Introduction

Historical maps are powerful storytelling devices for revealing facts, worldviews, and knowledge from the past. In the early 1990s, J.B. Harley stressed the complexity of cartographic representations as multi-layered documents and sources of information and wrote that the fascination of maps ‘lies in their inherent ambivalence and in our ability to tease out new meanings, hidden agendas, and contrasting world views from between the lines of the image.’ He conceived maps as cultural texts that had to be read within the context of the society in which they were produced.

In order to understand maps and their messages, the reader must take into account the three Ms that accompany the cartographic representation in the mapping process: modes (what); methods (how); and moments (when and where). This entails questions about the contextualization of mapping practices, alternative and innovative methodological approaches to studying maps, and the importance of events and stories in cartographic history. This conception of cartography counters traditional forms of mapmaking that have

These thought-provoking ideas for map reading have triggered a fruitful, controversial, and ongoing debate about cartographic theory and interpretation strategies, inviting cartographers, historians, and geographers to rethink the map.