Cartographical Perspectives on the Evolution of Newfoundland's Grand Banks Fisheries in the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Centuries

Cartographical Perspectives on the Evolution of Newfoundland's Grand Banks Fisheries in the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Centuries

Maps charting the evolution of Newfoundland's Grand Banks Fisheries in the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Centuries.

At the turn of the sixteenth century John Cabot and his successors discovered abundant fish stocks in the waters around Newfoundland. Through the subsequent two centuries, British, French, and Iberian fisheries developed in the Grand Banks region which had a transformative and globalising impact on commerce and inter-state politics across the North Atlantic. Contemporaneous maps of the period provide another strand of evidence that supplement our knowledge of these fisheries. We emphasise how select cartography of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries rendered significant mutations and innovations in how such fisheries and adjacent waters were represented in physical and changing political contexts. We proceed to argue that a crucial innovation was the evolution of hydrographical indicators in maps of notable aesthetic appeal that would have had significant influence. We also demonstrate that more refined and accurate delineations of the Grand Banks shadowed the development of fishing activities that encompassed both Newfoundland's nearshore as well as the Grand Banks themselves.

Trinity Centre for Environmental Humanities

The North Atlantic Fish Revolution - An Environmental History of the North Atlantic 1400-1700 (NorFish)

2018

Kieran Rankin, Trinity College Dublin

Creative Commons

cehresearch.org/norfish.html