03 Jan Place and Space

Humans have long recognised the importance and value of maps to their lives. Indeed, maps are extraordinary documents that have transformed the way we view the globe forever. Here are two gorgeous books that present the ways that Southeast Asia has been imagined by generations of cartographers. Thomas Suarez’s Early Mapping of Southeast Asia (Periplus) follows the story of map-making, exploration and colonisation in Asia from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. It surveys Southeast Asia’s geography and civilisations, its maps and their influence on Western worldviews, as well as the image of Southeast Asia in the eyes of its neighbours. Similarly, Frédéric Durand and Richard Curtis’s Maps of Malaya and Borneo: Discovery, Statehood and Progress (EDM) includes early Portuguese, Dutch, French and English maps, nautical charts, maps of the interior, maps from atlases and encyclopaedias, maps showing economy, culture and communications and urban maps. Taken together, these two books are a wonderful way of exploring how the Asian world has been understood and re-imagined.