The Amsterdam printmaker and publisher Claes Jansz Visscher produced and sold a wide range of prints, maps, and books, skewing his products towards a local market.¹⁶ The arrival of several competitors from the Southern Netherlands after the Fall of Antwerp in 1585 made quantity and speed of production in the Amsterdam print market more significant. Visscher played this game well: he was a well-organized, all-round print publisher, who distinguished himself by a ‘journalistic approach’ and by fostering his own personal contacts for news sources amongst the members of the Amsterdam urban elite.¹⁷ He had an eye for the latest news and was particularly strong at following and publishing the activities of the States’ army and the Dutch in Europe and overseas.¹⁸

By adding decorative side borders, allegorical cartouches, textual explanations, and vivid depictions of figures and scenes to his maps, Visscher established himself as a storyteller with words and images. He often modified or ‘updated’ his copperplates to offer the most accurate and topical products, explicitly inviting the audience to send him corrections and improvements.¹⁹ His firm was so successful that he had to hire a large number of mostly unidentified assistant engravers and etchers for his workshop, especially from 1625 onwards, which, incidentally, was also the period during which he primarily focused on topical prints and maps.²⁰ We should therefore presume that Claes Jansz Visscher probably did not etch all the maps himself but rather acted as a supervising editor.²¹

At the end of the summer of 1627, Visscher published a news map reporting on the construction of Spanish forts on the Scheldt river banks near Antwerp (fig. 1). The imprint indicates that the original plate was drawn by Josua van den Ende (c. 1584-after 1648).²² The title, ‘Chart of the location of the redoubt at Zandvliet, showing the flooded lands, new accretions and alluvial lands, creeks or channels between Bergen op Zoom and Antwerp’, suggests a traditional, hydrographic river map rather than a story.²³ The word pas-caert, a term usually used for sea charts, remains a mysterious choice.²⁴ The accompanying text sheets narrate events until at least 4 August 1627, when the Spaniards started to build a new fort (St. Martijn) on the salt marsh of Hogenwerf, mentioning the Spanish activities around the village of Zandvliet, including the build-up of troops, ships, and war materials in this area and their failed night-time attack on Zuid-Beveland. All these events are depicted on the map as well.

A few months later, Visscher published a modified version of this map ‘improved with the latest news’, containing the new Dutch fortifications near Lillo built in response to the Spanish presence in this area (fig. 2).²⁵ The accompanying text is expanded with the story of a devastating fire on 2 October which is not depicted on the map. It ends with a cliff-hanger: ‘This what we currently are aware of. Time will tell how this story continues.’²⁶ This designation of time as the driving force behind news events was a common statement adopted by news authors and publishers, comparable to the general claim or rhetorical topos ad vivum (‘from life’, lifelikeness) used by printmakers that does not necessarily imply a direct act of eye-witnessing.²⁷ Visscher’s references to time and progress were probably primarily part of a broader marketing strategy to tease and nurture consumer hunger for news so that people would buy subsequent editions. Nevertheless, it reminded readers that the information was topical, and it anticipated a continuation – a phenomenon interpreted by Michiel van Groesen as a ‘culture of anticipation’ that shaped the rhythm and the circulation of news in the early modern Low Countries.²⁸

In early 1628, a new map was published, although it was not a new map state because only the letterpress text was updated while the copperplate was left untouched. The added text contains the story of a devastating flood on 9 December 1627 that completely ruined both the fortifications and the plans of the Spanish. The flood itself appears on the map much later, in the next map state from 1631 (fig. 3). Visscher, possibly in a hurry to be the first to publish this event, chose to only adapt the text sheets.

