1635 Willem Blaeu Map of America

The essential Dutch map of America: Willem Janszoon Blaeu's 1635 carte-á-figures of the Western Hemisphere, in a scarce early printing. This is among the most desirable printed maps, encapsulating in one piece the most sought-after aesthetic qualities of the Dutch Golden Age of Cartography.

A Beautifully Figured Map

Blaeu's Americae is a premier example of the carte-á-figures, or 'figured map,' displaying in its upper border the most important cities in the seventeenth-century Americas, and in its left and right borders finely-engraved depictions of the new world's native peoples. The cities thus depicted are (from left) Havana, Santo Domingo, Cartagena, Mexico, Cusco, Potosi, La Mocha, Rio de Janeiro, and Olinda. The denizens of the Americas here depicted include Greenlanders, Virginians, Floridians, Californians (specifically, the King and Queen of Nova Albion) Mexicans, Peruvians, Brazilians, Chileans, and the natives of Magellanica (these last, possibly intended to be the giants reported by the survivors of Magellan's voyage). The decorative elements of the map are not limited to the borders: the seas are sailed by no fewer than eight ships sporting Dutch flags, an expression of control of the seas surrounding the new continent.

Censored Cartography

Apart from his world map, this is the only Blaeu folio map to show all of North America. Consequently, it had a long printing life. When Blaeu first produced the map in 1617, it not only bore the mapmaker's proper name - Guiljel: Janssonio - but also showed fewer islands in the Pacific and presented a more primitive depiction of the Strait of Magellan. The present map improved on these areas to reflect the findings of Le Maire and Schouten's 1615-1617 circumnavigation, news of which Blaeu was aware but was prevented, by the Dutch East India Company's censorship, from printing in 1617. (Blaeu's protest that his competitors were already printing the new data led the Company to relent, and he printed the corrected version of his map in 1618.) From that point forward, the plate remained in use with minor aesthetic changes, none of which represent changes in geographical knowledge.

Scope and Features of the Map

The engraving covers all of North and South America and the surrounding seas, extending eastward to Europe and Africa, and westward to the unexplored central Pacific. At the southernmost point of South America, Tierra del Fuego is shown as an island separate from the hypothetical Terra Australis Incognita, including both the Strait of Magellan and the Strait of Le Maire. The northernmost regions shown in the main map are Hudson's Bay, the coasts around the Davis Strait and part of Nicolo Zeno's phantom island of Frisland. An inset map shows the coastline of Greenland in more completeness, a complete rendering of Frisland (along with the Greenland coast, also derived from Zeno's fraudulent geography), and an accurate depiction of Iceland. The mapping of North America reveals little knowledge beyond the coastline. The Saint Lawrence River appears to take its beginning in an array of small lakes, but no recognizable Great Lakes are shown. The Mississippi does not yet appear, although there are several rivers emptying into the Gulf of Mexico, their watershed bounded by imaginary mountain ranges. In the North American southwest a proto-Colorado River appears with its start in a lake surrounded by the legendary Seven Cities of Gold. The Pacific Coast shows no sign of an insular California (while that canard had begun to appear on other maps as early as 1624, Blaeu's map was never updated to include it).

East Coast of America

The east coast of North America includes a rudimentary depiction of the 1591 John White cartography, appearing as an outsized and protuberant Virginia and Outer Banks. The Canadian Maritimes appear recognizably, but between Virginia and Nova Scotia the geography becomes imaginary. The highlight of the American northeast is the appearance of Norembega, a kind of northeastern El Dorado (El Dorado itself appears in South America). Norembega or Nurembega appears in what is today New England. This mysterious land began being mapped with Verrazano's 1529 manuscript chart of America. He used the term 'Oranbega' which in Algonquin means something on the order of 'lull in the river'. References to this place, spelled on variations of Nurumbeg, Norumbega and so on, began to appear in travelers' journals, collecting wilder descriptions until it was reputed to be a fabulous city rich in pearls and built upon pillars of crystal, silver, and gold. The idea caught on in the European popular imagination and expeditions were sent to search for the city - including that of Samuel de Champlain. Thereafter variants of the place would continue appearing on maps, reflecting a reluctance to erase so tempting a destination.

El Dorado

Similarly, in South America Blaeu includes El Dorado (Manoa al Dorada) on the shores of a large, imaginary lake in what is today Northern Brazil or southern Guyana reflecting the European belief that the legendary city was the equally mythical city of Manoa, first reported by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1595 and placed on the shores of the Lake Parima. Raleigh did not claim to have visited the city but described the city based on indigenous accounts. Parts of the Amazon were, at the time, dominated by a large and powerful Indigenous trading nation known as the Manoa, and rainy seasons occasionally connected the Amazon and Orinoco River systems, affording the Manoans the ability to trade with the Incans in the western Amazon, providing access to gold mines on the western slopes of the Andes. So Raleigh's suppositions may have had some basis in fact.

Publication History and Census

As mentioned above, this map was initially engraved in 1617. It was published separately until it was included in Blaeu's 1630 Appendix, consequently the 1617 first and 1618 second states of the map are exceedingly rare. This 1621 third state was included in Blaeu atlases until 1642, when the engraving was retouched mainly distinguishable by the addition of waves in the area between 240 and 250 degrees longitude and 10 and 20 degrees latitude south. The typography of the present example, combined with its state identifies it as belonging to a 1635 French edition of Willem Blaeu's Théâtre du Monde (Third state, catch letter H, verso header text 'L'AFRIQUE'). The map in its various editions is well represented in institutional collections; states prior to the fourth and fifth are scarce.