Tabula Indiae Orientalis
1662
Original hand-coloured copper engraving on paper
18.25 x 22.5 in (46.3 x 57 cm)
Published in Amsterdam.
Striking example of De Wit's map of Southeast Asia, engraved by Joannes Lhulier in 1662.
Southern Asia is depicted on the map, stretching from southeastern Persia to northern Australia. However, the emphasis is on India and Maritime Southeast Asia, where European joint-stock corporations have been busily developing entrêpots, forging economic partnerships, and forming political alliances.
The various islands in the vicinity are vividly shown, with ports prominently displayed. Mountain interiors are also highlighted, as are lakes such as the legendary Lake Chiamay.
The East Indies and the Philippines are well formed for the time. The Moluccas, or Spice Islands, are located to the east of Celebes and were widely sought after by Europeans looking for nutmeg, cloves, and mace.
One eastern island that is unfinished is called, “Terra d’os Papous a Jacobo le Maire dicta Nova Guinea.” This enormous island, located in what is now Papua New Guinea, was first discovered by Europeans in 1616, when circumnavigators commanded by Willem Schouten (and Jacques LeMaire, who perished on the final stage of the trip back to Holland) sailed along the northern shore.
A huge strait seems to divide New Holland (Australia) from Java and Timor in the southeast. This would be a daring cartographic assertion, as many contemporary mapmakers preferred to claim that Carpentaria, New Holland, and the Southeast Asian islands were only connected or separated by the narrowest of passageways. Torres, a Spanish captain, had travelled across the strait between the countries in the early seventeenth century, thus the Spanish were aware of its existence. The Spanish, however, concealed this knowledge, which was only discovered by Alexander Dalrymple when the British took over Spanish Manila in 1762. An inspection of De Wit's globe maps indicates that the alleged strait is a mirage. The eastern tidy line separates Carpentaria from the rest of Australia.
Except for the title cartouche in the upper right corner, the map is quite bare. It depicts four guys with haircuts and dress that reflect early modern European conceptions (and prejudices) of Asians.
De Wit’s map was influential. It served as a model for later Southeast Asian maps, such as the one published by Francis Lamb in the 1676 edition of Speed's atlas.
The Indian Ocean World and the Dutch and English East India Companies in the seventeenth century.
The Dutch (1602) and English (1600) East India Companies were created sixty years before this map was published to trade directly with the Indian subcontinent. They followed Portuguese traders who had established commercial posts on the Indian subcontinent. They also relayed trade from southwest Asia's valuable Spice Islands. Both firms monopolized trade and amassed enormous power.
By 1700, the Dutch and English were joined in Asia by the French and Danish East India Companies, but the English were by far the most powerful at that time. Eventually, the distinctions between commercial and governmental domination grew blurred in the century after this chart's publication. Because of its control of the oceans, more resources, and more modern military training and technology, the English East India Company became appealing to a segment of the Indian aristocracy. These elements were critical in helping the Company to take control of the Bengal area by 1765 and and to sideline other European countries. India was then becoming a British colony.
The Maldives, located to the east of India, had long been desired as a significant port due to their pivotal location within the Indian Ocean, halfway between Africa and the Straits of Malacca. The Portuguese were the first Europeans to arrive in 1558, but they were met with resistance from the mostly Islamic populace. The Dutch arrived next in the mid-seventeenth century, but they simply ensured access to ports and watering holes; they were uninvolved in local affairs. Long after the publication of this map, in 1796, the British captured the Maldives from the Dutch, and it became a protectorate in 1887.
The Maldives' colonial fate was intertwined with that of Ceylon, which is today known as Sri Lanka. The Portuguese were the first Europeans to arrive in the Maldives, in 1505. Despite fierce indigenous opposition and the survival of the independent Kingdom of Kandy, they erected a fort and expanded their dominance over the island. The Dutch East India Company (VOC) struck a deal with King Rajasinghe II in 1638 to drive out the Portuguese. The Dutch had taken control of Columbo by 1656, but instead of departing as promised, they stayed and were the dominant dominating power on the island at the time this map was created.
As with the Maldives, Britain conquered the island as part of the Napoleonic Wars in 1796. The Kingdom of Kandy resisted a British invasion in 1803, but the British kept a major presence on the island under the aegis of the East India Company. Kandy was defeated in 1815, handing over control of the entire island to the British.
In addition, the map depicts the Andaman Islands, or Andemaons as they are known locally. The Andamans, unlike the Maldives or Sri Lanka, were not an important trading hub. Indeed, they were and continue to be one of the few locations on Earth with little to no contact with the developed world. The Danish East India Company colonised the Nicobar Islands to the south in 1755, decades after this map were created. The British eventually established outposts on the Andaman Islands, but the locals regularly assaulted shipwrecked survivors and lone Europeans, earning them a dangerous reputation.
The political map of South and Southeast Asia: the Mughal Empire, Arakan, and Tonkin
The map depicts various governmental entities that are no longer well-known to modern eyes, including the Mughal Empire, Arakan (here Aracam), and Tonkin (here Tonquin). Babur (r. 1526-1530), originating from Central Asia, established himself in Kabul, Afghanistan, then marched south into India over the Khyber Pass to create the Mughal Empire. His heirs consolidated control and defeated opponents. The Mughal Empire evolved an imperial framework distinguished by religious tolerance and a skilled administrative elite, particularly under the leadership of Akbar (r. 1556-1605).