It was not until the Battle of the Slaak that Visscher published another update, the third map state (figs. 3–5). On 10 September 1631, the Spanish governess of the Southern Netherlands, Archduchess Isabella, and Marie de’ Medici sent off the Spanish armada. The fleet, comprising some eighty ships and commanded by the Marquis of Aytona and Jan of Nassau-Siegen, sailed from Antwerp toward Bergen op Zoom. The route is marked by a dotted line in Visscher’s map, following three major successive confrontations between the Dutch and the Spanish. At the point in the Westerschelde indicated with an ‘A’, the Spanish armada was attacked by some States’ warships on 11 September. Several Spanish ships ran aground and were left behind. Dutch reinforcements approached the Spanish ships the next day again at ‘B’, southwest of Tholen, where the final Battle of the Slaak continued for three hours until the morning. It ended at ‘C’, just north of Philipsland, where the States’ fleet drove their enemies into the Slaak, forcing them into a dense fog. In terror and panic, the Spanish soldiers jumped into the water and tried to get ashore (fig. 6), where the Dutch were waiting to kill them. This decisive final scene is portrayed by the print at the top.

To be able to tell the full story, Visscher added extra map sheets printed from new copperplates on the left side of the original map, effectively adding the Slaak waterway to the map. Also, a French translation was added to the text sheets, targeting an international audience (fig. 5). Strikingly, Visscher chose not to remove old events. Instead, the flood of 9 December 1627 (fig. 7) was added and the newly etched words ‘anno 1627’ next to the Spanish venture on Zuid-Beveland clarified the chronology of the two separate routes. Visscher carefully layered his map by assembling and composing various moments and narratives from the present and recent past. The news map not only represented the recent stories from present time but provided insights into the ‘background stories’ as well.

This narrative-cartographical strategy of layering and assembling old and new events was continued in the following three map states of 1632, 1638, and 1640. The fourth map state (1632) (fig. 8) shows how the States’ army captured Spanish forts and inundated the polders near Antwerp (fig. 9). Again, elements belonging to older events were added: when re-etching the Flemish polders and waterways below the Nieuwen Doel polder, the dotted line marking the 1631 Spanish route is accentuated by a new procession of ships bearing crossed Spanish flags (fig. 10). Some of the 1632 copies have map sheets printed from new copperplates attached at the top and the right, extending the map image to a larger geographical area including the towns of Roosendaal and Mechelen. Strikingly, no events are represented on these new sheets. They seem to have been a compositional addition designed to shift the events toward the centre of the map image (fig. 8).

The fifth map state (fig. 11) was probably issued on the occasion of the Battle of Kallo (13-21 June 1638) but shows merely minor adaptations: the Land of Waas, around fort Kallo, is mapped in more detail, and the names of some forts that played a key role in this event are added (Steenschans, Kalloschans, and Beverbroeck) (fig. 12). The Battle of Kallo had possibly led to new, more accurate maps of that area that Visscher could use to improve his own, existing map. Yet it lacks the depiction of scenes of the battle while – once again – a new scene belonging to an older event is added elsewhere, namely the several Spanish ships that were stranded on their way to the Slaak in 1631 (fig. 13). Finally, in 1640, Visscher published his last map state (fig. 14). The fighting ships at Kruisschans (1632) are removed. The narrative elements from 1627, 1631, and 1638, such as the routes and stranded ships belonging to the Battle of the Slaak, remain on the map. Of the fourth, fifth, and sixth map states, there are no accompanying text sheets known.

Looking at the six different map states Visscher published (tab. 1), we can recognize five different ways in which Visscher represented temporal information on his maps: marking moments; marking duration; adding accompanying letterpress texts; temporal generalization; and the layering of time. The first two strategies are those that Vasiliev also distinguished as two of the five time-on-maps categories. The first is ‘marking moments’ using time labels.²⁹ Visscher stressed some of the narrative elements on the map by adding labels next to points in geographic space, indicating the date and explaining what happened there, such as ‘according to this dotted line the sloops came to the Lant van der Goes’ (first map state), ‘according to this dotted line the fleet of Her Highness came on 12 September 1631’ (third map state), and ‘anno 1627’ (fourth map state).³⁰ As Vasiliev notes, time labels ‘provide the starting and ending times of the event and allow the viewer to judge its duration in time, while the dotted line portrays the location and duration of the event in space’.³¹

Vasiliev’s second strategy applied by Visscher is the dotted line portraying the spatial duration of an event. The beginning and end are indicated by the use of consecutive letters added to the map image (A, B, and C). The letters are elucidated by the accompanying text – the third strategy, which is much more explicit and elaborate than the map itself regarding time and chronology. It contains indications of the moments of the day (‘in the morning’, ‘at eight o’clock’), simultaneity (‘meanwhile’), the order of events, and tempo (actions happening with speed, delay, or haste). The viewer has to closely read the map in conjunction with the text to be able to interpret the events that are not explained by time labels.

