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Antietam, Maryland. Allan Pinkerton, President Lincoln, and Major General John A. McClernand: Another View
At the outset of the U.S. Civil War, Mathew Brady dispatched a team of photographers to document the conflict. Among them was a Scottish-born immigrant named Alexander Gardner, the photographer who took this photo of Lincoln at Antietam as well as other famous wartime shots. The man to Lincoln's right is Allan Pinkerton, founder of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, whom Lincoln had as head of a personal security detail during the war. Gardner titled another shot of Pinkerton and his brother William at Antietam “The Secret Service ...
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Chola Woman, Full-Length Portrait, Standing, Facing Right, La Paz, Bolivia
This photograph of a Bolivian woman is from the Frank and Frances Carpenter Collection at the Library of Congress. Frank G. Carpenter (1855-1924) was an American writer of books on travel and world geography whose works helped to popularize cultural anthropology and geography in the United States in the early years of the 20th century. Consisting of photographs taken and gathered by Carpenter and his daughter Frances (1890-1972) to illustrate his writings, the collection includes an estimated 16,800 photographs and 7,000 glass and film negatives. Max T. Vargas ...
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Maps of Ezo, Sakhalin, and Kuril Islands
This map was made by Fujita Junsai and published by Harimaya Katsugorō in 1854, around the time period when the Tokugawa shogunate started sending expeditions to the area of Ezo, Sakhalin, and the Kuril Islands. Russia was also showing interest in this area at this time. Place names are identified and indicated in the Japanese katakana characters (the angular Japanese phonetic syllabary). Various land and sea routes in the Ezo area (now Hokkaido) are shown in detail.
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Warrior Asahina Kobayashi
The Japanese art of Ukiyo-e (“Pictures of the floating [or sorrowful] world”) developed in the city of Edo (now Tokyo) during the Tokugawa or Edo Period (1600-1868), a relatively peaceful era during which the Tokugawa shoguns ruled Japan and made Edo the seat of power. The Ukiyo-e tradition of woodblock printing and painting continued into the 20th century. This 1862 print is a half-length portrait of an actor, wearing a robe with a bird motif, in the role of Asahina. The print is from the series The 36 Stars of ...
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Manuscript Map of Dagua River Region, Colombia
This beautiful pen-and-ink and watercolor map shows the Dagua River and the town of Sombrerillo in what was then the Spanish Viceroyalty of New Grenada. The river empties into the Pacific Ocean near the present-day city of Buenaventura, Colombia. Sombrerillo was a “free town” populated by former slaves who had gained their freedom from the lowland mines and the highland haciendas of the region. The map is oriented with north at the bottom.
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Map of a Part of the Island of Cuba and of the Bahamas
Joan Vinckeboons (1617-70) was a Dutch cartographer and engraver born into a family of artists of Flemish origin. He was in the employ of the Dutch West India Company and produced maps for over 30 years for use by Dutch mercantile and military shipping. This map of a portion of central Cuba and the Bahamas reflects the careful mapping that the Dutch West India Company undertook to facilitate safe and successful navigation in that region. The map identifies the Bahamas Channel (i.e., the Gulf Stream) that served as the ...
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House of Ichizuke
The term ukiyo-e, literally “pictures of the floating world,” refers to a genre of Japanese artwork that flourished in the Edo period (1600–1868). As the phrase “floating world” suggests, with its roots in the ephemeral worldview of Buddhism, ukiyo-e captured the fleeting dynamics of contemporary urban life. While being accessible and catering to “common” tastes, the artistic and technical details of these prints show remarkable sophistication, their subjects ranging from portraits of courtesans and actors to classical literature. Kitagawa Utamaro was a highly influential ukiyo-e artist, known in Japan ...
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The Actor Nakamura Utaemon in the Role of Kato Masakiyo
The Japanese art of Ukiyo-e (“Pictures of the floating [or sorrowful] world”) developed in the city of Edo (now Tokyo) during the Tokugawa or Edo Period (1600-1868), a relatively peaceful era during which the Tokugawa shoguns ruled Japan and made Edo the seat of power. The Ukiyo-e tradition of woodblock printing and painting continued into the 20th century. This print from between 1818 and 1830 shows the actor Nakamura Utaemon portrayed as a warrior in the role of Kato Kiyomasa (Masakiyo), a 16th-century general who led Japanese forces in the ...
