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Similar and Differing – Mapping the Lower Danube... 603
by leaving aside narrow national points of view still abounding in the small
bunch of research directly referring to this subject. 4 Furthermore, the focus
of forthcoming research should be laid on the broader context of european
enlightenment 5 – including Central europe and the lower Danube in early
Modern cartography. the prince’s outstanding scientific achievement was
embedded in a larger international context, as was his life. 6
A newly founded Academy of Science, Berlin (1700), counselled by
G.W. leibniz in 1714 asked the former ruling prince to write a description
of his native Moldavia including its geography and boarders, in order to
enhance accurate knowledge about this part of europe in the Western
world. As a brief circumspection through German and Dutch cartography
of the 16 th /17 th century will show ‘modern’ mapping stopped as far as this
european region was concerned with hungary, transylvania and poland.
Descriptions of the adjacent provinces of Valachia and Moldavia were
almost totally lacking or highly deficient, and maps would still be based on
the ptolemean model of ancient Dacia. 7 It was not only the Berlin Academy
which had complaints about these ‘white spots’. Dimitrie Cantemir himself
was fully aware of the poor level of rendering the geography and boarders
of Moldavia and Valachia in Central european maps (mostly maps of
hungary) confected by the then most famous Western cartographers. In his
History of the Ottoman Empire he writes:
Whenever I cast eyes on the map of hungary, I keep wondering at the
4 EŞANU: Neamul Cantemireştilor, ibid. See Chapters “harta Moldovei supliment
la Descriptio Moldaviae”, n os 1180-1185 – six titles, 164 f., and “Geograf şi cartograf”,
citing another cca. 80 titles making reference to Cantemir’s map: Ibid., n os 1871-1951,
223-229.
5 CÂNDEA, Virgil: Dimitrie Cantemir 1673–1723 – 300 ani de la naştere. Bucureşti
[1973], esp. 17-20; ZACH, Krista: Die Moldaukarte zur Descriptio Moldaviae von Dimitrie
Cantemir – eine rumänische ‘Chorographie im zeitalter der Aufklärung. In: Dimitrie
Cantemir: Fürst der Moldau, Gelehrter, Akteur der europäischen Kulturgeschichte. hg. v.
BOCHMANN, Klaus – DUMBRAVĂ, Vasile. leipzig 2008, 101-117, esp. 106 f., 112.
6 See the outstanding latest presentations by EŞANU, Andrei (ed.): Dinastia
cantemireştilor and LEMNY, Ştefan: les cantemir. l’aventure européenne d’une famille
princière au xVIII e siècle. paris 2009.
7 See e.g. maps by Abraham ortelius showing South eastern europe from 1584 and
1595, the latter called “Daciarvm Moesiarvmque, vetus descriptio” (Antwerpen 1570 – )
both presenting almost exclussively but place-names from antiquity (www.nada.kth.se)
and from Gerard Mercator’s “Atlas sive cosmographicae meditationes de fabrica mvundi
et fabricati figvrae (Antwerpen 1587–1595) would still be used in 1663 by Johan Blaeu
(and others), see note 16 further down.