By adding time labels, dotted lines, and text to the map, Visscher allowed viewers to judge the duration and chronology of some of the events. In doing so, he was inevitably guilty of ‘temporal generalization’, the fourth – rather implicit – strategy.³² By selecting which moments to include and which ones to disregard, he simplified the map narrative. A comparison of Visscher’s series of maps with a series of ‘updated’ maps by his Antwerp colleague Pieter ii Verbiest helps demonstrate how such a selection of events is a conscious choice and a highly partial practice.³³ In Verbiest’s seven subsequent map states, published between 1631 and 1638 (tab. 2), no attention is paid to the 1631 Battle of the Slaak, a serious loss for the southern provinces, although the 1638 Battle of Kallo, won by the Flemish-Habsburg army, is vividly and elaborately portrayed on the sixth map state from 1638 (fig. 15). Strikingly, that same year Verbiest published a successive map state in which nearly all the events pertaining to the Battle of Kallo are removed (fig. 16).³⁴ The ships heading towards Kallo remain on the map and the tangle of ships near Lillo remain there as well, but they lack context and meaning.

This example leads us to the final strategy that Visscher applied in his series of ‘updated’ maps, the layering of time. With each updated map state, he removed certain parts, added new parts, and left other elements unmodified. The juxtaposition of past narratives with present ones enabled the viewers to track changes over time, especially when they compared copies of various states.³⁵ They were reminded of the successive, progressive character of the maps by such phrases as ‘time will tell how this story continues’. Visscher’s fellow mapmakers in Amsterdam adopted similar techniques, such as Baptista van Doetecum, who produced a series of updated map states of the siege of Ostend.³⁶ Colleagues in Antwerp used the same strategy for maps about the same events. Courantier Abraham Verhoeven, for instance, who worked for the Spaniards, published a news map of the surroundings of Zandvliet on 24 March 1628 (fig. 17), including a legend noting that the ‘enemy [the States’ army] is currently busy building a new fort near Lillo’.³⁷ In 1632, Verhoeven published an updated map state, adding a second ‘layer’ of events from 1632 (fig. 18).³⁸ None of the narrative elements from 1628 were removed, but new events were added to the map image and the legend: the Dutch capture of the Kruisschans, fort St. Philippe, and fort St. Jacobs in June 1632, portrayed by a battle scene in the polders near Antwerp (not yet flooded).³⁹ Although the legend (fig. 19) describes these forts being taken by the Dutch, the map only portrays the fight, disregarding the outcome: the forts still bear their Spanish crossed flags.

Comparing Verbiest’s and Verhoeven’s maps with Visscher’s maps on the same events reveals how they applied the same narrative-cartographical strategies differently: Verbiest’s series disregards the lost Battle of the Slaak and celebrates the won Battle of Kallo, while Verhoeven seems reluctant to portray the Dutch capture of Spanish forts on his map. Northern and Southern map publishers were clearly aware of all these events, but did not pay them equal attention. Visscher in turn paid barely any attention to the lost Battle of Kallo. Visscher, Verbiest, and Verhoeven certainly had a sense of momentum, of what news their audience was willing to consume, and shared an unwillingness to eliminate history completely. They either consciously left narrative elements of past events behind on the map (considering that they possibly did this for the sake of convenience), or – in the case of Visscher – stressed ‘old news’ by consciously highlighting old parts with textual or pictorial details.

