Enlightenment cartography projected invented monsters onto unknown regions before real contact

Evidence

The Enlightenment was populated with fantasies about magical lands occupied by foreign monsters, including Muslims. Until James Cook’s second voyage during the years 1772–1775, the myth of terra australis incognito remained a formative influence on European map-making. The theory was that this continent, located in the Southern Hemisphere, balanced the earth so it would not tip over. Even when this myth was disproved, others emerged—for instance, of the perfect humans who lived in Otaheite (accompanied by exaggerated reports of public orgasmic rituals and massive cannibalistic occasions), the giants of Fiji, and other magical places and peoples. Some of the same mythologies are in place today. When I visited Fiji in 1995, one could purchase “flesh platters” (instead of wooden plates) and “cannibal forks” (instead of salad tongs), and the originals of these items, as well as “evidence” of Fiji’s giants, were on display at the museum in Suva. As these examples attest, the South Pacific, “in a debased sense remains, a place of dreams,” and nightmares. The growing popularity of books during this period in part explains why the mythologies have become part of the modern social imaginary. “Culturally arrogant and ethnocentric observations of non-European peoples were given immortality in western culture by the printed page.” Muslim lands were also prone to exaggeration and fantasy. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 369

Categorization

• XREF: The terra australis balancing-the-earth myth is another instance of fear-without-object: an imagined geography dictating mapmaking before any exploration — exactly the projection mechanism the reader is tracing in Muslim imagery.
• SEED: The ‘monsters precede maps’ idea — terra australis as a pre-contact image — could anchor an essay comparing cartographic and theological projection of foreign peoples.
• SHARE: The museum in Suva still displaying ‘cannibal forks’ and ‘flesh platters’ in 1995 is a vivid detail for anyone working on colonial tourism epistemology.