ABSTRACT
Nicolas de Nicolay, one of France’s leading cartographers during the Renaissance, published a book in 1567 describing his travels with the French Ambassador to the court of Suleiman the Magnificent, the center of the Ottoman Empire. The Navigations was enormously popular: translated and reprinted in many editions in England, Germany, The Netherlands, and Italy as well as France. It was a beautiful book, lavish with pictures, and described an empire that was rapidly expanding into Europe. Regional maps and city plans by convention recorded social activity, displaying political or tax boundaries, roads, walls, gardens, landmark buildings, religious sites, and habitations. Social types represented on their borders simply added another layer of information, associating social types with geographical homelands. Social life placed moral demands on human beings – opportunities for loyalty, sacrifice, and service – to which they had to respond.