Between 1627 and 1640, Visscher’s copperplate was altered five times (tab. 1). The main reason for these new map states was the incoming news of developments in the southwestern delta, as well as the demand for information on past events or ‘background stories’.⁴⁰ This information would eventually reach people through various media, such as newspapers, pamphlets, periodicals, letters, almanacs, and oral communication. Historians agree that many early modern European cities witnessed an information and communication revolution in which knowledge was anything but scarce.⁴¹ Competing with all these other news sources, mapmakers toiled under great time pressure, as ‘accurate, up-to-date maps simply were the most sensational form of war news available, and the quickest ones to appear were sure to be distributed widely’.⁴² Map publishers had to balance being the first to publish the latest information with the need to produce high-quality products. In this context, Visscher’s practices of recycling available cartographic materials and modifying existing copperplates were necessary to keep his business vital.⁴³ Temporality was not only represented on his maps but was also a driving force behind his maps. This was a reciprocal affair, as Visscher in his turn also provided the market with information, shaping the rhythm of news (the frequency in which information concerning recent events was available) and stimulating the demand for topical stories.

Because of convenience and time pressure, most news map publishers based their designs on existing maps. The designer of Visscher’s first state from 1627, Josua van den Ende, was born in Antwerp and active as a printmaker in Amsterdam in the period 1604-1643, working for the Blaeu family and for Claes Jansz Visscher.⁴⁴ He was more an engraver than a land surveyor or mapmaker, and probably worked from one or more existing maps himself. There are several maps made by other mapmakers in the same period which exhibit storytelling elements similar to Van den Ende’s design.

The Middelburg printer, engraver, and publisher Samuel de Swaef (1597-1636), who worked in Bergen op Zoom, published two maps in August 1627 for which he was paid six guilders by the city on 27 September.⁴⁵ Each map presents storytelling elements that seem to relate to Visscher’s map. The title of his first map notes that it shows ‘the enemy’s army at Zandvliet, between Bergen op Zoom and Lillo, with the forts and canal made by them in the month of August 1627’ and has an orientation quite similar to Visscher’s: the north is left, Bergen-op-Zoom in the upper left corner, and Antwerp in the lower right (fig. 20). The dotted line with the lettering ‘the route of the enemy’s sloops’ corresponds particularly closely to Visscher’s dotted line portraying the route which the Spanish ships sailed and its explanatory label (fig. 21) ‘along here came the sloops’.⁴⁶ It also portrays the Spanish venture to Zuid-Beveland by a crowd of ‘enemy sloops’ (viants sloepen) that corresponds to Visscher’s depiction of this scene. The second map (fig. 22) shows fort Hogenwerf being built by the Spanish (which began on 4 August, according to Visscher), indicated by the legend (A) as the salt marsh of the enemy (is s’viants schorre). It has a completely different orientation from that of the first map by De Swaef: the north is right instead of left. Also, the procession of Spanish troops marching from Antwerp in the direction of Zandvliet is clearly shown at the front, just like Visscher’s detailed depiction of this action (fig. 7). The title explicitly states that De Swaef himself was responsible for the drawing, etching, and printing of the map, though the publisher was Rombout van Hamerstede from Bergen op Zoom.

A news map published by Antwerp courantier Abraham Verhoeven has the same orientation as De Swaef’s second map and also closely resembles Visscher’s maps. Verhoeven held the privilege of publishing (first-hand) news about Habsburg Spanish military events and victories in the Southern Netherlands and distributed highly detailed information about the developments in Zandvliet fortnightly in his Nieuwe Tijdinge.⁴⁷ He also produced news maps. In 1627 he published one such map, portraying the construction of Spanish forts around Zandvliet in detail from a Habsburg perspective (fig. 23).⁴⁸ It does not show the Spanish venture to Zuid-Beveland, but the contents of the accompanying texts are almost identical to the ones accompanying Visscher’s first state.⁴⁹ Verhoeven’s text contains much more detailed spatial information, for example about sheep farming in the area, which suggests that Verhoeven was the first publishing this text. Visscher, while copying the text, might have considered this information irrelevant for his own news map focusing on the events.

Unfortunately, we have too little evidence to draw clear conclusions about which maps were published first and who followed whose example. However, De Swaef and Verhoeven both worked much closer to the location of the events than the Amsterdam-based Visscher and were semi-officially supported by the authorities. It is perhaps safer to assume, therefore, that their maps contained the original information and served as sources for Visscher (and Van den Ende), instead of the other way around.

