Monday, October 23, 2017

Spectacular Map Games


Over the last week I've been having a lot of fun playing with the Leaflet-IIIF plug-in. The plug-in allows you to map museum documents and manuscripts using the Leaflet,js mapping library.

Maps Mania's Spectacular Compendium of Victorian Map Games uses the plug-in to showcase some of the 18th & 19th century map race games owned by the Bodleian Library. These board games were used to entertain children while also teaching a little geography. The geography which was taught was seen from a particluar imperialistic western perspective (or from a distinctly racist perspective on occasion).

All seven games in this Maps Mania collection are race games. The objective in each game was for the players to get around the map board as quickly as possible. Each of these games either came with a 'teetotum' spinner (which players spun to determine the number of moves on the board) or came with dice. Some of the games also came with separate booklets which provided geographical or historical information on some of the locations featured.

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