Later in the seventeenth century, the Mughal Empire emerged not just as a centre of arts and culture (the Taj Mahal was constructed during this period), but also as a political and economic powerhouse. By 1707, the Mughal Empire had expanded to its greatest extent, spanning much of the Indian subcontinent, under the controversial king Aurangzeb (r. 1658-1707). However, the empire began to disintegrate a decade later. Many of Aurangzeb's new territories were in open revolt, and the dynastic line was in disarray. Four distinct emperors ruled in 1719. The Mughal Empire began to lose territory and influence, owing to Maratha resistance and the entry of the British East India Company.
Arakan, sometimes known as Aracan, was an Indianized kingdom located between the Indian subcontinent, the Bay of Bengal, and what was formerly known as Burma. Arakan, located at an important crossroads in trade routes to India, China, and Southeast Asia, was religiously and culturally diverse. In the ninth century, Islam arrived in the region. Around the ninth century, the Rakhine people came to the area, which is now known as Rakhine State in Myanmar. The area was also a hotbed of strife, with the Burmese and Bengal Sultanate among those vying for control of the strategically and economically significant territory. By the seventeenth century, Arakan had survived and developed a strong navy.
The Dutch and Portuguese, on the other hand, were lured to the commerce hub. The Dutch came in 1623 and concluded a deal that granted the Dutch East India Company duty-free trading privileges thirty years later. However, the Mughals destroyed the Arakan fleet in 1665, causing the region to decline.
Tonkin (also Tongkin, Tonquin, and Tongking) is the name given to the northern region of what is now Vietnam. It refers to the "eastern capital," Hanoi. For a time in the first millennium CE, the region was under Chinese authority. However, in 938, it became independent and was controlled by the Ngô, Ðinh, Early Lê, Lý, Tr?n, and H? dynasties.
Disputes with China raged on, with Lê L?i emerging as a noteworthy leader, fighting the Ming dynasty and establishing himself in Hanoi in the mid-fifteenth century. Westerners were regular visitors to the area by the seventeenth century. They traded with the Trinh lords who were in power at the time. From 1884 to 1945, the area was under French rule.
Lake Chiamay
Lake Chiamay originally appears on a map in 1554, when it was featured on the terza tavola of Ramusio's Delle navigationi et viaggi's second edition of volume one. This map of South and Southeast Asia, drawn by Giacomo Gastaldi, depicts a vast lake from which four rivers flow; these are typically understood as the Chao Phraya, Salween, Irrawaddy, and a branch of the Brahmaputra, although other rivers are occasionally included.
The lake was reported by two Portuguese sources: a geographer, João de Barros, and an explorer, Fernão Mendes Pinto. Pinto described a beautiful lake in his writings. These letters were seen by Barros. In turn, he wrote Décadas da Ásia, a history of Asia that referenced the lake; Ramusio incorporated Barros' book in his own collection of travel and adventure.
Barros depicts a lake that gave birth to six rivers, although Ramusio's map only shows four. However, Gastaldi's Tertia Pars Asiae map from 1561 depicts six rivers leaving and two entering the lake. Following its appearance in such an authoritative publication, the lake was adopted by other mapmakers. The Ramusio/Gastaldi model was widely employed. Others expanded on the idea of this geographical illusion, as there is no such lake in the vicinity.
The lake is shown farther north and with a different river pattern in Luis Jorge de Barbuda's 1584 map. Hondius used his approach in India Orientales (1606), and many others followed suit. Martino Martini, a Jesuit, compiled Imperii Sinarum Nova Descriptio on his experiences in eastern and northern China (1655). Martini included the lake, but also added the Red River and made the Chao Phraya flow from a separate lake. Other maps that surfaced about 1570 showed Lake Chiamay having just two outlets.
As more Jesuit knowledge of Southeast Asia seeped back to Europe, mapmakers like Guillaume Delisle started to doubt the lake's reality. It was last added to a map by Vaugondy in 1751; nonetheless, it was republished in map reissues until at least 1783. The feature was recognised as little more than a cartographic fiction by the early nineteenth century. Expeditions had clearly shown that no such lake existed by the early twentieth century. (Source: KAP)
Frederik de Wit (born Frederik Hendriksz; c. 1629 - July 1706) was a Dutch cartographer and artist who worked and died in Amsterdam. He went to the city in 1648 and founded a printing company called The Three Crabs; subsequently, he changed the name of his shop to The White Chart. The first cartographic images that De Wit engraved were a plan of Haarlem that has been dated to 1648, and sometime before 1649, De Wit engraved the city views - city maps for the cities of Rijsel and Doornik. His Atlas began to appear around 1662 and by 1671 included anywhere from 17 to 151 maps each. In the 1690s, he began to use a new title page Atlas Maior but continued to use his old title page. His atlas of the Low Countries first published in 1667, was named Nieuw Kaertboeck van de XVII Nederlandse Provincien and contained 14 to 25 maps. De Wit quickly expanded on his first small folio atlas, which contained mostly maps printed from plates he had acquired, to an atlas with 27 maps engraved by or for him. (Source: Wikipedia)
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