, founded […]
A rare tour de force of data visualization, depicting with elegance and visual economy the intensity and sweep of the lighthouses of Great Britain, and Ireland and the North Sea. As a nation that lived and died by the sea, in a region often wracked by bad weather, it was no wonder that by the mid-19th […]
A revolutionary 1957 thematic map of the North Atlantic Basin by geologists Marie Tharp and Bruce Heezen, which contributed greatly to acceptance of the theory of plate tectonics and continental drift. The map depicts the North Atlantic Ocean and surrounding basin, including most of eastern North America, with landmasses in yellow and submerged regions in […]
A detailed thematic map illustrating European agricultural, extractive and manufacturing activity at the end of the 18th century. Thought to be the earliest example of economic mapping. Crome’s map illustrates the distribution across Europe of the production of 56 commodities and other products, including gold, copper, wine, fruit, salt, hemp, silk, horses, and so on. The symbols for each […]
A remarkable thematic map documenting the distribution of gang activity in Chicago, compiled by groundbreaking sociologist Frederic Thrasher. Chicago’s Gangland was originally issued to illustrate Frederic Thrasher’s seminal 1926 study The Gang: A Study of 1,313 Gangs in Chicago. Thrasher’s concern was not primarily with “The Mob” of Al Capone, but rather second-generation immigrant children who evolved from “play […]
The 1853 first edition of an impressive but controversial geological map of the United States by the well-traveled Jules Marcou. Jules Marcou (1824-1898) trained first as a mathematician but in his early twenties transferred his interest and talents to geology. His natural talents came to the attention of Louis Agassiz and others, and in 1845—at […]
A powerful persuasive map documenting the extent of the Soviet Gulag system, produced with the quiet support of the Central Intelligence Agency. The Gulag was created under Lenin almost immediately after the Revolution, taking its name from an acronym of the Russian phrase for “Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps.” Though estimates of its scale […]
A landmark 1884 atlas of 16 thematic maps depicting the forest cover of the United States and Canada, compiled by renowned Harvard botanist Charles Sprague Sargent and overseen by pioneering mapmaker Henry Gannett. The atlas was issued, not by the Department of Agriculture, but by the Census Office of the Department of the Interior. A […]
A jeremiad against the evils of alcohol, with an interesting thematic map demonstrating its prevalence in New York City. Born on a New Hampshire farm and orphaned at 12, Henry William Blair (1834-1920) never attended college but rose to become a lawyer, state representative, and U.S. congressman, then represented his home state in the Senate […]