The Carta Marina of Martin Waldseemüller from 1516 – political geography in context of the struggle for the spices of Southeast India

Abstract

This paper demonstrates that the highly accurate depiction of the Indian Ocean on the Carta marina of Martin Waldseemueller from 1516 is mainly caused by the extremely powerful political and economic interests of the Portuguese Crown and the Upper German-trading companies in the conflict with the Kingdom of Castile over supremacy in the spice trade in India. It is shown that the Portuguese—after reaching the archipelago of the Moluccas before their Iberian rival in 1512—were subsequently most interested in the geographical documentation of the Spice Islands in the Southeast of Asia in order to claim the ownership for this economically extremely important part of the world. Furthermore, the paper aims to raise awareness of the fact that the resulting depiction of America on this map had become completely insignificant from a political point of view because of the changed political conditions in the second decade of the sixteenth century mentioned above. Finally, the cartographical representation will be related to the network of relationships between the Portuguese crown, the Upper German-trading companies and Maximilian I of Habsburg to illustrate the incredibly high correlation between the depiction of the 1516 Carta marina and the political and economic interests of all competitors involved in this commercial model.

Keywords

• waldseemüller
• carta marina
• caveri
• india
• spice islands
• the portuguese crown
• the fugger family
• maximilian i of habsburg
• economical interests