A special book was published at the end of 2014, if only because of its size:the enormous Forest Atlas of Cultural Heritage has 416 pages. Three years ago there was also the even thicker (576 pages) Forest atlas of the history of the Netherlands. Fortunately, no musts for the first graders who are already carrying a fracture. But are they really for history buffs? Or is one atlas enough? A good time to put the books side by side.
If you have both atlases in front of you, you can get greedy, so be careful. They are luxury editions (reflected in the price of 119.95 euros) with a hard cover and a thick cardboard box around it. But don't history and cultural heritage largely overlap? To get a good idea of this, we compare the design and content of both atlases. But first, a little more about the newest of the two, The Bosatlas of Cultural Heritage .
Third of experts
The new atlas has not become an exhaustive reference work, but that was never the goal, according to Cees van 't Veen, director of the Cultural Heritage Agency (RCE). Then what? 'A clearly presented overview of the diversity of our cultural past', is the statement in the atlas. Experts from the RCE have worked on this atlas together with a whole group of experts from the museum and academic world. The content is fine, even without there being no room to be complete. The chapters are clearly written and although they are concise, they contain a lot of instructive information. The atlas has already achieved that goal.
Layout of the atlas
The atlas deals with our cultural heritage on the basis of four themes, from tangible to intangible. In addition, the chapters are organized as chronologically as possible, starting with the oldest forms up to modern times. The themes are Landscapes, Labour, Facilities and Culture &Governance. Through the atlas we look at our ancestors' attempts to shape the landscape, how they worked, lived, moved and tried to defend themselves. How they lived together, looked after each other and played sports and partied together.
Through this combination of theme and chronology, the new atlas places history nicely in context. This makes the reader realize how long everyday actions, institutions and well-known names (of department stores, for example) have actually been around. History falls into place and is no longer a loose sand of facts and trivia.
The atlas will increase the historical awareness of the readers:cultural heritage is not a distant past, but what is left of that past and how we deal with it now. Not only interesting for lovers of cultural heritage and history, but for everyone. Because how fascinating is it to see how vastly different your own world is from the world of your grandparents' childhood? While on the other hand there is an unexpected amount to recognize and similarities to be seen.
Great photos and infographics
For each chapter, the Forest Atlas of Cultural Heritage . outlines a bird's-eye view of the developments associated with the theme and add matching (page-wide) photos and clarifying maps and infographics ('how does...?') next to it. That is what this Bosatlas does very well:it frequently portrays the cultural heritage that illustrates our history. This is an important difference with the history atlas.
The emphasis is on buildings and especially buildings that are still there today. The latter have been masterfully photographed by Karel Tomeï of Flying Camera (see image with the cover). At the back of the atlas is a map with the locations of all these aerial photos. The photos are not only beautiful, the expression is not for nothing 'a picture is worth a thousand words'. This in itself is reason enough to want the Bosatlas of cultural heritage, even if you already have the atlas of history.
Each chapter is concluded with a list of striking monuments and a map of the Netherlands with the locations of the treated heritage objects. In addition to the four themes mentioned above (divided into fifteen chapters), the atlas pays attention to commemoration and heritage beyond our borders.
And what about the history atlas?
The Forest Atlas of the history of the Netherlands from 2011 deals with what the title suggests:Dutch history. Divided into chronological chapters, from prehistory to post-1960s. Political-political history receives the most attention, especially because it is easy to represent in maps. Because this Bosatlas also differs from an ordinary history book in this:it is packed with illustrative maps (more than 1500). For each chapter, the atlas covers several pages with maps, with an emphasis on society in addition to politics (e.g. religion and education).
Each chapter starts with a page of clear timelines that give an overview of the events in the period in question. The development of the landscape and the fight against water are also discussed. All subjects as we are used to from the Bosatlas and the design of the maps is also known. Finally, each chapter shows the places and monuments that still remind us of the period in question. In other words:cultural heritage is also discussed in this atlas, it is just arranged differently and portrayed less beautifully.
And the winner is…
For those who go for historical information, the Bosatlas of the history of the Netherlands the better choice of the two. It is larger (but still not complete) and also shows historical traces in the various Dutch landscapes and physical remains such as dolmens, castles, mills and delta works, on map or in photo.
The Forest Atlas of Cultural Heritage on the other hand, history deals primarily with themes and only then chronologically. In this way she places history better in context. This gives us a better idea of what history has had an influence on and what has emerged from it. The new atlas is not complete and does not pretend to be, but it does provide a nice overview of the life of our ancestors and the traditions they honored.
Due to the luxurious version, both atlases are extremely suitable as coffee table books, but especially the Forest atlas of cultural heritage is a nice scrolling copy (with the bonus of good readable pieces of text). Ideally you would like both atlases as an enthusiast, but if I had to choose I would go for the new Bosatlas. The visual material is decisive here, I read the historical details elsewhere. The Bosatlas of history was not complete in that either.