Cartography in the Kingdom of Naples during the Early Modern Period

Naples during the early modern period, one encounters a number of “absences”: there are maps that circulated for only a very short time or among a very restricted group of people, maps that have been either forgotten or lost without a trace, and maps that were never completed or never printed. And whether this absence is an accidental or inherent characteristic of the works concerned, it is symptomatic of the cultural and political vassalage that southern Italy suffered from the early years of the sixteenth century right through to 1734 (that crucial year in Neapolitan history that saw the birth of an independent government). The period covered here runs from the founding of the kingdom of the Two Sicilies by Alfonso V of the House of Aragon in 1443 through the periods of viceroys under Spain from 1504 to the middle of the seventeenth century, coinciding almost exactly with the anti-Spanish riots of 1648 that had such severe effects on the city’s economic and social life. Along with “silences” and “secrets,” the previously mentioned absences provide fruitful terrain for an investigation into the ideological aspects of Neapolitan cartography. Harley observed: “That which is absent from maps is as much a proper field for enquiry as that which is present,”1 and this comment can cover not just a single map but the entire output of a particular society or period. The occurrence of such absences in even more recent periods of history reveals that the extent of cartographic knowledge (in both a quantitative and a qualitative sense) is not dependent simply on technological development. Expectations and pressures of various kinds come into play here. And while all of these have a political element (as Harley put it, they embody a concern “to maintain and legitimise state power”),2 they might also, in a more general sense, be seen as depending on the nature of institutions, on prevailing economic and social conditions, and even on the mental cartography that each society develops for itself. To move beyond these vague initial considerations and give a definite example, we can affirm that for over four centuries Neapolitan cartography put an unusual degree of emphasis on the matter of borders and the representation of the region of Campania Felix. In effect, these sectoral aspects of cartography would end up becoming 37 • Cartography in the Kingdom of Naples during the Early Modern Period