Anthony Jenkinson’s unique wall map of Russia (1562) and its influence on European cartography

• Main Author: Krystyna Szykuła
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Société Royale Belge de Géographie and the Belgian National Committee of Geography 2008-12-01
• Series: Belgeo
• Subjects: geography; Russia 16th century; discovery; travels to search the way to China; Jenkinson’s map
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/belgeo/8827
• ISSN: 1377-2368; 2294-9135

This paper deals with the only extant copy of the newly found map of Russia of 1562 purchased for the Wroclaw University Library cartographic collection and covering the eastern end of Europe. The map under consideration is the result of first travels of Englishmen searching for the route to China in the 16th century. The original Jenkinson map rediscovered in 1987 was exhibited for the first time in a poster session of the 13th International Conference on the History of Cartography in Amsterdam in 1989. The map in question portrays the area from the Gulf of Finland to the region of Tashkent and Bukhara. Rediscovery of Jenkinson’s original makes it possible to verify the fidelity of the Ortelius rendition only, not De Jode’s which is also considered. It allows us to exclude speculations entertained by scholars to whom the only renditions were known before this event.Several papers already published by the present and other authors have been written so far considering the subject from different points of view. In the later part of the paper, the present author proposes to analyze the influence of the rediscovered map on later cartography, i.e. whether Jenkinson’s map influenced the image portrayed by the post-Jenkinson cartographers of the 16th, 17th and 18thcenturies.