Besides using existing maps, Visscher’s workshop may also have recycled available textual news. Mapmakers could rely on newspapers, such as the Amsterdam Courante uyt Italien, Duytslandt, &c., which kept a large audience informed about the increasing Spanish presence around Zandvliet from September 1627 onwards. According to the newspaper, the Spanish were clearly ‘up to something’.⁵⁰ Visscher possibly used such reports as sources, since his new map states correspond with the updates presented in the newspaper. On 4 December 1627, for instance, the Courante reported the big fire of 2 October and the recovery that was needed (represented in the text accompanying the second map state, 1627), and the Courante of 22 January 1628 told of the Spanish soldiers that drowned during the flood (represented in the second map state, 1628).⁵¹ The printed texts accompanying the Battle of the Slaak news map (third map state) refer to a ‘longer printed list’ of the spoils of war ‘that is too long to narrate here’.⁵² Visscher must have meant the almost identical pamphlets published by the widow of Middelburg printer Symon Moulert and by Jan van Hilten (the publisher of the Courante) in Amsterdam, including a description of the events, an extensive inventory of the captured ships and goods, and a list of prisoners.⁵³ Furthermore, Visscher may have consulted one of the many other news materials, eye-witness accounts, and oral communications concerning the Battle of the Slaak that were available in the Dutch Republic.

When Visscher published his map of the Battle of the Slaak, he experienced some competition in the Dutch news market. Another individual news map that was not a direct imitation of Visscher’s was engraved by Crispijn van de Queborn and published in The Hague by Barend Langenes (fig. 24). Both text and map narrate the background of the battle, also reflecting on the Dutch activities in towns such as Bergen op Zoom and Waalwijk. The map is oriented with north at the bottom, which made it possible to push the most important scene to the foreground, namely the Spanish ships trapped in the Slaak. The Spanish soldiers drowning while trying to make it ashore in the fog are clearly visible.

When comparing maps and other media of the Battle of the Slaak (such as a satirical print by Crispijn van de Passe and an allegorical print by Daniel van den Bremden), it becomes clear that the final ‘fog scene’ is – literally – put in the foreground as a key motif in the storytelling material concerning the Battle of the Slaak.⁵⁴ The scene is also vividly portrayed on some of the – at least six known – triumphal medals that were made of the event, displaying cartographic images of the battle.⁵⁵ One silver medal (fig. 25) directly reflects Visscher’s map from 1631 and its depiction of the fog scene (compare with fig. 6). Much effort has been made to include the spatial and cartographical elements, such as the places Nieu Vosmaer and Orangien on the right. The verso side celebrates the Prince of Orange.⁵⁶ Visscher, vividly displaying this moment on his news map, possibly invented the scene as a climax to the narrative, or at least copied it from other printmakers and reinforced it by including it on his map. As such, he played a key role in how various media presented the story of the Battle of the Slaak and which temporal and narrative elements were selected.

The various map states (or map updates) provided by Visscher (tab. 1) imply a complex publication history. Things become even more complicated when we consider the various copies of these states that circulated. Many of these copies lack the initial accompanying texts or are attached to the ‘wrong’ texts (i.e., not the texts that initially accompanied a specific map state).⁵⁷ Apparently, Visscher carefully diversified his products: he sometimes added extra map or text sheets, but not always. It is possible that he asked a higher price for an extended variant, letting consumers decide which version they preferred. In some cases, particularly the self-compiled atlases, it is also possible that later owners of the maps added or removed sheets.

For example, a copy of Visscher’s 1640 sixth map state is part of the famous composite atlas Blaeu-Van der Hem, produced between 1662 and 1678, of which the unique, extravagantly coloured copy is preserved in Vienna.⁵⁸ This version has the extra map and text sheets of the Battle of the Slaak, belonging to the 1631 third state. The same is true of the copy in the royal collection of Cassiano dal Pozzo, which is the 1632 fourth map state to which the 1631 map and text sheets are also attached.⁵⁹ In both cases, the temporality of the maps regarding their function and use changed: the maps were not consumed as topical prints, because the events were from a more distant past. They were consumed as memorial or history maps, and as collector’s items. Such an extended glorious edition of the map was perhaps more likely to be included in a luxurious collector’s atlas. It was not an uncommon practice to collect news maps in albums. A well-known Dutch example is the Kittensteyn album, part of the Rotterdam Atlas van Stolk collection, which has been characterised as a ‘pictorial history book’.⁶⁰