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An Actor in the Role of Sato Norikiyo who Becomes Saigyo: An Actor in the Role of Yoshinaka
The Japanese art of Ukiyo-e (“Pictures of the floating [or sorrowful] world”) developed in the city of Edo (now Tokyo) during the Tokugawa or Edo Period (1600-1868), a relatively peaceful era during which the Tokugawa shoguns ruled Japan and made Edo the seat of power. The Ukiyo-e tradition of woodblock printing and painting continued into the 20th century. This diptych print of between 1849 and 1852 shows Saigyō surrounded by men trying to prevent him from leaving his house to become a priest. The poet Saigyō (1118-90) was born into ...
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Peony and Canary
The Japanese art of Ukiyo-e (“Pictures of the floating [or sorrowful] world”) developed in the city of Edo (now Tokyo) during the Tokugawa or Edo Period (1600-1868), a relatively peaceful era during which the Tokugawa shoguns ruled Japan and made Edo the seat of power. The Ukiyo-e tradition of woodblock printing and painting continued into the 20th century. This print, made in 1833 or 1834, is part of the series "Small Flowers" by Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849). It is unusual in its background color and its size. Other examples of this ...
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Suffrage Parade, New York City, May 6, 1912
The suffrage parade was a new development in the fight for women’s suffrage in the United States. It was a bold tactic, adopted by suffragists and the more militant suffragettes shortly after the turn of the century. Although some women chose to quit the movement rather than march in public, others embraced the parade as a way of publicizing their cause and combating the idea that women should be relegated to the home. Parades often united women of different social and economic backgrounds. Because they were carried out in ...
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Girl's Day
The Japanese art of Ukiyo-e (“Pictures of the floating [or sorrowful] world”) developed in the city of Edo (now Tokyo) during the Tokugawa or Edo Period (1600-1868), a relatively peaceful era during which the Tokugawa shoguns ruled Japan and made Edo the seat of power. The Ukiyo-e tradition of woodblock printing and painting continued into the 20th century. This print is one sheet of an illustrated book from between 1716 and 1736. It shows three richly dressed women or girls eating and drinking, probably celebrating Hina Matsuri (Girl's day ...
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Thomas Jefferson, Head-and-Shoulders Portrait, Facing Right
Thomas Jefferson was the third president of the United States of America and one of the founding fathers of the republic. With the nation still in the process of solidifying its identity, political figures became a popular subject for contemporary artists, much as kings, aristocracy, and religious figures had been in the past. Portrait painters also hoped to earn money by painting politically important individuals, either from the subject himself or from enthusiasts in his entourage. The French artist Charles Balthazar Julien Fevret de Saint-Mémin (1770-1852) did two engravings of ...
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Two Jewish Women Standing, Facing Each Other, in Tunisia
This photograph taken in early 20th-century Tunisia is from the Frank and Frances Carpenter Collection at the Library of Congress. Frank G. Carpenter (1855-1924) was an American writer of books on travel and world geography whose works helped to popularize cultural anthropology and geography in the United States in the early years of the 20th century. Consisting of photographs taken and gathered by Carpenter and his daughter Frances (1890-1972) to illustrate his writings, the collection includes an estimated 16,800 photographs and 7,000 glass and film negatives. This photograph ...
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United States Capitol, Washington, D.C.: East Front Elevation, Rendering
Construction of the Capitol, the building that houses the U.S. Congress, began in 1793 and was largely completed by 1865, when the Capitol’s second dome was finished. The principal architects were William Thornton (1759-1828), B. Henry Latrobe (1764-1820), Charles Bulfinch (1763-1844), and Thomas Ustick Walter (1804-87). This elevation by Alexander Jackson Davis (1803-92), rendered in ink, watercolor, and wash, shows the east front of the Capitol as it appeared in 1834. After studying at the American Academy of Fine Arts in New York, Davis began his career as ...
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7th War Loan. Now--All Together
C.C. Beall (1892-1967) was a commercial illustrator who drew comics and book covers. He based the image on this World War II war loan poster on the famous Joe Rosenthal photograph of the second American flag to be raised on Iwo Jima. The photo made a huge impact after being published as part of news reports on the battle. This poster was part of the campaign for a 7th War Loan subscription, which took place in May 1945, just days after victory in Europe. Officials were concerned that the ...
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A Chart of the Gulf Stream
This map, from the Peter Force Map Collection at the Library of Congress, was created by the Philadelphia engraver James Poupard. It was the third in a series featuring a chart of the Gulf Stream. The latter was well known to Spanish ship captains, who relied on it to sail from the Americas to the Iberian Peninsula, but there were no universal charts or maps due to Spanish secrecy. This map originally was sketched by Timothy Folger, a Nantucket fisherman and a cousin of Benjamin Franklin, who conceived the map ...
