Imaging the Past: Cartography and Multicultural Realities of Croatian Borderlands - Cartography: A Tool for Spatial Analysis - page 301

cartographer, was the most prominent figure in promoting Venetian politics regarding the
territorial pretensions on his maps. They were an important instrument for emphasizing the
Venetian conquest over the Ottomans. Coronelli's map of Dalmatia is a general regional
map on a rather small scale. The map charts Venetian Dalmatia, the territory of the Republic
of Dubrovnik, parts of Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia and surrounding lands (Figure 2).
Figure 2. Coronelli's Map of the Kingdom of Dalmatia, La Morlaquie , Bosnia and Serbia …, 1700,
facsimile in [19]. Emphasized by the author.
The whole inland area between the river Sava and the Adriatic is compressed along its
north-south axis. But, on the other hand, the territory of Venetian Dalmatia is
unproportionally vast, especially the inland part. These “distortions” are a testimony to the
expression of state power interests and an approach to the border area; emphasizing and
over-exaggerating its possessions and importance, while ignoring the Ottoman side at the
same time [11]. The rhetoric of the map is accompanied with the well known tool of
expressing the Venetian possession of the Adriatic aquatorial space as “ Mer ou Golfe de
Venise ” and in addition, introducing the “ Mer et Isles de la Dalmatie ”, that as a hydronym
does not really exist apart from the political context of exercising power and control over
Venetian Dalmatia.