ELEVATION - Maphead - page 67

elite clientele through the confusing world of copperplates and cartouches. Today the bal-
anceofpowerhasswungtothecollector:Icangoonlineandcomparison-shopthecatalogs
of dozens of antiquarians. There are now price guides and standardized condition guides.
It's hard to see this wider spread of information as a problem, but for the dealers, accus-
tomed to their position as gatekeepers of all map lore, it's been a bitter pill to swallow.
“Collectors used to be loyal,” sighs Cohen.
That exclusivity made the rare-map world one of cliquish secrecy, and old habits die
hard, as I learn every time I tell someone in the trade that I'm working on a book about
maps. Stories become as vague as the South American coastline on a Sebastian Münster
map; lips tighten into a single etched line of latitude. Dealers working with wealthy col-
lectors don't want rival sellers finding out about their golden-egg-laying clients and vice
versa. Collectors don't want their personal list of Holy Grails to be widely known, for fear
they'll be quoted higher prices when one comes up for sale. They don't even want you to
know what they already own, and maybe I wouldn't either, if I had pieces of vellum that
each cost more than my first house hanging in my den. Especially if they weren't all in-
sured. “It's almost like the confidential relationship between a psychiatrist and a patient,”
Cohen explains in all seriousness. “I'm limited in what I can say, like someone who's been
indicted of a crime.”
This reticence surprises me at first; in my experience, the main conversational problem
with hobbyists is getting them to shut up about their odd pastime. But map knowledge has
always been guarded with great secrecy. In 1504, King Manuel I of Portugal declared that
anyone leaving his kingdom with a single Portuguese map would receive the death pen-
alty. He did so for the same reason that map dealers keep mum about their clients today: to
protect a trade monopoly. The geopolitical equivalent of the space race at that time was a
“spice race” for Asian cinnamon, pepper, and nutmeg, and Vasco da Gama had just given
PortugalacrucialedgebychartingasearoutetoIndia.KeepingSpaininthedarkabouthis
discoveries was a crucial matter of national security. Likewise, until the dawn of glasnost
in 1988, the KGB was charged with making sure that essentially every detail of every pub-
liclyavailablemapoftheSovietUnionwaswrong. “ Almosteverythingwaschanged ,”said
chief mapmaker Viktor Yashchenko. “On the tourist map of Moscow, only the contours of
the capital are accurate.” Visitors to the city would invariably rely upon the CIA's Moscow
map, the only one that actually got the streets right.
YoumightassumethatfalsifiedmapsareaColdWarrelicthatcouldneversurviveinthe
age of satellite photography, but you'd be wrong. For most of the decade my family lived
in Seoul, we lived less than a mile from Yongsan Garrison, the largest U.S.military install-
ation on the Korean Peninsula. Yongsan is a bustling miniature city, home to more than
seventhousandtroopsstationedinSeoul.Myfamilywasn'tmilitary,butlotsofmyfriends'
parents were, and my mom worked at the high school there, so I spent more time on that
post than many GIsdid. Today,when Ilook at maps ofYongsan onGoogle Earth, little has