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A General Chart of the West Indies: With Additions from the Latest Navigators
Captain Joseph Smith Speer was an English mariner who served 21 years on the Mosquito (Miskito) Coast in what is now Nicaragua. He later created detailed maps of the West Indies based on his first-hand knowledge of the region. In 1766 he published The West-India Pilot containing 13 maps, followed by an enlarged edition with 26 maps in 1771. A General Chart of the West Indies, shown here, is a large, detailed map (71 by 117 centimeters). It is based on an earlier map from 1774, “with Additions from the ...
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A Journal of Captain Cook's Last Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, and in Quest of a North-West Passage Between Asia & America, Performed in the Years 1776, 1777, 1778, and 1779
The American explorer and adventurer John Ledyard was born in Groton, Connecticut, in 1751. After studying briefly at Dartmouth College, he went to sea as a common sailor. He was forced to join the British Navy, and from June 1776 to October 1780 was a marine on Captain James Cook’s third voyage to the Pacific. This book recounts his observations of Alaska, Kamchatka, southern China, and the islands of the South Pacific. Ledyard later conceived of a plan to cross Russia, continue across the Bering Strait to Alaska, and ...
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A New Map of Nova Scotia, and Cape Breton Island: With the Adjacent Parts of New England and Canada, Composed from a Great Number of Actual Surveys; and Other Materials Regulated by Many New Astronomical Observations of the Longitude as Well as Latitude
Thomas Jefferys (1710-71) was a royal geographer to King George III and a London publisher of maps. He is well known for his maps of North America, produced to meet commercial demand, but also to support British territorial claims against the French. The period from 1748-63 saw fierce global competition between England and France, culminating in the Seven Years' War, which produced a high demand for maps of the contested territories. This map presents Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island in the wake of the “great upheaval,” when the British ...
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A Plan of the Rosalij Compy. Estates, the Property of His Excelly. Charles O'Harra, the Honble. Leiut. Gov. Will. Stuart, James Clarke & Rob. & Phill.
France and Britain vied for control of Dominica for many years. In 1763, the British gained possession of the island. This detailed map shows British-owned estates and a plantation on the Atlantic side of the island. Details on the map include individual buildings and structures, roads, sections of the plantation identified by number, administrative divisions of the estates identified by letters, streams, pictorial representations of vegetation and relief, the coastline and coastal features, and a vignette of ships in the harbor. The map also includes a keyed legend listing the ...
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A Voyage Down the Amoor: With a Land Journey through Siberia, and Incidental Notices of Manchooria, Kamschatka, and Japan
Perry McDonough Collins was appointed the American Commercial Agent to the Amur River in March 1856. He arrived at his post in Irkutsk in January 1857 after a 35-day overland journey from Moscow. On June 4, 1857, he began a trip down the Amur River, which forms the border between the Russian Far East and northeastern China. On July 10, he arrived at the mouth of the river, becoming the first American to sail its course. In March 1858 Collins sent a report to the U.S. Department of State ...
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Aesop's Fables
This is the second Augsburg edition of the Fables of Aesop, translated from Latin into German by Heinrich Steinhöwel. It is illustrated with 208 woodcuts, cut in the Augsburg style, which is characterized by thick contour lines outlining the figures, a reliance on white space rather than highly detailed embellishment to decorate the image, and little background or landscape to create perspective. The publishing history of the Fables is extensive. Over 150 separate editions of the work were printed between 1465 and 1501. Little is known of Aesop’s life ...
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Jackie Robinson of the Brooklyn Dodgers, Posed and Ready to Swing
Jack Roosevelt Robinson, better known as Jackie Robinson, was the first African American major league baseball player. Previously, he had been a star athlete at the University of California at Los Angeles, served in the Army, and played with the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro League. Robinson officially broke the major league “color line” in April 1947 when he put on a uniform, number 42, of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Baseball fans and players reacted to Robinson with everything from unbridled enthusiasm to wariness and open hostility, but he soon ...
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A Modern and Quite Precise Depiction of America (or the Fourth Part of the World)
In 1554, Diego Gutiérrez was appointed principal cosmographer to the king of Spain in the Casa de la Contratación. The crown commissioned the Casa to produce a large-scale map of the western hemisphere, often called the “fourth part of the world.” The purpose of the map was to assert Spain’s claims to new world territories against the rival claims of Portugal and France. Spain claimed all lands south of the Tropic of Cancer, which is shown prominently. The map was engraved by the famous Antwerp engraver Hieronymus Cock, who ...
