Children's Relief Maps

Two of a boxed set of eight relief maps of the world's continents produced for school children in Germany in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Here the contrast between the relatively flat Australian continent and the high mountain regions of Asia can be clearly seen, providing interesting textural detail. The set also came with flat maps of the regions which provided further information for users.

A relief map, sometimes called a raised-relief map, bas-relief map or terrain model, is a three-dimensional representation, usually of land and other geographical features such as waterways, hills, mountains, wooded areas, etc. By 1860, when this set of relief-maps was produced, geography was an important part of school curricula in European and English language countries and colonies. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as school teaching aids, board games and toys were also produced which aimed to teach local or world geography to children.

Many scholars believe that raised-relief maps existed in China as long ago as the third century BC. Three-dimensional maps were made out of a variety of materials. The Chinese general Ma Yuan created one out of rice in 32 AD. This was a common form of map developed during the Tang Dynasty. Later three dimensional maps were built of wood; a mixture of wood, sawdust, beeswax and wheat paste; or wood and sticky clay. Some of these were very large and could be taken apart like jigsaw puzzles or constructed on hinged boards which could be folded and carried.

In the fourteenth century, the Muslim traveller and scholar, Ibn Battuta, writing about his travels, described a raised-relief map which he saw in Gibraltar. This information was lost as Battuta's writing fell into obscurity so that by 1665, the English writer and diarist, John Evelyn, believed that bas-relief maps and wax models were an entirely new invention from France. Later scholars thought that the first raised-relief map had been created in 1510 AD by Paul Dox. This was a three dimensional representation of Kufstein in Austria.

From the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, European and English exploration had altered perceptions of world geography. Discovery of new lands and seas led to enormous territorial expansion and brought wealth to an increasingly industrialised western world. At the same time however, politically strategic colonisation in pursuit of natural resources and trade advantages, was often accompanied by the destruction of indigenous cultures, people and habitat.

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