News maps could also enjoy a second life when they were incorporated as illustrations in history books or in atlases.⁶¹ Willem Jansz Blaeu made a very similar but latinized version of Visscher’s second state, which he included in Hugo Grotius’s book Grollae obsidio (1629) (fig. 26). This book mainly recounts the siege of Groenlo (20 July-9 August 1627) but also discusses the developments taking place around Zandvliet. It served as a public tribute to Stadtholder Frederick Henry, and Grotius planned to officially present his work to him.⁶² The volume reached a larger audience than just Frederick Henry, if we are to believe the correspondence between Grotius and his brother. Prior to the Battle of Kallo, led by Count William of Nassau-Siegen in June 1638, the maps from Grollae obsidio were apparently ‘in everybody’s hands’, as people tried to follow the news about the progress of the States’ army.⁶³ Again, the temporality of the maps regarding their function and use changed as they were consumed in a different context relating to different events.

Several decades later, the same imitation by Blaeu appears in Isaac Commelin’s historical account of Frederick Henry’s victories published by Jodocus Janssonius, Frederick Hendrick van Nassauw Prince van Orangien (Amsterdam 1651). The map description inserted in the book, however, is not very accurate. It claims to depict the events of 1632, but the last event shown is the flood of 9 December 1627, thus telling readers only half the story.⁶⁴

From 1630 until about 1670, Blaeu’s imitation also appeared in the multi-volume atlases of the firm.⁶⁵ The text on the verso side of the atlas map is based on the text from Grotius’s Grollae obsidio. Blaeu’s rivals Janssonius and Hondius, who competed with Blaeu, could not stay behind.⁶⁶ First, they included an original map by Visscher (the 1627 second map state) in the appendix of their atlas.⁶⁷ From 1636, however, Janssonius replaced Visscher’s original with his own imitation (fig. 27).⁶⁸ Strikingly, he did not simply copy one of the existing maps by Blaeu or Visscher but composed his own adapted version, assembling elements of Blaeu’s map (such as the Latin legend) and elements of Visscher’s 1631 and 1632 maps (such as the Battle of the Slaak and the flooded polder next to Antwerp). Like Commelin’s book, the story of the battle is only half depicted. The dotted line remains meaningless as it moves toward nothing (the Slaak is not part of the map). From 1636 to 1680 this copy would appear in several Mercator-Hondius-Janssonius world atlases.

In 1634, 1637, and 1645, Visscher published his own atlases of the Netherlands as well.⁶⁹ They mainly consist of his regional maps alternated with news maps. The 1632 fourth state of his Scheldt story map is part of the 1634 and 1637 volumes, and the 1640 sixth state is part of the 1645 edition. Visscher incorporated the latest available state into each of his atlas editions.⁷⁰ In all Visscher’s atlases, however, the additional plates – the text sheets as well as the additional map sheets at the left, top or right – were removed, reducing the map’s temporal relevance. This practice suggests that these additional sheets were only attached by Visscher to his maps for journalistic and storytelling purposes, contexts in which the temporal aspects were considered more important.

In sum, these circulating copies and imitations show that the ways in which the maps were presented to (and possibly interpreted by) the public varied from copy to copy – and these variations were not always due to interventions by the mapmaker or map publisher, but also by those by the users. Some of the copies were evidently presented as news maps, while some circulated as memorial maps in composite atlases or occurred as geographical maps in atlases. In the case of the latter, we have witnessed that the dynamic, temporal aspects of the story maps were reduced and fragmented. Presented as isolated maps, in the context of other static, regional maps, their narratives have become less meaningful and temporally situated. In historical books such as Commelin’s celebration of Frederick Henry’s victories, the maps were similarly reduced to static illustrations of a specific historical discourse presented in the book. At the same time, Visscher’s temporal information and map narratives became interwoven with geography and history. With each copy that was distributed and consumed, the events became part of the wider geographical and historical landscape, and were carved deeper into the collective memory and historical consciousness of the viewers.