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Arena Circus (2001), Khabarovsk, Russia
This photograph of the Khabarovsk State Circus in Gagarin Park was taken in 2001 by Dr. William Brumfield, American photographer and historian of Russian architecture, as part of the "Meeting of Frontiers" project at the Library of Congress. Founded in 1858 as a military outpost, Khabarovsk (population over 600,000) is strategically located at the confluence of the Ussuri and Amur rivers near the Chinese border. As one of the most important Russian cities in the Far East, Khabarovsk has a broad array of cultural institutions, but until the early ...
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![Arrival of Emigrants [i.e. Immigrants], Ellis Island](https://content.wdl.org/35/thumbnail/1461870270/192x192.jpg)
Arrival of Emigrants [i.e. Immigrants], Ellis Island
This film, by Gottfried Wilhelm "Billy" Bitzer of the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, was among the first films of this accomplished cameraman. It is reminiscent of contemporary films of Ellis Island shot by the Edison Manufacturing Company. It depicts scenes at the Immigration Depot and a nearby dock on Ellis Island. It appears to show, first, a group of immigrants lined up to board a vessel leaving the island, then another group arriving at the island and being directed off of the dock and into the depot by a ...
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Ancient Assyria Divided into Syria, Mesopotamia, Babylonia, and Assyria
Little is known about the French mapmaker Philippe de La Rue. He was associated with the pioneering French cartographer Nicolas Sanson, and specialized in Biblical themes. In 1651, he published La Terre sainte en six cartes géographiques (The Holy Land in six maps), the first collection of maps laid out in a chronological sequence around a unifying theme. La Rue’s goal was to trace the history of the world “from the origins to the present.” The six maps cover the land of Canaan and the Exodus, the Promised Land ...
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Portable Atlas, or, the New Theater of War in Europe
Daniel de la Feuille was a watchmaker, goldsmith, engraver, and bookseller in Amsterdam in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. He was also a prolific mapmaker. In this “portable atlas,” de la Feuille documented the intricacies of the War of Spanish Succession (1701-14), which began after the Habsburg king of Spain, Charles II, died and left his kingdom to Philip, the Duke of Anjou and the grandson of the French Bourbon king, Louis XIV. Worried that France’s Sun King intended to dominate Europe by consolidating his power in ...
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Austria-Hungary
The Austro-Hungarian Empire (1867-1918) was a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual empire governed by a dual monarchy that exercised Habsburg rule across Europe’s second largest sovereign territory. Although considered a Great Power in the concert of European nations, the empire was internally divided by internecine quarrels among its national minorities and ultimately broke up under the strains of World War I. This 1906 Rand McNally map shows the empire in the decade before its dissolution. William Rand founded the company that became Rand McNally in Chicago in 1856, initially to print guidebooks ...
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Emigrant's Map and Guide for Routes to North America
This map by Gotthelf Zimmermann reflects the importance of German immigration to North America in the mid-19th century. When the Revolution of 1848 failed to produce desired reforms within the German confederation, droves of disillusioned Germans turned their sights abroad. Maps such as this helped show them the way. At the time, land in the United States was cheap, fertile, and plentiful, making it an ideal choice for immigrants eager to establish new settlements and to begin new lives. German communities in the United States became so prevalent that on ...
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Peking
The German East-Asian Expeditionary Corps was sent to China in 1900 by Kaiser Wilhelm II as part of the eight-nation (Britain, France, Germany, Russia, United States, Japan, Austria, Italy) operation to suppress the Boxer Rebellion against foreign influence in China. The German force arrived in Beijing in mid-October, by which time the conflict was largely over. In late 1900-early 1901, the corps engaged in a series of brutal punitive expeditions designed to end Boxer resistance in the countryside and force China to sign a peace treaty with Germany. This detailed ...
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Chronicle of Knights in Armor
This book on the proper mode of conduct for a knight was written in French in around 1410 by Christine de Pisan, Europe's first prolific and respected female author. It was translated into English and printed by William Caxton (1422?-91) in 1489 at the behest of Henry VII, who wished to make it available to English soldiers. The book contained not only rules of conduct, such as how a victorious knight should treat a prisoner of war, but also practical information that Pisan had gleaned from several classical ...
