Mid-Afternoon Map: Why North is Up, Part Two

Welcome to Mid-Afternoon Map, our exclusive members-only newsletter that provides a cartographic perspective on current events, geopolitics, and history from the Caucasus to the Carolinas. Subscribers can look forward to interesting takes on good maps and bad maps, beautiful maps and ugly ones — and bizarre maps whenever possible. *** Where were we? At the end of the last installment, we were still in the 15th-century Mediterranean, when maps were oriented every way imaginable. But with compasses that always pointed north. Over the next century, the center of map-making itself would move to Germany and the Low Countries. New geographic discoveries would lead