World maps convey worldviews. They may seem simple grid maps, rationally ordered lands placed on the assumed latitude and longitude, but a world map also forms an argument. Like the Ebstorf map mentioned in the introduction of this book, the world map debated in this chapter presents an argument about knowledge and power. In the mid-seventeenth century, bits of information from all over the world travelled to Amsterdam, arguably the largest information hub of its time and ‘the bookshop of the world’. These bits of information had to be repacked, relabelled, and represented to create knowledge. This knowledge had to be moulded into a form that was understandable and acceptable as a world map for contemporaries. Thus, new and old information found its way into the renowned atlases and wall maps of the most renowned cartographers of the century: Jodocus Hondius, Joan Blaeu, Jan Janssonius, and Frederik De Witt.

World maps represent existing worldviews at the time of production, but also influenced, nuanced, or changed worldviews by omitting or adding boundaries and place names, by using certain languages and colours, by repeating stereotypes, by exaggerating or playing down the size of geographic features. Early modern cartographers were well aware that world maps were distorted representations, not showing the globe ‘as it was’. This is nicely illustrated by Joan Blaeu in an explanatory text entitled Maneductio / Discours below his large wall map, which will be explored in this chapter, the Nova Totius Terrarum Orbis Tabula of 1648 (Figure 1.1):