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Boundary Between Turkey and Armenia: As Determined by Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States of America
The disintegration of the Ottoman and Russian empires at the end of World War I gave birth to a number of new states. In May 1918, Eastern Armenia, formerly part of the Russian Empire, declared itself an independent republic. In April 1920, the victorious Allied Powers, dismantling the Ottoman Empire, directed that Western Armenia be attached to the new republic and appointed U.S. President Woodrow Wilson to arbitrate the boundary between Turkey (successor to the Ottoman Empire) and Armenia. In November 1920, Wilson set a boundary based on a ...
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British Empire Throughout the World, Exhibited in One View
John Bartholomew and Co. was a mapmaking firm established in Edinburgh, Scotland, by John Bartholomew, Sr. (1805-61). His son, John Bartholomew, Jr. (1831-93), carried on the business. In the 1830s, the firm secured the commission to produce the maps in the Encyclopedia Britannica, which it held for the next 90 years. The business grew in the late 19th century as the British Empire expanded abroad and educational opportunity increased at home, driving up demand for maps. Among the cartographic innovations attributed to the firm were the use of red to ...
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Campaigns of the Hesse-Darmstadt Contingent Under the First Empire
During the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century, many Germans fought on the side of the French Empire. After Napoleon defeated Austria and Russia in the December 1805 Battle of Austerlitz, he grouped 16 German states that were part of the Holy Roman Empire into a French-controlled Confederation of the Rhine. He then dissolved the Holy Roman Empire. The states that were members of the confederation were compelled to supply military units and soldiers to Napoleon’s armies. This map and the accompanying table show the military engagements in ...
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Cape of Good Hope
John Arrowsmith (1790-1873) was best known for the 1834 publication London Atlas of Universal Geography, widely considered among the best European sources of maps at the time. In 1810 he had joined the mapmaking firm of his uncle Aaron Arrowsmith, one of the premier publishers of the day, known for rendering the latest geographical findings into impressively detailed maps. Arrowsmith was a founding member of the Royal Geographic Society, which awarded him its gold medal in 1863 for his maps of Australia, North America, Africa, and India. Arrowsmith’s 1842 ...
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Map of the Straits of Magellan and Part of the Land of Fire, Prepared in 1786
This composite map of the 1785-86 scientific expedition to the Strait of Magellan under the command of Antonio de Córdoba (1740?-1811) represents the first comprehensive study of the region. The map includes references to ports, bays, channels, and other natural features, a keyed legend, and a detailed explanation and notes. Córdoba was a commander (teniente general) in the Spanish Navy who participated in various battles, campaigns, and scientific expeditions throughout the Spanish Empire and beyond. These activities took him to Havana in 1761, Algiers in 1767, Peru, Chile, and ...
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Map of Barbary, Nigritia and Guinea
Jan Barend Elwe was a publisher and seller of maps who was active in Amsterdam in the period between 1777 and 1815. He is best known for his pocket atlases of the Netherlands (1786) and of Germany (1791). Many of Elwe’s publications were reprints of earlier maps by well-known European cartographers. He reissued several maps by the great French mapmaker Guillaume de l’Isle, including this 1792 map of West and North Africa, which de l’Isle first published in 1707.
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Map of Quantong Province or Lyau-tong and of the Kingdom of Kau-li or Korea: For the Universal History of a Society of Men of Letters
This 1745 map of Korea was prepared for a universal history published in France in the 18th century. Based on an earlier English map, it is mainly in French but includes some names in German, e.g., “Das gelbe Meer” for the Yellow Sea. The notation at the bottom indicates that the prime meridian is set at Ferro Island, otherwise known as El Hierro, the southwestern-most of the Canary Islands. In his Geographia, the ancient astronomer and geographer Ptolemy (87-150) specified that maps should use coordinates stated in degrees, with ...
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Map of Africa
This 1820 map of Africa by Adrien Hubert Brué (1786-1832), one of the leading French cartographers of the day, shows the state of European geographic knowledge of Africa in the early 19th century. Unlike many sedentary mapmakers, the Parisian Brué had traveled widely from a young age, on long sailing voyages to Mauritius in the Indian Ocean and as a midshipman on a French naval expedition along the Australian coast. These voyages damaged Brué’s health, however, so that he returned to Paris where he began to draft maps under ...
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Map of Australia
Adrien Brué (1786-1832) accompanied the French explorer Nicolas Baudin on his 1803 voyage to Australia. Baudin described Brué as “a young man of good disposition and with a zeal for geography,” and named the Brué Reef off Australia’s northwestern coast in his honor. Brué returned to France to become the royal geographer and an important publisher of high-quality maps. The detailed notes on this 1826 map identify its sources. Brué calls Australia “New Holland,” the name first given to it in 1644 by the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman. Only ...
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