opening the abundance of different perceptions in the multicultural realities of the Croatian borderlands. Through a number of examples of the Croatian borderlands, the main aim is to reveal the symbolic layer of the map that leads us into the process of imaging the past, i.e. What one can put into relation here is Habsburg and Venetian cartography. Accordingly, a map could and often did represent an image with multiple layers of meaning and perceptions. Borderlands are typical spaces where a multiplicity of such contacts reflect and produce a multiplicity of perceptions and images.Įarly modern period in Croatian history is burdened with frequent changes of borders between three imperial systems with different religious systems and cultural traditions that have intertwined on the Croatian territory, and consequently reflect different attitudes toward borderlands. Researching past images through maps is of particular interest in multicultural spaces, where a variety of different cultures, religious systems, complex ethnic structures and imperial systems have met. Understood as images, maps can be used on one hand as a tool of disseminating messages, and, on the other hand as a source in analyzing the perceptions of past places, territories and societies. Moreover, maps as images are never neutral or value-free they are all social, political and cultural. They reveal what may be called the spirit of time: philosophical, political, religious and general socio-cultural context.Īs images, maps should be put and studied in the appropriate context, i.e. They are conveyors of meanings, messages and perceptions of the world – and not only of an individual cartographer, but also of common societal and cultural values. Maps understood and considered as social construction of reality have a number of layers, including the symbolic one. Maps always represent much more than merely physical nature and inventory of space. Harley, one can understand a map as a social construction of the world expressed through a medium of cartography, or as a socially constructed image of reality. Recent researches since the end of 20 th century tend to subvert the traditional, positivist model in analyzing the maps, replacing it with one that is grounded in iconological and semiotic theory of the nature of maps. The most usual approach to maps and cartography until recently dealt with its role in presenting a factual statement about geographical reality within the frames of actual survey techniques and skills of a cartographer. Maps have long been central to geographical inquiry.
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