By analysing Visscher’s series of updated maps of the surroundings of Zandvliet, as well as the maps produced by the other mapmakers, this article has argued that temporality is key to story mapping and news cartography in terms of representation, production, circulation, and (intended) use. Early modern mapmakers actively searched for ways to add various aspects of time to their maps and invited users to engage with these temporal qualities. However, the comparison of Visscher’s practices with those of other mapmakers shows that not every mapmaker handled time and temporality in the same way. Visscher’s choices relating to ‘temporal generalization’ in particular are completely different from Verbiest’s and Verhoeven’s. Their selection of temporal information implies different narratives, highlighting specific – positive – events and privileging some moments over others. My analysis also confirms the hypothesis that the representation of narrative and temporality is highly partial and political. Further research can help to elucidate whether Visscher’s choices should be understood as propagandistic efforts to actively sway public opinion, or whether he simply responded to consumer demand for a pro-Dutch perspective on the events. In doing so, we may also better understand if adding temporality should be considered as a way to increase a map’s credibility and authority (as with the phrase ad vivum), convincing the readers of their accuracy and faithfulness.

Regarding the production of the maps, the moments of production are defined by events from ‘real-time’ and the rhythm of the news, in combination with time pressure on the news market and public demand for the latest news. Widely celebrated events were far more likely to be presented on news maps than events that more or less stayed under the radar. We can observe practices similar to those in the ‘regular’ textual newspapers, such as anticipating a continuation of events. News maps should therefore be considered as news publications, entangled in the early modern Dutch media landscape and contributing to the culture of anticipation, the sense of ‘contemporaneity’, and a ‘shared present’ just like other news media did.

In order to understand how temporal information on the map was presented to the audience, the context of circulation and use is also of importance. With his news maps, Visscher published elaborate and topical maps, applying several techniques and strategies to add temporal information, movement, and narratives. His maps seemed to have been quite popular and influential; they circulated widely in the Dutch Republic, and were repeatedly copied or imitated by other publishers, appearing in various history books, commercial atlas editions, and composite atlases. However, when incorporated in books or atlases the temporal information and narratives these maps originally included were presented in a fragmented manner, losing much of the meaning they had when they were part of an elaborate news publication with accompanying texts. The narratives were probably consumed as static, historical, spatial facts rather than as dynamic, topical news stories. As a result, time in story maps was conceived in various ways, depending on the demands, preferences, and questions of publishers and consumers.

Besides depicting the ‘now’ and the ‘present’, news maps also commemorated older events. While the Battle of Kallo (1638) was neglected on Visscher’s maps, the story of the Battle of the Slaak (1631) was highlighted in his maps until 1640. Visscher’s map narratives found their way into atlases, albums, print collections, medals, and history books, turning the battle into a canonical event in Dutch history. These practices of either highlighting or removing events from the landscape, and of juxtaposing ‘old’ stories with ‘new’ ones, seems to be specific for early modern story mapping. It also distinguishes news maps from, for instance, the more ephemeral newspapers, and makes these sources particularly interesting for studying the relationship between news and memory.

In sum, studying Visscher’s updated news maps offers a vital contribution to the history of temporalities and historical consciousness, as these sources demonstrate that in premodern times temporality reflected much more than merely an idea of progress, as Koselleck once argued. Instead, time was a highly complex and diverse concept, manifesting itself in multiple temporalities that were sometimes even juxtaposed, similar to how Nicholas Scott Baker has characterized the conception of the time and the future by Renaissance Italians ‘not as a river but as a delta, diverging into many branches and channels.’⁷¹ The metaphor of the delta comes to life in the story maps of Scheldt river delta, where the present similarly coexisted with the past, and news coexisted with history. Visscher anticipated forthcoming events in the area, layered his maps, and transformed them into spatiotemporal patchworks, partially overlapping the landscape and obscuring or highlighting certain historical events. Visscher thus evoked the spatial and narrative imagination of his readers, inviting them to navigate space and time, and to travel between the past, present, and even the future.