# Geography & Domestic Recreation in Early Modern Europe

This lecture explores how world geography shifted from professional knowledge to general interest in 17th- and 18th-century Europe, looking in particular at domestic activities designed to encourage the collection and memorization of geography by non-professionals, including coloring maps and botanical texts and recipes for colors; interactive prints and games; and geographic memorization cards. Beyond an educational pastime, these activities neatly divided the globe into the familiar continental structure of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America; categorizing various human communities into "useful" comparative frameworks. Based on research conducted on Library collection items and in the optical properties laboratory of the Library's Preservation Directorate, using Hyper-Spectral Imaging (HSI) and X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) to identify pigments on printed cartographic images, providing information as to the availability of materials Europeans found necessary for such geographic pastimes.

- Kind: Talk
- Year: 2013
- By: Library Of Congress
- Genres: Education
- Archive: [Library of Congress](https://www.loc.gov/item/2021689240/)
- Licence or status: Rights statement at the Library of Congress (as the archive states it)
- Credit: Library of Congress
- Who can watch: Tweens profiles and older (the archive gives no rating; placed by Invisible Network from its collection and subjects)

[Watch now](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/watch/archive/loc/2021689240?play=1)