ABSTRACT
Chapter 5, ‘Eurocentric Maps and Images’, is the first of five more empirical examinations of Eurocentrism and concentrates on visual culture and the subject of discourse in images, from maps and paintings to ceramics and architecture, seeing how Eurocentrism has permeated our culture for 500 years. Two episodes in particular are chosen from the last half-millennium to illustrate the largely unnoticed power of Eurocentrism: the Renaissance and the period of New Imperialism in the run-up to the First World War. For the Renaissance there is a concentration on new techniques in mapping, especially the science of projection and nautical cartography, and on the use of personification in any number of genres to spread the Eurocentric message, defining and imposing a continental hierarchy. For the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the highpoint of Eurocentric imagery is also analysed in a wide range of visual genres, especially in public space in the form of memorials and monumental buildings. The relationship between Eurocentrism and Orientalism, especially in painting and colonial architecture, is also explored.
